Chapter 21

Baile Atha Troim

We left the civitas some days later. De Lacy’s men, those who had not followed their lord to France, were arrayed all in a body outside the walls, the aldermen wringing their hands at our leaving. A bright winter ringing of horses’ hooves on the frost-hard stones. The sun low and lancing brilliant light into our faces as we crossed the river Lífe and moved north on the Slíghe Midluachra. Entering the kingdom of Brega, a slow cantering from the seat of civilisation. A reluctant march into enemy land. The world again recast—fortune’s wheel clacking around once more, de Lacy gone and the people of Duiblinn awaiting a Justiciar, and all uncertainties anew.

We left in train with Tŷrel at the head, his household chaualiers and de Feypo there too, de Angulo, Hubert de Hose and many others whose names I never knew, all hoping for stakes in the great enterprise that lay ahead. A strong host whose tread on the slíghe was heavy. Behind us, falling further back with each step, the safety of walls, the close contact of people, the smells of the markets, the garden peas and comfrey, the cess, the smoke, the protection of numbers. I had the feeling of being stripped of something. Of safety? Of familiarity? Of leaving that conclave. And the shrine that I could put no name to. The shrine of ruined skin and bleached bone tumbled at the foot of the scaffold on the quays. Hamund. Or whatever her name had once been. The remains I had picked through in the night to find and to hold and to take with me the tooth that I bored in the quiet corner of the hostel and threaded on a thin strip of hide, sliding it along until it met the kelt and my embroidered scrap from Lasair’s well. Her eye tooth. I wore it now beneath my léine, the tooth tapping against the cold stone with the motion of the horse. And I felt protected. I had weighed the price of Conn’s life. Paid with the life of another, and both had died.

To forget, I tried to recite the dindsenchas for the journey—the placelore I had learned imperfectly during my time with Milesius. I searched my mind for traces of the poems of Brega to see if I could mark our way. And late in the morning, I thought that I glimpsed Sord Columbcille away to our right-hand side. I longed to see its tower and marvel at the place where Brian Borumhne was laid out in death. Baile Griffin, where the famous sons of Cynan dwelt, passing too, unseen. The lands of the Fine Gall, the demesne of the Saithne showing as nothing more than winter-scalded briar and frost-crisped grass. The Ben of Étair, that Hamund called Hǫfuð, watching our progress from afar and, as we travelled north, the peaks of the island Rechru taking up the vigil.

We crossed the openness of the country over Maigh na Éalta, the plain of the birds, without seeing more than the distant wintering flocks of geese. And I was reminded of that day that began everything, lying on my stomach with Lochru when we had seen that woe-begotten poet slink along the boundary of our túath.

I lost track of our location before the morning was out, and we moved through unknown meadows. We peeled inland following a small river between scarped hillsides. The farther we progressed, the clearer it became that our approach had been communicated along the road by unseen means. Our arrival at crossroads or farmyards was met with empty, peopleless places. All disappearing before we had rounded a bend. Huts and houses empty, daughters spirited into the woods, cattle driven into the bramble.

Tŷrel walked us on all day without pause, though before the sun set, we halted at an abandoned farm by a stream. The horses were brought to water and the captains repaired into the ruined cottage while the rest of the men threw up shelters against any standing walls they could find. I, as ever, was unsure of my place. As a member of de Lacy’s household, I had the right to lodge with the captains, though Tŷrel had yet to summon or speak to me. The men-at-arms, unsure of my reach, had given me a wide berth, though this first night would govern how I would be treated in Míde. I stood uncertainly in the yard, holding the reins of my gelding, staring up at the pale sky beyond naked, overhanging branches, feeling the circling of wolves, feeling the clenching of fists and the preparing of sport. With a slave’s intuition, I knew what would come from the soldiery if I spent the night amongst them.

I walked forward towards the house, trailing my horse with me. A guard stood beside the door. I handed him the reins and, without pause, proceeded into the dwelling. The room was dark, and dense smoke plumed upwards from a pile of bracken and mosses on the hearthstone, a garsun on his side, his soughing breath, coaxing flame. Tŷrel and his captains were divesting themselves of their riding clothes, and servants came and went, stowing their lords’ belongings, taking in packs and blankets from the horses that were stabled in an adjoining room. Holes gaped in the wattling of the partition wall so that the more audacious beasts had pushed their faces through the openings searching their masters’ good graces.

‘You’, a voice came rising over the sounds of the place, and I looked around to find Jocelyn de Angulo pointing at me through a space in the close press of men, his squat, sturdy form and pocked, lightly bearded face braced in anger. An apple in the palm of his pointing hand.

‘They say you put the noose around Gryffyn’s neck’.

‘They say a bitch’s brood is never short a runt’, I said in a red flash of anger. Silence fell on the place, sergenz moving clumsily from between us, garsunz scurrying towards the eaves of the house. Angulo did not move but brought the apple to his mouth, teeth digging noisily into the browning flesh. The others remained quiet, watching. A menace rising in the silence.

‘What did you say, wine splash?’ He spoke the words low and deliberate, a chill entering me as more men moved way, leaving me exposed.

‘I said that Gryffyn bought his pleasure dearly’. A horse whinnied noisily in the silence. ‘I did not make him go whoring while the Ostmen kidnapped his charge. But I did save the boy’.

I saw Tŷrel sit back on the piled baggage, watching with veiled amusement.

‘Such loyalty’, de Angulo said mockingly. ‘And to think I have heard naysayers muttering that you hold ORork in your heart’.

‘Certainly ill-informed, mistaken creatures, seignur, given that I never honoured Ua Ruairc. Nor could I. I was in Máel Sechlainn’s house, and the two were fierce enemies’.

‘You love Melacklinn then?’ de Angulo retorted eagerly, his mouth stammering around the Gaelic name.

‘Would you love the man who held you in bondage?’ I replied. ‘Who forced himself upon your mother? Who bent the back of your father?’

‘No Angulo was ever a slave’, he said hotly as he pushed himself forward.

Three things that show a bad man: bitterness, hatred, cowardice.

Tŷrel’s loud voice cut across de Angulo’s anger, checking his advance.

‘I have heard, young latimer, that thieves trawl this road and drag off travellers by night, strip them and stab them and leave them to blacken in a ditch. It would be a sad start to our venture should we have to report such a fate for any in our company to our lord de Lacy’. These words spoken to me in threat. Heedless, I played on with his game, treading as close to the edge as I ever had.

‘True’, I said, ‘I have heard that kerns in the trees make no sound. That their knives are long and that the country opens up to them, admits them, while briars close and choke foreigners’ progress. That trails disappear in the woods, light dims around them and they are lost’.

Several of the older lords laughed at my audacity—de Feypo, Hubert de Hose. This last called out in the general mirth.

‘If I had a servant with your tongue, I would feed him the blacksmith’s anvil’.

I ignored the comment and looked to Tŷrel. ‘I can open the country for you, seignur’. Before Tŷrel could respond, de Angulo paced forward, drawing close to me.

‘We can open the country as your mother’s legs were opened. With force. And we, too, shall spill blood, as your mother bled spilling you from her cleft, you stained and luckless bastard’. With these words, he flung a heavy mail glove, striking me on the forehead. The laughter was loud, and several men clapped de Angulo’s back, others breathlessly repeating his words in choked amusement. Tŷrel brought his hands together in slow, sardonic claps.

‘Now, boy, you have been ringed’, Angulo said. ‘The first of many, I do not doubt’. I held the butt of my palm to my forehead, pressing the broken skin. When I looked to my hand, I saw the impression of small circles described in blood. In the noise, Angulo’s horse had forced its head into the room, seeking its master’s hand.

‘You are no longer under his protection, wine splash. You are alone’, he said, pushing the apple core into his animal’s mumbling lips.

De Feypo came on speaking loudly and with good nature, ‘Don’t let them worry you, lad, you are of the house of our lord de Lacy. None here will harm you. They are starved of sport and jealous of your place at de Lacy’s table, that is all. Best if you do not sleep here tonight’. His broad hand found the depression between my shoulder blades and guided me out of the house with gentle but insistent pressure. Behind us, laughter diminished into a low burr of conversation. Outside, in the rapidly cooling air, he spoke to me again.

‘Some of us have come to love your irreverence and your wit, Alberic. Others would open you up for it. And to be fair, it was much easier to laugh when you were but a dung-stained rustic with pretensions of culture. But now your strut and your incautious lip come with a claim to some authority. And despite what has been said, many believe that you led Gryffyn to the gallows’. I did not answer this charge, nor did I meet his eye. He continued, ‘De Lacy is now far away, overseas and over land. We all believe that God will return him to us. And if God does not oblige, de Lacy will find other allies’, he said, smiling. ‘But until then, play your part humbly. Lead us to Meylocklan. Show us the trails and speak to us of those who hold the power in these parts, and the rest will follow from there’.

I nodded slowly to show that I heeded his warning, appreciated his words, and that I would be a pliant reed in the river until he clapped my shoulder and turned back inside. Standing there alone, I looked around the yard feeling the covert eyes upon me from all quarters. From the ranks of the archers, from the men-at-arms, the mounted sergenz and the garsunz, all trying to read meaning into my interaction with de Feypo, trying to see if I was fair game, if I was a serpent without fangs or if I was a danger, coiled to strike.

I left my horse in the stable and walked out on the slíghe. The pale coin of the moon showed its piebald face, and the cold light of the stars mirrored the forming frost on the bare branches. The bealach bó finne threading its bright way through the heavens. The roadway was easy to follow in the brightness. Some way from the camp, I found a trampled verge in the lee of a sloping wood. I lay out my brat by the blackened twigs of someone’s dead fire. Some traveller coming or going. Some farmer or messenger. Some fugitive or criminal. It was difficult not to think of Conn as I spent some time settling into the hard earth, wondering if he had escaped or, as was more likely, Gunnar had slit his throat and shoved him overboard during the chase. I lay alone, wrapped in the cold of the exile, cast into the wild lands, into that space where I was something else. Not Engleis, not Gael—something without definition.

Sleep would not come, and as I lay regarding the stars massed in their thousands, the cold biting cruelly at my nose, I caught the distant bark of a dog travelling on the dead calm of the night. Rising with the lightness of a dream, I followed the sound, unafraid, up the slope and into the woods. I walked beneath the bare canopy, moving quietly and finding footing between the bronzed stands of fern. Passing between the ghostly moonshine of birch trees, bats skimming overhead. I stopped and listened at intervals, seeking direction in the night. A light showed itself eventually through the trees. The dog barked, and this time the sound was cut off abruptly. I stood in the dark, straining to see ahead. Straining my eyes until they brimmed with tears, staring at the shifting light of a fire ahead, I thought I perceived figures in the light. From the space beside my ear, lips spoke slow words. The tongue of the Gael.

‘Easy now’, it said, and I froze, feeling the cold blade of an axe slide up my back to rest at the nape of my neck. A kern stepped out in front of me, soundless and soot blackened, the axe hanging loose now in his hand, careless yet terrifying.

‘Siocháin’, I said—peace, reaching my empty hands out to him.

‘We shall see’, he replied and motioned for me to walk ahead, towards the firelight, emitting a low whistle from beneath his drooping moustache.

I walked on, feeling a strange calm descend, and, reaching the trees at the edge of the firelight, I announced myself loudly in the tongue of the Gael, ‘Alberagh Máel Mánus, alone and without arms’.

After a short silence, a voice bade me to come forward from a small clearing ahead. I approached, showing my palms to a woolly hound who, responding to my calm, nuzzled and licked at them happily. In the clearing, a group of five men sat around a fire. They did not show much concern at my arrival, and several had the look of those waking from a gentle sleep. By their faces, visible in the dancing light, I could tell they were of the one clann.

‘God be with you’, I said to them.

They murmured a collective response. ‘God and Mary with you and a blessing on your journey’.

The eldest of the group, a man with a grey-streaked beard, invited me to sit with an extension of his hand to the fire’s edge. In the same motion, he dismissed the kern who had brought me in, and I presumed he would join others out there in ranging around the periphery to ensure that I was indeed alone. He looked at me mildly as I arranged myself in the offered place, nodding around the circle to each man in turn.

‘Cold night’, I said to a general sound of assent.

‘A follower of Mánus’, the elder said. ‘And what is it exactly that you are doing here, far from your Tiarna in this dark hour?’

‘I am returning’, I said. ‘I am returning to find my father and to help if I can to lessen the destruction that awaits that túath’.

‘And what part do you play in that destruction, I ask myself?’ he said, his tone unchanging.

‘That has yet to be seen’, I replied, treading carefully. ‘I have been to Duiblinn and have learned much from Lorcán Ua Tuathail’. Any advantage that I had hoped that name might bring was brushed aside lazily.

‘Is that so?’ the elder man said. ‘Lorcán who presides over the ruin of the civitas? He could do with some lessons himself’. His companions laughed lightly. ‘Perhaps your Tiarna would pay us a good price for your head? He could hang it over his door as a warning to his other bondsmen’. His eyes grew stern, testing me, before they softened once more and he laughed, striking me lightly on the knee. ‘Never fear, lad, I recognise Mánus’ red Sasanach when I see him. I watched you as a boy climb into the womb of the world, through the sídhe mound and out the other side, putting all to shame who stood by, shivering to their bones. I am Ruadán of Luigne and these my derbfhínne—my real kin’.

I made the required submission, bowing my head and speaking the words of obligation, thanking them for receiving me.

‘Little need of such formality here, lad’, Ruadán said. ‘What news from the road?’

I looked from one to the other, trying to gauge what they already knew. ‘There is a large company of foreigners down in the valley. It would be well to avoid them in the morning’. Ruadán nodded. And the others watched me, some with eyes rolling back into their heads in uncaring slumber. A skin of warm ale was passed to me, and I drank the sweet liquid gratefully.

‘How many?’ he asked.

‘Two hundreds of men, three score of whom are mounted on large horses’.

Ruadán smiled and took up a bent length of gorse. He stirred the embers, drawing the burning wood coals together so that the broken, spent blackness fell from their iridescent bodies, dragging the unconsumed wood into the centre of the wavering light, heat thrown out, a force against my face. I closed my eyes to the scorch of it. His insouciance annoyed me.

‘I have seen two score of these men destroy Ua Ruairc and his army’, I said, searching to draw out his worry.

‘You were on Tlachta then?’ he asked.

‘I was there, yes, and I saw what the foreigner can do’.

The man nodded slowly. ‘I do not question it’, he said. ‘I have heard much the same from many others’.

‘Yet you are unconcerned?’ I asked.

‘True’, he said mildly, looking around at his companions, ‘we are not concerned about two hundreds of foreigners in the valley’.

‘And why is that?’ I asked, suppressing my irritation.

‘Because we know something that you do not know, friend’.

‘I would be happy to hear it’, I replied in that codified, mapped out response so usual amongst the Gael. Ruadán looked to his sons with the possessive triumph of knowledge hoarded.

‘He has come into Ua Conor’s house’, he said with great satisfaction, the words themselves radiating across his face, and all five of them watched closely for my reaction. There could be only one response.

‘Ua Néil?’ I said, and they all took great satisfaction in my surprise. The great northern King and the chief rival of Ua Conor. If this was true, Ua Conor would have the support of every king on the island. He would be in a position to marshal a force of thousands. More than any Rí before him. One of the younger men, his eyes shining, spoke then in great earnest.

‘Ua Conor has raised all of the kingdoms, Ua Néil from the north, Ua Bríain from the south, the great families united. Mumán, Ulaid, Connacht. None will resist them’.

‘So you will understand now, friend’, Ruadán continued, ‘that a few hundred foreigners on the slíghe is of little consequence to us. We travel to join the great army that will wash over this land like a winter storm’.

I looked around at them all, their faces lit by the amber flame, their expressions lit with zeal, and I could not blame them their enthusiasm. I considered this news while the flames burned on, and the next time the skin made its way to me, I raised it before me and spoke loudly.

‘To Ua Conor and the great army of the Gael’, and my companions smiled and made warm, wordless noises of assent.

As the flames burned low, the younger men allowed sleep to overtake them. Ruadán moved around to me, the hound under his hand. He sat in close and spoke in a kindly way.

‘And what of you, friend, you who speaks with the tone of a Míde man but dresses like a foreign lord? Do you ride with their army?’

‘I do. Though I do not know to what end’. He nodded easily, letting silence overtake us, waiting for me to say more. After a time, I asked, ‘Do you have any news from the lands of Mánus?’

He did not speak for a while, staring at the glow of the fire. ‘A dark spell lies over those lands; I would not recommend travelling there’, he replied finally, looking grave, and I could not induce him to say more on the subject. ‘Would you consider coming with us?’ he asked. ‘We travel west at daybreak to find the King and to add the strength of our arms to his army. We have nothing left here in this cursed, scorched place’.

‘I would like to look upon the Rí, and my way might well lie in that same direction. Though for now, I will travel with the foreigners back to the lands where I was raised. I will seek my father and make him answer charges that have been laid at his feet’.

The man thought silently on my words before speaking.

‘Justice will be done’, he said.

‘Yes’, I said, giving the correct reply, speaking the old words.

What is owed is due.

I nodded by the warmth of their fire, waking in the blue before dawn with thin coils of smoke looping from burned ends of embers. My companions were gone, the clearing showing no sign of their passage. I walked slowly back to my camp, the night’s conversation seeming as a dream. The sun had chased the moon from the sky by the time I rejoined Tŷrel’s army. I led my horse out to a tree on the roadside, waiting in the noise and confusion of their preparation, keeping myself apart, watching their force draw itself up on the slíghe. The proud, tall horses, the metal-clad riders, the archers coming behind, seeming to me overshadowed, swallowed by the crazed, overhanging branches of the wood. A meagre few hundreds of men marching into an immense country, marching into hostile reaches, marching towards the warriors of the south and the battalions of the west and the hordes of the north. And suddenly they did not seem so numerous, nor so powerful.

The day’s march went much like the previous day’s journey. We passed many settlements, and at many places along the way, chaualiers came forward from small garrisons along the road. At other places, we passed monks digging trenches around new holdings. Flashes came back to me of that feverish ride after the parley on the hill, Gryffyn with me somewhat on the road, his easy way, his mischief, his strong frame a large absence. The weight of his ghost pressing on me and loading the sergenz’s looks with danger. I fingered Hamund’s tooth compulsively, trying to draw comfort from the smooth, hard gloss of enamel, like glazing on a jug. My finger worrying over the long root. Her eye tooth, conjuring visions of her cutting smile. Of the black maw of her mouth on the gallows, the rag of her body sailing high over the river. And I prayed to St Lasair to intercede. Forgive me, Lasair. Forgive me, Gryffyn; forgive me, Hamund. Without fully understanding it, I chose Hugo and I chose Conn. I did not appreciate that in doing so, I condemned you both.

We progressed north-eastwards, the winter sun arcing low in the sky behind us, casting long, confused shadows. Sergenz ranged ever ahead and disappeared off the road, searching into fields and wasteland, driven by the sense of possibility and of freedom. No law in this land. No bailiff, no burghers, no manor courts. The potential for something lying just around every bend in the road—a girl, a cow, a church with a golden shrine. Intoxicating. The frisson of the rut. The shudder of a hound unchained.

I watched them come and go. Disappointed. Defecating in the bushes and stumping onwards towards Troim. De Feypo sent out riders to each farmstead, each squat-walled fort on each shadowed hill, but all were deserted. A deserted land divested of people and of cattle. I knew them and their stratagems. I could see them clearly in my mind, the people of Míde, gathering their belongings deliberately, without haste. As they had done when Ua Ruairc came raiding. When Mac Murchada and Ua Bríain pushed deep into this territory. When the competing branches of Máel Sechlainn ravened like baited dogs, tearing strips from each other, blinding the tánistí, wasting the land. The people had taken the trackways and bóthair of the backcountry, gone to the heart of the forest, or into the hills. They had melted against the horizon.

We saw nothing of them as we progressed. Though from every shadow, I imagined I felt the seeking eye of the kern on my skin. A mud-darkened face peering through the tight mesh of the undergrowth. Still as a fallen tree. Dark as a burrow. Murderous as a hawk waiting to fall. We saw nothing.

Something indefinable in the country began to change. Something in the wheel of the rooks, the roll of the pasture, something in the shape of the skyline that approached familiarity. My stomach tightened with each league forward.

Late in the day, we crossed a rushing stream between high, naked ash trees. Above the ford, a mucky mound gaped with the many mouths of a badger sett. As the caravan filed slowly over the crossing, several soldiers occupied themselves sending small dogs down into the darkness. I watched them as they crouched around the openings, waiting for the muffled, vicious sounds below to break forth into the day. An ejection of stumbling cubs came up first and were ignored by the men. Then the mother spilled from one of the openings, and the waiting soldier cast down a mail coif as if it were a net. The weight of it flattened the badger to the ground, and he bent in, quick as a finch, to gather the sow in his arms. The terriers raced out between his legs, descending on the cubs as the soldier let the coif fall, gripping the badger tightly by the skin of its neck. There was a desultory cheer, and he walked around his mates, making feints towards each in turn, barking and laughing out loud like a drunkard, encouraged by the cries and shouts of his fellows. I left them in the trees, walking my mount to the stream, where she slaked her thirst in the gelid, swift-moving draught, unnerved by the yapping of dogs and the smell of blood.

When we had crossed to the other side, the host moved onwards in unison. The daylight began to fade, and Tŷrel sent runners up and down the flanks of the column, urging haste. Their remonstrance was unfounded as we crested a rise with an hour of sunlight to spare. Below us, a low valley rolled downwards to a sleek, slow-moving river whose waters stirred and chimed innumerable bells within me. Slick, cold skin. The wafting of weed beneath the surface, grazing legs, soft silt between the toes, lips on the bow of the neck. And other, ill-definable sensations dragged from the vaulted spaces of my memory. I knew that river. Bóinne.

And between us and it, a massive circle of heaped earth, a ráth larger than any I had seen, enclosed by a deep ditch, shimmering with floodwater and surmounted with a fearsome palisade and a large gatehouse. A ringworm on the flesh of the prairie. Inside its circumference, many thatched roofs and a smaller ráth accessed by an inner gate and containing closely packed buildings dominated by an impressive hall. Figures moving. Smoke rising.

The men started to call out, deep and low, and we saw the small figures within the palisade turn and gaze up at the darkening ridgeline. De Feypo raised a horn to his lips and sent a series of lowing notes down into the valley. After a moment of near silence, the distant clank of a bell rose in response. We spurred onwards, down the slope, towards the promise of straw bedding, warm fires, plentiful oats. De Feypo called me to his side as we began our descent.

‘Welcome home’, he said, leaning over in his saddle and punching my arm. ‘Now they will see your worth’. The gates were thrown open for us, the way lined with what men and women were in the place, cheering and clapping the withers of our horses as we passed. The line of people led us gently but very definitely down a processional way, funnelling us towards the inner gate, which we entered at a canter, and we were greeted by a chaualier, softly dressed without trace of armour, standing with arms outstretched like the Saviour on the cross.

‘Ricardo de Tuite’, de Feypo said to me quietly.

‘Welcome to the castel of Troim’, he shouted out. ‘Welcome, welcome’. Tŷrel at the head dismounted and embraced him, and they exchanged formal greeting.

‘We were beginning to despair of seeing you before the feast of St Agatha’, Tuite said.

‘Our departure was complicated by the King’s summons. He has called all of his barons to him and would void the country of men if he could. De Lacy has gone to his side’, said Tŷrel.

Tuite nodded with great enthusiasm. ‘Yes, the French problem’.

‘Of father and sons’, said Tŷrel ruefully.

‘Ever was it so’, Tuite replied, evading the subject, and to move things on, he spoke up, addressing the gathering host who arrived still through the gate. ‘Though we did not look to see you this night, we will stoke the kitchen fires for a supper and a butt of ale will be sprung. Please be patient, and the stable hands will see to you all in turn’. Addressing the barons, he said, ‘Hot water is being prepared in the hall. Please, come and wash away the dust from your eyes and drink the rust from your throat. My steward will attend you’.

Tŷrel paced after the steward towards the hall, and the barons followed, dismounting and passing Tuite with greetings of various degrees of familiarity. De Feypo hung back until the others had gone on, and I stayed near to him.

‘Adam’, Tuite said warmly, tendering his arm to de Feypo, who grasped it in a display of strength and affection. They exchanged the long and formulaic greeting and pledges of loyalty before de Feypo turned and said, ‘This is Alberic FitzJohan. Alberic is of these lands, and our lord de Lacy had seen a place for him here’. Tuite looked at me with interest, but his eye soon strayed to the busyness of the bailey and the housing of the newcomers. After shouting out some more instruction to his household men, he looked back to us.

‘Come and survey the western approach with me’, he said. ‘We have some rangers to return before nightfall’.

We climbed the solid beams of the steps built into the stout palisade and passed onto the wall walk. De Feypo and Tuite walked ahead, indistinct sounds of their discourse reaching me. I followed, as unobtrusive as I could make myself, wondering in what building I would be housed—hall, chamber, stable, byre?

We stood on the ramparts before nightfall had taken hold, gazing out and watching sullen, tumescent clouds bloom into the westward sky. A tang of coming rain on the air—the pointed stakes of the wall wet from the damp gauze of the air. We watched the land around and the burning line of deep red describing the shape of the horizon. The river ran below us, and on the ridge across the valley, a fire illuminated a rough tower built for watchmen, scavenged from the deserted bones of a broken monastery.

‘Riders!’ came a call from the outer palisade, and soon after, a dozen or so horses broke over the rise, silhouetted against the sky. They came lightly armoured for speed, riding in hard towards the stockade, racing the dying light. De Feypo strained forward, his hands gripping the palisade, trying to make out the shapes in the gloom. ‘Meyler?’ he asked, though his voice was low, not seeking answer. I counted ten horses as they crossed the ford, lifting their legs high, pushing through the deep water with their proud breasts. The lead horse carried two riders. Pouring water, they struggled up the final slope, clattering over the wooden causeway through the outer palisade. We watched their progress as they picked through the crowded outer bailey, entering the castel through the shadowed gate. Here they made to turn towards the stables, until de Feypo hailed out ‘Meyler’ and the riders, hearing his booming roar, wheeled around and stood, looking up towards us. I followed de Feypo, jumping straight from the wall walk down onto the beaten ground below. The lead rider, indistinct now in the gloom, pricked his horse’s flanks, running the beast towards us, pulling back on the reins at the last moment as de Feypo jumped aside laughing and slapping the beast’s lathered neck. Meyler FitzHenry sat glaring down upon us.

‘Adam’, he said then with some warmth, though his shadowed eyes were unreadable. At his waist, white interlaced fingers. Over his shoulder, a head rose from where it had been couched. Fey, dark strands knotted and loose. A vibration, like hands wrenching at the weave that bound my chest. A secret, helpless flush in the groin as she slid backwards over the mount’s rump, landing lightly in the muck. Boots. High boots on those cracked and blemished feet. She resembled a warrior woman from ancient times. A Queen Maedbh, come again. Ness. She saw me and knew me and her eyes lingered in a kind of greeting. They spoke no flicker of fear or apprehension. No apology. No shame. She took three bold steps towards me, and Meyler followed, dismounting, embracing de Feypo.

‘Ness’, he said to answer de Feypo’s questioning eye, ‘a princess of the Gael’. She bowed her head towards him before turning to me.

‘This one I know’, she said, neither to me nor to Meyler but to us both, reaching out her arm and extending her finger to rest on my breastbone. The sound of her tongue twisting itself inexpertly around the sounds of their foreign language struck me like a blow. Two worlds colliding between her lips. I tried to speak, but my own tongue had grown too big for my mouth. Meyler looked me full in the face, feigning amusement, feigning nonchalance.

‘Can it be?’ he asked, smiling. ‘And is he friend or foe?’

She thought for a moment, her eyes on me. Revelling in her power. Swift, vivid, confused messages passing silently between us like pollen in a summer gust.

‘Difficult to tell. He runs with the hare. And hunts with the hound’, she said, breaking into a peal of laughter. The sound of it racing down my spine and shattering along my pelvis. Despite the danger, I laughed with her—loudly, sincerely and helplessly. Her hair falling across her cheek. Her face bright in the gloom.

Three candles that illumine every darkness: truth, nature, knowledge.