by Sarah Rayne
“Bother royal dignity and bother being High King,” said Eochaid crossly, donning his nightcap and clambering into his bed.
Cormac had not given a tinker’s curse for dignity. He had held competitions with his courtiers to see how many women they could each bed in the course of a night, and had set up Sean the Storyteller to keep a tally. Eochaid had heard the final count, and he had not believed it, although he had not said so, because it might have given people an erroneous idea about him. And then you had to allow for exaggeration as well.
Cormac had been wilder than anyone Eochaid had ever known. Eochaid had never forgotten the night of Cormac’s Ritual of Fál; the ceremonious embracing of the great Stone which was supposed to shriek aloud for the destined King. A lot of nonsense, of course, and Eochaid was not going to resurrect such an archaic custom.
“I shouldn’t if I were you,” Bricriu had said, a knowing glint in his eyes. “You never quite know how these things may turn out, Sire.”
Cormac had gone through with it, of course, and people had become very wrought up and wept on each other’s shoulders, and talked about honour and the One True Line and dying for the King, and it had all been very emotional and sloppy.
But Eochaid had crept downstairs and hidden behind a rood screen later that night; he had been twelve at the time and curious. Cormac and the young men of the Court had been wildly gloriously drunk; they had been bawdy and boisterous and flown with the wine they had drunk. After the ladies had retired, Sean the Storyteller had sung quite the rudest song Eochaid had ever heard. Even now, it made his ears turn bright red to think about it. But Cormac and the young men had laughed and cheered and joined in the chorus, and Cait Fian of Gallan had written two more verses, and everyone had cheered all over again and several people had got up to demonstrate the more explicit parts of Sean’s song.
Before they retired, Cormac had challenged them to a new kind of contest.
“Who can fill the pots at twenty paces!” he had shouted, jumping on to the long banqueting table and unbuttoning his breeches. “Come now, gentlemen, for you’ve all taken enough wine to have overflowing bladders by now! A contest! Twenty paces, and a gold piece for each pace for the winner!”
As Eochaid had watched, there had been a laughing stampede and they’d all leapt into line, disgusting, obscene, all eager for the prize. There’d been ribaldry and teasing for one of them who had been suffering the concentrated attentions of a lady for most of the evening, and was in a state of natural arousal or as near as made no difference.
“An upright courtier!” cried Cormac gleefully. “Conaire, you’re out of the race, for you’ll never manage more than two drops in that condition!”
And the curious thing, to Eochaid the incomprehensible thing, was that on the very next day, those young men who had stood with the King, pissing into pots placed in a row, had fallen into respectful silence when he entered the Council Chamber, and later had ridden submissively behind him as he rode out at the head of his armies to some ceremony or other. What of royal dignity there!
It was all too much for Eochaid to grapple with, especially at this hour, especially after an entire evening in the Sun Chamber. He would have to send for a marigold draught or a glass of cold wine to settle his stomach.
“Be bothered to being High King!” said Eochaid Bres crossly and went in search of medicament.
*
Bricriu was composing himself for sleep as well, but unlike the King (if you could think of Mab’s boy as King which Bricriu found difficult), had not been so easily able to banish his worries. It was all very well for Mab to smile and shrug and say Eochaid was young, he could be moulded — yes, and then go off to eye with greedy delight the dark-haired young traveller! Eochaid was not so young as all that; in fact, Bricriu thought he had been born middle-aged, and he was certainly not as mouldable as Mab seemed to think. Mab said Eochaid was a puppet King, a figurehead; that it was she and Bricriu who ruled, but Bricriu was becoming uneasy. Eochaid was rather more than a puppet of late; he was developing a will of his own. You had only to look at the way he had growled at them all tonight, and at how he had gone off dancing and carousing with the chieftain’s lady. Quite out of character that had been, and if Eochaid could do one thing out of character he could do others. Only look, as well, at how he had broken Bricriu’s careful policy of refusing entrance to strangers and invited in the two young men who had come to the West Gate. Bricriu looked at this very carefully indeed, and did not like it. Eochaid seemed to be developing a streak of independence, if not of downright rebelliousness, and the one was as bad as the other. It would not do for Eochaid to start making his own laws; Bricriu did not know what matters were coming to when Kings thought they could do that. No, Eochaid must be got firmly back on the path that Bricriu intended him to tread, and they could all relax again. He had not spent those weeks and months consulting with the sorcerers for nothing. He had certainly not taken part in those long and incomprehensible rituals — and some of them had been disgusting! — just to see Ireland snatched from his grasp by a stupid obstinate puppet. Bricriu was going to make Ireland the most powerful country in the world; he was going to send out armies to conquer all the other civilised nations, and once they had been conquered, Ireland would rule the world. And Bricriu would rule Ireland. It was a heady thought.
It would happen as well, Bricriu had determined on that, and he had sought out the most powerful of the sorcerers to make sure of it. The armies that he would send out from Tara would be victorious because they would have the sorcerers at their beck and call, and wars waged using sorcery were nearly always successful.
He had had to make use of the Dark Sorcerers, of course, but he thought you could not have everything. The battles would, as a result, be really rather gruesome at times, but since the battles would not be in Ireland, Bricriu was not disposed to worry over-much.
He sighed contentedly, and was glad, rather than otherwise, that he had not summoned any of the Court ladies to his bed tonight. Really, when you came down to it, there was nothing as satisfying as the thrill of power. And Bricriu was going to be very powerful indeed.
Mab should not stand in his way; Mab had an unexpected habit of showing squeamishness at times, Bricriu had noticed it more than once. She thought that captives ought to be treated with respect, and she had wanted him to post sentries at all the borders between here and Muileann; “In case of attack from the Miller’s people,” she had said. Bricriu had not cared if the Miller’s people had attacked and taken off the entire Court, just so long as he himself was left safe. You could replace courtiers. You could not replace Bricriu.
Eochaid Bres should not stand in his way either. He could not be removed, of course, for they needed someone with a vein of royal blood in him, even if it was only a thin trickle. But he would certainly have to be distracted. Perhaps the boy should be married. It would occupy his mind if nothing else. Kings so easily became bored, and everyone knew what happened when Kings were bored; they squabbled and had petty disputes with their chieftains — which was apt to be expensive — or they took to womanising or drinking — which was apt to be injurious to their health. Bricriu did not want Eochaid either bankrupt or poxed, or not until he had found an acceptable replacement for him at any rate. And of course, a High King ought to be married. Bricriu ran his mind over several likely candidates for Eochaid’s consideration, but this one was too old, and that one too ill-favoured, and a third too nearly related to the Wolfline. They could not have a Princess of Tara who could not bear children, and they did not want one who was so ugly she would have to wear a bag over her head on State occasions, and they certainly dare not risk one who might owe allegiance to the exiled Cormac. There were enough spies at Tara as it was.
Spies.
The little niggling worry about the two strangers slid into the forefront of Bricriu’s mind and he gave it at last his full attention. Just supposing that the two young men, the one fair, the other dark, had come from an ene
my? Supposing they had come from Cormac himself? Bricriu had known Cormac as a boy; he had known Cormac’s father as well, and he knew that Scáthach, grim ugly fortress, would not keep Cormac imprisoned for long. He would break out and muster an army, and it was no comfort to ask what kind of an army the exiled King could gather, because Bricriu knew very well that Cait Fian and the people of the Morne Mountains would ride out under Cormac’s standard. And Cait Fian was not an enemy to be regarded lightly. With Cait Fian on his side, Cormac would put up a very good fight to regain his lost Kingdom, and there was always the chance he might win. Bricriu had done all he could to guard Tara against such assault; he had bound the Bright Palace with as many enchantments as he had been able to buy — although his thrifty soul had been very much shocked at the greediness of the sorcerers — and Tara was very nearly impregnable.
But it was not absolutely impregnable …
The Girdle of Gold had long since been lost to the High Kings of course; he knew that. And Tara’s sorcerers had never ceased to search for it — or so they would have you believe. “Ever since the Lady Dierdriu’s day,” they always said, their faces bland.
Bricriu did not entirely trust the sorcerers, although he did not say so directly. They were automatically bound to the one who ruled from Tara, of course; they always swore an Oath at a coronation, and it was all very impressive. But in reality they were as venal as the next man; they knew how to swear an Oath and avoid looking you in the eye, and they certainly knew how to find out loopholes in an Oath as well.
And so when the sorcerers told him they continually searched for the Girdle of Gold so that it might be restored to Tara, Bricriu was inclined to be very sceptical indeed. He thought the sorcerers knew very well where the Girdle of Gold was. With the Erl-King?
“We did not say that,” said the wily sorcerers. “But your honour knows that no enchantment can be used simultaneously by two different people.” And they avoided Bricriu’s eyes again, so that Bricriu thought: aha! So the Erl-King has commandeered the Girdle for his Citadal, has he? It was not so very surprising if you thought about it. It was not surprising at all if you took into account that the sorcerers — some of them anyway — were probably in the pay of the Erl-King, never mind if they had sworn a thousand Oaths and a million Allegiances.
But Bricriu was annoyed. Without the Girdle of Gold, Tara was vulnerable. Enemies could get in, spies could slip through.
Spies.
Bricriu thought: what would I do if I were Cormac? And back came the answer: send spies into Tara! He considered the idea, and thought it was very likely indeed that Cormac would do just that. It was what anyone would do, thought Bricriu, whose mind worked crablike, and who could not have conceived in a hundred years of Cormac’s forthright swashbuckling methods. Cormac, in fact, had never once thought about spies, about the backstairs way of regaining his kingdom, but still — he’ll send in spies, thought Bricriu. He’ll do that before he does anything else. Spies to find out the number of guards and sentinels; to count the hours of the nightwatches and learn the times of sentry changes. Spies carefully disguised!
Cormac would not know that travellers were no longer welcome at Tara. He would assume that all travellers were made as welcome as he himself had made them, and he would think that a pair of pilgrims would blend easily into any one of the evenings in the Sun Chamber.
The two young travellers who had arrived tonight were exactly the sort of people Cormac would consort with. They bore his stamp, Bricriu had seen that at once. The dark-haired one had a good deal of Cormac’s recklessness about him, you had only to look at him to see it.
Bricriu pondered the matter, and thought that no mistakes must be made. The only thing to do with spies was to kill them as quickly and efficiently as possible before they could get back to their master. The travellers must be dispatched as soon as he could manage it; they must certainly not be allowed to find out anything about the Palace’s fortifications.
A public execution? Make an example of them? No, it was not to be thought of. To do that would make public the fact that the spies had managed to gain entry in the first place. It would make Tara sound an easy target for the raff and skaff of the world, any one of whose rulers would be very pleased to possess the Bright Palace. It would certainly make it sound a cheap conquest for Cormac and the armies he would be trying to raise. People could not be allowed to know that Cormac’s spies had penetrated so far. What was to be done?
They would have to be killed of course, but in such a way that no one would guess the truth. Bricriu considered the matter and thought he would ask the sidh for help. It would mean going down into the Sorcery Chambers which he did not much care for — well, nobody did if the truth was told — but the sidh would have to be properly summoned. They would not be far away in any case, for they were never far from Tara. They served the High Kings in their fashion, but they served Bricriu as well. A very neat little bargain had been struck when Eochaid Bres had been put on the throne; the sidh had helped Bricriu quite considerably then, and perhaps it was time to send them a little offering. These bargains were a two-sided arrangement in any case, and Bricriu was really quite pleased to think he could reciprocate. The fact that the disposal of one of the young men would be to his advantage did not come into the thing. He would call up the sidh and they would certainly take one of the spies.
What about the other one? The sidh would only ever take one human at a time; they were greedy but they only concentrated on one victim at a time. What, then, of the one they did not take? Bricriu tiptoed through the halls, holding his night candle aloft, and as he turned the curve in the stair, the candle throwing huge fantastic shapes on the walls, a plan so simple and so satisfactory slid into his mind that he stood stockstill for a moment and the candle flickered wildly and almost went out. Bricriu shielded it at once with his hand, for he had no mind to be left down here in the dark. He would much prefer not to have gone down to the Sorcery Chambers in the dark to begin with, but it could not be helped, he could not risk being seen, and anyway, enchantments always worked better at night.
But the plan — oh yes, it was beautifully simple, and it would work, because the simplest plans were always the best. He smiled to himself as he made his way down the gilt stairway.
Beltane. In just over a week it would be Beltane. Bonfires and revels and all means of feastings. Rituals, for Tara with its links with the ancient lore, held closely to most of the old rituals. It held very closely to one ritual in particular.
The Beltane Fire. The great mound of wood on the Plain of the Fál, lit with great ceremony by the High King at the Purple Hour, danced round by the Court. And on the summit of the fire …
The Druids had continued the custom when everyone else had long since abandoned it. They kept their secrets and ceremonies, and even the wiliest of the sorcerers had never found out their rituals. The Druids were wise, rather eccentric, but entirely harmless. But on the night of Beltane they worshipped very old gods indeed; some of them so old that their names were lost to the rest of the world, and their powers old before men could communicate with one another.
Every Beltane night, the Druids brought to the Plain of the Fál a rather awesome and slightly grisly practice. The wooden giant. The great rearing Wicker Man, frequently thirty or forty feet in height, cunningly constructed from thin wood and grass, so perfect, so nearly human, that if you had not known it to be a dead thing, a soulless creature of bracken and tree and twig, you might have thought a nightmare had come alive.
The Druids brought it every year, trundling it in silent procession to the Plain, pulling it right up to the fire where it would be burned. It was divided into sections, little hinged compartments that opened and latched shut, and which, once closed, were remarkably difficult to open again. “One of our secrets,” said the Druids courteously, but Bricriu had always believed that some minor sorcery was used in the sealing of the compartments. The Druids had their secrets. In each compartment were live things;
pigs, geese, lambs; frequently pigeons and doves. The Wicker Man’s legs would hold the smaller creatures; the stomach and ribcage housed the larger ones. Inside the head, where the brain would have been in a live man, were traditionally put crabs and lobster to represent the sea creatures.
And at the height of the Purple Hour, when the revelries were at their wildest, the Wicker Man with all his prisoners was consigned to the great Beltane Fire, and every single creature inside the wicker cages was burned alive.
The higher the fire the greater the rewards … the more numerous the sacrifice, the better the fertility of the land …
It was many years since the Druids had penned a human sacrifice in the wicker man’s trunk, although Bricriu knew it had once been regarded as a punishment for those convicted of serious crimes. But neither Cormac nor his father had cared for the custom; Cormac had said that burning to death was unnecessarily brutal no matter the crime, and Bricriu believed he had even ordered some kind of draught to be prepared for the condemned animals and birds. The Druids had protested; they had said that blood and flesh and bone must shriek aloud for the sacrifice to be effective; deep and abiding agonies must be endured by the victims to ensure fertility to the land in the coming year. But Cormac had overruled them, for Cormac had always been able to handle the Druids.