Chapter 22

The Harrowing of Míde

God and Adomnán forgive me, for I preyed upon their innocents. I rode with the foreigners in their unleashed frenzy. Descending upon farm and church and baile. Riding with de Feypo, and Angulo in the van. Meyler pulling ever ahead, flailing flanks, thundering forward. Ever his lips peeling back from his teeth and her hands clasped around his waist, her hair flying loose, streaming out behind, bucking in waves to the triplet drum of hooves.

We descended. Again and again. Descending from the treeline, from the hedgerow, from the brow of a hill, with the low sun at our backs and shouts rising like flushed grouse ahead of us. I learned, time and again, there is no part of the body that detaches as naturally as the hand from the arm. The way a leaf stem is constructed to part from the tree. An axe arcs with force, a sword cuts upwards. Bare arms raising in defence. The hand shears away, falling intact into mud, into fire, onto rushes as cleanly and terribly as morality shears from the conscience when you run in a pack. When you descend together, baying and running quarry to ground. Like hounds with ears flat to their heads, coursing after the hare, the froth and salt slaver, tunnelling through the moment, attacking the present second, pushing through to the future where the flesh will be within your jaws. Nothing else exists, nothing in the periphery. Just the hew and curse and shout and slake. Undoing with butchery the hours and hours of planning, of labour, of skill embodied by the acres of thatch, the ells of wool, the ricks of firewood stacked just so, edge to the wind to keep the moisture out, gathered on a careful, deliberate day that came after other days of thinning the coppices, carting the loads back to the farm, splitting the logs and on and on. Gone from the count of days. Gone from the world. Endless aeons of labour, nights of plans softly spoken, dreams and hopes. All burning and rising into the canopy of the pale sky along with the spectres of those not quick enough to run nor strong enough to stay nor desirable enough to keep. Bodies ridden over and broken by our tide. Always the chaualiers pushed on, blood trickling from their mounts’ flanks where the prick spurs jogged lightly over old wounds.

And when I speak of ‘they’, be full sure that I walk there among them. Following their paces. Swollen with the driving thrill of it all. Beating in the skull of some startled spearman. Spreading brains on the dirt with the tip of my sword for nothing except the fire of it.

God and Patricius and Adomnán forgive me. For I know that Lasair will not. Lasair of the ewe. Lasair, daughter of ready Ronin, that holy woman great and noble, that woman greatest in grace, of all that were ever born in her time. She will not countenance what was visited upon her daughters.

More of this through the fading winter. Morning dawning earlier and earlier. Our party there in the treeline already. Barrelling down like floodwaters breaking into some stockade where rumour had placed Máel Sechlainn. And yet, all was not death to the Gael and victory to the foreigner. Wounds were dealt out, and I received my share. Though it is surprising how resilient a face can be to the belt of a blade. Splitting, yes. Fat, tumescent gashes like burst slugs with the rough grains of scabbing blood knitting crudely together, as invisible but inexorable as ice forming over the water in a bucket. And no warrior who has lost an eye would dismiss the crippled man scared from his bed swinging a flail or a distaff. Or the woman with the eel fork standing strong in defence of her children. Or the counter-attack of a family, desperately fighting for their lives, gutting a standing horse, dragging mail-clad men to the ground and forcing rust-riddled blades home.

We slept in broken houses, followed roads westwards for days at times, before returning to the castel. We ate meat every day, slaughtering and wasting carefully husbanded animals. We slept deep, black, sated sleep. And ever she was there, behind Meyler, ready with a spear; across the other side of the orange evening flame; her eyes fierce, her face shimmering with grease or leading the horses to water with the garsunz. Never alone. Never close to me. Never near enough for quiet words. Though a certain language there was. A language confined to the small movement of eyes. The slight turning of the head. A language I engaged in but could not fully understand. Her eyes did not rebuff me. Nor was there yearning there, as my eyes yearned and strove not to show it. There was something else. Something that was perhaps sharp but not cold. Amusement? I think it was amusement.

In this manner we buried the dead season. Secret prayers to St Brigid as buds appeared, bound up tight at the ends of branches. Catkins drooping on the saileach. The early arrival of the clochrán, flying low among the sedge. The slow lightening of the evenings. Through it all—more raids, more murder, more terror. The more we saw of it, the less consequence it entailed. The men all dragging back concubines and secreting them away in the small houses that were being made within the palisade at Troim.

Tŷrel finally called his dogs to heel with the unassailable signs of spring. Having taken over command of the castel, he called us all together in the sparse hall, employing all the regalia of a lord’s court. Trying to claim authority over men who were his equals, his relatives, his neighbours. Angulo, acting as his steward, ushered us into the room, de Feypo’s boy Robert bearing the cups of wine, Meyler his maréchal seated on the dais beside the empty oaken throne—one of the few items of furniture brought to the castel from Duiblinn. A thing of Ostman craft, riddled with knotwork and serpents, rubbed smooth as marble on its armrests, lustrous where decades of hands had cured and greased the wood with fretting grasp.

Once the assembly had settled, Tŷrel strode in purposefully, taking a seat in the high-backed chair. I stood by the doorway, in shadow. Neither invited nor shunned. He raised his voice over the murmur of the room.

‘Míde’, he said, ‘a land so vast we have not yet traversed its length nor counted its worth. A land of rich soil, of deep wood, of abundant fishes. A land that will yield up to us, not only a living, but a fortune. We can grow such grain that will shame even the East Anglians and the paysans of Evreux. And that without recourse to draining fens or clearing woodland’. He looked around the room, artfully using silence to carry his meaning, to allow his words to echo in each man’s skull. ‘Sheep on the upland, a great prey of cattle wandering the vales. Ploughing the yielding land. Sowing the copious seed. Birthing the lambs. Saving the hay. Milking the herds’. Silence again as each man conjured the bounty in his mind, calculating what his portion of land might yield, what that might allow him to build, buy, consume. Tŷrel nodded, appreciating the effect of his words, before speaking again. ‘And who, lords, who will do this work? Who will do this work if we continue to disport and attack and drive off the villeins of this land, the betaghs? Those who know its ways and its secrets. Its game and its produce. Lords, we need the Gael. We need them on their farmsteads. We need them to trust us sufficiently to stay. We need them to work for us and all that entails. We need to show restraint, we need to convince the Gael of Míde that not only do we support them in their work but we can offer them protection. That we are better lords than those to whom they might flee’.

Some general, though not emphatic, words of agreement emanated from the assembly. Tŷrel continued. ‘It is the nobles whom we need to eradicate, cut the head from the serpent. We need to find and destroy Magnus Meylocklan. There are those in Míde eager to come to terms. Men who had suffered under Meylocklan or under ORoric. Men who have claims to titles and hope that these would be upheld in our court’. He shaded his hand to his eyes, cancelling the glare of the tallow lamp that burned brightly beside him. His gaze fell on me, and he beckoned.

‘Alberic, is this not so? Come out and tell us of their ways. Tell us again of their tanistry. Tell us plain, for some men here are not long off the galley from Bristol’.

A heavy reluctance settled over me as the thirty odd heads shifted, looking to see where I stood. Angulo hooted with derision. I stepped forward from the shadow and spoke as plainly as I could, choosing words for the men in front of me. Tailoring my speech to distance me from the enemy without the walls.

‘The problem with the Gael is that their kings and lords are elected by the family, the rígh dáma. With the right backing, any brother, uncle or cousin can claim the seat of power. This is why you will find so many blind wanderers in Gaeldom. A chief may take his brother’s eyes as a guarantee he will not be a challenge, an uncle take his nephew’s or cousin’s. A blemished man may not be rí, which is to say king, nor taoiseach, which is like a baron, nor tániste, who supports the baron—somewhat akin to a steward’.

‘And what of the villeins? Who owns them?’ said a man I did not recognise.

‘They are not owned but are connected to the túath, which is the land, similar in scale to a barony. Their family cannot move beyond the túath, except at certain times or with express permission. A man beyond his túath is outside of the protection of the law. He revokes his status, and there is no honour price to be paid for killing him. Only the poet or the king may cross the boundaries. They fear the same will happen under a foreign lord. They fear that their status will be forfeit and they will no longer have recourse to the law’.

Tŷrel nodded again. ‘Then we must educate them. We must let them know that we will uphold their status, that they will work the land for us, as they always have for their masters. And better, they will own a portion of what they produce’. He looked around the room. ‘If we do not do this now, there will not be Engleis enough to bring in harvests and to turn the land to profit. We will go hungry and fall prey to the raids of those beyond our borders. I for one will not stand before Hugo de Lacy on his return and tell him we have reduced his fertile province to waste and scrub’.

We left the hall with Tŷrel’s last words following us into the crisp day.

‘Just the nobility. Kill them, root and branch. Keep the villeins to work the land. And bring me Meylocklan’.

The following day we rode again, leaving the fort and its two rings of sturdy palisade before the sun had risen. We rode over the wreckage of our work, farther westwards in a red haze. Meyler in the van again, pushing us hard over poorly lit terrain. We rode suddenly into the jaws of memory. Scraps of skyline, hills cut just so, silhouettes of high pine flashing familiar for a moment here and there. The jolt of the recognition nearly physical. I shook off the remembering. I ran with the pack, I focused on her back, jogging up and down with the motion of the horse.

We rode swiftly through a hollow, the horses ahead disappearing through a ragged hole in the blackthorn, aged ash trees towering on the higher crags above and the hoof-beats confused on the deep cushion of spent seed husks. I saw, but did not see, the well with the ties of fabric fluttering, the road beyond branching at the great splayed oak, the planked tógher crossing the stream. I knew, but did not allow myself to acknowledge, that I was home.

Meyler rode onwards without pause, Ness’ mouth to his ear, guiding him up the valley, along the mill-race, his men hard behind him. He broke through the stockade, cutting down two young men who drew arms at the gate. Trampling them into the yielding sod. I followed behind, spurring onwards, fear now lumpen in my stomach. Pain and shame colliding. Panic rising. My hand loosened my sword in its hitch. I rode into the stockade to see that the horsemen had split, riding off in different directions towards buildings that had signs of smoke or movement about them. A scattering of people running in fear. More emerging from buildings everywhere, fleeing in fright, some fools trying to carry chattels, others with children in their arms. And down the hill towards us, against the fleeing tide, a figure stalked, waving a wooden rake over his head.

‘Desist! Desist!’ He was crying out in rude Latin, the sound groaning out of the mortified part of his face. From a distance I recognised in that laboured gait, that slack cheek, old Lochru. The name came to me, spraying my mind with light, as a gout of flame in a smith’s forge. The veil fell, and finally I saw the place where I was raised. Cradle of my childhood, with its expanse stretched between the river and the woods inconceivably small now. Its shaded places and secret spaces contemptable in their wretchedness. Great fear and panic roared up within me.

‘Stop!’ I cried out, waking suddenly from the dream, pulling out of the mist that had enveloped me like one of Midir’s enchantments, a mist that had covered me for weeks. ‘Stop!’ I screamed out, looking for Meyler as his horse wheeled in the middle of the stockade. I dug my heels into my mount and the horse surged towards him. As I approached, I cried out with force, ‘There is no nobility here. There is no resistance. Stop your men and save the villeins’.

Meyler turned towards me; Ness’ face couched on his back regarded me with detached curiosity. My body fell to tremor as, all around, Engleis soldiers rode, looking for plunder, leaping low fencing and breaking through doors.

‘Keep them alive’, I said to Meyler, ‘and they will pay you in labour. Kill them, and they will gain you nothing’.

Meyler looked around once more and then responded with a look of rage, with hatred, like a stag pulled up short of the doe. His nostrils flared and his eyes cleared partially. His own mist lifting perhaps. He looked around again, breathing heavily, hungry for slaughter but remembering now Tŷrel’s words. Lochru hobbled downslope closer to us, his calls continuing.

‘Sic desinunt! Sic desinunt!’

‘What do you say, Princess?’ Meyler asked. Ness’ head did not rise from where it lay, buried into his shoulder.

‘No soldiers’, she said quietly in her accented speech.

‘Villeins, just villeins’, I said with haste. As I spoke, two horsemen riding up the slope closed on Lochru, felling him on the hoof and thundering on towards the fleeing women.

‘Arestare!’ I screamed.

Meyler followed my gaze and turned back to me, understanding all in the instant.

‘Welcome home, winestain’, he said, smiling viciously, and spurred his horse onwards. As he rode, he blew two notes on his horn, bringing his men up short as they all wheeled, breaking off pursuit to canter back towards the centre of the settlement. I rushed to Lochru’s side, kneeling beside him to touch his face. Warm still, his skin scabrous, his good eye staring in surprise into the grey roil of the sky. Black blood pooled darkly on the grass behind his head.

‘Lochru’, I said, ‘it is Alberagh’. Blood shone on his lips as he voicelessly formed words. I bent my head to listen.

‘Sic desinunt’, he whispered on a waning breath.

‘Where is my father? And where is the Tiarna?’ I asked, bending low over him to hear his response. He drew in breath, and it hissed from his side as from a burst bellows. He did not breathe again. I stood with difficulty, looking around. The full weight of memory settled on me without warning, and it nearly buckled my knees.

Meyler loudly instructed the riders to gather the villeins of the place. His men moved off slowly, the fire gone out of them, cantering their horses or dismounting to bow their heads into the dwellings. I walked among them, speaking soft words into the dark houses.

‘Come out and meet your new lords’, I said again and again. ‘Come out and be welcomed, be spared, do not fight’.

I walked the stockade shouting my message in the tongue of the Gael. Into the hayshed, the mill, the kiln, working my way around the sties skirting the mill-race and on through the gate into the Tiarna’s enclosure. Unchallenged I passed through spaces that had once been closed to me, seeking the face of my father in every cowering shape.

I kicked away the dogs nosing forlornly at the bodies, licking blood, despite themselves, from their rooting muzzles. One of the dogs came to me, Cuan, the lord’s hound. I bent down to jostle his head between the palms of my hands. The familiar gesture bringing me back to an older life. ‘Alberagh? It is Alberagh’, a voice came from the open door of Mánus’ house. I looked up to see a knot of women gathered around the porch. Mór, Étain and other free women of the túath, their daughters and sisters among them.

‘Étain, where is my father?’ I looked into the group, recognising some faces.

‘Alberagh’, they clamoured, ‘Alberagh, we were good to you when you lived amongst us, sweet Alberagh, please protect us’.

‘Mór, where is my father? Where is the Tiarna?’ None responded but rather they came forward, showing me the children in the house behind.

The dogs scattered as a parcel of sergenz ran wild through the paddock, drunk on the moment, laughing unchained, chasing panicked pigs and chickens.

‘Please, Alberagh, please protect us from these savages’.

‘There will be no further killing’, I said, looking to the ground, ‘that is all I can promise’.

The women watched from the shadow of the doorway, watching armour come off and seeing the blood up and knowing well what was to come. They began a wailing, a keening, seeing the men darken the gate, coming on with lustful steps. I turned and paced towards the men who entered.

‘Get back’, I shouted at them, ‘back and leave these women. It is Lord Tŷrel’s will’.

I was cuffed to the ground by one of Meyler’s cousins, the brawn of his shoulders thickening over his neck as he pulled the heavy mail shirt over his head. He cast the thing down at me, and I rolled away from the tinkling thud of its fall.

‘Leave these villeins’, I shouted again, rising up, and the next one coming in split my mouth with a mailed fist. I fell to my knees, feeling sick as the warm salt-rush of blood poured over my tongue. The women began screaming behind me, and I walked back to the house, shouting above their collective cries, calling the children out to me. The sound of the women attracted more sergenz into the stockade. They stopped to undo their armour, pulling impatiently at the small leather laces that kept their mail and surcoats bound. I bent in over the threshold, and the women began screaming my name, Meyler’s cousin already flattening one in the corner. I did not speak to them but instead brought the children from the house, peeling them in some cases from their mothers’ legs. I led them from the stockade and brought them to door of the kiln and told them to wait in the shadow until I came for them.

I walked on, following the stream towards the washing place, looking out for Gaels. For faces I knew. For Father. I walked between things, following the saileach fences. The baile around me, a hog under the butcher’s knife. Guts spilled, hindquarters and fores split apart, the one from the other. Blood, bones. All of the parts. None of the whole. Worlds colliding around me, and in the riot, things becoming unmade. Walking away from the clamour of it all, I caught sight of Ness slipping into a narrow, shaded space between a barn and the palisade wall. As she went, she looked back, over her shoulder, her eyes meeting mine before she disappeared into shadow.

I hesitated also. Standing dumb. Staring at the space which she had occupied. What I had been praying for. Fervid prayers to Patricius, to Lasair, to Féichín. To find her alone somewhere. To speak to her. Touch her. Hear her speak to me and only me. I followed.

The space was long, narrow and dark, the barn overshadowing on the right hand, the palisade on the left. Before my eyes adjusted to the light, I heard Ness’ voice say, ‘Don’t be silly child. This is what life is’.

Through the gloom I saw her, standing at the end of the space where the two walls met. She was speaking soothingly to a slim young woman of my own age. I recognised one of the kennel master’s daughters. I stopped, confused, as Ness placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder, moving slowly around to stand behind her, her arm crooked now around the girl’s neck. With her cheek, she forced the girl to look at me, her soft brown eyes shimmering with unfallen tears. Ness stood firm with her feet apart, one muscled arm taut across the girl’s throat while the other dropped to the girl’s belly and began to slowly draw up her long garment, fistful by fistful until her bright thighs were bared.

‘This is a good one’, Ness said into her ear. A deadly sleek voice. Dark waters and her eyes upon me, green and deep, calling me to her, offering the thighs that stood, riddled with tremor, quivering with promise, in place of her own. A shaft of light fell from between the thatched eaves of the barn and the high palisade, picking out the light, curling hairs on the girl’s skin. ‘Better him than another’.

To say I yearned would say nothing of the beating, swelling imperative. The carnivorous desire, licking along my neck, flushing deep in my stomach. I spoke quickly to quench what could be quenched. To break the spell.

‘Over the rampart and through the briars’, I said to the girl. ‘Do not wait for your kin. Run to where you are known. Run to Milesius. Those who live will find you there’.

Ness released her hold and the girl fell forward, one hand scrabbling, pulling her garment down as she crawled back into the light. I listened to the sounds of her flight recede behind me, listening out for any cry or shout that might signal her capture. None came.

‘Three things that set waifs a-wandering’. I said. Ness did not answer. ‘Persecution, loss, poverty’.

She came forward, her lip snarling.

‘Do not speak to me of wandering waifs, nor of persecution’, she spat. ‘I have lived it all. What welcome do you think she will receive in the first house she finds? A girl with no family. No log n-eanach? A bowl of broth and a bed in the straw. And when the fire burns low and the woman of the house slumbers, fingers creeping all over’.

‘Perhaps’, I said, ‘but it will not come from my hand’.

‘What difference to you?’ she said. ‘Who will slake your lust now?’

‘I pray to St Lasair’, I said quietly.

‘And does she take this away?’ she said, her arm falling artfully, the back of her hand brushing the tumescence that showed itself at my groin. A flash of fire, pealing bells, my body recoiled.

‘Does she relieve you with her saintly intervention? Why do you not join the monks, then, painted face?’ she said, her words hard. ‘Shame face. Berry blush. Why not cut your bag off and pin it to the bush over the holy well?’

‘God’s host secure me against the spells of women and smiths and druids’, I said in a stern, quiet voice.

‘You could have protected her. Save one at least’, she said.

‘Are you now the brehon who would judge me?’ I asked, the tide of lust receding.

She said nothing, her regard defiant. Her tongue running along her lower lip. A mollusc from its shell.

‘To abstain is not to be just’, she said at length. I thought a moment. Her anger, misplaced, did not speak true.

‘To collude is not to be free’, I replied, and I could see the words hurt her like a satire.

‘Its called survival, pauvre sotte’, she spat with venom.

‘I understand. And I have sinned also. But I have been awakened from this dream of death. Seeing Lochru felled . . . and now they abuse Mór and the women in the Tiarna’s house’.

‘Yes’, she conceded, ‘you are right. I have felt it too, back in this place. Back among faces I recognise. I can no longer stand by’. And I could see by her expression that she was on the verge of action. As ever, her decisions sharp. Her mind unchangeable. ‘It is time to do something’, she said, her eyes full of challenge, willing me to react. I could not move.

‘I need to think. I cannot see a way out’.

‘Stay in the shadows then’, she said, ‘while the world is raped around you’. She moved past me and away.

I stood for a moment, the sounds of the dwindling chaos outside muffled in the close space. In this stillness, Mother visited. A wren, tiny and dart-beaked, flitting in to perch on a broken bucket near to me. Her head twitching, cocked to the side with her usual question. I tried to imagine what it was that she saw. I became intensely aware of my body. My long arms heavy by my sides. Inactive. My wide frame, rangy shoulders. My squaring jaw. Breath through my nose, long exhalations and drawing in, bringing the odour of earth, night soil, expanding my lungs as far as they could within the restraint of the mail shirt. The weight of silence. The weight of inaction. I nodded to her on her perch. A decision made, the weight shirked off, and I walked out of the shadow, as light as a tuft of ceannbhán on a breeze.

Emerging into the heavy morning, I saw Ness walking towards the Tiarna’s house, a long spear in her hand. The fury of her gait filled me with fear. I followed, drawing my sword as I went, the oiled iron of the blade shushing from its sheath. Lengthening strides took me through the stockade, and I saw her dip and enter the house.

‘Ness’, I shouted, running now, fear rising up over me. I shouldered through the door and entered the swelter of the place, the vapours rank of sweat and other humours. The women fought in one corner, were bedded in another among screaming and wild curses. The Tiarna’s house made brothel. Men rutted women where they could pull them to the floor, over the cold ash of the hearth, beneath the table, among the stale rushes. Ness stood before me, seeming rooted to the spot, the scene dragging her back to darker days. Among the disturbed bedding and the scattered furniture at her feet, I saw the Tiarna’s fine cauldron, tipped and forgotten. She bent and lifted it up and hit it hard on the edge with her knife, raising her voice to its highest.

‘Sinners, I strike this bell against you’, she cried out and, moving to the nearest bared buttocks, she slid her spear along the inner thigh, nicking close to the hanging sack. Meyler’s cousin spun over, scrabbling to his feet, and Ness slammed the butt of the spear down onto his nose. He fell to his knees, cupping his face. I spun around, levelling my sword, fear threatening to drop me to my knees, but none had taken heed, the men rutting or wrestling with no regard for anything else.

Ness took up the cauldron again, flinging it at the back of the closest head. It struck home, producing a deep, resounding note as the man fell forward, Étain rising from beneath, launching forward, tearing at his face. I followed her, inflamed by the cries, and I struck out savagely with the flat of my blade, slapping downwards, nipping quickly at bared flesh, and the men rolled away with the sudden fear that cold steel wreaks upon naked bodies. Mór took up a flesh hook from the hearth and set to, drawing blood with vicious, hooking blows.

The women rose, one by one, and armed themselves with staves and knives and anything that came to hand. The men huddled at the far end of the house cradling wounds, staunching blood. I stepped forward as Ness led the women through the door behind me.

‘Back, in the name of the Lord de Lacy and of Lorcán Ua Tuathail, of Midir and of Lasair’, I shouted, swinging the sword in a figure of eight, crying out whatever words came. I backed out of the house, stumbling on the threshold and out into the light. Ness, leading the women at a run, was already beyond the stockade. I followed, shouting out to head for the kiln. Mór saw the children first, running forward, and they surged out of the shadows. The women bent to receive them, kissing their faces. The earnestness and the bruises, the blood, the nakedness set the children crying and the uproar was general. Our movements had attracted attention, and all of those despondent Gaels around the farm and the surrounding fields began to walk in towards us to see what the clamour was.

The men from the Tiarna’s house came raging from the stockade, dressed in whatever garment they had laid their hand upon. Swords and poignards in their hands, bloodied and slavering.

I stood up on a stump and pointed my sword at them.

‘Stay back, by the Lords de Lacy and Tŷrel, I command it—by the law of Adomnán I order it, by the Saints Patricius and Lasair I impel you. By Christ son of God and the . . .’ I shouted all of this, losing voice mid-phrase, as Meyler emerged from the brew-house drinking deeply from a frothing mug, his captains around him. He saw the trouble instantly, and I watched his face as he calculated the risk.

I roared loudly then in the tongue of the Gael, reaching deep into my lungs.

‘I am Alberagh, son of Seáhan. You all know me here. I have been to Duiblinn and the hurdle ford in Leith Moga, I have seen the Engleis castel at Troim. I was at the parley on the hill where Ua Ruairc was slain’.

The sergenz from the stockade hesitated, stopping a distance from us and looking to Meyler to see what he would do. He motioned with his hand to his young cousin, a calming motion. They relented. The Gaels approached further. I continued.

‘We will go to the monastery, away from this. We will leave now, we go with nothing and we will be welcomed. We walk, we do not look back, we walk away now, leave all behind, and I will do what I can do to protect you’.

I stepped from the stump and Mór walked past me, the people following her, trailing silently without looking back. I stood still as the Gaels filed past me and I kept my eyes on Meyler, the ale mug hanging, his eyes watching, considering. Something unknowable holding his worse compulsions in check.

‘Villeins’, I shouted to him. ‘Tŷrel’s orders. It begins now’. He did not move, nor flinch at my words. His eyes boring past me, over my shoulder, to where Ness stood, meeting his gaze. As a tree meets the axe. Finally, he called out to his men, affecting an air of easiness, pointing towards the half-naked sergenz.

‘Look at these dismal curs’, and then to his cousin, ‘routed by a parcel of handmaidens’. His companions, already full of ale, began laughing. ‘Try your hand with the goats instead’.

He downed his mug and turned his back, tossing the dregs of his cup into the grass. I could not see if he spoke further. The sky broke, a scatter of heavy drops dabbing dark colour on the stone threshold of the kiln, a rustle on the thatch. I watched his back fearfully as the women walked away behind me, leading the children and the ragged men. He cast a last look over his shoulder to where Ness stood, and I held my breath, watching, his head tilting slightly. But he made no sign, and after the briefest of pauses, he re-entered the brew-house with his men.

I heard her behind me, the sound of her moving away. After a final scan of the compound, I turned to go. Ness walked ahead, shoulders feline in their cadence, her legs strong and unyielding as she climbed the grassy slope. I jogged up and joined her wordlessly and we followed the others over the hill, northwards, into the teeth of the wind.