Chapter 11

Tlachta

The first we knew of the parley was Milesius hammering on the plank door of the mill, a burning rushlight in his fist. He cried out in Latin so that we might know his purpose.

Father and I were sleeping on a nest of sacking over the wide boards of the floor with the wheel disengaged and the bronze bog waters running freely down the timber chute beneath us and clamouring into the mill-race beyond. Father rose, and I could just make out his shape in the dense blue dark. I stayed prone, paralysed with a child’s fear on sudden waking. Men flooded into the small space, crowding around and stooping beside the millstone. Milesius led them, looking wild in the lamplight with embers rising, settling in his hair, in his beard.

‘Watch the thatch’, Father said as sternly as he dared. In the ruddy light, the scene was unreal, men of high degree entering our humble room like magi from afar, bursting in upon us with tidings of great consequence. Milesius bustling at their head with Tuar close behind him, anger thrumming in the space between them as the Tiarna himself pressed forward and the space closed in around us, the signs of conflict knitting his brows. Fiacra was there too, pushing his face in as close as he dared. Eyes swollen with the happening, darting around like fish in a shoal. His lips moving already—waiting for the first chance to shout out in condemnation. And beyond, I could sense a body of men crowding the darkening door frame.

Milesius spoke in Latin, out of respect to Father.

‘Seáhan’, he said—for that is how they say ‘Johan’—‘I need you to accompany me tonight’. The Tiarna’s arm shot out, thumped into the axle of the millwheel, breaking the space between Father and the monk.

‘No’, he roared in the language of the Gael, ‘I have said no, he may not go. He is needed here to tend the mill, to thatch the forge, to lead the milking. He will not go’.

‘The Rí has need of him, Mánus’, Milesius said.

‘The Rí! Your Rí. Ua Ruairc the war-dog. Ua Ruairc the pretender. Ua Ruairc the cuckold who set this madness in motion. Your mother’s cousin, Milesius. I am Rí in Míde, not Uí Ruairc’.

Milesius continued in Latin, undeterred.

‘Your claim to Míde is dead, and already the factions feud over the leavings, even as the foreigners chew at our hindquarters. The King of the Engleis has granted Míde to Hugo de Lacy. Support Ua Ruairc or suffer the hand of the foreigner’.

‘This is my túath’, roared the Tiarna, and I was frightened by his rage. Unsettled by his lost composure—to see this negotiator, this silver tongue, this Odysseus of the west, so uncontrolled.

‘Well have your say now, Mánus’, Milesius continued firmly, ‘Gael or Engleis, for that is the only choice before us. De Lacy is coming to claim what has been promised to him’.

The Tiarna did not move. His hand, planted on the axle, barred the monk’s way. Milesius pressed on, speaking to the shadows beyond the door as much as to the Tiarna himself.

‘There are many who say the Engleis are sent by God to punish us for the un-Christian act of slavery that persists in the dark corners of this land’.

Voices fell silent. Those who could understand Latin felt the barb keenly, the others cowed by the change in the atmosphere. Night-sound re-entered the mill. The tumbling waters below. The snapping of the rushlight slowly consumed. I felt my father’s hand reach behind for me and guide me up.

After a span of silence, the Tiarna spoke.

‘Seáhan will not go, he is needed. Take Alberagh. He speaks the tongue’.

At this, Father’s hand ushered me behind him, and he backed up, pushing me against the wattle of the wall, my face buried in his shoulder. I both heard and felt his voice, resonating through the cavities in his strong body, treading that familiar shadow ground between deference and defiance.

‘A thiarna, no, not my son’, he said in the tongue of the Gael, and the faltering words and heavy accent of his speech, as ever, caused me shame. The Tiarna came forward and took Father by the shoulders. The grip was measured but firm. I felt Father’s bulk resist for the space of two breaths before he moved aside. The Tiarna spoke words of assurance into his ear as Milesius came forward.

‘Mánus, please’, Father said—the Tiarna’s name, shocking from his lips, provoked exclamation from the shadowed door frame. But the Tiarna spoke gently to him.

‘All will be well, friend. He goes with the monk and will be protected by Ua Ruairc’s people’. Milesius had slid around them both, landing a hand on me, spiriting me outside.

‘Come, lad’, he said, ‘the Rí needs you’.

He hurried me away from the mill with vivid movements, and I perceived then that this had been his desire all along. Alberic and not Johan. He cast the dying rushlight into the mud, and we followed the run of the millstream that Father and I had dug out two seasons previous. I inspected it, as ever, mindlessly in the half-light for signs of silting or fouling as Milesius dragged me onwards by a numb hand.

We passed downslope past the farmstead alive with the commotion of events, to the head of the valley where a company awaited us at the crossroads beneath the wide bulk and greening canopy of an oak tree. There were some important-looking men on horses and a group of their household soldiers on foot. One of the horsemen cantered out to meet us, and I recognised, even in the poor light, the face of Conn Máel Sechlainn, his hooded eyes silent and questing, probing Milesius, seeking some word or sign of his father. The monk pushed me towards the rear of the caravan as he walked towards the head, Conn beside him, stooped in hungry conversation. Foster son of Ua Ruairc, blood son of the Tiarna. A shadow between two houses.

Milesius spoke to the horsemen and set off ahead on foot, his stride urgent. I walked behind with the servants. As we passed down the gleann, five of the Tiarna’s men came out to us, from the smaller farms, to honour the hosting and keep safe the hostages. Milesius stalked ahead of us all, his gnarled, bronze-shod gorse stave striking the earth, a brat over his head and his bare feet finding the way along gravel ridges between the bogs, leading us along low hills threading between woodlands and dark meadow. We walked into the sunrise, and I caught whispers between the others that we were bound for Tlachta—a place of consequence, a hill of mist and sorcery where the ancestors were close, watching all from behind a thin veil. We moved towards a meeting of kings. My mind swam, trying to catch up with the pace of events. I wondered as we walked whether the Engleis would have slaves, and whether I would understand when they spoke, and whether my ancestors would be watching, given I was not of that land. But mostly as we walked, and the mild breeze took on body, stirring Milesius’ brat from his shoulders, I wondered if I was to see Father again, and who was to fetch him his buttermilk now and help him in the early light to weigh the wefts of thatch onto the roof of the forge in the bottom field.

We came at the hill from the west, finding a large force of men assembled in a clearing at the bottom of the wooded slope. They had ordered themselves into a field camp with the provisions and nobility in the centre of a palisade of men bearing spears and axes and the entire circle crowned by a wheeling chaos of rooks, doing their dawn dance, falling in from the surrounding trees. Ua Ruairc was there in the middle of the gathering, surrounded by his household men, and Milesius led us through the circlet of warriors. He bade Conn organise the men who had arrived with us, and he called me with him, hurrying towards the side of the Rí. Ua Ruairc sat on a wooden stool with his ollamh and lawmen gathered around on woven matting. His household soldiers stood outside these, and all others were made up of soldiers and bondsmen sent from his client kings and vassals.

Milesius pushed through the guards, holding fast to my wrist. We passed without challenge. He brought me forward and pushed me towards a group of men standing beyond the seated advisers but within the circle of guards. The talk fell silent as Milesius took his seat, beginning to speak as he lowered himself onto his heels, and I was surprised by the sudden silence he commanded. I stood with the others. There were a dozen of us, poorly attired, and all with the gaunt look of the labourer. Servants, slaves, all, I learned from Milesius’ speech. All foreigners gathered together from Ua Ruairc’s allies in the hope that we might understand the tongue of the foreigner. Ua Ruairc sat immobile, the storm of his face arranged at its most baleful. Thunder clouds on the horizon over passive purple bogs. His one eye, roving, found me as Milesius spoke, and I could not bear its gaze; I withered under its power as I remembered him at a distance absorbing the file’s satire, his body a battered shield. And then Milesius was speaking my name, as if from a great distance.

‘Boy’, Ua Ruairc addressed me directly, ‘these men around you, speak to them in turn and choose the five who understand your tongue the best. Bring these five men to Eochadh here and we will speak with you afterwards of a place for you in my household’.

And then the roving eye was gone, passed on to the next matter as scouts and kern came into the circle from all sides in a steady stream with updates on the Engleis position. On movements on the slíghe, of the watchmen farther out on the approaches, on the advance negotiations on the hill between Ua Ruairc’s and de Lacy’s stewards.

Eochadh came towards me, a broad-faced, tall man, wiry though exuding an impressive air of strength. He gestured towards the group of foreigners, and I approached them. As a test, I spoke quickly and tersely from the Chanson de Roland, those verses almost sacred to my father, words he had recited again and again at my demand on stormy nights in the byre, his tongue tripping along his native words like a swift stream over rounded stones:


Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes,

Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne:

Tresqu’en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne.

N’i ad castel ki devant lui remaigne;

There were some looks of confusion—Bretons and Saxons who had no knowledge of our language. Though there were those who caught my meaning and took up immediately with the following verses. I picked out those who recited clearest and spoke to them quickly, to be sure they could parse my words. There were two Engleis, a Frank and a merchant—a Gael who had sojourned long in the realm of Burgundia, this last one an older man, the best part of his nose consumed by a black canker. He spoke with strange inflection on the words, though he was as quick as the rest to understand. I indicated to Eochadh, and he led us out from the circle, took our rags and dressed us as soldiers. He put a leather ionar over my shoulders and a pair of thick osian over my legs.

‘What is to happen?’ I asked as Eochadh added some touches to my disguise, tugging at a cross belt and hanging the long blade of a scian mór at my waist. He addressed us all.

‘You will go to the summit with the Rí, each of you mounted with one of our men. Listen to what is being said—not by the negotiating party but by the soldiers, the guards, the servants that may be up there. Keep your eyes and ears keen for signs or words of betrayal or ambush, all the while feigning incomprehension. If there is anything said that suggests attack or treachery, you will grip the handle of your scian in its sheath like this, so that your companion may see. You will be rewarded for loyalty. Any move to deceive us or to aid our enemies will be met with a long blade driven slowly home’.

Then he called out to several of Ua Ruairc’s household men, placing us each with one of them. I was to go with Eochadh himself, who laid his large hand on my shoulder.

‘Our emissaries are up there now, negotiating since dawn. They will agree on the parties with the Engleis—how many men, what weapons are allowed, how the parties will approach one another, how the parties will address one another’.

‘We will be with the Rí?’ I asked.

‘We will be abreast of him. And we will watch, still, like stags in the woodland, ready to rush to the protection of the old wolf’. Eochadh laughed, ‘Though it is likely to be this de Lacy who needs protecting’, and he looked back at the Rí—a spider in his web, assessing the tremblings coming to him from his network of men arriving still from south and north. Runners padded constantly into the clearing with words passed on and then gone. The rhythm of the camp, quick but regular, showing up the slowness of our waiting. A restrained feeling all around us. Some of the men singing in low voices or throwing javelins into the earth to dispel the tension.

Eochadh hung a worn quilted jacket on my shoulders—the kind that absorbs blows—and pushed me out in front of him, turning me around, saying loudly, ‘A warrior of legend or I am much mistaken’. Some of the men within earshot laughed, looking at me in the oversized coat and the loose trews. Despite their mockery, I had never been so richly attired, and I noticed my bearing had changed, shoulders pushed back, muscles stretched tight across my breastbone.

‘No hope of winning the hero’s portion with this one around’, someone said, and there was more laughter, heads turning to see, hungry for something to break the tense waiting.

‘Were Anluán here, he would best this bodach’, said another, and I took up the game swiftly, dropping to the ground and gathering up a clod of muck. ‘But he is here—his head at least’, and I threw the clod at the warrior who had spoken so that it struck his chest, breaking apart in a shower of crumbs. This move echoing the part of Conall Cearnach in one of their favourite stories. All laughed and praised my swiftness, and Eochadh clapped a big hand on my shoulder.

‘All right, lad, well played. That will do us now’. Eochadh could sense the laughter bringing on a flightiness, and some of Ua Ruairc’s party were taking notice.

‘What do you know of this place, Sasanach?’ he asked, addressing me loudly for the benefit of all those within earshot.

‘This is Tlachta, the place where the fires of Samhain are lit’, I said, ‘the place where Ruairí Ua Conor convened his synod’.

‘Yes, this is the place’, he paused, looking around at his men. ‘The monk says you have a sharp mind. So tell me, why do you think we are meeting here, at this hill?’ This was something I had been turning over on our journey.

‘Because this hill is clearly within the territory of the Rí and holds meaning for the Gael. The Engleis should be vulnerable here, not knowing the land or the ruling families. The Rí is more likely to agree to a meeting here’.

‘And what benefit to the foreigner?’

I spat in the dirt and decided to speak plainly. ‘Either to show a desire to reach accord by submitting to the legitimacy of place—’ I said, pausing.

‘Or’, Eochadh prompted.

‘Or to craft a lure to draw the Rí into danger in his own territory’.

Eochadh nodded, the rough palms of his hands running loudly over his cheeks. ‘I can see why they call you the hay-barn ollamh behind your back’, he said, watching to see the effect his words would have on me.

‘Many fine things began in a manger’, I said swiftly, and some of the men laughed, Eochadh himself smiling beneath a raised hand.

‘Tell us then, ollamh, who was Tlachta?’

I could not answer, and Eochadh continued. ‘Tlachta was the daughter of the great druid Mog Ruith, who learned the profane secrets and forbidden magic in the Holy Land. She accompanied her father on his travels and learned the dark secrets. She was raped by the three sons of Simon Magus before she fled to this place, where she gave birth to three sons. She then died of grief’.

The men fell silent contemplating this, and I could see the mark of leadership clearly in Eochadh’s actions. Breaking the tension with humour and then focusing minds with a reminder of the hilltop and its grave past. I noted such things, as ever, and learned by them where I could.

Into the silence, a voice rose in the clear metrical run of their poetry. I looked up to find it was the old Gael with the canker on his face, the back of one hand tapping softly into the palm of the other, marking time.

A wage was given to Mog Ruith for beheading Johan the Baptist;

this then was the wage of Mog Ruith—his choice of the maidens.

Then Mog Ruith the splendid went to kill Johan, though

it was shameful. So he took to Herod the head of

Johan on a dish of white silver.

For this sin, it is contended, the feast of Johan

will come upon the Gael, so that there shall not survive of the

race of noble Gaels save one-third unslain.

The single third which will be left on that day

of the host of the Gael and the foreigners, oh Son of Mary,

it is a sad thing that they should all be visited by a black pestilence.

The words dropped into the congregation like a black boulder, sinking into a clear pool, dislodging gouts of black silt and scum from the bottom—muddying the waters. We waited the rest of the time in silence under the hanging threat of that curse.

The emissaries returned down the hill, the morning still young and the sun with several spans to rise. Ua Ruairc, though he had not shifted in hours, stood up in one movement, like a dog who has heard his master at the gate. He showed no sign of complaint or stiffness in his joints bar a slight stoop to his back. The palisade of warriors opened to admit the men coming down the hill, closing again quickly, and I lost sight of Ua Ruairc and Milesius in the close, conferring huddle at the centre of the ring.

Eochadh stood and readied his men, calling for the Rí’s horse. We arranged ourselves at the base of the slope, the circle of warriors behind us. Ua Ruairc’s ollamh came out from the circle and shouted the words ‘fifteen and five’, and Eochadh responded immediately with a brusque and swift ordering of his men, sheering off several of them until we numbered fifteen, all mounted except the five of us sent out to spy, sitting in front of the household men of Ua Ruairc. Another set of giollaí came forward to give Ua Ruairc’s horse a final brush and to lay it with a woven mat of fine purple linen. The garland of warriors opened and Ua Ruairc came forward with five of his councillors, and I was heartened to see Milesius by his side. Conn was there too, surrounding the councillors as part of Ua Ruairc’s guard. Two giollaí followed carrying a basket which contained gifts. Ua Ruairc walked as straight as his old body would allow. His face like a graven idol, his one eye trained at the hillside ahead, entirely engaged in trying to see the future—as if it were a distant bird on the breeze. The giollaí helped him to mount, and he moved on instantly, steering the horse by squeezing its flanks with his thighs and tapping its head with a length of crooked stick.

I mounted in front of Eochadh, and he set his mount to the slope, climbing towards the summit. The horse progressed slowly up the hill, and as we went, we passed individual kern perched in trees or within stands of broom watching the approaches, alive to treachery.

We crested the hill, facing into the morning, and Ua Ruairc and his advisers shouted out angrily when they saw that the Engleis were there waiting. They had placed themselves at natural advantage on the bones of what must have once been a kingly ráth with the broken banks still piled high. Their backs were to the rising sun so that their outlines were all that we could see as we faced into the lensing light.

Eochadh cantered us out wide. His eyes roved across the hilltop, and the anxiety of the situation was writ large in the set of his jaw. He guided the horse then to Ua Ruairc’s flank, his fist deep in the horse’s mane, his other hand crooked in his belt, knuckles knocking the smooth wood of the axe handle that dwelt there. The household guard fanned out to reflect the arc made by the waiting Engleis.

Milesius and the ollamh led the Rí forward, his black mount’s coat sheening beneath him. They halted midway to the Engleis. Ua Ruairc’s regalia, dun and flat coloured in the sun. My courage faltered when I saw Milesius strike out alone across the empty ground, twenty paces to the waiting foreigners on the ráth. We all watched Milesius’ progress, tracked his movements, until he was but an outline against the rising sun, which peeled away the true colour of the world, leaving patterns burned into our eyes. A figure came forward to meet him, and they exchanged words. Milesius turned and raised his hand. Ua Ruairc dismounted stiffly, his belly sliding down the horse’s flank. He stood straight, pulling his léine down tight to his frame, took his axe from a waiting giolla and strode forward towards the conclave of foreigners standing in the sun like blackened, immovable posts. Ua Ruairc’s retinue surged forward together, keeping pace with their Rí and fanning out in the shape of a gull with wings outstretched, we on the inner flank to ward off encircling. His ollamh, hurrying to keep pace, began to announce ‘Tigernán Ua Ruairc, Rí of Bréifne, Tiarna of—’ until Ua Ruairc slapped at the man’s chest with the back of his hand, silencing him as his own voice came tunnelling up out of his chest as he stalked forward. The sound came gargling up into the light and broke like a colony of gannets on a cliff, hoarse and phlegm riddled, the deep lung rot sounding, the determined power of his voice carrying over all the signs of his age.

‘King of Bréifne, Prince of the Ua Ruaircs, ruler of Tethba, despoiler of Laigin, receiver of the cattle tribute of Airgialla, hammer of the gall, and ruler of Míde by the hand of Ua Conor, Ard Rí and highest authority in Éirinn’.

The party of Engleis came forward to meet him, five in total, walking towards where Ua Ruairc had stopped, the butt of his axe planted in the earth. Then came their fifteen men over the curving bank to match our number. But these men came riding large, fearsome horses that clattered as they walked, such was the weight of gear hanging from them. The riders, too, clinked in mail cloaks, and Eochadh drew breath sharply when he saw them. And it seemed in that moment that our ruse was in vain, that their aspect as they approached in such force was the answer we had sought to obtain through cunning. The riders fanned out to mirror our formation, coming close as a javelin cast while the delegation from each side met in the middle.

Eochadh became agitated, looking down the line of horsemen to the small gathering of men around his lord, reading the military strikes that could be made, the counter-strikes. The danger was clear. He made to move towards the middle, and the Engleis horseman marking us sent up a shout. A single word.

‘Arestare!’—stop. And without warning, my heart trilled in my chest like a wren caught in the fist. These foreign horsemen becoming, with the sound of that one word, the heroes of my father’s verses. Ua Ruairc’s men looked to Eochadh, uncertain. Milesius shouted up the line.

‘Hold firm!’

I looked to the delegation and found that I could now make out the Engleis party. Five men, their shaved faces gleaming like boys, one whose head was in the shadow of a long cloak, whom I took to be a priest. Another was announcing de Lacy and his titles in Latin as the lord stood by. I strained for a look at this de Lacy. He was shorter than the rest, his mail shirt coming to his knees, cinched by a narrow belt at the waist from which hung a long sword. A red glaze covered one side of his face, which I took, at a distance, to be a birthmark, and I was overcome by a sudden feeling of fraternity.

De Lacy stepped forward, and there was a fierceness in his aspect, a baleful confidence that carried him, eye to eye, with Ua Ruairc, who met the challenge, immobile. What I had taken to be a birthmark revealed itself as a ruinous scarring—fearsome and red, spreading down from his right eye in lumpen ridges, like molten candlewax. For the span of twenty heartbeats, these two stood face-to-face, immobile without word or acknowledgement. It was frightening to behold as the sun climbed slowly above them, exaggerating their terrible features with the intensity of light and shade.

De Lacy spoke then in Latin, and the low tremor of his voice fell below hearing. He indicated to his councillor, who produced a roll of vellum, inked edge to edge with writing, trailing a heavy lead seal.

A shudder passed through Ua Ruairc, and he shouted ancient Gaelic words in a deep phlegmy rumble, sounding like the final crack of a stump in the earth that has borne hours of axe blows and shovel prying. He spoke the ancient words of the poet—

‘Thou shalt seek no other charter except thy own reliance on thy courage to charge against the spears that pierce thee—that is thy charter to the land’.

Ua Ruairc looked from face to face, seeking challenge.

‘And you will be pierced before long, Tigernán’, said the hooded shape from the group of Engleis, speaking words of the Gael, coming forward and pulling back a cloak of foreign cloth to reveal a bearded face.

‘Ua Ragallaig’, Eochadh hissed, and, spurring his horse onwards, he roared up the line, ‘We are betrayed!’

The effect upon Ua Ruairc was immediate, and in a swift movement, he leaned his weight backward, pitching his weapon up before lunging forward as the axe’s swing reached its apex, driving the blade down towards Ua Ragallaig’s face. Ua Ragallaig raised his forearm, the iron blade striking hard and shearing clean through the bone. At the same instant, de Lacy drew his sword and struck at Ua Ruairc’s exposed nape, driving the blade downwards with force. Conn and the other guards had surged forward, grabbing Ua Ruairc back, axes crowding into the space, spoiling de Lacy’s blow.

Arrows flew from over the brow of the hill, striking Ua Ruairc’s men, and the Engleis horsemen charged forward with long spears levelled, causing Eochadh and the other warriors to dive from their mounts. Screams of treachery on all sides, and I could hear the cries repeated down the hill behind us. Eochadh loosed a spear that gouged the breast of an oncoming charger, the horse bucking and throwing its rider. Eochadh ignored the man, running in the direction of Ua Ruairc’s body, which lay still, his household guard crowding around him, and fierce fighting over his fallen form had pushed the Engleis delegation back. The sun at its highest now beating down onto the dead bodies, merciless colours, bright, coruscating gore.

I saw Eochadh pinioned mid-stride by a horseman who thundered up and couched his spear to his mailed flank and rammed the tip into the side of Eochadh’s head, breaking and spilling his jaw grotesquely outwards. He fell like a downed doe and moved no more. I ran, directionless, as all descended into melee. Tripping and scrambling, I sought nothing but to hide, to escape that bare, sun-raked crest, desperate to plunge into undergrowth, to burrow into gorse, to be like a fox gone to ground, swallowed up by the earth. I fell against a hump of grass, and I will admit that I hid my face in my hands like a child, trying to crawl bodily into that darkness.

When I again took stock of my surroundings, I was in the lee of the earthen ramparts with sounds of conflict ringing sharply all around. The last of Ua Ruairc’s guards had fallen to arrows sent high and repeated quickly, falling down on them with the ferocity of diving falcons. Amongst it all, the dread form of Ua Ruairc rose. Then the horsemen charged with spears into Ua Ruairc’s party, and his ollamh and councillors were cut down as they fled. I saw Ua Ruairc receive a blow to the back as he tried to mount his horse, falling beneath a rushing crowd of soldiers whose swords rose and fell, casting bright arcs of blood to the sky.

I stood up on the rim of the ditch, seeking a sign of Milesius, and one of their mounted men whom I had not observed nearby spurred on me with his spear levelled. I fell backwards against the ramparts and cried out in the totality of fear, ‘Pitie, pitie! Soie normanni!’

The hard eyes encased within the helm widened with surprise, and at the final moment, he pushed his spear wide, regaining balance, masterfully wheeling his horse to block my escape. He spun from the saddle, and the butt of the spear shaft struck the crown of my head as I ducked to slide beneath his grasp. When I righted myself to flee, the world canted and my legs gave way beneath me, the blinding pain of the blow arriving late, and I pitched forward, my limbs no longer obeying my commands. He grabbed me by the leather coat and dragged me over the neck of his mount.

Voices were shouting ‘fuie, fuie, fuie’, and the call was taken up by the horsemen. A horn sounding. Flee. I knew then that Ua Ruairc’s camp had been roused and were charging uphill with murder in their veins. The rider struck me again, with his fist, and spoke in a hissing threat.

‘Stay still, winestain, or I will sever your neck’.

There was no sinew left in me to resist. All was trained upon staying athwart the horse as he spurred it downslope. I could hear from the calls around me that the body of men had taken flight, a thrumming of hooves on the earth. All I could see was the ground racing below and thick medallions of muck thrown up by the biting hooves. I clung to whatever parts of horse or gear were within grasp, jolted almost off the beast at every gallop. The rider slapped my hands away constantly as I grappled for purchase, each strike of the hooves like the blow of a stick across the ribs. Everything now rested upon staying on that horse.

My last clear memory of the descent and flight from Tlachta was reaching the level ground at the foot of the hill, where the canter of the horse became more even. I lifted my head as far as I could to get a bearing on the lie of the Engleis camp. To gauge its defensibility against the strength of Ua Ruairc’s men. All I saw were the smoking embers of a fire beside a stream and the trampled grass and shapes where men had slept hidden in the briars. And I was both quickened and afraid of these men, understanding then that these twenty riders were the full company. There was no camp. There was no battalion. There were twenty riders deep in a hostile túath on a táin of stone-hard audacity. And it followed that I was the prize. I and the few other shapes I caught sight of, similarly slung over horses. We, the cattle driven before the host, hanging on by the grace of St Lasair, borne off as prisoners to de Lacy.