The three men knelt together on the stone floor. Following Marcan’s instructions, Mahon extended his arms in the Sign of the Cross and held them outstretched, hour after hour, until the agony of his muscles erased the sight of Limerick from his tortured mind. The blaze of religious fervor that had long ago consumed Marcan leaped from him to his brother, and Mahon welcomed it, welcomed its flames that were brighter than his nightmare vision of the dying Norse city.
He prostrated himself before the altar and poured out his bitterness and his horror to One who, Marcan assured him, would understand.
Brian had not waited to wash himself with the ritual warmed and scented water offered to every guest and resident of Cashel, but had hurried directly to Deirdre’s bedside to see her condition for himself, and feast his eyes on their first-born son.
The baby was lusty and red-faced, with an undeniably healthy set of lungs. Deirdre looked pale and shrunken beneath the covers, but her clear gaze was lucid and she smiled brightly at him when Brian entered the room. She lifted one thin white hand, and he pressed it gratefully to his lips.
“My lord,” she acknowledged softly.
At first he was as careful with her as one is in the presence of an old wound, but when her eyes remained dry and her voice cheerful he began to hope that perhaps the baby had, after all, worked a small miracle.
“There will be a celebration in the banqueting hall tonight,” he told Deirdre, “and I would like to present my—our—son formally to the court.”
Her eyes misted, not with melancholy but with happiness.
“I wish I were strong enough to be there with you,” she told him.
But Deirdre was not the only member of the king’s family to be absent from the festive occasion. Mahon’s High Seat was empty and Fithir entered the hall alone. When her eyes met Brian’s she shook her head.
“The king is still at his prayers,” she told everyone firmly, “and has asked not to be disturbed.”
The hall buzzed with whispers and speculation.
Before the first red wine was poured a maidservant entered with the infant in her arms, and carefully unfolded the fine linen sheet in which he was wrapped so that everyone could see he was a healthy male. Beaming with pride, Brian lifted the boy above his head. “My son!” he shouted down the hall. “Murrough mac Brian, prince of the Dal Cais!”
“Murrough mac Brian!” they thundered back to him amid cheers and blessings.
Murrough drew a deep breath and yelled.
At his victory celebration, Brian had particularly requested the attendance of those men still living who were survivors with him of the outlaw days in Thomond. Now they entered the hall one by one, cleaned and freshly dressed but with the scars of their most recent battle still on them, and Brian gave to each a special token, some treasure of exceeding value liberated from the Norse city. As they came and knelt before him, the herald read their names and Aed made a brief poem, reciting each man’s history and special accomplishments.
Liam mac Aengus, who had been their physician when they had no other. Leti of the Long Knife, his face permanently scarred into a grin that Brian found beautiful, because he knew its price. Kian and Brendan and Illan Finn. The brothers Loaghaire and Reardon Bent-Knee. Fergus the Fist and Conaing the Beautiful Chief.
But no Nessa. Nor Ardan. There were two piles of treasure in their names, the finest of all, scrupulously set aside on a table apart from the others. And their names and deeds were recited by Aed that all might hear.
The torches burned late in the hall, and the cheering and singing could be heard clearly in the chapel where Mahon knelt.
“You are a born killer and you will go on killing,” Mahon accused, not looking at his youngest brother. Brian had finally forced a confrontation by invading the king’s private chamber, and now they stood, separated by more than space, in a room Brian scarcely recognized.
It had been stripped bare of its luxurious appointments. The hangings were gone from the cold walls, the floors were bare of rushes, even the wealth of lamps had been replaced by one feeble stub of a candle. The chamber now held only a thin pallet and a chest, and one black crucifix hung on the wall. It was the cell of an ascetic.
“What have you done with your things?” Brian asked, ignoring his brother’s accusation. “I don’t understand …” He waved his hand at the stripped room.
“No, of course you don’t,” Mahon answered. “All you understand is warfare. Brutality. Lust for power. You don’t realize that material objects are of no consequence compared to the wealth of the spiritual life. I’ve been praying to Our Lord to enlighten you as He has me, but so far my prayers are unanswered.”
Brian scowled. “You don’t need to pray for my soul, brother.”
Mahon gave him a look of curiously commingled disgust and pity. “Ah, but I do, I must! You and I both have so many guilts to expiate; you surely earned God’s wrath for the evil you unleashed at Limerick, and I …”
“Is that what this is all about? You’re trying to punish yourself for what happened at Limerick?”
“I could never punish myself sufficiently for what happened at Limerick! I can only try, and beg God’s forgiveness. I misunderstood the nature of war. I let myself be seduced by the trappings and the excitement, I let my vanity blind me to the horrors around me, but I can see them all now, and I must atone.”
“Atone!” Brian snorted. “What have you got to atone for? Ivar and his allies are nursing their wounds on some sandy island infested with black flies, where the Fergus joins the Shannon. Irish families that have quarreled with one another for years are united now, proud of being Munstermen together, singing your praises and speaking of the possibility of freeing all our land from the tyranny of the foreigners. By God, that’s an accomplishment to be proud of, and yet you sit here beating your breast and crying mea culpa. I tell you frankly, brother, I wouldn’t want a conscience like yours; there is no logic in it.”
Mahon looked at him bleakly. “And I no longer want a soul like yours, barbarous and cruel. You are the wolf who devours the lambs to fill his own belly. Marcan has convinced me that we must walk in the paths of peace, accepting God’s will and …”
“Marcan!” Brian exploded. “Marcan is a priest, with his own view of God’s will, and I don’t happen to think that view is right for our situation. I’m not even convinced that it is God’s will that we be victims, though Marcan used to expend a lot of energy trying to convince me of it. He could not persuade me and so he has gone to work on you, and I am sure he is very proud of his … his accomplishment.” The deep voice was bitingly sarcastic.
“Marcan has brought me peace, Brian; he has shown me that there are other paths that I may follow. God sent him to me when I needed him most.”
“God didn’t send him! Marcan can here himself to beg your influence in having him named bishop of Killaloe. Marcan may preach humility, but he hungers for power within the Church as much as any tribal king hungers to expand his holdings.”
“I will war no more, Brian, no matter what you say, for it brings me too much pain. I sent your own brothers into battle ill-prepared, I think, and knew the guilt of seeing them die for a kingship I did not really value, even then. I tried to do better by you, and yet when I see what you have become I think I would rather have buried you somewhere in Tipperary, with Lachtna and Niall. I will build a new church on this Rock and give my life to God.”
“You think that is the best way for you to serve God? Charlemagne built churches, too, but he had a sword in his hand and it was with that sword that he brought Christianity to the Franks.”
“I renounce the sword forever!” Mahon cried.
Sensitive to something in his tone, Brian studied the king’s face intently. At last he said, “It is not God’s wrath that frightens you, brother. I think you are afraid of something in yourself. You enjoyed the killing, if only for a moment—some moment back there on the plain of Sulcoit, perhaps.
“Marcan is a shrewd
dog, and he found that chink in your armor, didn’t he? And worked on it?”
Mahon’s body had stiffened into a column of outrage, but his eyes were haunted. “You’ve made a pact with the forces of evil, Brian,” he whispered into the stillness of the room. “You can see into men’s hearts and uncover things better left hidden.”
Brian’s smile was small and bitter. “I made no unholy pact, Mahon. I’ve merely learned to examine myself in the long watches of the night, and I never lie to myself about what I find. Knowing my own truth makes it easier for me to recognize certain signs in others. There are similarities in all of us, if we admit to them. With part of my mind I can understand even the Northman’s joy in destruction, and with another part of my mind I can share a child’s innocent pleasures or know a priest’s hunger for God.
“You have gradually become more and more horrified by the brutality you see, and I suppose that does you credit. But you are afraid that it has stained your soul with some permanent mark that won’t wash off, and you have become desperate for forgiveness of one of the very qualities God gave you in the first place.
“If you would have peace, genuine peace, you must accept all the aspects of your personality and learn to be comfortable with them. You can’t cut away one part of your nature as a physician cuts away rotten flesh.
“You must continue to be strong and valiant, because if you won’t fight to protect what you have won, every Dane and Norseman, every greedy scoundrel and born thief, will come a-gallop to Munster to pick its bones. If you care about these people, Mahon, be a strong king and defend them!”
Mahon slumped against the carved olivewood chest, cradling his head in his hands and swaying gently from side to side. “I cannot, Brian,” he said in a muffled voice. “I cannot take men into battle anymore.”
A vast pity swept Brian. This is what I wanted, he told himself, only not this way. Not this way.
He carefully kept both pity and sympathy out of his voice as he told his brother, “Then I will do it for you. Be the king, hold court, and commune with God, and leave the rest to me.”
On the first night of the new moon, Deirdre returned to his chamber from the ladies’ wing.
“The physician says I am well, my lord, and able to resume my duties as your wife.”
“You want to?”
She dropped her eyelids, the long lashes sweeping in a curve over her cheeks, then looked up again and smiled. “I want to please you, Brian. I know that I have not … always …”
“You were ill.” He hastened to excuse her.
“I suppose so. But I’m all right now, and I do love you, my lord!” She knew the shadows were still there, waiting in the corners. But since Murrough’s birth she had begun to find she need not look at them. With each passing day she felt more insulated, less vulnerable to them, wrapped securely in some mystical cocoon she shared with her baby. Mothers were special, and strong; in their presence the shadows lost their power, and she was a mother now.
She turned her back on the shadows and saw instead the beauty of her husband. She remembered the songs the harper had sung of him, and imagined how glorious he must have been at Sulcoit. The lips framed by his crisply waving beard were soft, cool, and breathsweet. But when they parted his mouth was hot and hungry, clamping on hers with a passion too long contained.
She could not respond in kind; it took all her new strength to push the fear below the surface and hold it there. But she gave what she could, with love, if not with passion. She lay beneath him, fighting her desire to resist, wondering at the alien power of the emotion that gripped him and curiously flattered by it.
This thing Brian called lovemaking had an intensity she had experienced only through the medium of terror, and when she felt him plunge deeply into her with the last, spending thrust, and the cry of pleasure was wrung from him, she envied him.
That which was forever dreadful to her gave Brian a reward she could not even begin to imagine. She put her hand against the back of his head and pressed his face into the hollow of her shoulder, so that he could not see the glitter of tears in her eyes. His heart hammered against her, his breath singed her skin. But he was hers. The worst moment was over, endured, survived; now she was free to love him. Her fingers twined themselves gently in his hair.
“Welcome home, my lord,” she whispered softly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
In the dark and desolate cave beneath the roots of the tree Yggdrasil, where the three Norns dwelt at the ends of the earth, weaving the fates of men, the threads that controlled the life of Olaf Cuaran had become exceedingly tangled. Even in distant Dublin he felt them twisting about him, pressing the air from his lungs, and he grew irritable and morose. Everything seemed to be turning to ashes in his hands; the very foundations of his belief in himself were crumbling beneath his feet.
He spoke of it to his old viking comrade Magnus Ulricsson, whose warship Windwalker had just brought news of the latest setbacks in Northumbria. On Mother Night, the longest night of the year and parent to all other nights, they sat together over their drinking horns, and Olaf’s thoughts were blacker than the starred darkness beyond the walls.
“It isn’t just the news from the Saxon lands, Magnus,” he said, staring gloomily at his clenched fists on the table. “The Saxons have always fought our efforts to control that land, and I suppose it is inevitable that they challenge our dominance from time to time.”
“This is more than a challenge, Olaf. We are suffering severe losses and we may even lose control of York city; then we would have no port on the Humber.”
York, once a glittering prize that Olaf had claimed as part of his far-flung kingdom, seemed that night to be a great distance away, and only a symptom of the disease that was gnawing his vitals. The possible loss of his holdings to the east was a fitting part of the dark tapestry his life had become.
“We are losing more than the Saxon territories, my friend,” he told Magnus. “The very gods have deserted us, and we suffer defeat after defeat at the hands of Celtic upstarts who would not have dared face us in battle a generation ago. My own wife laughs at me.” His broad shoulders slumped and his head sank forward in despair.
Magnus snorted derisively. “Your wife! What does that matter? She’s only Irish. Have someone run her through with a sword, that will teach her proper respect, and then get yourself a new and better one.”
“It isn’t that easy. For one thing, she is the sister of Maelmordha, prince of Leinster, and I would not have his hand raised against me. Already I am threatened by Munster and Meath, and the Ulstermen are howling like wolves at my door.”
“Munster, you say? You need fear nothing from them—they spend all their time fighting amongst themselves. They are even worse about it than the rest of the Irish. Besides, Ivar of Limerick will keep them too occupied to come adventuring in your territory.”
Olaf sighed heavily. “You have been away, Magnus, living a good life in the Saxon lands where things are simple. On this cursed island nothing is as it seems; friends become foes overnight and there is magic in the very rocks. Bad magic.”
Magnus swung round on his bench to stare at his friend. “What’s this you’re saying? I do not recognize such words, coming from you; this is not the talk of the great Olaf Cuaran! This is late night talk when the drinking horn has been filled too many times.”
“No, I only wish it were. But I speak the truth, Magnus. Ever since I wed Gormlaith—perhaps even before that—there have been signs, portents that I should have been quicker to recognize. This is the land of the Christians, not of Odin and Thor and Freya. We cannot hold it in their names and if we continue to try we are doomed. We go into battle against the Cross and we are cut to pieces.”
Magnus was becoming alarmed. “Your wits are addled! You have a few unimportant setbacks and believe their one god is more powerful than all of ours. But just stop and think, man, how many times we have made the Celt flee in terror or grovel in the mud. Why, we hold all this is
land in one clenched fist!”
“No more, no more,” Olaf said in a barely audible voice.
“Why, what’s happened?”
“You spoke of Ivar of Limerick—he is Limerick no longer. Six months ago, Mahon of Munster destroyed Ivar’s army and sacked the city. It is ashes and rubble, and Ivar has fled to Scattery Island, where he is trying to rebuild his forces. I was no friend of Ivar’s, as you know; ours is an old rivalry, but his loss is mine too in this case. Munster is now united under the Dal Cais, and I fear they will join with Malachi of Meath, who has shown sympathy with their cause, and all march on Dublin.”
“Irish kings standing together? I don’t believe it!”
“Neither did I, but it is true. There is a new feeling in the land, spreading outward from Cashel, and we are beginning to hear rumors of a plan to drive Norse and Dane alike from Ireland.”
“Talk! Boastful Irish talk and nothing else. You know how they love to brag, these people who cannot fight.”
“Ah, but they can fight, Magnus. Like you, I underrated them, but no longer.”
“And where did they get this prowess on the battlefield? From the Munster king—what’s his name?—Mahon?”
“I suppose so. In his youth he was an indifferent warrior; he nipped at Ivar’s heels for years without ever being a real threat. Now all of that is changed. In one battle after another, the men of Munster have met and crushed good Northmen; this very day I heard that Ivar may be forced to flee to Wales, where Donovan of Hy Carbery has some allies who have offered him support.”
“I think I need more ale,” Magnus commented.
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