Chapter 17

The Owl and the Nightingale

In the end, it was not the Earl who arrived on a stuttering seasick horse draped with the colours of Pembroke but a lady. We came up the privy, slipping into the rear of the assembled household unseen, all eyes trained on the high gatehouse, cluttered with earnest townspeople, children, merchants, all pressing forward, pushed back by sergenz, all wanting to see the moment of meeting, to read the interaction, to hear her name spoken, to hear the news confirmed, news that was already coursing through the streets and lanes like a fever pumped by a sick heart—that Vadrafjord was lost.

De Lacy stood outside of his hall, ranged up with his captains and his advisers, his wife by his side. His children stood close at hand, and chaualiers flanked all.

‘Keep the yard clear’, de Lacy roared out as sergenz and cup-bearers jogged over and back dragging stray casks and bushels into obscured corners. We pressed ourselves into the shadow of the wash-house, invisible to the intensity of stares focused on the large oak frame of the gate.

Within the Justiciar’s party, I noted Gryffyn standing on the fringes. An unfamiliar nervousness was writ on his face, his hands smoothing and re-smoothing his hair, palping his face, which was not as smooth as perhaps he would have liked—a day’s growth of beard stubbling his cheeks, like burned straws in a razed field. As I watched, he unclasped his belt, polished the buckle against his thigh and re-set the belt around his waist, pulling at the fabric of his tunic so that it fell just so, hanging in pleated folds from his shoulders over his belt, to great effect. His nervousness seemed particular, something apart from the gathering tension within the bailey.

My meditations were cut short as the hushed tumult of the cortege’s approach reached the gate and the crowd parted like a curtain to reveal Saer the steward walking steadily and with great ceremony. He came on into the centre of the yard, and the cortege followed mutely behind him—cooks, grooms, washerwomen and chambermaids on foot ahead of five mounted knights in mail coats and coifs who surrounded the pale figure of the lady. By her side, a very stout rider in a mail suit that barely contained his evident girth, though where the lady was reserved in her expression, he smiled broadly around him at all who would meet his gaze.

Saer approached the Justiciar, and the cortege halted behind him, the servants looking nervously around the castel, uneasy under the close scrutiny of the household soldiers before them and the thronged press of the civitas behind. Saer lowered the end of his halberd to the cobbles and intoned deeply in the now silent courtyard.

‘Sire, si il vous plaisez, la dame Basilia de Clare of Pembroke, and of Quincy’, and in naming her first, he made it clear that she carried the authority of the Earl, ‘and mon seignur Raymond FtizWillliam de Carew’.

Hamund tensed beside me at the voicing of that name.

‘Malice-striker, chewer of corpses’, he said with restrained force, through teeth edge on edge, spittle ejected with the force of his utterance. ‘That is him, le Gros. The fat savage who put this place to the sword’.

The Lady Basilia nudged her shivering horse forward, breaking the line of riders, and all eyes fell on her. A young woman, not yet twenty of years. She sat upright in a high-backed saddle, her skin wan as buttermilk, dappled strikingly with freckles across the bridge of her nose. At a distance, her eyes seemed grey, indistinct like teased yarn, and even sitting in the saddle, it was clear that she was long of limb and tall in body. She wore a dress of fine yellow wool open at her neck, which was cosseted in furs of the marten. In her hair, jewels, as is their custom. But it was none of this that snagged every eye in that place. It was how her dress gathered around her swollen stomach, how her right hand, flashing with gold, gripped the reins, her left curled protectively over the round bump, the child in her body. For a moment, silence reigned, punctuated with the clink of horse gear, the muffled thump and crack of hogsheads being opened deep in the hall and the distant flap and cry of gulls picking the deserted shambles clean. I looked to Gryffyn, and his face seemed lit as if by a strong morning sun, a look of intensity straining the composure of his features, hands clenched, gripped at his belt.

Before de Lacy spoke, the Lady Monmouth broke from the Justiciar’s party, pacing forward eagerly and calling to the younger woman.

‘Basilia, cousin, look at how you have grown. With child already—the union was blessed’.

‘The Earl’s wife?’ I asked Hamund quietly. He signed me to silence, his face intent on the scene before him.

The woman on the horse leaned down to take the lady’s hand. Several of her servants moved forward to help her from her horse, and the two women embraced, heedless of the crowd who looked on, breaking into rippling whispers.

‘Sister’, Hamund said, then, close to my ear, ‘the Earl’s sister’.

‘Not so blessed, cousin. Not so blessed’, we heard her say. ‘He is dead’. Hamund straining physically forward to hear as the younger woman’s head fell momentarily onto the Lady Monmouth’s shoulder. De Lacy, feeling the ceremony of the situation slip, and visibly relieved at the absence of an Earl on his doorstep, paced forward then, exclaiming.

‘Welcome, welcome, cousin, please come and join us in our hall, where we shall dine and drink and hear of your tidings’.

And his words broke the formality. Movement erupted all around, and the whispering onlookers began to cheer and shout and call out their congratulations to the young woman. My head swam, our racing and sudden stop, the taut severity and the mannered gestures dissolving now into a heady chaos—my heart pumping wine-rich blood through me, and the scene played out with the vagueness of a dream.

De Lacy, having finished his welcome, motioned broadly for the company to follow into the hall, and he went stooping into the door frame, his hand on young Hugo’s shoulders and the Lady Monmouth behind with her arm guiding Basilia protectively over the stones of the yard, her ear bent to the younger woman’s mouth. I watched Gryffyn closely as Basilia de Clare passed the line of the Justiciar’s soldiers. He did not betray much, but his eyes sought her out, shadowing her every step. Basilia’s escort dismounted then, handing their still dripping horses over to their garsunz. The sergenz at the gate began pushing people back across the causeway and levering the large wooden doors closed, sealing off the court from the civitas.

As the lower orders of the household and the knights filtered into the hall and the less wealthy merchants and burghers plied for entry at the door, I felt Hamund’s fist in the small of my back, pushing me onwards across the yard towards the hall. We insinuated ourselves into the press after the higher-ranking sergenz. We pushed in at the door, and Saer, having taken up his post by the door-jamb, grabbed us each by the head and pushed us to one side beneath the sloping eaves.

‘Where have you been—petits morveux de merde? Jeunes poltrons’, he spat and, without waiting for an answer, turned to welcome the last retainers coming through the door, assessing with the skill and dexterity of a trader in furs the value of each individual and, with minimal and deliberate signs to the serving staff, indicating where each was to be seated. ‘Habillez-vous’, he hissed at us then, landing a clout on Hamund’s ear, and we followed the eaves towards the side door, avoiding the seated guests.

The hall had been transformed from an open, lazy space into a crowded, close melee with servants flitting like thrushes through bramble, carrying out the steward’s orders, as separate conversations down the length of the room combined in a clamour, none of it loud, yet together an overbearing presence of sound that had no way to egress the full, smoky space. We hurried through the serving door at the side of the hall, passing out into the cramped yard that gave onto the kitchen and bakehouse.

A confusion of servants and cooks roiled in the tight space of the kitchen, the pantler turning out loaves from the bread oven, cooks stirring brass cauldrons hanging over the fireplace, beating out cloves of garlic and cuts of meat on the boards. Scullions arranging dishes and servants plucking fowl and scaling fish as the spit-boys stood turning and turning hefty joints of meat over two fireplaces heaped with radiant embers, their bare arms and chests slick and spattered with pox-like spots from the crackling grease. And all presided over by the squat figure of the butler, marshalling his forces with a red, sweating face from beside the bread oven.

‘Surcoats’, he roared at us as we came in, pointing towards another door where the Justiciar’s plate was being extracted from great chests of heartwood, bedded with dry straw and draped with linen covering. The napier dressed us in the yellow linen vest of the household, taken out for us from a heavy chest set with tableware, the butler wielding the key with severe gravity and surveying every item as it was unwrapped.

‘Wine’, he said to us, placing two brilliant earthenware jugs into our arms, and we gazed at the finery of the craft—helmeted knights’ and monks’ heads frozen in a metallic green glaze around the rim, the deep amber light of the fires rolling slowly across the surfaces in wending ribbons. ‘Wine’, he roared again with huge force, to wake us from our dazed reverie. ‘Starting at the head of the table—this one’, he said, touching the jug in my arms, ‘and this hogshead’, as he thumped a low, potbellied barrel covered with scratched signs. ‘And for the lower table this and this’, he said, touching Hamund’s jug and a different barrel. ‘Go, go, go’, he shouted, shooing us like pigeons from a granary door.

We entered the hall in a procession of servants carrying the opening dishes. Order of a kind had been restored to the throng. De Lacy was standing on the dais part-way through a speech of welcome.

‘We welcome also, in the king’s name, seignur Raymond de Carew, known to us all through his deeds of great consequence and valour. Deeds which have touched us here in this civitas, which he helped to deliver to our King through feat of arms. And to his cousin the great Meyler FitzHenry. There will always be a welcome before you in this hall. It is with regret we learn of the reverses suffered by the Earl in Osraige . . .’

Raymond stood and bowed as deeply as his thick paunch would allow; Meyler, a dark man with black, stern eyes and a keen face, half rose in his seat and inclined his head before settling. De Lacy continued as we worked our way around the table on the dais filling the green studded glasses set out before each guest. ‘As the King’s Justiciar on this island, I extend to you this feast—a reflection, though pale it might be, of the king’s welcome and his blessing upon all who progress his work here in Yrlande, often at their own expense, and always at the cost of their own safety’. He lifted his glass, cradling the bowl of it within the cage of his fingers. The others moved to do the same. He addressed himself, then, to Basilia. ‘It is with great sadness that we learn of the loss of your husband, ma dame. I had known him to be a sober and brave soldier and a leader of men who stood firm in Aquitaine when we marched together on Toulouse in the first year of our King’.

Basilia bowed her head, and de Lacy paused. Though not naturally a brusque man, he was neither loquacious nor overly comfortable in the gaze of a public that was not that of his hard-breathing soldiers after an engagement. It was clear by his demeanour how buoyed he was by the appearance of the young Basilia in place of her brother the Earl, and despite all his affected regret, I could sense a well of merriment and good humour beneath his pointedly grave face.

Once the assembly had raised their glasses and, shouting out their agreement, drunk deeply to show their respect, de Lacy spoke once more. ‘I invite you all to eat, therefore, and drink, and, in doing so, to recognise that any hospitality you receive here, you receive from our King, for this is his hall and I but his steward’.

When de Lacy had started speaking again, I hurried around the table in an attempt to refill all glasses before they were obliged to raise them again to drink the king’s health. This done, he spoke again. ‘Let us all now enjoy the feast we lay before you after your travails’.

This last address signalled the close of the formal introduction, and the guests—knights, burgesses, ecclesiasts and barons—shouted out in concord: ‘Santé !’

Three shouts of a good warrior’s house: the shout of distribution, the shout of sitting down, the shout of rising up.

All fell to speaking together and reaching out to the dishes which began accruing on the tables. All the benches had been turned end on end to make a great row down the centre of the hall, and long boards were laid out on wooden stands to create a running, overlapping table of planking. As the dishes were brought out, the boards bowed with the weight of the setting: gigot, lamprey, possets, pies, plates of beans in pork fat, goose and fowl meat, hog souse, cheese, custards, late fruits and cereals prepared in milk. And indeed, the wine did not flow at a trickle, nor anything like it. The work was hot, and the assembly grew freer and more querulous the more they drank. The fire in the hearth burned down to a throbbing pile of embers, and the riot of coloured fabrics that was noticeable earlier in the evening became muted in the changed light. The deep red glow brazing the moistened skin and faces of those assembled, flaring at times when bones or lard-rich crusts were thrown onto the fire, coaxing licking flame.

We plied back and forth with our jugs from the kitchens to the hall, the distinction between the wine casks soon lost and the butler too busy to enforce his will, or to stop us from draining the dregs from our jugs in the cool yard as we came over and back, growing gradually as merry as the feasters. With wine, de Lacy’s relief at the absence of an Earl in his hall became so bald that he forgot his solemnity entirely. His wife, however, made a better show of commiserating closely with Basilia on the death of her husband; though the assembly more closely followed the Justiciar’s example of high spirits—the men of the civitas and Basilia’s retinue all. As the procession of dishes waned and even the most avaricious of appetites grew sated, the men of the household began calling upon the newcomers to share any new song or verse that they had, and the younger men of the party obliged. Solemnity in general softened, as did the pervasions of rank and the stilted demeanours of those trying to maintain their reserve and those trying to manufacture a greater nobility than they possessed, and the event took on the aspect of the fluid gathering of a peasant’s wedding.

The merriment pervaded all levels. I attended the dais more frequently than Hamund, though I noticed that he lingered nearby, affecting to work while straining his ear to catch the thread of conversation surrounding the Justiciar. I poured wine as carefully as I could despite the dulling effects of the drink on my own mind and body. As I bent attentively to the table once again, directing the dark stream of liquor into the waiting glass, a hand reached out and circled my wrist, holding me gently from across the table. I looked up directly into the frank eyes of Rohese de Monmouth.

‘This is our foundling’, she said to Basilia, who sat beside her, ‘a young man of Yngleis birth, enslaved in our new lands in Míde’. Basilia looked at me appraisingly and allowed a momentary silence to settle before she spoke.

‘And he understands our tongue?’

‘He understands very well, though he speaks like a dog choking on a bone’, and the table, all turning to look, laughed at her words. All except Basilia. Rohese released her grip on my wrist, and I made to back away, uncertain under their combined stare.

‘Let us hear some words then’, Basilia said coldly, ‘to lift my mood’. Following a pause, I stood forward, bringing the jug close to my chest—the only shield I possessed. I searched in vain for some witticism, some words that could turn this moment to my advantage.

‘Rarely is a dog so dumb’, she said, cutting across my thoughts and provoking more laughter, this time from both those on the dais and those seated nearby at the long table.

‘Speak up, boy, and show the lady she is mistaken’, de Lacy boomed impatiently.

And a verse surged forward—words from a lay I had heard the rhymers practicing together in the orchard.

Lords do not be surprised:

A stranger bereft of advice

can be very downcast in another land

when he does not know where to seek help

‘Haah!’ de Lacy roared out, in his cups, slamming the boards of the table so that glasses leapt and tittered together and a black cat with a white breast scrambled from where it had been giving a fallen morsel its attentions. The laughter became general around the hall.

‘Indeed, a rare find’, said Basilia with a reluctant smile showing on her lips. ‘We have a few such men in Ferns—slaves we have liberated from unjust captivity—older men mostly, Saxons in the main. And none that can quote the latest lais from the court of the King. Though I dare say, our Maurice ORegan not only recites but composes in the most vivid verse’.

As the moment passed and the lantern of their attentions moved from me back to their various discussions, I pressed on, remembering now more of the verses, pushing myself forward and shouting above the din.

Any wise and courtly lady of noble disposition,

who sets a high price on her love and is not fickle,

deserves to be sought after by a rich prince in his castel,

and loved well and loyally,

even if her only possession is her mantle.

And in this, I misjudged the moment as much as my audience, the missed step so apparent to most in the room that silence fell like the sharp of a blade, cutting short the babble of talk until the sound of dogs and cats pulling at bones and discarded crusts was all that could be heard. And in this dread moment, Basilia’s eyes turned to me once more.

‘It is seven days since my husband found his eternal rest at the end of a Gaelic lance’, she said in a flint-edged voice, her gaze terrible, the light laughing lines of her face hardening. And I saw Rohese de Monmouth’s eyes flash to her husband’s, to check if he was alive to the danger.

‘What do you say of that? And what do you say of Gaelic lances that would plunge into our bodies at the first chance?’ I faltered and tried to step back, butting into an impervious wooden post.

‘I did not seek to cause . . .’, I began, losing voice, and in that moment, all that would come to my mouth was the Gaelic word—náire. And I dared not speak it.

Raymond acted in this horrific silence, rising up from his seat in front of me, his stout frame rumbling with the rhythmic verse of some poem I did not know.

A wicked man, from a foul brood,

who mingles with free men,

always knows his origins,

that he comes from an addled egg,

even though he lies in a free nest

He struck me suddenly, with great force, and I fell backwards against the post, my head thumping the deep set of the wood, and I slid sideways with the jug cradled in my arms, wine spilling freely over the canted edge.

‘That is for shaming our race with your slavery’, he said.

From the ground, I perceived the shock provoked by this act as some of the Justiciar’s retinue rose from their seats. De Lacy stood also, his face clouding over as Rohese placed an arm on his fist, pinning it to the board.

‘A cup-bearer who sloshes the wine’, Raymond said loudly, grabbing me up from the ground and passing his wide thumb across the birthmark on my face, as if to rub it clean. A pitiful jest, though in the tensioned atmosphere, it provided levity, and some faint laughter skittered down the hall, breaking the unwelcome silence. He drew me in then and kissed me with great exaggeration on both cheeks.

‘And that is for your loyalty, brat, to your King and Justiciar’, he shouted gaily, and in that act I recognised his shrewdness.

‘Now sit, young squire, if it pleases your master, for I would like to hear your story told, and I would know what you have learned of the Gaelic temperament’. Turning to de Lacy, he added, ‘If we can get closer to the workings of Gaelic thought from one who has observed their ways for the entirety of his life, we can hit back at them all the harder’.

De Lacy acquiesced not without reserve, and all sat and resumed their talk and their play, and I placed my jug onto the board. In the absence of a seat, I knelt on the rushes beside Raymond, stemming the blood that coursed from my nose with a wadded rag. ‘Mouthy fool’, he said to me discreetly, ‘one verse would have served you better. But you were not to know the truths you were stepping on with your second offering’. He looked at me hard, making sure there was no flicker of comprehension on my face. Making sure, with his forceful eyes that probed like awls, that I had not sought to make a fool of him. ‘No matter’, he said, apparently satisfied, and he tousled my head roughly, adding, ‘the nose will heal. I can see by how it lies that it has known a few breaks before’.

I nodded and contrived a rueful look. He went on talking, asking me of Míde and making some well-observed comparisons to the lands of Mac Murchada. I answered what questions he would ask and played along with any farce he wanted to make of me to his fellows. I saw Hamund use the excuse to come ever closer, taking up my wine jug and loading me with significant looks. After a time, Raymond spoke to me more freely of Mac Murchada, his strengths and his follies, and even of how he had died, ‘his body rotting around him, his face frozen in rictus, his jaw clamped closed so tight that his teeth cracked and his people kept him hidden, spooning him whey, the scum dribbling and crusting perpetually over his beard. A sad thing for one who had such presence in life’.

He spoke this way for a long time, addressing himself at times to this companion or that and, at times, speaking directly to me. I believe that, in his cups, he forgot momentarily to whom he addressed himself, speaking with little check, clapping me on the shoulder like a comrade in arms, and I listened and leaned my ear in and nodded and laughed at the expected moments. He did not need much more encouragement, and it was not long before he was speaking bitterly of the Earl and how he had been ill used by that ‘politicking old bastard’. I learned that Raymond had commanded the Earl’s armies, that he had carried many great victories, and that the Earl had slighted him in the end, promoting another man as Constable—de Quincy. The man who lay dead somewhere in the mountain passes of Osraige.

‘And’, he said to me, leaning close, drink glistening on his lips, ‘despite his promises, he would not give me her hand’, and he pointed with his eyes to where Basilia sat. A kind of shudder passed through me at an image of his face with its round, grey eyes, high colour and raven’s nose finding harbour in the nook of Basilia’s milk-smooth neck. For, throughout all this time, as he spoke to me, I had been stealing glances in the direction of Rohese and Basilia, who leaned in to each other in similar conclave. Two women full of their own power, existing in a space of their own, set apart from the heaving swelter surrounding them.

Through the lulls in the voices around me and between the preoccupied words of Raymond, I had captured many whispers that passed between the two women. I had heard Rohese whisper, ‘Is it un-Christian of me to say that your Yonec is here, your Launcelot?’ and I saw her motion very subtly with her head to a dark part of the hall. Basilia’s eyes did not follow, but she did smile briefly, her hand coming lazily up to her mouth.

‘The fool was standing upriver on the shore like a motherless calf before we even moored the ship’, she said.

Rohese laughed with delight and looked over her shoulder, finding the corner where Gryffyn sat, tolerating the discourse of his fellows, his eyes trained on the dais burning like beach coal under a bellows. Rohese turned and spoke with a playful sigh, her chin cupped in her hand, drawing in close, ‘What harm—one of the benefits of being with child, young sister—you cannot conceive another’. I did not follow much more of their speech before Raymond’s insistent voice broke in.

‘You see this Justiciar, boy, he is a baron dyed in the wool. Stick to him like woad. Ranulf in Chester tells me that, as a boy, he used to collect branches and brushwood to build a castel and, mounting a toy horse as his steed and brandishing a branch like a lance, would with other boys of his own age undertake the guard and defence of this play castel’.

‘Ranulf of Chester?’ I said, but Raymond had moved on to another subject. ‘My father was reeve of Frodsham in Chestershire’. Interrupted in his train of thought, Raymond’s brow furrowed, and he looked down at me mildly. ‘There is no reeve at Frodsham, boy, only a burned stump’.

‘Many years ago’, I said desperately, trying to bring his attention with me, ‘it was years ago . . . Johan de Crécy. My mother . . . taken, they were both taken—’

The wine had clouded over his face and he strained to hear over the noise of the hall. ‘Johan of Frodsham’, I shouted, and he searched for meaning in the sounds.

He pursed his lips, considering, running his large hands through both temples of his curled blond head. He spoke then, and I was never sure if it was a platitude or if he was channelling something deeper. Some memory. ‘There is nothing sadder than a beautiful slave, lad’.

I grasped for more, but the entire hall burst into an eruption of shouting and cawing and slamming of fists and cups on the table as the harpers and pipers came forth playing blasts on their instruments to signal the end of the meal and the beginning of the entertainment. Between them, marching with exaggerated movements, the Justiciar’s fool, Folzebarbe, strutted like a gamecock, paint smeared grotesquely over his face, tongue lolling like a hound on the scent.

Wine splashed and flowed and all servants were now busy with jugs, the plates having been cleared away. Folzebarbe was a man I had seen often about the yard, sleeping in the hay, harassing the girls, a feckless wastrel. But here, in the reek of bodies and wood smoke, he showed himself king. In time with the music, he darted between the roof posts and into the shadows of the eaves, emerging like a questing deer, only to shy back into the shadow, and we got glimpses of his outrageous costume, a frayed, stitched phantasm of strips and colours.

He began to cavort, tumbling and turning his body, stretching his joints into unnatural lengths, eliciting cries of dismay and delight from the company. As the music built and grew faster, so did his dance, leaping high with apparent abandon; oblivious to the hearth or the table or the dais, he traversed all with his acrobatics.

During this performance, the steward, with masterful discretion, ushered in courtesans from the civitas, who dispersed into the now moving assembly of guests, the serving girls, by now, pinched red and blue breasted. The formality of the feasting disappeared in its entirety, replaced by loud and unrestrained revelry, Folzebarbe’s cavorting growing less heeded as younger men scuffled in impromptu trials of strength and hot words as de Lacy and Raymond cheered from the dais, flinging jugfuls of beer down over the revellers.

In the midst of this maelstrom of upending benches, false singing, haggling courtesans and leaping fools, the door to the hall heaved open from without, spilling an unseen mass of cool night air into the room. The touch of this air on the great heaped embers of the fire sent the smoke boiling around the hall, sparks rising in a swarm, the fire glow showing in bronze slats through the billows, and through this choking, blinding mass, a figure stalked forward, crooked staff in hand.

‘Justiciar’, the figure roared, cutting through the uproar of coughing and howls of indignation and cries of ‘shut the cursed door’. The figure came on, pushing into the tight ball of courtiers, his two familiars ranging to his left and right, clearing space.

‘De Lacy’, the figure roared again over the receding din, and fresh sticks were cast on the flames, brightening the hall and sending unwelcome shafts into several cosseted corners where rutting buttocks could clearly be seen. The figure illuminated in the wild crackling flames—Lorcán. His face severe, his aggrieved head pushed forward as a clearing established itself around him, looming knights and barons on all sides. He stood, unperturbed. A ferret in the sett.

‘Where is de Lacy?’ he said again with less force but with no less steel in his voice.

‘Where he belongs’, came the answering, belligerent shout from the dais, and by now the assembly had fallen quiet in the main, shaking heads and smoothing garments, blinking reddened eyes and dislodging beer froth and crumbs from grease-coated faces.

‘Justiciar’, said Lorcán, inclining his head forward with the merest sign of respect. ‘I apologise for my late arrival, but my invitation to your feast did not reach me’, and before de Lacy could respond, the archbishop’s quick eyes had found Basilia in her seat. He moved his soft treading feet in a minor movement that reoriented his entire being. He bowed his head more perceptibly and spoke directly to her.

‘My greetings before you, ma dame, to this, our civitas, and may I give you God’s blessing for the child that you carry. I waited for you at the cathedral where I thought to celebrate a Mass to mark your arrival, but I see that perhaps, unaccustomed as you are to these streets of ours, you were led astray’.

After the slightest pause, Basilia rose, leaning backwards with her arm crooked beneath her belly, and she made to step down from the dais to approach the bishop.

‘Sit, child’, he said, his un-mitred head and mild face commanding supreme authority, and Basilia froze momentarily as the congregation, fully silent now, recognised the hard dissonance of the scene—the bishop standing before the dais. The shame of it. The failure of all forms of hospitality did not fail to puncture even the thickest wine-fuddled head, and all stood watching the scene with paralysing uncertainty. This confusion compounded by the friendly address of the bishop.

‘We are past the hour of decorum’, he said, and though his words were mild and appeasing, they settled over the hall with the sting of something deeper, something critical, and the unease spread.

‘How do things go with your brother?’ he continued, addressing Basilia still as the hall listened. ‘I would like to speak with him again, as it has been some time now. I would speak with you at length, not least of all to know if you have news of my sister in the court at Ferns’.

And with this conversational tone, Lorcán had confused, disarmed the assembly, who stood by, bleary and unsure of themselves as the revelry paused and this slight, grey man held sway. He made to step up onto the dais, and, his eyes meeting mine, he feigned great surprise and said warmly, ‘And Alberic FitzJohan, of course you are here. But what of your companion, Conn?’ He stepped back into the cleared space he had made and, as if searching his memory, thinking aloud, he said, ‘No . . . not here. I have seen him elsewhere today’.

And in a swift movement of his body, once again he was facing de Lacy. ‘I believe I saw him labouring on the quay, though it was difficult to be certain. The creature I observed was slight and slick with black ooze, and’, he chuckled lightly, ‘enslaved’.

De Lacy, shaken finally from his torpor, stood and bowed his head, indicating to his own seat, ‘Your Grace, please accept this seat’, and to the empty shadows by the scullery door he roared, ‘Wine for His Grace, wine and meat’, and in the act of turning he swayed ever so slightly, the thick fingers of his right hand a scaffold on the tabletop to stay him.

Lorcán ignored all of this and continued, as if speaking to himself. ‘Yes, enslaved. Slighter now, much slighter, scrofulous at the neck. His movements short and hesitant, his eyes pale and watery. But yes, the same man, I am sure of it, the same Conn’. Then, his eyes seeking de Lacy, he continued, ‘He is the son of one of the noble families of Míde, a realm you now hold, Justiciar. It would seem to me politic to let the lad go and you might well see his father come into your house at Troim to pay you service’.

De Lacy shook his head, snorting like a stallion, as if to dispel the bishop’s words. And he spoke.

‘Archbishop. Míde is mine both by royal grant and by the right of arms, as that villain ORork relinquished his claim when he acted treacherously’.

‘The fate of a kingdom concerns more than a single individual’, Lorcán responded quickly. ‘You may represent the King of England, but I represent a much higher power. Your King’s holdings would fit into the holdings of the Pope one hundred thousand times over. Not only that, but all of the earth is the dominion of God. And God’s law states that no man shall be made a slave. This is the Christian teaching. Give the boy his liberty’.

De Lacy leaned forward in his seat.

‘That may be, Bishop. But God, too, controls a kingdom. He knows what must be done to clear the borders and keep down his enemies. He has fought wars in heaven and earth and has faced betrayal and uprising from those towards whom He was lenient or beneficent’.

Lorcán ignored this rhetoric. ‘Man made politics. God made people. I concern myself with people. Free the boy that he may return and speak of your reverence, worthiness, benevolence. That the men of Míde may come forward when your banner appears over their hill. Who else will farm your land? Turn it to produce? There are not enough Engleis on this island to work half of that land of bounties’.

‘You speak true, Eminence. And yet I fear for the boy. What will happen if he is turned loose from my protection? Will he not need to traverse Laigin somewhat? Across the lands of your people? What will a Mac Murchada do to a sprat of ORork? No, for his own safety, I keep him’.

‘To expire of exhaustion on the black banks of the river?’

‘To participate in the great civil project of our time—how better to belong to our tribe?’

‘This is slavery. Might I speak of our councils? Of the teachings of your own great clerics, Anselem, Gervase?’

De Lacy grew hot at this, tiring of the play.

‘Your Grace—perhaps you have heard what we do with trouble­some priests in our kingdom’.

The inference was bare—shredding the ill-contained mirth like the raking claw of a prodded beast. He evoked the brained Archbishop of Canterbury. And even the loudest, most boastful drunkards in the room fell silent, glancing shiftily to each side as if fearing an apparition of Thomas à Becket, a man the Pope had proffered for sainthood. Lorcán allowed the silence to extend, and de Lacy, casting about for some way out, grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me towards him from where I had stood, transfixed, with jug in hand.

‘Let us ask this boy what shape justice should come in. One of our own countrymen, Bishop, enslaved and scourged daily by the one you would seek to free—an heir to a lord who refuses my authority over his lands’.

Lorcán directed himself towards me and spoke. ‘Be careful, lad, did they not tell you? A lord is like a fire—go too close and you will be burned, too far away and you will freeze. It is a difficult beam to walk’.

I spoke then from some deep well of foolishness. A part of me that ever refused to keep quiet. I spoke words I had not weighed as the wine-warmth made me more reckless still.

‘If that is so, I see my lord has spent time in the blaze of a king and has won much by it’.

De Lacy fell very silent. The entire hall took on the muffled pallor of a fog-choked night. Eyes averted, glasses placed down with extreme care, as if any noise at this juncture might attract a violent rebuke.

Lorcán searched my face with a look neither amused nor angry. I risked a glance to my side where de Lacy sat, his gaze full on the bishop, his fingers slowly palping the waxy red smear of burned skin, the molten folds of his cheek. And slowly, deeply and irresistibly, he began to laugh, the sound booming out into the deadened air like an axe on a barred door. After a confused silence, the assembly followed—the laughter taking and spreading—and de Lacy stood, his head cast upwards towards the shingles, roaring mirth, and he came forward thumping my back.

‘This boy’, he said, ‘has the balls of an ox and the head of a legate’. He made a great show of ushering me to sit in his chair. ‘What should we do with your tormentor, boy? String him from his bowels over the palisade? Or deliver him into the arms of the bishop who would spirit him homewards with words of us and our numbers and our defences and our plans direct to our enemies? Pronounce your judgement, wise and fearless one’, he said with a mocking bow.

The question had only one answer. Lorcán did not come to my aid this time, instead eyeing me coolly. I went sick with the thought of murder. God’s hand hanging over me, his eye on me, for I had helped kill the file. I prayed inwardly during that moment, seeking Lasair’s embroidered scrap behind my belt. I prayed for intercession to Féchín and Lasair. To Patricius and Thomas à Becket. And I spoke.

‘He should labour on the wharf. As I laboured at his mill, draining his bogs, de-stoning his meadows, building his trackways. If he lives through these trials, none should bar his way home’.

‘Midir come again’, said Lorcán quietly into his fist as de Lacy boomed his own sentiments.

‘Solomon’s bastard’, grabbing the back of my neck in his powerful hand and shaking as one does an apple branch, the tip of his tongue trapped between his clenched teeth, shaking me and rubbing my head and clasping me into his hard chest with intoxicated merriment. And thus engulfed in this dark embrace, I did not see the bishop leave.