Cairbre frowned. He put one hand on Brian’s shoulder and motioned him to be silent. “We can talk about that when you’re feeling better, lad. Rest now.”
The king and his physician walked out into the morning. “What is it, Cairbre? What’s wrong that you didn’t want to discuss in front of him?” Brian demanded to know.
Cairbre shook his head. “I’m getting too old to go to battle with you, Boru. And so is Padraic. Time has no power over you, you seem able to go on forever, but the rest of us are wearing out. We must sit in front of the fire and feed on our memories.”
“What are you saying, physician?”
“Padraic will not march again with you, my lord. Didn’t you realize? He is blind.”
Brian’s head rocked backward slightly, as if he himself had taken the blow. “Are you certain?”
“Oh, yes, my lord.”
“Will he be able to see again, in time?”
“In my experience with battle wounds, nothing is absolutely sure, but I’m inclined to doubt it. The damage was done inside and is beyond my skill to repair. His intellect itself seems unimpaired, however.”
Brian gave him a sardonic glance. “Ah, yes. Our God is a literal God. It is well to know that and keep it in the forefront of your mind, physician.”
“I don’t understand what you …”
“No matter. What about Padraic; does he know?”
Cairbre nodded. “As soon as he first woke up. He’s taking it like a brave soldier.”
Brian went back and sat beside his friend’s blanket. Padraic’s eyes were open, and he turned his head as Brian sank cross-legged onto the ground. “My lord?”
“Yes, Padraic.”
“How goes the battle?”
“We won,” Brian told him simply. “And how goes it with you?”
“Oh, I’m well enough, my lord. Just a sore head and a few minor problems.”
Brian swallowed hard. “You’re the best of the best, Padraic,” he said in a husky voice. He reached for his friend’s hand and lifted it to his own face, pressing it against his cheek.
Padraic wrinkled his forehead in the familiar, quizzical way, then moved his hand away and rubbed the wet fingers together. “The gift of tears, my lord?” he asked.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Malachi Mor was in a fever to get to Dublin. Warned by the first straggle of survivors from Glenmama, Sitric and his mother fled the city, leaving it all but defenseless against the onrushing Irish. The conquerors found the gates standing ajar, the streets lined with terrified townspeople who were too poor, or too unimportant, to try to escape.
Brian had insisted that there be no attempt to destroy the population of the city. He and Malachi quarreled about it. “I killed Leinstermen for you at Glenmama,” Malachi reminded him hotly. “These Dubliners are my enemies; they revolt against my authority, and I expect you to live up to our agreement and defend my interests!”
“It could not possibly serve your interests, Malachi, to slaughter helpless women and children,” Brian said firmly, “and that is all that remains in Dublin.”
“I understood you were a great Norse-killer!”
“I have fought the Northmen all my life,” Brian agreed, “but I won’t allow these people to be murdered. Loot the city if you will, take everything of value, bash down the buildings and tear down the walls, but no killing, Malachi, except in self-defense. Soldier against soldier, nothing else.”
“I have equal say with you, Boru!” Malachi cried.
Brian took a step toward him and looked down into his face. The eyes of the king of the south were as gray and cold as the Irish Sea, and there was an absolute authority in his voice that Malachi could envy but not emulate. “The people will not be slaughtered, Meathman,” he repeated. “What kind of High King are you?”
“I am the Ard Ri of Ireland!” Malachi flung at him.
“And I am Brian Boru, and my armies outnumber yours three to one. Finish your business here, take your share of the plunder, and go home, Malachi. I will stay here for as long as it takes to render Dublin harmless.”
When the stacks of weapons and furs and precious metals began to pile high in the viking hall, Malachi swallowed his anger and made plans to return to Meath. Meath was, after all, his principal responsibility. Meath was a small, familiar kingdom, not a whole great sprawling land full of contradictions. Besides, there was something about Brian Boru’s presence that made Malachi uncomfortable. The Dalcassian was a force of nature. There were times when he seemed to radiate an energy like the tension that builds in the air before a lightning storm, and Malachi had never liked storms.
When the army of Leth Conn pulled out, Brian set up his personal headquarters in Sitric’s hall. There had been no word of Sitric Silkbeard or his legendary mother; wherever they had fled, they had not chosen to die with their city.
Brian had his pallet spread in a small chamber built directly behind the hall, though there was no covered passageway between the buildings. He thought for a moment, with nostalgia, of the special niceties he had incorporated into the design of Kincora. But at least this chamber, for all its splintery squalor, was the choice apartment in the Norse fortress.
In Padraic’s absence he invited Donogh there one evening to play chess with him. Donogh, who had grown sensitive to the undercurrents among the command officers, suggested tactfully, “Perhaps you would rather ask Prince Murrough, my lord … ?”
Brian gave him a one-sided smile. “Murrough can’t bear losing to me, and it’s not in my nature to play less than my best. I would rather avoid a fight with my son over a chessboard, when it seems inevitable that we will clash soon again, anyway.”
Understanding, Donogh nodded his silver-blond head.
“It’s too bad Prince Murrough doesn’t have the temperament of his brothers.”
“He has fire and passion, Donogh, and those are valuable qualities. His men love him, and he fights splendidly in any cause he believes to be just. It’s only that I’m his father, and I dreamed of a dynasty whereby he would be heir to my kingship, and I tried to train him for that from childhood. In spite of appearances, he is the one of my sons who is most like me, the one who would love and defend this land as I have done.
“But because it was my idea, and my dream, it was somehow unacceptable to him. I feel sure that all the lessons have not been lost on him; he is intelligent and he could summon them to his use, if he would. But he rejects them because they came from me.”
Donogh sighed. “There was an argument in the hall yestermorn. Your son Conor commented on what a fine thing it was for a man to be known by his father’s name, as MacLiag is, and then Corc brought up your secretary’s use of the name O Carroll, meaning of the line of Carroll, as his esteemed grandsire had been of that name.
“Prince Murrough seemed very annoyed at the conversation and cried right out, ‘I don’t see any justification for such a custom! A man should have his own name and his own reputation, not someone else’s!’ Prince Conor got upset too, then, and told him he would be very proud to have all his children known as O Brian. They almost came to blows over it.”
Brian stared at the chessboard and refrained from commenting. At last he moved a piece and said, “Check and mate.”
Donogh looked down alarmed. “How did that happen?”
Brian smiled. “Easily. I knew where I was going, and you did not.” His voice dropped a little. “It isn’t always that simple, you know. Sometimes you have to change, to rethink a direction you had assumed to be as firm and fixed as the stars.”
“You’re speaking of chess, my lord?”
Brian looked across the board at the tall, solidly built man, with his intelligent, loyal face and his eyes as blue as the cold fjords of Lochlann. Donogh, son of Connlaoch the Weaver. Wholehearted fighter for Ireland.
“No, of the foreigners.” He sounded suddenly harsh, almost angry, and with a firm stroke of his hand he wiped the chessboard free of men and knocked them all to the
floor. “I was going to kill them to the last man, Donogh, did you know that? Slaughter them all, drive them into the sea. But … look around you. At Dublin itself and the countryside beyond; at Waterford and Cork and Wexford and Limerick, and so many places between. There are almost as many Northmen in some areas as Irish, and many of the so-called ‘foreigners’ belong to families that have been here over a hundred years. How could I wipe them all from the face of Ireland?
“Some of them are … good men, Donogh. With much to contribute. I have always wanted Ireland for the Irish, but I’ve come to believe that the only way that can be is to turn the Northmen themselves into Irishmen.”
“Can that be done, my lord?”
“Perhaps, given enough time. They must come to forget that they were ever Northmen and become Irishmen through and through. Let Ireland absorb the foreigners and make them truly part of herself, loving her too much to hurt her. They chose to come here; this is their homeland now, those who have settled here and raised families on Irish soil. So be it. Let them be Irish, and we will teach all the Irish to be one people, unified and strong, no longer attacking one another but working together to make Ireland a land of peace and plenty. It is the only way to give our children a future worth having.”
After Donogh left, Brian waved his body servant aside and bent to pick up the scattered chessmen himself. Carefully he laid them, one by one and side by side, in the velvet-lined cedar box that was their world. King, queen, bishop, soldier, pawn. Black and white. All together.
The empty blue light of February, drained of all warmth, lay over the conquered city. There were still sporadic outbreaks of fighting to the north, and a band of Norse warriors crept into Dublin by night and made a desperate stand at the Thingmote, the sacred assembly place on a fortified hill in the center of the city. Brian reluctantly ordered Murrough and Conor against them, and afterward lit the funeral pyre himself, in the Norse fashion—a huge blaze on top of the hill, its glow carrying far out over the Irish Sea.
When the Irish army departed it left no garrison; there was little worth protecting in the rubble of Dublin.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Sitric returned to the cold ashes of the city. His hall was a pile of charred timbers; his former subjects were sullen strangers who stared at him with the same mistrust that had greeted him wherever he fled in Ireland. The three lions of Brian Boru were painted on the gates of Dublin in defiant crimson, and though no army guarded the town it was his, from the wall to the sea. The people knew that it was Brian’s order that had spared their lives, and that Brian’s army waited in Munster to come back and probably kill them all if there were another uprising. The memory of the towering Irish king was still very fresh, and the power of the viking hall was ash and rubble.
Gormlaith surveyed the ruins without regret. “It was always a wretched place,” she commented. “But you should have stayed, Sitric; you should have been here to meet this Brian Boru face to face.”
“And be shamed before him? Not I, woman! Would you have liked to face Malachi Mor?”
“I would like to see that one dead!” she retorted, “but I am sorry I missed the chance to meet Boru. The warriors say he is a giant; what a man that must be!”
Sitric looked at his mother standing proud and tall, holding the hem of her otter-fur robe out of the sooty debris. She glowed like a jewel in the ruins. “Mother,” he said with admiration, “you are incorrigible!”
She gave him a mischievous smile, curving her lips just enough to reveal the dimples that still lurked in her creamy cheeks. “I hope so!” she answered.
At Kincora, Padraic had been given a new cottage close by the walls, and a skillful body servant to tend his needs. In Brian’s absence there had been considerable activity. New facilities were built for the expected hostages from Leinster, a long row of timber-and-wickerwork houses with tamped clay floors and shuttered windows. As soon as Brian returned, Marcan came hurrying to remonstrate with him for this latest defection from what the bishop perceived to be charitable Christian behavior, and the hostages themselves congratulated one another on being included in the bounty of Kincora.
The sight of all the construction under way had inspired MacLiag to have a new home built for himself at some distance from the palace, tucked into the shoreline of Lough Derg. “The best thinking is always done between the hills and the water,” he explained to Carroll. “Besides, the constant bustle at Kincora is upsetting to a man with a delicate constitution.” Nevertheless, he managed to make an appearance almost every night in the Banquet Hall, drinking the first pouring of wine as was a poet’s right and singing songs of the Dalcassian heroes.
Brian received news of Sitric’s return to Dublin, and shortly thereafter messengers came bearing Sitric’s formal offer of submission to the king of Leth Mogh. Brian announced that he would go personally to Dublin to conclude the peace. Murrough, Conor, and Donogh rode with him, leading companies of swordsmen and javelins, and both Carroll and MacLiag accompanied the party, to record the proceedings in their separate ways.
Padraic stood at the door of his cottage and heard the snorting of horses and the tramp of feet as they departed. He listened with closed eyes to the sounds fading into the distance, then he turned back into his chamber, feeling his way through his permanent night with empty hands.
“I wish he hadn’t gone,” he remarked to his body servant. “The future looks so dark, and I won’t be there to protect his back.”
Usually Padraic moved cheerfully through his diminished world, accepting his loss as an old campaigner accepts any battle wound. If there were days of bitterness he kept them to himself. But on the day Brian left for Dublin he spent hours alone, wrapped in a gloomy silence, staring into the past, into the only years where he still possessed sight.
Sitric had ordered the ruin of the Norse palace cleared away, and already men were at work within the former courtyard, sawing and hammering to build a new palisade and hall. But he did not wish to meet Brian Boru for the first time within sight of such a reminder. He ordered tents set up at the gates of the city, and there he waited with his entourage and a guard of warriors. And Gormlaith.
“You must give me your word you won’t make trouble; this is a very delicate situation,” Sitric reminded his mother.
“I? Make trouble?” Gormlaith pressed one white hand against her bosom and laughed. “Everyone misunderstands me!”
“I can’t argue with that,” Sitric commented. “But please, woman, allow me the dignity you demand for yourself. I will speak to Boru, and I will make the decisions that are a man’s to make. Trust me to be your son and to do whatever is to our best advantage. You will take a woman’s place—out of sight.”
“Just don’t give him everything he asks for to begin with!” Gormlaith insisted. “And be sure to stand very straight, I don’t want you looking like a dwarf compared to the man.” She stood close to him and combed through his beard with her fingers, obliterating the carefully drawn comb-lines his servant had etched in it with water. “It’s a pity you don’t take after your father more,” she sighed. “Whatever his failings, Olaf Cuaran was a warrior, and he looked like one.”
“If I resembled my father I might have gone to war with Harold and died at Glenmama, instead of being available to get you safely out of the city before the Irish arrived.”
“Yes,” she said, and sighed again, “but one might wish …”
Sitric Silkbeard rode out to meet the entourage of Brian Boru. The Dubliner was mounted on a shaggy little buckskin horse, fitted for war, and he carried a jeweled sword and a painted shield. His remaining jarls accompanied him, hard-faced men who did not take the act of submission lightly. They gazed with bleak eyes at the expanse of Irish arrayed before them.
The two central figures were to meet in the space between Sitric’s tents and the encampment of the Irish. Gormlaith stood just inside the entrance to her son’s tent. She was wrapped in green velvet, with a scarf of white silk drawn over her hai
r and partially concealing her face. By staying just within the flap she could see without being seen, but the distance was too great to get more than a vague impression of the Dalcassian king. He was riding a tall red horse, but he seemed to dwarf it by his own size, and Gormlaith chewed on her lip and squinted her eyes in a vain effort to see more.
The two men conferred briefly, then both dismounted and handed their horses to holders. They walked together, slowly, until they were a little distance away from their respective guards, and then stood talking. Sitric’s head scarcely reached Brian’s shoulder. My son is a little man, Gormlaith thought in surprise.
As the two leaders spoke toe to toe, the gray clouds that had hung threateningly overhead since dawn parted a little, and a pale yellow light warmed the scene. Brian stood with his head bowed and his arms folded on his chest, listening courteously as Sitric spoke. Once Sitric waved his arm in the direction of the tents and Gormlaith drew back quickly, but Brian did not turn to look.
After what seemed hours the two men parted, Brian remounting his horse and riding back to his waiting escort, Sitric returning to his tent. “We will welcome the king of Leth Mogh for a feast here,” he announced with pride. “I want the best banquet we are able to put together, and more wine and ale than even an Irishman can drink.”
“Brian Boru is a man of cups?” his steward asked him.
“Malachi was,” Gormlaith said dryly.
“Just bring up everything we have,” Sitric ordered. “I don’t want to be embarrassed by running short of anything this afternoon. And … Gormlaith, I think it would be best if you took yourself to that nice tent I have provided for you. You really cannot stay here when the Irish come.”
“I am Irish!” Gormlaith said in a voice that promised trouble. Sitric made a hasty sign to his guards, and his mother was escorted firmly but ceremoniously from the tent. His eyes followed her.
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