Lion of Ireland

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “Gormlaith!” he cried, grabbing for her.

  The warmth was gone from her voice in the blinking of an eye—a cold emerald eye, that stared at him imperiously as if he were some impudent baggage boy taking liberties with the nobleman’s wife. “Wait, I said!” Gormlaith demanded. She put all the power at her command in her voice, making it ice, making it iron, lashing him with it, and watching intently to judge the courage of his response. Olaf Cuaran, that crumbing old man, would have backed away and stood blinking at her like some great fish out of water.

  Malachi did not back away, nor did he blink. He held himself absolutely still, trying to measure her as she measured him. He was aware of the erection thrusting against his tunic, a foolish lance forward-tilted for an engagement that might never take place. He would hate her if she looked down at it, but she did not.

  Their locked eyes held. “Why wait, lady?” he said at last, controlling his breathing with difficulty. If she would deny him, he would deny her. Malachi had played games before.

  “Why not? Isn’t fruit sweeter if you have to climb a tall tree to pick it?”

  She was teasing him then, cat-and-mouse. But I am no mouse, lady, he thought, and no man enjoys this game. He made his voice as cold as her own. “Sometimes the fruit isn’t worth the climb, Gormlaith.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “How can you know unless you taste it? Unless you hold it in your mouth … and run your tongue over it … and let its juices slide down your throat … ?”

  Malachi balled his fists, the nails biting into his palms, but his voice was level and calm. “It seems you mean to deny me a taste, Gormlaith—is that correct? Have you chosen to remember that you are a widow, still in mourning?”

  She stuck out her pointed red tongue at him. “Ha! You think I mourn a slack-loined old man who ran off and left me to face the conqueror alone?” Her voice caressed the word conqueror, and in spite of himself Malachi looked again at her naked breasts, and the sheen of sweat glossing them.

  She watched the direction of his eyes. “They would taste salty now; it’s very warm in here,” she told him. Her voice was a golden purr.

  Something twitched in his jaw, a tiny muscle into which he poured all the concentrated tension of his body. “You invited me here, lady. Your messenger brought word that you were ready to discuss my proposal of marriage, and I came in good faith. Your welcome certainly gave me no reason to suspect that you intended to reject me! But now you tell me to wait, as you have told me to wait again and again these past weeks.

  “I’m tired of waiting, Gormlaith, and there are other matters that demand my attention. Either your brother has sent his permission for the marriage or not; I must know today.”

  “Oh, now, Malachi, don’t be angry! I was merely having a little fun with you, didn’t you know that? A little harmless amusement to add spice to our relationship.” She drew her gown closed demurely, looking up at him through her long lashes, and patted the seat beside her. “Come and sit with me and say you forgive me. I have good news.”

  He sat down too eagerly, and knew at once it was a mistake when he saw the minute flicker of contempt in her eyes, but it could not be undone. Every gesture, every syllable must be weighed with this woman! Perhaps that was what made her so exciting; surely old Olaf had been as helpless to deal with her as a baby with a lion. But he knew he could handle her.

  “News from Leinster?” he asked.

  “Yes, my brother Maelmordha has consented to the match, in return for your support of him in his struggle for supremacy over the entire province, and five thousand men to stand with him if he is invaded.”

  “Invaded? By whom?”

  Gormlaith shrugged, and her breasts pulled free of their flimsy covering once more. “Every prince has enemies, and my brother has more than most, I fear. That’s why he has to be so careful with his … assets.”

  “It’s a strange way of bargaining for a bride—dealing with the lady herself,” Malachi commented. “It’s rather like making your arrangements with the horse instead of the horse dealer.”

  Gormlaith laid her hand on his thigh and the fingers began a slow walk upward, pushing the edge of his tunic ahead of them. “You’ll be getting a hot-blooded mare, my lord,” she smiled at him, “sound of wind and limb and with all her teeth intact.” The flaming hair whipped past his face and dropped to his lap, and he felt her mouth on the inner surface of his thigh, her teeth nibbling.

  I am making a terrible mistake, Malachi thought. He closed his eyes. I don’t care.

  A small brown woman came to the gates of Kincora, accompanied by a tall maiden well-concealed in a hooded cloak. “We have heard that the king is far gone in grief,” the brown woman began to explain to the guard. “I am a skilled herbalist, and I have some preparations …”

  “Is this a fosterling, or one of the line of Cennedi?” the guard interrupted her, stepping forward abruptly and trying to peer into the tall girl’s face.

  “What do you mean? This is my daughter!” Fiona exclaimed, putting herself squarely between them.

  “All right, all right, but you’re bringing her to Kincora to live, aren’t you?”

  Fiona bristled. “And why should I?”

  “Why, we have had a standing order from the king that we are to take in all the blood descendants of Cennedi; he wants to see that they are properly educated and provided for. His older brothers had sired a sizable brood among them before they died, and most of them have come to Kincora since it was completed. Lachtna’s son Celechair is here right now—the abbot of Terryglass, he is now. And this girl has a look about her …”

  Fiona dodged in front of him, determined to block his view. With one hand behind her back she motioned the girl away. “Well, she’s not anyone but my own child, and no one else has any claim on her! She and I go our own way and trouble no one; it’s just that I am … obligated … to try to aid the king when he needs me, in what ways I can, and …”

  “The king isn’t seeing anyone,” the guard said firmly. “And if he were, it wouldn’t be some faded woods-woman. If you want to leave the lass here, though, I’ll look after her myself, and …”

  “You misunderstand me,” Fiona said in a harsh voice. She grabbed the girl’s wrist, and the two started back down the road together, leaving the guard staring after them.

  When she reached the sheltering woods, Fiona stopped to look back. The stone and timber walls rose in symmetrical beauty, a stout defense against sword and spear. But there were other dangers that could cut a man down and destroy him.

  She narrowed her eyes and focused on Kincora. There it was; a faint shimmer of tension, white-gray, the aura emanating from the place where Brian was. The halo of grief; leaden, depressing.

  With one hand she reached up slowly and felt her cheek and the skin of her face … “some faded woods-woman” … Her fingertips touched the rayed wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, then drew forward a long strand of hair so that she could see it clearly. The rich brown was frosted with white.

  “Do men only grow,” she said, more to herself than the waiting girl, “while women grow old?”

  There was a rumble of thunder over the mountains. Her daughter began to walk again, hurrying deeper into the woods, and Fiona followed her as the first raindrops spattered on the friendly leaves.

  Runners came up from the south, breathless with the excitement of bad news. “Gillapatrick of Ossory has invaded Munster, raided the cattle herds near the border, and stolen everything of value that he could carry!”

  Kincora was ablaze with activity. Certainly Brian would immediately launch an attack of reprisal; volunteers came scurrying up the roads with packs on their backs, anxious to be able to tell their kinfolk, “We marched with Brian Boru!”

  Only Brian remained uninterested. He discussed counter-measures with his officers in a desultory fashion, half listening, his gaze elsewhere. The kingdom he had fought to win was invaded, raped, and he could not make himself care. He saw the bafflement in t
heir faces as they tried unsuccessfully to enmesh him in their plans.

  “My lord, of course you must lead us!” Leti argued. “It’s unthinkable that you stay at Kincora while your army attacks Leinster!”

  “You can do it without me. I trained you, all of you; you know what to do.”

  “But it wouldn’t be the same!”

  “Why not?” Brian’s voice was thin. “What difference is one man, more or less?”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this,” Cahal whispered to Illan Finn.

  “God help us!” came the reply.

  But Brian was no longer attempting to carry on dialogues with God. The Ear into which he had poured his pleadings had been deaf, no prayer was answered, no help given. Deirdre lay in her tomb. Mahon …

  He spent most of his time outside the compound. All of his love and creativity had gone into the design of Kincora, and the sight of it had become excruciatingly painful. The only thing that hurt more was the thought of leaving it. Every torchholder and candle niche was a dig in the gut; the sweeping views from the galleries, the wealth of carved stone and polished yew, even the light and the spaciousness were a constant reproof, a reminder of the long final darkness.

  They did not know how much I loved them. I could have spent more time with Deirdre; I could have tried harder to understand.

  Did Mahon know? He thought I was his enemy. I thought he was a fool. We should … I should have … If …

  When he thought of the familiar, loved face, he could only picture the darkness of the grave. The unacceptable wall, the final separation. He strove within himself to force his way through that dark veil that separated the living from the not-living, and daily he grew more comfortable with his growing isolation.

  There was one way of dealing with pain that he had never before explored. Surrender …

  He stood on his hilltop, eyes caressing the reedy silver loops of the Shannon, and said the word to himself. The once unacceptable word: géilleadh —surrender. Open to it, fight no more. Give yourself completely to the melancholy and let it carry you away, into that dream world beyond.

  Surrender. Give up.

  The pearled air of Ireland moved about him, mist-soft, comforting. The piping sweetness of a waterbird’s cry came up to him from the river. The greens of the landscape flowed into his eyes, into his brain, into his soul. Grasping trees, springing grass, strong tenacious curl of ivy, life going on forever, like the river.

  Going on without him.

  He was peripherally conscious of the community of Kincora at a distance; felt without thinking the pressure of its responsibilities. Family, children, foster children, cousins, friends, councilors, ollamhs, clergy, officers, artisans, musicians, brehons, warriors, servants. Each of them requiring some part of his energy, none of them able to help him.

  Behind him, the trees moved, clasping their branches together in the gentle breeze like supplicating hands. They drew their energy from the earth and poured it into the very air, sending it out, directing it …

  As the small brown woman who stood concealed within the heart of the woods directed them. Her eyes on the tall man barely visible through the screen of leaves, her hands forming the ancient signs, she poured her life and all the life at her command outward, toward the man who carried the future of Ireland on his shoulders.

  He stood erect, at last beyond even grief, in a quiet empty place without awareness of God or hope of heaven. Purgatory, he thought idly, not caring. And I am all alone. I have no one but myself.

  But myself.

  In the silence he heard the blood roaring in his ears. He felt the weight of his body pressing downward through strong-muscled legs and broadplanted feet, into the earth.

  I have myself.

  He drew one slow, deep breath, careful not to shatter the bubble expanding within his chest. The awareness of life, insistent, demanding, not to be denied, grew in him and sang in his veins.

  I am alive.

  He looked at the beloved land and it was still there, as it had always been. Just as beautiful, just as enduring. Death was absorbed into it and given back as life. Death had no power over the land.

  It has no more power over me than I give it, he thought. I told Padraic I do not want to believe in death, and I have never believed in surrender, so why am I standing here considering those things?

  He threw back his head and looked at the endless depths of the blue sky above him, the sun gilding the edges of a little billow of clouds blown gently inland from the sea.

  “Do You hear me?” he cried, raising his fists above his head. “I will surrender to no one; I will not let myself be destroyed by shadows in my own mind!”

  He hurled his defiance at the empty spaces above him and knew, with absolute certainty, that Something heard … and was pleased.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The army of Munster swept across the land, following Brian Boru. The red-and-gold banner of the three raging lions whipped in the wind of their passing. They splashed through streams, singing, and broke through the stands of alder as they would break through the ranks of an enemy. They flowed over the gentle hills, hot with purpose, shouting their war cries, Boru’s men on the move again.

  Hearing the thunder of their coming, long-eared coneys hid in their burrows beneath the bracken, and red deer darted into hiding in the oak forests. But there was no hiding place for the men of Ossory, only a hasty retreat to their tuaths on the banks of the Nore river. Brian’s men came after them, pausing for neither rest nor food, eating oat bread and wayside berries as they marched, a forest of spears rising from their shoulders, chanting.

  The countryfolk cowered in their cottages of mud and timber and wickerwork, shielded only by a coat of lime wash from the hard eyes of the warrior of Munster. But, as always, there were some who darted out, eager to give news of Gillapatrick for a piece of silver or a fine wool bratt.

  Besieged and hard-pressed, the prince of Ossory sent three messengers riding north with a desperate plea to Maelmordha of Leinster, in his stronghold near Naas.

  “Tell Maelmordha that we have been attacked without provocation by a gang of bloodthirsty Munstermen,” Gillapatrick instructed them. “Explain about that vile trick when Boru lured my best men into a bog and left them to find their own way out or drown—that will show what kind of a dog he is! And be certain the prince understands that my people are being gathered and taken to Munster as hostages. Beg him to send me more warriors, and arms!”

  As night fell, the messengers led their horses, hoof-wrapped, a safe distance from the ruin of Gillapatrick’s hall, where sporadic fighting was still taking place, then mounted and raced northward. Morning found them in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains. They had ridden past deep peat ridges and bogs starred with bog cotton, and sheep grazing on lonely moors had lifted their heads to watch them gallop by in the moonlight. They kicked and switched their horses along winding mountain trails, oblivious to the wild beauty of foaming stream and lacy waterfalls.

  Their memories still contained the picture of the Munstermen running up the hill toward Gillapatrick’s stockade, brandishing axes as skillfully as Northmen and screaming threats. When they looked at one another they saw, mirrored in their comrade’s eyes, that last vision of the giant king of Munster on his sweating stallion, a red silk mantle blowing back from his shoulders, his tireless sword arm rising and falling.

  They reached Naas at last, exhausted, horse-sore, and Maelmordha ordered boiled eels and red wine for them while he listened to their story. Then he called for fresh horses to be brought them.

  “The Cualann road lies a few miles from here, leading straight to Tara. The Ard Ri is my near-brother now, and my problems should be his. You have come such a long way so bravely, I charge you go this little additional distance to Malachi, who has convened his council there. Greet him in my name, and tell him that I request he put a body of men in the field against this Brian Boru, who has criminally invaded Leinster.”

 
When they had ridden away he returned to his hall and commented to the throng of nobles and hem-hangers who filled it, “I never believe in spending my own men unless it will benefit me directly. Gillapatrick is the Ard Ri’s subject; let the Ard Ri defend him.”

  “You don’t intend to fight Boru?” someone asked.

  Maelmordha gnawed his underlip and thought of the tales he had heard in recent years. “Not if I can help it,” he replied. “After all, he hasn’t done anything to me.”

  The Ossorymen rode on, following the road blindly and unaware when the aspect of the land changed. It was only when the road itself began to be crowded with carts and horses that they knew they were on the slighe, the main highway for wheeled vehicles. They became part of the general crush of carts and chariots jostling one another for right of way as they approached the official seat of the Ard Ri.

  The chariot whirled past them, driven by a young noble in a brilliantly colored and elaborately pleated linen tunic. He reined in his pair of frothing horses to stare at them curiously, then cracked his whip and dashed away, wheeling the horses too sharply, so that the chariot rode up on one wheel and balanced there precariously amid shouts of “Watch out!” and “Look where you’re going, you young fool!”

  The slighe flowed into the ramut, the king’s avenue. There was no rock or rut in it where a tired horse might stumble, for the ramut was kept immaculately clean by the people of the king’s own tribe, using the three ritual cleansings: by brushwood, by water, and by weeds. The road stretched straight before them now, a broad ribbon gently rising to the green and distant ridge, the sacred hill, hub of the Five Roads of Ireland.

  Tara.

  Timbered halls still stood within the seven duns, the ringforts built beyond memory’s reach, but their wood was ash gray and fragile with age. Before the Miodhchuarta, the huge royal banqueting hall, the Ard Ri’s flag hung limp in the soft air. Guards wearing swords and holding shields of bronze stood at each of the fourteen doorways of the enormous building, and a constant flow of people moved in and out, talking among themselves or pausing to listen to the various musicians playing throughout the area.