At their wedding in the great hall, Aisling wore a long green dress, elegant in its simplicity, matching the color of the tree on Ireland’s newest coat of arms. Conor’s white surcoat partially covered his new chain mail, which sparkled in the candlelight as Art performed the ceremony. Aisling and Conor laughed at the absurdity of signing a contract for five years and a day. As soon as the seal was applied to the document, Art embraced the pair of them, and his deep voice resonated through the hall, “Now we celebrate! Bring in the food and wine, lots of wine!”
“One thing we can count on with Art, there’ll be a feast at every opportunity,” said Liam. He and Patrick waited by the door, away from the thick crowd, which jostled with squires and pages carrying tables, benches, and food.
“I wager ten silver pennies that he leads a drinking song by the third course,” said Patrick, snagging a cup from a passing basket and scanning the crowd for a page to fill it.
Rhoswen wedged herself between Patrick and Liam. She addressed Liam without a greeting. “Do you understand that Aisling will still need your protection?”
“She beat a demon!” exclaimed Patrick.
“She is in flux. She must feel secure to continue to develop her powers,” said Rhoswen.
“I am grateful for your insight, but don’t worry, I don’t plan to abandon her,” said Liam.
“Conor also. You will stress this to him?” Rhoswen insisted.
“Not tonight, tomorrow. Tell me—”
Rhoswen interrupted, “I will not let that priest talk at me,” and slipped away.
Colmcille, leader of the smaller of the two factions of the Irish Christian Church, was pushing his way through the crowd toward the door. Reaching Patrick, he declared, “This should be a Christian wedding.”
“Christian weddings are for Christians,” replied Patrick. “Besides, pagan weddings are more fun.”
“That is all it is to you, isn’t it? How much fun you can have?”
“Jesus was always up for a good feast.”
“There will be no feast for you in hell,” warned Colmcille. “Or for anyone else here.”
“I hear that hell features prominently in your sermons of late,” said Patrick. “No wonder your congregation is shrinking while mine is growing. You’re becoming quite Roman, aren’t you?”
“The new Church of Rome will cover the world soon. There’s no standing against the true word of God. Look to your own rotting soul, your church is too accommodating—educating women, sanctioning divorce. Your sermons do more harm than good.”
“Let’s let the Bell decide whose words are true,” said Patrick, drawing the Blood Bell from its holster.
“I wasn’t going to grace this heathen gathering with my presence anyway,” hissed Colmcille as he left.
Patrick noticed that Liam, along with everyone else nearby, was backing away from him. “Don’t worry,” he said laughingly. “I’m not going to ring it. Let’s go find the wine.”
. . . . .
A week later Conor’s coat of arms fluttered on a flag above a mounted column of twenty-four Gallowglass. The small force was a gift from King Murchada of Leinster. To this, Murchada added his sealed pledge to support, with his own forces if need be, Conor mac Tadg’s right to Dunsany Castle—there was no better way to ensure that the Maolan clan actually turned over the property.
Two wagons of supplies followed, with Tadg’s widow driving the first. At the head of the column rode Liam, behind him Aisling and Conor, side by side. Since departing Tara to the cries of a herald, Conor had been wearing the awkwardly furtive smile of a young boy who has been caught eating a stolen pastry, only to learn it was intended for him all along.
The procession had taken the southern road out of Tara. Open fields now lay to both sides. Two curious young shepherds trotted along the side of the road, talking to one of the younger Gallowglass. The road was about to enter Laigen Forest when a Woodwose stepped out.
The air filled with the sharp scrape of swords being drawn from scabbards.
“Hold!” shouted Aisling.
Liam’s sword flashed, knocking down an arrow that had already been loosed by one of the Gallowglass.
“Hold!” Aisling repeated.
The Woodwose, an unpainted male wearing a loincloth, carried a severed head. He took several steps forward and tossed the head toward them. It rolled to the forelegs of Aisling’s horse and stared up at her with vacant eyes. Aisling recognized the dead face, still contorted, of the Woodwose shaman. She dismounted.
“What are you doing?” objected Conor.
“They seek a new shaman,” she answered.
Liam circled his horse back protectively.
Conor studied the Woodwose as Aisling picked up the head and lashed it by its bushy hair to her saddle. He asked, “Why do this? They killed Tadg and almost killed us.”
“That’s why I need to. They’ll follow their shaman to their death without question, so I must become their shaman.” Aisling looked up at Conor. “And you must become their lord.” She wiped a smear of blackened, sticky blood from her hands. “They’ll be a powerful ally for you, to the exclusion of all other nobles. What they lack in organization and weapons they make up for in fearlessness and ferocity.”
“She has a point,” offered Liam.
Aisling walked toward the Woodwose while Liam watched. Conor pulled his bow from its pouch behind his saddle and fitted an arrow but did not draw. When Aisling stood in front of the Woodwose, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head. A line of Woodwose, men and women, materialized from the trees, moved forward, and dropped to a supplication pose. Then another line, followed by more, until more than two hundred, Aisling estimated, knelt before her.
. . . . .
One hundred forty-six miles north, on the coast of Ireland, large waves crashed through the soaring, arched mouth of Dunkerry Cave, an entrance that rivaled any cathedral’s. Its crimson-hued galleries extended far under land, briefly dipping beneath the dark water before emerging to form a vast cavern.
In the cavern, scattered torches did little to push back the darkness. Carvings of the sea-serpent-shaped God Seonaidh glistened faintly on the damp walls. There was just enough light to reveal blood dripping from open wounds on the Fomorian’s strong arms and chest, staining his white sable cloak as he sat, for the first time, on the stone throne of the Fomorian high king. At his feet lay the broken body of his predecessor. The new high king reached down, ripped out the single engorged eye of the former ruler, and held it aloft, his own single eye looking out at the four thousand Fomorian warriors kneeling before him.
15
The Palace of Westminster, London
October 1392
Propped up in bed on a copious pile of purple silk pillows, Queen Anne watched de Vere getting dressed. Opening the chamber door, he glanced back at her. She smiled, a smile he returned, and then he left. Anne looked down at Richard, his head in her lap, eyes closed, and stroked his hair. Richard curled up tighter against her bare body.
“Our pretty king,” she cooed. “We hate that Our lovely friend had to run off to a war council meeting. Such a tedious errand.”
Richard nuzzled her lap and whispered, “He must prepare for the invasion.”
“You and he are spending altogether too much energy on these plans. We are not happy that there is less time for Our games. How hard will it be to defeat the faeries? There cannot be that many of them—We have never even seen one.”
Richard opened his eyes. “Our sweet queen, do not be cross. You have not seen a faerie because the Romans drove them out of southern England a millennium ago. However, Longshanks had to fight them in Wales, and he recorded that they were quite fierce. We have been reliably informed that there are a lot of faeries in Ireland, as well as Celts. You would be happy We are making such efforts to protect de Vere’s force and make sure he comes
back to Us, if you heard what happened during the last attempted invasion. We cannot afford to repeat that disaster.”
TWO CENTURIES EARLIER, twenty miles off the Irish coast, gray clouds closed in on the sun, building a midday gloom. A quarter mile ahead of Strongbow’s flagship, enchanted waves suddenly sprang up thirty feet and tossed themselves about, forming turbulent fortifications spanning the horizon, blocking the armada’s route to Ireland.
“Time to earn your kingdom back,” Strongbow said to Diarmait, the exiled king of Leinster.
Diarmait removed his cloak, handed it to Strongbow’s marshal, Robert Fitz-Stephen, and strode to the prow. Spreading his arms wide, he began to chant. At first nothing happened, but then a wide channel of calm opened up in the wild sea ahead. Strongbow’s armada sailed easily into it.
Pope Adrian IV had issued the Laudabiliter grant authorizing Henry II, the Norman king of England, to invade Ireland. As tempting as the Vatican’s offer was, Henry did not act upon it for a decade, not until the apparently blessed event of Diarmait’s eviction from Ireland and arrival in Henry’s court. By demonstrating a few simple enchantments, Diarmait convinced Henry that he would be able to perform the rite necessary to land an invasion force safely on the Irish shore. So with great confidence, King Henry, having also secured the Vatican’s payment for the nine-hundred-sixty-man mercenary army, launched an armada at Ireland under the command of Richard de Clare, second Earl of Pembroke, known as Strongbow. With him went his marshal, Robert Fitz-Stephen, illegitimate son of the constable of Cardigan.
Robert watched as a wave rose up above the port rail only to fall harmlessly away from his ship and, for the first time since hearing of this plan, allowed himself to smile. Clapping Strongbow on the back, he said, “I’m looking forward to plenty of Celtic ale, and I hear their women—” He did not finish.
A loud crash reverberated from off their starboard bow as one of the other ships hit a colossal rock that had not been there a moment earlier. Robert glimpsed two young women astride its peak, their long red hair streaming out behind them in the rising wind. One reached out in the direction from which his ship had come, and her hand made a gesture, leaving a glowing trail in the air. He looked back. A wall of water rushed down the channel behind him and washed over the trailing ships, causing them to flounder, spilling men over the side. The women—Robert saw that they were twins—began to direct a symphony of rising waves and rocks. His flagship tossed and spun. A green-tinged, manlike Fomorian climbed over the rail, seized the sailor at the ship’s wheel, and dragged him over the side. Strongbow grabbed the wheel and fought the waves for control.
Robert drew his sword just in time to thrust it into the chest of a Fomorian charging at him. He kicked the dying beast off his blade. The flagship ran up against the side of another ship that was overrun with the creatures, and he heard the screams of its men. Robert severed the head of a Fomorian lunging for Strongbow and yelled, “We have to turn back!”
“Which way is back?” shouted Strongbow.
Both men were knocked to the deck as the ship struck one of the rocks that were now everywhere. With a groan the ship started to list. Strongbow’s personal guards gathered around him and were holding their own against the Fomorians. “Get to the longboats!” Robert shouted. They managed to launch two of the boats, carrying Strongbow, Robert, Diarmait, and sixteen other survivors, before the ship sank.
. . . . .
The following dawn Robert squatted in the tree line and looked out across the marshy foreshore toward the water. Waves had driven the wreckage landward, where it clogged Bannow Bay. Throughout the night survivors had crawled out of the bay through the marsh and into the woods, having made it to shore on a collection of planks, longboats, and, remarkably, one almost intact ship. Robert waited another hour, but no one else emerged from the water, so he made his way to back to the clearing where Strongbow and Diarmait had assembled the survivors. In all, about a quarter of the men had made it.
“Any more men?” asked Strongbow.
Robert shook his head and asked Diarmait, “Do you know where we are?”
“I’m sure we’re between Wexford and Waterford, Viking ports,” replied Diarmait. “There’s a dry riverbed just to the west of us that must be the Scar, but it’s never run dry before.”
“Which port is closer?” asked Strongbow.
“If that’s truly the Scar River, then Wexford’s less than a day’s walk to the northeast.”
“So we go to Wexford,” said Strongbow, looking up at the clear sky to get a sun bearing. “The Vikings might be persuaded with the promise of enough gold to return us to England. With luck we can slip by the Sidhe and Celts without being noticed.”
“There’ll be no such luck. They know where we are,” said Diarmait. “It was the Morrígna twins that sank the fleet. We won’t be able to hide from them.”
“We have no choice,” said Strongbow. “How are the men set for weapons?”
“They have what they were wearing when we were attacked—a sword or a dagger or both,” replied Robert. “We managed to salvage five sets of mail, sixty shields, thirty bows, and maybe six hundred arrows from the surviving ship. But we have no fresh water. Fomorians got to the casks, and they were spoiled.”
“Organize the men. We make haste to Wexford. There should be plenty of water on the way.”
The company did not find Wexford or water. They walked for ten hours, using the sun for bearing, without seeing a sign of a Celt, a Sidhe, or even a farmhouse. Worst of all were the three wells they found. Sunlight glinted on the water at the bottom—they could smell it, drop a stone and hear it splash—but even with all the rope they could piece together, the bucket always came up dry. At the third well, one man attempted to leap in and had to be pulled back by his friends.
Finally Strongbow called a halt to the slog. They scraped together a meager meal consisting of the last of their salvaged provisions and sucked the moisture out of a few wild turnips and radishes they had found.
A shrill wail penetrated their skulls. Men leaped to their feet, swords in hand, peering around through the gathering gloom.
“What’s that?” shouted Strongbow to Diarmait.
“Banshee, messenger of death.”
A tall woman appeared, walking among the trees, gray hair floating in the air about her gray cloak over a green dress. She looked at Strongbow with eyes red from weeping. Her mouth opened, became impossibly large, and emitted another wail. Three men rushed at her. They found only mist. The Banshee started up again in another direction.
Surrounded, submerged in wailing, the men tried to cover their ears but found no relief as the cry rose and fell for three hours. Then it stopped. The entire company collapsed, exhausted, in a fitful sleep without even posting a guard.
The sun rose on a fresh crisis. Twenty men were missing. Trails of blood led deep into the trees. A nervous scouting party was sent out and quickly returned to report that the bay where they had washed up the day before was just a hundred yards away. They had been walking in circles.
“Diarmait, this is your homeland. You have to find us water,” demanded Strongbow.
“It must be the Sidhe. They’re not letting the company leave this wood.”
“Then go get water and bring it back.”
“I know an enchantment that should enable a few of us to get out,” Diarmait said. “No more than five. Me, Robert, and three others. We’ll take all the buckets and rope.”
The group headed west to connect with the course of the river Scar. When they reached its bank, the riverbed appeared to have been dry for an eon, even though, maddeningly, they could hear water running as if the river flowed just around the next bend.
“Pick a sprig of heather and place it in your hair,” ordered Diarmait. “Then remove your boots. We can carry them in one of the buckets.”
The men looked uncertainly at one
another.
“Do it, if you ever want to leave this wood alive.”
Robert found a patch of heather and plucked a sprig. Securing it in his hair, he sat on the dry ground and began to pull off his boots. The other men followed his example. Diarmait drew a six-inch circle in the dirt, had each man gather what moisture he had left in his mouth and spat into it. There was just enough for Diarmait to work a layer of mud, in which he drew a complex symbol. Scooping up the mud, he smeared a small amount on each man’s feet, then his own.
“This may get us past the Sidhe and out of this trap,” he said without emotion.
“Or get us killed trying,” added Robert.
“That’s right,” said Diarmait. He decided to head north and keep the riverbed close on their left to ensure that they did not again travel in circles. After three hours of walking, never losing sight of the dry riverbed, or escaping the sound of flowing water, they broke free of the trees. Spread out ahead of them were large fields divided by a network of stone walls. A mile or more to the east, away from the river, they could see the top of a round tower that signaled the presence of a monastery. The small group turned toward the tower, sliding along the field walls to stay out of sight.
The medium-size monastery consisted of the tall round tower, a stone sanctuary still under construction, and three thatch-roofed buildings with plaster walls. The largest of these was marked as the old sanctuary by a tall stone Irish Christian cross, a merging of the Roman Christian cross with the Celtic Sun God, some said the Moon Goddess, though it could be both. Perhaps even the cross itself was not from the original Roman Church, as cruciform elements were common in both Celtic and Sidhe ritual practice centuries before Christ was born. The sound of harp music and singing drifted from the old sanctuary. In the courtyard, clearly visible through a wide gap in the unfinished outer defensive wall, was a well.
Crouching behind a hedge, Diarmait whispered, “It’s unlikely an enchantment protects their well.”
The Last Days of Magic Page 19