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Day Three
Conall
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Conall had allowed Dai and Vigo to pass him, which in retrospect had been a wise decision, even though it had been impulsive at the time. He’d glanced back as they’d left the gate, seen Vigo pass money to the guard, and realized he’d made a terrible mistake: the participants in the fighting ring were supposed to bribe the guards on the way out. For one, it was a means of ensuring their silence, but it was also a way of co-opting them into the conspiracy. By not doing so, Conall had revealed himself to be not only a newcomer but possibly someone who hadn’t been properly incorporated into the conspiracy.
Bribery had always been an option, but Conall hadn’t wanted to risk being exposed if the guard reacted badly. He couldn’t risk Fergus the Sailor being revealed to be the ambassador to Dublin. He hoped his mistake wasn’t irredeemable. He definitely needed to stay well away from Vigo, so he allowed four or five groups of people to enter the Liffey crossing before joining them with Iona.
He was also starting to think Gwen was right that what they were doing here smacked of Shrewsbury. With Godfrid on their side, they’d had the option of simply descending on the fights with a company of men and arresting everyone they could get their hands on.
But Gareth was right that while this would stop the fights (possibly), it wouldn’t get them any closer to their murderer. Secrecy aside, until Conall had seen Vigo bribe the guard, he hadn’t been convinced the participants were actually doing anything wrong.
Bribery was a sin, of course, but the throne of Dublin wasn’t the Church. Sins weren’t Brodar’s purview. When Godfrid had finally told Brodar what was going on and what they planned to do tonight, the king had looked favorably upon the idea of more of his people learning to fight like the Danes of old.
If that’s what they were really doing.
Brodar had encouraged them to find out what was really going on, but not to call attention to themselves if they could possibly avoid it. That had been their intent, but Brodar’s particular concern was that he still had to entertain Rory O’Connor and the representatives from the other kingdoms of Ireland, who’d started trickling into the city over the course of the day in advance of the wedding tomorrow. Brodar didn’t want anyone to wonder if Dublin was in disarray. Everything was to appear entirely normal.
“I am not overly fond of the sea.” Iona had allowed Conall his silence for the initial fifty yards of the crossing, picking her way through the sands beside him.
“I forgot for a moment that you’re Welsh. You didn’t think to return home after you were freed?” Even this soon after Dai and Vigo had crossed, the water was running a little more freely, and Conall increased his pace.
“That had been my initial plan.” Iona hopped over another rivulet that within a count of five had widened from six inches to a foot and a half. “But when it came down to it, I have lived my entire life in Dublin. If I still have family in Pembroke, they don’t remember me.” She looked at him quizzically. “It is my understanding they are ruled by Normans now.”
“That is likely,” he said.
She snorted as they came up the bank and caught their breath. “That was well done.”
“What was?”
“Distracting me from my fears.” She wagged a finger at him like his mother used to do. Dressed as Fergus the Sailor, he thought perhaps it was easy to forget who he really was.
He grinned. “We made it. That’s what’s important.” Then he offered her his arm again.
She tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow, and they began to stroll down the lane. Dai and Vigo were somewhere up ahead, but even in the bright moonlight, Conall couldn’t see where. The herd of people coming with them knew where they were going, however, and Conall reflected again on the extent to which the fights were a secret only to those in authority.
It irked him that he hadn’t known before yesterday. He used to be better than this.
Iona nudged him. “You’re frowning.”
He blinked. “Am I?” He rearranged his face. “Just out for a lovely evening watching a bunch of Danes hacking at each other. What could be better than that?”
Iona laughed, a little louder than he was comfortable with, but he’d meant her to, and those around them smiled at their camaraderie.
The fights were taking place less than a mile northwest of the crossing place, on a patch of lower ground in a clearing within a grove of trees. Conall really wanted to know whose land they were on, though some of these tracts hadn’t been farmed since the attack by the men of Meath that had killed Godfrid’s father two years ago. Anything north of the Liffey was exposed to raids by the Irish. It could also be that only a handful of people knew in advance where the fights were actually being held at any given meeting and the rest just followed, as Conall and Iona had done.
Though it had seemed like a great army of people were walking with them, the number in attendance was a hundred at most. Iona was one of the few women, but she didn’t seem to mind, and many of the men knew her, calling her by name. Someone had set up a makeshift entrance to the site to the west of the road, and everyone passing through had to show their wooden coin.
Conall had his at the ready, and he was glad Iona was on his arm, because the man barely glanced at him in favor of looking at Iona. Though her hair was streaked with gray, and she was a few years older than he, she was buxom with a deliberately saucy smile and a glint to her eye. Conall didn’t know if that was usual for her when facing the world, but he guessed it might be. She hadn’t directed her wiles at him, for which he was grateful.
Then they were making their way around the edge of the crowd. Already in the center of the ring, which was no more than a circle etched in the dirt with a stick, two men with wooden swords and shields were hammering away at each other. While the men might get splinters or bruises, they were unlikely to be seriously injured.
“How is the winner determined?” he whispered to Iona.
She shook her head, not able to answer, but then a tall man, also with red hair, on Conall’s other side said, “One man has to yield.”
That was an eminently reasonable approach but, in practice, it turned out that Danes are extraordinarily stubborn (not that this should have been surprising) and many refused to yield long past the point when they had clearly lost. The organizer—the man Iona had referred to as Goff—kept motioning for his underlings to throw sand on the blood that had spilled on the dirt of the ring. Conall felt a grumbling in his belly and hoped Iago, whose task it had been to follow Goff, was nearby.
To keep the conversation going, Conall decided to question his neighbor again, even if Conall already knew the answer. “Who is that?”
“You don’t know?”
Iona leaned forward. “I brought him. He’s new.”
“He captained a ship, back in the day. Now he works on the dock. His name is Goff.”
The desire for Danish pre-eminence was something Conall could understand. But it was also a way of living in the past. Ireland was never going to accept an independent Danish Dublin again. If they weren’t going to be ruled by Leinster, then it would be a different kingdom. Either that, or they would be driven out of Ireland entirely.
Now, with the latest fight ended, Goff stepped again into the center of the ring, arms outstretched. “My friends! Today is a glorious day!”
The crowd’s roar of approval was so loud it made Conall want to cover his ears. The sound had seemingly come out of nowhere, and if he were the organizer, he might have feared it could be heard all the way to the palace. Perhaps he didn’t care.
Goff went on. “Every time a man steps into the ring, he fights not only for himself, but for his ancestors!” He beat both fists on his bare chest, and his golden armbands glinted in the torchlight. “We are their direct descendants!”
Now he lowered his voice. “For years, I feared they would be ashamed of us, that the mead they drank in Valhalla would be bitter with disappointment and defeat. But today!” He spread his arms wide again. “Today, we are reborn! It is here.” He stamped a foot. “Here where we become as our ancestors once were.”
He swung a finger as if searching for a particular person in the crowd, but it was merely a rhetorical technique. “Some of you remember those days of glory, before we were cowed by the kingdoms around us. Before we licked Leinster’s boots.” He clenched his hand into a fist. “I swear to you on the blood of our ancestors that things are going to change. It will not forever be this way. And it is here—” he stamped his foot again, “—our renewal begins.”
The roar of the crowd was deafening, which prevented Conall from noting that he and Iona were no longer on the outskirts, but right in the middle of it, and some very large Danes were crowding up behind him.
Suddenly, a hood came down over his head, leaving him able to see only through two slits near his eyes, and someone said into his ear, “The cost of admission is a bit higher for you, Irishman.”
