Lion of Ireland (23 page)

“I have my reasons” was all Deirdre would say, and she threatened to grow so upset that Fithir soothed her with a kiss and left her alone with her maid.

“I cannot understand what troubles the girl,” Fithir complained to her own maidservant. “Once, all she spoke of was Brian of the Dal Cais; now that he is actually here she hides from him as if her face were ruined by the pox. If I were but a few years younger, and my period of mourning were over ...” She winked at the maid, who promptly winked back. Deirdre was not the only woman at Cashel who spied on Brian.

“His brother is more of an age for you, my lady,” the maid commented.

Fithir smiled softly. “Aye, and he is a fine figure of a man himself. You do not need to remind me of a woman’s thoughts, Una—I have plenty of my own. A cold bed has never been to my liking.”

In her own cold bed, Deirdre sat with her small chin cupped in her palm, watching the candle flames.

Candles burned all night in Deirdre’s bedchamber. Beyond them were shadows peopled with beings faceless and unfaceable, and her fear of the dark had become so overwhelming that it was no longer challenged. Where Deirdre was, there must always be light.

He doesn’t know I’m ruined, she thought, staring through the flicker of orange light with eyes that were not focused. He does not know; no one knows. But would he, if... ? Can men tell such a thing?

Could I go to the marriage bed with a man—even him?

She hugged her knees and shivered in her thin linen shift. Her black hair had been plaited for the night in two thick ropes that fell down across her bosom, and her maid slept, as she always did, on the floor at the foot of Deirdre’s bed, trying to ignore the light.

The girl pulled a blanket around her and continued to watch the flame. The other one, she thought. He didn’t come to Mahon’s crowning, they said. No one came from Limerick. I suppose I should be glad that the Northmen and the Dal Cais have such a hatred for one another that Ivor would not send a representative.

But if he had come ... and if I had gone to Prince Brian and told him what happened to me ... would-Brian have killed him for me?

She smiled in the soft light, her lips drawing back from small white teeth. It was not a pleasant smile.

At last the lips closed again of their own accord, and Deirdre shifted restlessly on her bed.

Why would Brian be willing to avenge me? she asked the night. He does not know me, he has never seen me. All the love we share has been only in my mind, and now there are so many other things in ray mind.

Ugly things ... She twisted on the bed and wrung her

blanket in her hands.

He will go away again soon. They say he will go to fight the Northmen and try to drive them out of Munster entirely. Perhaps he will meet ... that one ... in battle ...

She threw herself down on her stomach and buried her

face in the crook of her arm.

“I cannot go any longer without meeting him. Even if he finds out about me. It will not matter, if only he will smile at me for a little time, and perhaps sing me a song.

One small song of love. Is that asking too much?

“I’ve been foolish, sister, giving in to a young girl’s silliness, but I’m over it now.” Deirdre stood in front of Fithir with her hands clasped together, her toes peeking evenly from beneath the blue of her gown. Her hair was freshly braided in the elaborate court style and tied with silk thread and golden balls. Jewels glowed at her throat and wrists, and a belt of gold links encircled her narrow waist.

Too narrow, Fithir thought, eyeing her critically. “We have all been worried about you, child. Are you certain you’re all right?”

“Perfectly all right,” Deirdre answered in a tight, controlled voice.

Oh dear, Fithir thought, that doesn’t sound all right at all. Perhaps I have been so involved with my own grief and worries about our future that I have neglected this girl, but she certainly had not welcomed my attentions lately. I really must try to make more of an effort with her.

“Perhaps, now that you are back with us you can tell me what’s been troubling you,” Fithir suggested gently.

Deirdre would not meet her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell. Just think of me as ... as growing out of childhood and becoming a woman. I was like the caterpillar that must go into a cocoon all alone for a time, so that it can emerge as a butterfly. Now I have emerged.” She smiled brightly.

Such a pat little speech and such flowery words, Fithir said to herself. I would be willing to wager that it is a cover for something, but if I push at her and try to find the answer to the mystery she might shatter like crystal. Was she always this tense and delicate, I wonder, and am I just now noticing it?

The great banqueting hall of Cashel was ablaze with torches and rushlights, and fat new candles blossomed golden on every table. The servants, tremble-kneed with eagerness to impress their new lord, had piled cushions on the benches and dumped basketloads of rushes and rose petals on the floor. The transition in power had been made so smoothly that many among them felt they would be allowed to stay on, like Fithir, changing allegiances rather than masters. It was an arrangement that suited Mahon, who found the prospect of transporting his entire household staff across the Shannon tiresome.

But the style of Mahon was not the style of Donogh or Callachan. Mahon believed it was the duty of a king to be open-handed, even lavish in his hospitality, and he invited all who came to stay the month with him. Even the sprawling buildings of Cashel could not hold them all, and cottagers for miles around became innkeepers overnight.

On this evening, Mahon just finished proposing a toast to the absent Malachi—“A man I should very much like to meet”—as basins were passed so that the guests might wash their hands and servants were bringing in the platters of bread and fish. At the door to the ladies’ wing, a herald announced, “The lady Fithir, and the princess Deirdre!” Toasts and goblets were forgotten as all turned to see the mysterious princess make her long-overdue appearance.

Fithir entered first, smiling directly at Mahon but nodding graciously left and right. As she neared the king’s seat her smile grew deeper, as did her dimples; when they came together at the table men elbowed one another and winked.

But by that time the main attention in the hall was fixed on the woman who followed her.

Deirdre was dressed in a clinging gown the color of wood violets in deep shade, and her eyes seemed to be of the same hue. Her lashes were so black and thick that they appeared to weight down the long, delicate lids above them. She walked in small steps, toe first, so that she glided across the floor with unusual grace, unlike Fithir, who had a definite bounce to her gait.

The men had risen in honor of the ladies when the herald made his announcement. As Deirdre took her place they all sat down again, with a resumed clatter and bustle, save for Brian. He could only stand there, feeling huge, and look at the exquisite being some miracle had placed beside him.

She was so little, a woman in miniature. A mere breath might blow her away. But in his eyes she glowed as no maiden ever had before. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach out and touch the silky little curls clustered about the ivory skin of her temples.

He came to himself, a little, when Mahon laughed. “It appears my brother has received a mortal wound!”

Mahon jested, and the company roared with laughter. “Let us pray he can recover himself enough to eat some of this excellent meal, for a man smitten by a pretty face has been known to lose his appetite entirely. It would do my reputation no good to have the prince starve to death in the midst of plenty!”

Brian sat down abruptly, aware of an embarrassed heat just beneath the surface of his skin.

“I apologize for staring, my lady,” he managed to say to her, but then she turned and gave him the full force of her huge violet eyes and he could say nothing else.

Her eyelids fluttered down and he noted, with awe, that their skin had a delicate sheen, and tiny blue veins of an impossible smallness. “I am not offended, my lord,” Deirdre murmured in a voice so soft he could scarcely hear her.

“It’s just . . .” he began again, fumbling for words in a mind gone blank. “I was afraid I would meet someone like you, sometime.”

Deirdre had been frozen within an icy shell of terror and excitement, but Brian’s words cut through it.

“What did you say?”

Flustered, he considered his last statement and tried to think of some satisfactory way of explaining it. “I meant it as a compliment, truly,” he told her. “I always seem to make a fool of myself when I speak to women. I meant that I did not want to find a woman who .. . who could touch my heart . . . until there was time in my life for her. You have come too soon for me, that’s all I meant.”

She heard only a little. “... a woman who could touch my heart,” he had said. Of her.

She toyed with her food, aware of the way his eyes turned again and again to watch the most commonplace gestures of her hands. She felt as if all the candles in the room surrounded her. Dreams shouldn’t come true, she said to herself, because it makes you too happy. You are too afraid of losing them.

Brian heard the little sigh that escaped her and felt a flooding anger. What could dare to distress her! Her being dominated his consciousness, and her smallness made massive claims upon his desire to protect and champion.

Mahon asked the seanchai to entertain his guest by reciting the history of the tribe Dal Cais, with special emphasis on the accomplishments of the line of Lorcan.

Listening, Brian thought only: I wonder if she is favorably impressed. She looks so perfect and lovely, like a polished jewel, complete and total within herself. What would impress her?

She fills my eyes. Every thing about her is just the way it should be, to please me; if I had drawn a design for a woman, and given it to a craftsman to execute in ivory flesh, the finished result would be the princess Deirdre.

Damn this ignorance of women! Fiona, camp followers, a shopkeeper’s wife—what have I learned about the softer sex? Nothing. And for years I have struggled to wipe them from my thoughts entirely. Now I sit beside this beautiful creature, and I know less about her and her kind than I would make it my business to know of the most minor adversary on a battlefield. I understand the words and images that inspire men, but I cannot put together a coherent sentence to win her admiration. She must think me a fool, and I agree with her.

Is he angry? she asked herself, studying his face with snatched sidelong glances. He is even more magnificent than they said! Have I done something wrong, or has he somehow guessed . . . Why does he sit there in silence?

Bedazzled, enchanted, the two sat locked alone with their private self-doubts in a room full of strangers.

Brian could not let a day pass without seeing her. He could not go into the ladies’ wing; Mahon had given those apartments to Fithir for her exclusive use as long as she wished to remain at Cashel. But Deirdre no longer stayed hidden; she walked in the garden and took her meals in the hall. Wherever she appeared, Brian contrived to be. He knew how to campaign best with a series of surprise confrontations and strategic withdrawals, so that was his tactic, always tempered with the great tenderness her presence inspired in him.

Sometimes, when she first glimpsed him, an expression would fleetingly cross her face that reminded him of the look a deer has as the hunter bends over it with a knife. It made him want to do terrible damage to whatever could frighten her so, and simultaneously fear that he, himself, might for some reason be that ogre. As if he would ever hurt her!

He marveled, remembering that the first time he saw her he had been frightened of her. It had taken only a very few days for him to think of her as a constant in his life, something he could nevermore do without.

Passion he was willing to set aside for a while, for any intimation of it seemed to up—set her, but of course that was the sacred innocence of maidenhood. He ignored his body and made love to her with his eyes, and with stumbling speeches that gradually improved with practice.

Deirdre knew he would ask the question. He would make the offer of a high bride-price for her noble blood and her presumed virginity, and Fithir, believing her to be whole and valuable, would accept on behalf of their family.

Unless she told Fithir what the Northman had done to her. And then, honor bound under the Brehon Law, Fithir would tell Brian that the girl he had asked for was no virgin, that the bride-price might be adjusted accordingly. For noble families, any such deception in the matter was a deadly insult that might be redressed in the Brehon court. Publicly.

But how could she, in her agonized shyness, tell anyone, even Fithir?

And if he knew, would Brian still want her?

She lay in bed at night suffering, trying to force her unwilling mind to frame the words that would retell that night of horror, and she could not do it. All she did was set off nightmares from which she awoke sick with terror. Every deliberate summoning of that memory brought her closer to some yawning blackness she could only sense, but which filled her with a greater fear than any she had yet known.

And there was the other knowledge, which she tried with all her small strength to push below the level of consciousness even as she tried to forget about the rape. The knowledge that what the Northman had done to her, a husband would do in their marriage bed.

And yet she loved him. Brian was the air she breathed, the only light in her sky.

Brian asked the question, and Fithir, believing she knew her sister’s heart, willingly gave assent.

“Although you are not of our tribe,” she told Brian, “we are impressed by the achievements of the Dalcassians, who have risen so rapidly from obscurity and promise us such great things for the future of Munster. I am confident you will make a fine husband for my sister.

“But you understand, of course, that the marriage must wait another half year, so that sufficient mourning may be given to my late husband, Deirdre’s near-brother.”