Lion of Ireland (7 page)

“Ah, the poor lad!” Brother Columb twisted his plump hands together in sympathy. “And, your other brothers? You had*a large family, did you not?”

“They are all hurt, some very badly, but only two are dead I

I brought the rest here. It was no good trying to take care of them at the compound—everything was still burning, awful.” He shuddered at the memory and wiped his hand across his eyes. “But I must go back now and prepare the dead for burial.”

Brother Columb was horrified. “How can you do such a thing, after all you’ve just been through? Surely we can spare you that. Not I myself, of course,” he amended hastily, “but we have able-bodied monks here who can go this minute and fetch your dead, and of course we will hold the funeral rites here.”

Mahon shook his head. “You don’t understand. We were all but wiped out; there are far too many to carry here. We must pray over them at Boruma, and put them into the ground as soon as possible.”

“I will arrange everything!” Brother Columb glowed with joy, at last able to be of real service. From the corner of his eye he spied the abbot, Brother Flannan, hurrying across the yard. “Of course the abbot will think of it himself as soon as the injured are cared for, but I will anticipate him a little and take that burden myself.” He reached out to pat Mahon’s arm. “You stay here and rest, my friend, while I make the necessary arrangements, and then we will go together to chapel and commend the souls of Boruma to God.”

By sundown the funeral party had not returned. The monks shared their simple meal with those survivors of the raid who were able to eat, then gathered for evening prayer. Marcan joined them, irresistibly drawn.

Brian was allowed a brief visit with his brothers. Niall had had an ear sliced away and tossed in pain, moaning; Lachtna had yet to regain consciousness; but Donncuan was awake and clear-eyed, and when saw his littlest brother he lifted a hand weakly in greeting.

“You’re not wounded?” he asked Brian.

“I wasn’t there,” Brian replied, feeling embarrassed by the admission. He had gone off to have an adventure while his

family suffered and died, and he was aware of a guilt he could not fully understand.

“I wish, I hadn’t been there,” said Donncuan, sighing. Beyond him, wrapped in blankets and coughing fretfully, Anluan awakened and called for his mother. A monk hurried) to bend over him, soothing him in a low voice. Brian’s eyes’ met those of Donncuan.

“Where is she, Brian? Did they take her?” The little boy shook his head. If he stayed one moment] more, Donncuan would ask the next question, and the unbearable answer would have to be given. “I must go!”

he barked, turning away so abruptly that the very violence of his action told Donncuan all he needed to know. As Brian ran from the room, Donncuan lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, trying to see his mother’s face in the smoked underside of the thatch before she faded away forever.

Alone, superfluous, Brian wandered about the monastery. He heard the chanting of the monks rise in solemn beauty from the oratory, echoing from the stones until it sounded unearthly and far removed from the realities of living. The oratory was the central building of the monastery, a rectangular stone structure with a corbeled roof supported by a propping semicircular vault. The architecture was responsible for the unusual acoustical effects, but to Brian the results were miraculous. He stood in awe while in the inhumanly beautiful chant rose as with one voice to the clouded heavens. A wave of incense drifted to him, smoky sweet.

He tilted his head back and looked up. No stars, no moon. No spirits winging past him on their way to God. Where was Mother, then? And Fiacaid? If he had been a good boy and stayed in his bed, would he have died with them and be accompanying them now? To heaven?

Looking into the sky, he concentrated all his being into one knot of power and tried to propel himself out of his own skin, to leap upward into the night and fly in invisible freedom to God’s sheltering arms. He closed his eyes tightly and made a mighty effort, feeling certain he could undo the mistake of his being alive if only he tried hard enough. He waited, breathless, for an upward swooping, but nothing happened.

The cold, damp wind swirled around him. He shivered and opened his eyes. Around him stood the monastery, placid and substantial, a large circular enclosure whose embracing arms sheltered a cluster of buildings not unlike the community of Boruma, except for the beehive cells of the monks. He stood, earthbound, and pondered the fact that heaven did not want him.

The glow of light beckoned to him from within the buildings, and the night beyond the walls was full of surprise and death-He wanted to turn his back on the darkness and run to the light, to be safe and protected, a little child who did not have to deal with the awesome matters of life and death.

But only part of him wanted that. Something else was coming to life in “him, something feral. He had been dreadfully shocked, his being uprooted, and all he had taken for granted destroyed; the insult to his mind and his spirit might have been deadly. But it was not.

Within the youngest son of Cennedi a deep rage smoldered. A desire ‘to fight back, to balance the scales, to pit himself against that which frightened him and fight. And fight. And fight.

The emotion that had been damned within him all the long day broke to the surface at last, and the little boy threw back his head and howled with a dreadful animal cry that raised the hackles on the necks of all who heard it. The sound tore through the oratory, disrupting the service, splintering the music of God, and replacing it with a primitive voice that acknowledged no god, only fury and pain.

They came running to find him, then. They wrapped him in blankets thrown over him as he fought, biting and kicking with uncontrolled wildness. Brother Thomaus, who professed to have a way with children, carried Brian to his cell and tried to calm the child with song and prayer, but it was a battle he won only when the little boy collapsed in exhausted slumber. In the morning, Brother Thomaus’s face and hands were scratched and a bad bite had enpurpled his forearm.

Brian was sorry for the monk when he saw this, but he could not connect it to any action of his own.

Cennedi’s wound did not fester, but healed cleanly. When the haze of pain lifted he immediately demanded to know the fate of Boruma. They sent Mahon to him, and the young man stood before his father with a bowed head and clenched fists as he recited the long list of the dead.

With each naming Cennedi signed himself with the Cross, though the pain made him groan aloud. When Mahon told him of Bebinn both men fell silent, unable to look at one another.

At last Mahon said, “She fought, Father. She never gave in, and at last he struck her such a blow it killed her. If she had not resisted she might have lived.”

“Yes, and be dragged away with the rest of them! Your mother was a princess of Connacht, Mahon. It would have been a mortal sin to allow herself to be used like a whore by the Northmen; I am proud of her, and glad she was spared that.”

Mahon still could not meet his father’s eyes. He could only see his mother, the warmth and laughter of her, the way she used to smile at him whenever their glances crossed. The pride she had given him in his own manhood. He felt that a candle had gone out that could not be replaced, and anything would have been preferable to such a loss. His father’s grief was not the same as his; their pain was different, even as their images of Bebinn were different. Raped but living, she would still have been mother to him, and he could not make himself value her inviolacy above her life.

But Cennedi had lost more than a wife and two sons. His small kingdom had been all but annihilated. The miracle by which most of his children had been spared was not sufficient to redress his loss, and, as he lay healing, his mind turned endlessly. As soon as he was able to sit up he summoned Mahon for a council of war.

“This is all the fault of Callachan!” he thundered at Mahon as soon as the young man entered the room.

“The king of Munster? Father, it was Norsemen from Limerick.”

“Aye, well, they are the ones who actually did the deed, I grant you that. And they shall suffer for it, every last one of them. But it is Callachan’s fault just the same. It was his doing that provoked them, when he marched to Limerick and defeated Amlav, and made all the Norse give tribute to him. I tell you they have been smoldering ever since about that, waiting to have their revenge on the Irish.

“They attacked us because they know of our ancient rivalries with Callachan’s Owenacht tribe, and they felt confident he would not waste his energies on defending us. He is very much woven in with the foreigners now, sitting there in his stronghold at Cashel and counting the tributes they send him. He would take their side against his own race, and I tell you he is no longer fit to rule Munster! Callachan must be driven from Cashel and the foreigners must be driven into the sea!

“There has been a tradition in ages past of alternate kingship, where first one tribe and then another would see its chieftain made king of all the province. It is a good custom, to my mind, and I think it should be observed now.

“I have chosen you to succeed me as king of the Dal Cais, and I know that what elders still live will support me in that. Because you are strong and wise and beloved by all, you are most worthy. But you deserve even better than that, I think.”

He reached out and took Mahon’s hand in his, looking up with proud eyes at the handsome young giant sprung from his loins. “My son, the time has come for the Dal Cais to bring new glory upon themselves, and upon all our homeland of Thomond.”

He paused, fighting back the overflow of some strong emotion, then continued. “I told your dear mother, shortly before ... she died ... that it was my dream to see you seated as the king of Cashel, king of all the tribes of Munster!”

Mahon stared at his father, momentarily appalled. It was the first he had heard of Cennedi’s intention to elevate him to the status of a provincial king, and the concept was so alien to his own modest plans for his future as a tribal chieftain that he could scarcely comprehend what he was hearing.

“But you, father . . .” he finally managed to say. “You would make a better king of all Munster than I ...”

“That well may be,” Cennedi agreed, “but I am an old man. The people are more likely to accept vital young blood As soon as I am able, we will march, recruiting fighting men as we go, and when we get to Cashel we will demand that Callachan avenge us fully against the Northmen, or give up his kingship to a more worthy man.”

Mahon knitted his brows in an earnest effort to absorb this! latest shock. Cennedi glared at him. “Do you question the wisdom of your sire, the ruler of your tribe?”

Mahon bowed his golden head. “Of course not, my lord. I accept your will with my whole heart, if that is what you want.”

“It is more than ‘what I want.’ We must be avenged! We must guarantee safety and power for our tribe in the future!” Lying in his bed, Cennedi gave his brain all the exercise his body could not take. Lachtna and Donncuan were rapidly recovering from their wounds, and to them fell the early footwork of organizing the campaign. As the other boys gained strength they too were given tasks, and their excitement and enthusiasm began to communicate itself to Mahon, so that he began looking with brighter eyes at the future his father was offering him.

The three youngest boys were to be sent to the great school at Clonmacnoise, to receive the finest education Ireland had to offer and prepare them to take their places in the world as the brothers of a powerful provincial king. It occurred to Mahon that the whole plan might have been simmering in his father’s mind for years, only waiting for circumstance to bring it to life, full-blown.

On the morning they marched away, Brian stood at the gate of the monastery to watch them go. He himself had polished Mahon’s sword, running his fingers reverently over the sharpened edge of the blade. “Will you kill the man who killed Mother?” he asked.

Mahon smiled down at him. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to find him, little brother.”

“You will!” Brian said confidently. “If I was going with you, I could find him!”

“You go to school and learn Latin and Greek; that will give you enough to do for a time,” Mahon said.

“But you’ll send for me soon, won’t you? When I’m just a little bigger .. . and know Latin and Greek?”

He tugged at Mahon’s tunic sleeve. “Please promise me you won’t forget!”

Mahon ruffled the little boy’s hair with a fond hand, but his eyes were already straying to the road, and to the band of men assembled there, waiting for him. “I won’t forget,” he said.

Brian stood in the bright summer sunlight and watched them go, tormented by envy. He had seen death in all its ugliness, but he was still too young to believe himself mortal. Personal danger was nothing compared to the pain of being left behind when Mahon went off, like Nuada the Perfect, to fight glorious wars.

He watched them march across a rolling grassland between lifting hills, following the road that ran down to the river. As they reached the last curve that would take them out of sight, Brian stood on tiptoe and waved both arms frantically. “Father!” he cried. “Mahon!”

But Mahon’s mind had already leaped to the campaign ahead. He could not afford the luxury of looking back at the peace and sanctuary of Killaloe, and so he did not see the small figure reaching out to him in desperate pleading and farewell.

Brian waved until his arms were tired, but no one waved back.

On a wooden bench in a grassy courtyard sat a boy who was no longer a child. His growing bones thrust outward against his skin as they lengthened into manhood. To himself, he seemed to be all hands and feet, knees and elbows; an angular and knobby creature totally lacking in grace.

But there were brief, dazzling moments when a consciousness came to him, as awareness of the sun comes to a trout lying at the bottom of a dark pool. In tiny flashes he glimpsed the future waiting for him, just beyond his reach. Every added bulge of muscle was a promise that made him impatient with the confining walls of Clonmacnoise and the measured pace of his life.