Dublin (46 page)

  Unconsciously, he had braced his crippled leg to take her weight.

  And she had floated down, light as a feather. Before her feet touched the ground, she had half turned in his arms, smiling, to thank him, and as well as her lightness, he had become instantly conscious of her wiry strength. So strong, yet so light in hand: such a woman promised many sensual delights.

  As the weeks went by, her attraction grew. He soon discovered the strength of her intelligence: he respected that. She was proud: her pride did him honour. She was also cautious. It was not long before he noticed that if she offered to spend time in his company, it was partly so that she could observe him.

  Sometimes she would start seemingly innocent conversations.

  She might say, "I felt sad last night and the sadness would not leave me. Do you ever feel like that?"

  And only afterwards would he realise that she had been testing him to find out if he was subject to moods.

  When he visited her at Rathmines, she had the servants bring him wine repeatedly, to see if he would drink too much. He did not mind these little traps she set for him. If she was careful, so much the better. And it was gratifying that, beyond the cautious enquiries, she let him see that she was starting to care for him.

  He, of course, knew all about her. He hadn't needed to make his own enquiries; his friend Morann had seen to that, and the silversmith's investigations had led to only one conclusion.

  "You could hardly do better," Morann told him.

  It would certainly look well to have such a wife at his side; and though Harold was too sensible to be much swayed by such things, he saw no reason why he shouldn't cut a handsome figure in the world.

  In fact, there was only one obstacle to their marriage. It did not appear until halfway through June, when he proposed to her. For after the usual expressions, instead of answering at once, she told him that she must first ask him a single question.

  "What is that?" he asked.

  "Would you mind my asking, what religion it is you follow andbrvbarbb8"andbrvbar; now:

  The question was not strange. She had known that, at the time of his marriage, Harold had been a pagan, but it was harder than ever to know, nowadays, what religion people followed in Dyflin. Though some of the Vikings in Dyflin had remained faithful to Thor, Woden, and the other gods of the north, since her childhood the old Norse gods had been in steady decline. There had been too many marriages with Christians. The King of Dyflin was the son of a Christian Leinster princess. Besides, if the pagan gods protected their own, people might ask, then how was it that every time the men of Dyflin had challenged the High King, they had lost? And 'Brian Boru, the patron of monasteries, was their master now. The old wooden church had been rebuilt in stone, and the Viking King of Dyflin had openly worshipped there. So it was not surprising if the Ostmen nowadays were often vague about their religious beliefs.

  Harold, for instance, wore a talisman round his neck that might have been taken for a cross or a symbol of Thor; and certainly few of the varied folk who came into the busy port would have pressed him as to which it was.

  In truth, like most middle-aged men, Harold no longer had any strong feelings about the gods, and it would have mattered little to him whether he were Christian or not. But faced with her sudden question, he hesitated. "Why is it you ask?"

  "It would be hard for me to marry a man who was not a I Christian." She smiled. "It is easy to be baptised." "I will think about what you say," he replied. She waited for him to say more. He watched her instead. She flushed a little.

  "I hope you will do it," she said.

  He waited to see if she would concede any more, but she did not. Soon afterwards, he returned home. A week passed before they met again.

  Harold considered the matter carefully during those days. The I business of baptism, as such, was nothing. He didn't mind that. But it was the way Caoilinn had brought it up that concerned him. be Why, if it was so important to her, had she waited this long? It could only be because she thought that, once he had committed himself so far, he could be manipulated. True, the fact she'd waited also be showed that she had been anxious not to put him off.

  She wanted

I

  to secure him. But look at it however you liked, she was raising her price. If he loved her, of course, he could pay the price and laugh it off. But if she was going to play a trick like that once, mightn't she do it again? He was old enough to know that, however subtle the game, marriage was a balance of power; and he wasn't sure he liked the way she played.

  By waiting a week, he was indicating his displeasure and giving her a chance to back down.

  But what if she didn't. What was he going to do?

  Did he really intend to give her up on account of her god? If he did, and she married someone else, wouldn't he regret it? Each time he went over the matter in his mind, he found that it came down to the same thing. It's not what she asks for, he thought, that I care about, but how she asks for it. What matters is her attitude.

  It was late in June when he rode back again to Rathmines. He had no definite plan, even then. He did not know whether he was going to offer to be baptised, and whether he'd be married or not. As he approached the big earth wall and palisade of her rath, he had no other plan than to watch, and listen, and follow his instincts, and see what happened. After all, he told himself as he rode up to the entrance, I can always leave and come back again another day. Only one thing worried him a little: how was he going to open the conversation on such a delicate subject? He still didn't know when he saw her coming to the gateway. I'll just trust, he supposed, to luck.

  She met him with a smile. She led him inside. A slave brought him mead. She told him how glad she was that he had come. Was there something new, something almost respectful in her manner? It seemed to him there was.

  "Oh, Harold, son of Olaf," she said, "I am so relieved that you have come. I have been feeling so embarrassed by my impudence- truly impudence-to you when we last met."

  "It was not impudence," he said.

  "Oh, but it was," she cut in earnestly. "When you had done me the honour-the honour comto make the offer you did. And I never expect it to be repeated now. But that I should have dared to impose conditions on a man I respect so much …"

  "Your god is important to you."

  "It is true. Of course. And because I believe He is the true God, I was anxious to share…

  I certainly won't deny," she allowed her hand lightly to touch his arm, "that if you were ever to come to the true faith, I should rejoice. But that is no excuse for what I did. I am not a priest." She paused. "I was so anxious to say this to you and to ask for your forgiveness."

  It was admirably done. He might not be entirely deceived, but it was agreeable, very agreeable, to be so flattered.

  "You are kind and generous," he replied with a smile.

  "It is the respect you are owed, nothing more," she said, placing her hand on his arm again. She waited a few moments.

  "There is something else," she said. She led him towards a trestle table on which there was an object of some kind, covered with a cloth.

  Supposing this might be a platter of food, he watched as she carefully pulled away the covering.

  But instead of food, he saw an arrangement of small, hard objects that glinted in the weak, interior light.

  And coming closer, he stared in surprise.

  It was a chess set. A magnificent chess set, the pieces carved of bone tipped with silver and set on a polished wooden board. He had s een it before, in Morann's workshop.

  "It is for you," said Caoilinn. "A token of my respect. I know," she added, "that the Ostmen like to play chess."

  It was perfectly true that the marauding Viking traders had de veloped a liking for the intellectual game, though this may partly have been because the carved chessmen were often objects of great value. Though Harold seldom played the game himself, he was t ouched that Caoilinn should have gone to such trouble on his ac count.

  I wanted you to have it," she said, and he scarcely knew what to r eply.

  He realised, of course, that she had outmanoeuvred him. He knew that she was betting that sooner or later he would convert to the faith of the Christians to please her. And he supposed that he probably would. By raising the issue, moreover, and then giving way so graciously, she had placed him in her debt. He saw through her, understood, but didn't mind. For hadn't she also signalled clearly that she knew when she had gone too far?

  That, he reckoned, was good enough.

  "I have only one request," she continued, "though you may refuse it if you wish. If ever you should wish to marry me at some future time, I should ask if there could be a ceremony conducted by a priest. Just for my sake. He would not be asking you what you believe, you may be sure."

  He waited a few more days, then he came back to ask her, and was accepted. Since she wanted to complete the harvest at Rathmines before she left that estate, it was agreed that they would marry, and she would come to his house in the autumn.

  For Harold, the days that followed began a period of both anticipation and contentment. Rather to his own surprise, he had already started to feel younger; and he looked forward to the autumn eagerly.

  For Caoilinn, the prospect of marriage meant that she was ready to fall in love. Although, when she had first asked him to be baptised, she had fully intended that Harold should give in, she realised afterwards that she was glad that he had fought her. She respected him for it, and she had rather enjoyed the challenge of bringing him round. The vigorous, red-haired Ostman was like a spirited horse that one could only just control, she thought. Yet at the same time, he was a sensible man. What could be better? He was safe and he was dangerous and he was where she wanted him. By July, as the fields were ripening in the summer sun, she enjoyed some very pleasant fantasies about the times they would spend together. By the time he next came to call, her heart was quite in a flutter.

  And it was just then that she had another happy thought.

  "I shall ask my cousin Osgar to marry us," she told Harold. "Hes a monk at Glendalough."

  And she explained to Harold about Osgar and their childhood marriages, though she left out the incident on the path.

  "Does this mean I have a rival?" he asked cheerfully.

  "Yes and no," she answered, smiling. "He probably still loves me, but he can't have me."

  "He certainly cannot," said Harold firmly.

  She sent a message to Osgar the very next day.

  The blow fell two days after that. It fell without warning, from the summer sky.

  The northern headland of the Liffey's bay, with its lovely view down the coast to the volcanic hills, was a pleasant place to hold a quiet conference. As well as its Celtic name of Ben Edair, the Hill of Edair, it had acquired a Norse name also nowadays, for the Ostmen called it Howth. Often as not, therefore, the local people mixed the two languages together and referred to it as the Ben of Howth. And it was on a warm day in early July that Harold and Morann Mac Goibnenn met upon the Ben of Howth to discuss the situation.

  It was Harold, in his genial way, who summed it up when he remarked, "Well, Morann, I think we may say that the men of Leinster have finally proved that they are insane."

  "It cannot be doubted," Morann wryly replied.

  "Thirteen years of peace, thirteen years of prosperity, put at risk for what? For nothing."

  "And yet," Morann added sadly, "it was inevitable."

  "Why?" The Leinster men had never forgiven Brian, of course, for daring to be their master. But why, after years of peace, should they have decided to challenge him now? To Harold it made no sense.

  "An insult was offered," said Morann. The rumour was that the King of Leinster and Brian's son had fallen out over a game of chess, and that Brian's son had taunted the king with his humiliation at the battle of Glen Mama more than a decade before.

  "That could start a war," the Celtic chiefs of Leinster cheerfully agreed. "That would do it."

  Worse, the Leinster king had left Brian's camp without permission and struck the messenger Brian had sent after him. "And then," Morann added, "there was the woman." Brian's ex-wife, the King of Leinster's sister, longing to see Brian humbled: like a vengeful Celtic goddess, like the Morrigain herself, she was reputed to be stirring up trouble between the parties.

  "Why is it," the Norseman burst out, "that the men of Erin allow their women to make so much trouble?"

  "It has always been the practice," said Morann.

  "But you know very well," he added, "that it's your own Ostmen who are behind this as well."

  Harold sighed. Was he getting old? He knew the call of the high seas; he'd sailed them half his life. Those adventures were past though. All he wanted was to live on his farm at peace. But around the seaborne settlements of the Norsemen, a restlessness had arisen that year, and now it had come to Dyflin, too.