Chapter 12

Duiblinn

Pain and fear, from distant black oblivion, bloomed fully into my consciousness. I rose out of a dead sleep to an unknown place. Hours of road stretched behind us. Perhaps even days. The passage had been distilled into a feverish blur of sunlight and moonlight. Of stony slíghe and mucky route. There had been quick entry to a large fort within a forest of palisades, where horses were changed. A water crossing, an open plain, but more I could not say. Neither direction nor duration of our flight.

I lay quaking, face deep in the dew-damp grass, fearing to look up or even to raise my head. Muscles seized with deep aching. Ribs bruised and hands I could no longer feel bent fettered beneath me. All around, I could hear sounds of action. Thick, black snoring close to me. The snap of a good fire of dry sticks. The flat dinging of a ladle off a full cauldron. The snatch of a workman’s song. A low babble of voices in conclave.

Three tokens of a blessed site: a bell, psalm singing, a synod of elders.

It was the voices that allowed me to raise my head. Voices all around, rough, soft, earnest, low. Voices I could hear in passing, in the distance, chittering like crickets by a stream.

A cracked voice close by, ‘Jesus and St Anthony, my head is like a blown bladder’; another further off, ‘a hundred or more, seething up the slope and de Lacy crying “back you shit-hounds” and drawing out his weapon’; distant cries of ‘more meal for the pot’, as the fires were stoked for the soldiers’ breakfast.

And all of these words, growing and receding, mixed with the sound of bodies tousling, leather creaking, wood clacking, horses lipping each other and a hound whining satisfied under a hand showing it affection. All the words, bursting out in that secret language like dog rose across the briar. That tongue that I had known since before I knew what knowing was. A language as personal to me as Lasair’s scrap of embroidered fabric. The tongue of the Engleis. A language I had traded secrets in and had only ever heard from the mouth of Father. Hearing it all around me now, amplified, repeated, like a hundred voices welling out of my own thoughts, gave me strength to finally lift my head and look to my surroundings. To see who these voices belonged to and what they resembled. My kindred. My people.

With my eyes shaded under the blade of my bound hands, I saw that we had camped the night in a courtyard on a hill girded with a palisade of raw timber. The place teemed with people. Soldiers rising from couches on the earth within the lee of walls and fences. Boys and servants carrying wood and water pails between buildings that flanked the yard, and from one of these with an awning to the side and diffuse smoke clouding its shape came the noises of a meal being prepared. A severe grassed slope rose sharply from within the palisade, itself girded by a large ditch. The banks raised high had the look of newness to them in the sparse way the grass was breaking from the turned sod of the slope. From the crest rose a timber house the like of which I had never seen, constructed as it was of massive beams of oak wood intersecting and dowelled together. The strength of this place was clear. A great pile of stone had been gathered within the gate; the broken faces of the blue rock spoke of a great work to come.

Some of the riders I recognised from our party; those I took for giollaí had slept in the open, rolled up in blankets, and I could see the misshapen bundles of the survivors of Ua Ruairc’s men dispersed between them. I saw Conn, not far from me, his hands hugging his knees, his brow lowered in a passion of chagrin, his eyes ill concealing racing, bloody thoughts. He nodded slightly to me, and I returned the gesture.

Below us, wooded slopes fell towards the bend of a broad river. Everything now washed out by the morning sun. Milk-white light falling through the watery air. A burning mist spooling shapes across the forest tops. The heavy smell of gorse fires on the wind.

This, then, the first dawn in a changed world.

Away downriver, wreathed in smoke, a sprawling town with stone walls encircling straddled the river where it opened into a wide, pink-fringed estuary. Beyond it, a line of pale blue, flat as hammered gold, stretched without end. I was confused and afraid and overcome by what I saw and did not think upon my words, which I later had much cause to rue.

‘Are we come to Rome?’ I asked the horseman who had stirred beside me. He laughed out loud for some time and shouted from his bed to his companions in a coarse way, sharing the joke.

‘Hear that, boys? We have a pilgrim with us’. I glowed with shame and hid my head as much as I could beneath the arms of my quilted jacket.

Three tokens of a cursed site: elder, a corncrake, nettles.

‘That is the King’s city’, he said at length, ‘Duiblinn—taken from the Ostmen by the Earl’.

‘The Earl of Chester? Is he there?’ I said.

This horseman turned to me now, as if noticing for the first time whom he addressed.

‘What are you, urchin?’

A voice speaking Latin responded from the fence-line.

‘The boy will speak to de Lacy alone; he has much information’.

Milesius. My heart awoke finally, a thrush in my chest. The rider snorted, disinterested, and rolled back to his horse blanket.

Milesius sat nearby, his own face bruised and a blooded scalp scabbing over where handfuls of hair had been wrenched away. He saw the joy in me and tried to smile, though his lips were burst open cruelly. His words came quiet and distorted, and he spoke some snatch of old verse.

‘Loth yet not loth am I to fare to Áth Cliath, to the fort of Olaf of the gilded shield’.

I sank back to the grass, closing my eyes and gathering strength, waiting for what was to come. When the sun was fully risen, servants roused the horsemen and brought them porridge and water in pitchers of red earthenware. We were left in the grass, ignored and disinclined to move.

‘Whose house is this?’ Milesius asked, and I spoke the question gently to a boy passing near, his arms full of horse gear.

‘Ert Chastelknoc, de barun Hugo Tŷrel qui ert de grant valur’, the boy answered, and this was of no help to our understanding. Soon after, de Lacy and his councillors emerged from the house on the mount. Cheers went up into the morning air, and congratulations and courteous gests passed between the lord and his men. He moved easy, divested of his mail and riding cloak. He wore a loose robe cinched at the waist by his sword-belt. Around him clove a coterie of men, some of whom I recognised as his captains from the parley on the hill. They negotiated the earth-cut steps of the slope, coming down through an open gate into the courtyard to move among the soldiers, who stirred themselves and stood up straight at his approach. De Lacy passed among them, quick to clap a hand on a shoulder and cry out in praise of a blow that was struck or a feat of horsemanship from the day before.

‘Gryffyn, you lithe war hound, your spear dipped in and out of them, bouncing like a bloody mason’s chisel over a stone’. Moving on, ‘And Joycyln, I saw your sword fall on a head as a falcon falls upon a dove’. In Gryffyn, I recognised the man who had borne me on his horse. His chest swollen now with pride. His young eyes sparking and eager.

De Lacy took up a position in front of the kitchen and spoke loudly.

‘Men, companions—eat and sup. We have carried a great victory and have done so with bravery and precocity. A blow struck well, news of which will reach our King on his throne. The traitor and fulminator ORork is dead, and none now bar our claim on Meath’.

Great cheers went up.

‘We will divide up that rich land and show the rug-headed native how to sow seed’. He raised his arms once more, and the cheers rose with his hands, skywards. ‘Once we have broken our fast, we will make for the town where our people await us. I have sent a runner ahead with news of our victory, and we will be met by the aldermen and the good people of that burg’.

More cheering and clapping and beating of the ground with booted feet. At some subtle signal that I did not note, we were rounded up from our scattered locations across the compound, I, Milesius, Conn, the old merchant with the cankerous nose was there also with two others of Ua Ruairc’s courtiers. They strung us together with iron fetters, and we were left standing in the open, disregarded, as horses and gear were seen to.

‘Cnucha’, Milesius said quietly as we stood side by side, watching the preparations. I looked around with widened eyes. The place where Cumhal of the Fianna was slain by Mac Morna. Where the mother of Conn Cétchathach lies in the earth, dreaming heathen dreams. ‘Glaine ár gcroí’, Conn said so that we all could hear—‘purity of our hearts’—the war cry of old heroes. ‘Neart ár ngéag’—strength of our limbs—said another. Our lips barely moved as we spoke briefly to one another, bunching together back to back with our eyes roving the compound. We waited to be noticed. We waited for violence.

When the eating and the preparations were complete, the horses were readied for the mounted warriors—those we heard them call chaualiers—and their giollaí, whom they called garsunz, came up with cold mirth in their eyes, draping the body of Ua Ruairc over a mule that had been brought alongside, believing this would injure us. One of them produced his severed head from a bag and made play with his lips, feeding him a spoon of porridge, to which the entire compound rang with injurious laughter.

‘Give us a kiss’, said one, pushing the head forward and smearing it across Conn’s face. They all laughed harshly, like bickering rooks, and the lord and his chaualiers took notice, smiling knowingly to one another from where they sat in their saddles, other servants tying bright strips of fabric to their regalia.

The castellan’s family came down from the hill when the company was ready. The lord of the house, Hugo Tŷrel, showed his children the body of Ua Ruairc, and a young boy clapped his hands in praise. The children then turned their attention to us captives, circling our small group, speaking low and commenting unfavourably upon our bearing, our clothes, the younger ones making free to tug Milesius’ beard before skipping back fearfully, laughing. This was the beginning.

The old merchant started to address them with fawning, heavily accented words.

‘My lords, I beg of you . . . my lords, I am your faithful servant . . . my lords, I pledge my services’, and so on.

This gave the children great entertainment as they pushed each other forward towards the old man’s outstretched hands, laughing and mocking his archaic words and miserable appearance.

De Lacy called out, ‘Here we have their leader. Place this one at the head of their column, he is obviously a great statesman and can speak for his fellows’. They laughed and mocked us more, and de Lacy called to the castellan’s children, ‘Take note, young ones—even a dog can be taught to drink ale, but that does not mean he can host a feast’. From his saddle, Gryffyn watched me quietly.

The knights spurred forward when all was in order, and they cantered their mounts through the narrow gateway and across a causeway over a ditch. A small procession followed on foot. It was now late in the morning and the company were in high spirits, recounting the actions on Tlachta in ever bolder renditions, retelling the events from all angles and laughing and speaking highly of each other. We came towards the rear of the train, tied together to the mule over which Ua Ruairc’s stiffening corpse was slung, the merchant at our head still crying out and beseeching in every language he knew. As we passed out of the compound and over the causeway, Milesius said into my ear, ‘They will make much of you, lad. You are their bridge to the Gael. Be sure to be useful to them, and all will pass well enough. Watch all. Choose your moment’.

We passed a large area outside the castel which had been ploughed in neat rills and travelled along a raised ridge beside the wide river. The pace was slow, but to our ill-used bodies, the route was a thing of torment, and we were required to jog constantly this way and that, fettered as we were by the hand and the neck to each other, to prevent us falling and wrenching our companions all to the ground. The memory of that short route, as I would later know it, from the castel on Cnuca to the gates of the civitas, remains one of pain and a ceaseless vision of black, bloodied feet shuffling over the stones and gravel as we trained our eyes to the ground and tried to remain upright.

This became somewhat easier when we reached the riverbank and the road levelled out. We passed some ill-wrought dwellings along the roadside. A pig nuzzling through a mound of shell and offal. Children happy among strewn netting and old rope. From the deadness of the morning, a sense of fear rose in me as we progressed and we began to see people. They bowed low to the noblemen and slunk into their houses, from where they regarded us passing with venom and scorn. There were many scorched stumps of house posts in the ground, mossing over with bright green. The entire riverside and surrounds looking as though an immense prey of cattle had passed, churning the ground, dragging ordure everywhere. The civitas had been obscured behind hills and stands of yellowing trees for much of our journey, but now it hove into view on the opposite side of the river, its stone walls like nothing I had ever seen. And away to the south, a dark shadow of hundreds of low buildings and tents huddled in the lee of the walls. An army in quarters.

We received some respite when we reached the fording point and our scourged feet were bathed in the water of that wide, shallow river they call Lífe. Though a mighty bridge spanned the flow farther downriver, we crossed over a sturdy wicker track staked into the gravel bed. De Lacy wanted to approach from the west, unseen until the last moment. The waters ran clear over our calves, reaching our knees, and in the fullness of the sun, the world below the surface looked one of pristine and unreal beauty. Long, trailing tresses of green weed, bright rounded stones and silvery branches, half-submerged in the snagging black mud. We crossed the water, and I felt I was falling, falling from the world into a different place where names out of stories assaulted me on every side, and I longed to slip from my chains and fall into that clear water, to join that pristine world. I did not need Milesius to tell me of the boundary that we traversed as we crossed that river, passing from Leth Conn to Leth Moga. Entering the southern half of Ireland, a place ruled by the Laigin and the Mumán kings. A place beyond the reach of our people.

They allowed us to sit on the opposite shore as the mules came across. De Lacy and his councillors entered a small wayside chapel near the ford to offer a prayer in thanks for their safe return. We sat in exhaustion without a word passing between us. Our necks shackled, our heads crooked back as we spent some minutes trying to settle. Five heads laid on a dung heap, our jaws hanging open, our gaunt eyes roving slowly. Even the cant of the merchant had ceased. Several houses and hostels hemmed in by old, broken-down banks and clogged ditches spread out around the ford. From our vantage, we could see back across the river to the bank we had come from, a wide slíghe running north past a huddle of dwellings and a church and on into open farmland.

‘That is the Slíghe Midluchara’, said Milesius at length, speaking to us all. ‘If you find yourself outside of the walls unguarded, flee that way. Stay off the slíghe itself, but follow along its course from a distance. It will take you to Teamhair, and from there you will reach home’.

None of us had voice to answer. De Lacy remained within the chapel, at prayer, until one of his men returned from the direction of the civitas. De Lacy emerged at length, bowing his head through the low door, and when he stood, he was in the full raiment of mail and surcoat, with his helm shining and hanging at his belt. His garsun helped him into the saddle, and his spurs pricked his horse’s side to start it into action. We were dragged up, crying out as our twisted bodies felt the scourges anew. A hunger and a cruelty crept into our captors, and we could all sense the change. A vibrancy and an anticipation. The air charged as if before a storm. And indeed, we could hear a distant tumult of people crying out. They tugged hard on our hasps, forcing us to stumble, amber grains of scabbing blood breaking and reforming in the notch where shoulder meets neck. Chains swaying. The dark clanking of metal.

De Lacy had cantered ahead with his chiefs, out of sight, and we were driven up a broad, climbing road from the river until the town gate came into view. High ramparts and a fearful opening through the blue stone blocks, crowded with coloured banners and wooden stakes. Our eyes, drawn skyward by the fluttering pennants snagged on the gore-greased poles and their fruit of heads blackening in the sun.

A crowd spread out from the entranceway, a cheering mob crying de Lacy’s name as he dismounted among them, holding up his sword in victory. We were brought up to stand close to the crowd, which began to curse us and spit on us. Young men began to run up to us, landing savage blows with fists and sticks before skipping back out of the way. They flailed us hard, as if trying to winnow our flesh from the bone. Our legs faltered then, with men on their knees trying to stand and others choked by the dragging chains, the horsemen coming behind lashing down with the flats of their sword blades. Our necks all twisted in the fall, hands bound and useless, high walls of stone looming up over us, a high, blue sky and crowds closing in to kick and punch at our exposed heads and throats. Out of the tumult of harsh voices and the heavy frenzy of faces bearing in on us, Milesius’ voice rose, deep and sudden. A prayer. The Cry of the Deer. St. Patricius’ Breastplate. The Shield of the Gael.

I arise today,

Through a mighty strength,

the invocation of the Trinity,

Through belief in the Threeness,

Through confession of the Oneness

of the Creator of creation.

At this raw-throated knell, strength was fired within us, and we took up the prayer, struggling upright and tensing against the blows.

I arise today

Through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism,

Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial,

Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension,

Through the strength of His descent for the judgement of doom.

I had known vicious blows before—often—but that these blows were meted out by a wall of strangers with teeth bared, children and all, broad youths proving their arm, brought with it an unknown terror. We were beaten and humiliated, clothes torn away and left naked. Milesius droned on, and we followed him with words into the churned muck beneath our faces, unsure even if sounds issued from our mouths or if Milesius carried us all.

I arise today, through,

The strength of heaven,

The light of the sun,

The radiance of the moon,

The splendour of fire,

The speed of lightning,

The swiftness of wind,

The depth of the sea,

The stability of the earth,

The firmness of rock.

We prayed and prayed, invoking Christ, Patricius and the truths of existence and struggled to rise to our knees, huddling together in whatever way caused us least pain. Brothers in suffering. And I would come to understand later that they did unto us what had been done unto them. That their viciousness was born of despair and loathing and foul distemper. The ugly and blind bite of a kicked cur. The blows stopped, and we were left briefly in the dirt as the mule was brought up with Ua Ruairc’s body.

They played all kinds of foul games, making us cavort with the stiffening corpse in all manner of ways before finally the sport was halted and the body heaved aside and hung over a large tree bole beside the road. A squat, dead thing which looked small and weak in the sunlight. A hide de-haired on the tanner’s horse.

In front of the gate, they brought out a thick pole, flame blackened and sharpened to a point. De Lacy approached this and produced from a wrap of leather the severed head of Ua Ruairc. He held it up, and the townspeople cheered.

‘Here is the villain Tigernán ORork who would not come to the King’s peace’.

He thrust the head onto the spike and hammered on the crown with his mailed fist until the point forced its way deep into the tight, knotted brawn of the severed neck. He stepped aside, and his garsun landed heavy, thudding strikes of a mallet until the tip of the stake crested Ua Ruairc’s scalp. The spike was hoisted high and planted over the gate by men out on the battlement. Ua Ruairc the mighty, the feared, took his place among the rotting heads and broken skulls as, above all, two flags, the King’s and de Lacy’s, nuzzled each other like stabled horses in the light breeze. Under Ua Ruairc’s one-eyed stare, the crowd all cheered like men who could be next.

When these deeds were done, and the attention of the crowd was held by de Lacy orating another fine speech, Milesius bade us all stand. We found that the old merchant no longer drew breath, and we were constrained to kneeling to allow his weight settle on the ground. I bled from gashes in the head, neck and shoulders. I could not see my companions, but I could feel their quaking transmitted along the unyielding metal of our fetters. Milesius whispered to us all—‘strength brothers, the worst has passed’. He waited for a quiet moment in de Lacy’s speech and shouted out—full voiced in a clear and imperious Latin, devoid of accent or abbreviation.

‘I am Milesius Mac Donchada, Ua Ruairc. I am a coarb of the house of St Féichín, disciple of Eugenius, consort of the Bishop of Clonard and confidant to his holiness the Archbishop of Ard Macha, the highest power in this land’.

The crowd booed and jeered and began to throw stones and bits of offal and whatever came to hand. Milesius propped himself upright as best he could, his broken voice rising to a terrible pitch.

‘I have sworn oaths on the Bachal Ísu, read scripture from Columba’s great gospel, I have walked pilgrimage to Croagh Padraig, to Inis Cealtra, I have heard Mass in Cluan mhic Noise, sounded the bells of Cluain Fada, drank the water of Beal na bPéiste, sat at the great synod of Ceannais. I call upon Simon of St Michan’s to stand for me. I defy this treatment and claim sanctuary from unlawful actions’.

His voiced cracked before the end, and these last words came out on a wracked breath. The crowd jeered on, but de Lacy held up his hand for silence.

‘There is nothing in our laws, monk, to prevent a man defending himself from attack and treachery’.

The crowd cheered.

‘You and your brood attacked us on the hill. Broke parley, without provocation. You have forfeited the law’, said de Lacy.

Not one of us had the strength to utter a word to the contrary. Even Milesius, his last force spent, slumped forward as if he would expire on the spot.

‘I will, however, honour your request’, said de Lacy. ‘We will fetch you to Simon of St Michan’s, and he will advise us what your fate should be’.

Our chains were opened, and we fell to the ground. Milesius was carried away, his feet dragging the earth, and the crowd opened, swallowing him whole, and the strength he had held us together with departed with him. They took the merchant and threw him into the dark liquor of the town ditch. We heard the body slide roughly down the bank and slop into the bottom. They came and dragged us up to the edge to see, hands merciless on the bases of our necks, forcing us to look. A crooked elbow jutting from the mire beside a bloated hog carcass, feathered with discarded bedding straw and charred lumps of timber. A stench rising from the disturbed waters. They led us then into the dark mouth of the town gate, and the dire pageantry continued, with Ua Ruairc’s body dragging behind a gelded horse.

The space within the gate loomed dark and close, and when we crossed over, the lightness of my body, freed of its chains, felt insubstantial, an unimaginable lightness—pain subsumed and changed into something different. I had seen too much. Men and women followed, and others stood cheering from doorways. Entering that civitas, I was overcome. The monastery on the saint’s day, the óenach at its fullest, the press of a feasting hall, could not compare with the tumult, the crowd, the density of people. Too much newness, the dim light of the streets, dwellings crowding in together. I caught glimpses of their houses, their plots with their animals tethered in tiny parcels of ground behind low fencing. And everywhere the reek of man and beast—wood and damp thatch and excrement. Smoke settling low over the spaces in between, and I could not fathom why or how all these people could live flank by flank within those high, suffocating walls.

A feverish shaking came on me. Beading sweat. A cloud passing over the sun. When I looked up, an edifice of terrifying proportion stood hulking its stone shoulders from beneath a roof of red-earth shingles. A cathedral unlike anything I had ever seen. In the fever of pain and the delirium of festering wounds, I gave myself to the dream. A wall opened. We were passed through with impatience; we crossed a doorway and into a space beyond that was as still as the exterior had been riotous. We saw a large court with a long timber hall, herb gardens, a sty, a malt-house. I heard a voice behind us speak.

‘Take these to the hospital and see they are revived. Tomorrow they are before the Justiciar’. The dream closed around us, and I was carried along by many hands into darkness, pliant as a wet sack.