He looked at it in the rosy dawnlight. His mouth was suddenly dry; the gooseflesh rose on his back and shoulders. He spun around and stared in wonder at the empty beach and the empty, empty sea.
“My lord? My lord of Munster?” The voice came to him from a far distance. He heard it and tried to close it out, but it dug at him persistently, forcing its way through the spell that gripped him.
“My lord, please!” It was a plaintive wail forced in desperation from Padraic’s panting lungs. Brian looked up and saw his friend above him on the cliff, peering down, with Conaing beside him.
Yesterday, the steep climb would have winded him. On this radiant morning he made it easily, reaching the top in a final bound to find Padraic and the Dalcassian chieftain staring at him in astonishment. “My lord, how did you get down there? And what …” Conaing began.
“Oh, my lord, I thought we’d never find you!” Padraic interrupted him, almost sobbing with relief. “I … I’m afraid I disobeyed your orders last night; I followed you at a distance—a great distance, to be sure!—because a king could not be allowed to go unescorted, even in this deserted place. It would have been a disgrace to us all, my lord!”
“And then when the messengers came from Kincora, looking for you, I set out after Padraic,” Conaing picked up the thread of the tale, “and together we’ve been searching for you ever since.”
The words got through to him then. “Messengers from Kincora? What’s happened?”
Padraic’s face was all smiles. “Word came from the south, from Prince Murrough, that his wife was safely delivered of a healthy female infant, my lord! Your first grandchild!”
Brian looked at them in disbelief. A grandchild? How could that be? His body felt young and hard, the flesh tight on the bones, the muscles rippling. Vitality coursed through him; he had enough energy for ten men. How could he be a grandfather?
“And one thing more, my lord,” Conaing added, his eyes bright. “The Ard Ri has sent ambassadors from Tara; he wants you to meet with him as soon as possible at a place of your own choosing, to settle your differences and plan a joint resistance against the Northmen. Malachi Mor, my lord!”
Beyond Brian the brightening waters of the sea caught and held the morning light. The sharp whistle of a curlew sounded, flying somewhere out over the incoming tide, and in the distance was the purring noise made by the petrels as they arranged their feathers and prepared for the day’s hunting.
“You say the Ard Ri wants this meeting immediately?” Brian asked. There was a high color in his cheeks and his voice sounded … different.
“Yes, my lord; we thought sure you’d want to ride at once for Kincora to make plans.”
Brian stood still, looking through them. “Very well,” he said at last, with some great reluctance they could not understand. “I suppose there is always a tribute that must be paid, for everything.”
Padraic and Conaing exchanged mystified glances.
It was only as Brian was mounting his horse that he let himself look out toward the sea once more, and then he rode slowly to the very edge of the cliff and looked down for a long time before he turned his horse and set his face to the rising sun.
The horse bolted forward at the unexpected ferocity of his clamping legs.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Brian sent word that he would meet with Malachi at a place between Lough Derg and Lough Ree, in the valley of the Shannon. Malachi was in a frenzy of preparation. “I will not appear before the king of Munster like an old woman holding out an empty apron,” he emphasized. “We will be in his territory and asking his cooperation; it is imperative that we appear as strong as possible. The supremacy of the Ard Ri must be made obvious.”
“How do you propose to win his alliance, my lord?” his nobles asked.
“I will appeal to his humanity. Brian Boru has built himself a reputation for his love of Ireland; in the name of fellowship and our mutual birthland I will meet him beneath Christ’s Cross and we will put our feuding behind us. Once we are face to face all our difficulties can be resolved.”
In the privacy of his chamber, alone with his bodyservants and cupbearer, Malachi let the confidence slip from his face. The ready smile remained, but his eyes were shadowed. He summoned his confessor and spent long hours in prayer.
“Am I doing the right thing, Father?” he asked the priest again and again, “or am I delivering Ireland to a wolf?”
“God has guided you in this decision,” the priest assured. “It is only right that two powerful Christian warriors should join forces to protect our land from the pagans.”
Malachi bowed over his prayer-clasped hands. “Many of the Northmen are now professed Christians, Father.”
“You doubt your right to rule?”
Malachi’s narrow shoulders slumped a little. “To be a king is to be plagued with doubts,” he confessed in a whisper. “I never seem to know if I have made the right decisions, and by the time I find out it’s too late. The Northmen want to control Ireland and so, I know, does Brian of Munster. But I am the Ard Ri! The ultimate authority over this island was given to me at Tara, although the Stone of Fal did not cry out when I was given the High King’s wand …”
“Heathen superstition!” the priest growled. “You are High King; no man can take that from you while you live. You’re not afraid the Dalcassian would actually try to kill you, are you?”
Malachi searched his memory for all he knew of Brian. “No, I don’t think so. He has been compassionate with his defeated enemies, except in a few understandable instances. But I don’t want to be his enemy any longer, it stains my own soul. I need him for my friend, my brother. A man has a bare back who has no brother.”
“If it is God’s will that Brian Boru support you, he will,” the priest told him.
Malachi stared at his hands. “And what if it is not God’s will, Father? What do I do then?”
“Pray,” the priest intoned.
The army that marched into Munster was the strongest Malachi could collect. The kings of the tuaths of Meath rode with him, and many of the Hy Neill princes of Ulster, wrapped in furs and carrying cudgels in addition to their swords. Every horse or pony that could be pressed into service was appropriated, and the ladies had sewn bales of fabric into bright new banners that fluttered bravely at the head of the irregularly formed columns. There were few men trained or skilled in the use of the battle ax; the Ard Ri’s warriors were more familiar with the throwing ax or the hammer, and there was no such cavalry as Brian had created for Munster, but Malachi looked at the forest of spears and the row upon row of swordsmen and slingers, and assured himself Boru would be impressed.
They pitched their final camp west of the Tullamore crossroads before making the morning march to the Shannon, and Malachi got very drunk on Danish beer.
They forded the river the next day and took their positions at the assigned meeting place, but there were no Munstermen waiting for them. Suspicious, mindful of the incident at Lough Ennell, Malachi paced back and forth in front of his tent, knotting his fists and whistling under his breath. “We will wait a day and a night and no more!” he assured his officers. “I will not let Brian Boru play me for a fool!”
The day dragged by, impossibly long. The soldiers fretted and cursed, ate, quarreled, drank, and began to talk of going to look for women. Malachi went into his tent two dozen times and came quickly out again to stare down the road.
As the sky began to redden with the blood of the dying day, a single herald came across the valley toward them, riding out of the sunset on a horse with a gilded bridle and golden balls ties to its mane. He came up the road from a distant fringe of trees and went directly to the bannered tent of the Ard Ri, where he dismounted and made an elegant formal obeisance.
“I bring word from my lord, king of Munster,” he said to Malachi in a clear tenor voice.
Malachi’s own voice rasped with impatience. “Yes, yes, what is it?”
The herald rose from his kneeling position befo
re the tent and turned westward, extending his arm to the blazing glory of the sky.
“He comes,” the young man said simply.
The man came walking toward them across the grassy lowland. First he was a dark form in the distance, appearing indistinct against the trees; then he was a recognizable figure, marching with long legs that scissored vast strides, arms swinging, head high.
He came all alone. No standard bearer, no spear carrier or guard of protocol. No horse. No army to protect him. Brian Boru advanced upon them like a lord of the universe, his own strength totally sufficient. The waiting armies of the Ard Ri stared as at an apparition—a devil or an archangel.
A slender gold circlet bound his hair, but he needed no crown to identify him. A magnificent cloak of bearskin, pure white and worth a king’s ransom, was flung back from his shoulders and fastened across his chest with a jeweled chain. A gold tore heavier than the collar of Tomar lay beneath his precisely combed beard. The tunic he wore was crimson silk, fringed and embroidered at its hem with an entwined Celtic design in purple and gold threads.
The king of Munster had brawny arms and the legs of a young man, bare and cleanly muscular, fitted with fine red sandals crossbound over his calves with gilded leather. His wide belt was set with precious stones, and it held the scabbard of a sword longer than any normal man could wield.
Malachi watched his advance with undisguised awe. The Dalcassian was a giant, taller than the Ard Ri by the length of a man’s forearm. To see him was to understand the meaning of the word—king.
As Brian, unchallenged by any member of Malachi’s army, reached the slight rise where the Ard Ri’s tent stood, the Munster herald said only one word to announce him.
“Boru.”
Malachi recognized the audacity of Brian’s plan, understood fully the contrived effect which had been skillfully produced, and was powerless to throw off the spell of it. Sweet Jesus, he thought, the man has a splendor about him!
Brian came to a halt directly in front of him. At the last moment the Ard Ri’s bodyguard collected himself with a start and flung out a spear diagonally across his lord’s body, but Brian caught it with one huge hand and twitched it aside like a green twig, never taking his eyes from those of Malachi.
“There is no need for weapons between us,” he said. His voice was very deep.
Under the avid stares of the throng of nobles and warriors crowding around them, Malachi stepped forward to embrace Brian and give him the kiss of greeting. The difference in their heights made it awkward, and Malachi felt ridiculous, rising on tiptoe and straining upward to touch his lips to the bearded cheek. Brian accepted the caress impassively, then bent forward and returned it with grace.
Out of the corner of his eye, Malachi observed his princes jostling one another to get a good look at the king of Munster.
“Come,” he said crisply to Brian, “let us go into my tent where we can talk privately. I will order mead for us, and a hearty dinner.”
The lamps within cast blurry shadows on the walls of the royal tent. The guards stationed in a circle around it could see the distorted outlines of the Ard Ri and his guest, but were not close enough to understand their voices.
“I’d trade one ear, afterward, if I could stand next to that wall and listen,” muttered Nathi the Fancy.
“That’s about what it would cost you, and then you wouldn’t be so pretty anymore,” replied the next guard in the circle, Ferdomnach the Ulidian.
“Go along with you! The Ard Ri has never yet punished a man in his service, he’s that good-hearted for all he’s a king.”
“I wasn’t thinking of our lord Malachi,” Ferdomnach said, “but of the king of Munster. It fair turned my bowels to soup when he came walking out of the sun like that.”
“Ach, he’s just one man.”
“One man who has killed a hundred in one day in personal combat, let me remind you. My sword arm aches just thinking about it.”
Nathi scratched his head and glanced at the tent. “Do you believe that—him killing a hundred in a day, I mean?”
Ferdomnach answered, “You saw him yourself. He came here without even bothering to bring a guard; what do you think?”
Nathi squinted speculatively at the shifting designs of the lamp flames on the walls of the tent. “I think we should pray things go well in there,” he said thoughtfully. “Not that I, personally, fear the man, you understand, but I would rather follow Boru than face him.”
At a distance from the Ard Ri’s tent, the officer in charge of the first unit of Meath swordsmen stood leaning on the hilt of his unsheathed blade, peering into the quiet night that had fallen gently over the land. It was overcast, devoid of stars—or of the orange glow of distant campfires.
“I know Boru has men out there somewhere,” he said to his second in command. “I know it. But where?”
Beyond the outermost sentry position of Malachi’s camp the land dipped into a silted streambed fringed with willows. There another army waited, invisible in the starless night. The Munstermen were clad in jackets and trews of black wool, their faces and beards coated with powdered charcoal. They had moved forward with a disciplined silence as the daylight retreated, and now they were close enough to the Ard Ri’s encampment to go to Brian’s rescue, if he summoned them by a prearranged whistle. As men do who have nothing to fear they stood at ease, calmly alert, looking through the trees at Malachi’s watchfires.
The clouds sank and squatted upon the earth, wetting the air. Day did not break; black merely faded to gray. The princes and under-kings were summoned to the Ard Ri’s tent as the field soldiers awoke from sleeping in their ranks on the damp ground. There was much hawking and spitting, a little shoving and a lot of profanity among them, and then an exclamation of surprise that rippled across the entire encampment.
The morning mist lifted slightly like a necromancer’s trick, to reveal the dark mantle of Brian Boru’s army spread across the land, row after row, awake, on their feet, in cleanly structured battle formation as if they had stood without moving throughout the night.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Nathi the Fancy cried, crossing himself fervently.
Shortly after the hour of Prime, Brian and Malachi emerged from the tent together. Brian’s face was serene, with no sag of flesh or redness of eye, but Malachi looked gray and exhausted. However, the broad smile that split his beard was as ebullient as ever. He stretched his arms wide and tried to shout something to the crowd that immediately gathered, but his dry throat failed him. He turned to his herald and gave instructions.
The herald’s trained voice carried easily across the green land, even to the foremost ranks of the silent Munstermen, who had lifted their right arms in salute as Brian emerged from the tent but were otherwise stationary.
“My lords!” the herald cried. “By mutual agreement between Malachi Mor, Ard Ri of all Ireland and king of the province of Meath, and Brian mac Cennedi, king of Munster, from this day forward the responsibility for protecting the land will be divided as follows: to Malachi Mor, all that territory from the kingdom of Meath northward; to Brian Boru, the kingdoms of Munster, Leinster and Connacht. The territories shall be known as Leth Conn, the North, and Leth Mogh, the South, and their rulers shall have the power of tribute and of raising armies from all the kingdoms within their authority.”
The Munstermen sent up a cheer that shivered the leaves of the willows. Padraic laughed and cried and Conaing had to take him behind the lines and throw cold water on his head until he subsided into happy hiccupping.
Carroll also was behind the lines, sitting on a fallen tree with a parchment spread on his little folding desk. The hand with which he wrote shook a little as he carefully inked the words: “In the Year of Our Lord 997, Malachi Mor did willingly relinquish half of the territory of Ireland to Brian Boru, in exchange for military support. No Christian blood was spilled. Praise be to God.”
As the news was spread throughout Ireland, from army to camp to tuath, from
fort to fishing village, people danced and wept with joy on the roadways. “How uncommon a thing it is,” a poet sang in Oriel, “to see union among the lords of the land!”
Malachi, who had expected to have to defend his position, found himself receiving congratulations from all sides.
“It was an act of great statesmanship, my lord,” Dúnlang assured him on behalf of the council of state. “And your unselfishness does you credit. To be willing to halve your authority in order to gain such a formidable military ally …”
“I did not give Boru anything he didn’t already have, to be realistic about it,” Malachi interrupted ruefully. “He controls the entire south anyway; I only gave him sovereignty in name as well as fact.”
“My lord, you belittle your achievement! It must have taken great persuasion for you to convince the king of Munster to use his armies in defense of the kingdoms of the north if need be.”
“I don’t remember being very persuasive; it was more the other way around. Brian Boru has the tongue of a poet and he knows how to make words say anything he likes. When he speaks, he does so in such a way that you find yourself agreeing with everything he says. I’m afraid there was a moment there when I was listening to him and nodding like a child with a teacher—I’m just grateful that he demanded no more that he did. My only hope is that we never rue the day we gave Boru and his armies willing access to the northern lands.”
“You don’t trust him, my lord?”
“Yes,” Malachi said slowly. “We exchanged the hostages in our keeping as a guarantee of the agreement; I gave him those I was holding from Dublin and from Leinster, and he is sending his from Connacht. It is a good surety. Yes, I trust him.” He closed his eyes and leaned back on his High Seat, seeing again the beautiful, closed face of the king of Munster. “No, I don’t,” he said, opening his eyes. “I mean, I can’t be certain. How I wish I knew if I have done the right thing!”
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