Lion of Ireland (22 page)

He said, “Some argue that the way to safety lies in placating the aggressor, rewarding him for not murdering us. I tell you that makes us willing parties to extortion and only gives the savages reason to hold us in contempt and attack us again whenever they will.

“It is the victim we must reward and pity and protect. Let us give our strength to the innocent and destroy the guilty!”

They rose to their feet and cheered him until the echoes of their cheering rolled across all Thomond, and the land gave back their cry.

*

Donogh of Munster was dead. His widow walked the passageways of Cashel, wringing her hands and wailing for her lost lord. “Just yestermorn he was all right,” she repeated to anyone who would listen, grabbing their arms and pinning them against the wall while she brought him to life in her memories. “Just yestermorn he spoke to me, and laughed, and we broke our fast together with wheat cakes . . . those little wheat cakes, you know? The ones with whortleberries in them, and honey .. .”

Then with glazed eyes she would drift on, her thoughts

shredded and lost.

Donogh’s abdomen had swollen and then become rigid, and he died in agony while the court physician was administering an enema through a leather funnel. Even Deirdre, who had been inexplicably quiet and remote in manner for many months, managed to shake off the trance that held her and take part in the mourning. People gathered in little clusters throughout the palace to speak of his virtues and lament his untimely death, and speculation ran high as to his successor. “Alas for the line of Callachan, there are no more sons.” “And no near cousins left, either. Belike there will be a stranger here by Eastertide.”

“Blessed saints protect us!” They crossed themselves fervently and cast their glances heavenward.

The news reached Ivar of Limerick just as he was returning from a visit to Dublin, excited by the negotiations for sharing a rich haul from the pirated Saxon towns across the Irish sea. The death of the king of Munster was a dark splotch on his pleasure.

“How can that young fool be dead?” he demanded to

know,

“I doubt if he intended it,” Ilacquin replied dryly. He had expected to hear some repercussions from his visit to Cashel, but the ensuring silence had convinced him that, for her own reasons, the girl was keeping the incident secret. Perhaps she had welcomed his advances more than she pretended? An interesting speculation, that.

“This news will certainly stir the pot,” Ivar commented, “and who knows what may float to the top?”

They were at the docks, watching the unloading of the warships and counting the bales of fine wool that sweating slaves were carrying ashore on their backs. The people of Limerick had turned out to greet the returning heroes, and a festival gaiety made the grim town sparkle. Children darted underfoot; women gossiped with arms folded across their aprons and smiled invitation to the triumphant raiders. A brighthaired wench with overflowing bosom rolled her hips as Harold looked her way, and he grinned and tossed her a bauble from the purse at his belt.

“Unset jewels,” he explained to his father and Ilacquin. “We’ve got enough here to seduce every women in town; the Saxon priests stick them on everything. They don’t equal the Irish in goldwork, but they’ve got enough valuables to keep us busy for generations to come.”

“There’s another matter we must give some attention to,” Ivar commented, watching the parade of loot with eyes that gleamed hotly. “Donogh of Munster is dead, Harold, remember? And the next Irish king must be someone who will appreciate the importance of continuing our . . . arrangement.”

“There are Owenacht merchants at Limerick now,” Ilacquin pointed out, “come to barter for the culling of our goods, of course.. They can tell us just what the situation is now.”

Ivar conferred with the Irish traders in his hall. They seemed even more nervous than was customary in his presence. “The ranking princes in south Munster are the Owenachts, Molloy of Desmond and Donovan of Hy Carbery,” their spokesman reported. “They are both of noble lines and control many tuaths, but Molloy is presently in Ulster on some affair of business and Donovan is in Wales.”

Ivar scowled. “What of the other chieftains of your tribe?”

The man shrugged and held up his hands, palms upward. “It is an unfortunate time! One is ill, several are old, and many have more enemies than friends—none is prepared to make a strong demand for the kingship right now.”

”And Donall, the Ard Ri? Will your so-called High King

interfere?”

“It isn’t his place to choose provincial kings,” the merchant pointed out. “Besides, he is preoccupied with his own struggle for power against the king of Leinster at the moment. He will not concern himself with the internal affairs of Munster.”

Ivar narrowed his eyes to glacial slits as he swung round to face his brother. “Tell me again, Ilacquin,” he demanded, “about the build-up of troops you witnessed in Thomond. If the Dal Cais seize the opportunity to claim the kingship we may have a real problem.”-

The army of Thomond had made good time. Two days’ march from the Shannon brought them within reach of Cashel, and so quickly had their advance been made that neither Northman nor Owenacht had come out against them. Mahon rode at the head of the column. His face was growing fleshy and lined with living; it expressed neither fear nor enthusiasm, but only a calm acceptance. He felt committed to a course chosen for him by fate or by God, from which there were no alternatives and only brief detours. If I have one virtue above others, Mahon sometimes told himself, it is my ability to accept the inevitable and move forward without wasting myself on regret. Beside him rode Brian, to whom nothing was inevitable.

He was not yet satisfied with the hastily assembled army. The news of Donogh’s death had spurred them to frantic action, recruiting and provisioning, and putting off the drills Brian wanted until a more convenient time.

With his back to them, he could imagine a veritable Roman legion, marching and wheeling with geometric precision. But when he rode along the line he found a rowdy scramble of men, in cohesive, resistant to discipline, and moody as the weather.

He tried to learn the names and personal histories of as many of them as he could, so that he might bond them to him with ties of individual friendship. They were a diverse lot, drawn from every part of Thomond and every station in life, and it was difficult to assess the sum total of their feelings or their dedication.

Two of the slingers under Ardan’s command were recruits from the wildly beautiful region at the edge of the Cold Sea, where the Black Cliffs of Moher presided over the foaming breakers like the Fates at the rim of the world.

Thrust into a band of strangers, the two men walked hip to hip for comfort, their eyes scampering like rabbits over the unfamiliar countryside.

“Do you really think we’re going to win our fortune at this?” asked the fair-haired man with the permanently furrowed brow.

“I don’t know about a fortune; I was promised a piece of good land that would raise some crop besides rocks. That’s a fortune to me, and I’d gladly slit a southerner’s throat for it.”

“You want to live in the south? Me, I haven’t felt at peace in my own hide since we left the coast. I hope to kill a Northman and take his gold in a sack and go home, where I can smell the wind from the sea again. This is a heavy, close air, and it sits bad on my chest.”

His companion, a weathered fellow with a cheerful, gaptoothed grin, took a deep breath of the criticized air and shook his head. “Boyo, your imagination is running downhill and it will drag your spirit after if you don’t watch out.”

“It’s not my imagination!” the blond man argued. “I happen to possess a very sensitive nose. All my family—very sensitive noses. It’s a talent. My uncle could smell out wild honey a mile away, and that with the wind blowing against him.”

“Ach, go along with your uncle and your sensitive nose. If your smeller is so damned good, why didn’t you find us some wild onions to boil with our meat last night?”

“Because all the onions were over by the big mound, that’s why. You’ll never find me disturbing a fairy mound.”

“The little people won’t bother you with that cross around your neck.”

“My old aunt wore a cross and pinned another to her

baby’s blanket, and the fairies came and stole it right out of its cradle!”

The other looked at him skeptically. He had already heard many tales of his companion’s remarkable relatives, and because he suffered the grave defect of a limited imagination that could not compete with them, he was growing impatient with their reputed adventures. “I have never, personally, known of anyone who was stolen by a fairy,” he stated emphatically. “Well, then, you must have been living in a tree someplace and in total ignorance of the world, because it happens all the time,” said the other with equal conviction. “I myself am descended from the line of Heremon, him who drove the fairy people, the de Dananns, underground in the long ago time. We conquered them as they conquered the Firbolgs, and I know for a fact that they have been seeking, revenge on us ever since. Them as thinks the fairies are friendly would as soon believe the world is round.”

“Ach, go along with you,” the gaptoothed man said again. Just then their line of march brought them over a ridge and a new landscape opened before them, a landscape dotted with the unmistakable curves of three ancient and grassy mounds built by some agency other than nature. Atop one of the mounds a pyramid of boulders stood, balancing an immense horizontal slab across the top.

Both men fell silent as they walked through the timeless valley. The other soldiers also let their voices die in their throats, like the twitter of birds at evening, and more than one hand signed the Cross over a fast-beating heart as they passed the cromlech.

In the dawn light the Rock of Cashel loomed as a gigantic limestone outcropping, rising sheer from the deep, damp meadows. The stone fort, built there in the fifth century by a king of Munster, perched on the level summit like a silver crown, its banners hanging limp as they awaited the first breeze.

“That’s the royal stronghold,” Brian said to himself, so

softly that only Briar Rose’s backtilted ear could hear him. “That’s Cashel.”

The townspeople who lived clustered at the base of the Rock had turned out to watch them come, standing in silence before their cottages. They did not hail Mahon the Dalcassian, but neither did they throw stones. They watched with round eyes as the seemingly endless line of marching men passed them, and kept silent.

One, a young woman with tanned face and hair the color of autumn leaves, held her breath as the king and his brother rode past, and fingered the elaborate silver brooch that pinned her shawl. She started to raise her hand in greeting, then flushed red and ducked back within her cottage, pulling the door shut behind her.

The horses bowed their necks for the steep climb to the top, and Brian felt something like a drum start to beat within him. The massive oaken gates swung slowly open as the Dal Cais reached the summit and rode toward the stone wall which encircled the fortress.

The morning mist had not yet begun to burn off, but lay in the valleys like a sea of clouds. From the head of the path one could look out across the miles of Munster, from purple mountains to glinting rivers, across land that was still fertile and rich. In the sacred high places of the earth, a man may imagine that he shares God’s view.

Olan kept his hand on his sword hilt and Kernac looked around warily as they entered the fortress, but Brian fixed his gaze straight ahead and rode forward smiling.

Deputations came to honor Mahon, many of them composed exactly as they had been when Donogh was crowned king of Munster. The Ard Ri sent a representative from Tara who had been a contemporary of Cennedi’s and claimed to remember Lorcan. The king of Connacht complained bitterly at being compelled by honor to send gifts to Cashel twice in such short succession, but Malachi, the boyish new king of Meath, ignored the rivalries between the eastern provinces and Munster and sent a chest of rare freshwater pearls to Mahon together with an offer of future military support against

the Northmen.

“You were not with me on the Plain of Adoration at Adhair, when I was given our father’s tiles beneath the sacred oak where Dal Cais kings are made,” Mahon reminded his younger brother, “but I will make it up to you this time. You will be at “my right hand throughout every ceremony, and I will show all people that you are to be respected as my beloved brother.”

“I have earned respect in my own right,” Brian said sharply, his eyes hostile. “I don’t need you to pass it on to me like one of your surplus garments.”

“Of course, of course, I meant no offense. I only wanted to make it clear you are to be included in everything.” Mahon tried to smooth Brian’s ruffled feathers. How prickly the man was! At times like that, only a loving brother could understand him.

Deirdre had received the news of Mahon’s march on Cashel by retiring to her apartments and having the door barred. As the days lengthened to weeks she continued to stay there, like some insane relative who is kept out of sight in an isolated chamber. She sent word that she was too ill to welcome the new king; no one knew that she spent her days at the edge of her window, trying to catch a glimpse of Brian in the courtyard.

Fithir forced a visit, and suggested to her that she was not only committing a grave breach of protocol, but was spoiling her long-awaited chance to meet the legendary Lion of Thomond.

“It is too late for me to meet him!” Deirdre wailed incomprehensibly.

Fithir stared at her blankly. “But it’s not! He’s in the hall at this very moment, I think.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, I will confess that I do not. Mahon—the king—has been very generous with us, agreeing that we may retain our tenancy here since our own kin are mostly dead now. He continues to treat me with the courtesy due a queen, not a mere relict, and I appreciate it very much. You are demonstrating the basest ingratitude by hiding away like this while continuing to accept his hospitality.”