Lion of Ireland (61 page)

He raised his head and looked at the ashen face. Just at that instant Padraic’s lashes fluttered slightly, and his lips curved into the faintest of smiles. A sign?

Brian bowed once more and redoubled the outpouring of his energy—the energy on which he had always based his faith. I beseech You! This one gift, not for myself but for this good man. I will give Brian Boru entirely into Your hands, question You no longer, put all my strength at Your service, believe in You to the exclusion of everything else, if You will just let Padraic wake up in the morning with his mind intact!

Ignoring his exhaustion, Brian stayed by Padraic’s side through the night, repeating his prayers and watching the quiet face. Sometime in the dark hours he dozed off, only to be awakened by the repeated clearing of a throat behind him.

In that moment he had been thinking of love, dreaming of the face of God, feeling the wholeness of it at last just within his reach, a full shining sweetness he could actually touch, an ecstasy beyond pain, and at the instant he opened himself joyously to surrender to it he was dragged back into the world of battle nights and aching bones. He tried one last time to gather the threads of thought he had been weaving but they had come undone, their pattern lost, their ends raveled, and one was missing altogether.

“Yes!” he snapped angrily at the officer who stood’ beside him. Brian’s eyes were swollen and red in the torchlight. “What do you want?”

“It’s Maelmordha, prince of Leinster, my lord. Prince Murrough found him hiding in a yew tree and has taken him prisoner.”

Brian made a mighty effort to collect his fragmented consciousness and become -king and warrior once more. He slipped Padraic’s hands beneath the blanket and stood up. “Did my son kill him?” he asked sharply.

The officer was startled. “Oh, no, my lord. Should he have done?”

“God, no!” said Brian fervently. “Go summon Malachi Mor to join us at my tent, and have the prisoner brought before us right now. I think we would both like to have a word with the prince of Leinster.”

“Now, my lord?”

“Now.”

Maelmordha knelt before them, his hands tied behind his back with leather thongs, wetted. His bratt was missing, his linen tunic half-torn from his body; his unbound hair streamed to his shoulders in a wild tangle.

He was a tall man, with the stamp of nobility on his fine-boned face, but his fleshy lips were coarse and his eyes were the eyes of a rabid animal.

Murrough stood behind him, the point of his sword set firmly against Maelmordha’s spine. “I bring you this rebel, my lord,” he addressed Brian formally. “Unharmed, as you see, though I had to whip some of my own men off him. Tell me, Brian mac Cennedi—does this at last cancel my debt for Molloy of Desmond?”

His eyes were hot with challenge. It might have been only the two of them, facing one another in an empty hall. Would that it were, Brian thought. Then I could say to you all those things that have been so long unsaid between us, my son. My real son, my firstborn. But not here, not now. This is war, and we have serious business to do.

He tried to put his unspoken feeling into the eyes whose expression he had guarded for so many years.

“Yes, Prince Murrough,” he said with courtly courtesy, as he would to any noble addressing him publicly.

“The scales are balanced.”

Murrough’s face did not soften. “Very well, my lord,” he replied curtly. “I leave him to you.” With an abrupt gesture he thrust his sword back into its sheath and strode away, his captains trotting behind him.

Maelmordha was sullen, unimpressed by either of the great kings seated before him. He worked his tongue in “his dry mouth until he was able to accumulate a pathetic little gob of saliva, then he spat it at Brian’s feet. “You strip the skin from my back with your demands for tribute, Bora,” he snarled.

“Leinster has always paid tribute,” Malachi offered mildly.

“Aye, we’ve always been robbed to fatten some other province!”

“Not this time,” Brian cut in. “Your cattle and grain do not go into the treasury of Munster, they are used for the benefit of all southern Ireland.”

Maelmordha wished he had his hands free, so he could make an appropriate gesture. “And what does that mean?”

Brian answered, “It means schools and churches, and missionaries sent to distant places that lack the word of God. It means good roads, so that people can get their goods to market. It means drained bogs, and food for the poor under the Brehon Law. I don’t take tribute from Leinster for myself, Maelmordha; I spend it where it will do the most good in my judgment.”

“Let me keep all my cattle in my own kingdom, and I’ll feed my poor and ask no help from any man!”

Maelmordha demanded.

“Ah, but then who will come to help you when disaster falls? Who will be your brother, Leinster, when the inevitable time comes that you cry out in need?”

“The Norsemen of Dublin are my allies!”

“They would cut you down for the gold in your belt, and you know it,” Malachi told him.

Maelmordha made no reply. The bindings on his wrists were drying, tightening cruelly, and long flickers of pain ran up his arms to the shoulder. He looked from one king to the other; from Brian’s impassive face to the round, pleasant visage of Malachi. Beyond the firelight a sentry raised a muffled challenge and was answered. A distant horse whinnied. The watchfires crackled, and there was a smell of snow on the night wind.

“Gormlaith’s son—Sitric Silkbeard—is he with you?” Malachi asked.

Maelmordha sneered. “Not that one. He’s a fox, like his mother. It was a good day for me when I sent her to you and a sorry day when she returned. It was Sitric’s half-brother, Harold, who led the Norsemen, he and Svein Iron-Knuckle. They both quit and ran, the cowards, when the fight could still have been won.”

“The fight could never have been won, Maelmordha,” Brian told him. “You don’t understand how things have changed. It’s no longer just one petty kingdom against another, a mass of unrelated tribes squabbling for advantage. You have rebelled against the entity of Ireland, a new thing which has never really existed before, and you must pay the price of your misjudgment. We will hold you prisoner until we receive hostages of good conduct from Leinster, and not just your expendables, either. The patriarchs of the tribes.”

“Never!”

“I think you have no choice, Maelmordha,” Malachi interposed. “We can go and get them with bloodshed, and our men will do some looting into the bargain, or you can send for them in a spirit of cooperation and everyone will be treated with the dignity their positions merit. But either way, it will be as Boru says.”

“Not everything has to be ‘as Boru says’!” Maelmordha exclaimed in outrage.

Malachi glanced covertly at Brian, but the controlled face told him nothing. “Of course not,” he answered

Maelmordha. “We are allies in this and our decisions are made jointly. It is as much my will as his, Leinster, and you must obey it.”

“And what of the Northmen—will you take hostages from them, too?”

Malachi’s color was high and his eyes sparkled. “Better than that, rebel! We’ll take their city!”

Brian was reluctant to seek his bed, though his aching body demanded it. There was a false dawn light in the sky and the night was drawing to a close; he must seek a few moments of oblivion to separate the days. He forced himself to lie on the hard pallet in his tent and close his burning eyes. The fatigue tremors in his calves started immediately and he lay in grim endurance until the gray fog overtook him.

He came instantly and completely awake, with no lingering memory of sleep. His body felt broken. He clenched his teeth and got up, making a perfunctory return to the salute of the guard at his tent-flap, and hurried to Padraic’s side. The morning was leaden with cold.

The familiar face was still uncovered—he was alive, then. Brian turned his back on the rows of other wounded lying in neat, soldierly ranks on the cold earth, and knelt stiffly beside his friend.

“Padraic?” he whispered.

The man moaned a little and a faint color crept into his cheeks. His tongue made a feeble attempt to wet his lips, and Brian looked up with a scowl to summon the nearest attendant to bring water. He gently bathed Padraic’s face and lips himself, then held the cup against the colorless mouth and tilted it to allow a few drops to slide down the wounded man’s throat. He was rewarded with the ghost of a smile.

“My ... lord?”

Brian crouched over him. “Yes, friend, I’m here.” He touched Padraic’s hand. “How is it with you?”

“Too much ... ale. My head ...”

“That’s not ale,” Brian said, smiling a little. “It’s a battle

wound, but by God’s mercy you will recover and be yourself again. I give thanks that my prayers were answered for once.”

“You prayed ... for me?”

Brian stroked the wrinkled forehead. “With all my heart.”

“Thank you, my lord. Your prayers must have great weight with God.”

“I never thought so until now, Padraic,” he said, glancing up as Cairbre leaned over them. “He’s going to live, physician!”

“Yes, I think he is. When he’s better, we can take him back to Kincora.”

Padraic’s eyes opened but he did not look at them; he only stared upward. “How soon will I be able to march again with my lord?” he asked.

Cairbre frowned. He put one hand on Brian’s shoulder and motioned him to be silent. “We can talk about that when you’re feeling better, lad. Rest now.”

The king and his physician walked out into the morning. “What is it, Cairbre? What’s wrong that you didn’t want to discuss in front of him?” Brian demanded to know.

Cairbre shook his head. “I’m getting too old to go to battle with you, Boru. And so is Padraic. Time has no power over you, you seem able to go on forever, but the rest of us are wearing out. We must sit in front of the fire and feed on our memories.”

“What are you saying, physician?”

“Padraic will not march again with you, my lord. Didn’t you realize? He is blind.”

Brian’s head rocked backward slightly, as if he himself had taken the blow. “Are you certain?”

“Oh, yes, my lord.”

“Will he be able to see again, in time?”

“In my experience with battle wounds, nothing is absolutely sure, but I’m inclined to doubt it. The damage was done inside and is beyond my skill to repair. His intellect itself seems unimpaired, however.”

Brian gave him a sardonic glance. “Ah, yes. Our God is a

literal God. It is well to know that and keep it in the forefront of your mind, physician.”

“I don’t understand what you ...”

“No matter. What about Padraic; does he know?”

Cairbre nodded. “As soon as he first woke up. He’s taking it like a brave soldier.”

Brian went back and sat beside his friend’s blanket. Padraic’s eyes were open, and he turned his head as Brian sank cross-legged onto the ground. “My lord?”

“Yes, Padraic.”

“How goes the battle?”

“We won,” Brian told him simply. “And how goes it with you?”

“Oh, I’m well enough, my lord. Just a sore head and a few minor problems.”

Brian swallowed hard. “You’re the best of the best, Padraic,” he said in a husky voice. He reached for his friend’s hand and lifted it to his own face, pressing it against his cheek.

Padraic wrinkled his forehead in the familiar, quizzical way, then moved his hand away and rubbed the wet fingers together. “The gift of tears, my lord?” he asked.

Malachi Mor was in a fever to get to Dublin. Warned by the first straggle of survivors from Glenmama, Sitric and his mother fled the city, leaving it all but defenseless against the onrushing Irish. The conquerors found the gates standing ajar, the streets lined with terrified townspeople who were too poor, or too unimportant, to try to escape.

Brian had insisted that there be no attempt to destroy the population of the city. He and Malachi quarreled about it. “I killed Leinstermen for you at Glenmama,” Malachi reminded him hotly. “These Dubliners are my enemies; they revolt against my authority, and I expect you to live up to our agreement and defend my interests!”

“It could not possibly serve your interests, Malachi, to slaughter helpless women and children,” Brian said firmly, “and that is all that remains in Dublin.”

“I understood you were a great Norse-killer!”

“I have fought the Northmen all my life,” Brian agreed, “but I won’t allow these people to be murdered.

Loot the city if you will, take everything of value, bash down the buildings and tear down the walls, but no killing, Malachi, except in self-defense. Soldier against soldier, nothing else.”

“I have equal say with you, Boru!” Malachi cried.

Brian took a step toward him and looked down into his face. The eyes of the king of the south were as gray and cold as the Irish Sea, and there was an absolute authority in his voice that Malachi could envy but not emulate. “The people will not be slaughtered, Meathman,” he repeated. “What kind of High King are you?”

“I am the Ard Ri of Ireland!” Malachi flung at him.

“And I am Brian Boru, and my armies outnumber yours three to one. Finish your business here, take your share of the plunder, and go home, Malachi. I will stay here for as long as it takes to render Dublin harmless.”

When the stacks of weapons and furs and precious metals began to pile high in the viking hall, Malachi swallowed his anger and made plans to return to Meath. Meath was, after all, his principal responsibility.

Meath was a small, familiar kingdom, not a whole great sprawling land full of contradictions. Besides, there-was something about Brian Boru’s presence that made Malachi uncomfortable. The Dalcassian was a force of nature. There were times when he seemed to radiate an energy like the tension that builds in the air before a lightning storm, and Malachi had never liked storms.

When the army of Leth Conn pulled out, Brian set up his personal headquarters in Sitric’s hall. There had been no

word of Sitric Silkbeard or his legendary mother; wherever they had fled, they had not chosen to die with their city.

Brian had his pallet spread in a small chamber built directly behind the hall, though there was no covered passageway between the buildings. He thought for a moment, with nostalgia, of the special niceties he had incorporated into the design of Kincora. But at least this chamber, for all its splintery squalor, was the choice apartment in the Norse fortress. In Padraic’s absence he invited Donogh there one evening to play chess with him. Donogh, who had grown sensitive to the undercurrents among the command officers, suggested tactfully, “Perhaps you would rather ask Prince Murrough, my lord. . . ?”