He was not yet satisfied with the hastily assembled army. The news of Donogh’s death had spurred them to frantic action, recruiting and provisioning, and putting off the drills Brian wanted until a more convenient time.
With his back to them, he could imagine a veritable Roman legion, marching and wheeling with geometric precision. But when he rode along the line he found a rowdy scramble of men, incohesive, resistant to discipline, and moody as the weather.
He tried to learn the names and personal histories of as many of them as he could, so that he might bond them to him with ties of individual friendship. They were a diverse lot, drawn from every part of Thomond and every station in life, and it was difficult to assess the sum total of their feelings or their dedication.
Two of the slingers under Ardan’s command were recruits from the wildly beautiful region at the edge of the Cold Sea, where the Black Cliffs of Moher presided over the foaming breakers like the Fates at the rim of the world.
Thrust into a band of strangers, the two men walked hip to hip for comfort, their eyes scampering like rabbits over the unfamiliar countryside.
“Do you really think we’re going to win our fortune at this?” asked the fair-haired man with the permanently furrowed brow.
“I don’t know about a fortune; I was promised a piece of good land that would raise some crop besides rocks. That’s a fortune to me, and I’d gladly slit a southerner’s throat for it.”
“You want to live in the south? Me, I haven’t felt at peace in my own hide since we left the coast. I hope to kill a Northman and take his gold in a sack and go home, where I can smell the wind from the sea again. This is a heavy, close air, and it sits bad on my chest.”
His companion, a weathered fellow with a cheerful, gaptoothed grin, took a deep breath of the criticized air and shook his head. “Boyo, your imagination is running downhill and it will drag your spirit after if you don’t watch out.”
“It’s not my imagination!” the blond man argued. “I happen to possess a very sensitive nose. All my family—very sensitive noses. It’s a talent. My uncle could smell out wild honey a mile away, and that with the wind blowing against him.”
“Ach, go along with your uncle and your sensitive nose. If your smeller is so damned good, why didn’t you find us some wild onions to boil with our meat last night?”
“Because all the onions were over by the big mound, that’s why. You’ll never find me disturbing a fairy mound.”
“The little people won’t bother you with that cross around your neck.”
“My old aunt wore a cross and pinned another to her baby’s blanket, and the fairies came and stole it right out of its cradle!”
The other looked at him skeptically. He had already heard many tales of his companion’s remarkable relatives, and because he suffered the grave defect of a limited imagination that could not compete with them, he was growing impatient with their reputed adventures. “I have never, personally, known of anyone who was stolen by a fairy,” he stated emphatically.
“Well, then, you must have been living in a tree someplace and in total ignorance of the world, because it happens all the time,” said the other with equal conviction. “I myself am descended from the line of Heremon, him who drove the fairy people, the de Dananns, underground in the long ago time. We conquered them as they conquered the Firbolgs, and I know for a fact that they have been seeking revenge on us ever since. Them as thinks the fairies are friendly would as soon believe the world is round.”
“Ach, go along with you,” the gap-toothed man said again.
Just then their line of march brought them over a ridge and a new landscape opened before them, a landscape dotted with the unmistakable curves of three ancient and grassy mounds built by some agency other than nature. Atop one of the mounds a pyramid of boulders stood, balancing an immense horizontal slab across the top.
Both men fell silent as they walked through the timeless valley. The other soldiers also let their voices die in their throats, like the twitter of birds at evening, and more than one hand signed the Cross over a fast-beating heart as they passed the cromlech.
In the dawn light the Rock of Cashel loomed as a gigantic limestone outcropping, rising sheer from the deep, damp meadows. The stone fort, built there in the fifth century by a king of Munster, perched on the level summit like a silver crown, its banners hanging limp as they awaited the first breeze.
“That’s the royal stronghold,” Brian said to himself, so softly that only Briar Rose’s backtilted ear could hear him. “That’s Cashel.”
The townspeople who lived clustered at the base of the Rock had turned out to watch them come, standing in silence before their cottages. They did not hail Mahon the Dalcassian, but neither did they throw stones. They watched with round eyes as the seemingly endless line of marching men passed them, and kept silent.
One, a young woman with tanned face and hair the color of autumn leaves, held her breath as the king and his brother rode past, and fingered the elaborate silver brooch that pinned her shawl. She started to raise her hand in greeting, then flushed red and ducked back within her cottage, pulling the door shut behind her.
The horses bowed their necks for the steep climb to the top, and Brian felt something like a drum start to beat within him. The massive oaken gates swung slowly open as the Dal Cais reached the summit and rode toward the stone wall which encircled the fortress.
The morning mist had not yet begun to burn off, but lay in the valleys like a sea of clouds. From the head of the path one could look out across the miles of Munster, from purple mountains to glinting rivers, across land that was still fertile and rich. In the sacred high places of the earth, a man may imagine that he shares God’s view.
Olan kept his hand on his sword hilt and Kernac looked around warily as they entered the fortress, but Brian fixed his gaze straight ahead and rode forward smiling.
Deputations came to honor Mahon, many of them composed exactly as they had been when Donogh was crowned king of Munster. The Ard Ri sent a representative from Tara who had been a contemporary of Cennedi’s and claimed to remember Lorcan. The king of Connacht complained bitterly at being compelled by honor to send gifts to Cashel twice in such short succession, but Malachi, the boyish new king of Meath, ignored the rivalries between the eastern provinces and Munster and sent a chest of rare freshwater pearls to Mahon, together with an offer of future military support against the Northmen.
“You were not with me on the Plain of Adoration at Adhair, when I was given our father’s title beneath the sacred oak where Dal Cais kings are made,” Mahon reminded his younger brother, “but I will make it up to you this time. You will be at my right hand throughout every ceremony, and I will show all people that you are to be respected as my beloved brother.”
“I have earned respect in my own right,” Brian said sharply, his eyes hostile. “I don’t need you to pass it on to me like one of your surplus garments.”
“Of course, of course, I meant no offense. I only wanted to make it clear you are to be included in everything.” Mahon tried to smooth Brian’s ruffled feathers. How prickly the man was! At times like that, only a loving brother could understand him.
Deirdre had received the news of Mahon’s march on Cashel by retiring to her apartments and having the door barred. As the days lengthened to weeks she continued to stay there, like some insane relative who is kept out of sight in an isolated chamber. She sent word that she was too ill to welcome the new king; no one knew that she spent her days at the edge of her window, trying to catch a glimpse of Brian in the courtyard.
Fithir forced a visit, and suggested to her that she was not only committing a grave breach of protocol, but was spoiling her long-awaited chance to meet the legendary Lion of Thomond.
“It is too late for me to meet him!” Deirdre wailed incomprehensibly.
Fithir stared at her blankly. “But it’s not! He’s in the hall at this very moment, I think.”
“You don�
�t understand.”
“No, I will confess that I do not. Mahon—the king—has been very generous with us, agreeing that we may retain our tenancy here since our own kin are mostly dead now. He continues to treat me with the courtesy due a queen, not a mere relict, and I appreciate it very much. You are demonstrating the basest ingratitude by hiding away like this while continuing to accept his hospitality.”
“I have my reasons” was all Deirdre would say, and she threatened to grow so upset that Fithir soothed her with a kiss and left her alone with her maid.
“I cannot understand what troubles the girl,” Fithir complained to her own maidservant. “Once, all she spoke of was Brian of the Dal Cais; now that he is actually here she hides from him as if her face were ruined by the pox. If I were but a few years younger, and my period of mourning were over …” She winked at the maid, who promptly winked back. Deirdre was not the only woman at Cashel who spied on Brian.
“His brother is more of an age for you, my lady,” the maid commented.
Fithir smiled softly. “Aye, and he is a fine figure of a man himself. You do not need to remind me of a woman’s thoughts, Una—I have plenty of my own. A cold bed has never been to my liking.”
In her own cold bed, Deirdre sat with her small chin cupped in her palm, watching the candle flames. Candles burned all night in Deirdre’s bedchamber. Beyond them were shadows peopled with beings faceless and unfaceable, and her fear of the dark had become so overwhelming that it was no longer challenged. Where Deirdre was, there must always be light.
He doesn’t know I’m ruined, she thought, staring through the flicker of orange light with eyes that were not focused. He does not know; no one knows. But would he, if … ? Can men tell such a thing?
Could I go to the marriage bed with a man—even him?
She hugged her knees and shivered in her thin linen shift. Her black hair had been plaited for the night in two thick ropes that fell down across her bosom, and her maid slept, as she always did, on the floor at the foot of Deirdre’s bed, trying to ignore the light.
The girl pulled a blanket around her and continued to watch the flame. The other one, she thought. He didn’t come to Mahon’s crowning, they said. No one came from Limerick. I suppose I should be glad that the Northmen and the Dal Cais have such a hatred for one another that Ivar would not send a representative.
But if he had come … and if I had gone to Prince Brian and told him what happened to me … would Brian have killed him for me?
She smiled in the soft light, her lips drawing back from small white teeth. It was not a pleasant smile.
At last the lips closed again of their own accord, and Deirdre shifted restlessly on her bed.
Why would Brian be willing to avenge me? she asked the night. He does not know me, he has never seen me. All the love we share has been only in my mind, and now there are so many other things in my mind. Ugly things … She twisted on the bed and wrung her blanket in her hands.
He will go away again soon. They say he will go to fight the Northmen and try to drive them out of Munster entirely. Perhaps he will meet … that one … in battle …
She threw herself down on her stomach and buried her face in the crook of her arm.
I cannot go any longer without meeting him. Even if he finds out about me. It will not matter, if only he will smile at me for a little time, and perhaps sing me a song.
One small song of love. Is that asking too much?
“I’ve been foolish, sister, giving in to a young girl’s silliness, but I’m over it now.” Deirdre stood in front of Fithir with her hands clasped together, her toes peeking evenly from beneath the blue of her gown. Her hair was freshly braided in the elaborate court style and tied with silk thread and golden balls. Jewels glowed at her throat and wrists, and a belt of gold links encircled her narrow waist.
Too narrow, Fithir thought, eyeing her critically. “We have all been worried about you, child. Are you certain you’re all right?”
“Perfectly all right,” Deirdre answered in a tight, controlled voice.
Oh dear, Fithir thought, that doesn’t sound all right at all. Perhaps I have been so involved with my own grief and worries about our future that I have neglected this girl, but she certainly had not welcomed my attentions lately. I really must try to make more of an effort with her.
“Perhaps, now that you are back with us you can tell me what’s been troubling you,” Fithir suggested gently.
Deirdre would not meet her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell. Just think of me as … as growing out of childhood and becoming a woman. I was like the caterpillar that must go into a cocoon all alone for a time, so that it can emerge as a butterfly. Now I have emerged.” She smiled brightly.
Such a pat little speech and such flowery words, Fithir said to herself. I would be willing to wager that it is a cover for something, but if I push at her and try to find the answer to the mystery she might shatter like crystal. Was she always this tense and delicate, I wonder, and am I just now noticing it?
The great banqueting hall of Cashel was ablaze with torches and rushlights, and fat new candles blossomed golden on every table. The servants, tremble-kneed with eagerness to impress their new lord, had piled cushions on the benches and dumped basketloads of rushes and rose petals on the floor. The transition in power had been made so smoothly that many among them felt they would be allowed to stay on, like Fithir, changing allegiances rather than masters. It was an arrangement that suited Mahon, who found the prospect of transporting his entire household staff across the Shannon tiresome.
But the style of Mahon was not the style of Donogh or Callachan. Mahon believed it was the duty of a king to be open-handed, even lavish in his hospitality, and he invited all who came to stay the month with him. The royal apartments of Cashel could not hold them all, and cottagers for miles around became innkeepers overnight.
On this evening, Mahon just finished proposing a toast to the absent Malachi—“A man I should very much like to meet”—as basins were passed so that the guests might wash their hands and servants were bringing in the platters of bread and fish. At the door to the ladies’ wing, a herald announced, “The lady Fithir, and the princess Deirdre!” Toasts and goblets were forgotten as all turned to see the mysterious princess make her long-overdue appearance.
Fithir entered first, smiling directly at Mahon but nodding graciously left and right. As she neared the king’s seat her smile grew deeper, as did her dimples; when they came together at the table men elbowed one another and winked.
But by that time the main attention in the hall was fixed on the woman who followed her.
Deirdre was dressed in a clinging gown the color of wood violets in deep shade, and her eyes seemed to be of the same hue. Her lashes were so black and thick that they appeared to weight down the long, delicate lids above them. She walked in small steps, toe first, so that she glided across the floor with unusual grace, unlike Fithir, who had a definite bounce to her gait.
The men had risen in honor of the ladies when the herald made his announcement. As Deirdre took her place they all sat down again, with a resumed clatter and bustle, save for Brian. He could only stand there, feeling huge, and look at the exquisite being some miracle had placed beside him.
She was so little, a woman in miniature. A mere breath might blow her away. But in his eyes she glowed as no maiden ever had before. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach out and touch the silky little curls clustered about the ivory skin of her temples.
He came to himself, a little, when Mahon laughed. “It appears my brother has received a mortal wound!” Mahon jested, and the company roared with laughter. “Let us pray he can recover himself enough to eat some of this excellent meal, for a man smitten by a pretty face has been known to lose his appetite entirely. It would do my reputation no good to have the prince starve to death in the midst of plenty!”
Brian sat down abruptly, aware of an embarrassed heat just beneath the surface of his ski
n.
“I apologize for staring, my lady,” he managed to say to her, but then she turned and gave him the full force of her huge violet eyes and he could say nothing else.
Her eyelids fluttered down and he noted, with awe, that their skin had a delicate sheen, and tiny blue veins of an impossible smallness. “I am not offended, my lord,” Deirdre murmured in a voice so soft he could scarcely hear her.
“It’s just …” he began again, fumbling for words in a mind gone blank. “I was afraid I would meet someone like you, sometime.”
Deirdre had been frozen within an icy shell of terror and excitement, but Brian’s words cut through it. “What did you say?”
Flustered, he considered his last statement and tried to think of some satisfactory way of explaining it. “I meant it as a compliment, truly,” he told her. “I always seem to make a fool of myself when I speak to women. I meant that I did not want to find a woman who … who could touch my heart … until there was time in my life for her. You have come too soon for me, that’s all I meant.”
She heard only a little. “ … a woman who could touch my heart,” he had said. Of her.
She toyed with her food, aware of the way his eyes turned again and again to watch the most commonplace gestures of her hands. She felt as if all the candles in the room surrounded her. Dreams shouldn’t come true, she said to herself, because it makes you too happy. You are too afraid of losing them.
Brian heard the little sigh that escaped her and felt a flooding anger. What could dare to distress her! Her being dominated his consciousness, and her smallness made massive claims upon his desire to protect and champion.
Mahon asked the seanchai to entertain his guest by reciting the history of the tribe Dal Cais, with special emphasis on the accomplishments of the line of Lorcan.
Listening, Brian thought only: I wonder if she is favorably impressed. She looks so perfect and lovely, like a polished jewel, complete and total within herself. What would impress her?
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