At last Mahon said, “She fought, Father. She never gave in, and at last he struck her such a blow it killed her. If she had not resisted she might have lived.”
“Yes, and be dragged away with the rest of them! Your mother was a princess of Connacht, Mahon. It would have been a mortal sin to allow herself to be used like a whore by the Northmen; I am proud of her, and glad she was spared that.”
Mahon still could not meet his father’s eyes. He could only see his mother, the warmth and laughter of her, the way she used to smile at him whenever their glances crossed. The pride she had given him in his own manhood. He felt that a candle had gone out that could not be replaced, and anything would have been preferable to such a loss. His father’s grief was not the same as his; their pain was different, even as their images of Bebinn were different. Raped but living, she would still have been mother to him, and he could not make himself value her inviolacy above her life.
But Cennedi had lost more than a wife and two sons. His small kingdom had been all but annihilated. The miracle by which most of his children had been spared was not sufficient to redress his loss, and, as he lay healing, his mind turned endlessly. As soon as he was able to sit up he summoned Mahon for a council of war.
“This is all the fault of Callachan!” he thundered at Mahon as soon as the young man entered the room.
“The king of Munster? Father, it was Norsemen from Limerick.”
“Aye, well, they are the ones who actually did the deed, I grant you that. And they shall suffer for it, every last one of them. But it is Callachan’s fault just the same. It was his doing that provoked them, when he marched to Limerick and defeated Amlav, and made all the Norse give tribute to him. I tell you they have been smoldering ever since about that, waiting to have their revenge on the Irish.
“They attacked us because they know of our ancient rivalries with Callachan’s Owenacht tribe, and they felt confident he would not waste his energies on defending us. He is very much woven in with the foreigners now, sitting there in his stronghold at Cashel and counting the tributes they send him. He would take their side against his own race, and I tell you he is no longer fit to rule Munster! Callachan must be driven from Cashel and the foreigners must be driven into the sea!
“There has been a tradition in ages past of alternate kingship, where first one tribe and then another would see its chieftain made king of all the province. It is a good custom, to my mind, and I think it should be observed now.
“I have chosen you to succeed me as king of the Dal Cais, and I know that what elders still live will support me in that. Because you are strong and wise and beloved by all, you are most worthy. But you deserve even better than that, I think.”
He reached out and took Mahon’s hand in his, looking up with proud eyes at the handsome young giant sprung from his loins. “My son, the time has come for the Dal Cais to bring new glory upon themselves, and upon all our homeland of Thomond.”
He paused, fighting back the overflow of some strong emotion, then continued. “I told your dear mother, shortly before … she died … that it was my dream to see you seated as the king of Cashel, king of all the tribes of Munster!”
Mahon stared at his father, momentarily appalled. It was the first he had heard of Cennedi’s intention to elevate him to the status of a provincial king, and the concept was so alien to his own modest plans for his future as a tribal chieftain that he could scarcely comprehend what he was hearing.
“But you, father …” he finally managed to say. “You would make a better king of all Munster than I …”
“That well may be,” Cennedi agreed, “but I am an old man. The people are more likely to accept vital young blood. As soon as I am able, we will march, recruiting fighting men as we go, and when we get to Cashel we will demand that Callachan avenge us fully against the Northmen, or give up his kingship to a more worthy man.”
Mahon knitted his brows in an earnest effort to absorb this latest shock. Cennedi glared at him. “Do you question the wisdom of your sire, the ruler of your tribe?”
Mahon bowed his golden head. “Of course not, my lord. I accept your will with my whole heart, if that is what you want.”
“It is more than ‘what I want.’ We must be avenged! We must guarantee safety and power for our tribe in the future!”
Lying in his bed, Cennedi gave his brain all the exercise his body could not take. Lachtna and Donncuan were rapidly recovering from their wounds, and to them fell the early footwork of organizing the campaign. As the other boys gained strength they too were given tasks, and their excitement and enthusiasm began to communicate itself to Mahon, so that he began looking with brighter eyes at the future his father was offering him.
The three youngest boys were to be sent to the great school at Clonmacnoise, to receive the finest education Ireland had to offer, and prepare them to take their places in the world as the brothers of a powerful provincial king. It occurred to Mahon that the whole plan might have been simmering in his father’s mind for years, only waiting for circumstance to bring it to life, full-blown.
On the morning they marched away, Brian stood at the gate of the monastery to watch them go. He himself had polished Mahon’s sword, running his fingers reverently over the sharpened edge of the blade. “Will you kill the man who killed Mother?” he asked.
Mahon smiled down at him. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to find him, little brother.”
“You will!” Brian said confidently. “If I was going with you, I could find him!”
“You go to school and learn Latin and Greek; that will give you enough to do for a time,” Mahon said.
“But you’ll send for me soon, won’t you? When I’m just a little bigger … and know Latin and Greek?” He tugged at Mahon’s tunic sleeve. “Please promise me you won’t forget!”
Mahon ruffled the little boy’s hair with a fond hand, but his eyes were already straying to the road, and to the band of men assembled there, waiting for him. “I won’t forget,” he said.
Brian stood in the bright summer sunlight and watched them go, tormented by envy. He had seen death in all its ugliness, but he was still too young to believe himself mortal. Personal danger was nothing compared to the pain of being left behind when Mahon went off, like Nuada the Perfect, to fight glorious wars.
He watched them march across a rolling grassland between lifting hills, following the road that ran down to the river. As they reached the last curve that would take them out of sight, Brian stood on tiptoe and waved both arms frantically. “Father!” he cried. “Mahon!”
But Mahon’s mind had already leaped to the campaign ahead. He could not afford the luxury of looking back at the peace and sanctuary of Killaloe, and so he did not see the small figure reaching out to him in desperate pleading and farewell.
Brian waved until his arms were tired, but no one waved back.
CHAPTER FIVE
On a wooden bench in a grassy courtyard sat a boy who was no longer a child. His growing bones thrust outward against his skin as they lengthened into manhood. To himself, he seemed to be all hands and feet, knees and elbows; an angular and knobby creature totally lacking in grace.
But there were brief, dazzling moments when a consciousness came to him, as awareness of the sun comes to a trout lying at the bottom of a dark pool. In tiny flashes he glimpsed the future waiting for him, just beyond his reach. Every added bulge of muscle was a promise that made him impatient with the confining walls of Clonmacnoise and the measured pace of his life.
Brian’s gaze was drawn from the writing tablet in his lap to a little bush where a fly struggled in the web of its archenemy, the spider. It was a foredoomed action, but at least it was action.
“Prince Brian, if you please!” An annoyed voice broke through his own mental cobwebs. “I ask you again, what is the noblest passion of Christendom?”
Brian was aware of the others sitting on their benches, waiting with illconcealed glee for him to fail. Fortunately, it w
as a question he knew by heart, having had it drummed into him by Marcan at every opportunity.
“To spread the faith among heathen and bring the light of God’s Word to all mankind,” he recited dutifully. Around him, anticipation subsided.
“That is correct.” Brother Lecan agreed, only slightly mollified. “Nonetheless I am disappointed in you, Brian.”
From somewhere at the back of the class came a faint snicker. Bored boys shifted on their benches, hoping to be entertained.
“You have been with us since you were a small child,” the monk continued, “and until recently your scholarship has always been outstanding. Indeed, there has been some discussion of sending you to Rome eventually to continue your studies. But lately you have begun neglecting your lessons shamefully, young man. Your work in the sciences and the Brehon Law is definitely below your usual standard, and I am told that you failed an examination in astronomy yesterday.”
Fed this choice tidbit, the class purred with satisfaction. A dozen pairs of eyes glowed with the gleeful malice of the nonchastised in the presence of one who is being publicly humiliated.
Brian’s cheeks flamed beneath their golden lacework of freckles. “How can I concentrate on studying when my brothers are dying in battle, one by one, and my own father has been slain at the hands of the Owenachts?”
Brother Lecan signed the Cross upon his chest. “Ah, yes, that was a tragic thing, a tragic thing. But we know that it was his expressed desire that you continue your education and be a credit to his name and your tribe.”
“I would be of more use to my tribe if I were with my brother Mahon, fighting to drive the Northmen from Munster.”
Brother Lecan’s eyes widened. “Am I hearing aright? Are you publicly expressing resistance to your king’s will?”
“My father the king is dead, and Mahon is chief of the Dal Cais now—and he needs me. I am grown tall and strong; I should be sent to him.”
“You are not authorized to make such a decision. You will stay at Clonmacnoise until we receive instructions to the contrary from those who are responsible for you …”
“I can be responsible for myself!” Brian interrupted hotly.
Brother Lecan flushed a dull red. “You are arrogant and impertinent! I fear you are falling under the devil’s influence, Brian mac Cennedi. Go at once to Saint Kieran’s Chapel and pray for strength to cast these sins from your immortal soul.”
Like a plucked harp string, Brian’s entire being vibrated with tension as he stalked away from the group. It was unthinkable that he should kneel in chapel and beg forgiveness; in his present mood it would be an act of hypocrisy. He strode across the green lawn, his fists tightly clenched against his sides, until he came to a place where a massive old holly bush screened a break in the monastery wall.
During the last Norse raid on Clonmacnoise the walls had been breached in many places, and patiently repaired. Unlike some of the more militant defenders of the faith on the continent, the clergy of Ireland humbly accepted the violence of the barbarians as inexplicable expressions of the will of God. Insular and apart, Celtic Christianity developed in its own way, and if its feats and its philosophies did not always agree with those of Rome, no one could question the intensity of its passion for The Word.
Brian wriggled through the break in the wall with the ease of long familiarity, and came out upon his private place overlooking the river, the broad Shannon that looped and curved like a silvery roadway, leading home.
In spite of the years he had spent within its walls, he could never think of Clonmacnoise as home.
The weight of sanctity lay heavily on the great ecclesiastical university. Four hundred years of intercourse with God. The monastery had grown from humble beginnings as one small chapel in a wild and lonely place, to reach its present glory as a citadel of education, a holy city of stone and scholarship set like a jewel at Ireland’s heart.
Brian of Boruma stood with his back to its treasures and dreamed of escape.
When he had first arrived at Clonmacnoise, the little boy Brian had been was excited by the huge school and by the dozens of foreign faces he saw every day among the students. The Dalcassian princes were but three among hundreds who thronged the classrooms and begged access to the libraries and scriptoriums. In the darkest of the Dark Ages, the monasteries of Ireland had, almost alone, sheltered the wisdom of the past and kept the light of literacy aglow. Ireland had never adopted the customs of the great lands to the east, but it had taken and treasured the written word of Rome and Greece, and now students came from across distant seas to relearn the wisdom of the past. In all of Europe there was no larger assemblage of scholars than that which gathered for daily meals in the refectory of Clonmacnoise.
Brian felt that he had had his fill of learning.
Let Marcan stay, he thought. Marcan loves it, he thinks prayers and devotions are everything in life. Even when Anluan was dying of the fever, Marcan sat beside him, raving on and on about his own vocation and all his theological studies. He didn’t even notice when Anluan quit breathing. Let Marcan stay, sweet Jesus, but send me to fight with Mahon!
Desire ran through him, sharp as the cutting edge of his hip-knife. Nameless, aching. He looked at the empty land with hungry eyes and felt a longing for something beyond the framing of words.
The soft colors of late afternoon, gentle blue and lavender and apple green, were painting the earth in shades of enchantment. It was like fairyland; it was like Erin in the age of the Tuatha de Danann. Out of the misted wood beyond the river men might come riding in strange costumes, bringing new ideas, singing songs that had never been heard before. On yonder slope a city might rise to his bidding, where people could live better lives than they knew now, and the name of Brian mac Cennedi would be remembered through the centuries.
I am like a seed, he thought. Bursting with life, anxious to grow, yet not knowing what shape I will take or what fruit I may bear.
He stretched his arms and felt the muscles flex, taking joy in the suppleness of his joints and the pull of his tendons. It is good to be a man! Good to be strong, and to know that I can fight and build and shape the future. Like great Charlemagne, I will make a glory of my life.
As soon as I have the chance.
Let it begin, please God, let it begin now! No more waiting and longing for my real life to start; let it happen now. I want.
I want!
But another year would pass before the summons finally came. Green summer turned to misty autumn, and then to a winter that was too long and too gray, shriveling the spirit. Snow lay in folds across the hills; ice shimmered at the edges of the river.
When the messenger came soon after Easter to call Brian and Marcan to their brother Mahon’s service, it hardly seemed real. Only the two horses Mahon had sent for them offered tangible proof that the waiting was over at last.
They were wonders, those horses. One was a slender black mare with the thin legs and deep chest of a blood horse, and an elaborately gilded bridle suitable for the mount of a prince. She was intended, of course, for the elder brother—Marcan.
For Brian, whom Mahon obviously thought of as still as child, there was a pony of suitable size and sturdiness. Its bridle was as gilded, its coat as glossy, but if Brian were seated on its back his feet would touch the ground.
The moment he saw those two horses Brian felt a burning determination that Marcan should have his dearest wish and join the religious life permanently.
“Of course, it’s what I want most to do,” Marcan agreed. “But Mahon wouldn’t have sent for us unless he really needs us, and he is the chief Dal Cais now; we must obey him.”
“It would be a waste!” Brian argued. “You know that you have a strong calling to God; it would be sacrilegious to turn your back on it. God’s will must take precedence, even over a king’s. You stay here and prepare yourself to take your vows, and I will explain to Mahon; he will understand and be proud of you.”
Marcan spent all day in the
chapel on his knees, then returned to tell Brian that he felt sure it was God’s will that he stay. For once, Brian thought, God had answered his prayer, if only indirectly. The black mare would be his, and the bay would serve as a pack horse.
In addition to the horses, Mahon had sent a map, giving directions to his current encampment at Kilmallock. From this base, at the southern point of a rough triangle that included Limerick and Cashel, he was simultaneously waging war against the Norsemen and trying to build up Dal Cais strength in the south country.
There were preparations to be made and studies to be concluded, so that it would be early summer before Brian could actually be on his way. He was glad of the extra time thus afforded him to acquaint himself with his new horse and the art of riding—a subject not included among the formal courses of study at Clonmacnoise.
Each afternoon, Brian took bread dipped in salt to the stables as a treat for the mare. He bridled her himself and led her outside the walls, unwilling to have anyone witness his self-taught horsemanship. Mounting was easy enough for a long-legged, athletic youth, and the mare had been trained to stand quietly while a rider vaulted aboard. But as soon as Brian’s legs clamped around her silky sides, the calm animal underwent a startling change of personality.
She danced, she shied, she arched her neck and curvetted in great leaps that caused Brian to clutch her mane with both hands. She was light as smoke on her feet, as full of starts and bounds as a hare. Brian had always assumed that riding was easy, a thing every man did and took for granted; a few hours’ practice and he would be a centaur.
But the mare held a vastly differing opinion. She fancied herself a creature of the wind, light and untrammeled, and his tense grip irritated her. The first day she was relatively careful with him, feeling him out; but on the second day she rightly decided he lacked sufficient authority to control her and flipped him off with a snap of her spine.
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