Lion of Ireland (40 page)

The hands that could wield the heaviest ax flickered delicately over the strings. Brian’s deep, strong voice rose with the music and filled the hall.

“The death of Mahon is grievous to me—The majestic king of Cashel the renowned; Alas, alas that he fell not in battle, Under cover of his broad shield; Alas that in friendship he trusted To the treacherous word of Donovan. It was an evil deed for Molloy To murder the great and majestic king; And if my hand retains its power He shall not escape my vengeance.

Either I shall fall—without dread, without regret—

Or he will meet a sudden death by my hand;

I feel that my heart will burst

If I avenge not our noble king.”

When the lament died away, the sobbing in the hall was being healed in the first flush of anger, and men and women with tear-stained faces were holding their clenched fists in the air.

Someone began it—almost in a whisper: “Boru! Boru!”—and one voice after another took it up. The chant rose, swelled, filled the hall.

“Boru! Boru!”

Brian stood erect then, his face unreadable. He felt the presence of the martyred man behind him and saw the road ahead of him open now, and clear, though stained with blood. The blood could not be put back in the ruined body. The opportunity to set foot on the road might never come again.

He laid down his harp and picked up the sword, thrusting

it through his belt.

“Boru!” they cried.

With hands he forced to be steady he lifted the gold circlet from the dead king’s chest, and placed it on his own head.

And the roar that was raised in the hall of Cashel thundered out across the green land.

It took two years to get them all. There were those who threw the epithet Usurper! more savagely at Brian than they ever had at his brother, and refused him men or aid. There were traditionalists who listened and nodded at his wisdom and yet refused to sanction a break with the past, and those who were afraid, and those who might be won over by long conversations far into the night.

The time had come for Brian of Boruma to learn the art of diplomacy.

But there was always one immediate goal: Mahon’s killers must be punished, must be denied even the smallest reward for their crime. He began with Ivar.

The leadership of the Dal Cais and the control of Thomond were Brian’s at his brother’s death, for no man stood to claim them from him. He made good use of his new power. The officers who had shared the last, desperate stand with him in the mountains beyond Boruma were placed in charge of the entire army of Thomond, and every man who could fight was summoned to attack Ivar in his stronghold on Scattery Island.

Brian himself led the attack on the earthen walls the Northmen had hastily erected on the island, riding to Scattery in one of the boats craftsmen were hurrying to build to his order on Munster’s waterways. In his hand he carried an Irish sword—he would not kill Ivar with a Norse ax—and he nursed his hatred in his heart as a thrifty woman nurses a flame on the hearth on a cold night.

“When we break through to Ivar, remember that he is

mine,” Brian warned his men repeatedly. “If any man puts a mark on him first, that man shall answer to me. Fight well, use your soldiers carefully, and put no one in unnecessary danger—and as soon as you find Ivar, send for me.”

But there was no need to send for Brian. He was in the forefront of the attack that charged through the doorway to the room where Ivar waited, an old man past his fighting days, the rot of age in his joints and sinews.

Brian waved his men back and advanced on the Norse king alone. “You are Ivar Amlavson?” he asked in his heavily accented Norse.

Ivar gave no vocal answer, merely bared his remaining teeth in the practiced and mirthless grin of a warrior and waited. But his eyes were still keen; he clearly saw the man who stood before him, tall as the tallest Northman, with the history of Ireland on his face. There would be no escape this time.

Brain lifted his sword. He saw Ivar glance at it. “You have no weapon?” he asked.

Ivar glared at him and gave a curt shake of his head. “I. need no weapon against an Irish dog,” he snarled.

Some of the tension went out of Brian. Here was a chance, one of those golden moments that can be turned to immortal treasure by the alchemy of a bard’s retelling. He made himself smile at Ivar. “I understand your belief is that you must die with a sword in your hand to reach Valhalla, Northman; is that not so?”

Ivar watched him, narrowing his eyes. He knew the fellow was using him. If he had been younger, stronger ... ah, but it hardly mattered anymore. Because he was old his men had deserted him and left him to die, the vaunted brotherhood of the Northmen forgotten, corrupted by this alien land. Death was no stranger, and Valhalla was a promise given a child and soon forgotten.

“Here!” Brian cried suddenly, tossing his own sword at Ivar. “I would not deny any man his heaven, nor kill any enemy in cold blood as was done to my brother. Fight for your life or your death, foreigner!”

Ivar’s shocked mind reacted with the old quickness, but his hands were slower. He grabbed at the sword, caught it, fumbled it, and struggled to lift its weight while Brian stood unarmed, watching him, smiling. And when at last he held it firmly, the hilt clasped in both his hands and his feet parted in as good a fighting stance as he could manage, Brian came toward him. Unarmed. Smiling.

Ivar lay dead of a broken back in the heart of his last stronghold, while its buildings were ignited by Irish torches to provide his funeral pyre. Two of Ivar’s sons lay dead on the banks of the island; the oldest, Harold, had fled safely to his old ally Donovan.

Crouched in hiding in a wooden chest in one of the storerooms, thinking himself overlooked by Boru’s men, Ivar’s brother Ilacquin heard the first crackle of the flames without realizing what they represented.

Then he smelled smoke, and thrust violently against the tightly fitted lid of the chest. Irish swords were preferable to being roasted alive!

But the chest was strongly made, and the damp air of Scattery Island had caused the wood to swell.

Doubled up within it, Ilacquin was unable to get enough room to straighten his arms and force it open.

Growing desperate, he hammered against the lid, yelling for someone to come and help him’. Only the roar of the fire answered.

Hungry, insatiable, the flames surrounded the chest and licked the wood with eager tongues. As the frantic Ilacquin at last broke free of his prison, a gust of air swept the room and the blaze leaped high, igniting his clothes and turning him into a living, screaming torch.

He did not scream for long.

Brian and his men laid waste to the rest of the island, then turned south toward the land of Hy Carbery, and Donovan. On the first anniversary of Mahon’s death Bruree was burned to the ground, and Donovan and Harold Ivarson slain, together with a vast number of their followers. On the charred trunk of a sycamore that had stood by Donovan’s gate Brian left a banner hanging, its defiant three lions clawing the breeze.

Those who might have stood with Molloy sided with him no longer. He waited in Desmond, watching a thin trickle of men desert him every day. “My mistake was one of ignorance,” he lamented to his wife on the privacy of their pillow. “I saw Mahon and thought he was the king, the obstacle in my path, and assumed his brother was merely his general. I have destroyed the weaker man and brought the stronger down on my head.”

“You had no way of knowing, a mhuimin,” his wife said, trying to comfort him.

Molloy sat up on the bed and nursed his knees. “I should have known,” he muttered. “I should have made it my business to learn everything about the Dalcassians before I challenged them. That’s the way Boru does it. But I mocked Mahon and made sport of his clergy, and now there is an avenging angel at Cashel, honing the edge of his sword and thirsting for my blood.”

“You always tempted God. You laughed at His priests and defied his commandments, and I warned you and warned you about it. You know I did. I told you many times ...”

“Oh, be quiet,” Molloy groaned, turning his back to her.

The months passed, and Brian let Molloy wait, knowing the fear that sickened and weakened him. It was pleasant to drowse in bed at night, safe, sure, the strong stone walls embracing him; or lie in front of his tent in the army camp, watching the stars wheel above him, and imagine the agony of Molloy, waiting. It was part of the punishment.

“I’m a vindictive man, Padraic,” he commented one day. “I never really realized that before.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re not, my lord,” his aide was quick to reply. But Brian refused to have his self-knowledge muddied by illusion. “No, it’s true,” he insisted. “I can harbor a grudge for years, and I never forget an insult or slight. The priests tell me these are weaknesses I must overcome, and my brother Marcan prays for me to be given a more forgiving spirit. He can afford to pray—vengeance is not in his province; he has God for that. Munster has me.”

It occurred to Padraic that Brian was not ashamed of his vengeful nature; he even appeared proud of it.

Brian was proud of many things, including his own pride. Yet surely these were sins . . .

Brian made them sound like virtues.

Padraic shook his head and smiled good-naturedly. “I must confess I don’t always understand what you say, my lord,” he told Brian, “but the way you say it makes it seem right!”

At the end of the year, Brian grew weary of the game. The satisfaction was wrung out of it. He sent the prince of Desmond a formal challenge to battle, instructing the envoy to make it plain to Molloy that no truce or peace would be accepted and no payment taken for the murdered king. Nothing would do but open battle. There was no reply.

For two years, ever since Mahon’s death, Brian had had agents in Desmond, reporting to him on Molloy’s every move. He was determined that the man not slip through his fingers; no ship would take him, no foreign port welcome him. Molloy was to wait, feeling the sands run out of his glass, until Brian was ready for him. And now Brian was ready.

He sought out Deirdre, to tell her personally and as gently as possible that the time had come for one more campaign. He found her with the children, her lap piled with sewing. The needle flashed in her thin fingers—when had she gotten so thin?--as she smiled down at little Teigue, who leaned against his mother’s knee, begging for a story.

“Didn’t I tell you a tale yestereven?” Deirdre asked him, a smile at the corner of her mouth.

The boy looked up at her with innocent eyes. “I don’t remember it,” he said flatly.

Emer, shocked, contradicted him. “Yes, you do!” she began. “It was all about the pookah, and . . .”

Teigue glared across Deirdre’s lap at his sister. “I don’t remember it!” he proclaimed again, with more volume. “Maybe she just told you. Nobody ever tells me a story for my very own. You get stories, and Sabia and Flann get stories, but I never . . .”

The laugh pulled loose from Deirdre’s lips and rippled softly about the room, warming it. Brian stood in the angle of the doorway, seeing but unseen, and found that he was listening as eagerly as the children.

“Very well.” Deirdre capitulated. “One story, just for Teigue, though I know I’ve told you a score since the last Saint’s Day.”

“Haven’t,” Teigue murmured under his breath, pleased. They gathered around their mother’s feet, dropping to the stone floor with the boneless grace of the young. Even Murrough came and hung over the back of Deirdre’s seat, and Brian realized with a start how large the boy had grown, how soon he would be a man.

Where does the time go? We haven’t begun to know each other yet, and soon he will be off with a horse and a sword.

“Have I told you the story of Tir-na-n-Og?” Deirdre asked the children. As if pulled by one string their heads moved in unison, left to right and back again. “Very well, then. It’s time you heard it as it was told to me, to give me sweet dreams in my bed at night.”

Deirdre took a deep breath and began the story, her soft voice barely reaching to the corners of the chamber. In his hidden alcove Brian strained to hear her.

“Tir-na-n-Og is the land of perpetual youth, where all is beauty and death is unknown. It is the Place of Radiance. Do you know how the morning looks after a rainy night, when moisture glistens on every leaf and the bright sunshine breaks through and dazzles us? Well, Tir-na-n-Og is like that, and it makes you feel that way—as if your heart were too big to stay inside your breast.”

“Oooooh!” breathed Flann. “Who lives there?” “The ancient gods live there, the immortals who were in Ireland before the coming of Christendom. Lugh of the Silver Spear, and Dagda of the great Cauldron that gives life to the dead and food to the living, and Angus Og, who is the soul of poetry, and all the large and small spirits of the woods and hills.

“Some people call that land Hy Brazil, the Isle of the Blest, because that is where heroes go as a reward for their courage and steadfastness. It is said that the great Cuchullain himself is there, with Conchobar, and Fionn mac Cumhaill.”

“And Conn the Hundred-Fighter!” Murrough interrupted, unable to listen in silence any longer. “And his lifelong enemy Owen Mor. Aed says that once they divided Ireland between them, and Conn took the northern half and Owen Mor laid claim to all the rest, and ...”

“We are not talking of battles this day, Murrough!” Deirdre reproved him sharply. “We are not all as obsessed ‘with fighting as you are. Sit down on your stool and listen; it will do you good to hear something of peace and beauty.”

Murrough sank back on the stool, but it was not his way to accept a rebuff or a criticism. Soon he jumped up and left the room, brushing past Brian without even noticing him. Deirdre looked after him, and sighed. “Go on!” Teigue begged her.

“Ah .. . yes, Tir-na-n-Og. It is a place that is everywhere and nowhere, for it is not bound by the laws of time and space as we know them. Sometimes it is beneath the sea, and if you are lucky you may catch a glimpse of its crystal towers rising above the waves in the dawn. Other times it floats atop the water, appearing and vanishing again. The sainted Brendan himself set sail for it, convinced it was the lost Garden of Eden and could be reached in a curragh if his faith was strong enough.”