A few hands lifted and Peter acknowledged them. “Good,” he said, his manner growing clipped. “Then you know that this is a place of culture and learning, not a schoolyard. Keep your voices down and your hands to yourself, or you can go back and sit on the school bus until we are finished. Is that clear?”
The kids nodded with uncertainty as Peter waved then onward. “Excellent,” he said. “Now, we can get started. Our very first stop will be the Medieval exhibits. Can anyone tell me what Medieval means?”
The children followed Peter as he led them across the cavernous foyer towards the first floor Medieval exhibit section. One or two raised their hands to his question. Peter, walking backwards, pointed to a serious young man with a crown of reddish-blond hair.
“It means Medieval times,” the boy said. “It means Middle Ages.”
Peter nodded his head, impressed. “It does indeed,” he said. “It means the High Middle Ages, or at least the section we will be attending does. This was a very important time in Ireland’s history. Can anyone tell me why?”
No one seemed to know. They were entering another room now, a big exhibit room that had a variety of displays. Peter drewthe children into the center of the room and had them gather around him as he continued.
“The High Middle Ages was a very important time in Ireland’s history because it was the time beginning with the Norman conquest of England,” he said. “The Normans were very greedy people from France; once they began to spread all over England, they came to Ireland as well and claimed lands.”
“Didn’t the Irish fight them off?” a boy from the crowd yelled.
Peter grinned and pointed over to an exhibit near the south side of the room. He began to move in the direction of a series of cases and a large, imposing display sign over them that said “BLACK SWORD”.
“Take a look at this over here and that will help answer your question,” Peter said. “This is an exhibit of an Irish rebel known as Black Sword. He was also known as the Lord of Black Castle, which was a strategic castle at the time. Black Sword was one of the great freedom fighters in the fourteenth century against English rule. Now, if you take a look at the first exhibit, it shows a map of Black Sword’s family territory. He came from the de Bermingham family which was, interestingly enough, Norman. The family married into the Irish nobility over the centuries so much that they were essentially Irish. By the time Black Sword was born, he was so Irish that he bled green.”
The kids giggled as many of them, mostly boys, began to crowd around a display that had things like an old dagger and other warfare implements. Peter pointed to the display.
“This display holds items that were dug up in an archaeological dig around the turn of the last century,” he said. “Devlin de Bermingham lived at Black Castle in Wicklow, just south of here. It was his castle from around 1320 A.D. to 1351 A.D. as far as we can tell. There aren’t a lot of records to tell us what happened during these years but we do have records from the English settlements to the south that recorded a peace treatywith Black Sword. We know that Black Sword was a great man because rather than use mostly warfare to gain his ends, he was very good at negotiating treaties with the English that kept them from grabbing more Irish land in the Wicklow area.”
A boy with dark hair and freckles raised his hand. “Did he really have a black sword?”
Some of the kids giggled. Peter smiled. “Well, we never found one, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “Who knows why he was called that? People back then earned nicknames and reputations for reasons that have become lost to history. We do know, however, that he married an English bride and that they had eleven children, ten of whom lived into adulthood, and out of that group, nine of them were boys. Can you imagine having all those brothers?”
The kids giggled and joked with each other. Before it got out of control, Peter lifted a hand to quiet them.
“It was important back then to have a lot of children to help with the household or with the fighting,” he said. “In Black Sword’s case, he had nine sons to help him with his fight against the English. Several of those boys grew up to be great warlords in their own right, and two of them, as far as we know, went to England and actually served in the court of Edward III and Richard II. Like their father, they were said to be great knights.”
The children were growing increasingly excited about Black Sword, which is how Peter had planned it. He usually took children’s groups to the Black Sword exhibit first because the thought of a great Irish knight usually got their attention. But it was time to move on because there was much more to see, so he began to move slowly past the rest of the exhibit, pointing to the last case as they moved out.
“Here you can see some other things that we found during our excavations of Black Castle, but I want you to notice this one item in particular,” he said as he paused by the case and pointedto a small scrap of material, very old and stained, but with faded green stitching on it. “Do you all see this piece of fabric?”
The kids were climbing all over each other to see it. They started shouting in the affirmative so Peter continued.
“This piece of fabric actually has a very interesting history, much richer than Black Sword’s short history,” he said. “Black Sword’s wife evidently gave this to him on their wedding day and it’s a very special piece; it’s said that whoever possesses it will have luck in love. It was passed down through Black Sword’s family, from father to son for generations, until it ended up in the possession of Marie Antoinette. The legend says that one of Black Sword’s descendants was Marie’s one true love and gave it to her. She kept it until she was executed and the piece somehow became lost in the French revolution before reappearing, centuries later, with Wallis Simpson. Does anyone know who she is?”
The kids shook their heads even though the teacher nodded. In fact, the teacher seemed more interested in the piece than her students did.
“She was the wife of a former king of England,” Peter said. “In fact, she gave this piece to her husband, the former Edward VIII, who actually gave up the throne in order to marry Mrs. Simpson. I would say they had great luck in love, indeed.”
“But how did it get here?” one of the children asked.
Peter gazed at the faded piece of cloth. “The British royal family donated it to the National Museum of Ireland because we asked for it,” he said. “We knew what it was and the significance of it. It belonged to one of the greatest Irish figures in history and we wanted it back, so they were gracious enough to comply.”
The children gazed at the cloth for a few seconds longer before their short attention spans had them looking elsewhere. Peter took it as his cue to move on.
“Let’s come over here, ladies and gentlemen,” he called out to the crowd. “There are some swords over here we will take a look at.”
The children followed him in a group, surging forward towards the weapon display, but one young man hung back. He had bright red hair and a dusting of freckles across his nose, a big boy for his age. He was still looking at the piece intently. The teacher, seeing that she had a straggler, went to retrieve him.
“Come along, David,” she said.
Young David looked up from the case. “That thing is very old,” he said.
The teacher nodded, her gaze falling on the faded piece of embroidery and feeling a romantic tug to her heart. “It is indeed.”
