Pride of Lions (28 page)

As Fergal remarked sarcastically to Ronan,

"Being a former husband of the Princess Gormlaith is a sure way to earn her undying enmity."

To Donough's grateful surprise, he did not have to explain his reasons for the raid on Lough Ennel to his mother. She understood at once with an unfeminine political acumen. "Of course you had to take reprisal against Malachi; he is ultimately responsible for the disintegration of the kingdom. Such a successful raid into his own territory will carry a clear message.

From now on he must see to it personally that your interests at least are protected, from Connachtmen or anyone else. Furthermore, you have made it plain that Kincora is one of your interests, thus outshouting your wretched brother."

At Dun na Sciath, Malachi indeed got the message. He was horrified. "I am no longer a young man," he protested to his sons.

"How am I to cope with another fiery-eyed Dalcassian? Was not one in a lifetime enough?"

His sons were having the same worry. A repetition of their father's humiliating rivalry with Brian Boru was the last thing they wanted. "If this isn't an open revolt against your authority,"

counseled Ardgal, "don't blow it up into one.

Make an offer for your hostages--one large enough to be tempting but not so large as to encourage a repeat of the incident--and when Donough accepts, make peace with him."

"But why did he do it?" wondered Conor, Malachi's youngest son.

The High King favored him with a morose stare.

"Because he's a Dalcassian. I suspect this is his way of warning me that he is angry over the destruction of Kincora. The Dal Cais tend to think in twists and spirals, and act accordingly. I like things simple, straightforward. We of clan Colman are not such a devious breed."

Malachi's son Ardchu said nothing. But he thought to himself that perhaps being devious paid, if the success of the Dal Cais was any example.

Donough waited in his camp, and as he had expected, within a few days emissaries from Malachi, riding fast horses, arrived to make arrangements for the return of the hostages. They met with him in the privacy of his tent, where they were almost painfully formal. He was glad they had come promptly; feeding the two score warriors he had taken was straining the patience of his own warriors. On them fell the task of hunting and foraging, and the Meathmen were voracious eaters.

Gormlaith continually advised her son on how to treat them while they were in his custody. "Give them the best of everything, so they will have no cause to speak against you when they return to Malachi.

Make them think you have unlimited resources at your disposal. That's what he always did."

But Donough did not need her

advice.

In return for the freedom of the hostages, Malachi's emissaries brought Donough twelve horses, twelve fur-bordered cloaks, and, last but by no means least, a massive gold ring.

Within their hearing Donough pretended to be dissatisfied. "The least he could have done was send us one horse for each man we are holding," he grumbled.

But secretly he was delighted. The horses would be useful for the rest of their journey to the coast, where they could be exchanged for passage to Alba.

The cloaks would be handsome gifts for the court of Malcolm the Second.

As for the ring ...

He took it to Cumara. "Have you seen this before?"

he asked Mac Liag's son.

"I have. The last time I saw it, it was on the hand of the Ard Ri ... the former Ard Ri, that is."

Donough nodded. "I thought so. How did Malachi get it?"

"He is an honorable man, whatever his faults," Cumara replied. "If you're thinking he may have stolen it from Brian's dead hand I'd say you are mistaken. Your father probably gave it to him before the battle at Clontarf. Perhaps they exchanged rings as a pledge of alliance."

"And now he has sent it to me. What am I to read into this, Cumara?"

"Whatever you wish, I suppose. My mind is not the sort that interprets the games chieftains play."

Donough smiled thinly. "Mine is."

He slipped the ring on the forefinger of his left hand, leaving the right hand unencumbered for the sword.

It fitted perfectly.

After the Meathmen had departed with the hostages, Donough held a little celebration in the camp beyond Ros Cre. His men threw more sticks on the fire than necessary and one played a pipe, while another drummed the bodhran.

Donough sat with his back against an oak tree, listening. His seat was a pile of autumn leaves; his cup held clear water from a nearby spring.

No poet entertained him, no servants shuttled to and fro carrying heaped platters, but he was content. Almost content ...

Cera ...

Resolutely, he pushed the thought of her from his mind. Yet like the smell of woodsmoke she lingered at the edge of his consciousness, sweet, haunting ...

No!

Standing up abruptly, Donough brushed himself off like a man ridding himself of cobwebs. He caught his mother watching him.

"What's that ring on your finger?"

"Just a ring."

"Let me see," she demanded imperiously.

He held out his hand for her perusal.

Gormlaith's eyes glittered. "This was your father's."

"It was."

"How did you come by it?"

His reply was studiedly careless. "He wanted me to have it. It's part of my inheritance."

Gormlaith raised her eyebrows.

When they were preparing to break camp and move on toward the coast and Alba, Cumara came to Donough's tent. His serious face was more serious than usual.

"Since you have your father's ring, I think you should have this too," he said, holding out a leather bag. "I brought it away with me from home, I did not think it wise to leave it there unattended."

For a moment Donough's heart leaped into his throat. The sword! The sword after all!

Then he realized the bag was the wrong size and shape. Strangely, however, his hands trembled as he reached for it.

"Your father left it with mine," explained Cumara, "before he marched away toward Dublin.

My father believed he knew what fate would befall him, and was making his preparations. Like telling you of your inheritance."

Slowly, reverently, Donough reached into the bag and drew out a small bardic harp.

The instrument possessed a curved forepillar with a T-formation thickening, a relatively shallow soundbox, and an elegantly curved neck.

Abstract Celtic and zoomorphic

Scandinavian motifs were carved together into the polished willow wood. A ribbon of finest gold wire traced the curve of the neck, the pins were of silver, and the nine brass strings, though slightly tarnished, were sound.

The two men gazed at the harp in admiration.

At last Cumara said, "Many's the time I've seen your father sitting in our house with this on his lap. He preferred the slow airs to the sprightly ones, and kept his eyes closed when he played; it was as if no one else was there, only himself and the harp. I thought it a strange thing for a warrior to do."

Donough said nothing. But that night, their last night before setting out once more, he lay wrapped in his cloak with the ring on his hand and the harp beside him.

From time to time he reached out and gently stroked the strings. Although he lacked the long fingernails necessary for playing the harp properly, it rewarded him with a ripple of sweet, clear sound that was almost bell-like.

"How long would it take to learn to play you?"

he whispered.

As they rode eastward the next morning, he moved his horse close to Fergal's. "Who do you suppose has my father's sword?"

"I have no idea."

"My mother has a theory; she doesn't believe it was put in his tomb in Armagh."

Fergal squinted between the pricked ears of his horse, assessing the road ahead. "She's probably right. King Brian's famous sword that knew how to win wars would be too much of a temptation."

"Who would take it? Can you guess?"

"I cannot, but I would say any of the warriors might have done it. Or even Malachi Mor himself. There was magic in that sword."

"Magic." Donough's eyes were briefly dreamy.

As he rode, he imagined the great sword in its scabbard, belted around his waist. He could almost feel its weight against his thigh. The blade was so long only a very tall man could wield it, and the heavy, counterbalancing hilt was designed for huge hands.

Huge hands. Donough looked at his own.

They were big enough.

The weather grew cold and bitter, and Donough began forcing the pace. Once winter set in it would be hard to persuade a shipowner to transport his retinue across the Irish Sea. Even the Vikings abandoned the northern seas during the season of storms.

Twice more they were attacked by outlaws, but in both instances, and with increasing anger, Donough repelled them.

When they neared Dublin they swung north, made a wide circle around Sitric's stronghold, and angled toward the coast. Their route took them past a tiny chapel dedicated to Saint Mobhi, where they stopped long enough to drink from the saint's holy well. The water was curiously bitter, yet left a sweet aftertaste on the tongue.

For some reason, that taste reminded Donough of Cera.

They reached the tiny fishing village of Skerries shortly before sunset on an evening when sky and sea and air were all a cold, stony blue. Beyond the curving arm of a sandy beach, several islands were visible, the nearest only a short distance away. A collection of currachs and coracles was beached on the strand, upended so they resembled the black carapaces of giant beetles entangled in a web of drying fishing-nets.

"We shall make camp outside the village,"

Donough decided, "and in the morning we'll inquire about passage to Alba. I want to take Fergal and Cumara with me, and you, Ronan, with four of your best men. And my mother, of course," he added unenthusiastically. "The rest of you can return to Thomond with my thanks."

His mother had surprisingly little to say. She stood in her cart staring at the expanse of open water with an unreadable expression.

Arranging transportation to Alba took several days, for none of the little fishing boats was capable of carrying a large party such a distance, even if their owners had been willing to undertake the journey with winter coming on. But at last a local man whose wife's brother had married the daughter of a Hiberno-Dane undertook a complicated negotiation on Donough's behalf, and succeeded in hiring a battered Viking longship, replete with dragon-headed mast.

The vessel would be crewed by Danes and captained by the owner, a Dane called Ragnald, whose ship would otherwise be idle in the off-season. He considered a dozen horses an unexpected windfall and accepted them gladly to pay the fare, though when he realized his passengers would include a red-haired woman he upped the price.

"Red-haired women at sea are terrible bad luck," the Dane insisted.

When the time came for boarding, Donough's escort, none of whom had ever made a sea voyage before, stood aside to a man.

"You first," Fergal told him cheerfully.

Are you with me? Donough silently asked the unseen presence that had impelled him this far.

No discernible response.

When he stepped into the boat, the others followed.

Donough was surprised by the feel of the boat.

The wooden planking beneath his feet seemed unexpectedly thin, so that he was aware of the sea below as if it were a living creature. The water moved, heaved, had a mind of its own, and he was about to ride on its back with only a timber shell to protect him from its whims and vagaries; its savagery.

But this is more than my father ever did, he reminded himself. Then, to that unseen presence, he added, We take a great leap now.

Writing in the annals of Kill Dalua at the end of the year, Declan recorded, "The Age of Christ, 1017. The third year of the second reign of Malachi Mor. In this year died a number of abbots, and a number of princes were slain, often by their own kinsmen. The son of the King of Leinster was blinded through treachery by Sitric of Dublin, and his brother likewise murdered.

Malachi undertook predatory excursions into various kingdoms and many men were killed, including his son Congalach and his chief brehon.

Teigue, King of Munster, undertook the rebuilding of Kill Dalua, but a great wind arose off the lake and three times stripped the roof from the chapel."

To supervise the reconstruction, Cathal Mac Maine left Holy Island and, with half a dozen monks, resettled himself rather uncomfortably in the damaged monastery. He quickly grew suspicious that Teigue's men were retaining the best building materials for Kincora while providing flawed stone and green timber for repairs to Kill Dalua. Swathed in righteous indignation, he set off to the fort to complain. None of his monks were asked to accompany him; he did not want them to witness their abbot in a display of temper.

As he approached the main gateway Cathal met a party of four headed in the same direction, three young men and a barefoot woman who was swathed in a hooded cloak. The leader was a freckled, angular man with red hair and a strangely familiar face, but Cathal could not identify him until he noticed the ornament the man wore on a chain around his neck. It was a bronze pendant of great antiquity and vaguely Gaulish style; a triskele, emblem of druidry.

"What are you doing here!" the abbot challenged, extending his blackthorn walking stick to bar their way.

"Our father sent us to help repair Kincora,"

Padraic's eldest son replied. "He is of the Dal Cais; it is our responsibility."

"We don't need your help. We have plenty of Christians to do the work, God-fearing men who will not leave pagan charms hidden under lintels."

Torccan's eyes flashed but he said evenly,

"We merely seek to be useful. My brothers and I are able carpenters, and our sister can mix limewash and trim thatch. We do all the work on our father's holding; we can turn our hands to anything."

"Be that as it may, we have no need of you! Go back where you came from or ... or ..." Cathal choked on outrage. To regain his composure he lowered the walking stick and reached for the cross he always wore.