Lion of Ireland (51 page)

And the knowledge that Murrough would not care was painful.

“You know, Padraic,” he said aloud, “my oldest son and I are not ... as close as I might wish. Have not been since I punished him for killing the prince of Desmond.”

“I know, my lord. He never understood that, I think.”

Brian gave a hollow laugh. “As well for me that he did not! But it’s become a wedge between us, and every year we grow farther apart. Now we are almost strangers to one another.” He lifted his chin, making the movement deliberately to catch Padraic’s eye, and then he held the gaze. “You are more a son to me than Murrough, Padraic,” he said, wondering how much he really meant it. But the light it kindled in the other man’s eyes was unmistakable. “I would not want you hurt if it were in my power to help you,” Brian went on, “and if there is anything at all I can do for you in this matter, you have only to ask.”

In the silence that hung between them Padraic recognized the size of Brian’s gift and tried valiantly to find a way to match it. “Prince Murrough loves you, my lord!” he offered. “Fathers and sons grow apart, but they come together again in time; it always happens!”

“Some things are not meant to be, Padraic. It is easier to accept it than to torture yourself with regrets.

That is good advice for both of us, my friend, and if we get busy perhaps we will not be haunted by too many ghosts. Come around here and help me unroll this map, I want to select a site for a new garrison on the Blackwater ...”

Grateful and flattered, Padraic moved around the table to stand beside his king. When he looked down at the seated Brian’s coppery hair, he was surprised to find that something about it brought a painful lump to his throat.

*

“Carroll,” he began bluntly, “is there anything to this problem with Murrough? He doesn’t seem to be accepting my authority any more than he ever has, and I feel there are other factions that might be encouraging a full-scale break between us.”

Carroll narrowed his eyes and considered. “Your son loves you, my lord,” he said carefully.

“I loved my brother. More than anything on earth,” Brian replied cryptically.

Leinster seemed to have capitulated to the superior force of Brian Boru. Maelmordha and the other princes sulked in their strongholds or contended among themselves for the vacant kingship of the province, but sent no further raiding parties into Munster.

Malachi Mor was also feeling the weight of Brian’s hand. Satisfied as to his control of the land below the Shannon, the king of Munster was turning his full attention to Connacht. Council was convened at Tara, and the prospect was viewed in a sour light.

Dunlang the Wise expressed the thought uppermost in the mind of everyone. “If Boru forces Connacht to stand with him, he will control more warriors than the Ard Ri himself.”

“He has made no attempt on Tara,” Malachi pointed out. “We can’t actually accuse him of leading a rebellion against my authority.”

“He attacks Meath!”

Malachi tried hard to be fair. “He had some provocation for that; I let myself be persuaded to act in a way that no prince could have accepted meekly.”

“Even so,” the more violently inclined nobles argued, “the skirmishes along the border have gone far beyond simple acts of retaliation. Munster is all but at war with both Meath and Connacht, and there is only one way to interpret that!”

Malachi moved around to see their point of view, and found that he agreed with it as well. It was part of the problem with being fair; if one was totally objective, there often seemed to be no right or wrong.

“Boru is suffering heavy losses in Connacht,” he said. “It certainly does look like an all-out war for control there.”

“Then this would be a good time to attack him and destroy this threat once and for all. Surely even the king of Munster cannot sustain active warfare on two fronts and keep control of his under-kings and the Norsemen as well.”

At last Malachi agreed, feeling a certain sense of relief at being forced to act. “Very well, then. While Boru is terrorizing Connacht, we will march into Munster and put an end to this thing before it goes any further. Give the order to summon the war counselors, and we will choose the most auspicious moment to attack.”

Cut and thrust and slash, swing the ax, whip your horse forward, sweat and grunt and dodge, scream till your throat was bloody with the constant repetition of orders unheard above the din of battle. Fergus was slain by a Northman’s ax. March, march, slog through mud and scramble over hills, lose some of your best men in an ambush in an oak forest so dense there seemed no sky above it. Fight to win the people’s loyalty, bury more friends, pray, swear, struggle. Worship at the altar of Discipline and try to grind it into your officers until they could be trusted as you trusted your own hands.

Brian’s sons rode with him, two of them gladly, and the third, wrapped in his own thoughts. Conor and Flann fought well but had no gift for leadership. Murrough, who scorned jewels and comfort and loved the soldier’s life, fought like a demon and was a magnet for the loyalty of men, but he constantly criticized his father’s command decisions. When Liam mac Aengus fell in battle Murrough asked for his warriors, but Brian reluctantly gave them instead to Donogh mac Connlaoch, Donogh did not risk men’s lives unnecessarily in the name of valor. The tension between Murrough and his father was as sharp as a dagger’s edge.

Donogh’s obedience and his love of the land were total, and sometimes Brian found himself watching the silver-haired young man with speculative eyes. Donogh had much to give Ireland.

Brian ordered still more boats added to his fleet, which was proving a successful deterrent to Norse aggression on Ireland’s inland waterways. The new ships were built of wood in the style of the Norse dragonships, shallow drafted for rivers and coastal waters. They enlarged his assortment of common log canoes and the ubiquitous curraghs, which were built on a framework of ash lashed together by alum-soaked leather thongs and covered with oxhide. Brian suggested discarding the leather sails, sodden and heavy in wet weather, and replacing them with lightweight ones of woven flax.

The fleet sailed northward from Killaloe, through the dark waters where the mountains came almost to the river’s edge, and then moved out onto the broad blue breast of Lough Derg itself.

The countryfolk came out to see them glide by—Irish ships, not viking raiders—and blessed them and thanked God for Brian Boru. It was whispered—a rumor that came from nowhere, with no discernible source, but was somehow heard by everyone—that no matter which direction the king of Munster chose to sail, the wind was always with him. Some said it was witchcraft, and some said it was an act of God.

Brian went south to hold court at Cashel and was appalled at the long lines of people streaming down the road toward the Rock, each with a boon to beg or complaint to air.

The endless struggle against the encroaching grass must be wasted along the roads, and men found to do it. The roads

had to be kept passable so that carts could go to market and warriors to war. The high court was convened, and valuable hours spent hearing one lawyer debate his interpretation of the Brehon Law against another; books sent for, piled on tables, consulted, judgments made—enemies, too; under-kings placated, fairs and feasts attended, a new Norse outburst put down, troops reviewed, officers trained, ambassadors received, motives analyzed . . . and still another battle to fight The ships and the foot-soldiers returned to Connacht.

The king of the tribe Muscraige was a happy man. His tuath was prosperous and his compound sheltered a large healthy family. The fields of his land grew good grain, heavy-headed and golden in the sun; his cattle were fat and his wife was docile. Even the bishop at Cashel told him he was a man blessed by God.

Then the Meathmen came, marching in quick columns across the land, taking advantage of Brian’s absence to drive into his heartland. The armies of Munster were fighting on Connacht, and there was no sizable garrison close at hand when Malachi Mor fell on the king of Muscraige. Only his own warriors were available to fight the hopeless battle, and when the sun set the happy king was dead and his docile wife was a banshee shrieking in the night with grief.

Brian returned to Kincora, victorious in the most recent encounter with Conor’s army, and was told the news of the Ard Ri’s attack. He listened to the story intently, his gray eyes glittering with anger. “Malachi will not face me directly, man to man, but comes sneaking into my kingdom in my absence to cut my people down, like a wolf separating one sheep at a time from the flock. Does he mean to exterminate us tribe by tribe?”

Someone suggested, “This raid is very like our own raid ,

last month on the Caille Follamain. Malachi killed more men, I but otherwise his expedition might have been modeled av A. ours.”

Brian arched one eyebrow. “I’ve noticed something about the Ard Ri. He does not act; he reacts. It is not a quality to

be prized in a leader, I think, this habit of always taking the second step. He appears ta deal with each situation as it occurs on its own terms and in its own context; he fights a hundred little battles and overlooks the war.”

He turned to look directly at Carroll, holding the historian’s gaze for a meaningful moment, then spoke to the entire hall in ringing tones. “Ireland would be better served by a different High King.”

Carroll understood, but duty forced him to say the words anyway. “Malachi Mor is the ranking member of the tribe Hy Neill, my lord. The Ard Ri is always Hy Neill.”

Watching the king, they all knew what was coming. It filled the room with them, tightening their throats and racing their hearts. Even Padraic lost his customary halfsmile as he leaned forward, elbows on knees, to wait tensely for the words Brian was bound to say.

‘ “The Ard Ri has always been Hy Neill, traditionally,” Brian said softly, with that deadly softness of a stalking cat. “Has been. But no more. A ruler must be the man best suited to rule, not a man determined by tradition. If Ireland is to take her rightful place in the world, she must do so with her strong hand uppermost.”

He stood in front of his High Seat, slowly raising his ‘right hand in front of him, so that they could all see the size of it. The strength of it. He lifted it like a banner, and their eyes watched it ascend. “The days of the Hy Neill are over,” said Brian Boru.

“He has gone mad with ambition!”

“He has promised new glory to Ireland.”

“He will get us all killed!”

“He will bring back the Golden Age.”

“He’s a monster!”

“He’s a saint!”

“It’s about time,” said Murrough.

There was no disguising the intent of Munster now. Armies in Roman-style columns drilled on the plains of Tipperary

and along the coast of Bantry Bay. As if overnight, an enormous organization sprang into being, capable of feeding men and supplies in great numbers into Brian’s military base on the Shannon. Like the Northmen, he used the river as a highway, and by following its watercourses he was able to reach long fingers of attack into Connacht and Meath. From the Suir he sent a wall of men marching eastward to Leinster, his determination written on their faces, his battle cry on their lips.

The struggle for the control of Ireland was joined.

Malachi was no longer able to view it as part of the old familiar pattern of king against king, tribe against tribe. Brian marched through Ireland making speeches, repairing schools and monasteries, appointing new bishops, firmly enmeshing himself in the hierarchy of the Church while attracting a new generation of hot-eyed young soldiers to the glories of the battlefield. He fought continually, and there were some defeats but many more victories. He flung his grandeur ahead of him like a challenge. He told his followers they could win, and they believed him.

He was a frightening man.

“What does it mean?” Malachi asked his advisors again and again. “Why should this king of Munster lead a revolt against the established order? It all began as a misunderstanding, an argument between tribes ... it should never have come to this!”

“Boru is an outlaw,” they told him. “He used his military skill to put his brother on the High Seat of Munster, and then stole that kingship for himself from its rightful heirs. He is a man of great fighting ability and no principles.”

Malachi turned to them with imploringly outstretched hands. “What am I to do? There are rumors that he is winning my people away from me. His red banner with its three lions has been found hanging from trees and poles in my own Meath, and the countryfolk refuse to cut it down.”

“He must be destroyed!” they shouted at him in unison, all

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those old men, past their fighting days, who would stay behind while Malachi fought the battles.

“I agree, he must be stopped,” Malachi said, “but how can I give it my full attention when Sigurd and his Norsemen wait in the Orkneys to attack us once more and there is always the possibility of an uprising in Dublin? The king of Munster has somehow amassed a very large army, and persuaded even his traditional enemies to stand with him; what can I bring to bear against that?”

They offered him advice—every man had some—and he patiently listened to each in turn, hoping that one suggestion would strike fire in his own mind. None did.

Malachi Mor lingered at Tara, forcing his council and under-kings to remain in session with him, considering his problem. The loveliest of Ireland’s hills was no longer beautiful to him; it had become a prize that could be wrested from him, a position he would have to defend with his blood.

“I’m not afraid to fight this Brian Boru,” he told Kelly. “I’ve never been afraid of any man on the field of battle. But first I must be certain that whatever policy I follow is the right one. I must get down on my knees and pray to Jesus Christ to protect me from rash impulses, because every time I give in to one connected with this Boru I get in greater difficulties.”