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Day Four
Conall
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Conall was nearly beside himself watching the events of the evening unfold, made worse by the arrival of Sitric, sent by Aron with word of the capture of Dai and Steffan, and that he and Iago would follow Cadoc. “I didn’t know any of this was going to happen! Truly I didn’t!” Sitric appeared genuinely worried that Conall—and thus Prince Godfrid—would think he’d drawn them into an ambush.
“We have larger concerns now,” Conall said, not so soothingly, but with some understanding.
Then Jon arrived on Conall’s other side, wearing a hat much like Conall’s, but pulled even lower down over his face to disguise his identity. The three men plus Iona retreated to the edge of the ring. The last fight of the night was winding down, and to celebrate another successful event, the fight’s organizers had begun to pass around alcohol, one whiff of which told Conall it was water of life. Whiskey.
Sitric accepted the flagon and took a long slug. To do otherwise would invite notice and censure. After Conall too had drunk and passed it on, Sitric said, “Pardon my omission, my lord. I forgot we drank whiskey at the end.”
“We will remember it, but Harald’s death is of far less concern in this moment than what is going to happen to this mob once it has more whiskey in it.”
“Should I do something about Arnulf?” Jon nodded towards the priest, who had his arm across the shoulders of the young man Conall had fought. They appeared to have been at the whiskey sooner than the rest of the crowd. Either that, or it really worked that fast.
“First, we need to find out what has become of the others,” Conall said. “Hopefully they are close enough that they realize what kind of trouble we’re in.”
And then the foreman, Goff, made everything that much worse. He stepped into the ring, both arms held in the air. “I wanted to share a message from King Brodar himself.” He produced a paper and flourished it. “He warns us that our enemy is at our gates! Rory O’Connor has not come to Dublin to celebrate Prince Godfrid’s wedding. He has brought an army, and our king needs our help to defeat him!”
With each successive sentence, the shouts of approval grew louder until they became a roar.
“What in the name of St. Ansgar is happening?” Sitric stared at Goff, a man he’d once admired.
“Nothing good.” Jon’s hands were clenched into fists and he seemed moments away from exposing himself and them, so Conall gripped his upper arm.
“Wait.”
Jon clearly didn’t want to, but the rest of what Goff might have said was drowned out by a sudden roar from beyond the crowd, and Godfrid himself bounded out of the woods, his sword held above his head.
The crowd roared their approval back at him. Even with all the upheaval of the last months, and despite the general resentment against Leinster, Godfrid and Brodar themselves remained personally popular among the citizens of Dublin. The common people had always been very clear in their choice.
“Godfrid! Godfrid! Godfrid!” Someone off to the right began the chant, and Sitric instantly picked it up, his hands cupped around his mouth. Such was the way of a mob that the chant quickly spread and, with Godfrid’s arrival, Goff had no choice but to accede his place in the center of the ring.
Conall spied Gareth circling around the outside of the crowd and tugged at the others. “Come on.”
They snaked their way amongst the chanting onlookers and converged in the gathering place for the fighters. With Godfrid now the center of attention, Goff had retreated there, and Jon immediately went up to him. “You have either been used by villains or are a traitor. Either way, I expect you to support your prince.”
“What?” Goff gaped at him. “What traitor?”
Jon snorted. “You have been listening to the wrong people.”
“Rory O’Connor is our enemy.”
“That may be, but King Brodar did not write that message, as Prince Godfrid would tell you if he was speaking to you instead of to your acolytes.” Jon lifted his chin to point to where Godfrid stood, still trying to quiet the crowd. “The king has no problem with you training the next generation of fighters. Murder and treason, however, are another thing entirely.”
Now Goff’s mouth fell open. “You have this all wrong!”
Conall’s lip curled. “So you don’t know that Vigo met this evening with Prince Donnell of Connaught, with whom he is allied?”
“N-n-no!”
Conall tsked. “Maybe you really have been duped.”
Goff swallowed hard. “I swear to you—” But then he cut himself off and swung around to where Godfrid had finally quieted his audience.
Godfrid’s arms had been up, the sword above his head, but now he dropped them and stood before the crowd of people, silent all of a sudden as the full impact of Godfrid’s arrival among them hit home. A prince of Dublin was standing in their midst. He was a true warrior, of them but not one of them. He was, in fact, what every fighter among them aspired to be.
So they listened as he spoke.
“Our ancestors came to Ireland seeking wealth because it was through silver and gold that honor was gained. For centuries, our people lived by raiding other peoples. We settled in Dublin not because we had suddenly become farmers and merchants but as a base from which to raid even farther and wider.
“It wasn’t just the Irish we raided either.” Here, Godfrid flung out a hand towards the east. “We sacked settlements on the shores of Wales, England, and France. We went anywhere the land was rich and the people ill-prepared to counter us.”
Now he dropped his arm and gazed at the men and women looking back at him. “Friends, those days are over. We grow just as fat and rich by allowing our neighbors to grow fat and rich and trading with them. We do better selling them goods than by taking what they have. We do better by building than destroying. We have discovered we would rather live peaceably with our neighbors than make war against them.”
The people listening could have been disagreeing, but Conall didn’t read that in their faces. They appeared riveted and suddenly subdued, where before they’d been raucous with blood and whiskey.
Godfrid moved to head off any objections anyway. “I am not saying what you are doing here is wrong. My brother, when he learned of what Goff has built, was proud. They sailed together to Gwynedd, as some of you may recall, and fought together just last spring at the Liffey.”
Nods came from all around. Conall had never heard Godfrid speak before, not like this. He hadn’t known he could speak. Godfrid had lived in Brodar’s shadow the whole of his life. He’d gone where his father and then his brother pointed, fought where they told him to fight, and never once complained.
Maybe this was the same Godfrid, and it was just Conall who was seeing him with new eyes.
“There is a need still for men to wield sword and axe. We saw that at the Battle of the Liffey, where the warriors of Dublin fought to defend our city and our people against the men of Meath. Ottar fell that day.” He gave a little laugh. “God knows he and I had our differences, but I never questioned his prowess in battle. Today, however, we face a different threat.”
His listeners stirred at the change in Godfrid’s tone, and even Conall, an Irishman, felt his spine straighten, knowing he was about to hear something different.
“The threat against us isn’t about Danes versus Irish. It isn’t about us versus them. It is about our very survival.” He punched a fist into his open palm. “Tonight I am here because I learned Prince Donnell of Connaught has come to Dublin, not to pay his respects, not to celebrate my wedding to my Irish bride, but to collude with those who look at Leinster and see our traditional enemy, not realizing that in trading Leinster for Connaught we’d merely be exchanging one overlord for another even more brutal.
“I have no love for Leinster, believe me. And while I do love Caitriona and see the possible benefit of a closer alliance with the throne of Leinster, do not mistake me: I would never—” he paused and then emphasized, “—ever compromise Dublin’s sovereignty.
“But that is what we face tonight. Brodar would not have me tell you this, but we went to war against our allies when we fought the men of Meath. King Ottar himself plotted with them and Prince Donnell O’Connor of Connaught, the High King’s son, to murder both my brother and Donnell’s brother Rory, who sat at our high table this very night.”
If Conall had been asked, he would have counseled against revealing Ottar’s treachery, but he hadn’t been asked, and he understood both why Brodar hadn’t told anyone about the death warrant earlier, and why Godfrid did now.
Regardless, the revelation swept through the crowd like a sudden gust of wind, leaving mouths open and grown men gasping.
Beside Conall, Goff stuttered his protest, prompting Conall to turn on him. “This is also something you claim to have known nothing about?”
“I knew nothing! Nothing, my lord!”
Godfrid, however, wasn’t done, and he held up his hands for quiet once more. “Some of you are already warriors. Some of you are in training to become warriors. All of you may be needed, if not today then one day.” He put a hand to his heart. “I share your hopes and dreams for Dublin. One day, God willing, we will return our city to its rightful place on land and sea. We will speak more in the coming days. For now, know that my brother and I stand with you.” He clenched his fist and held it above his head. “For the glory of Dublin!”
“For the glory of Dublin!”
It wasn’t a cheer Conall had ever heard before, but every man’s fist was in the air in mimicry of Godfrid.
And then an accompanying shout came from all sides of the clearing. It echoed so loudly, floating above the trees, that Conall had to fight the urge to cover his ears. The crowd had been won over by Godfrid’s speech, and it was as if a wave was cresting on a beach as each man fell to his knees at the sight of King Brodar himself riding into the clearing, followed by twenty of his men. Prince Hywel and the other Dragons hung back, but the fighting ring was now surrounded by warriors.
At the sight of his brother, Godfrid also went down on one knee. Brodar dismounted and the crowd parted for him. As he reached Godfrid, he held out his hand for Godfrid to rise, and the two men clasped forearms. “I see you’ve been busy saving my kingdom for me ... dare I say again.”
“Everything I do, I do for Dublin, and you, my lord.”
Beside Conall, Goff too had gone down on one knee.
Conall had bent his head but not knelt, and he looked down at the back of Goff’s head. “You really meant to overthrow your own king, Goff?”
“Please believe me, my lord. I didn’t know.” Then Goff gave in to a moment of weakness. “Is it death for me?”
“Help us rescue our friends. And then we’ll see.”
