Pride of Lions (22 page)

"Is Eevin a ban shee?"

"A female fairy?" Mac Liag's lips twitched. "According to, ah, legend, what we call fairies are actually the undying spirits of the race that dwelt in Ireland when our ancestors arrived, many centuries before Christ was born. The Gael defeated the Tuatha De Danann with iron swords, but they could not drive them out. The Danann melted into the land itself, becoming such a part of it they could never be expelled.

"So the myth goes," Mac Liag added, emphasizing the word myth. "Then there is another opinion which holds that Eevin was but the first of a long line of druid women who have practiced their sacred rites on Crag Liath for centuries.

Where the gray stone broods in the silent glen, Eevin's daughters pray to gods older than time. Or so some say." Mac Liag paused to slurp up another fingerful of cheese.

"Is that the real reason my father visited the mountain--to take offerings to druid ceremonies?"

Mac Liag pretended to be shocked. "A fine Christian king like Brian Boru?"

"I know enough about my father to know he sought allies wherever he could find them."

"He was not seeking political alliances on Crag Liath."

"What, then?"

"He never told me."

"But you have a suspicion."

"I do. I think he was looking for a woman."

Donough leaned forward. "A druid woman?

A real flesh-and-blood person, not the guardian spirit of the Dal Cais?"

"Must she be one or the other? Why not both?"

"You're talking in riddles, Mac Liag."

"Do you think so? Let me tell you a real riddle; a mystery. All his life, at least for as long as I knew him, Brian Boru was haunted by a druid woman. He had known her when they were both very young. He told me that much one night when there was too much red wine taken.

Fiona, her name was.

"He loved her, lost her, let her go.

Became too busy hacking his way to kingship. But she was always just beyond his range of vision, somehow.

Even in the days when Gormlaith lived here, there were times when Brian went alone to Crag Liath looking for the one he called Fiona."

"Did he find her?"

Mac Liag shook his head. "I cannot tell you. I honestly don't know."

The two men gazed together into the fire. Donough took a drink of his mead. Then suddenly he lifted his head. "Perhaps she found him. At Clontarf."

"What do you mean?"

"Carroll said there was a strange tale of some woman who visited the Ard Ri in his tent the night before the battle, and then vanished."

"Ah, that could not have been Fiona. She would be too old, if she were still alive at all, to make such a journey."

"Would she?" Donough wondered. "You said she was a druid. Do the druids not have magical powers?"

The old man's expression stiffened. "Cathal claims magic is evil, the work of demons."

"Somehow I don't think you believe him. Tell me this, Mac Liag. Why does the Abbot of Kill Dalua hate the druids so?"

A twinkle returned to the poet's eyes.

"Now that's an interesting question, especially since we were talking of Crag Liath. Get up and pour me some more mead, lad. This is not a story to be told with a dry throat."

Mac Liag waited while Donough refilled his goblet, then he emptied it in one draught.

"Listen closely, I shall only say this once.

There are those who wish it forgotten entirely. As you may know, Saint Da-Lua founded the abbey here late in the sixth century. He was a grandson of Eochaid, then King of Munster--an Owenacht. The next prominent abbot was Flannan Mac Turlough, for whom the chapel is named. His father was a king of the Dal Cais who reputedly rose to power through the aid of a demon.

"A demon is what they call her now, you understand. But in the legends of our tribe, Turlough's benefactress was none other than Eevin of Crag Liath. Through her magical influence the Dal Cais gained control of all Thomond and were able to demand alternate kingship of Munster. From her gray crag she watches over them yet, and when a Dalcassian dies, she keens.

"Once such alliances with ancient spirits were encouraged. It was their land before it was ours. Your kinsman Cathal Mac Maine, however, is filled with zeal and a desire for reform. He wants to stamp out every vestige of the Old Faith and replace it with Christianity--in which he holds an important position. He hates the druids because they still revere the spirits he wants to extirpate.

"As for Eevin, Cathal considers her a humiliating reminder of Dalcassian connections to paganism. He would put her entire mountain to the torch if he dared, burn down every tree she is said to love. But for all his self-righteousness he doesn't dare. He believes in her too, you see; he was Dalcassian long before he was abbot. He is torn between two faiths and hates the one he believes to be the source of his dilemma." Mac Liag yawned abruptly.

"Talk wearies me these days, I'm afraid.

And I still have writing to do before I sleep."

Donough took the hint and stood up. "I am tired myself," he lied, "and my men are waiting for me."

"Before we part, lad, answer one question for me.

Did you ask these things out of simple curiosity, or something more?"

Donough felt he owed the old man an explanation. "It's not just curiosity. On Good Friday I heard the voice of the ban shee. Then after we reached Dublin a woman I had never seen before appeared and gave me good advice. At my own wedding I saw her again, only with a younger face. And when I was injured in this most recent battle, the same woman helped me--I think.

Somehow I hoped you could ... explain ..."

Mac Liag's mouth was hanging open. "His heir," he said in an awed voice.

"What?"

"Brian is dead and now she's come to you. You are truly his heir, though not in the way you expected."

The two men stared at one another, locked in the same mystery.

At last Donough broke the silence. "But she's a real person! I mean, the girl at my wedding ... she's real, I know she is."

"Fiona was real," Mac Liag told him flatly. The old man sighed, fumbled for his cup and refilled it. "I fear for you, lad," he said at last. "I fear for you ... and envy you."

When Donough and his men returned to Corcomrua, Gormlaith was quick to point out her son's mistakes to him. "I could have told you there's no point in trying to mollify Teigue.

You won't persuade him to cede anything to you by doing him favors. Force is the only thing men respect. Once the Owenachts were defeated, you should have pointed out that the victory was your doing and appealed to the Dalcassians to follow your banner thereafter, instead of Teigue's. You could have won them in that moment, but you wasted your opportunity.

Listen to me after this; profit from my knowledge of kings and chieftains."

Donough eyed her wearily. He was in no mood for a lecture from Gormlaith, but once she started talking nothing would stop her. If he walked away she would follow him, yapping on and on until he longed to strike her.

Yet he dare not, any more than

Cathal Mac Maine dared put the torch to the trees on Crag Liath.

At night he bedded Neassa, who chattered constantly but with less purpose. He was soon deaf to her voice and merely lay with his arms around her, waiting for youth and lust to take over. When they did, he performed and she accepted, a fertility ritual older than time. But something was missing. He knew it if she did not. Afterward, unspent because he invariably held back a part of himself he simply could not give, he lay awake and stared into the darkness.

Sometimes he saw his mother's face.

Sometimes he saw Padraic's daughter.

*

pregnant, Donough announced he was beginning the construction of a fort in a valley south of the Burren, using the labor of local clans tributary to the Dal Cais.

"I don't want to live in another lonely outpost in the wilderness like Corcomrua, days away from my father and clan," Neassa pouted.

"I insist you provide me with a home more suitable to my rank."

Donough laughed. "Your rank? You want a home suitable for a cattle lord's daughter?"

"For a prince's wife," she countered. "Which I am."

"Then you and your children will live with this prince wherever he lives," her husband informed her.

Donough did not plan to restrict himself to western Thomond for the rest of his life. He still dreamed Kincora would be his someday. But in the meantime he determined to build a stronghold as much like Kincora as possible for his growing family.

And out of the various landholdings that were now his, he chose to build not far from Ennis, not far from Drumcullaun Lough. He explained his decision by claiming the site was conveniently equidistant from Corcomrua and Kincora.

Gormlaith was as indignant as Neassa.

"I have no desire to vegetate in some nettle patch where nothing important ever happens!" she told her son.

"There are no nettles; the area is overrun with ivy instead. But if you don't like it, you can certainly go back to Dublin."

"You need me with you, you have no worthy advisors." Recognizing the stubborn set of his jaw, so like his father's, she softened her tone.

"Besides, Donough, I had rather be with you. Sitric doesn't want me; he would turn out his own mother as Teigue turned you out of Kincora. We belong together, you and I." She ran her fingers lightly down the bare, muscular arm emerging from the sleeve of his linen tunic.

Gooseflesh rose in the wake of her touch.

Gormlaith smiled. "You don't really want me to go," she said. He was her son, but he was a man.

Gormlaith had always known her power over men.

Donough sped another urgent message to Dublin, imploring Sitric to send for Gormlaith. Offering cattle with her, like a dowry.

In time a small delegation arrived at Corcomrua with Sitric's refusal. They brought other bad news as well.

"There is plague in Dublin now," they said.

"People are dying left, right, and center." Strong, sturdy Vikings, they feared no living man, but at the word "plague" they trembled. "Let us stay here with you," they pleaded.

Remembering that Brian Boru had

incorporated Vikings into his army, Donough was happy to agree. "Swear loyalty to me and carry arms on my behalf," he stipulated, "and I'll treat you better than Sitric ever did."

It was a vague promise based on an uncertain future, but at least the fort in the ivied valley was tangible. And growing. As soon as he had arranged with Conor for food and sleeping space for his Vikings, Donough prepared to make one of his frequent journeys to check on the fort's rate of progress.

Gormlaith intercepted him before he could get away. "You see! I have to stay with you. I couldn't go back to Dublin if there's plague there."

"Are you not worried about Sitric?"

"Him? He's a survivor," she replied with a shrug. She had not forgiven Sitric for losing at Clontarf. Gormlaith never forgave losers.

Donough reminded her, "I have a half-sister married to your son, and I worry for her."

"You've never been close to her. She's much older than you."

"But she is my blood-kin."

Gormlaith raised a sarcastic eyebrow.

"And so is dear Teigue. What a close and loving family you are, the clan O Brian."

He was relieved to put her behind him.

Relieved to be away from Corcomrua, which was not his, and Neassa, who was.

Neassa, who complained constantly about her nausea and thickening waist, and wanted her husband with her every moment because no one else would tolerate her whining.

Donough rode south with a lifting heart, watching for the landmark bulk of the region's highest mountain.

His new fort was rising in a meadow beside a clear, peaty stream with Slieve Callan looming beyond.

The local clans who were building the fort claimed that druid rites were performed on the summit at Altoir-na-Greine, the Altar of the Sun.

Donough had wanted a mountain overlooking his fort, even if it was not as near as Crag Liath was to Kincora. Still it was there; a mystical height, a reassuring presence.

He required a mountain in his landscape.

He often thought of Padraic's daughter, yet did not go in search of her. Strangely enough he was satisfied, for the moment, just knowing she was somewhere not far away. Like Kincora, she seemed a promise for the future, as tangible to him as the fragrance of the hawthorn that perfumed the air of Thomond.

The scent of magic.

With that perfume in his nostrils, Donough sat on a hummock and watched contentedly as his fort sprang from the soil like a cluster of stony plants. Its design was determined by a pattern in his head; he began to fancy it might resemble the shape of his own brain, if one could remove the top of his skull and peer inside.

His desire for Kincora began to fade.

Then he returned to Corcomrua late one evening to find Conor's stronghold in an uproar. Neassa was very ill.

"She was fine when I left," Donough protested to any who would listen, but little time was spared for him. The female population was frantically busy, either tending the sick woman or huddling in corners to discuss her condition with much muttering and arm-waving.

Donough could get no solid information from any of them.

Exasperated, he joined the men outside.

"It's my wife in there, and they won't tell me anything."

The Corcomrua cattle lord gazed at him sympathetically. "You have a lot to learn about women. When one of their own is ill, they close around her and make us feel as useless as wings on a fish. It's a way the women have of exerting their power."

Donough remarked, "That isn't the way my mother exerts hers."

"Och, no." Conor laughed. "Your mother's different. None of the rules apply to Gormlaith."

Including, it seemed, a welcome into the society of the women tending Neassa. When Gormlaith tried to join them, Neassa protested until her mother-in-law was barred from the chamber.

She stood quivering with outrage in the courtyard, aware that the men were watching her.