Pride of Lions (24 page)

The old pattern of reprisal, Blanaid thought wearily. My father tried to break that mold.

But now ...

Malachi as Ard Ri and everything the way it was, before Brian. The flower of the Dal Cais dead at Clontarf, and Malachi, apparently by general consent, presiding over an Ireland that was reverting to unbridled tribal warfare.

Sometimes Blanaid felt very old and tired.

A shrill whistle split the air behind her.

She turned to see her maid-servant standing at the top of the path with two fingers in her mouth. The woman called down, "Your husband summons you, lady. He says there's something you might like to hear. A messenger brings the latest tidings from Ireland!"

Blanaid was briefly startled, as if God had overheard her thoughts and sent a direct response. Taking her skirts in her two hands, she hurried up the path.

A yellow-haired, jug-eared messenger stood warming his backside by the fire in Malcolm's great hall while he regaled king and courtiers with a mixture of hard news and titillating gossip.

As Blanaid entered the hall, Malcolm threw an automatic glance in his

wife's direction. His dark eyes gleamed like obsidian beneath their heavy black brows. The sight of her still pleased him after all these years, though he never told her so. Revealing affection to a woman was a sign of weakness.

But she was wearing well, he admitted to himself.

He had wanted an Irish wife because he had an Irish mother who wore well. When Brian Boru, who was then only King of Munster, was marrying his children into noble families wherever he could to extend his influence beyond provincial borders, Malcolm had agreed to have a look at one of his daughters.

One look at Blanaid had been all he needed. Twenty-six years later she was still good to look at, with a straight back, a relatively unlined brow, and large eyes the color of the sea off Montrose. In dim light she could be mistaken for one of her own daughters.

"I thought you'd be interested in hearing this,"

Malcolm said now as Blanaid paused just inside the low, arched doorway. "It's about Ossory."

Pressing her lips tightly together, Blanaid crossed the room to seat herself on a cushioned bench near the hearth. No matter how many times she told him, her husband still thought she came from Ossory.

"Tell us that part again," Malcolm instructed the messenger. "Take up where I stopped you before."

Dutifully the man recited, "When Maelfogarty of Ossory led a raiding party into Thomond recently, Prince Donough Mac Brian recruited an army to challenge him. The Ossorians defeated the Dalcassians and a number of Donough's followers were slain."

Malcolm turned to his wife. "What do you think of that? Your Ossorians must be good warriors."

"They are not my Ossorians," she reminded him patiently, as she had done many times before.

"My mother was born in Ossory, but all her people came from Connacht. Those things matter in Ireland.

I am connected with Donough Mac Brian, though; he's my half-brother."

Malcolm suppressed a smile. Teasing his wife gave him a small and secret pleasure because she never seemed to realize she was being teased.

Long before she set foot on the shores of Alba, Blanaid had believed that all Scots were humorless. As Malcolm, until he met her, had assumed all Irish were emotional. Blanaid, however, was a deep pool, keeping her feelings to herself. She managed his household calmly and competently, eschewing extravagance, which pleased him. There had never been great passion between them--he believed she was incapable of passion--but her very serenity had proved a haven in his otherwise turbulent life.

And he did enjoy teasing her.

"I know about your half-brother," he said aloud. "And you have another who is now King of Munster. Should he not be the one to challenge raiders in his kingdom?"

Blanaid's thoughts ran back over the years, searching for brightly lit niches of memory along the dark passageway of time. "Teigue was always the least contentious of us," she said. "I recall him as a rather gentle boy, compared to the others."

"Gentle." Malcolm gave a dismissive snort. "Not a particularly desirable attribute in a king; kings have to be fighters.

What about Donough? What's he like?"

"I don't know him. You and I were married and I was in Alba before he was born. He was the youngest of all Father's children."

"Your father certainly sired a number of sons," Malcolm remarked, his rasping voice tinged with envy. Though he was only thirteen years younger than the late Ard Ri of Ireland, his offspring were lamentably fewer: four daughters.

His people blamed Blanaid, but in his inmost heart he suspected the seeds for sons withered and died in him before he could ever sow them in a woman.

Punishment for his sins, if one believed in such things. But a king could ill afford a conscience.

"Prince Donough is a widower,"

volunteered the messenger in response to Malcolm's query. "His wife miscarried a son and died of a fever."

A frown stitched Blanaid's forehead. "A widower already, and he not twenty? That's a hard beginning."

The messenger nodded agreement. "Added to that, Prince Teigue has refused him part of the inheritance he claimed, and now this defeat; a defeat he did not deserve!" the man added, betraying his own sympathies in the family quarrel. "He's a fine warrior, Donough is."

Malcolm stroked his beard. "His mother is Gormlaith, is she not? We could hardly expect a son of the notorious Princess of Leinster to be ... gentle." With a half-smile, he turned to Blanaid. "Perhaps we should invite this brother of yours to Glamis and get to know him."

Donough was astonished to receive an invitation from the King of Alba. Ostensibly it came from his sister Blanaid, but it would never have been issued, he knew, without her husband's approval.

When he mentioned the invitation to Gormlaith her face lit with enthusiasm. "Send him our acceptance this very day!"

"Our acceptance?"

"Well, of course, our. You know nothing of foreign courts. You will have to have someone at your side to explain the intricacies of knotted relationships, and who better than me? Who more sympathetic to your own cause?"

Donough gave his mother a look. "What is

"my own cause"?"

She smiled sweetly. "Whatever you want it to be, my son. You wish to emulate your father--do you think I don't know? To realize his unrealized dreams? A noble ambition and one of which I am sure he would approve. But if you are to succeed, you will require more than an army. You will need the support of foreign warlords. The world is much larger than Ireland. You saw how advantageous his foreign connections were to him at Clontarf, when Malcolm sent a great prince of the Scots to fight on your father's side.

"The time has come for you to expand your reach, my son; this invitation is an omen. And I shall be with you, helping you all the way. I desire for you everything you desire for yourself. You know that."

He knew no such thing. Gormlaith danced to her own music, and if she offered help, one could be certain it was only to further some scheme of her own.

He had never meant to keep her with him indefinitely. In an effort to discourage her, he had abandoned any idea of living in a fort and built himself a sort of camp in the valley of the Fergus, a cross between a military encampment and the seasonal dwellings thrown up by herdsmen. It had proved to be an excellent focal point for gathering disaffected Dalcassians to him, but the facilities were deliberately made uncomfortable for a woman.

Gormlaith, to his dismay, had chosen to see the whole thing as an adventure. "I'm tired of luxury," she had announced. "I get tired of anything after a while--a gown, a man, a way of life. This camp of yours will refresh my jaded palate, Donough; it's a fine idea."

To prove the point, she settled into a lean-to constructed of woven branches and thatch and made herself quite at home, as if she had grown up following the cattle from pasture to pasture. She dressed in unbleached linen, went barefoot, and swam nude in the river, scandalizing Donough, who thought she had already exhausted her capacity for shocking him.

"You're too old for such carry-on!" he protested.

"Nonsense, it's taking years off me. Are you afraid one of your men will look at my naked body and grow a spear of desire? That would make me younger still, I assure you!"

Gormlaith threw back her head and hooted with laughter at the look on her son's face.

But she proved unable to face a winter in the open. Having ascertained that the plague had ended, she finally returned to Dublin to impose herself on Sitric and his wife--an imposition they did everything to discourage. It took Malachi Mor's burning of the Viking port to drive Gormlaith out, however, and once more she made her way west to appear at Donough's camp, confidently expecting him to take her in. "I am your mother," she said as if no other argument were necessary.

That became her pattern. Summer with Donough, winter with Sitric; time divided between Gael and Viking. Neither man liked it, and Sitric's wife was almost manic in her hatred of Gormlaith, but no one could force Gormlaith into any other arrangement. When all else failed she fell back on motherhood, demanding the protection of her sons as her right.

Sitric Silkbeard was heard to mutter that the exposing of female infants at birth was probably not a bad idea.

But Donough had been glad enough to have Gormlaith waiting when he returned from his defeat at the hands of the Ossorians.

Old scores had been settled; many of his best men were dead. Yet to his

surprise Gormlaith spoke no word of criticism. She briskly set about tending the wounded and making small jokes to boost their spirits.

She even flirted with them; the more grievous a man's injuries, the more flagrant her behavior.

On some it worked wonders. Men who were given up for dying revived after having their heads pressed into Gormlaith's still capacious bosom.

Donough told Fergal, "I hate to admit it, but there are times the woman is an asset."

She would not be an asset in Alba, however; of that he was convinced. The prospect of traveling to the land of the Scots with Gormlaith was daunting.

But she busied herself with plans and preparations as if there was never any question of his leaving her behind. She made a point of telling his officers, "This will be the journey of a lifetime for me, and aren't I fortunate to have a son who will take me to foreign courts, to mingle with people of my own stature? What a memory to treasure in my old age!"

She clasped her hands over her breasts. She rhapsodized over Donough's kindness. At some point he realized he would have to take her or risk the profound disapproval of his men, all of whom had mothers.

Although she kept dropping tantalizing hints about the life and times of Malcolm the Second, she was careful not to reveal what she knew. "I shall tell you when we're underway," she promised.

"It will make the voyage go faster, and be fresh in your mind when you actually set eyes on the man."

Donough knew she was manipulating him; recognized her tactics with a dark and bitter amusement and a certain reluctant admiration. But it was not worth arguing; there was too much to be done.

Arrangements to be made, good-byes to be said.

Since his final frustrating visit to the fort he had built south of the Burren, Donough had tried not to think about Padraic's daughter. Like the abandoned fort, she was a symbol of youthful dreams and extravagant plans set aside.

Neassa's death and the loss of his son had changed something inside him.

But he did not want to leave Ireland without informing Padraic's daughter. It was inexplicably important to him that she know where he was.

Taking a fast horse and no bodyguard, he set out to find her. He told no one, not even Fergal, where he was going.

A lashing rain was falling as he galloped through an endless sea of wet weather. His horse plunged beneath him like a ship breasting the waves; spume blew back from its open mouth to fleck his clothing.

Blind Padraic's holding was easy enough to find.

A herder on a hillside gave him exact directions and he galloped on, the bulk of Slieve Calan looming ever nearer. The rain blew away; a watery sun shone.

At last Donough took pity of his blowing horse and drew rein on the shores of a lake to allow the animal to drink. While the horse sucked up water in grateful gulps, Donough looked around.

It occurred to him that this would have been a better site for his fort than the one he had chosen. Fish leaped in the shallows as if begging to be caught.

A solitary islet in the middle of the lake was an ideal nesting site for wildfowl, and the sandy beach on which he stood was perfect for launching small boats. As for pasturage, on one side swelling hills climbed toward green uplands, on the other were sweeping meadows tufted with arbutus.

Aside from the sounds his horse made while drinking, the silence was absolute.

A peculiar light glittered on the surface of the lake.

The horse raised its head and snorted softly.

Donough tensed. His warrior's instincts told him he was not alone. Very slowly he turned.

She was standing almost directly behind him at a distance of fifteen or twenty paces.

Today she was not wearing the red skirt, but a short apron that barely covered her knees. Her leine was open at the throat and her hair tumbled unbound around her shoulders. She hardly seemed clothed at all; he was intensely aware of her supple body beneath the veiling fabric.

"How long have you been standing there?" he asked.

She smiled and walked toward him. "Long enough."

"How did you know I was here?" It did not occur to him that this was an odd way to begin their conversation, as if they were old friends who had just found themselves in the same room.

She did not answer.

Donough dropped the horse's reins and walked forward to meet her. The words which had been coming so easily dried up on his tongue when he was close enough to touch her. He held out one hand instead.