Chapter 14

The Civitas

We spent the following day in the straw, our bodies desperate for rest and finally a hunger on wakening, for sustenance. Conn’s strength seemed to have waned overnight, and I understood in the morning light how heavily he now paid for his violent exertion. He barely spoke all morning as, under the instruction of the hospitaller, we forced ourselves to rise, brush down our pitiable garments, wash our faces and necks in a bucket of cool well water and attend sext. I felt light beyond description. Though I was not unused to hunger, this feeling of a ravenous sack-bellied desire for oats, for curd, for meat pierced me, pricked me to the quick, and I felt as alert as the wolf after a hard snow.

We were taken through the canon’s door which led from the cloister into the cathedral. From this modest entrance, the building opened upwards and outwards into an immensity that caused us both to stumble and reach out to steady ourselves. The height of the ceiling arching upwards with painted scenes on a vault bathed in light from hidden windows above. Columns of carved intricacy. Majesty in every direction. We stood with the canons as the service began, a plaintive call echoing briefly before being swallowed by the response—many voices coming on as a gust of wind rising suddenly in the thatch—bodiless, yet full and powerful. A bell ringing. Rapture, light spiking from the corners of my eyes, brimmed with unfallen tears. God perceptible in the silences.

Following the Mass, a stooped canon with rheumy eyes led us from the cathedral across the tended garth to the refectory. The bishop sat at the head of a long bench, and we were beckoned to sit at a small board close to the door.

‘Daoine uaisle, you look the better for your rest’, he shouted over to us. ‘Eat now and eat well, for the King will pay your fare’.

The canons paid us no heed, though we were served like the rest of them with food to our table. We drank hydromel and ate leavened bread and lamprey and oysters and cockles from the bay. We ate the fruits of the harvest, apples and mushrooms from the woods to the south and birds from the plains to the north. We dined heavily on the King’s purse, and when the bells sounded and the canons all stood quietly, one came to tell us it was time for me to go to the castel. I left Conn to go to his bed, and I stirred with some more dexterity than I had the day before, following the clerics from the precinct towards the Justiciar’s hall.

The castel yard was full of activity when we arrived. The soldiery was carrying out an inventory of arms around large piles of spears and the long axe they call the fauchard. I saw for the first time a hone stone mounted to an axle and an armourer sharpening the weapons as they were counted. Beyond them, several horsemen were active, wheeling around and trying to pierce straw rings and targets with long spears couched under their arms.

I recognised Gryffyn, and he pointed a spear at me playfully, shouting out, ‘Hail to the pilgrim’.

The hall was a changed space when we entered. The windows all thrown open and light plunging in from all sides, shafting through the smoke. The benches had been cleared away from the floor and arranged around the edges of the room, the rushes swept out and replaced with a fresh, green crop. A fire of low embers smouldered in the large, rectangular hearth, and de Lacy was there on his knees by the flame, wrestling a large bone from the jaws of one of his hounds. Several children gambolled and screamed around him, jumping onto his back and attacking him with kindling sticks. He reared and roared and turned on them each in turn, catching them up in his powerful arms, goring their little stomachs with his teeth as they shouted ‘spear the bear, bring him down’. Servants moved in the wings, and a group of noblewomen worked on a large embroidery towards the back of the room.

I stood flanked by the clerics as the steward waited uneasily for a moment to interrupt. De Lacy looked up and saw us and cried out in greeting.

‘It is the two black cormorants bringing me the sprat. Come in, Alberic FitzJohan. Come close to us here by the fire’. He stood up, wiping himself free of the clinging reeds and burrs. ‘You have celebrated the Mass, Alberic. Tell me, what do you think of their church?’

I spoke of the transcendence of its form, its size, of God’s presence clearly felt.

‘Hah!’ he shouted, cutting me short. ‘That quarry man’s hut? If you had seen the churches of Herefordshire, of Lincolnshire, or the great churches at Evreux or St Denis, you would not hold OToole’s pride in such esteem’. He waved the thought away and called behind him. ‘Children, sit and listen. We are having a lesson’.

I was made to stand in front of them and give my name and tell my story. The lady of the house emerged from behind the screen at the far end of the hall. She walked towards us, a long, slender figure in a sweeping garment of deep blue, sewn along the sleeves with white linen. She held herself poised in a studied way that was different to how the Gaelic noblewomen moved. Her trunk and neck she kept immobile, pushing her legs forward with slow and careful movements, her eyes lowered and her hands clasped gently over her waist. She came and sat on the bench with her family, gathering up a young girl into her lap. De Lacy did not introduce her but leaned in and kissed lustily at her cheek, making a loud smacking noise, and she pushed him back smiling as the children laughed and groaned.

‘Your father is in his cups, children, he forgets himself’, her eyes rising to look at me, studying my garments and bearing.

‘A victory needs celebrating, love. And a great victory all the more, not so, Alberic?’

I nodded stiffly. He laughed at my diffidence and began the interview. He led me with questions on the powerful families of Míde and then on the workings of the Gaelic tongue and asking how to say this and that thing. He made much play of attempting the words with exaggerated hocking in his throat, which set the children laughing uncontrollably.

At length, de Lacy asked of Conn.

‘How fares your oppressor?’

‘He recovers’.

‘Tell us again of his standing. Is he an heir to a territory?’

‘He is táinste to our túath. The túath of Máel Sechnaill’.

‘This tanistry again—it is all they speak of’, de Lacy said in frustration. ‘Explain it to me in your words, for you speak straight. I have had to rely on the overwrought Latin of their translators’.

I was not sure how to answer at first.

‘A tániste’, I began, ‘is the leading heir chosen from the ríghdamhna, the noblemen of the household of the rí. A son, brother, nephew or cousin. He who receives the slat na ríghe’.

‘Which is?’ he asked impatiently.

‘The white rod. The rod of kingship’.

‘And who decides the successor?’

‘The headmen of the clan decide it between them’.

‘And how many of these tániste are there at any time?’

‘There can be different candidates proposed by different branches of the clan’.

‘Surely there are disputes following these successions?’

‘Yes, often’.

‘And how are these settled?’

‘At times with violence. At times through agreement’.

He spoke to his son, ‘And therein lies opportunity’. Then to me, ‘How many can claim to be heir to ORork?’

I thought for a moment. ‘He has many sons, grandsons, great grandchildren, brothers, cousins who could claim this title. One hundred perhaps’.

De Lacy cursed. ‘And how, tell me, do I cut the head from this hydra?’

The young boy on de Lacy’s lap spoke up. ‘Let the Gaels cut the heads off until there is but one remaining. Then sever it with a clean stroke’.

De Lacy laughed and held the boy up and kissed his cheeks.

‘Good man, Hugo. Hear this, Mother?’ he said to his wife. ‘A lord in the making. You see, Alberic, your counsel bears early fruit. And tell us, is this Conn a potential heir to ORork?’

I smiled at this suggestion. ‘Not so—he is gaill’, and once more I struggled for words. ‘A hostage held by Ua Ruairc to ensure the loyalty of Máel Sechlainn’.

‘And what is Máel Sechlainn’s claim?’

I hesitated before answering. ‘He is of the line of traditional kings of Míde, though that clan is broken and many tánistí claim to be the head as their kingdom is devoured to the west and east. He is not kinsman nor fully a vassal to Ua Ruairc. He has come into his house with oaths and exchange of hostages, though our Tiarna hated Ua Ruairc and, as far as I could understand, looked to outflank him by forming alliances in Tethba. Our Tiarna fought with Mac Murchada against Ua Ruairc many years ago’.

‘My head is sore with it’, de Lacy cried. ‘Despite its inelegance, our system is the better. First born inherits. There is no room for dispute’.

I took a moment to consider this information.

‘I see your father did not teach you that. Your thoughts are easy to read, for every Gael who has spoken to me on this subject has expressed a distrust of our system. Its absoluteness. Its disregard for the qualities of the offspring in question’.

‘It is not something that has ever troubled me, sire’, I said, to remind him to whom he spoke. He continued regardless, his bare cheeks ruddy, his arm closing around the shoulders of his boy.

‘Believe me’, he said forcefully, ‘I understand its limitations. I myself am a second-born son. I lived in resentment of my brother during our youth, and when he died young—the Lord bless him—I did not mourn. However, I did not plot with cousins and uncles to murder him or put out his eyes while he lived. And it has taught me to instil in my children a unity of purpose. Young Hugo here, my third-born boy, will be provided for by his brothers. They will work together to achieve their goals. They will make the kingdom tremble’.

He laughed deep and loud as the young Hugo set his light eyes upon me, unwavering, glittering with a metallic pride, challenging me not to believe. In that cold, clean gaze, the hubris and the determination that would come to steer my future course competed for dominance. It was not a look I could meet, and I cast my eyes, like a slave, to the green rushes layering the floor.

Our lesson was interrupted by the arrival of a chaualier to the hall, and de Lacy was called away to mediate some dispute between men-at-arms beyond the walls. I was left standing before the family as they sat on the bench, the younger ones squirming around each other and escaping the grasp of the Lady Monmouth. Her soft eyes regarded me as the girl pawed at her face. She spoke then to the canons who attended me by the doorway.

‘The boy can stay on here. We shall have him escorted to the cathedral before nightfall’.

She gestured to a bench nearby, her long sleeves falling to her lap.

‘Sit’, she said, ‘and we will have some small beer brought up for you’.

I did as I was told. A maid came up and herded the children away towards the rear of the hall, though Hugo stayed near.

‘There are many Gaels in this civitas, Alberic’, she said, and the sound of my name from her mouth made me feel a certain shame. ‘There are many who petition my husband for the opportunity to instruct our family in the language and the laws of this new land we have been thrust into. You, however, seem reluctant’. She waited for me to respond. I remained silent.

‘You speak well, however, and you have an air of honesty. You also know the lands and lords of Míde that is to be our demesne. You are close in age to my boy Gautier, who will inherit the titles of this great house. I think to trust you, though, it is clear that you need some finishing. Perhaps the mother was lacking?’

I lowered my head in supplication.

‘True to tell’, I said. ‘I did not know her’. She laughed lightly.

‘Yes, indeed’, her amusement tempered with a note of pity. ‘You have such wonderful phrases’. Her smile hardened then. ‘But I want you to understand the privilege you are accorded here’. A slim, straw-headed boy came up with the beer, and I drank with a meek lip.

‘Hugo’, she said, ‘go and find your brother and bring him to meet Alberic’.

A spark of annoyance in the boy’s eye, but he did not hesitate to obey. She turned back to me, and when the boy was out of hearing, she spoke quietly.

‘My husband is quite a brilliant man. Despite what you have seen here, he is temperate and considered—a lord who weighs all in the balance carefully before committing to an action. He is scrupulous in the administration of the office entrusted to him and in his conduct of public affairs. As you have had cause to witness, he is extremely well versed in the business of war. This is why the King has entrusted him with the governance of Yrlande. You may be sure that he has already weighed your worth. And while he has had some sport with you here in this hall, he has also been examining you in great detail. And though you may not know it, your qualities have shone through’.

These words, arriving unheralded, unexpected, drew the air from my lungs. She had spoken my name and had given me worth. I longed then in that moment to melt. A thaw set into me. Deep into my core. A thaw that was both dangerous and seductive, a thaw that would soften and release those rigid and hard places within that had carried me this far, through labour and scourge, through violence and scorn. This the homecoming I had yearned for. The deliverance of which I had dreamed fevered dreams during snatched hours of half-sleep in the hayrick, in the byre, in the kiln-house and greenwood. The great homecoming and liberation. The great acceptance and welcome from my true people. And above all, the soft, fleshy, long-tressed, soft-voiced mother. And I longed with such longing that I had never felt before to melt. To lean forward and occupy the place that the little Hugo had left on her shoulder and to melt, like candlewax, into her soft embrace, to smell her neck and to hear her whispers in my ear. And I fought with all the strength that was left to me, I resisted this melting, this softening, for I knew that if I let go, there would be no return.

She continued to speak, and my body burned with the struggle. She listed out the lineage of her people and of the de Lacys. She spoke of their lordships and manors and castels in Herefordshire, in Ludlow, in Normandy and the Vexin. My downturned eyes brimmed over, blurring the rushes, her feet, the timber base of the bench into spires and stars of light. I lifted the tears away on my thumb and forefinger and hacked out a cough, sending spittle to the floor. If she had reached out to me then and touched my shoulder, I believe I would have fallen to my knees and embraced her at the ankles, crying out black, bottomless sobs wrenched up from the marrow of my bones. I would have laid it all out before her, all of my hurts on the altar of her motherhood. I would have sacrificed all to the homeliness of the stray tress of hair on her cheek, burrowed into the sanctuary of the light-staining milk leaking into the blue wool at her breasts.

She did not move to touch me, however, nor to console or encourage me.

‘My children’, she said, ‘are precious. I have carried ten babes in my womb, and God has called five of them home. They are of the great line of Hereford de Lacys and of the lords of Monmouth. But, as far as I care, lands, castels, titles can blaze in the fires of hell if harm comes to my children. We are in a strange land, Alberic. We hear daily of enemies rising against us. In Vadrafjord, they have attacked and killed the garrison. In Veixfjord, Ostmen and Gaels foment. To the west, in those unknown lands, armies gather. My boys need to know how to read these people. To know who has stakes where and how to anticipate the moves of the Gael—to understand their speech, their laws, their beliefs and how these can be used to control them’.

I focused on her words and mastered myself as well as I could.

‘If you do this, Alberic, if you teach them and serve them, you will earn freedom, justice and the brotherhood of your people’.

I swallowed back a sob. And this time, her hand did reach out and found my head, receptive as a dog’s. Her fingers pushed through my hair, running over my scalp, sending warm shivers through me. Her fingers tightened painfully then in my hair, dragging my face upwards to meet her brown-eyed stare. ‘If, however, by action or omission, you hurt any of my children or fail them in your duty, I promise you that I will cut every piece of skin from your body, slowly while you live, and I will feed you piece by piece to dogs while you watch’.

I could speak no word. Instead, I bore the terrible fullness of her gaze and sealed our covenant with a nod of my head. She released me.

‘Now, go and find my boys. Speak to them and find your place amongst them. And do not show them fear. I will send for you when it is time for you to return to the cathedral’.

I found Hugo outside in the yard bouncing a tightly wound ball of yarn on an old butter paddle with the straw-headed servant. I walked up beside them. Hugo spoke loudly when he saw me, ‘Look, Hamund, I have a new servant now. Perhaps I should make you fight for my favour’.

‘I am not your servant’, I said quietly. ‘I am to instruct you and your brothers in the ways of the Gael’. Without warning, he spun and struck me hard with the paddle, hitting my brow and causing blood to spill. He laughed savagely.

‘You should ask Hamund here what happens to a servant who clings to his pride in this household’.

I wiped my brow with the back of my hand.

‘If your memory is as short as your temper, I do not look forward to instructing you’.

Hamund laughed, and Hugo himself smiled guardedly, then he raised the paddle again swiftly as if to strike. I did not flinch. He lowered his hand.

‘You have an unusual way of speaking’, he said. ‘I have decided it is pleasant. Now, let us go on patrol. I will be the castellan, and you two will be my men-at-arms. Let us see if we can find any invaders’.

He led us around the yard. We peered in at the bakehouse and skirted the latrines that emptied into the ditch below. We passed freely through the shed where the soldiers slept and onwards into the close space where the garments were washed in steaming timber vats. He looked back to us here with a finger to his lips. A young woman, her arms red to the elbows, bent to her work. Hugo approached her quietly from behind. He swung the paddle and sent it whistling through the air, connecting with her hindquarters full on, the force travelling through her haunches, which quivered beneath the thick-spun dress.

She spun, shouting, and, seeing Hugo, the rebuke died on her lips. Hugo laughed loudly, and in laughing, he uncorked a mirth—he laughed and laughed, it welled up in him uncontrollably. He giggled and tittered, then choked, trying another swing, which the girl batted away with the edge of her hand. Hugo raised the paddle again, laughing still. A figure stepped from the wash-house where he had been obscured behind hanging cloaks and hoods. A broad, steely-looking lad of a similar age to me. Hugo had not seen him approach. He leaned in and cuffed the side of Hugo’s head fiercely. The boy choked, his hand reaching for the little knife sheathed at his belt. The newcomer grabbed the arm and twisted until Hugo cried out and the knife fell away.

‘Why, Gautier?’ he said pathetically, bending to pick his blade from the stones of the yard. ‘She is Ostman, and Father says the Ostman are like Saxons’.

‘And the Gaels like the Welsh’, Gautier finished.

‘She does not mind it’, Hugo said then. His voice pattering like cess from a runnel.

The girl said nothing.

‘Do you mind, Angret?’ Gautier said to her then, and I was surprised to hear him speak in the tongue of the Gael, laboured though his pronunciation was.

‘I do, Lord’, she replied in faltering Engleis tongue, the sounds rounded out pleasantly in her mouth. Gautier examined the girl’s face as he spoke, and she shifted under his gaze, the break of her hairline visible beneath her scarfed head.

‘Nobility can breed insolence, Hugo. Do you not think the servants whisper? “The lord is fearsome but fair . . . Gautier is stern but kind . . . Robert is sickly . . . Hugo is a little brute.” Not so, Angret?’

It was clear she had lost the thread of his words, but she had followed the lift of his tone, and she said, ‘Yes, seignur’, standing by with her eyes downcast.

Gautier looked to me then.

‘And you are the Alberic of the stained face that my father speaks about. You understand bondage and its abuses, no? Angret here was a noblewoman until very recently. Her father had his entrails drawn out beyond the walls’. Turning again to his brother, he spoke quickly, so that Angret might not understand. ‘Watch her, brother. Watch how she obeys those who put a blade in her father’s stomach and walked him around a post to which his intestine was nailed, dogs licking their lips and the crowd baying for him to fall. That also is bravery. That also is courage. What do you think is in her heart? It is not by ill usage that we will win her loyalty. But by a hundred small kindnesses’.

He nodded to the girl, and she passed on into the wash-house. Gautier cocked his head, indicating for us to go.

‘Besides, brother’, he said, catching my eye, ‘you are approaching the age now when you should know there are better ways to find sport with a girl’s haunches’.

Hugo’s face burned red, and he stalked back to the hall in silence. He ran to his mother full of tales, and the Lady Monmouth received him in her lap and sent me back to the cathedral.

Hamund led me through the smoky streets, and all of my thoughts were of Ness, like Angret—forced to play the game. Forced to survive in silent acceptance. A tenant in her own body. And I wondered, where now? Where did she roam? Steering her own destiny or, like me, a beast of burden dragging the cart of someone else’s?