“I never saw that myself, so I can’t confirm or deny it. But I know that everything demands payment, a fair exchange, so I suppose each sacrifice was sanctioned by the gods as an exact payment for the favor given. You cannot take a rich harvest from the soil without returning something to the Mother Earth of equal value. Besides, isn’t a big part of the Christian ritual the sacrifice of your god, and the eating of part of him?”
Brian stared at her in horror. The rite of the Last Supper was a ceremony of mystery and beauty, sacred beyond all others, profound and pure. This girl was characterizing it as a grisly cannibal feast!
But on some level of his mind he felt a shocked recognition of the aptness of her observation.
“Of course, I cannot expect you to understand,” he said with forced hauteur. “Living here as you do, in such isolation, you can scarcely be blamed for ignorance. In fact, I’m surprised that you have any knowledge of the outside world at all, no matter how mistaken.”
Her eyes glinted with amusement. “Druidry is the opposite of ignorance, Brian. We hold knowledge sacred; it is the heart of our religion. My grandfather has ways of learning the affairs of the world beyond this place, and as I told you, he teaches me. Constantly, in fact,” she added with a small sigh.
“And you really believe all this that you have been telling me?”
“It is not a matter for belief or disbelief; I see it in practice every day, so I know it for a fact. It is in my bones and blood. And in yours,” she added softly. “We are all part of Mother Earth. Let me explain it to you …”
It took several nights for the mare’s fevered leg to return to normal. Each morning the three met to examine the problem; each evening Fiona found a way to slip away unobserved and beg the horse for a little more time.
“One more night, Briar Rose!” she would whisper, her sensitized fingers playing over the black foreleg as a harper caresses his instrument. “He goes to fight, perhaps to die; give me one more night with him.”
Reading her heart, Camin took her aside. “You cannot hold him forever, child. His future belongs to himself and the gods, and you cannot hold him back from that. It would be an evil thing to put a stone on top of a young plant and keep it from reaching for the sun.”
“I know that. But if he has time enough with me I may come to mean something to him, something that will draw him back to me when the fighting is over …”
“The fighting is never over, out there. Particularly for him, if I read the signs aright. There will be little time in his life for the softness of women.”
“But you summoned him for me, did you not?”
He smiled. “As you guessed. You, and I through you, have touched his power, and if it is the will of the gods you will be linked by blood to all his lives forevermore. You must be content with that.”
She looked at him with wistful eyes. “I cannot be content with only that, Grandfather.”
But other powers were already at work on Brian. The memory of Mahon and his duty, the lure of adventure and the waiting road, each in turn pressed in upon his consciousness, making demands. The edge had been taken from his sexual hunger; the mystery of Woman seemed known to him now, and there were other mysteries still beckoning …
He spoke to Camin. “If Briar Rose is still unsound tomorrow I will leave her here with you, if I may, and send for her later. The bay pony will carry me, if he must, but I cannot stay any longer.”
From the corner of his eye he saw Fiona’s brown face crumple in grief before she turned away to fiddle with the cauldron, and he felt a stab of guilt at causing her pain. But she had wanted it as much as he—she had said so. Half the responsibility for what they had done was hers, just as half the pleasure had been. Surely he had given her pleasure: she had told him so with sighs and groans, artful little flutters and delicious cuddlings. Ah, it would be hard to leave that!
He cleared his throat meaningfully and tried to catch her eye, but she would not look at him. In a tight voice, she said, “Perhaps the mare will be all right tomorrow.”
Camin drew a deep breath of relief. “Yes, I think she well may be healed tomorrow. If you will do us the honor of accepting our poor hospitality for one more night, I believe the long days you have kindly passed with us are at an end, and you may be on your way by sunrise.”
Brian tried to speak to Fiona privately, to explain his reasons and express his sorrow at leaving her, but she found ways to avoid being alone with him. Her decision made, she was putting up her own walls against pain, and Brian was stung by a rejection he had not expected.
That night they slept little on their separate beds, but the black mare dozed undisturbed in the brush pen.
The morning was dark and stormy. Brian thought of Camin’s reputed ability to summon the wind, and it did not seem as unlikely as it had in the bright sunlight. A coldness blew down from the north, almost as if autumn were coming, and the fire on the hearth crackled seductively.
Briar Rose was not only sound, she was frantic with excess energy, rearing against her tether and rolling her eyes as the distant thunder grumbled. Fiona brought her to the door of the hut, together with the bay pony, and held them while Brian adjusted the pack on the pony’s back.
He had searched his belongings for some gift he might give them in return for their hospitality, but found nothing he deemed worthy. Then he saw the girl shiver in the cold wind, standing with her eyes cast down to avoid his.
In a flash he was fumbling with the brooch that pinned his cloak. He shrugged out of the warm garment and draped it over Fiona’s shoulder, fastening it securely in place with the big silver ornament.
“This bratt was woven for me of the finest wool, and the brooch was my birth-gift from my father,” he said to Fiona. “I would mean a lot to me, knowing you wear them.”
“You honor us by your very presence,” Camin told him, bowing over his clasped hands. “Come, girl, let us show the lad his way before the storm catches us all.”
They stood together and watched him ride away—the gnarled old man and the doe-eyed girl. Brian was careful to turn and wave to them, noticing even as he did so how the brown of her hair and the tan of her skin melted into the colors of the forest. She raised her hand to return his salute, then let it flutter sadly back to her side.
“You behaved well,” Camin offered her, as comfort. “Here, let me see the gift he gave you.” He turned the unresisting girl toward him and bent, squinting, to peer at the brooch on her bosom. He ran a finger over the metal, tracing the elaborate pattern of spirals on the heavy silver, and then he smiled and straightened up, his eyes seeking the dwindling figure of their recent guest.
“A Christian, is he? Trained at the monastery school? Look well at that brooch, Fiona. Whether the lad knows it or not, all his life he has worn the Druidic symbol of rebirth and immortality.
“Time is a curve without beginning or end, my child. Do not cry for him, for he will be yours again as the circle turns.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Brian rode cross-fields, whipped by a wind that howled and threatened but never brought rain. The sheltering woodlands lay behind him, the southern plain rolled before him in gentle green waves. Masses of hawthorn pressed upon the stone walls that occasionally separated the holdings of the farmers of Munster; the barking of dogs followed him, and from time to time a cottager peered out at him with suspicion from a dark doorway.
His mind moved forward to Mahon and backward to Fiona. She had looked so small and sad, when he said goodbye; she who had been so warm and natural and full of bubbling laughter like clean water. His mind kept returning to the sweetness of her smile, the suppleness of her waist, even the dearness of her soot-smudged cheek as she bent over the hearth. As the tongue will continually torment a painful tooth, he dredged up memories of increasing poignancy, until the burning behind his eyes became a moisture that stung his lids.
Of course, his first duty was to Mahon, it was what he had dreamed of for years, but … he could rid
e back, lift her up behind him on Briar Rose and gallop away with her! … But to where? Mahon’s army camp? What kind of life would she have there, what could he offer her? He could not take her back to Boruma as his wife … a woods-child! … There was fortune and fame yet to be won with his sword, and all the years ahead stretched invitingly before him … She was a child, really, probably not even as old as he … and certainly not of noble blood … But what a lovely thing she was, and how delightful to remember … She made me a man, he thought.
As he rode, he found that he rather enjoyed the sensation of melancholy, and he explored it as he would any new experience, tasting it, weighing it, letting it roll over him and pluck the harpstrings of his heart. It was perversely pleasurable. “Fiona,” he whispered to the wind.
At last the horses forded a creek and topped a hill, and the encampment of the Dal Cais lay spread before him.
It was not the massive army he had envisioned, burnished and ordered and battle ready. Several hundred men were spread across the valley, squatting by small fires as they prepared the evening meal. There were only two tents of any size, and a single picket line held some horses. A man with a sword and shield stood before the larger tent, bored with guard duty and anxious for his supper. It was to him that Brian rode, practicing speeches of announcement in his head.
“Is this the army of Mahon mac Cennedi, king of the Dal Cais?”
“It is that.” The guard looked up at him without expression.
“Then I have come to join you. I am Brian mac Cennedi, brother to the king and a fine warrior!”
To his chagrin, the guard did not react at all. Brian might as well have announced he was a beggar come for scraps.
“Did you hear me?” Brian’s voice rose, quavered, then sank back to bass, leaving him with sweaty palms and earlobes burning red. “I demand to see my brother!”
The black mare, recognizing one of the horses tied to the picket line, lifted her head and whinnied a greeting. The guard looked at her sharply and muttered something under his breath; his whole manner changed.
“I guess you’re who you say, all right, for that’s one of the horses that was sent north for you. But I thought there were two of you coming?”
Brian, having been humiliatingly vouched for by his own horse, was in no mood to make explanations. Surely, if he had authority anywhere in the world it was with his brother’s army; this was the time to establish his position. He kicked Briar Rose forward and shouted, “Mahon! Mahon!” as the horse willingly shouldered the guard aside.
Someone came out of the tent with an oath, and in a moment Brian was grasped about the waist by two powerful arms and dragged from the mare’s back. The two men tumbled together on the trampled earth as Brian struggled in vain to free himself.
“You wanted the king of the Dal Cais, didn’t you?” roared his captor. “Well, you’ve found him!” With a deft twist, the man flipped Brian over and pressed his face in the dirt. “And who is this who tries to ride his horse into a royal tent?”
“He says he is Brian of Boruma,” the guard volunteered.
Mahon released the crushing grip he held on the intruder’s shoulders and sat back on his haunches, brushing the hair out of his eyes. “Is that what he calls himself? Let’s just have a look, and see if we have got the real thing here or some impostor. You, stand up and let me look at you.”
Embarrassed and angry, Brian got to his feet and brushed at his clothes, stirring a cloud of dust. Mahon arose also and stepped close to him, and the guard could see that the king still topped his younger brother, but only by a head.
Mahon had fulfilled the promise of his youth, growing into a golden lion of a man with a fiercely curling beard and heavy-lidded, amiable blue eyes. Even in the hardship of an unsuccessful campaign he dressed himself in the style of a chieftain, wearing a fringed linen tunic and a woolen belt embroidered with gold. The soldiers about him wore jackets and trews, and their uncombed hair was badly snarled; beside them Mahon was the prince of Brian’s imaginings, still larger than life and more splendid.
The newcomer felt himself shrinking by comparison.
Mahon thrust his face right into Brian’s and squinted at him in the twilight. Then his beard split in a grin and he gave the boy a blow on the shoulder that threatened to knock him down.
“Brian! It is my own little brother, half-grown and underfed, but himself, and no mistake. Welcome to the army, lad, and tell me—where’s Marcan? He’s the one I really need; he should be a full man by now.”
Stung, Brian replied in a cold voice, “He didn’t want to come, he preferred the Church. But I came.”
“Well, then, we will just have to make do with you, won’t we? Come into my tent, little brother, and we will start turning you into a soldier this very hour by feeding you on the vile muck we eat. Tonight I think it is muddy eels.”
Brian squared his shoulders, trying to ignore the amused expression on the face of the guard. Other men were crowding around, anxious to learn the cause of the excitement. With grim determination he swallowed his hurt feelings and tried to arrange his features in an expression of careless arrogance—an effect somewhat lessened by the sweat and dirt smeared across his face.
Seen close up, the glory of soldiering was grubbier than he had imagined. He was not prepared to admit disillusion, not yet, but it was difficult to adjust to the gap between his expectations and reality. Like sex, army life seemed to be very different from his dreams.
“Come in, come in!’ Mahon held the tent flap wide and gestured him inside. “Someone will take care of your horse. I see you brought them both back; that’s good, we need every one we can get.”
Brian looked around the tent, trying to absorb every detail of the longedfor moment. Mahon was as impressive as ever, even if his greeting had been a letdown. But his surroundings were dirty and mean, and by torchlight Brian could see that his kingly clothes were growing threadbare. No patina of success lay upon the camp, only the shabbiness of an effort that was somehow not good enough.
The smell of the food in Mahon’s tent was nauseating after the delicately seasoned meals Fiona had given him. Several men sat on folded blankets or small stools, eating chunks of pale meat from a communal pot. Their bearded faces were rough and hard, their eyes hostile to the sudden stranger.
Mahon introduced them, but Brian did not concentrate. He was trying to hold an image of himself within his mind so strongly that they could see it too, a picture of a brave and noble prince. It was the only armor he had, and he clung to it.
One of the men, beetle-browed and florid of complexion, spat deliberately near Brian’s feet. “We have no need for a child in camp, Mahon.”
It was not the man’s words that hurt, but the fact the Mahon did not rush to his brother’s defense. All he said, and that in a mild tone of voice, was, “He is my brother and a son of Cennedi; his place is here.”
“Aye, well, if he doesn’t prove himself you’ll have to send him back, brother or not,” the red-faced man said. “We have no time for hangers-on and no food to feed them; we’re too poor even to attract camp followers right now.”
“Give him a chance,” Mahon said.
Brian clenched his fists against his side. You don’t have to beg on my behalf, he thought to Mahon. I can prove myself; I’ll make you proud of me!
Mahon turned toward Brian but he did not put his arm around the boy’s shoulder, as Brian had somehow expected. He merely grasped his arm in a hard, impersonal hand and propelled him across the tent. “There, sit yourself by Olan and we’ll see what we can do about making a warrior out of you. You’re welcome to whatever is left in the pot tonight, but after this you’ll have to eat with the men, for only my captains take their meals with me.”
Brian squatted on the ground between the jutting shoulders of iron-hard men. No one offered him a stool. He plunged his hand into the pot and pulled out a morsel of something to cram into his mouth. At his first bite of the overripe boiled eel his stomach writh
ed in protest. Brian of Boruma, come to Kilmallock to be a hero, scrabbled desperately out of the tent to vomit into the dirt. Behind him, he could hear them laughing.
It was the yelling that was the worst of it. All day, every day, the camp rang with shouting. Every order was delivered at the top of the lungs, and in an insulting tone; every voice was roughened beyond recognition by the constant need to yell.
“Get up, you worthless bastards, the sun’s over the rim and you’re all still snoring. A passel of weaklings, that’s all I’ve got here!”
“You call that running? You lazy maggot, I’ll put my sword to your backside and teach you how to really run! The Irish soldier is supposed to be agile and fleet of foot, so how in God’s name did I get a command full of men whose feet are rooted to the ground?”
“Quit that grumbling over there—you, I heard what you said. If you lot were half as good at fighting as you are at complaining and prevaricating, I’d have a command I didn’t have to be ashamed to claim.”
Brian, who had arrived expecting to ride from then on at his brother’s right hand, found himself at the bottom of a pecking order more stringent than that of his mother’s geese. Every man in camp seemed to feel it was his duty to heap insults on the head of Mahon’s brother. No job was too menial to give him, no joke too rough to play on him. From that first night, he was known to everyone as Eel-vomit, and even the lowliest baggageman used it contemptuously within his hearing.
Mahon made no effort to protect him. He had assigned Brian to one of his captains, given him a pat on the back, and thenceforth ignored him as if he were merely another raw recruit. Indeed, he watched unmoved one day as several of the men gave Brian a thorough drubbing for some small offense.
When his tormentors gave up and left him alone, Brian spat a tooth and a gob of bloody saliva into the grass and looked reproachfully at the silent figure of the king, standing with folded arms some distance away.
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