Chapter 18

An Impious Teacher

Hamund was furious. As the revelry burned on late into the night, spilling out into the cobbled yard, he stalked around the rear of the hall, drinking long pulls from a flask, punching the immovable beams and kicking his feet raw against barrels and bales. I tried to calm him, his slim face flushed, eyes unfocused.

‘Peace, Hamund, you will find trouble for us’. He turned on me, snarling out words.

‘Do not believe for a moment that he is your friend. That fat, vile excrement eater. That murderer of children’.

‘Peace, Hamund, I wanted to know of my father, that is all. He has been to Chester and knows the Earl that rules there’.

‘Do not believe a word from that unctuous villain’s rotting mouth’.

I brought him into the darkness of the stable and we made space for ourselves on the floor, rooting in among the horse-boys and receiving their scorn but also their fear as they had seen me with the Justiciar. Hamund railed on, his words losing force until he fell silent, his arm falling over my shoulder, his face finding a hollow at my neck and his chest filling and emptying noisily in the dark beside me. I pretended sleep, my head half-hid in the straw, though I watched the open kitchen door through a gap in the lats for a long time. The serving girls, waiting for the tempers to calm in the hall, cleaning the cups, talking low and surreptitiously chewing the gristle from bones discarded among the potsherds and oyster shells.

I saw the concubines ushered from the hall, brought out through the kitchen, two dark figures flanking the door. Saer the steward, purse hanging from his belt, continuing a deep argument with the stately chief courtesan. Arguing over silver, no doubt. An argument laced with a courtship of its own—ageing, minor powers exerting their wills upon each other. Finally, her hand strayed to her breast, pulling the verge of her garment down as he leaned in. A final transaction. I watched as she clenched him to her, falling back against the woodpile, abrupt grasping movements, and I closed my eyes from it.

Dawn broke cold and unforgiving. Light pushed in through the lats, and I lay still, weighted down with the heaviness of the night’s events. My face throbbing from Raymond’s blow. I could hear no movement, but as I lay between sleeping and waking, I caught sight of Gryffyn padding around the kitchen door and sidling into the small space between the bread oven and the rear of the feasting hall. He put his eye to the wattle, his fingers working in to open a chink, to which he pressed his mouth. Though I could hear no sound, I could see his lips forming words, words that carried urgency, imperative, working from his trunk, across the breadth of his shoulders, his hands, unseen by the listener within, moving in imploring contortions. He went away then, leaving the yard to the chickens and the loose straw that scratched soundlessly across the stones in the weak breeze.

I dozed a while longer until, my stomach sick from the wine and my bladder full, I freed myself from the tangle of bodies in the straw and crept to the stable door. I pissed out onto the cobbles looking to a troubled sky, heavy with cloud. All abed, the doors barred, low voices somewhere above on the wall walk. When the household awoke, there would be cleaning and clattering to avoid, scrubbing down and mucking out and flinging armfuls of bones and shells into the moat. I shook off the sourness and pushed into the cold. No marshal coming to rouse out the sleeping hands yet, everyone clinging to sleep.

There was a soldier at the gate, and he pulled one of the great doors ajar for me to slide through. And just as I emerged out into the civitas, Gryffyn came up behind me and laid his heavy arm over my shoulders.

‘What pilgrimage now, lad?’ his voice bright and alive.

‘Back to the hostel to my straw bed. I do not want to be found here this morning’.

‘Have no fear, lad, you are more or less part of the household’.

‘More or less, yes, depending on the day, I will not dawdle for fear of a kick. Or worse yet, a bucket and swab’.

Gryffyn laughed.

‘I’ll walk with you and see your lodging’.

‘You’ll be disappointed’.

He did not reply, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. At the hostel, Gryffyn looked around with interest and threw himself backwards onto my cot, his powerful arms crooked behind his head.

‘Not bad, pilgrim’, he said, ‘fine lodgings for a young man. Are you alone here?’

‘Mostly, yes, though the bishop admits the sick betimes, and there have been women here with their children some nights seeking refuge from their drunken husbands. And Conn was here also’.

Gryffyn grunted.

‘Best for you to forget that lad, Alberic, his fate is no longer on your head. You will get the call soon to bunk up at the castel. You’ll be part of the household then, and you’ll do no more slinking around when you think no one’s watching. You’ll be bearing cups in the hall, carrying spears on the hunt and maybe, if I read it right, you’ll be groomed up to be a squire for Master Hugo when he comes of age. The Lord has taken to you, and though you may not know it, he is measuring you at every tread. There are burghers and chaualiers and sergenz the length and breadth of Herefordshire who would pay a lifetime of tithes to place their sons in the position you have blundered into’.

‘Yes, so I am told’, I said.

‘A cup-bearer to a king is often richer than a knight of renown’, he said. ‘Members of the lord’s household can be richly rewarded with lands for their service’.

‘What would I do with lands, and not a cow to go on them?’

Gryffyn laughed loudly at this.

‘You really are a fool. You would rent your holdings to farmers. They work the land and you reap the tithes, get fat, marry the steward’s daughter and sire twelve stain-faced children’.

‘And who will you marry?’ I asked him then, and the smile died on his lips.

‘I don’t give a fistful of ashes for marriage’, he said, and he rolled over on his side, to conceal the pain on his face.

We returned to the castel some time later to find the place set to rights. Hamund was nowhere to be found, though Hugo was quick to spot me coming in with Gryffyn. He approached me with a clear, childlike joy on his face. In the excitement of the new arrivals, all of the practiced scorn fallen away.

‘There’s to be a hunt’, he said to us both, ‘and we are to go along’.

Gryffyn ruffled his hair.

‘That is good, young Lord. I’d best prepare. Is there talk of bringing the falcons?’

Hugo had already run off in giddy flight, reeling between the bustling servants and labourers.

‘Go with him’, Gryffyn said, ‘and keep him from falling under a cart’.

I followed after Hugo and, catching him up, steered him upwards onto the parapet, where we settled on the edge of the outer wall, throwing pebbles into the moat below and spying for glimpses of nuns over the walls of St Mary de Hogges. We tried to count the soldiers’ tents beyond the pool and followed the road along the Vale of Duiblinn and the green woodland beyond, sweeping onwards to the purple mountains. Out on the bay, the fishing boats were plying the incoming current around the big sandbar—hunting for bass.

I boasted to Hugo of my trip on the boat for mackerel. He feigned little interest.

‘We crossed on a ship from Bristol’, he said, ‘and for days the sailors showed me how to work the sails, and I climbed the mast and helped them with the rigging, and Father was very proud’. He was still young, and he retained this habit of speaking quick and transparent lies, and he would then need to work hard to make them believable.

‘A mariner, a boy, fell overboard in a swell, and there was no one left on-board small enough to shin out onto the yardarm to fix the sail in place. They showed me what to do and . . .’ He went on at length with this fantasy, and in the end, against my better judgement, I said to spite him, ‘Well, I can see now why a short journey with mere fishermen should hold so little to interest’.

And in saying this, I unleashed what was to follow.

‘Not so’, he said defiantly, ‘I should like to see one of their boats up close, see how they sail. You can arrange this for me’.

Our talk was interrupted by a roar from the yard below. We looked down to see de Lacy staring up from the back of a formidable bay horse, his hunting horn hanging at his neck and a retinue of mounted men, footmen and dogs forming behind.

‘Sluggards’, he roared again, in high spirits, ‘to work’.

We scrambled down the wall, forsaking the steps in our haste, and took up with his retinue. Gryffyn swung Hugo up onto his courser, and I jogged along with the hounds, looking for something to carry in an attempt to redeem myself.

When, some hours later, I returned to the cathedral, tired and dust covered, Lorcán came to see me. He entered the hostel bending through the low door before rising to his full, imperious height. A cold fear, and something more—guilt—flashed in my bowel.

‘Young Sasanach’, he said by way of greeting, and in this flippant way ejected me from the tribe of the Gael. ‘I see you have become a celebrated freeman of the civitas’.

The jest was spoken without spite, though there were thorns to his words. My freedom was questionable. Though he was also alluding to my unaccompanied travels through the streets, signalling gently that my wanderings were known to him.

‘I am sorry for Conn’, I said, my head lowering.

‘I am also sorry for Conn’, he said grimly, ‘for his fate means more than you realise. In the south, the Engleis have entered into lordship through marriage and alliance. They are constrained to Mac Murchada’s lands. But de Lacy has gone beyond his sanction. He has entered into lands which were never subject to Mac Murchada. He has pillaged the territories and he has killed a Rí under truce. In not according Conn the dignity and rights owing to a hostage of noble rank, de Lacy spits on the Gael and makes clear his intent for Míde’.

I bowed to the ground before him. Hiding my face, should he read the riot of feeling at play there. Lest he know that in my darkest days, as a youth, there were times when I had prayed and yearned and lusted for an Engleis heel to crush the house of Máel Sechlainn.

‘I am sorry for my words at the feast’.

Lorcán sighed.

‘You did right. You bore a heavy weight, and there may well have been two swinging boys on the castel walls had you dared more. Though you skirted close to hubris on occasion. Boldness has served you well, I can see that. But the fire grows hotter, and it will be more difficult to gauge what distance to keep. You are shrewd, boy. I would make you a man of the Church, for I feel this is where your talents lie’.

I kept my gaze lowered, a blush of pride spreading through me.

‘Now’, he said in a louder tone, ‘I need you to go to the shambles for me. I would like cow’s tongue for the kitchen’.

I looked at his face for the trace of a smile. It was well past the time that flesh was to be got. He had never sent me on such an errand before. His eyes were unsmiling, and I took my leave of him, alerted to a ‘crane in the meadow’, as old Lochru would have said.

The market was largely deserted, the last of the hawkers packing their crates away with wild pigs in loud contest with feral dogs over the spillings which studded the mud crisping in the sun. The boards over the flesh shambles caked with reddened gore and the awnings and benches feathered with sparkling fish scales.

I went along the street, watching for a late vendor, expecting to see something else. A figure beckoned. Milesius—cowled and shadowed behind a stall. My heart beat violently at the sight of him, and I slid into the narrow, deserted space in the lee of the tall cathedral wall.

‘Alberic’, he said, reaching out to grip my shoulders with restrained feeling. He looked up and down the street and began to speak urgently, his face gaunt and still bearing patches of inflamed skin that had ill healed since our ordeal.

‘I am happy to see that you are well. That you have found a way to persevere in this tainted place’. Before I could respond or question him, he pushed on with a frantic energy. ‘We will need to act together to ensure Míde does not suffer the fate of these Ostmen’.

I was afraid now, afraid of being seen with him and of what that might mean. I had come to understand that even in its sleepiest hours, the civitas watched. My fear turned to anger.

‘And why would I rush to help the Gaels of Míde? To what purpose would I uphold a tiarna who has enslaved me and mine?’ If I had struck him in the face, he would have looked less wounded. My lack of a respectful address—I had not called him ‘athair’—rang emptily in the space between us.

‘Alberic’, he said without anger, and making no attempt to mask the hurt in his voice, ‘you know the depth of our learning. Our culture. We trace our line to Noah. We have seeded Christendom with places of learning. You know the craft of our poets, the depth of the genealogies. This land will die if we are severed from it. Can’t you smell it on this place? The rot? The filth, lifted with the tide, running in the streets? The air is heavy with the smell of man and beast living too close together. The blackbird’s trill over the high wood is sweeter to me than their calls at the flesh shambles and their little silver tokens of no worth to one who has the art of learning and who knows the face of God’.

I did not speak, though I knew some of what he said to be true.

‘In three days’, he said, ‘I will leave for our home. Meet me at the Ostman’s bridge with the lowering sun, and we can travel together’. I answered him then with the full-faced haughtiness that my new liberty had fostered in me.

‘And why, friend, would I hurry back in the night to a life of bondage?’

He did not reproach me for my familiar address, but I could read fury in the set of his jaw.

‘You have seen these men up close now, Alberic. Their thick tongues. Their irreverence. Their ignorance of the natural law, of the saints of the land, of the lore of our ancestors and of the places where they lie sleeping. Not a word of our beautiful language can they form with their jeering mouths and everything to them a prize to be stolen—territory, women, cattle. And kingship now they lay their heavy hands upon with no shred of respect for the law and the ancient bond between our rulers and the land’.

His frenzied eyes bored into mine, looking for agreement. I do not know what he saw. His fist came down on the dirty board of the stall.

‘These thick-headed churls. Curs, robbers, shit-hounds. We brought them gospels when they foundered in the dark. Their fingers in the entrails of beasts looking for wisdom and prophecy’. He spat into the dirt.

‘They are my people, Milesius. I hear their words. I understand their speech, and here I have liberty’.

‘Your liberty will be bought with a hundred thousand thralls. Slaves from the Sionainn to the sea’.

I looked to the ground, embarrassed by his vehemence, though I did not waver. Milesius sighed and, in doing so, his stature reduced. He pulled back his hood, revealing a scourged and scabrous head. His lips grey, bloodied eyes and lesions of yellow green like slugs on his skin. He searched me with his eyes again, looking for some subtle sign that I was under coercion, that I was being watched and my responses forced. Finding none, he said, ‘What shall I tell your father?’

‘Tell him make to Áth Cliath, where I will meet him as a favourite of the Justiciar’.

‘He will not come’.

‘Perhaps not, but he will be happy that I am with his people and that I advance. Tell him that here they call me Alberic FitzJohan’.

Milesius raised his hood and said, ‘Three things whereby the devil shows himself in man?’

I did not respond, though I knew well the answer—by his face, by his gait, by his speech.

He pushed past me out into the street, saying as he went, ‘Choose well your path, Alberic. The fork is before you and the door closes behind’.

To his back, I spoke sharp words to mask my pain.

‘Three enemies of the soul . . .’

His pace did not slow, nor did he turn to respond, and on their leaving of my throat, the words burned as a breath of stirred cinder.

The world, the devil, and an impious teacher.

The following day, I was sent for before terce. When I came to the castel, de Lacy was out among the soldiers and his children scattered to the winds, pursuing their pleasures with the other youths of the household. The lady of the house was waiting for me in the great hall. She spoke to me but briefly.

‘The Lady Basilia would like to see to you’, she said with something like faint mirth in her eyes. ‘You will take her to the cathedral to celebrate the Mass. You will serve her without question’. Her look was significant. ‘She is with her women in the orchard’.

I bowed and took my leave. In the courtyard, I caught sight of Hamund, skulking by the bread oven, his arms full of logs. I beckoned him with a slight movement of my head, and he shadowed the wall to meet me at the gate. We stepped outside, and once we were beyond the hearing of the doorman, he spoke urgently, ‘He is sending the Ostmen to the Earl’.

‘Who is?’

‘Fool’, he spat, his eyes anguished, ‘the Justiciar is sending the last of our men south to the Earl to fight their brothers in Vadrafjord’.

Though I did not say it, I immediately saw the logic of de Lacy’s actions. Sending the last vestige of the Duiblinn army away from the civitas. Obliging the Earl in his request for support, yet not weakening his own forces.

‘A cruel destiny, the lot of the conquered’. I meant it as a placation. A conciliatory thing. He stopped and turned, pushing me back against the city wall.

‘We are not conquered, friend, we are defeated. And defeat can be undone. Great fleets gather in the Isles and warriors sharpen their axes in Lothlind’.

‘I do not doubt it, friend’, I said, putting my hand on his breast. ‘That is not what I meant’. He turned his face from me, his fair features blackened with anger. We walked on towards the Dam Gate in a charged silence. ‘Not what I meant at all’, I said lightly, and I considered carefully before continuing. ‘Milesius came to me yesterday’.

‘Your monk?’ Hamund said sharply.

I nodded. ‘He wants me to flee, to liberate Conn and flee north’.

Hamund fell silent a moment as we walked on.

‘When?’

‘Three days from now’.

We passed under the gate arch and came along the bank of the Salach to the orchards.

‘I can help’, he said. ‘Tomorrow, I will come to you. We will walk out and settle on a plan’. His hand cupped my cheek, steering my gaze to his own, his thumb running over the stained flesh with an unlooked-for tenderness. ‘We are none of us conquered yet. Not by a long stroke’. He turned and ran back for the gate, his feet kicking up the slop as he went.

In the orchards I walked down rows of fruiting trees until I came to Basilia and her ladies sitting beneath a netting of branches. Cool shadow, the black soil rich with windfall exuding a fragrance of souring ale. Seeing me approach, Basilia called me forward. Men-at-arms keeping their distance looked for Basilia’s nod and did not impede my progress.

‘He arrives, ladies. The poet-slave. The Justiciar’s fancy. Look at that lovely young face. That dew berry. Stained with perpetual embarrassment for his crimes. The stain of impure thoughts, I am sure’. She spoke with the powerful composure of a wealthy and handsome woman, raising in me true blushes as my eyes sought escape in the tracery of grafted branches behind her head and in the flight of wasps hovering noisily between the rotted cores. She rose from her couch, supporting her stomach with one curled hand, and said, ‘Come now, you are not some country stutterer afraid of the sport of a lady; I have seen you berate bishops and charm barons. Come and speak to me as we walk to the cathedral. I would know more of you and of this civitas. It is bigger than our own Vadrafjord, though more open to the elements, more mixed in its inhabitants’.

Her manner of speech perturbed me, and I struggled to know how to speak to her. We began to walk down the tree-lined sward, and her ladies followed several steps behind. ‘Do you not wish to tell me of yourself?’

‘I will gladly tell what you would know, ma dame’.

‘Do you write verse? You seem to have the soft heart for it, the warm eye?’

‘I cannot write, though I can read well enough the script of the Gael and also Latin to a lesser degree. I have yet to see the Engleis tongue written out, though I hope that the opportunity will present itself’.

‘No doubt’, she said, and I divined that this was not the answer she had been looking to elicit. ‘Tell me, then, you who recite the romances of the court—in your young life, have you loved?’

I looked behind to her ladies who followed; they affected not to hear our conversation. Again, this was something new to me, and I was not sure how to answer. I was not sure of the truth of the matter, and I was not experienced enough of those in love to know that they just want to hear their own flowery fantasies and agonies repeated back to them. In my uncertainty, I began to speak, words that had been waiting to fall from my lips like the heavy apples around us. Like a fruit of large, sad tears.

‘I would say yes, ma dame, I have’.

She smiled a thin smile, her eyes narrowing, the freckles across her nose, delicate and speckled as a thrush’s egg.

‘Tell me of her’, she said, leaning in conspiratorially, taking my arm. Her breath hot against my cheek.

‘We captured her on a cattle raid’, I began, and she snorted an involuntary laughter, and I could hear suppressed giggles from behind also.

‘Child’, she said, ‘I do not wish to hear of your dirty carnal acts perpetrated on the poor savages of the forests’.

Sudden anger spiked into the cavities of my being. I did not heed her but continued slowly, deliberately.

‘Standing in the pre-dawn dew, her bare feet bright in the gloom, a clutch of herbs and hedge flowers at her breast. She did not move as we thundered from the thicket and she climbed onto one of the horses with little fight. As if she had been expecting it. Indeed, I would hazard to say that it was not the first time she had been carried off’.

Basilia quieted as I continued speaking, listening now with a guarded interest.

‘Sixteen of years perhaps, dark hair, pale eyes, skin like the purest snow’.

I faltered at this. The paleness of my words against the image of Ness that smouldered in my mind. ‘I am no poet. I do not have the skill to tell you of her beauty’. And speaking of her hurt me as I had no conception it would. Words scalding my heart like charred coal. My thoughts turned against me, and I grew angry at the sly, amused air of this lady. Her highness, her fickleness. I continued rashly; anger unbinding words that should have remained bound. ‘Nor do I need to tell you what befell her when we returned to our túath, for these things are universal’.

I continued on, emboldened, speaking of such low things with a high-born lady, disregarding the danger. Disregarding her stiffening gait, the exhalation of breath from her nose, the dead silence from behind me.

‘I convinced her to run away with me, into the hills and the deep forest. I told her that my people, the Engleis, were at hand and that I would bring her to them and that we would be liberated. Though in truth I knew nothing of the world beyond our small borders, nor what lay east or west, north or south. I told her all I could to make her come away with me, and we wandered in the wilderness for weeks, eating what we could find. And in the end, she lay with me. She lay with me to change things’. Basilia touched my shoulder as if to say enough, but I could not stop, and I continued, louder and faster. ‘Lay with me to make something happen, to do the only thing that she had known, and in lying with me, I became all men, and she rutted like an animal and pushed every sin that had been perpetrated upon her down onto me. She expelled a blackness and a screaming terror and she clawed me and gored me and when it was over, she had passed on’. Basilia stopped walking and her ladies came forward, full of affronted awe, gathering around their lady.

‘Stop’, Basilia said. Releasing my arm forcefully. But I did not stop.

‘Passed on, passed over, I do not know which. Perhaps she lies cold in the forest or perhaps torn by wolves or enslaved by another who chains her to a post and ruts her daily—’

Her slap came hard and jarring, her long, ringed fingers catching my lip so that blood spilled dramatically into my mouth and down my chin.

‘Filth’, the ladies said, ‘ordure, morveau de merde’, and I turned away so that they would not see my tears. Basilia silenced them with a raised hand.

‘Boy, you are a fool. I knew it at the feast and you have proven it here today. You are offered liberties beyond any expectation of your station, and you utter outrages’.

‘A slave has no need for decorum’, I said. ‘Words have ever been the only freedom available to me. For good or for ill’.

‘Take us to the cathedral’, she said sternly, and we walked on in silence. We passed through the town gate and climbed past the castel along the High Street, and I was dead to the salutes and the hails from merchants and women in doorways, pushing my feet ahead in a kind of stupor.

At the great western doorway to the cathedral, Basilia bade her ladies enter. She held back and touched my wrist, indicating that I do the same. She looked into my face and spoke to me kindly.

‘Marie of the laies says that love is a wound within the body’.

I nodded slowly my assent.

‘I, too, have known wounds. And we have all, servants and nobles alike, known love’s barbs’.

She took a small blade from a purse at her belt and put it to the stone of the church door. She grated it back and forth for a time until she had amassed a small heap of fine powder in her hand.

‘Take this consecrated stone, mix it with the milk of a goat and the juice of one sloe, drink it cleanly as a single draft and it will assuage some of your pain’.

Her gesture touched me deeply. I palmed the dust, bowing to her in the process, and we entered the cathedral together. I walked her down the side to the lady chapel where her cortege waited. We stood in the alcove. It being one of the canonical hours, the cathedral was largely empty apart from the congregation of canons assembled towards the altar, their plainchant humming and resonating within the chamber. I swayed throughout the ceremony, Basilia by my side and my hand clenched around the sanctified dust. The echoing majesty of the plainchant, the changing strengths and patterns of the light as the clouds outside, shredding in the growing breeze, veiled and unveiled the sun from the high windows.

When the Mass had ended, she waited, praying behind her clasped hands, and, as if on silent command, the ladies left quietly as the canons emptied through the cloister door, making for the refectory and the midday meal. I looked around the empty space and at Basilia, murmuring determinedly into her hands. I stepped away and made to go, but her hand reached out to stop me.

‘I would like to see where you stay’, she said. And I perceived a tremble in her touch. I nodded without a word and walked her to the cloister door. I slipped out first, scanning the garth for signs of movement. She came on unperturbed, walking at my side. I guided her across the exposed spaces until we came to the door of the hostel. She bowed her head and entered. I followed, and she spoke some words I did not catch. Words of verse. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, she stepped back, butting against me. My hands came up around her shoulders to steady her. Her gentle smell filling my nostrils. My heart hammering. And from the shadows of the room, Gryffyn stepped forward, his face a blaze of unaffected joy. He came forward in a rush and fell to his knees onto the tamped earth, his head bowing and awaiting the touch of her hands in his hair.

‘Get up, fool’, she said, her voice breaking out into laughter, and he stood, laughing too, his hard face lined with tears. She kissed him boldly and his arm came up around her, his body perching forward comically over her bump.

Gryffyn looked up to me sharply then and said, ‘Alberic—the door’.

I went outside, pulling the door behind me. I sat back against the doorpost and watched the cloud break up over the cathedral walls and the crests of the thatched roofs, not listening but hearing their running babble of talk, their low laughter, the emphatic kissing and the tender noises that followed. And then only Basilia’s voice.

‘There. Lie back, you sotte. There. And now. Here. Yes. Gentle. There. Yes’. I clapped my hands lightly, and a puff of consecrated dust dispersed on the breeze.