Three Queens in Erin, page 11
“Now he’s finally married Lucinda,” said Ranulf, “he’s preaching marriage to every man and maid—ha! and now every man and dog!”
“Why, my congratulations,” said Hob, shaking his hand. “I wish you joy of your union, Roger.” Jack, avoiding speech, just slapped him on the back.
For such a hardened soldier, with his face sun-darkened, scars here and there, Roger suddenly looked quite shy. “She’s with child, Lucinda. ’Twill be by Michaelmas.”
Now there was another round of congratulations. “And have you a name for the bairn?” asked Hob.
“If it’s a girl, we’ll name it ‘Avis,’ after Lucinda’s grandmother,” said Roger. “It will be ‘Olivier’ if it’s a boy.”
“Ah,” said Hob. “That’s well done, then.” Olivier was Roger’s great friend, killed on Fox Night back in Castle Blanchefontaine.
Away across the stretch of grass, over by the stables, Nemain was leading out the two mares, already hitched to the war chariot. Roger leaned out from the wall in order to address Hob past Jack’s body.
“Sir Robert, tell us something: there’s talk of a dangerous wight, Robert the Englishman, a commoner, one who slew a mort of pirates on the crossing from Chester to Dublin, and some are saying that it was you slew them, and others are saying that Sir Robert and Robert the Englishman are not the same man, and I’ve a bet that ’twas you, for there was talk of two women with bows and a big lad with a hammer, and who else could that be?”
“Well,” began Hob, but then Jack held up an outstretched palm—Wait!—and then indicated Hob with his thumb. Hob just grinned and nodded. Roger stretched an open hand across toward Ranulf, and the sergeant dropped a small coin into it.
Across the bailey Nemain jumped into the chariot and took up the reins; Molly stepped in beside her, one hand to the rail and the other with four javelins that she placed in one of the car-side cylinders. The younger woman flicked the reins and the horses walked forward; the small car began to roll, the two high wheels making for an easy passage over the uneven ground. A whistle, and the horses picked up pace, breaking into a trot.
Two quintains had been set up, one thirty feet behind the other. The first was a post with a fixed arm from which depended a string; the string ended in an iron ring, perhaps an inch and a half in diameter. The second had a movable arm with a target painted in concentric circles, connected to a second arm with a sandbag attached. The object of the exercise at the first quintain was to put a javelin through the ring; at the second quintain the task was to hit the target with a lance—which would bring the sandbag flying around the pole to strike the lancer—while going quickly enough to escape being hit.
Nemain took them around the perimeter of the bailey to warm them up, then stopped at the far side. A piercing cry from her and the horses sprang into a gallop, racing in a wide circle. Nemain then executed a series of breathtaking changes of direction, finally pulling the horses around at the lower end of the grassy field, and charging straight at the first quintain.
Molly drew a javelin up from a chariot-side scabbard, tossed and caught it so that she had it in an overhand grip, and drew back her strong white arm for a cast. The chariot thundered down the middle of the bailey. The whole car bounced and left the ground when it hit irregularities or buried stones in the field, the women easily keeping their balance, one hand to the wicker rail, knees flexing with each upward bound, each downward jolt. Through all this chaos Molly kept her javelin steady and as they drew near the first quintain, she cast it, the slim spearhead threading the eye of the iron ring, the shaft carrying on through the circlet till its increasing width caused it to stick fast. The javelin hung suspended from the arm of the quintain, halfway through the ring.
Without slacking speed, they hurtled on toward the second quintain. Molly drew up another javelin from the scabbard, reversed grip, and as they reached the target stabbed it dead center, sending the arm on its swivel greased with lard flying away from them, the sandbag at the end of its rope tilting outward with centrifugal force, whirling past them just too late as Nemain ran the mares full tilt down the bailey. The weighted canvas bag shot by past the women’s backs, slapping just the tips of the blood-red mane, the silver mane, that were streaming out behind them.
A page ran out and tugged both javelins free, set the target in the proper position, stilled the spinning ring. Nemain was coming around in a wide semicircle, and then she was in position downfield, and made another run at the target. Again Molly pierced the ring, and they barreled on toward the second quintain, and this time Molly threw at the target instead of stabbing it and there was a flickering silver wheel beside her javelin as it flew at the quintain. Again they avoided the sandbag, and in addition to the javelin fast in the wood at the edge of the inner circle, there was Nemain’s dagger stuck quivering in the dead center of the target.
The men at the side wall were all on their feet cheering by this time, Macha shouting war cries in Irish, her clear high child’s voice echoing from the bailey walls. Sweetlove was barking in support of their enthusiasm, uncertain though she was about its subject. Nemain slowed the horses to a walk, then set out on a slow perambulation about the sward, to give the animals a chance to cool down.
“Fuck!” said Roger. “I’d bet that they’d miss at least once.” He handed the coin back to Ranulf.
“I’d not want to see them charging toward me,” said Ranulf, fumbling with his pouch strings, dropping the coin in. “If that throw-spear didna spit you, the dagger’d end up in your eye.” He nodded to Hob. “A dangerous woman, your lady wife, Sir Robert!”
“She never fails to surprise me,” said Hob in all honesty. He looked out on the field. Nemain was driving the chariot past Molly at a good clip, and the older woman was practicing grabbing at the hand rail and jumping upward, letting the chariot’s velocity snatch her aboard. “They’re one more surprising than the other.”
CHAPTER 14
THEY WERE MOST OF THE way there, and the senior knights beginning to speak of the value of surprise, when the ambush came.
There had been a rapid progress up the coast road, with barren land to their right and the great Western Ocean stretching away to the edge of the world on their left, in their ears the roar-and-sigh, roar-and-sigh of the waves, waves such as Hob had never seen, battering at the borders of the land. Molly had told him once, as he stood there entranced at his first sight of the German Sea stretching eastward from the northeast coast of England, that when he saw the Western Ocean he would think this a puddle. He had not been disappointed; if anything, the great waters exceeded his imagination. He found rivers, lakes, oceans entrancing: anywhere there was a large amount of water, preferably with movement, either the onward unreturning rush of stream and river or the huge repetitive breathing movements of sea and ocean, and the Western Ocean was a joy to him whenever he contemplated it.
The order of march had some mounted Irish kerns first, deployed as scouts, followed by the vanguard of Norman knights, led by Sir Balthasar, with Hob as his second-in-command. Then came Molly’s war chariot, with Nemain driving, and Jack marching right behind; baggage and supply wagons came next, secure in the middle of the column, with Irish footsoldiers riding atop the loads or walking beside. Following the last wain were the company of Welsh archers, their great longbows strung and slung over their shoulders, ready at a moment’s notice, and then the remaining two Norman groups: the battle, commanded by Sir Jehan, who was overall warleader under Molly, and the rearguard, commanded by Sir Odinell.
They crossed streams at fords and rivers at bridges, always moving northward. The sun was sailing up toward noon, and they had begun just before daybreak. Sir Jehan had them halt by a cold little stream for a meal of hard cheese and rich dark bread. The animals were watered, and then they moved on, for the Ó Cearbhaill homelands were just up the coast.
Across their path was a set of three small mountains, marking the southern border of Ó Cearbhaill land. The Christians to the south of Molly’s lands called them The Trinity; Molly’s tribe called them The Mórrígan. The westernmost mountain stood with its feet in the sea. Between that mountain and the middle one—the Son to the Christians, Babd to the pagans—the road rose to a pass. Once through that pass, the column would be visible from the valley beyond, where Sir Jehan hoped to descend and spread his battle line across the southern high slopes.
It was a well-kept hard-packed dirt road, with hedges along both sides. As they began to toil upward on a slight grade, the hedges began to increase in height. Hob found himself growing uneasy; the hedges were almost to his shoulders, mounted though he was on tall Iarann. He peered at them: they seemed unnaturally dense, with thorns as long as his thumb, and the sunlight struggled to seep through the tight-packed stems and leaves.
He heard a disturbance behind him, and Nemain calling his name. He reined in and looked around. Here came Nemain trotting up the line toward the head of Sir Balthasar’s vanguard. Sir Balthasar gave the signal to halt, and the column of knights behind them pulled up. Nemain reached up a hand to Hob’s knee, and addressed Sir Balthasar.
“Sure there’s an ambush of some kind laid for us here,” she said, panting a bit. “These hedges—they’re plashed, and we’re in a channel. Sir Jehan says we should halt and get some axmen to cut a gateway.”
Hob looked again at the hedges. They had indeed been plashed: of each four thick plant stems, three were cut halfway through near the ground and then bent sideways, and the fourth left upright, augmented by upright stakes. The sideways stems were woven through the uprights, and then they sent up shoots from their upper sides, and the result was a woven hedge, armed with thorns, that was impenetrably thick. No one could push his way through, and even cutting was long laborious work. Essentially the road now ran between living walls.
The way just ahead curved around a bend, and while they had been talking the mounted Irish scouts had gone around and out of sight. Now they came spurring back and drew up sharply, the Irish ponies’ hooves kicking up clods of dirt. A veil of dust around their legs drifted into the base of the hedge.
The chief scout, a man named Fergus, said, stuttering a bit in excitement, “There’s a ditch and a rampart, and on it isn’t there a squad of monstrous gallowglasses with their mail and axes, and they barring the way.”
Nemain looked back along the column, but there was no time to run and consult with Molly or Sir Jehan. She held up a hand; she was thinking of everything Molly had told her of Irish tactics, and she said, “These will be watchmen; they’ll hold us here while they send some messenger back, and the whole of the Uí Bháis will be waiting for us at the top of the pass. We’ve no time to return now, nor to chop through this hedge. We must go through them.”
Gallowglasses, as Molly had said, always had two squires who attended each of them, and armed them, and carried their baggage. In battle, though, the squires acted as light skirmishers; they wore no armor, and ran swiftly toward the enemy, and threw light javelins that they carried, three to a squire. Now javelins began to rain into the lane; Hob wheeled Iarann around, seeking the source. He noticed movement in the trees beyond the hedges.
“They are in the trees!” he shouted.
“Shields!” bellowed Sir Balthasar.
Hob pulled his shield from its saddle mount and held it over Nemain’s head. “You!” he called to one of the scouts, his mount fidgeting in the lane, holding his round targe over his head. “Take Queen Nemain back to her chariot.”
She sprang up behind the scout and Hob handed her the shield.
“Nay,” she said, and, cool-tempered as she always was in danger, was unable to resist her little jest even as death whistled and thudded in around them: “Even your thick skull cannot withstand a javelin.”
“Go, you little brat,” he said, something from their childhood together. He thrust the shield into her arms and slapped the scout’s mount and they went on back down the line.
Sir Balthasar had been growling orders left and right. “You men, back down to that long wagon and knock a plank off each sideboard and run them up here. You there, go back to the Welshmen and have them up on the wagon loads. Tell them to rake the trees. Fergus, tell Sir Jehan what is occurring here. Sir Robert, let’s around that bend and see what’s toward.”
They trotted their horses up and around the curve. There was another thirty-yard stretch and then the road was cut from hedge to hedge with a deep trench, perhaps six feet wide. From this angle they could not be sure of the depth, but it looked deeper than it was wide. On the far side of the ditch a berm had been thrown up, using the soil from the trench. Atop the barrier was a waist-high parapet of wooden mantlets, large rectangular shields staked into the soil of the berm.
Behind this was a line of eight huge Norse Gaels, clad in their long mail hauberks, their padded gloves with knuckle plates, their helmets with cheekpieces that curved around, leaving a slit in front as wide as a man’s thumb was long. Into this slit depended the nasal, filling the top two-thirds; the result was a mask that showed the eyes, a portion of the mouth. From the eyeholes pale eyes looked forth, expressionless. The gallowglasses’ stance suggested immovability. On their shoulders rested the heads of their long sparth axes, terrible crescent-bladed two-handed weapons.
Sir Balthasar spat. “Well, let us go through them.” He sent messengers back to the knights of the vanguard, instructing them to dismount and advance on foot. “Sir Robert, you and I will go up first: ’tis only courtesy to knock politely at their door.”
Men-at-arms were trotting up with ten-foot planks, torn from the sides of the wagons. Sir Balthasar told off men with shields to cover the men carrying the boards, and sent them at the ditch. They ran up, dropped the two planks across the gap, and retreated, shields held high. Hob moved the reins against Iarann’s neck, lining him up with the board. The planks would never support the weight of a destrier, but the two knights would sweep up to the boards and then dismount.
Around the bend behind them came the Norman knights of the vanguard, dismounted, running with their horseman’s axes in hand, bearing the smaller half-shields on their left arms.
Two javelins came hissing in; one hit Hob a glancing blow on his shoulder blade, the small lancehead skittering off his mail. The other swept an Irish scout from his horse, the flexible shaft embedded in his chest. He fell with a clatter in the road, dropping his own lance; he moved just a bit, and then again, and then died.
Sir Balthasar looked at Hob. The castellan unshipped his horseman’s ax from his saddle, and Hob did the same. Then: “Blanchefontaine!” roared the castellan in a voice one might use to frighten a lion, and spurred his destrier straight at the trench. “Banríon Maeve abú!” shouted Hob, and kneed Iarann into a run.
A few yards shy of the gap, Sir Balthasar pulled up short, his horse with front hooves braced stiff-legged and spraying a fan of dirt into the trench beyond. He threw himself out of the saddle and Hob pulled up beside him.
One of the gallowglasses had hooked a plank with his ax and tipped it into the trench, leaving only one path across. Sir Balthasar sprang onto this plank and trotted across, the plank flexing and bowing beneath him. With fifty pounds of iron on his body, he was about three hundredweight, and he was not a corpulent man. Hob dismounted and ran onto the plank after Sir Balthasar, hoping it would not fail beneath their combined burden.
But the castellan was off the wood and onto the far bank in a moment, and Hob himself was right on Sir Balthasar’s heels. The castellan reached the line of mantlets first; a tremendous kick from his armored shoe against the mantlet’s side twisted the big ground-shield on its spike, creating an opening and putting one gallowglass off balance. Two more of the Norse Gaels aimed their long bearded axes at Sir Balthasar, and Hob, struggling up the bank, saw the Norman perform an astonishing feat: with the upper edge of his shield he smote upward against one opponent’s wrists—the downward force of the Hebridean’s blow broke the small bones in his own forearms, the long ax flying free and embedding itself in the bermside dirt. Simultaneously Sir Balthasar blocked the other gallowglass axhead with the spiked ax he carried in his right hand, managing to tangle the beard of his foe’s long ax with his spike. He pulled, hauling the gallowglass forward; the man tumbled down the short berm to lie before Hob, who drove the spike of his own ax into the man’s skull.
Then Sir Balthasar was through the line, on a level with the other gallowglasses, and turning to attack them. A moment later Hob rushed through the gap and narrowly evaded a whickering ax blade rushing past his face. He parried the next blow, barely catching the stroke on the top edge of his own ax. The blow numbed his arm, but his attacker was left off-balance. Hob reversed his ax and hammered with the spike at the man’s chest. The spike went partway through the mail and snagged in the padded gambeson beneath, but the force of the blow staggered the Hebridean backward, and seemed to deprive him of all breath. Hob hacked at his leg below the hauberk with the blade of his ax, and felt something sever: the man went down, wheezing and seeking to spin and fight upward. A dagger had materialized in his left hand, but Hob was too fast and too strong—he stamped on the gallowglass’s left forearm, swiveled his ax in his hand, and planted the spike in the helmet’s narrow ocular opening, beside the nasal. The gallowglass convulsed, and then was dead.
The knights of the vanguard were pouring through the gap Sir Balthasar and Hob had opened. The first two knights did not fare well: the long-shafted gallowglass axes fell like thunderbolts upon them, splitting a shield here and cleaving through a mailed shoulder there; one Norman was nearly beheaded by a tremendous blow from one of the huge Norse Gaels. But then the gallowglasses were going down, each swarmed by two or three Normans.
