The Portents of War

The Witch's Daughter, Chapter 17: Tension mounts at the Norman camp and the foibles of the two captains are on display. Hilde leaves the church.

Etienne d’Courcey had had just about enough of this damn soggy Irish hillside. And the sortie they were making just kept getting longer and longer between landing and the gold and glory they’d been promised. He eyed the approaching lordling walking up the dale with a baleful stare. It was bad enough the idiot Irish King was late to his own party, now their own compatriots wander about the countryside like lost goats. That was definitely the Frenchman.

“Tell Captain FitzStephen that de Prendergast is here,” d’Courcey said to one of the group of men with him. As a lieutenant he fitted his Norman uniform well enough, but d’Courcey had an aquiline nose and thin lips that gave him the air of a mortician, more than a fighter. The other men did not like the fact that he was FitzStephen’s right hand man, but this animus suited d’Courcey just fine. FitzStephen’s young page nodded to d’Courcey’s request and headed off followed by the barrel-chested, red-headed sergeant in charge of FitzStephen’s personal guard.

FitzStephen was right about his blonde hair and fair looks. But wrong about his measure. But there was steel under his skin. He’d not blinked when FitzStephen ordered the man from Thomond murdered in cold blood for no other reason than to send a message. Clearly the older man just assumed Strongbow had made him the leader but de Prendergast by his posture never accepted it. He needed watching. He was like ice and cold. A slow killer, that had its hands around your throat before you woke to its presence.

But the mettle of him was more than just cruelty, it was methodical and it was economic. The French mercenary stepped over the cow dung and tussocks of the hillside without looking down, his eye surveying the camp and the skyline as though on a Sunday walk but with a morbid coolness. It was a detachment the like of which d’Courcey had seen in those who’d manned the walls in the long hours of a deathly siege. As if sure that death would certainly come and be a welcome friend when it did.

And now de Prendergast walked in that same deliberate manner, although he dragged two men, one in each hand, bumping across the grass in front of the men he led. The troops stood in front of their tents, one or two with food in their hands, others in the midst of sharpening weapons, or not fully dressed, mouths agape. Some eyes were on the whip in de Prendergast’s hand, blood still dripping from it.

His arms though not large were whipcord and his frame iron. He looked nowhere in particular but took in every man in that line. Giffard who walked behind him, clothed in his characteristic black, flecked with green, seemed insubstantial compared to the mercenary captain. De Prendergast in a his captains uniform, a study of casual authority, drew all the eyes on that hillside toward himself, even FitzStephen’s men in the adjacent formation.

“Giffard, get someone to clean these two up,” de Prendergast said. “I want them fighting fit tomorrow.”

“Oui,” Giffard responded. With the manner of a spy, Giffard moved as though he were de Prendergast’s shadow, oily and slick. He paused to check briefly for signs of life in the two. Then he motioned to a sergeant at the front of the men of the camp, a solid man with a scar down his forehead, and no neck to speak of.

The lieutenant stepped forward.

“Sir, Captain FitzStephen has asked for you,” d’Courcey shouted, across the camp. “He is waiting over the hill.”

A rumble of voices ran through the ranks of the men. From FitzStephen’s camp a few voices were raised, and steel against steel echoed.

“How do you expect them to fight!” the sergeant said as he prodded the supine body of the closest soldier, eliciting a pitiful groan. The other man tried to roll onto his front, to relieve the pain of his bloodied shoulders.

It was a good question. Is de Prendergast and his few hundred men really needed?

Etienne d’Courcey shaded his eyes, peering, trying to discern some intent, some emotion in the mercenary captains face.

The Irish were a bunch of wretched drunks, and judging by MacMurrough’s men the garrison at Wexford would be an afternoons work for just Captain FitzStephen’s men alone. They didn’t need this spiteful de Prendergast and his paltry few hundred men who seemed about to revolt against him anyway. Spies and schemes were not part of a battle fairly joined.

“I’m talking to you, de Prendergast!” the Sergeant said, his beady porcine eyes flaring as he put his hand to his sword hilt.

Crack!!

“Merde!” The sergeants arm jerked as Prendergast’s whip snaked around his wrist in the blink of an eye. A stream of insults bit off, as he stumbled into the Irish peat.

Is this how the mercenaries treated their men? Etienne d’Courcey shook his head in disbelief. In Cardigan there was a nice garden and his plans for a small grapevine waiting. This was madness, the man was an unpredictable snake.

“Captain Prendergast,” he began. “Captain FitzStephen was very clear. He…”

“Not now d’Courcey,” de Prendergast snapped, not taking his eyes off the sergeant in front of him, as he walked toward the prone figure looping his whip back into coils. “Sergeant, you seem a decent man. You want to get home, gold in your pocket, yes?”

The man struggled to get to his feet again. But de Prendergast yanked the whip, the sergeants hand went from under him, and the man’s face dropped back into the wet grass. Nearby the two abject figures who de Prendergast had dropped stirred. One younger fellow, tall and thin, in uniform pants, his shirt hanging from his waist crawled toward the line of tents, toward his compatriots.

“Sir, forgive me,” the sergeant removed the whip from his wrist revealing a deepening red welt. He pointed to d’Courcey. “The Lieutenant ordered that no-one leave the camp. But our lads, under the leadership of your good self, had no such order.”

“The very good Lieutenant here is in charge of the camp. Is he not?” de Prendergast said gesturing behind himself at d’Courcey, who shivered and stepped back, eyeing the whip.

“Sir, we didn’t know where you were!” the Sergeant said. “I mean, we thought something could have happened.”

“What did Lieutenant d’Courcey say Giffard? Hanging? For anyone leaving the camp?” de Prendergast stood over the Sergeant now. The man was half again the bulk of de Prendergast, but his face was white as a sheet and he quivered at the Captain’s feet. “We are Normans! We fight together! Obey orders! No-one likes a deserter Sergeant!”

Using the coiled whip to mock a noose, de Prendergast looked around the ranks of his men, laughing at his own joke. Nervous laughter passed through the ranks.

“I offered these men choices. They chose this,” de Prendergast said, gesturing to the two men he’d dropped. “They chose the lash. I’m a fair man, sergeant. They chose well, I think. So get these men back in uniform.”

“Aye, sir,” the sergeant said. He stood, brushed grass off his uniform and massaged his wrist.

“And talk to your troops. There will be no more men taking their chatter out of the camp, yes?”

Down by the salty marshes of the River Muck delta, old logs and banks of silt spread in a curve, as the bight of the watercourse wound west in a hook turn to follow the coastline. Over the long spit that lay on the other side of the river bank sea birds wheeled in the salt-laden moist grey sky and the sound of shallow breakers joined their raucous calls. A few last traces of morning mist lurked in the shadows of the marsh reeds.

“Here man, tell me. Don’t spare me the gory truth!” FitzStephen shouted. He grasped a brace of wild rabbit, their guts spilling from their bodies in a red curtain of gore.

On a log, the animals entrails spread, skewered with a pair of fighting knives at one end, to the butchered beasts in FitzStephen’s grasp at the other.

The other man, clad in a woollen cloak that seemed to come from the mists, kneeled at the log his face daubed with ochre and blood. He held up the flat of a hand to the burly Norman Captain. With his other hand he waved a jagged bone, white and twisted over the grisly tableau. From a pouch he drew powder and tossed it to the winds, it settled in places on the rabbits intestines.

The kneeling man pointed without turning, and FitzStephen dutifully laid the animals carcasses at the side. FitzStephen leaned over the display, his eyes wide.

“What do you see!” FitzStephen demanded.

“Ye’ve been betrayed!” the mans voice cracked and shrieked. His broken face and toothless jaw raised to harsh light of the early afternoon sun, as he turned to FitzStephen. “A fighter has gone to be a lover! Laid with the enemy!”

“Never mind! Do I win! Do I become a king?!” FitzStephen shouted. He grabbed the mans skinny shoulder, digging his fingers through the woollen cloak into the mans flesh.

“Sire! Sire! You will be king,” the man said. Spittle gathered on his lip.

FitzStephen grinned, and he reached for the knives yanking them free. He wiped them on the grass, then on his tunic.

“The walls you lay siege to will open before you,” the man said, pointing to a shape in the pile of guts that lay before them.

FitzStephen nodded then walked a few steps away up a slope, his bloody hands dripping. He pulled a handful of leaves from a lupin bush, and squelched momentarily in a patch of boggy ground. He wiped much of the blood from his hands.

“Captain!” A voice raised over the distant din of the surf and cries of the sea birds. “Captain FitzStephen!”

Two figures approached over the top of the mound that FitzStephen and the seer had sheltered behind.

“Told you to leave me alone!” FitzStephen yelled. He massaged the back of his still throbbing head, and blinked into the harsh light at the crest of the mound.

“It’s de Prendergast sir. He’s back.” One of the figures waved FitzStephen hither.

Above them, framed against a patch of blue sky between two towering banks of clouds a murder of crows turned through a slow arc, then flapped off growing smaller as they flew into the west.

“Sire, look,” the old man said pointing to the birds. He stood, mimed the shape of their flock with his hands, and made an expansive gesture. He clasped his hands, beseeching.

“The fates are with you. Your enemies will fall,” the man jingled a purse. He held out his hand. “A kind and generous king you will become.”

“Which enemies?” FitzStephen turned. He grabbed the man shook his frail shoulders. The briar crown on the mans head shook and fell to the ground. He held up a placating hand.

FitzStephen cleaned one of his knives, on the grass, dried it on his tunic and replaced it in his boot.

“Some silver, sire. To make it sure, to keep our secrets,” the old man said with a lop-sided grin, as insistently he held out his hand.

FitzStephen slashed the mans throat.

His frail body fell to the ground. Seemed to become one with the dock, arrowgrass and sedges.

“Captain FitzStephen. He’s waiting for you,” one of the soldiers said, walking down from the mound. A third man approached over the hill. It was d’Courcey.

As the men walked down to join him, FitzStephen cleaned his other knife.

“What is this?” d’Courcey said, looking at the mess.

“Good fortune, d’Courcey,” FitzStephen said. He jutted his chin out, and stroked his stubble, as he looked into the west. The crows in flight were small black ink marks against the white cloudy sky. “Good fortune, for us.”

“What about de Prendergast?” asked d’Courcey.

“He is a dead man,” FitzStephen said. He sheathed his knife at his belt and walked back toward the camp.

“What do you think he’s going to do with Captain Prendergast?” the page asked in a whisper, nodding at the silhouette of FitzStephen swaggering ahead of them.

“Nothing,” the barrel-chested man gruffly said. He slapped his hand down on his sword hilt.

“Sergeant, you must promise me you won’t speak of what you saw, not to the men,” said the young page, catching at the cuff of the red-headed man as they strode a few pages behind FitzStephen, around the base of the rise, toward the camp.

“Well, I saw nothing,” the Sergeant said.

The page smiled nervously.

“And that’s a problem. Aye?” the Sergeant and cocked his helm to expose the quizzical grimace on his face. He squinted at the page.

“I know, I know,” the page said. “A five year hell in a Welsh prison. With nothing but shadows and ghosts for company. But look! He weathered it, a great man! A great man. You should see Cardigan Sergeant.”

“There was nothing, son. No-one,” the Sergeant said.

“I don’t know if we can be sure,” the page said.

“Yon ‘great man’, he was talking to thin air! A great old conversation with no-one,” the Sergeant said.

The page bit his lip and nodded slowly. “Practicing his speech, no doubt.”

“Oh, aye? Well I saw him slashing away with his knife at the mists,” said the Sergeant. “Practicing that too, was he?”

His brow furrowed and he shook his head. He glanced at the page.

The young man pulled his helm on firmly and hurried to catch up with FitzStephen.

A group of noisy starlings flew down from the rafters of the church, fighting over a beak-full of twigs. Hilde looked away from the priest as a pair, mother and fledgling perhaps, fought off an interloper and settled back into a crevice in the dark recesses of the thatch.

“My saints, how long have we been talking,” Father Stephen said. He leaned back against his pew.

“Sorry Father. So much has happened,” Hilde said.

“Thank you child for everything you’ve told me. But I’m still not sure how I can help. Your friends at the Priory or the Chief seem your best chance,” the priest said. His face fell, a cloud across his eyes. “I really must get back.”

Back to the vestry, to his quarters to clean up the mess. To see what kind of state his wife was in.

Why would Alice side with Jezabel, or with the man in black? This had been the question, the despair, the feelings of betrayal hovering over Hilde like a dark cloud since her mother was accused and taken.

But the puzzle of Alice’s testimony, her story of the devil she had seen by Duncormac Hill, took on a whole new light now Hilde had heard the woman’s drunken ramblings at length. If Jezabel had wanted Alice’s help a good jug of fortified wine would be all it might have taken. Her lush turn of phrase only needed a small urge and her anxiety would push it the rest of the way. Unfortunately the Brehon might not listen long enough to see this.

And the damage Alice’d done, now written up in the witch-finders parchments, was lost on her addled mind, floated off in a sea of strong wine. What point would there be in trying to get her to recant her story, so strangely specific, of the cloven hoofed demon and his wicked liaison with Bronach?

“Hilde?” the priest was on his feet now, gesturing toward the door.

She looked up, scooped up her bag and donned her boys hat, and reluctantly stood.

“Father, what did you think of what I said about the man in black?” Hilde asked, as she turned to the door.

“What do you mean?” Father Stephen ushered her along.

“I mean taking in what the Reverend Mother said of him and his fakery, what if I can find a way to nay say him? What if I can bring a counter to each of his tales? Would you stand with me then?” she said. She paused by the door, blocking him from opening it.

“If the Priory supports you, yes I will,” he said. “But this Ahearne is dangerous, I can’t oppose him alone. I will help Hilde, if the time comes and I can.”

“Promise?” Hilde said. She relented from the door, and held his hand instead.

The priests eyes grew moist and he put a palm to his forehead. “Yes, Hilde. If you can do that, let’s see.”

It was the best she could hope for. Hilde pulled her cap down over her eyes, and walked down the church steps.