Pride of Lions

by Morgan Llywelyn

  With a proprietary sweep of his arm, he indicated a rectangular block of pale yellow sandstone at the top of the mound. “Jacob’s Pillow eventually made its way to Ireland—some say with the Tuatha De Danann—where it was placed on the Hill of Tara. There it was called the Lia Fail, the Stone of Destiny, and became the inauguration stone of the Irish high kings. My predecessor, Kenneth Mac Alpin, acquired a piece of the Lia Fail for his own inauguration as the first King of the Scots and the Picts—his mother was a Pictish princess—and named it the Stone of Scone. Each King of Alba since then has seated himself upon it. Rather than being crowned, we are ‘set upon the Stone.’

  “Go on, look at it. You may touch it if you like, Donough,” Malcolm added magnanimously. “You are of kingly blood.”

  Donough and his companions gathered around the revered stone, embedded like a jewel in the grass. After one good look, Ronan snorted and nudged Donough with his elbow.

  When Malcolm was out of earshot, he said, “That’s no more part of the Lia Fail than I am. I was on Tara, a mere lad in my first company of warriors, when your father stood upon the Lia Fail and it shrieked aloud, proclaiming him the true Ard Ri. I’ll never forget that day nor anything about it—including the fact that the Lia Fail is gray, not yellow like Malcolm’s rock. A different stone entirely.”

  “Is that true?” Fergal asked Donough.

  “I don’t know, I’ve never seen the Lia Fail. When my father went to Tara to be inaugurated, he left my mother and me at Kincora.”

  “Good job too,” commented Cumara. “Gormlaith had been married to Malachi Mor, and Brian was taking Malachi’s high kingship away from him. It would have been too grave an insult to flaunt the fact that he had also married Malachi’s former wife.”

  Donough knew, but did not say, that Gormliath had never forgiven Brian for denying her her moment of glory at Tara, her chance to be honored as the new Ard Ri’s wife in front of Malachi Mor. Their subsequent arguments about it were his earliest memories of his father.

  Chieftains traveled to Scone from the far corners of Alba to do homage to Malcolm. Donough listened attentively as the wily Scot played off one against another, always to his own advantage.

  From time to time he would look up and catch Donough’s eye and give the slow, solemn wink of shared conspiracy.

  “The king is trying to impress me,” Donough remarked to Fergal on a rare winter afternoon of radiant sunshine, when they were enjoying a stag hunt Malcolm had arranged for the new Mormaer of Ce. “He must believe I’m more powerful than I am.”

  Before Fergal could reply, Donough felt an unseen presence at his shoulder and in his head sounded the deep, slow voice he knew so well. Perceptions are important, it counseled. If Malcolm thinks you have hundreds of warriors at your command in Ireland, do not disillusion him.

  Donough began dropping offhand references to “my armies at home” into casual conversation.

  At Scone he met a variety of powerful men come to negotiate with Malcolm for various reasons; the King of Man, the Lord of the Western Isles, the Mormaers of Caithness and Argyll, abbots and bishops and silver-haired Norse jarls and dark Pictish chieftains. To all of these Malcolm unabashedly presented Donough as, “The son of the Emperor of the Irish,” and Donough watched their eyes kindle with respect.

  In Alba he was accorded a stature he did not possess at home.

  He ordered Fergal and Ronan to flank his seat in the hall, holding spears at a ceremonial angle. Ronan obeyed without question, but Fergal took offense. “I’m entitled to have spear carriers of my own; I’m a prince of the Dal Cais!”

  “I’m Brian Boru’s son,” Donough replied inarguably.

  While Malcolm held court at Scone, Gormlaith was left at Glamis with the other women. Her son was relieved. He was finding her behavior increasingly disturbing. She howled with laughter at inappropriate times, which was bad enough, but her tendency to stare at Malcolm and then burst into tears unnerved him.

  Donough had never before seen his mother cry.

  Blanaid also remained in residence at Glamis, with Sigurd’s widow, Thora, and the boy Thorfinn. She avoided Gormlaith whenever she could, which was not easy, as the big Irish woman dominated whatever space she occupied. Blanaid held her temper and her dignity until the arrival of her oldest daughter, Bethoc, with her husband Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld, and their son, young Duncan.

  Being of an age and like disposition, Duncan and Thorfinn immediately became companions-in-mischief. Bethoc was reunited with her sister Thora, whom she had not seen in some years.

  And Gormlaith flirted outrageously with the Abbot of Dunkeld.

  Bethoc complained to her mother. When Malcolm next returned to Glamis he was unpleasantly surprised by a confrontation with his wife. Blanaid would not fight him on her own behalf, but she was a tigress where her cubs were concerned. “Do something about that woman!” she demanded.

  “Short of locking her in her chamber,” Malcolm replied, “I cannot keep Gormlaith out of the hall. I don’t want to alienate Donough Mac Brian by abusing his mother.”

  “You abuse her often enough in your bedchamber.”

  His black brows swooped together. “That’s my business. And it isn’t abuse.”

  “No? Taking advantage of a demented …”

  “She is not demented.”

  “I thought you more observant than that,” said Blanaid coldly. “I warn you, husband. Keep Gormlaith out of sight henceforth, or I myself will see that Donough is never an ally of yours.”

  She held her shoulders square and her head high, and in the proud set of her jaw, Malcolm read implacability.

  That night he told Gormlaith, “When I return to Scone, you will go with me.”

  “He wants me at his side,” Gormlaith smugly reported to her son.

  Of course she found Scone even less appealing than Glamis, and did not hesitate to say so. In an effort to win her interest, Malcolm took her to see the famous Stone.

  Donough accompanied them out of politeness and a secret amusement. Perceptions, he thought. The Albans perceive this to be a legitimate king-stone, so for them it is. Old Kenneth Mac Alpin must have been very clever.

  Lost in his own thoughts, he walked beside his mother and Malcolm toward the Stone of Scone.

  Neither man was prepared for Gormlaith’s reaction.

  No sooner had Malcolm delivered his speech about the stone’s provenance than she swept past him, up the gentle breast of the manmade hill, and threw herself down beside the stone. As the two men watched in consternation she pressed her cheek against its cold surface.

  “Just so,” Gormlaith whispered throatily. “Just so. You stood on this stone in the sun; I remember. You stood, and I at your side, and it screamed aloud for us.”

  “What is she talking about?” Malcolm asked Donough. “We don’t stand on this, it’s the throne, the king-seat.”

  The younger man shook his head, unable to speak.

  Gormlaith was running her hands over the stone as a woman would caress a man’s body, with infinite love. “Ard Ri,” she murmured.

  She was crying.

  Donough felt a terrible pain flare through his chest as if someone had opened him with a sword. She loved him. She actually loved him, and none of us ever knew.

  He ran up the hill and put his hands on his mother’s shoulders to try to lift her, but she fought him off. “Leave me! Leave me with him! I belong with him, don’t you know that? Don’t any of you know that?”

  In a moment Malcolm was beside Donough. Together they wrestled Gormlaith to her feet but she fought them like a wildcat, screaming. They had to drag her down the hill, and she was constantly twisting backward to shout at the stone, “Don’t let them take me!”

  That night Malcolm’s personal physician spent a long time closeted with Gormlaith in a small chamber with a guard at the door, then emerged shaking his head. “Her reason is addled,” he reported. “A pity. Such a big, strong woman. But she keeps talking to someone els
e in the chamber, someone who is not there.”

  I talk to him too, thought Donough, inwardly flinching. Does that mean my wits are addled? Or is be really with us?

  There was no answer. Try as he might he could not sense the towering presence behind him, but felt suddenly, terribly, alone, as if his back were unshielded at the height of battle.

  His feelings about his mother, always ambivalent, underwent a seachange. The last emotion Gormlaith would want to inspire was pity, yet it was pity he felt for her.

  Malcolm’s attitude toward Gormlaith also changed. When she was rational, which was most of the time, her intelligence was as keen as ever and he continued to enjoy talking with her. But whatever ardor he had felt was gone. He could not bring himself to take her into his bedchamber again.

  Gormlaith was plainly hurt by the king’s rejection. She put a brave face on it, however. “I’ve grown tired of him,” she announced to Donough. “He’s thick in the belly and too old for me, and his spear is blunted.”

  This open reference to her sexual life made Donough uncomfortable, and struck him as further proof of her failing sanity. He began to be anxious to take her home to Ireland. Exposing his mother, in her weakness, to the eyes of strangers seemed a betrayal.

  But he was torn. The visit to Alba was providing him with knowledge, experience, and a circle of powerful acquaintances. To leave now would be to lose opportunities that might not come again. In Alba he was looked upon as the next Ard Ri of the Irish. At home he was not even a provincial king.

  On the first day that carried a hint of spring in the air, Donough was with Malcolm in the low-ceilinged audience chamber, conferring with clan chiefs of Angus and of Fife, when their conversation was interrupted by the blast of a horn. Within moments a foreign delegation was ushered into the chamber.

  The leader of the group was thickset, with a tawny beard and snapping blue eyes in a square Saxon face. Beneath a mantle of woven wool he was garbed in the sleeved, short-skirted coat and loose trousers worn by men of Albion, now called by its inhabitants the land of the Anglo-Saxons, or England.

  “My lord Godwine, Earl of of Wessex and Kent,” announced the small boy who trotted beside him, panting.

  Malcolm sat bolt upright on his bench, his face impassive. But the hands that clasped his knees were suddenly white-knuckled.

  Power meets power, whispered a voice in Donough’s head. Watch for your own opportunity here.

  Chapter Forty-four

  ON THAT DAY AT SCONE DONOUGH’S HORIZON EXPANDED IN A WAY HE had never anticipated. The trip to Alba was a mighty adventure, but with the arrival of Earl Godwine it became obvious that Alba was only a threshold; a much larger world lay beyond.

  He listened, fascinated, as the Earl and Malcolm spoke of London and Normandy and Rome, of shifts in power both temporal and spiritual, of warfare and politics and the reshaping of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

  “Canute is nothing short of brilliant,” stated Earl Godwine unequivocally. “When he arrived off our coast in the summer of 1015 with a fleet of Danish ships, many thought him little more than an untried youth. There were even jokes about the boy King of Denmark; some claimed he brought a wet nurse with him.

  “But within four months no one was joking. Canute had complete military control of Wessex and was not only extending Swein’s conquests but making new ones. I thought it expedient then to ally with him—a decision I have never regretted. I owe my recent earldom to him. My wife is a full-blooded Dane and her brother Ulf is married to one of Canute’s sisters. Our children will ascend with Canute’s star.

  “At the time Canute began his military campaign there was already great dissatisfaction, even rebellion, against the Saxon King Aethelred. Eadric of Mercia, one of his foremost critics, openly allied himself with the Danes. He did return to the king’s side, however—for a while.

  “Much too late, Aethelred raised an army. When the London militia refused to join them, it disintegrated. Meanwhile, Canute played on the fears of the people by harrying the unprotected shires. One after another, they fell to him.

  “When Aethelred conveniently died his son succeeded him, but Edmund Ironside had little more success against Canute than his father before him. A great battle was fought for London, and Eadric of Mercia fled the field, taking many warriors with him.”

  “I heard that he deliberately betrayed the king,” Malcolm commented.

  “I was told you had long ears,” replied Godwine with respect. “Your informants are correct. In the event, the Anglo-Saxon defense collapsed.

  “But I must admit Edmund Ironside proved so formidable in the face of disaster that he won the hearts of many who had not previously supported him. Canute was shrewd enough to recognize this. He met Edmund on an island in the Severn and the two made a pact by which the land was divided, with Wessex going to Edmund and the country beyond the Thames to Canute. Even Canute’s enemies were impressed by this example of generosity to a gallant foe.

  “Such a division could not last, of course. When Edmund died not long after, Canute became King of England almost by acclamation. The people were hungry for a strong man.”

  Ireland, said the voice in Donough’s head. The people are hungry for a strong man.

  He leaned forward on his bench, absorbing every word as Earl Godwine described the means by which Canute had consolidated his hold on England. Although Swein had been a pagan, his son Canute undertook to promote the Christian religion and protect and enrich its clerics. He became the first Viking leader to join the exclusive ranks of Christian kings. Thus he was brought into contact with Rome and acquired political connections none of his race had enjoyed before.

  He had also married Emma, the widow of the dead King Aethelred.

  Malcolm looked surprised. Clearly this, at least, was news to him. “But did Canute not already have a wife?”

  Godwine’s blue eyes twinkled. “He did. He had married the daughter of a wealthy Northumbrian landowner not long after arriving in England, and she bore him two sons in very short order. But once he became king, he faced a threat in the form of the late Aethelred’s sons. Their mother, Emma, was a sister of the Duke of Normandy, and it was feared Normandy would use them to lay a claim to the English crown.

  “He may be a professed Christian, but our good Canute still has a strong streak of the barbarian in him; he does not accept the conventions that limit lesser men,” Godwine continued. “He promptly announced that his arrangement with the Northumbrian woman had never been formalized by the Church, and therefore as a Christian king he could not consider himself lawfully bound to her.

  “Then he married Emma.

  “He now has control of Aethelred’s sons plus the Duke of Normandy for a brother-in-law Under the circumstances I seriously doubt if Normandy will dispute Canute’s right to be King of England.”

  When Donough at last retired, grainy-eyed and weary yet exhilrated, he found Gormlaith waiting for him. She wanted to hear every detail concerning the Saxon visitors.

  Once he would have tried to avoid her. Now, in pity, he spent as much time with her as he could.

  “Why has this Godwine come to Malcolm’s court?” she wanted to know after Donough recounted all he could recall of the conversation in the audience chamber.

  “For the same reason everyone else comes—to gain something for himself. Nothing was said in my hearing, but I have the profound conviction that Malcolm summoned him, or at least invited him, for a very specific reason.”

  “What?”

  “As Godwine made clear in the audience chamber today, he has the ear and the trust of King Canute. I think Malcolm will make him a generous offer in return for Godwine’s using his influence to dissuade Canute from attempting the conquest of Alba.”

  “What has Malcolm to offer that Godwine would want?”

  Donough’s eyes narrowed to slits in the torchlight. But Gormlaith was not looking at his eyes. She found herself staring at his hand, upon which gleamed the ring of Brian Boru.<
br />
  “A powerful ally in Ireland,” said the deep voice she knew so well.

  Gormlaith smiled.

  “Godwine has his own ambitions,” Donough went on. “He said quite candidly that he would not mind seeing a son of his on the English king-seat one day. An alliance with the Irish Ard Ri would be very beneficial in such a circumstance, and that, I suspect, is what Malcolm means to offer him.”

  “Games,” murmured Gormlaith. “The old games; ah, how well I know them. And how perfectly this comes together for you! An alliance with the King of England …” Reaching out, she stroked the massive gold ring on her son’s finger.

  “That potential alliance is based on my being Ard Ri, which I am not,” Donough reminded his mother.

  When Gormlaith’s eyes met him they were glazed; they looked almost blind. He wondered if she saw him at all.

  Yet she seemed to know who he was. She said, “With such forces behind you as you are now gathering, who could stand against you? Not that flabby old man Malachi, surely.”

  “I cannot be Ard Ri without first being King of Munster. That, need I remind you, is a title my brother holds with all the determination of a hound clinging to the throat of a stag.”

  Gormlaith gave a negligible wave of her hand. “A temporary inconvenience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ask Malcolm—he will tell you. Ask him just how he arranged to become King of Alba.”

  But when Donough questioned Malcolm on the subject, he was met with such evasions he began to suspect a valuable secret was being withheld from him.

  “When Godwine has gone and we return to Glamis,” Malcolm said, “we can discuss these things. There are some matters one should not mention when foreigners are about.”

  I am a foreigner, thought Donough. How much is being kept from me?

  The fact that he was not privy to all of Malcolm’s conversations with Godwine heightened his suspicions.