Lion of Ireland (35 page)

“Oh, Brian, he has seen no one but Marcan and the other priests until this very last hour, when he sent for the barber!”

“The barber?” Brian asked, baffled.

Fithir’s sobs redoubled. “He asked to have his hair cut in a tonsure! Like a monk.” she wailed.

Mahon had returned to Cashel sick at heart. Refusing to see anyone or discuss the battle, he went directly to his private chamber and barred the door. A crowd of courtiers piled up in his wake, each clamoring for an audience, but the door remained resolutely shut.

Marcan, who had been waiting at Cashel to discuss his possible appointment to the hierarchy of the Church with his brother the king, at last succeeded in talking his way past the guard and knocked on Mahon’s door, calling his name in a loud voice.

He was granted a grudging admission. Mahon sat in a lampless darkness, his chin sunk upon his chest; he did not look at his priestly brother. “What do you want?” he asked Marcan in a hollow voice.

“To remind you of God’s mercy,” Marcan replied smoothly, realizing that the king was in no frame of mind to discuss bishoprics and abbacies. “Whatever burden you bear, dear brother, I assure you that God will lift it from your shoulders if you will only ask Him.”

Mahon groaned, “I have looked into Hell! I have seen the ultimate ugliness of men’s souls. I watched while our own tribesmen turned into beasts like the Northmen . .. and the responsibility was mine; they murdered babies in my name!”

“Christ look down upon us!” Marcan breathed. He hurried across the room and flung himself on his knees beside his brother. “My lord king, my dear brother, God in His wisdom Has surely sent me to you in this moment of your distress. Lean on me and let me help you, and together we will ask God to bring you peace, and comfort for your over-burdened soul.” Marcan’s features arranged themselves into a beatific smile.

After several hours he emerged from the chamber and ordered a page to summon the king’s confessor.

To him Marcan

related in triumphant voice, “I have been blessed by God! I am being allowed to bring the wandering soul of the king to the ultimate realization of God’s plan. He will give up the love of luxury and the sinful trappings of temporal power and be God’s man from henceforth, like the great priest-kings of old. Come with us to the chapel, that we may pray.”

The three men knelt together on the stone floor. Following Marcan’s instructions, Mahon extended his arms in the Sign of the Cross and held them outstretched, hour after hour, until the agony of his muscles erased the sight of Limerick from his tortured mind. The blaze of religious fervor that had long ago consumed Marcan leaped from him to his brother, and Mahon welcomed it, welcomed its flames that were brighter than his nightmare vision of the dying Norse city.

He prostrated himself before the altar and poured out his bitterness and his horror to One who, Marcan assured him, would understand.

Brian had not waited to wash himself with the ritual warmed and scented water offered to every guest and resident of Cashel, but had hurried directly to Deirdre’s bedside to see her condition for himself, and feast his eyes on their firstborn son.

The baby was lusty and red-faced, with an undeniably healthy set of lungs. Deirdre looked pale and shrunken beneath the covers, but her clear gaze was lucid and she smiled brightly at him when Brian entered the room. She lifted one thin white hand, and he pressed it gratefully to his lips.

“My lord,” she acknowledged softly.

At first he was as careful with her as one is in the presence of an old wound, but when her eyes remained dry and her voice cheerful he began to hope that perhaps the baby had, after all, worked a small miracle.

“There will be a celebration in the banqueting hall tonight,” he told Deirdre, “and I would like to present my—our—son formally to the court.” ~~Her eyes misted, not with melancholy but with happiness.

“I wish I were strong enough to be there with you,” she told him.

But Deirdre was not the only member of the king’s family to be absent from the festive occasion.

Mahon’s High Seat

met Brian’s she shook her head.

“The king is still at his prayers,” she told everyone firmly, “and has asked not to be disturbed.”

The hall buzzed with whispers and speculation.

Before the first red wine was poured a maidservant entered with the infant in her arms, and carefully unfolded the fine linen sheet in which he was wrapped so that everyone could see he was a healthy male.

Beaming with pride, Brian lifted the boy above his head. “My son!” he shouted down the hall. “Murrough mac Brian, prince of the Dal Cais!”

“Murrough mac Brian!” they thundered back to him amid cheers and blessings.

Murrough drew a deep breath and yelled.

At his victory celebration, Brian had particularly requested the attendance of those men still living who were survivors with him of the outlaw days in Thomond. Now they entered the hall one by one, cleaned and freshly dressed but with the scars of their most recent battle still on them, and Brian gave to each a special token, some treasure of exceeding value liberated from the Norse city. As they came and knelt before him, the herald read their names and Aed made a brief poem, reciting each man’s history and special accomplishments.

Liam mac Aengus, who had been their physician when they had no other. Leti of the Long Knife, his face permanently scarred into a grin that Brian found beautiful, because ‘he knew its price. Kian and Brendan and Illan Finn. The brothers Loaghaire and Reardon Bent-Knee. Fergus the Fist and Conaing the Beautiful Chief.

But no Nessa. Nor Ardan. There were two piles of treasure in their names, the finest of all, scrupulously set aside on a table apart from the others. And their names and deeds were recited by Aed that all might hear.

The torches burned late in the hall, and the cheering and singing could be heard clearly in the chapel where Mahon knelt.

“You are a born killer and you will go on killing,” Mahon accused, not looking at his youngest brother.

Brian had finally forced a confrontation by invading the king’s private chamber, and now they stood, separated by more than space, in a room Brian scarcely recognized.

It had been stripped bare of its luxurious appointments. The hangings were gone from the cold walls, the floors were bare of rushes, even the wealth of lamps had been replaced by one feeble stub of a candle.

The chamber now held only a thin pallet and a chest, and one black crucifix hung on the wall. It was the cell of an ascetic.

“What have you done with your things?” Brian asked, ignoring his brother’s accusation. “I don’t understand . . .” He waved his hand at the stripped room.

“No, of course you don’t,” Mahon answered. “All you understand is warfare. Brutality. Lust for power.

You don’t realize that material objects are of no consequence compared to the wealth of the spiritual life.

I’ve been praying to Our Lord to enlighten you as He has me, but so far my prayers are unanswered.”

Brian scowled. “You don’t need to pray for my soul,

brother.”

Mahon gave him a look of curiously commingled disgust and pity. “Ah, but I do, I must! You and I both have so many guilts to expiate; you surely earned God’s wrath for the evil you unleashed at Limerick, and I ...”

“Is that what this is all about? You’re trying to punish yourself for what happened at Limerick?”

“I could never punish myself sufficiently for what happened at Limerick! I can only try, and beg God’s forgiveness. I misunderstood the nature of war. I let myself be seduced by the trappings and the excitement, I let my vanity blind me to the horrors around me, but I can see them all now, and I must atone.”

“Atone!” Brian snorted. “What have you got to atone for? Ivar and his allies are nursing their wounds on some sandy island infested with black flies, where the Fergus joins the Shannon. Irish families that have quarreled with one another for years are united now, proud of being Munstermen together, singing your praises and speaking of the possibility of freeing all our land from the tyranny of the foreigners. By God, that’s an accomplishment to be proud of, and yet you sit here beating your breast and crying mea culpa. I tell you frankly, brother, I wouldn’t want a conscience like yours; there is no logic in it.”

Mahon looked at him bleakly. “And I no longer want a soul like yours, barbarous and cruel. You are the wolf who devours the lambs to fill his own belly. Marcan has convinced me that we must walk in the paths of peace, accepting God’s will and . . .”

“Marcan!” Brian exploded. “Marcan is a priest, with his own view of God’s will, and I don’t happen to think that view is right for our situation. I’m not even convinced that it is God’s will that we be victims, though Marcan used to expend a lot of energy trying to convince me of it. He could not persuade me and so he has gone to work on you, and I am sure he is very proud of his ... his accomplishment.” The deep voice was bitingly sarcastic.

“Marcan has brought me peace, Brian; he has shown me that there are other paths that I may follow.

God sent him to me when I needed him most.”

“God didn’t send him! Marcan came here himself to beg your influence in having him named bishop of Killaloe. Mar-can may preach humility, but he hungers for power within the Church as much as any tribal king hungers to expand his holdings.”

“I will war no more, Brian, no matter what you say, for it brings me too much pain. I sent your own brothers into battle ill-prepared, I think, and knew the guilt of seeing them die for a. kingship I did not really value, even then. I tried to do better by you, and yet when I see what you have become I think I would rather have buried you somewhere in Tipperary, with Lachtna and Niall, I will build a new church on this Rock and give my life to God.”

“You think that-is the best way for you to serve God? Charlemagne built churches, too, but he had a sword in his hand and it was with that sword that he brought Christianity to the Franks.”

“I renounce the sword forever!” Mahon cried. Sensitive to something in his tone, Brian studied the king’s face intently. At last he said, “It is not God’s wrath that frightens you, brother. I think you are afraid of something in yourself. You enjoyed the killing, if only for a moment—some moment back there on the plain of Sulcoit, perhaps.

“Marcan is a shrewd dog, and he found that chink in your armor, didn’t he? And worked on it?”

Mahon’s body had stiffened into a column of outrage, but his eyes were haunted. “You’ve made a pact with the forces of evil, Brian,” he whispered into the stillness of the room. “You can see into men’s hearts and uncover things better left hidden.”

Brian’s smile was small and bitter. “I made no unholy pact, Mahon. I’ve merely learned to examine myself in the long watches of the night, and I never lie to myself about what I find. Knowing my own truth makes it easier for me to recognize certain signs in others. There are similarities in all of us, if we admit to them. With part of my mind I can understand even the Northman’s joy in destruction, and with another part of my mind I can share a child’s innocent pleasures or know a priest’s hunger for God.

“You have gradually become more and more horrified by the brutality you see, and I suppose that does you credit. But you are afraid that it has stained your soul with some permanent mark that won’t wash off, and you have become desperate for forgiveness of one of the very qualities God gave you in the first place.

“If you would have peace, genuine peace, you must accept all the aspects of your personality and learn to be comfortable with them. You can’t cut away one part of your nature as a physician cuts away rotten flesh.

“You must continue to be strong and valiant, because if you won’t fight to protect what you have won, every Dane,, and Norseman, every greedy scoundrel and born thief, will come a-gallop to Munster to pick its bones. If you care about these people, Mahon, be a strong king and defend them!”

Mahon slumped against the carved olivewood chest, cradling his head in his hands and swaying gently from side to side. “I cannot, Brian,” he said in a muffled voice. “I cannot take men into battle anymore.”

A vast pity swept Brian. This is what I wanted, he told himself, only not this way. Not this way.

He carefully kept both pity and sympathy out of his voice as he told his brother, “Then I will do it for you.

Be the king, hold court, and commune with God, and leave the rest to me.

On the first night of the new moon, Deirdre returned to his chamber from the ladies’ wing.

“The physician says I am well, my lord, and able to resume my duties as your wife.”

“You want to?”

She dropped her eyelids, the long lashes sweeping in a curve over her cheeks, then looked up again and smiled. “I want to please you, Brian. I know that I have not . . . always ...”

“You were ill.” He hastened to excuse her.

“I suppose so. But I’m all right now, and I do love you, my lord!” She knew the shadows were still there, waiting in the corners. But since Murrough’s birth she had begun to find she need not look at them. With each passing day she felt more insulated, less vulnerable to them, wrapped securely in some mystical cocoon she shared with her baby. Mothers were special, and strong; in their presence the shadows lost their power, and she was a mother now.

She turned her back on the shadows and saw instead the beauty of her husband. She remembered the songs the harper had sung of him, and imagined how glorious he must have been at Sulcoit. The lips framed by his crisply waving beard were soft, cool, and breathsweet. But when they parted his mouth was hot and hungry, clamping on hers with a passion too long contained.

She could not respond in kind; it took all her new strength to push the fear below the surface and hold it there. But she gave what she could, with love, if not with passion. She lay beneath him, fighting her desire to resist, wondering at the alien power of the emotion that gripped him and curiously flattered by it.

This thing Brian called lovemaking had an intensity she had experienced only through the medium of terror, and when she felt him plunge deeply into her with the last, spending thrust, and the cry of pleasure was wrung from him, she envied him.