Dubh-linn: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 2)

by James L. Nelson

  But here, before her, were not dozens but hundreds of buildings, houses crammed so close on one another that a tall man could put his hands on two at the same time. There were odd shaped patches of ground extending from each of the houses, each with a small garden enclosed with a wattle fence. She could hear the ring of smith’s hammers and the growl of saws, the thud of some heavy work going on, the muffled sound of men shouting, too far off for the words to be distinct. Music was playing somewhere. And the whole thing was cut up into semi-regular sections by roads, some little more than muddy paths but others wide and planked over.

  The farmer, quite used to the sight, made no comment as he led the oxen along the chief road through the town. Finnian also said nothing, and as usual it was impossible to guess what he was thinking. And Brigit was too shocked to speak, her impressions and thoughts, half-formed and confused, too amorphous to be formed into words.

  So many buildings… she thought. Is that a temple of some sort? The smoke…what is that? At the bottom of the sloping town the River Liffey rolled toward the sea. More than a dozen ships of all sizes were swinging at moorings or pulled up on the shore, and even as she looked she could see three more moving slowing up river, their long oars rising and falling in such perfect unison they seemed to be controlled by a single hand.

  And the people. More than Brigit could have imagined, more than she had ever see assembled in one place before, people moving everywhere, each seemingly with a place to go, a reason to be abroad. Women in Irish garb or dressed like the fin gall’s women, big men with beards and heavily armed, farmers from her own country. Children.

  Beneath the numbing astonishment she felt a sense of dread, and despair. Like her father, like so many Irish, she had always harbored a hope that these heathen pigs might be driven back into the sea. But how? How could that happen now? The fin gall had taken what was a toe-hold on the coast of Ireland, no more than a place to over-winter, and had built that into a trading center the likes of which the Irish could never manage. The damned farmer had said it: the fact is, they’re here to stay.

  But soon those thoughts were pushed aside as Brigit was confronted by a new problem. Even after deciding to come to Dubh-linn, she had not put a great deal of thought into how she would find Harald. She had not anticipated much difficulty because she had not imagined that Dubh-linn was anything near as big as it was. She had never imagined that any town could be as big as Dubh-linn was. But once her initial shock dissipated, it was replaced by a sense of panic. How will we ever find him in all this?

  The farmer led the oxen down the road, rumbling along shoulder to shoulder with the hundreds of people making for the market. They came to an open place lined with rickety booths and the farmer stopped the animals in their progress. “This be the market, Father,” he said, “which is far as I’m going. But maybe I can help you find him what you’re looking for?”

  Finnian turned to Brigit. They had never discussed whom, specifically, in Dubh-linn she was seeking, and now she saw what a terrible oversight that was. She cleared her throat, and when she spoke she tried to sound as much like a young man as she was able, giving her voice a gravely tone and lowering it as best as she could. “We’re looking for one of the fin gall. A young man named Harald, middling height, but broad, with yellow hair. Perhaps seventeen or eighteen years of age.”

  If the farmer suspected Brigit’s subterfuge he gave no indication of it, but he did laugh out loud. “You just described half these damned fin gall!” he exclaimed. “But very well, I’ll see what I can make of it.”

  He wandered off, and for fifteen minutes or so Brigit and Finnian watched him as he asked various passers-by, or at least those who looked like they might know something, if they knew of this boy Harald. They watched as one after another shook his or her head. At last the farmer returned.

  “Is there anything else you might know? Something to be of more help?”

  Brigit had been digging through her memory, and she managed to come up with something. “His father was also with him,” she said, tentatively. She was thinking back to a discussion, months earlier, that she had had with Morrigan. “His name is…Thorgrim. Thorgrim Night Wolf.”

  “Well, let me see, then,” the farmer said, his tone skeptical. He walked off, approached a tall man wearing a crimson cape, a long sword at his side. The farmer spoke. Brigit could not hear the words. But she saw the light of recognition on the fin gall’s face. He nodded his head. He pointed down the road. She felt the relief spread over her like the warmth from a fire.

  Twenty minutes later, no more, they had found the smith’s house, made their way down the path, past the big man pounding iron on his anvil, another, sinewy and powerful looking, sharpening swords. An Irish woman met them at the door. Brigit pulled the cowl off her head and, with great relief, pulled the long brown hair from the robe and shook it like a wet dog.

  If the Irish woman was shocked to see a woman in a monk’s robe, she hid it well. She did not recognize Brigit, but she did recognize that Brigit was no thrall or fishmonger.

  “May I help you?” she asked, courteous, if a bit wary.

  “My name is Brigit. Brigit nic Máel Sechnaill,” Brigit replied, and the look of shock and fear and respect that came instantly to the woman’s face was proof enough that she knew to whom she was speaking. She swept her arms toward the interior in a gesture of welcome, her body in a partial bow. She called out in a loud voice, speaking the Norse language, presumably to her husband. From the back room, his arms full of firewood, Harald looked up at her, his deep blue, ingenuous eyes wide, his mouth open in surprise. He did not even flinch as the pile of wood slipped from his arms.

  They all crowded into the house, tiny by the standards of the royal residence of Tara but palatial compared to an average Irish peasant’s home. A bustle, an awkward silence, then Brigit turned to introduce Father Finnian. But Father Finnian was gone.

  Finnian’s disappearance was a surprise, but it did not long distract Brigit from her desperate need to get out of the scratchy robe and the blood-encrusted leine that she had worn since leaving Tara. Once the flurry of greeting and explanations was over, she asked Almaith if she might borrow a shift of clothing, and Almaith, stuttering and apologizing that she had not thought to ask, supplied a leine and brat of wool dyed bright red.

  It was not Brigit’s preferred color – she liked something that set off her eyes - but she was grateful for it, and more relieved than she had expected to be rid of the cumbersome monk’s robe. She twisted the brat expertly around her waist and fastened it with a leather belt. Despite being months into her pregnancy now she still had that womanly shape for which several men had already died. That was good. She would need every charm she possessed, if the next few days were to go as she hoped. The old clothing she left in a heap on the floor for Almaith to attend to.

  Brigit told the tale of how she had arrived at that place to the eagerly listening Northmen in the smith’s house (and it was indeed a tale, containing only a glancing similarity to the truth of the thing), and for the next twenty-four hours she rested and was waited on and met many people until names and faces all became a big blur. And then, at last, in private with Harald, she had convinced him to arrange for a meeting with someone of influence among the Vikings. Which had brought them, finally, to the fine room in the fine house with the fire burning in the hearth.

  The Irish woman, Almaith, was speaking to her, translating the words of the Northman who sat behind his table, facing them. Harald smiled at her, an uncertain smile. He had reacted to her arrival just as she had imagined he would, like a big, loyal dog seeing its master return from a long voyage. And like the dog, which has no concept of the machinations of the larger world, Harald seemed not in the least surprised by her arrival. Foolishly delighted, even embarrassed, but not surprised.

  “He says, your highness,” Almaith was saying, “please tell him again how it could be Tara is so lacking defense? He had thought it was the seat of the high king,
and that there would have been a formidable army there.”

  Harald was squirming, and Brigit guessed that he feared she was about to lose her temper. His fear was justified. This was taking longer than it needed, and despite how crucial the outcome might be to her, her patience was ebbing fast.

  “Pray, tell him again,” she said, “that most of the men-at-arms who defend Tara are the rí túaithe and their men. Will he know the meaning of rí túaithe? They have such a word?”

  “I will say ‘jarl,’ highness, it will be close enough.”

  “When my husband died, the rí túaithe returned to their own kingdoms. There are men-at-arms at Tara, but few, far less than the fin gall…these Northmen…could gather. Flann mac Conaing who sits on the throne now is a pretender, they will not rally to him.”

  Almaith translated the words. Harald squirmed some more. Brigit was motionless. The man behind the desk drilled her with his eyes and tapped his fingers on the wooden surface. Brigit met his gaze, unflinching. Harald had assured her, through Almaith’s translations and the bits of Irish he had picked up, that this man was a great leader among the fin gall, that he had just led the sack of Cloyne, that he enjoyed considerable respect among the others.

  Brigit hoped that Harald was right. She was starting to have her doubts. This fellow asked a lot of questions, sometimes the same question put into different words. He seemed not to make decisions with the surety she expected from a real leader.

  Still, she could not deny that he seemed to have wealth enough, and that must have come from somewhere. And she herself knew nothing of these people. There was little that she could do but trust Harald, trust Almaith, and hope that this fellow was the man most able to help her take the throne of Tara.

  Harald was talking to the man now, his tone obsequious but not groveling. Brigit caught a name and she remembered. Of course! This is not Thorgrim. Thorgrim was the other fellow. This is Arinbjorn. The one they call White-tooth.

  Suddenly she felt her confidence melting away. What in God’s name am I doing? she wondered. She was all but offering her kingdom to this man, some heathen fin gall bastard, resting her future on the hope that she could trust him, even though she knew that no fin gall were to be trusted.

  Then she considered her choices, and recalled that, awful as this one might be, she could think of none better.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Not all my dreams bode well,

  yet each of them I must tell.

  That woman in my dreams

  takes all my joy, it seems.

  Gisli Sursson’s Saga

  They went at it with bare hands, and then hoes and shovels, carefully, layer by layer. The heavy, charred beams of the roof were lifted off the pile of still smoking debris, once part of the royal residence, and stacked to the side. The heaps of thatch that had somehow escaped the flames were flung in a great mound. And below that, the fired daub of the walls, hard now like pottery. Six days later and it still stunk.

  The fire had consumed well over half of the big house. It had torn through Brigit’s bed chamber, where it had apparently started, had knocked through a wall to the adjoining room, had reached up and grabbed the thatch roof where it found a ready source of fuel. It had been a roaring, smoke-choked, scorching bedlam, and the men, women, even the children of Tara had come to fight it like angels waging war on the depths of hell. They used whatever tools came to hand to pull away the burning material and threw buckets of water on the flames.

  Flann mac Conaing had coordinated the work, issuing orders like a commander on the field of battle. Against the roaring blaze their efforts had seemed puny. The mob looked more like worshipers of the old gods, dancing around a druid’s fire, than like people who might actually beat the flames into submission. But in the end they did. All night long they fought, and by dawn the flames were no longer a monstrous inferno but rather a handful of smaller fires that seemed less threatening in the growing light. Half of the big house was a smoky ruin, but half was still standing.

  Morrigan had only been asleep a short while when the first voices of panic wrenched her from her bed. Not long before that, thirty minutes, maybe an hour, she had turned out to the sound of shouting from Brigit’s chamber. Brigit and Conlaed’s chamber. The newlyweds. A few servants were already there, standing nervously outside the door, unsure of their duty. Morrigan chased them away with a few harsh words and blows.

  Then she listened. They were shouting, but the thick, tapestry-draped walls muffled the words. She was certain she heard something break, something flung. Then quiet. She waited a long time. No sound. That weak-brained idiot Conlaed no doubt passed out at last. She returned to her own bed chamber.

  When she did wake again, when she clawed her way up from sleep, she lay still and listened. Shouting. She heard Flann’s voice, loud and commanding. She smelled the bitter smoke creeping into her room. One thought came to her, one thought alone. The Crown!

  She threw off the bed clothes and stood and coughed in the smoke hanging in the upper part of the room. Instinctively, she dropped to her knees and crawled across the floor to where a plain wooden chest stood pushed against the wall. The last vestiges of a peat fire burning in the hearth gave her light enough to see, but she hardly needed it. She threw open the lid and tossed aside the various blankets and small rugs stacked there until her hand fell on the course linen bag at the bottom. Through the fabric she could feel the filigrees like little battlements around the edge of the crown, the smooth round jewels that studded it.

  She pulled the crown from the chest and hugged it close. Now what do I do? she thought. She grabbed up a blanket and tossed it over her shoulders and wrapped it around herself, as much to hide the crown as to protect her from the night’s cold. She half stood, and then sunk to her knees again. Her hands caressed the crown through the linen bag.

  She had not brought it out to look at it for several days, and now, despite the ever louder shouting from beyond her door, the thickening smoke, she could not help herself. She was like a man who could not resist the temptation of drink, and she knew it, and like that man she did not care. She opened the bag and slowly pulled the crown into the light.

  The Crown of the Three Kingdoms… She turned it over in her hands, let the weak light of the peat fire play on the gold and the jewels, reveled in the weight of it. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever beheld. And now it was hers. It would have to remain hers.

  From somewhere outside the door she heard a crashing sound, like a heavy beam falling, and the shouting came louder and she knew she had no more time. She thrust the crown back in the bag and once again held it to her chest, once again wrapped the blanket around her. A long dagger was lying at the bottom of the chest and she grabbed that as well. From the sound alone she could tell that the passage from her door to the residence’s main entrance was untenable, blocked by fire and debris, so she did not even try. She made the sign of the cross, and with the hand holding the dagger picked up the little silver crucifix around her neck and kissed it. She was ready to move.

  Crouching low, she hurried to the window on the far wall and threw open the wooden shutters. The cool night air came rushing in and she realized that the room was more smoke-filled than she had thought. Coughing and stumbling she climbed out of the window. Her bare feet hit the cool earth and she ran.

  Morrigan did not take any part in fighting the fire. Her duty, as she saw it, the duty that outweighed them all, was to preserve the crown. Since the fin gall had stolen it months before, and she had taken it back, she felt she was the crown’s protector. It was her duty, given to her by God, to protect the crown and see it placed on her brother’s head.

  So she hung back in the shadows, holding the crown in one hand, the dagger in the other, and watched as the people fought to save what they could of the royal house. In the light of the flames she looked for Brigit. She looked for Conlaed. She did not see either of them.

  She wondered if they had become trapped in their bed ch
amber, had failed to make it out. Now that would be convenient.

  The night dragged on, the fire was beaten back, and still no Brigit, no Conlaed. Morrigan was all but ready to see in this the hand of God, when one of the monks, a thick, sweaty man named Cónán came huffing up to her. “Morrigan, Morrigan! There you are, by God! Have you seen Father Finnian this night?”

  “Father Finnian?”

  “Yes. We’ve not seen him at all. When we heard the alarm we all came rushing out you know, to bear a hand. And we were at it for hours before anyone realized Finnian was not among us. We’ve looked all over. And we’ve not seen him.”

  Morrigan was silent. The implications, the possibilities clicking away in her head. No Brigit, no Finnian? Were they in there, in the fire? Were they fornicating in there, until God sent his wrath down on them? Or Conlaed did? Is that what the shouting was about?

  Cónán cleared his throat.

  “No, I have not seen them. Him,” she said.

  “Well, thank you, ma’am. We’ll keep up our looking.” He hurried off, and Morrigan’s thoughts hurried on. Or are they not here at all? Where would they have gone?

  At first light she sent out riders. Donnel and Patrick and some few of the rí túaithe whom she trusted, sent them off to search all the roads leading away from Tara. They found nothing. And so the uncertainty continued.

  Half of the royal residence was spared, thanks to a night of frantic labor, good luck and a shift in the wind, but it was unlivable, so Morrigan and Flann and the others who had occupied the big house moved into the monastery and the monks doubled up in their cells or took the rooms of the household staff and sent them to fend for themselves. Flann intended to have the debris cleared away as quickly as possible, to begin construction on a new and larger building. Morrigan stayed his hand. “There’ll be bodies in there. Brigit and Conlaed, I have no doubt. And we don’t know the whereabouts of Father Finnian.”