Dublin (43 page)

  "He stripped them," the old man said, with the grim satisfaction of a bystander at a good fight. "Dear God, he has stripped them. I 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 I 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, in stead 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 I 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 I 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 sisters 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. He 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."

  "Did he now? And is he alive, still, this man of wisdom?" It was hard to tell whether this was sarcastic or not.

  "He's long dead."

  King Brian was silent. He seemed to be thinking to himself. Then he moved close to the craftsman.

  "When I was young, Morann Mac Goibnenn," he spoke so softly that Morann was probably the only person who heard him, "I hated the Ostmen.

  They had invaded our land. We fought them. I once even burned down their port of Limerick. Do you think that was wise of me?"

  "You had to teach them a lesson, I should think."

  "Perhaps. But it was I, Morann Mac Goibnenn, who needed to learn a lesson." He paused, and then he took a small object from his hand and placed it in Morann's. "What do you think of this?" It was a small silver coin. The King of Dyflin had started minting them just two years ago. In Morann's opinion, the workmanship was not especially fine, but passable enough. Before waiting for his reply, Brian continued. "The Romans minted coins a thousand years ago. Coins are minted in Paris and in Normandy.

  The Danes mint coins in York; the Saxons have mints in London and several other towns. But where do we mint coins on this island? Nowhere, except in the Ostmen's port of Dyflin. What does that tell you, Morann?"

  "That Dyflin is the island's greatest port, and that we trade across the sea."

  "Yet even now our native chiefs still count their wealth in cattle." The king sighed. "There are three realms on this island, Morann. There is the interior, with its forests and pastures, its raths and farmsteads, the realm that goes back into the mists of time, to Niall of the Nine Hostages, and Cuchulainn and the goddess Eriu-the realm from which our kings have come. Then there is the realm of the Church, of the monasteries, of Rome, with its learning and its riches in protected places. That is the realm our kings have learned to respect and love. But now there is a third realm, Morann, the realm of the Ostmen, with their ports and their trading across the high seas. And that realm we still have not learned to make our own." He shook his head. "The O'neill High King thinks he is a great fellow because he holds the right to Tara and has the blessing of Saint Patrick's Church. But I tell you, if he does not command the Ostmen's fleets and make himself also the master of the sea, then he is nothing. Nothing at all."

  "You think like an Ostman," the craftsman remarked.

  "Because I have observed them. The High King has a kingdom, but the Ostmen have an empire, all over the seas. The High King has an island fortress, but without ships of his own, he is always vulnerable. The High King has many cattle, but he is also poor, for the trade is all in the Ostmen's hands. Your father was right, Morann, to take you to Dyflin."

  As Morann considered the implication of these words, he looked at Brian with a new curiosity. He had realised that, by taking the southern half of the island, the Munster king had already taken control of all the major Viking ports. He was also aware that, on some of his campaigns, Brian had made extensive use of water transport on the River Shannon. But what Brian had just said went far beyond the sort of political control that kings had exercised up to now. If the High King without Viking fleets could be dismissed as "nothing," then this was confirmation that Brian, as many people suspected, did indeed intend, sooner or later, to take over as High King. But more than that, it sounded as if, once he had made himself master of the island, he meant to be a different sort of king. Dyflin seemed to interest him more than Tara. Morann suspected that the Ostmen of Dyflin would be seeing more of this new kind of ruler than they had been used to, and that this foolish revolt had probably given Brian just the excuse he was looking for to assert his authority in the place. He looked at the king respectfully.