Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [198]
It was still quiet when Kevin MacGowan awoke that September morning. The sky was grey. His wife was already up; from the oven in the yard came the faint smell of baking bread. The slave girl was sweeping near the gate. The two boys were playing in the yard. Through the open doorway he could see the steam of their breath. Autumn had come to Dublin. There was a chill in the morning air.
Automatically, as he always did, he reached under the bed and felt for the strongbox. It was reassuringly there. He liked to sleep with it close to him. There was another place, under the bread oven, where he usually concealed it. Only his wife and Una knew about that. It was a good hiding place. Not as secure as the cathedral perhaps, but cleverly disguised. You could look there a hundred times and never guess there was a hiding place. But when he slept in the house, he kept the box under his bed.
He looked across the room. In the far corner, in the shadows, he could see another form gently stirring. It was Una. Normally she would have been at the hospital, but with all the recent events, she had preferred to remain at home with her family today. She was sitting up now. He smiled. Could she see his smile from over there in the shadows? He wondered if she knew what happiness her presence gave him. Probably not. And probably better if she didn’t. One mustn’t burden one’s children with too much affection.
He got up, went over to her, and kissed her on the head. He turned, felt a slight constriction in his chest, and gave a little cough. Then he walked to the entrance and looked out. It was certainly getting cold.
His gaze went out towards the gateway. He saw a neighbour go past with a wooden bucket of water from the well. The fellow seemed in no hurry. He listened. Some sparrows were chattering in the branches of the apple tree in the yard next door. He heard a blackbird. Yes, everything seemed to be normal. There was no hint of any commotion. That was a relief.
Strongbow. Nobody really thought that he would come. His uncle and the FitzGeralds had stayed down in the south all summer and the people of Dublin had reasonably assumed they would be there for the rest of the year. But then in the last week of August the news had arrived.
“Strongbow is in Wexford. He’s arrived with English troops. A lot of troops.”
Two hundred fully equipped mounted men and a thousand foot soldiers, to be precise. They were mostly drawn from the family’s huge holdings in England. It was a force that only one of the greatest magnates in the Plantagenet empire could have collected. By the standards of feudal Europe, it was a small army. By Irish standards, the armoured knights, the highly trained men-at-arms, and the archers, who shot with mathematical precision, represented a disciplined military machine beyond anything they possessed.
Within days, news came that the port of Waterford was in Strongbow’s hands as well; then that King Diarmait had given Strongbow his daughter in marriage. And soon after this: “They’re coming to Dublin.”
It was an outrage. The High King had allowed Diarmait to take Leinster; but Dublin was another matter, specifically excluded from the agreement. “If Diarmait wants Dublin, then he means to take all Ireland,” the High King judged. “And didn’t he give me his own son as hostage?” the O’Connor king continued. If Diarmait broke his oath under such circumstances, O’Connor had the right under Irish law to do what he liked with the boy, even execute him. “What kind of man is it,” O’Connor cried, “that sacrifices his own son?”
It was time to put a stop to the ambitions of this turbulent adventurer and his foreign friends.
There was no doubt about the feelings of the Dubliners either. Three days ago, MacGowan had watched the King of Dublin and some of the greatest merchants ride out to welcome the High King as he came down to the Liffey. It was said that even Diarmait’s brother-in-law the archbishop was disgusted with him. The O’Connor king had brought with him a large force, and it was quickly agreed