He hardly felt it as Morann seized the sword out of his hands. He was only conscious, for a moment, of Morann’s strong left arm banging against his chest as, throwing his body across Osgar’s, the craftsman thrust at their assailant. He heard the clang of steel on steel, felt Morann’s body twist violently, and then heard a terrible cry as the thin fellow tumbled from his horse. A moment later, Morann clambered over him, jumped down from the cart, and plunged his sword into the wounded man’s breast.
The thin man lay on the ground. Blood was frothing from his mouth. Morann was turning. And now the craftsman was cursing.
“What were you thinking of? You could have had us both killed. Dear God, you are useless to man or beast. Are you the greatest coward that was ever born?”
“I’m sorry.” What could he say? How could he explain that he had not been afraid? What difference did it make anyway? Osgar hardly knew himself.
“I shouldn’t have brought you,” the craftsman was crying. “I shouldn’t have done it, against my judgement. You’re no use to me, Monk, and you’re a danger to yourself.”
“If it happens again …” Osgar heard himself saying weakly.
“Again? There’ll be no again.” Morann paused, and then declared with finality. “You’re going back.”
“But I can’t. My family …”
“If any place in Dyflin is safe, it’s your uncle’s monastery,” Morann told him.
“And Caoilinn … She’ll be in the city, probably.”
“Dear Heaven,” Morann burst out, “what in the world can a useless coward like yourself do for Caoilinn? You couldn’t save her from a mouse.” He took a deep breath, and then, a little more kindly, went on reasonably. “You are wonderful with the sick and dying, Osgar. I have watched you. Let me take you back to the place where you are needed. Do what God made you for, and leave the saving of people to me.”
“I really think—” Osgar began, but the craftsman firmly stopped him.
“I’m not taking you any farther in my cart.” And before Osgar could say anything more, Morann jumped in, turned the cart round, and headed back the way they had come before.
They saw no one along the way. The cattle raiders had disappeared. The people at the farmstead had already dragged the corpse of the farmer back inside. They could see the little religious house where they had spent the night in the distance when Osgar asked the craftsman to stop.
“I suppose you are right,” he said regretfully. “The place ahead is where I should go. They seem to want me. So put me down and I can walk from here. The sooner you get to Dyflin, the better.” He paused. “Would you promise me one thing? Would you call in at Rathmines. It’s on your way. Call in and make sure that Caoilinn isn’t there, in need of any help. Would you do that for me?”
“That,” Morann agreed, “I can do.”
Osgar had just got down, when a sudden thought occurred to him.
“Give me the blanket,” he said.
With a shrug, Morann threw it down.
“Good.” And removing his monk’s habit, Osgar wrapped the blanket around himself. Then he tossed the habit up to Morann. “Put it on,” he called. “It might help you get into Dyflin.”
The flames and smoke arising before Dyflin had been growing greater by the hour; but they were not the result of destruction: they came from the huge bonfires that the Munster men had built in their camp on the open ground between the town ramparts and the open spaces by the Thingmount.
Caoilinn was looking anxiously towards them and wondering what to do when she saw the two men appear. She wondered if they could help her.
She had gone to Rathmines the evening before. As soon as she had heard the news of Glen Mama, she had decided to ride out to the farmstead, leaving her children with her brother in Dyflin, to wait for her husband in case he should come that way. She had seen Brian’s men pass by, and a few of the defeated army, seeking their homes. Though the huge camp of the Munster men lay outside the walls, the gates of Dyflin were open. People were going in and out. But for a long time there had been no sign of Cormac.
She had expected to find some of her people at the farmstead, but fearing Brian’s men, presumably, they had all disappeared, and she had found herself quite alone. The farmstead stood at some distance from the main track, at the end of a lane of its own, so nobody had come by. She had gathered her courage, however, and stayed the night out there by herself, all the more anxious that, if her husband should come that way, he would find someone at the place.
And it was as well that she had.
He had arrived half an hour ago, alone. If she had not recognised his horse, she would not have guessed, until he fell at her feet, that the ragged, bloodstained figure who was approaching was the man she loved. His wounds were terrible. It seemed to her that he probably would not survive. God knows what effort of will had kept him on his horse at all as the animal walked slowly back. She had managed to prop him up just inside the gateway, and bathe and bandage some of his wounds. He had groaned softly and let her know that he knew who she was and that he was home. But he could scarcely speak. And having done what little she could, she had been wondering how to get him to her brother’s in Dyflin, or whether she should leave him here alone while she went for help, when she saw the two men approaching the farmstead up the little lane.
They were soldiers. From Brian’s army. They seemed friendly and came into the farmstead with her. One of them took a look at Cormac and then shook his head.
“I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
“No,” the other agreed. “He hasn’t a chance.”
“Please,” she cautioned them, “he may hear you.”
The two men looked at each other. They seemed to be considering the situation. One of them, who appeared to be the senior, had a large, round face, and had been the most smiling and polite of the two. It was he, finally, who spoke.
“Shall we finish him off, then?” he genially enquired.
“If you like,” said the other.
She felt her heart sink.
“We could kill him after we’ve had her. He might like to watch.” The round-faced man turned to her. “What do you think?”
A terrible fear overcame her. She could scream, but would anyone hear her? Not a chance. If she’d had a weapon, she’d have tried to use it. They had swords and they’d kill her, but she’d rather go down fighting. She looked about.
Of course. Her husband, Cormac, had a sword. He was staring at her from his position by the gate, as if he were trying to tell her something. That he had a weapon? That he’d sooner they both went down fighting? That he wasn’t prepared to watch her raped? Yes, she thought. That was the only way. She lunged towards him.
But they had her. They had her by the waist. She couldn’t move. She heard a cry from the lane. She screamed.
And a moment later, to her great astonishment, a monk appeared. He had a sword in his hand.
It was Morann’s idea to take Caoilinn and her husband to the little family monastery. “That’s a place where he will be well looked after, and you would be safer under the protection of the monks than anywhere else I can think of.” He wished he could hunt Caoilinn’s second assailant down. The man with the round face he had wounded mortally, but he was sorry the other fellow had managed to run away. However, first things came first.
Osgar’s uncle had been delighted to take them in, and was full of praise for his nephew when Morann tactfully told them all that it had only been thanks to the monk that he had come there. The abbot had also been full of information. Though he was getting very old and frail now, the excitement of the events of recent days seemed to have made him quite lively. Yes indeed, he confirmed, Brian was staying within the ramparts of Dyflin. “He means to spend the whole Christmas season there.” The battle of Glen Mama had been a catastrophe for Leinster. The death toll had been heavy; wounded men were still coming in all the time. The King of Dyflin had fled north into Ulster; but search parties had bee
n sent out after him. Brian hadn’t taken a bloody vengeance on the people of Dyflin, but he had taken a huge tribute.
“He stripped them,” the old man said, with the grim satisfaction of a bystander at a good fight. “Dear God, he has stripped them. Not less than a cartload of silver from every house.” And though this was clearly an exaggeration, Morann was doubly glad that he’d removed his own valuables. The Munster king had also lost no time in impressing his political authority on the province. “He’s already holding the King of Leinster, and he’s taking hostages from every chief in the province, every church and monastery, too. He’s even taken my own two sons,” the old man added, with some pride. It was not unusual for kings to take hostages in this way from the great religious houses. For even if these monasteries were not in the hands of a powerful local family who needed to be controlled, they had the wealth to hire fighting men, and might even possess regular armed retainers of their own. Taking both the old abbot’s sons as hostages, however, was to accord the family and its little monastery an importance that would have made his ancestor Fergus proud.
The old man asked Morann if he was intending to go into the town, and the craftsman replied that he was.
“It’s the Ostmen who are seen as the real enemy,” the abbot remarked. “But though you’re not an Ostman, you’re a well-known figure in Dyflin—even dressed in a monk’s habit!” he added wryly. “I don’t know what the Munster men will feel about that. I’d stay out if I were you.”
Morann thanked him for the advice, but couldn’t take it. “I’ll be careful,” he promised; and leaving his cart at the monastery, he walked down into the town.
The streets of Dyflin were much as he had left them. He had expected to see fences down, perhaps some thatched roofs burned; but it looked as if the inhabitants, wisely, had accepted their fate without resistance. Groups of armed men lounged here and there. The Fish Shambles was crowded with carts of provisions, and the presence of pigs and cattle in many of the little yards indicated that the occupiers meant to feast well over Christmas. Many of the houses had obviously been taken over by the Munster men, and he wondered what had happened to his own. He had told Harold’s wife to take her family there in his absence; so that was his first destination.
When he reached his gate, he saw a couple of armed men leaning on the fence, one of them apparently drunk. Turning to the other, he asked if the woman was in there.
“The Ostman’s woman, with the children?”
Morann nodded. The fellow shrugged.
“They took them all away. Down by the quay I think.”
“What are they doing with them?” Morann asked casually.
“Selling them. Slaves.” The fellow grinned. “Women and children. It’ll make a change to see some of the Ostmen being sold, instead of selling us. And every one of us that fought for King Brian will get a share. We’re all going home rich this time.”
Morann forced himself to smile. But inwardly he was cursing himself. Had he brought this on his friend’s family, by persuading them to go into Dyflin from the farmstead?
His first impulse was to go down to the wood quay to try to find them, but he quickly realised that this might be unwise; nor was it yet clear how he could help them. He needed to find out more. Next, therefore, he went to the house of Caoilinn’s father, and told him where his daughter was.
“Brian’s men have already been here,” the old merchant declared. Caoilinn’s husband, he explained, had already been fined in his absence. “He’s to pay two hundred cattle and give his eldest boy as a hostage,” he said gloomily. “I’ve already lost half my silver and all my wife’s jewellery. As for you,” he cautioned the craftsman, “if these Munster men discover who you are, you’ll suffer like the rest of us.”
When Morann told him about his problem with Harold’s family, the older man was not encouraging. There were already several hundred, mostly women and children, being kept in a big compound under close guard down by the quay. And they were bringing in more each day. He advised Morann not to go near the place for the moment.
A short while after leaving the merchant, Morann was moving carefully down towards the wood quay. Though he was shocked by what had happened to his friend’s family, he knew he shouldn’t be entirely surprised. The slave markets were always being fed with people who had lost battles or been caught in Viking raids. Hard though it was, King Brian was simply making a point that the whole northern world would understand.
The craftsman’s first objective was to discover where Harold’s family was being held. If possible, he would try and make contact with them, at least to give them a little comfort and hope. The question then would be how to get them out. It was unlikely that he would be able to sneak them away from their captors. To make things more difficult, it was possible that Astrid had been separated from her children, if they were to be sold in different markets. He might, of course, be able to bribe the guards; but he thought it unlikely. He stood a better chance of buying them outright from the Munster men at the full market price. But then he’d have to explain who he was, and that could prove to be troublesome. He could even finish up, he thought grimly, in the slave market himself.
The quay was in front of him now. It was crowded with ships. Nobody took much notice of him as he started to make his way along. A group of armed men came swinging down from an alley on his right. He paused to observe them as they went past.
But they didn’t go past. Hands suddenly seized his arms. He struggled, tried to protest, but realised at once that it was useless. Immediately, therefore, he became very calm.
“What is it you want, boys?” he enquired. “Where are you taking me?”
The officer in charge was a swarthy figure, with a look of quiet authority about him. He came to stand in front of the craftsman and smiled.
“What we want, Morann Mac Goibnenn, is the pleasure of your company. Where are we taking you? It’s to King Brian Boru himself.” He turned. “And you wouldn’t want to keep the man waiting, now, would you?”
It was Morann who was kept waiting. He was kept waiting all afternoon. Whatever his fate was to be, he was curious to see the Munster king, whose talent and ambition had raised him almost to the pinnacle of power; and while he waited, he went over what he knew about him.
He’d been born the youngest son of his father, Kennedy, beside the River Shannon by a ford. Morann had heard somewhere that quite early in his life, Brian had been told by a fili that he was a man of destiny and that, having been born by a ford, he’d die by a ford also. Well, he was by Ath Cliath now, but he was very much alive. “He likes the women.” They all said that. But then who didn’t? He’d had three wives so far. The second had been a tempestuous woman, the sister of the King of Leinster. She had already been married to both the Viking King of Dyflin and the O’Neill High King. But she’d given Brian a fine son before he’d discarded her.
There were many people, Morann knew, who thought that this divorce had led to the bad feeling behind the revolt of the Leinster and Dyflin kings against Brian; but a chief who knew the King of Leinster well had assured Morann that the rumour wasn’t really correct. “He may not have been pleased, but he knows his sister’s trouble,” he’d told the craftsman. And God knows, divorce was common enough amongst the royal families of the island. More likely, in Morann’s opinion, the bad feeling against Brian was the inevitable jealousy against a man who rises so far and so fast. What nobody denied was the Munster king’s prowess. “He’s as patient as he’s daring,” they acknowledged. He would be in his late fifties now, but full of vigour, it was said.
And so it proved to be. It was nearly dusk when Morann was finally brought into the big hall of the Dyflin king, which Brian had taken over. There was a fire in the centre, where several men were standing. One of these, he noticed, was the rich merchant who imported amber. Beside him, turning to look at him, was the figure he guessed must be Brian Boru.
The king was not a tall man, hardly above middle height. H
e had a long face, thin nose, intelligent eyes. His hair, where it was not greying, was a rich brown. The face was fine, almost intellectual; he might have been a priest, Morann thought. Until Brian took a few steps towards him. For the southern king moved with the dangerous grace of a cat.
“I know who you are. You were seen.” He wasted no time. “Where have you been?”
“To Kells, Brian, son of Kennedy.”
“Ah, I see. And you hope your valuables will be safe from me there. They tell me you left nothing much in your house. Those who rebel have to pay the price, you know.”
“I didn’t rebel.” It was the truth.
“Did you not?”
“That man could tell you.” Morann indicated the amber merchant. “I told the Dyflin men that it was a mistake to oppose you. They were not pleased. Then I left.”
King Brian turned to the amber merchant, who nodded his confirmation.
“So why did you come back?” the king demanded.
Morann related the exact details of parts of his journey, how he had set out with Osgar and the nun, and his discovery that Harold’s wife and children had been taken. He discreetly omitted the incident at Rathmines and his flight with Caoilinn and her husband to the monastery, and hoped that Brian was unaware of it.
“You came back for your friends?” Brian turned round to the others and remarked, “As this man’s not stupid, he must be brave.” And then, turning back to Morann again, he coolly observed, “You are a friend to Ostmen, it seems.”
“Not especially.”
“Your wife’s family are Ostmen.” It was said quietly, but it contained a warning. This king was not to be deceived. “That must be why you came to live here in the first place: your love of Ostmen.”
Was King Brian playing with him, like a cat with a mouse?
“In fact,” Morann replied evenly, “it was my father who brought me here, when I was little more than a boy.” For a moment he smiled at the memory of that journey down, past the ancient tombs above the River Boyne. “My family were craftsmen, honoured by kings since before Saint Patrick came. And my father hated the Ostmen. But he made me come to Dyflin because he said that Dyflin was the place of the future.”