Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [207]
The port of Waterford stood on a handsome site overlooking a large river mouth. The original Viking settlement there had been nearly as old as that of Dublin and traders came there from the south-western ports of France and even farther away. Strongbow had set up extensive winter quarters there but the very size of the camp had only reminded Peter of his next problem. The English lord had so many knights—relations, followers, friends, and sons of friends—to look after that it was going to be a long time, or take some extraordinary deed on his part, before his own turn came to share the rewards. By late spring, moreover, some of the young men like himself were wondering what the future of the expedition was going to be. There were two opinions in the camp.
“Diarmait and Strongbow are going to take the whole island,” said some. Peter thought it quite likely that the Irish king hoped to do this; and with Strongbow’s well-equipped army, he probably could. The Irish chiefs, fine fighting men though they were, had nothing that could withstand the devastating effect of an armoured cavalry charge; nor had they anything like the massed archers. Even the High King, with all his followers, might have difficulty stopping them.
But equally there were others who thought that the mission might be near completion. If so, then most of them would be paid off and sent home. And I’ll be sure to be sent back, Peter thought, with little enough for myself or to give to my mother. He wondered where he’d find employment after that. But then, in the month of May, an unexpected change occurred.
King Diarmait of Leinster, having regained his kingdom, suddenly fell sick and died.
What would happen next? It was true that when he gave Strongbow his daughter, the Leinster king had promised to make him his heir. But was that promise worth anything? Peter had learned enough of the customs of the island by now to know that any new king or chief in Ireland was chosen by his people from amongst his close kin. Diarmait had left a brother and several sons, and under Irish law there should be no question of their sister’s foreign husband taking their inheritance. Yet it soon became clear that Diarmait’s sons, at least, were going along with the idea.
“They’ve no choice,” a Waterford merchant had remarked to him. “Strongbow has three hundred knights, three hundred archers, a thousand men. He has the power. Without him they’re nothing. If they stick with him, they’re still in with a chance of keeping part of what they lost.”
“But I can see another difficulty,” Peter had replied. By the feudal law of Plantagenet England, a great lordship like Leinster would pass to the eldest son; or if it devolved upon an heiress, there would be no question of her marrying without the king’s permission—and kings usually made a point of giving such heiresses to their faithful friends. Since Diarmait had actually acknowledged King Henry of England as his overlord, and Strongbow was in any case a vassal of the Plantagenet king, the English magnate would be placing himself in a dangerous legal position by taking up this Leinster inheritance. “He would really need King Henry’s permission,” Peter had explained to the Waterford merchant. “And I wonder if he has it.”
Just at that moment, however, King Henry II of England had other things to worry about. Indeed, it seemed to Peter that the English king would scarcely dare to show his face.
The shocking news from England had come quite early in January. By the following month it had spread all over Europe. The King of England had killed the Archbishop of Canterbury. No one had ever heard of such a thing before.
The quarrel between the English king and Archbishop Thomas Becket had been the usual one over the Church’s power and jurisdiction. Henry had insisted that those in religious orders should answer to regular courts if they committed crimes like murder or theft. Becket, his former friend and Chancellor, who owed his position as archbishop to King Henry, had obstinately set his face against the king in a bitter