Pride of Lions (34 page)

The fire on the hearth had gone out. The stale air smelled of dead ash and sleep.

Donough and Blanaid passed through the hall without waking anyone. A yawning guard unbolted a massive oak door for them with a curious glance but no question, and they went outside.

The night was bitterly cold. There was no moon; the stars were so bright they stabbed at the eyes.

Blanaid drew her cloak more tightly around her and gazed upward. "Winter nights here have their own sort of beauty," she said conversationally.

"They do."

A pause ensued. "Is Alba what you expected?" she asked at last.

"I don't know what I expected."

"Why then did you come?"

"I'm not sure of that either," he replied honestly. "My mother ..."

"Ah yes. Your mother." Blanaid's voice was carefully neutral. "She was something I did not expect."

Donough laughed. "No one is ever prepared for Gormlaith."

In spite of herself, Blanaid laughed too.

"No, I suppose not."

Donough tried to read her face in the starlight.

"Is she the reason you were crying?"

"I wasn't crying. My husband has always had women; he's a king. It means nothing to me."

"No," he agreed amiably. He slouched against the wall beside her, and together they watched the sky as if messages were concealed among the stars.

"How strange it must be," Blanaid remarked after a while, "to have that woman as a mother."

"She's the only mother I've ever had, so I've no comparison. But most of the time I don't think of her as my mother."

"You don't? How do you think of her?"

"Just as Gormlaith."

"And our father?"

Donough drew a deep breath. When he spoke his voice was so deep and so familiar it startled Blanaid. "Ard Ri."

She whirled to stare at him. "You sound just like him."

"Do I?"

Blanaid's throat closed. Her eyes began to sting again. Not fair! she thought. I have not wept in years, and now twice in the same night ...

Donough exclaimed, "Look! Look there!"

She blinked hard and followed his pointing finger in time to see a shooting star. "The druids used to say a shooting star meant the death of a king," she said around the lump in her throat.

At the mention of druids, Cera leaped into Donough's mind. Overcome by an echo of sweet laughter and a smell of the wild woods, he stared unseeing into the night, his thoughts very far away.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Blanaid

broke. A storm of sobs shook her. She did not know if she was crying because Brian Boru was dead, because Malcolm was with Gormlaith, or simply because the sight of her brother had brought back Ireland with painful intensity.

In the next moment her brother's arms were around her and his hand at the back of her head was gently pressing her face into the hollow of his shoulder.

"Sssh," he whispered. "It's all right.

Sssh now."

Never in his life had Donough held sister or mother as he held Blanaid now. The emotions engendered were a revelation to him.

Surely what he had felt for Cera was love; a love that time and distance were gradually investing with a nostalgic melancholy. His feelings for Blanaid lacked the sexual excitement, but they were equally tender, and to his surprise they gave him a sense of family which he had never experienced with Gormlaith.

As he held his sister he was very aware that they shared the same father, a connection that was almost tangible. Links in a chain, Donough thought musingly. It was impossible to imagine putting his arms around Brian Boru, yet through his sister he was somehow embracing the man.

Love had a life of its own, then, an immortality that had nothing to do with death or distance.

With Blanaid in his arms, Donough had a sense of forces much larger than himself.

Cera, he thought again.

Brother and sister stood together under the stars.

They never spoke of that night afterward.

Blanaid's acquired Scottish reticence kept her silent, and Donough would not bring up the subject on his own, but he knew the same thing had happened to both of them. They had found family. When their eyes met in the hall or the courtyard or as they passed one another in some corridor, a warmth leaped between them that did not depend on words.

Across the Irish Sea, another member of Donough's family was thinking of him, though not tenderly. Carroll the historian made it his business to follow the fortunes of Brian's children, and had innocently mentioned Donough's trip during a conversation with Teigue.

They were in the great hall at Cashel, where Teigue now spent most of his time. Because the restoration of Kincora was taking longer than anticipated, he was keeping his family in the traditional fortress of the Munster kings. Cashel was magnificent in a forbidding way, comprised of a cluster of stone buildings perched atop a huge limestone outcropping with a view spanning much of Munster.

Teigue had begun taking several walks a day around the perimeter of the height. He would pause at various points and stand motionless, gazing out across the rolling, fertile land with a self-satisfied expression.

But Carroll would always prefer Kincora. He said as much, then added offhandedly, "I daresay Donough would agree with me. He must be finding Alba inhospitable by comparison."

Teigue stiffened. "What's he doing in Alba? Why did someone not tell me sooner?"

"I thought you knew already," replied Carroll.

"I did not know. Is he on a

pilgrimage? To Iona, perhaps?"

"It seems to be a family visit. Your sister Blanaid invited him to Malcolm's stronghold at Glamis, so he and Gormlaith ..."

"Donough took that woman? To Alba?!"

"He did."

"Then it's no family visit," Teigue snapped. "If Gormlaith is involved it can only be a conspiracy. What's she scheming to do now, have him take Munster from me?"

Carroll said soothingly, "Och, I'm sure neither of them has designs on your kingship."

"You're almost right," Teigue shot back.

"Munster is not their final objective, one province would never satisfy Gormlaith. She intends her son to be Ard Ri, and this visit to Malcolm's court is her way of promoting that ambition. It should be perfectly obvious to anyone who knows the woman!

"The very fact that Donough is her son condemns him. He must never be allowed power; a door that opens the slightest for him lets Gormlaith enter.

"I did not seek to be King of Munster, but now that I am, Donough will not make Cashel his steppingstone to Tara. I won't let him. With Brian Boru's own sword I will bar his way."

Carroll's jaw dropped. "Brian's sword? You have Brian's sword?"

A sly light, which once would have been uncharacteristic of Teigue, crept into his eyes.

"I might know where it is."

He would say no more, but Carroll was like a hound with a bone. The historian began quietly questioning the sentries, the spear carriers, the lower echelon who always knew more than the nobility.

He never mentioned the sword directly, but in time he had the answer he sought. It was not the answer he expected.

In addition to being King of the Scots and the Picts, Malcolm had been, since the death of a cousin in 991, Prince of Cumbria, the northwestern region along the Irish Sea. With his defeat of the Northumbrian army at Carham in 1016, he had extended his reign south to the Cheviot Hills. The control of so much territory required not only constant military vigilance, but considerable monarchical administration.

For this purpose he held court at Scone, to which he invited Donough and his men to accompany him. The distance was not great, a long day's ride along a well-beaten road through valleys carpeted with dead bracken. Gray crows wheeled above in gray sky, calling harshly to one another.

Scone was an ancient assembly

site predating Christianity. The buildings that now stood there were constructed of stone-kerbed timbers, with sod roofs upon which rank grasses grew. Built in the manner of an ancient broch, they comprised a cluster of round chambers, low-ceilinged, smelling of the earth.

"The Picts prefer this to Glamis,"

Malcolm explained to Donough on their first visit. "They are, or were, cave-dwellers, short-statured folk who feel comfortable in these surroundings. Skilled artisans, though. The silver ornamentation you see all around you is their work."

Scone felt old, Donough thought. And not Celtic. There was something else here, a different flavor in the air. The scent of metal and stone-dust.

Malcolm personally escorted his Irish guests to the tree-girded Moot Hill, or Assembly Site. "This mound was formed centuries ago of earth collected from throughout Pictland," he said proudly. "And there you see the Stone of Scone, believed to be part of the original stone pillow upon which the biblical patriarch Jacob rested while seeing his vision of angels."

With a proprietary sweep of his arm, he indicated a rectangular block of pale yellow sandstone at the top of the mound. "Jacob's Pillow eventually made its way to Ireland--some say with the Tuatha De Danann--where it was placed on the Hill of Tara. There it was called the Lia Fail, the Stone of Destiny and became the inauguration stone of the Irish high kings. My predecessor, Kenneth Mac Alpin, acquired a piece of the Lia Fail for his own inauguration as the first King of the Scots and the Picts--his mother was a Pictish princess--and named it the Stone of Scone. Each King of Alba since then has seated himself upon it. Rather than being crowned, we are "set upon the Stone."

"Go on, look at it. You may touch it if you like, Donough," Malcolm added magnanimously.

"You are of kingly blood."

Donough and his companions gathered around the revered stone, embedded like a jewel in the grass.

After one good look, Ronan snorted and nudged Donough with his elbow.

When Malcolm was out of earshot, he said,

"That's no more part of the Lia Fail than I am. I was on Tara, a mere lad in my first company of warriors, when your father stood upon the Lia Fail and it shrieked aloud, proclaiming him the true Ard Ri. I'll never forget that day nor anything about it--including the fact that the Lia Fail is gray, not yellow like Malcolm's rock. A different stone entirely."

"Is that true?" Fergal asked Donough.

"I don't know, I've never seen the Lia Fail. When my father went to Tara to be inaugurated, he left my mother and me at Kincora."

"Good job too," commented Cumara.

"Gormlaith had been married to Malachi Mor, and Brian was taking Malachi's high kingship away from him. It would have been too grave an insult to flaunt the fact that he had also married Malachi's former wife."

Donough knew, but did not say that Gormliath had never forgiven Brian for denying her her moment of glory at Tara, her chance to be honored as the new Ard Ri's wife in front of Malachi Mor. Their subsequent arguments about it were his earliest memories of his father.

Chieftains traveled to Scone from the far corners of Alba to do homage to Malcolm.

Donough listened attentively as the wily Scot played off one against another, always to his own advantage.

From time to time he would look up and catch Donough's eye and give the slow, solemn wink of shared conspiracy.

"The king is trying to impress me," Donough remarked to Fergal on a rare winter afternoon of radiant sunshine, when they were enjoying a stag hunt Malcolm had arranged for the new Mormaer of Ce. "He must believe I'm more powerful than I am."

Before Fergal could reply, Donough felt an unseen presence at his shoulder and in his head sounded the deep, slow voice he knew so well.

Perceptions are important, it counseled.

If Malcolm thinks you have hundreds of warriors at your command in Ireland, do not disillusion him.

Donough began dropping offhand references to

"my armies at home" into casual conversation.

At Scone he met a variety of powerful men come to negotiate with Malcolm for various reasons; the King of Man, the Lord of the Western Isles, the Mormaers of Caithness and Argyll, abbots and bishops and silver-haired Norse jarls and dark Pictish chieftains.

To all of these Malcolm unabashedly presented Donough as, "The son of the Emperor of the Irish," and Donough watched their eyes kindle with respect.

In Alba he was accorded a stature he did not possess at home.

He ordered Fergal and Ronan to flank his seat in the hall, holding spears at a ceremonial angle. Ronan obeyed without question, but Fergal took offense. "I'm entitled to have spear carriers of my own; I'm a prince of the Dal Cais!"

"I'm Brian Boru's son," Donough replied inarguably.

While Malcolm held court at Scone, Gormlaith was left at Glamis with the other women. Her son was relieved. He was finding her behavior increasingly disturbing. She howled with laughter at inappropriate times, which was bad enough, but her tendency to stare at Malcolm and then burst into tears unnerved him.

Donough had never before seen his mother cry.

Blanaid also remained in residence at Glamis, with Sigurd's widow, Thora, and the boy Thorfinn. She avoided Gormlaith whenever she could, which was not easy, as the big Irish woman dominated whatever space she occupied.

Blanaid held her temper and her dignity until the arrival of her oldest daughter, Bethoc, with her husband Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld, and their son, young Duncan.

Being of an age and like disposition, Duncan and Thorfinn immediately became

companions-in-mischief. Bethoc was reunited with her sister Thora, whom she had not seen in some years.

And Gormlaith flirted outrageously with the Abbot of Dunkeld.

Bethoc complained to her mother. When Malcolm next returned to Glamis he was unpleasantly surprised by a confrontation with his wife.

Blanaid would not fight him on her own behalf, but she was a tigress where her cubs were concerned.

"Do something about that woman!" she demanded.

"Short of locking her in her chamber," Malcolm replied, "I cannot keep Gormlaith out of the hall. I don't want to alienate Donough Mac Brian by abusing his mother."