Teigue blinked solemnly. “Oh, that isn’t necessary; I decided it for myself. My brothers will be warriors, Sabia wants to have babies, and Emer wants to enter a convent so I thought I’d choose something of my very own. Maybe I’ll be Pope.”
He turned from them and sauntered back to oversee his young charges as Brian and Marcan exchanged amused glances. “He certainly is your son,” Marcan said. “No limit to his ambitions!”
Brian narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”
“Merely that I hate to see you encouraging such boundless ambition in your children. Your Murrough, for example, is already consumed with his desire to be bigger and better than you in everything. I understand he is making quite a name for himself among the ladies, and there is a certain faction among the young warriors that believes we would have more profitable warfare if his policies were adopted. His desire to best you is making his soul more bloodthirsty than yours, Brian, and it is a danger to him in the eyes of God. And perhaps may come to be a danger to you personally—have you thought of that?
“It would be better for us all if you would devote yourself to storing treasures in heaven instead of on earth; remember the example of our dear brother Mahon.”
A tiny spasm crossed Brian’s face, but he recovered quickly. “I share my treasures with the Church, and you don’t seem to object to that,” he observed dryly. “You never seem to criticize my ambition as long as its benefits are directed toward the ecclesiastical community.”
With a patient glance heavenward, Marcan laid a gentle hand on his brother’s arm. “I just fear you will overreach yourself, Brian, and lose all that you have gained. You cannot deny that your motives have not always been the purest.”
“You mean you only approve as long as I fight for the glory of God, but when I act out of revenge or to enrich the province it is an example of my sinful ambition?”
“All this fighting—is it really necessary, Brian? Surely you realize you’re only encouraging retaliation; outsiders will come into Munster and destroy all that you have built. The churches and monasteries will be looted again.”
Brian paused before answering. Marcan sat looking at him with that innocent round face and those guileless eyes, and it was hard to accuse him of selfishness. Could one be selfish on God’s behalf? “I’m always mindful of my responsibilities to protect the Church, Marcan. You remember that it was at my instigation years ago that the illuminated gospels and other church treasures and manuscripts were spirited out of Ireland before the Northmen could seize them and destroy the last remnants of our heritage. When our land is truly safe I will bring them back again, paying the expense myself.
“But I must balance all the consideration of both Church and state, brother, and that is not as one-sided a matter as you see it. You only fear for the Church—I must fear for the lives of my people as well as their souls, and to protect them I have to have a strong sword arm and a willingness to avenge wrongs done to them.”
“And what about the wrongs you do to them, Brian? What about all those noble hostages you have taken in war and held against their will? If you had Christ’s compassion you would free them …”
“And their kinsmen would fall on me with swords and axes,” Brian finished for him, “and steal our cattle and probably rob those churches of yours as well. The hostages don’t suffer—I am famous for my hospitality to them. And I have found it to be a sensible custom. As long as I hold hostages of good conduct, my physical control of their persons insures that their tribes will not act against me and my people. The concept did not originate with me, Marcan; it is an old tradition and a good one.”
“Why can’t you just be satisfied with what you have already achieved, dear brother, and live here in peace without further efforts to enlarge your power?” Marcan asked. “You would be happier, you know. And you might live longer.”
Brian’s thin smile was sarcastic. “Why don’t you just say what you think, outright, instead of talking all around the issue? You’re afraid I mean to take the offensive in other parts of Ireland, aren’t you? And you’re not afraid I will jeopardize my immortal soul by doing that; you’re only afraid I will somehow lose. I can’t be manipulated like Mahon, and so you see very little good in me, do you, brother?
“Why is it a man cannot be appreciated by his own family? I simply don’t understand that! All I’ve done has benefited you and the rest of Munster. Our tribe now owns all the land from the Shannon to the Slieve Aughty mountains, and there are gold chalices on your altars and new cells for your monks.
“Yet you come to me in fear and trembling to beg me to put an end to my ambition and not endanger all that by losing it in warfare. And worse than that, perhaps—like a sly weasel, you sneak in a threat that my own son might harm me as a result of his ambition!
“Do you think I’m a total fool, Marcan? Don’t you think I’m aware of the whispering in corners? There are others who think like Murrough, all right; I feel their little daggers aimed at me from time to time. Any man who walks in power also walks with the expectation of a knife in his back. I live with that. You cannot imagine what it’s like to live with that. It’s just one of the many, many details I have to deal with and handle.”
“You could avoid such anxieties and not run the risk of losing …”
Brian cut him off angrily. “Do you think I will allow myself to lose, Marcan?”
Marcan rose and gathered his dignity around him like a new bratt. “You misunderstand me as usual, king of Munster,” he said haughtily.
“And you misunderstand me, bishop,” Brian replied, not taking the easy advantage of standing to tower over Marcan. “You just do God’s work your way, and I will serve Him in mine.”
Outraged, Marcan exclaimed, “That fleet of warships you are building on the Shannon—do you call that God’s work?”
“If it is against His will,” Brian answered, “He knows how to stop me.”
The Council of Twelve was convened to hear the annual report of the brehons on the state of children in fosterage throughout the kingdom. It would be a lengthy meeting, as the records were read of each family’s fulfillment of their obligations as to clothing and education, and the elaborate bookkeeping involved was spread out on the council table for examination.
The king’s council only concerned itself with the arrangements made within noble families of the highest rank, but nevertheless the procedure could take all day. On this day, however, the king had another matter he wished to discuss, and he hurried them through the business and sent the lawyers on their way with his thanks.
The new subject was the ultimate and continuing problem of the Northmen. Beside their rankling presence, even the dynastic feuding of the Irish was secondary in importance to Brian. He was aware of the foreigners always, a brooding menace at the edges of his land.
“In general, Munster now accepts our rule, and the province is thriving,” he stated to his council. “But our prosperity is always conditional while the Northmen have the ability to threaten us.
“I will speak to you of history, so that you will understand my position in its greater context. I feel that the time has come for us to dominate Leinster …”
There was a smothered gasp in the room.
“ … and I trust you will agree with my reasoning when I have explained it to you. I have an excellent historian at my elbow—Carroll, here—to correct me if I make any errors, for though we are all educated men his knowledge is more thorough than any of ours.
“As you may recall, great Caesar’s sandals never stuck in Irish mud. His conquest stopped with the Saxon lands, and Ireland’s ancient culture was preserved here undisturbed. The new learning from the east was grafted onto it as the silver arm was grafted onto Nuada the Perfect in the legends. When the barbarians overran Rome centuries ago, the important knowledge of the civilized world was already safely in Ireland, transported westward with Christianity ahead of the vandal hordes. In our monasteries the world’s wisdom lay store
d, protected, waiting to shed its light on a new and better age.
“But this beautiful, unfortunate land dreams under one long curse, and the name of that curse is Invasion. It is the central fact of Erin’s history. One after another the rapacious invaders have come, since long before Christ, fleeing the cold, or barren land, or repression by tyrants; descending on these shores to feast on the riches of this island until they have stripped it almost bare. Already the mighty forests are greatly diminished, the gold is gone from the streams, and the variety of game animals is much reduced.
“This plundering of Ireland must stop. We must be left to ourselves, free of the tyranny of the foreigners. Now it is the Northmen who rape and pillage; for two centuries they have destroyed what they could not understand and taken the best we could produce to sell to other lands and fatten their own coffers. They have muddied Ireland with their ignorance and their barbarity, and much of the glory that was ours is destroyed forever.
“What this long and tragic tale of conflict has done to the natures of the people is the saddest part of the story. The noble class is one seething mass of contention, family against family, and the under classes pay the price, for it is their effort that supports the warfare and their children who cry, fatherless, in their beds. The incessant need to fight for our lives, generation after generation, has turned us into a people whose society is devoted to fighting. All that is naturally aggressive in our natures has been honed fine.
“To keep our defensive skills sharp we savage one another as a cat attacks its own tail to stay in practice for the rat. It has become so much a part of us that we cannot set it aside, this eagerness to do battle. We cannot set it aside until there have been generations of true peace in Ireland, and men no longer need to patrol the coasts, carrying spears and watching the horizon. Only after such a time can we learn to practice the arts of peace among ourselves.
“Understand this at the outset: I do not want to kill Irishmen. But to drive the foreigners from our land we must first control the land; all of it. The Northmen sit in strength in Dublin and in Waterford, and between them and us lies the kingdom of Leinster. Leinster, who fears and tolerates the invader. And marries its women to him willingly.
“It must no longer be Munster and Leinster, but one land, southern Ireland, one nut too hard for the Northmen to crack. We will turn them into slaves or drive them into the sea, it matters not which, but we will have Ireland for ourselves alone!”
The heat was flowing from him and it spread outward to the elders of the council in waves, warming, scorching, striking sparks. Carroll felt the hairs on his arms rise as Brian’s cry was taken up in the echoing hall.
“Ourselves alone!”
PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Fiona saw a band of nobles riding to Kincora along the ramut and she hurried after them, hoping to glimpse Brian with them, if not in his splendid feathered chariot then on one of the lean quick horses he preferred for battle. But the group was led by Leti, with not one but two spear carriers trotting beside his horse, and it included a number of princes and warriors whose faces she did not recognize.
Beyond the ridge where Brian had built his stronghold, the hills folded back upon themselves in layers of green and gold. Summer was over; the campaign just getting under way would be the last major one before cold weather. Fiona felt the growing drowsiness of the world around her, the laying aside of climb and grow, the incurling and settling down of a land preparing for rest.
She stood, hidden from the road by a massive elm tree, and as she watched she laid her palm against its trunk. Beneath her hand she felt the life flowing downward, out of the leaves and branches, into the welcoming earth.
“Sleep well, friend,” she bade the tree gently, her hand caressing it once more before she turned to go. Then she heard the distant creak of the heavy gates being pushed open and she paused to look back, unaware that a stray sunbeam had sifted through the leaves to pin her in a shaft of light.
Padraic had no gift for riding horses. He had come to it too late, his joints and tendons were already firmly set in the mold of the pedestrian. He and horses regarded one another with mutual misgivings.
But as a highly ranked representative of the king of Munster, he must be appropriately mounted when undertaking an errand for his lord, and so on this morning he had selected a gentle-seeming horse from the stable and set out with a brave face and a nervous belly.
He saluted the incoming Leti and tried to look nonchalant as the mare pranced beneath him. The breath of autumn air excited the horse, who had grown bored dozing in the stable pen, and as the gates closed behind her she tossed her head violently, snatching at the bit. Padraic gritted his teeth and jerked her to a standstill, anxious to establish some degree of authority over the beast before entrusting his life to her on the road. When she seemed quiet, he breathed a sigh of relief and glanced around … and saw the woman in the distance, haloed in gold beneath the elm tree.
Startled, he turned the mare for a better look. He kicked the horse and trotted toward her as Fiona became aware of his interest and turned to run.
She dodged in a zigzag path through the trees, hearing the horse crashing behind her and the desperate profanity of its struggling rider as his face was slashed by branches.
It was hard to keep sight of the fleeing woman, and even harder to stay on the horse in the thick stand of trees, but Padraic was beginning to feel the thrill of a hunter on the heels of a fine stag. Here was a clever quarry, indeed, and a mystery soon to be solved. He grinned in anticipation of telling a fine tale in the hall just as a low branch whipped across his face and nearly knocked him from his horse.
And then, between one breath and the next, the woman was gone. The path lay empty and open before him, a dim road winding through the trees into the gloom of a narrow valley. The mare’s trot slowed to a walk and Padraic pushed forward warily, trying to analyze every pattern of foliage for the discordant shape of a hidden watcher.
It seemed he had ridden for miles. Surely the woman could not have come this far! But by now he was reluctant to turn back, too committed to the quest to admit failure.
A girl appeared beside the path so suddenly that his horse shied. Padraic scrabbled desperately for a handhold of mane, but the landscape spun around him and he hit the earth with a jolting thud. He lay stunned, waiting for the telltale nausea of a broken bone. When it did not materialize, he sat up gingerly.
The girl knelt beside him. “Are you all right?” she asked in a voice like the whisper of dry leaves. He looked at her in wonder, unable to answer.
Her rippling hair was red-gold, a fall of molten copper in the shadowy light. Her features were finely chiseled and strangely familiar. The big brown eyes that regarded him with concern might have come from a doe’s face.
“I said, are you all right?” she repeated, leaning toward him. Seen at close range, she was not a girl but a sweetly matured young woman. There was something about her face that was known to him, already achingly dear. He watched his hand reach to touch the strong curve of her cheekbone.
“I’ve never felt better,” he told her honestly.
“It’s glad I am to hear it,” she replied, lowering her eyelids before the intensity of his gaze. “Rest there a bit, and I’ll catch your horse for you.” She rose and chirruped to the mare, who was grazing beside the path, and the horse came at once, dropping her head to receive the touch of the girl’s hand.
“How did you do that?” Padraic asked in surprise.
“Ach, ‘tis easy to talk to animals. They’re not like …”
“Not like what?”
“Like people.” She looked as shy as a coney, ready to break and run, but there was strength in her face and a hidden merriment that twinkled in the depths of her eyes.
“Don’t you see many people?” he asked her. “A fair lass like yourself, so close to Kincora …”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “I never go there! I rarely come this
far, but I wanted to fetch my mother. She walks in these woods sometimes, and today she went off without her woolens and the weather’s turned raw.”
Padraic stood up and began self-consciously brushing himself off. “Is your mother a small woman, rather dark, with some sort of brown robe?”
“Aye. Have you seen her?”
Padraic hesitated between the truth and a polite fiction. What would Brian do? The king would certainly never come right out and say he had chased this beauty’s mother through the woods like a wild animal! “Ah … I believe I saw her back there a way …” he gestured vaguely toward Kincora, “but she was headed in this direction. No doubt she’s on her way home and you’ll be seeing her very soon.”
The girl smiled gravely and watched as he pulled himself awkwardly onto the horse. “Will I be seeing you again?” she asked shyly.
Padraic, a man long grown and with some experience of the world, felt his ears growing hot and his heart racing. “If I knew where we might meet … ?” he said hopefully.
At Kincora he was the recipient of much teasing. Faithful Padraic, who belonged heart and soul to the king, neglecting his duties to go off in the hills chasing a woods-woman? “Why, man, there are scores of women within the palace walls who’ve made eyes at you, if you’d but notice,” Laoghaire the Black told him.
“Aye,” his brother Red Laoghaire added, “and when they faded away for lack of you I’ve been here to console them!”
“The king and I have no time for women,” Padraic said loftily.
“Oh, well, the king … that’s one thing. I think we all agree he will not soon commit his heart again; that is a wound scarred over but not healed. An occasional lady to warm his bed, perhaps—but you, Padraic? You have not even taken your share of bedwarmers. Until now!” They laughed and winked at one another.
“This is different.” Padraic drew himself to his full height and glared at them.
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