Lion of Ireland

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Aware that Brian was coming for him, Molloy made one last desperate effort to recruit allies. But the name of Desmond had lost its magic. His defiance of God had made him many enemies; former friends shrugged eloquently and showed him their empty hands. With every threat or promise at his command he rode from tuath to tuath of his kingdom, waving his sword and hurling threats at Cashel, but most folk stayed indoors and barred their gates against him.

  Some few Northmen stood with him, but when he marched to meet Brian’s forces at Belach-Lechta he still had only a thousand men, and the full weight of southern Ireland was bearing down upon him.

  Belach-Lechta, near the pass of Barnaderg.

  A stone cross stood there to commemorate the spot where King Mahon the Dalcassian had been slain; Brian and his officers knelt there and left a gift of flowers.

  The two armies came together three miles beyond.

  When camp was pitched before battle morning, Brian rode among his men, already savoring tomorrow’s victory and anxious to see it in their faces as well. They waved to him from their cooking fires; relaxed, confident, aware that they had twice the number of warriors Molloy could hope to field, and Right was on their side. It was a holy war; a great man was being avenged.

  Sophisticated tactics would not be required to defeat the Desmonians; it was to be a straightforward battle, a final mopping-up of the last rebels against the new rule in Munster. A good, clean battle.

  Something prickled at the back of Brian’s neck, some atavistic-instinct warning him of the unexpected. He reined in his horse. His escort, led by Fergus and Reardon Bent Knee, pulled up behind him. “What is it, my lord?”

  “I don’t know … something … when things seem to be going too easily, watch out.” He raked his keen gaze over the spread blanket of his army, row upon row of seasoned warriors. It was a sight to reassure, not alarm. And yet …

  An officer’s tent, pitched in the center of a company of men, rippled slightly over its surface with a passing wind. A young face, a page perhaps, or a body servant, glanced out briefly and then ducked back. Sitting on his horse, Brian froze.

  “Whose tent is that?”

  “I’ll find out, my lord.”

  “It doesn’t matter, just bring me the lad inside there. Quickly!”

  He waited, tall on his horse, his face carefully clean of expression, while Reardon trotted over to the tent and vanished within. There was a sound of voices, a brief but loud protest, and then he returned, followed by Murrough.

  A flushed, defiant Murrough, dressed in a soldier’s tunic that lapped his boyish frame and reached his knees. He stood bright-eyed before his father, his shoulders braced.

  “Before God, I can’t believe this!” Brian swore, torn between anger and amusement. “Who helped you do this foolish thing, boy?”

  “I didn’t need anyone to help me, my lord,” Murrough answered strongly although his voice began with a suspicious quiver. “I’m old enough to come to fight by myself.”

  “But not so brave that you would do it openly, it seems. Does your mother know of this?”

  “No, sir.” Murrough stuck out his chin.

  “I thought not. It probably never occurred to her that you were so eager to get yourself killed. I shudder to think what she would say to me if you went home with so much as a chipped tooth. You have put us both in jeopardy, boy, and I do not thank you for it.”

  Brian’s men were smiling openly, their teeth flashing in their beards. Man and boy looked at each other, a generation separating them, and it was easy to see Brian’s youth reflected in his son. Even Brian recognized it, and it took a mighty effort of will to avoid being influenced by it.

  He turned briskly to Fergus. “Take care of this whelp, Fergus. See that he gets a look at the fighting, so that he’ll know what it’s about, but don’t let him get in the way.” He turned back to his son. “I’ll deal with you later,” he promised.

  The battle was brief, one-sided, its outcome predetermined. The Northmen who had stood with Molloy deserted him as soon as they became aware of the superior numbers arrayed against them, but Brian ordered a detachment to pursue and kill them anyway. “Let the foreigners learn what it costs to interfere in our affairs!” he cried.

  Molloy led his men in the first few minutes of the battle, then disappeared from the scene, and with his going the heart went out of the Desmonians. The slaughter that followed was swift and harsh. Brian had given the order that men be cut down in their tracks unless they asked outright for mercy, and by the time the sun stood overhead there were hundreds dead where once the king of Munster had died alone.

  Molloy was not to be found.

  Brian raged among his officers. “He must be captured! That man cannot be allowed to live to enjoy another sunset!” He rounded on Cahal, who had led the assault on Molloy’s right. “I thought you had found him and marked him for me!”

  The king of Delvin More snarled back, “I did, but the coward threw aside his princely cloak and abandoned his horse during the thick of the fighting. By the time you got to us, my lord, no one could identify him. And then he was gone entirely.”

  “Damn it! I want every Dalcassian put to the task of finding him; now! There will be no fires lit and no food eaten until I have Molloy—and by God, if my own Dalcassians can’t catch him, then I’ll spread every man here over Munster like a net until that murderer stands before me. I have promised him to my sword!”

  Search parties scattered in every direction. Fergus, as one of Brian’s inner circle from the outlaw days, should have been leading one of the companies, but he came instead to Brian, sweat on his face and a curious expression in his eyes.

  “Yes, Fergus, what is it now?”

  “More bad news, I’m afraid. Your son is missing also.” There was no way to tell that but baldly; the dreadful words spat out upon the air like arrows to wound and kill. Fergus shrank from the expression in Brian’s eyes.

  “You’ve lost my son?”

  It was well known of Brian Boru that he recognized no excuses, and Fergus offered none. “I had given him my horse to hold, my lord, and placed him well behind the front line. He simply handed the horse to someone else and vanished.”

  Brian looked out in agony at the battlefield, where men still convulsed in the final act of dying, or shrieked and cried for water or mother. One of them might be Murrough.

  “Find him,” he said bleakly.

  Among the anxious searchers who fanned out across the countryside was a tall man on a horse. His face was so closed, his manner so forbidding that even Padraic fell back and walked a dozen paces behind him. Alone, sick at heart, the easy triumph and sweet revenge soured in his belly, Brian moved among the dead, looking for his son.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The hut was long abandoned, tumbledown, its thatched roof reintegrated with its native soil. A great weight of hawthorn leaned against it, crushing it back into the earth. No door remained, merely a crooked aperture between two sagging posts, but it was sufficient for a man to squeeze through.

  He stood very still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The air was close, dead, with a mustiness that made his nose itch. Sweat trickled down his neck. It was very quiet in the hut; even the spiders that had laced its decaying walls with cobwebs were still, as if watching him.

  He drew a deep, shaky breath. And then another. He felt greedy for the air that meant he was still alive. No one had seen him headed this way, running doubled over among the trees, and it would be dark in a few hours. If he was still undiscovered by then, it might be safe to try to complete his escape. But not by going home—Boru would surely have men waiting for him there.

  Perhaps they were already there, tying up his sons, putting their hot hands on his wife … he swore bitterly and rubbed his hand over his eyes. The stinging salt sweat made them itch, and he swore again.

  Molloy of Desmond sank down against the wall and leaned back gingerly, ignoring the rustle of disturbed vermin in a pile
of thatch. By looking straight up he would see a piece of blue sky. He picked at his nose, adjusted his clothing, ran through various plans in his mind and discarded them one after the other.

  The defeat was total; there could be no doubt about that. All Munster would accept the Dalcassian upstart now, it would not be possible to put together a force large enough to drive him out, even if the Norsemen and the Danes could be convinced to take part in such an attempt. Which looked highly unlikely.

  He sat and thought about defeat.

  Something moved outside; something too large and heavy. It crashed through shrubbery and then reached the collapsed door, breathing heavily. Molloy’s hand was on his sword hilt and he held very still, trapping his breath in motionless lungs.

  Someone squirmed through the opening and into the hut. Molloy almost laughed aloud. The newcomer was only a large child, a boy who surely had no more than ten or eleven years on him. He was wild-eyed and flushed, his black hair tangled with twigs, and when he saw Molloy he started.

  The prince of Desmond got to his feet and bowed with sarcastic silken courtesy. “If you’ve come for hospitality I can show you little, good fellow,” he said. “I’m new here myself.”

  The boy circled him warily, looking him up and down. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Just a soldier who got tired of fighting,” Molloy answered casually. “This looked like a quiet place, out of harm’s way, and I thought I’d stay here until it was safe to go home.”

  “You’re a deserter, then.”

  “You might say that. What about yourself? You look too young to be a warrior.”

  “No, I’m not!” The boy straightened to his full height and tossed his head, flinging aside a tumble of raven curls. “I’m old enough to fight, and I can wield a sword as well as any man!”

  “Ah, hunh.” Molloy edged sideways, trying to get the boy to follow him into the shaft of light that pierced the ruined roof. The lad looked well nourished and well dressed—ah, yes, when the light struck him it was obvious he had a noble’s face. Some important family would pay a good ransom to get him back. Perhaps enough to buy passage to the Cornish coast, and bribe the Munstermen to look the other way.

  Molloy spread an ingratiating smile across his face and held out his hand. “Come closer, lad, I won’t hurt you.”

  The boy took a step backward, shaking his head.

  “It’s glad I am to have you here for company, my man,” Molloy continued, trying to edge closer unobtrusively. If he could get a hand on the youngster, tie him up with something …

  Murrough watched the man’s eyes above the dark beard. The lips were smiling, but the eyes were not. Murderer! Assassin! Murrough continued to back slowly away from him, and with one hand he sought beneath his tunic for the knife hidden there.

  He had been holding Fergus’s horse, chafing with impatience and enduring the cramped muscles of one who has stood too long on tiptoe as he craned to watch the battle. And then he had seen the Desmonian slip past, cutting across the rear of Brian’s line, moving not away from those who sought him but directly behind them. The man wore the plain clothing of a foot soldier, but the gilded hilt of his sword caught the light and Murrough’s attention.

  It must be the prince of Desmond. Without thought, Murrough tossed the horse’s reins to a surprised slinger standing nearby and ran in the direction of the swiftly retreating back.

  While ducking and dodging through the trees, it had been exciting to imagine himself confronting the treacherous prince, capturing him alone, and handing him over to Brian in triumph. In a boy’s fancy such deeds are easily done, but now, alone in the smelly hut with a grown and dangerous man, he began to realize the vast gulf between imagination and reality. Molloy was a skilled warrior, a big man with a heavy sword and a feverish glitter in his eyes.

  Murrough’s mouth went dry.

  There was a commotion outside. Brian’s men were passing nearby, calling Murrough’s name. Momentarily distracted, Molloy turned away from his intended victim and stepped catlike to the opening. Careful to keep his face hidden, he peered outside, trying to determine how near the soldiers were.

  There might not be another chance. Shaking with terror and very sick to his stomach, Murrough pulled out his knife and clasped it tightly, one hand locked over the other. Without allowing himself to stop to think, he ran full force at Molloy’s unguarded back and put his whole strength behind the blow.

  It was frightening, how tough that back was! It was not like cutting into meat at all; more like trying to sink your blade into a tree trunk. The shock of the blow rocked Murrough and he let loose of the knife and stumbled backward, waiting in terror for the infuriated Molloy to turn around and strike him down.

  But Molloy did not turn. He stood unmoving for a terribly long time, then made a strange gurgling sound, and sank to his knees, arms upraised, hands clawing at his shoulders.

  Murrough screamed, then, with all the air he could draw into his lungs. “Help! Help! I’m here, I’ve got him! Help!”

  And then strong hands were ripping down the flimsy walls of the hut, and Brian’s soldiers poured in upon them.

  By the time Murrough had repeated his story to a score of soldiers, it had changed from the deed of an impulsive child committing a rash and dangerous folly to a feat of heroic proportions. In spite of the fact that the dead prince lay on his face, a knife hilt protruding from between his shoulder blades, by Murrough’s account he had been slain in savage hand-to-hand combat by an intrepid young man who knew what he was doing every step of the way.

  When Murrough was brought before his father—accompanied by Molloy’s body on a litter—the boy was glowing with pride and self-importance.

  Brian’s furious face was like a dash of icy water.

  “How could you do such an insane thing!” Brian yelled, his relief roaring out of him in the shape of a thunderous rage. “You could have been killed—you should have been killed! Molloy should have spitted you like a pig and had you for his dinner. Idiot child, do you think war is a game for babies to play?”

  The exuberant light faded from Murrough’s eyes. “I’m not a baby,” he said with a sulky edge to his voice. “I was old enough to kill the prince of Desmond, wasn’t I? I thought you wanted him dead.”

  Brian struggled with the urge to put his hands around the boy’s throat and throttle him. The memory of painful, fearful love was wiped away, and he felt something very near to hatred for being made to suffer such anxiety. And beneath that, a burning, shameful resentment for having been cheated of the revenge he had promised himself for so long. It was not the sword of Brian Boru that brought Molloy down.

  He forced himself to look at Murrough, and remember that this was his son. “Get out of my sight, and stay out of it until we are back at Cashel,” he said in a voice rough with anger. He turned to Leti. “Tie his hands, if you have to, and keep him within arm’s reach at all times!”

  When at last he had a chance to be alone in his tent, with only Padraic for company, Brian began to let the tension drain out of him. He leaned back against the firmly planted tentpole and stretched his long legs in front of him, crossing them comfortably at the ankle. His hands lay quietly along his thighs, palms downward, and beneath them he could feel the swell of iron muscles.

  He watched Padraic prepare their evening meal. Outside there was shouting and the singing of men well gone in drink, the sounds of celebration that follow a victory.

  Brian wondered why the joy of it eluded him.

  Mahon, he thought, the name crossing his mind as it did so often in unguarded moments. It was a spear of pain. And Murrough’s name might have been added to it, another burden of guilt.

  The more I have the more I can lose, he thought. The price for my dreams keeps getting higher.

  “I am raising him to be a king,” Brian said darkly, mostly to himself, “and he is willing to throw his life away for a moment’s adventure. He is rash and quick-tempered, but are those youthful follies a
lone? Will he outgrow them when he comes into manhood, or am I wasting all my dreams?”

  Padraic, quick to respond to the pain in Brian’s voice, said, “Oh, no, my lord; Prince Murrough will do you proud some day, I know it. He is young yet, that’s all; there’s sturdy timber underneath. You are training him to the kingship and he will not fail you.”

  Above his beard, Brian’s gray eyes brooded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The palace of Kincora rose on the west bank of the Shannon, stone upon stone, timber wedded to timber in an embrace meant to span the centuries. When Brian could make time for it he rode up to supervise the building, suggesting a window here, insisting on a stouter wall there. The builders were surprised at his grasp of their craft, and annoyed at his insistence on perfection in the most minute details.

  But as the compound grew they began to take a special pride in it. It was, truly, a house fit for a provincial king, a splendid citadel, and in the years to come men who did no more than straighten bent iron nails or tamp clay would boast to their grandchildren, “I built Kincora, you know!”

  The chambers were to be circular, free of shadowy corners. The grianan was built around an enormous, gnarled apple tree, which had been spared the woodman’s ax and allowed an opening in the roof. Cages for Emer’s songbirds were to be hung from its branches, and the slant of the trunk was inviting to the feet of small climbers.

  The huge banquet hall was to have two long galleries leading to the kitchens, so that a steady flow of servants could come and go without having to dodge one another. “No one has done it that way before, my lord!” the chief builder complained, and was irked to see that his argument only pleased Brian. “That’s all the more reason for doing it,” the king said.

  Care was taken that light and air should reach the inmost recesses of the king’s hall, and bright colors blazed everywhere, replacing the gloom of Cashel with the brilliance of Kincora. Painted leather hangings were commissioned for the many separate guest houses and apartments, and Brian’s treasurer complained to him of the cost.