“When we break through to Ivar, remember that he is mine,” Brian warned his men repeatedly. “If any man puts a mark on him first, that man shall answer to me. Fight well, use your soldiers carefully, and put no one in unnecessary danger—and as soon as you find Ivar, send for me.”
But there was no need to send for Brian. He was in the forefront of the attack that charged through the doorway to the room where Ivar waited, an old man past his fighting days, the rot of age in his joints and sinews.
Brian waved his men back and advanced on the Norse king alone. “You are Ivar Amlavson?” he asked in his heavily accented Norse.
Ivar gave no vocal answer, merely bared his remaining teeth in the practiced and mirthless grin of a warrior and waited. But his eyes were still keen; he clearly saw the man who stood before him, tall as the tallest Northman, with the history of Ireland on his face. There would be no escape this time.
Brain lifted his sword. He saw Ivar glance at it. “You have no weapon?” he asked.
Ivar glared at him and gave a curt shake of his head. “I need no weapon against an Irish dog,” he snarled.
Some of the tension went out of Brian. Here was a chance, one of those golden moments that can be turned to immortal treasure by the alchemy of a bard’s retelling. He made himself smile at Ivar. “I understand your belief is that you must die with a sword in your hand to reach Valhalla, Northman; is that not so?”
Ivar watched him, narrowing his eyes. He knew the fellow was using him. If he had been younger, stronger … ah, but it hardly mattered anymore. Because he was old his men had deserted him and left him to die, the vaunted brotherhood of the Northmen forgotten, corrupted by this alien land. Death was no stranger, and Valhalla was a promise given a child and soon forgotten.
“Here!” Brian cried suddenly, tossing his own sword at Ivar. “I would not deny any man his heaven, nor kill any enemy in cold blood as was done to my brother. Fight for your life or your death, foreigner!”
Ivar’s shocked mind reacted with the old quickness, but his hands were slower. He grabbed at the sword, caught it, fumbled it, and struggled to lift its weight while Brian stood unarmed, watching him, smiling. And when at last he held it firmly, the hilt clasped in both his hands and his feet parted in as good a fighting stance as he could manage, Brian came toward him. Unarmed. Smiling.
Ivar lay dead of a broken back in the heart of his last stronghold, while its buildings were ignited by Irish torches to provide his funeral pyre. Two of Ivar’s sons lay dead on the banks of the island; the oldest, Harold, had fled safely to his old ally Donovan.
Crouched in hiding in a wooden chest in one of the storerooms, thinking himself overlooked by Boru’s men, Ivar’s brother Ilacquin heard the first crackle of the flames without realizing what they represented. Then he smelled smoke, and thrust violently against the tightly fitted lid of the chest. Irish swords were preferable to being roasted alive!
But the chest was strongly made, and the damp air of Scattery Island had caused the wood to swell. Doubled up within it, Ilacquin was unable to get enough room to straighten his arms and force it open. Growing desperate, he hammered against the lid, yelling for someone to come and help him. Only the roar of the fire answered.
Hungry, insatiable, the flames surrounded the chest and licked the wood with eager tongues. As the frantic Ilacquin at last broke free of his prison, a gust of air swept the room and the blaze leaped high, igniting his clothes and turning him into a living, screaming torch.
He did not scream for long.
Brian and his men laid waste to the rest of the island, then turned south toward the land of Hy Carbery, and Donovan. On the first anniversary of Mahon’s death Bruree was burned to the ground, and Donovan and Harold Ivarson slain, together with a vast number of their followers. On the charred trunk of a sycamore that had stood by Donovan’s gate Brian left a banner hanging, its defiant three lions clawing the breeze.
Those who might have stood with Molley sided with him no longer. He waited in Desmond, watching a thin trickle of men desert him every day. “My mistake was one of ignorance,” he lamented to his wife on the privacy of their pillow. “I saw Mahon and thought he was the king, the obstacle in my path, and assumed his brother was merely his general. I have destroyed the weaker man and brought the stronger down on my head.”
“You had no way of knowing, a mhuirnin,” his wife said, trying to comfort him.
Molloy sat up on the bed and nursed his knees. “I should have known,” he muttered. “I should have made it my business to learn everything about the Dalcassians before I challenged them. That’s the way Boru does it. But I mocked Mahon and made sport of his clergy, and now there is an avenging angel at Cashel, honing the edge of his sword and thirsting for my blood.”
“You always tempted God. You laughed at His priests and defied his commandments, and I warned you and warned you about it. You know I did. I told you many times …”
“Oh, be quiet,” Molloy groaned, turning his back to her.
The months passed, and Brian let Molloy wait, knowing the fear that sickened and weakened him. It was pleasant to drowse in bed at night, safe, sure, the strong stone walls embracing him; or lie in front of his tent in the army camp, watching the stars wheel above him, and imagine the agony of Molloy, waiting. It was part of the punishment.
“I’m a vindictive man, Padraic,” he commented one day. “I never really realized that before.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re not, my lord,” his aide was quick to reply. But Brian refused to have his self-knowledge muddied by illusion. “No, it’s true,” he insisted. “I can harbor a grudge for years, and I never forget an insult or slight. The priests tell me these are weaknesses I must overcome, and my brother Marcan prays for me to be given a more forgiving spirit. He can afford to pray—vengeance is not in his province; he has God for that. Munster has me.”
It occurred to Padraic that Brian was not ashamed of his vengeful nature; he even appeared proud of it. Brian was proud of many things, including his own pride. Yet surely these were sins …
Brian made them sound like virtues.
Padraic shook his head and smiled good-naturedly. “I must confess I don’t always understand what you say, my lord,” he told Brian, “but the way you say it makes it seem right!”
At the end of the year, Brian grew weary of the game. The satisfaction was wrung out of it. He sent the prince of Desmond a formal challenge to battle, instructing the envoy to make it plain to Molloy that no truce or peace would be accepted and no payment taken for the murdered king. Nothing would do but open battle.
There was no reply.
For two years, ever since Mahon’s death, Brian had had agents in Desmond, reporting to him on Molloy’s every move. He was determined that the man not slip through his fingers; no ship would take him, no foreign port welcome him. Molloy was to wait, feeling the sands run out of his glass, until Brian was ready for him.
And now Brian was ready.
He sought out Deirdre, to tell her personally and as gently as possible that the time had come for one more campaign. He found her with the children, her lap piled with sewing. The needle flashed in her thin fingers—when had she gotten so thin?—as she smiled down at little Teigue, who leaned against his mother’s knee, begging for a story.
“Didn’t I tell you a tale yestereven?” Deirdre asked him, a smile at the corner of her mouth.
The boy looked up at her with innocent eyes. “I don’t remember it,” he said flatly.
Emer, shocked, contradicted him. “Yes, you do!” she began. “It was all about the pookah, and …”
Teigue glared across Deirdre’s lap at his sister. “I don’t remember it!” he proclaimed again, with more volume. “Maybe she just told you. Nobody ever tells me a story for my very own. You get stories, and Sabia and Flann get stories, but I never …”
The laugh pulled loose from Deirdre’s lips and rippled softly about the room, warming it. Brian stood in the angle of
the doorway, seeing but unseen, and found that he was listening as eagerly as the children.
“Very well.” Deirdre capitulated. “One story, just for Teigue, though I know I’ve told you a score since the last Saint’s Day.”
“Haven’t,” Teigue murmured under his breath, pleased. They gathered around their mother’s feet, dropping to the stone floor with the boneless grace of the young. Even Murrough came and hung over the back of Deirdre’s seat, and Brian realized with a start how large the boy had grown, how soon he would be a man.
Where does the time go? We haven’t begun to know each other yet, and soon he will be off with a horse and a sword.
“Have I told you the story of Tír-na-n-Óg?” Deirdre asked the children. As if pulled by one string their heads moved in unison, left to right and back again. “Very well, then. It’s time you heard it as it was told to me, to give me sweet dreams in my bed at night.”
Deirdre took a deep breath and began the story, her soft voice barely reaching to the corners of the chamber. In his hidden alcove Brian strained to hear her.
“Tír-na-n-Óg is the land of perpetual youth, where all is beauty and death is unknown. It is the Place of Radiance. Do you know how the morning looks after a rainy night, when moisture glistens on every leaf and the bright sunshine breaks through and dazzles us? Well, Tír-na-n-Óg is like that, and it makes you feel that way—as if your heart were too big to stay inside your breast.”
“Oooooh!” breathed Flann. “Who lives there?”
“The ancient gods live there, the immortals who were in Ireland before the coming of Christendom. Lugh of the Silver Spear, and Dagda of the great Cauldron that gives life to the dead and food to the living, and Angus Og, who is the soul of poetry, and all the large and small spirits of the woods and hills.
“Some people call that land Hy Brazil, the Isle of the Blest, because that is where heroes go as a reward for their courage and steadfastness. It is said that the great Cuchullain himself is there, with Conchobar, and Fionn mac Cumhaill.”
“And Conn the Hundred-Fighter!” Murrough interrupted, unable to listen in silence any longer. “And his lifelong enemy Owen Mor. Aed says that once they divided Ireland between them, and Conn took the northern half and Owen Mor laid claim to all the rest, and …”
“We are not talking of battles this day, Murrough!” Deirdre repoved him sharply. “We are not all as obsessed with fighting as you are. Sit down on your stool and listen; it will do you good to hear something of peace and beauty.”
Murrough sank back on the stool, but it was not his way to accept a rebuff or a criticism. Soon he jumped up and left the room, brushing past Brian without even noticing him. Deirdre looked after him, and sighed.
“Go on!” Teigue begged her.
“Ah … yes, Tír-na-n-Óg. It is a place that is everywhere and nowhere, for it is not bound by the laws of time and space as we know them. Sometimes it is beneath the sea, and if you are lucky you may catch a glimpse of its crystal towers rising above the waves in the dawn. Other times it floats atop the water, appearing and vanishing again. The sainted Brendan himself set sail for it, convinced it was the lost Garden of Eden and could be reached in a curragh if his faith was strong enough.”
“Was it?” they clamored to know. “Was his faith strong enough?”
“That’s another story, and must be told some other time,” Deirdre answered. “On clear days Tír-na-n-Óg is sometimes glimpsed from the westernmost cliffs of Ireland, and its music comes drifting over the waters like a forgotten song. Many have dived into the sea and attempted to swim to it. The dark in heart are always drowned and washed back upon the rocks. Only the strong and beautiful in spirit wade through the surf and onto the shores of Hy Brazil.
“But few truly have the ability to be happy in such a world, strange as that may seem. There are those who grow discontented, even in Tír-na-n-Og, because there is no challenge for them there. They must return to the land of the mortals and continue to fight for life and food and a bit of earth to be buried in.”
“It isn’t heaven you’re talking about, is it, Mother?” asked Conor, wrinkling his forehead.
Deirdre’s smile was sad. “No, dear, it isn’t heaven. Not the heaven in the Bible. It’s a pagan place, and the stories about it are so old that no one knows where they came from.”
“But is it true, is there really a Tír-na-n-Óg?” Emer crowded against her mother, looking hopefully into Deirdre’s face.
There are some questions that must never be answered, Brian thought. He stepped from his hiding place into the light, and felt the old familiar pain when he saw the sudden fright leap in his wife’s eyes. Whatever malign force it was that had blighted her life with terror, it still stood between them. Cashel was not Tír-na-n-Óg, his lovely princess lived in a dark and fearful world.
His children regarded him with varying degrees of awe. He stood on one side of the invisible line called adulthood, and they on the other—and he could never remember having crossed over. He felt a mild surprise that they did not recognize in him their own sense of wonder, of fascination with the tales which were their common heritage. But he could not drop down on the floor with them and say, “Go on, Deirdre, tell us another story.”
He could not say, “Yes, there is a land of Tír-na-n-Óg, and I will take you all there to be happy forever.”
He could not even say, “I love you, Deirdre—don’t look at me like that.”
“Leave us,” he said to the children, not unkindly. “I need to talk with your mother.”
The flowerlike face she lifted to him was as beautiful as ever, all traces of fear carefully wiped from the shadowed violet eyes. But he knew without having to think about it that if he put a casual hand on her shoulder she would tremble, and if he stood too close to her she would shrink inside her clothes, and tolerate him. Only tolerate him.
It was this place, this dark and gloomy pile of ancient stone, with its ghosts and its memories, its odors of sanctity and incense that somehow stifled children’s laughter. Mahon had wanted to turn it all into a splendid religious center, a shrine as far removed from life as Tír-na-n-Óg was from reality, and had he lived there might have come a time when there were no banquet tables at Cashel, no marriage beds, no little ones racing and laughing through the passageways.
And it might be better so.
“My lady, I’ve come to bid you good-bye for a while,” he began, couching his words as gently as possible. But she always knew.
“You’re going to war again?”
“It’s Molloy of Desmond. The time has come when he must stand to account for my brother’s murder; I can put it off no longer. I go to dispense long-overdue justice, Deirdre.”
She said nothing, merely watched his face. A fantasy flickered across his mind: Deirdre with tears in her eyes, throwing her arms around him, begging him not to leave. A warm and passionate Deirdre, clinging to him as Fithir had clung to Mahon the morning Mahon left for Bruree.
As Fiona had once clung to him.
“Be careful,” Deirdre said at last, her voice very low.
He had to leave her with something. “When I was a boy,” he told her, “there was a hill where I used to play. It was a piece of high ground overlooking the Shannon, not far from Boruma, and a favorite game of mine was to go up there alone and pretend that I was a king.”
Her eyes were fixed on his face.
“I am king now, Deirdre. King of Thomond, and, when Molloy is dead, undisputed king of Munster. And I want my own stronghold from which to rule. Let the priests have Cashel; that will please Marcan, he can offer it as a penance dearly bought with blood. If you like the idea, when I come back from the west country I will have a new palace built on that hill in Thomond, a home of our very own. A place of radiance.”
Her eyes widened; he had heard the story she was telling, then, and was offering to build a Tír-na-n-Óg for her. If she had the strength to believe in it.
“Are you asking for my approv
al, my lord? You are the king; you need no one’s permission save that of God.”
“I can’t give a gift unless there is someone to receive it, Deirdre. Would you want me to build a palace for you on the hill at Kincora, if I promise you that it will be as beautiful and secure as mortal man can make it?”
She dropped her eyes to her hands, twisting together in her lap. It was so much easier to talk to him when there were other people around! “Yes, Brian,” she told him, her voice so soft that he had to lean over her to hear it, which alarmed her and irritated him.
“What did you say?” he snapped, feeling his good intentions slipping away.
She pitched her voice louder, so that it sounded shrill and unnatural to her own ears. “Yes, my lord! I would be very happy to share such a palace with you!” And then she knew that in some curious way she had hurt him, and her guilt gave her the audacity to reach out and take his big brown hand with her own small white one. “Please, Brian,” she said in a more normal tone, “I really would like it. It would be so good to leave here; I’ve always hated this place.”
He was surprised. “I didn’t know that! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know there was anything to be done about it.”
“Ah, lady, there is always something that can be done. If I had known you felt that way we would never have lived here at all. We could have had a compound of our own beyond the Rock, or on the banks of the Suir. But you must share your feelings with me, Deirdre; don’t expect me to read your mind.”
“It is said that you have a gift for doing that.”
He shook his head regretfully. “It doesn’t work with women!”
Lion of Ireland Page 32