Guffaws. “Oh, yes, they’re all different! This one is short and that one is tall and the other yells in bed and squirms like a …”
Padraic’s face was crimson around its freckles. “I won’t have you talking about Niamh that way!” he cried, knotting his fists.
Brendan grinned at him. “So it’s Niamh, is it? And who is this Niamh who has bewitched you away from us and is so different from other women? Why don’t you bring her to Kincora and let us have a look at this treasure?”
Padraic rounded on him. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, you’ll all have a long wait; I have to have some private life, you know!” He stalked away from them, fists still clenched, shoulders rigid.
“Whew!” breathed Carroll, who had entered the hall in time to hear the end of the conversation. “What was that all about?”
“Padraic has a woman hidden away somewhere, bit of a mystery, and he’s taking it all very seriously. But he hasn’t brought her to Kincora for the king’s approval, for some reason. There was a time when Padraic wouldn’t squat over a pot without Brian’s nod.”
“Padraic takes everything seriously,” Carroll commented, “himself foremost. But if he wants to have a private lass, that’s his business and we should let him be.”
Brendan, whose high voice was always so unexpected issuing from his bull neck and massive chest, said, “You’re more generous to Padraic then he would be to you, Carroll.”
“What does that mean?”
“The man’s so jealous of you and your closeness to the king that it put him off his feed, even before he took up with this woman of his.”
“Padraic and I are friends!”
“That may be, but if the king snapped his fingers for Padraic just as you stepped between them, Padraic would leave you lying on the ground with his footprints on your face. He has sat at Brian’s feet and all but worshiped him since he first joined us. Now you spend so much time with the king he fears you’re trying to supplant him.”
Carroll was taken aback. “I mean to do no such thing! I am merely filling the position assigned me. Why, I don’t even call the king ‘Brian’ the way the rest of you do; he’s never encouraged me to be so familiar.” He thought for a moment, then a slow smile spread across his face. “Now that I think of it, it was Padraic himself who told me the king was only called Brian by his very closest friends.”
“He has a lot of close friends, then!” Laoghaire the Black said with a snort. “Padraic was trying to keep some distance between the two of you. He’s gotten cunning as a fox over the years.”
“He learned it at Brian’s knee,” Brendan said, and they all laughed.
Padraic and Niamh met throughout the winter, whenever he could find time away from Kincora. It gnawed at him, leaving Carroll to hear Brian’s inner thoughts, but Carroll found ways to set him at peace by mentioning, casually, what a private man the king was and how much he kept to himself.
It is all right, then, Padraic thought. He makes speeches for the historian, but he does not really share himself. Only I am his true friend.
He boasted of it to Niamh. Fiona was never there when he met the young woman, although cold weather forced them to stay in the warmth of the little cottage Niamh shared with her mother in the lee of a hill. “Mother goes out in all weathers,” Niamh explained. “She hates being under a roof.”
When he had gone back to Kincora Fiona would appear, red-cheeked and icy of hand, anxious to sit by the fire and hear Niamh repeat Padraic’s tales of the king. She devoured every word, greedy for the smallest detail of Brian’s life. “Are you certain of this?” she would ask. “Is it really so? What did he do then?”
“Padraic assures me it is true, and he is the king’s only confidant. He says he knows everything about him.”
“Everyone must tell his secrets to someone, girl.”
“Not you, Mother. You keep all yours to yourself.”
“I tell them to the trees,” Fiona said.
“You are one of the trees, Mother,” Niamh said laughing. “But seriously, you are still a healthy woman; you could find a man like my Padraic and be happy.”
“He isn’t your Padraic,” Fiona reminded her. “People do not belong to other people, only to themselves and the gods. The time for me to have a man has come and gone; it would not be appropriate for me now. I have other, more important, things to think about.”
When Fiona spoke in that faraway voice, her “vision” voice, Niamh felt the presence of ancient magic. “You mean the guardianship, Mother?”
Fiona nodded. A fat tabby cat came and rubbed against her thin ankles; the evening meal bubbled in its cauldron, sending up a rich aroma of winter meat and herbs. She sat quietly for a time, gazing into the fire, and then she spoke again.
“The old ways are gone and all but forgotten, Niamh. Most of our race is dead now. But the gods are not dead. This is their land and they are part of it, part of every tree and bird and flower; and we must protect it for them as best we can. We are sworn to their service; I, by my grandfather, and you, by me.”
“But there are so few of us left, Mother—you said that yourself. What can we do when we have so little strength?”
“We keep our race and our obligation alive as best we can, my child. Long ago, my grandsire Camin foresaw the future and the power that would come to Brian of Boruma. It was his wish that Brian’s blood be added to our race, to give us a link with all the tomorrows.”
Niamh sat very still, staring at her mother. “Padraic says Boru is the greatest man in Ireland,” she whispered proudly.
“Aye. He is the hope for the future, and it is the will of the gods that we guard and watch over him. I am not as strong as I used to be, Daughter; perhaps the time has come to summon the remnant of our people and charge them to share in our task. If we must vanish, yet we can continue to live in Boru’s children, so long as there is some thread carrying forward into the future until we are reunited in other worlds, in other lifetimes.
“Remember the old ways, Niamh; remember everything that I have taught you. If the time comes when Brian needs a gift that only the gods can provide, and I am … not here, I will charge you and the others to see to it.” Fiona sat with closed eyes. The smoke from the fire drifted around her, swirling, spiraling.
When Niamh’s belly began to swell, Fiona took her away.
Padraic was distraught. “I should have married her!” he moaned to his priest. “I begged her to, but she didn’t believe in the Christian marriage and I could not give myself to pagan ritual.”
“You did the right thing, my son.”
“I don’t think so!” Padraic cried.
Now the king and I have something in common, he told himself in the dark watches of the night. We have both lost our women.
Brian’s mind was not on women, but on the campaign to dominate Leinster, the skirmishes with Meath, the delicate shiftings in the balance of power between Munster and Connacht. The kings of both north and south Connacht had taken fright at the growing strength of their neighbor and were torn between war and negotiation. Brian woke each morning with an aching head full of diplomatic ploys and military stratagems, and when he went to bed at night his brain did not rest but churned on, invading his sleep until it was no different from wakefulness.
Even so preoccupied, he could not help noticing the change in Padraic. The whimsical quality was gone from his aide’s face, leaving it gaunt, with long vertical lines that ran from below his cheekbones to the edge of his jaw, showing through his slight beard. He no longer followed like a shadow at Brian’s heels, nor tried to place himself between the king and Carroll in the banquet hall.
There was something definitely amiss with Padraic.
Brian summoned him to his chamber, the sacrosanct room that even Padraic rarely entered. “I’m concerned about you,” he began without preamble.
“I’m all right, my lord.”
“You’re all wrong, Padraic, and everyone at Kincora is aware of it. I
f you feel ill, speak to Cairbre the physician or get a tonic; if you have a problem, tell me and I’ll fix it.”
Padraic’s smile was crooked, threatening to slide off one side of his face. “Even you can’t fix this, my lord.”
“Oh. It’s a woman.”
“Yes.”
The two men sat in a companionable silence for a time. Then Brian said, “She won’t have you?”
“She did, but she’s gone. Run away. I’ve searched everywhere for her, even sent agents to try to find her, but she’s vanished from the earth.”
“Did she care for you, this lady of yours?”
“I thought she did. But she was not a lady, my lord; she was a woods-woman, a practitioner of the Old Religion.”
“Is that why you never brought her to court? You should have known better than that.”
“I tried, but she wouldn’t come. Her mother wouldn’t allow it; they were a strange family. I suspect her mother has taken her from me, and I’ll never see her again.” The pain skewered through his voice, twisting it into a shape Brian recognized all too well. He looked in understanding at Padraic, and their eyes met in the gentle brotherhood of vulnerability.
“I’m sorry, Padraic.”
“Thank you.”
Brian poured out two goblets of mead for them from the flagon on his table, and handed the first-poured to Padraic. “Sit here with me a time,” he offered.
They drank in silence. At last Brian said, “I wish I could tell you how to endure loss, my friend, but I have no talent for it either, as you know. The only thing I’m certain of is that no words make it easier. You just live through it, get it behind you, and come out on the other side. If you want her and think you have a chance of making it come right, stay with it until you find her.”
Padraic’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t think I can ever find her, my lord. If she had really wanted to be with me, she wouldn’t have let her mother take her away.”
There was something Brian could give him, although the words were hard to say. He spoke carefully, searching among his store of phrases for those that would mean the most to Padraic. But it was strangely embarrassing. A small betrayal of Murrough, who would not care if he knew.
And the knowledge that Murrough would not care was painful.
“You know, Padraic,” he said aloud, “my oldest son and I are not … as close as I might wish. Have not been since I punished him for killing the prince of Desmond.”
“I know, my lord. He never understood that, I think.”
Brian gave a hollow laugh. “As well for me that he did not! But it’s become a wedge between us, and every year we grow farther apart. Now we are almost strangers to one another.” He lifted his chin, making the movement deliberately to catch Padraic’s eye, and then he held the gaze. “You are more a son to me than Murrough, Padraic,” he said, wondering how much he really meant it. But the light it kindled in the other man’s eyes was unmistakable. “I would not want you hurt if it were in my power to help you,” Brian went on, “and if there is anything at all I can do for you in this matter, you have only to ask.”
In the silence that hung between them Padraic recognized the size of Brian’s gift and tried valiantly to find a way to match it. “Prince Murrough loves you, my lord!” he offered. “Fathers and sons grow apart, but they come together again in time; it always happens!”
“Some things are not meant to be, Padraic. It is easier to accept it than to torture yourself with regrets. That is good advice for both of us, my friend, and if we get busy perhaps we will not be haunted by too many ghosts. Come around here and help me unroll this map, I want to select a site for a new garrison on the Blackwater …”
Grateful and flattered, Padraic moved around the table to stand beside his king. When he looked down at the seated Brian’s coppery hair, he was surprised to find that something about it brought a painful lump to his throat.
The next day, after surprising Murrough at the center of a knot of low-voiced men who stopped speaking entirely as he approached, Brian called Carroll to his chamber for a private meeting.
“Carroll,” he began bluntly, “is there anything to this problem with Murrough? He doesn’t seem to be accepting my authority any more than he ever has, and I feel there are other factions that might be encouraging a full-scale break between us.”
Carroll narrowed his eyes and considered. “Your son loves you, my lord,” he said carefully.
“I loved my brother. More than anything on earth,” Brian replied cryptically.
Leinster seemed to have capitulated to the superior force of Brian Boru. Maelmordha and the other princes sulked in their strongholds or contended among themselves for the vacant kingship of the province, but sent no further raiding parties into Munster.
Malachi Mor was also feeling the weight of Brian’s hand. Satisfied as to his control of the land below the Shannon, the king of Munster was turning his full attention to Connacht. Council was convened at Tara, and the prospect was viewed in a sour light.
Dúnlang the Wise expressed the thought uppermost in the mind of everyone. “If Boru forces Connacht to stand with him, he will control more warriors than the Ard Ri himself.”
“He has made no attempt on Tara,” Malachi pointed out. “We can’t actually accuse him of leading a rebellion against my authority.”
“He attacks Meath!”
Malachi tried hard to be fair. “He had some provocation for that; I let myself be persuaded to act in a way that no prince could have accepted meekly.”
“Even so,” the more violently inclined nobles argued, “the skirmishes along the border have gone far beyond simple acts of retaliation. Munster is all but at war with both Meath and Connacht, and there is only one way to interpret that!”
Malachi moved around to see their point of view, and found that he agreed with it as well. It was part of the problem with being fair; if one was totally objective, there often seemed to be no right or wrong. “Boru is suffering heavy losses in Connacht,” he said. “It certainly does look like an all-out war for control there.”
“Then this would be a good time to attack him and destroy this threat once and for all. Surely even the king of Munster cannot sustain active warfare on two fronts and keep control of his under-kings and the Norsemen as well.”
At last Malachi agreed, feeling a certain sense of relief at being forced to act. “Very well, then. While Boru is terrorizing Connacht, we will march into Munster and put an end to this thing before it goes any further. Give the order to summon the war counselors, and we will choose the most auspicious moment to attack.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Cut and thrust and slash, swing the ax, whip your horse forward, sweat and grunt and dodge, scream till your throat was bloody with the constant repetition of orders unheard above the din of battle. Fergus was slain by a Northman’s ax. March, march, slog through mud and scramble over hills, lose some of your best men in an ambush in an oak forest so dense there seemed no sky above it. Fight to win the people’s loyalty, bury more friends, pray, swear, struggle. Worship at the altar of Discipline and try to grind it into your officers until they could be trusted as you trusted your own hands.
Brian’s sons rode with him, two of them gladly, and the third, wrapped in his own thoughts. Conor and Flann fought well but had no gift for leadership. Murrough, who scorned jewels and comfort and loved the soldier’s life, fought like a demon and was a magnet for the loyalty of men, but he constantly criticized his father’s command decisions. When Liam mac Aengus fell in battle Murrough asked for his warriors, but Brian reluctantly gave them instead to Donogh mac Connlaoch. Donogh did not risk men’s lives unnecessarily in the name of valor.
The tension between Murrough and his father was as sharp as a dagger’s edge.
Donogh’s obedience and his love of the land were total, and sometimes Brian found himself watching the silver-haired young man with speculative eyes. Donogh had much to give Ireland.
Brian or
dered still more boats added to his fleet, which was proving a successful deterrent to Norse aggression on Ireland’s inland waterways. The new ships were built of wood in the style of the Norse dragonships, shallow drafted for rivers and coastal waters. They enlarged his assortment of common log canoes and the ubiquitous curraghs, which were built on a framework of ash lashed together by alum-soaked leather thongs and covered with oxhide. Brian suggested discarding the leather sails, sodden and heavy in wet weather, and replacing them with lightweight ones of woven flax.
The fleet sailed northward from Killaloe, through the dark waters where the mountains came almost to the river’s edge, and then moved out onto the broad blue breast of Lough Derg itself.
The countryfolk came out to see them glide by—Irish ships, not viking raiders—and blessed them and thanked God for Brian Boru. It was whispered—a rumor that came from nowhere, with no discernible source, but was somehow heard by everyone—that no matter which direction the king of Munster chose to sail, the wind was always with him. Some said it was witchcraft, and some said it was an act of God.
Brian went south to hold court at Cashel and was appalled at the long lines of people streaming down the road toward the Rock, each with a boon to beg or complaint to air.
The endless struggle against the encroaching grass must be waged along the roads, and men found to do it. The roads had to be kept passable so that carts could go to market and warriors to war. The high court was convened, and valuable hours spent hearing one lawyer debate his interpretation of the Brehon Law against another; books sent for, piled on tables, consulted, judgments made—enemies, too; under-kings placated, fairs and feasts attended, a new Norse outburst put down, troops reviewed, officers trained, ambassadors received, motives analyzed … and still another battle to fight.
The ships and the foot-soldiers returned to Connacht.
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