Lion of Ireland

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “You just want to get rid of me so you can have your fill of other women, and this is the excuse you are using!” Gormlaith cried.

  His voice was almost gentle when he answered her. “You’ve always mistaken the nature of your rival, Gormlaith. There are no other women; you blot them out as the sun blots out the stars. But I have to choose between you and what’s best for Ireland, and that is no contest at all. I won’t keep you here where you can hack with an ax at all I have spent my life building.” Deliberately, he turned his back on her.

  He did not see her writhe as if a knife had cut into her vitals. But he heard the wild despair in her voice as it rose behind him. “Brian!”

  “Go,” he said, over his shoulder. “We are finished.”

  There was a stunned silence, and then she screamed at him with the rage of a wounded animal, “You will regret this, Brian Boru!”

  He continued walking away from her, seeing nothing, putting one foot in front of the other.

  One more time she called to him, desperate, her voice breaking over his name. “You, of all men, cannot reject me! Not you! BRIAN!”

  Something made him turn back, reluctantly. She started toward him and then hesitated. “Brian, you don’t understand. I really … I …”

  He forced his voice to be cold. “Yes?”

  She searched his face, but saw nothing in it for her. Mourning his slaughtered union, Brian’s level gaze looked through her to a darkening future.

  “I … hate you, Boru!” she cried then. “I hate you with all my heart!”

  He turned away once more from her contorted face and doubled fists. “Someone pack her things and send her back to Dublin, to Sitric,” he said to the room at large. “There is a burial to be prepared here.”

  There were tears in his eyes, and the watchers thought they were for Corc.

  Maelmordha hurried eastward, nursing his rage, anxious for the stout walls of Naas. As soon as he arrived he summoned the under-kings of Leinster and repeated to them the feverish story of the insult and dishonor he had received at the hands of the Ard Ri. The recitation improved with each telling, until Fer Rogain of the tribe Fotharta arrived to hear that Maelmordha and all his men had been reviled and spat upon at the Ard Ri’s banquet table.

  “Leinstermen have received a mortal insult!” Maelmordha cried, and they all agreed with clenched fists upraised.

  “Boru has lived well at our expense far too long,” Maelmordha continued, “under the guise of this nationhood he proclaims. I tell you, it’s all a trick to extort our property from us, and once he has that in his hands he has nothing but contempt for us. We must overthrow the High King—it’s been done before, Boru did it himself—and take back all that rightfully belongs to us!”

  Messengers were sent in stealth to the Hy Neill in Ulster, to the king of Brefni, to the young chief of Hy Carbery, son of the son of Brian’s old enemy Donovan. At first there was reluctance to join with Leinster, but Maelmordha had chosen well; he knew where old grudges festered, where old resentments still rankled, and in time he had a force to stand with him.

  From Dublin, Sitric came to Naas to discuss the situation. “My mother is almost insane in her rage against Boru,” he told Maelmordha. “She and my wife cannot share the same roof, or the air rings with arguments night and day and I am caught in the middle. The Ard Ri has kept his promises to me, Maelmordha, and his power is formidable. I’m not eager to take up the sword against him.”

  Maelmordha sneered. “When did you ever take up the sword against anybody? You are too sly, too cautious, Sitric, too anxious to keep your famous beard free of bloodstains. But I should think you would be willing to avenge your mother’s honor in this matter.”

  Sitric smiled. “Her honor means nothing to you and you know it. And I suspect it is not your own that guides you, either. You just want to bring Boru down because he’s a greater man than you.”

  “Now you insult me!”

  “And you can swallow it as easily as a raw oyster, if I agree to stand with you. Isn’t that true?”

  Maelmordha hesitated. “Will you?”

  “Will you guarantee me that it will be profitable? The Irish interfere with our trade and give us competition in the marketplace; if you promise me unlimited sea control and the freedom of the coast, I think I can give you an army of Norsemen and Danes really capable of destroying the Ard Ri.”

  “Done!” cried Maelmordha.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  At Dun na Sciath, Malachi Mor was enjoying the fruits of the long peace. The souterrains beneath his stronghold were packed with food and grain, protected in the cool earth, and the casks of wine and ale were stacked atop one another. On a warm spring evening Malachi, bald and portly, was entertaining the nobles of Meath in his banquet hall. It was an informal occasion, with much singing and joviality, and after the meal there was to be dancing. The quiet, compliant woman who had replaced Gormlaith as Malachi’s wife would bring her ladies from the grianan and the music would play far into the night.

  The steward had just supervised the presentation of a magnificently roasted pair of lambs when the door was thrown open and the gatekeeper burst into the hall.

  He shoved past the startled herald and flung himself directly at the king’s table, mouth ajar, eyes wide and staring. With a prickling of his neck hairs, Malachi set down his goblet and got to his feet. Something urged him to receive this news standing.

  “Invaders, my lord!” the gatekeeper cried. “We are attacked!”

  Then they heard the shouting outside, the forgotten clashing of weapons and the sound of running feet. Malachi swore colorfully as the men around him leaped to their feet and turned to him for guidance. “Who is it?” Malachi demanded of the gatekeeper.

  “It appears to be Northmen and Leinstermen, my lord,” the frightened man replied. “They must have gotten close to the walls by staying hidden among the new trees, and then they burst out at us all at once, yelling …”

  “Yelling what?”

  “‘Death to Boru!’ my lord,” the gatekeeper answered with some reluctance. “It appears to be an uprising against the Ard Ri.”

  “Against the Ard Ri,” Malachi repeated. He drew a deep breath and pushed his unfinished meal away from his place at the table. There would be no more eating for a while. He rolled his eyes briefly toward heaven. “Why me?” he asked. “Sweet Christ, why me?”

  Then he moved briskly away from the banquet board and began preparing for war.

  Brian was less surprised. “Maelmordha is consistent in his cowardice,” he commented upon hearing of the attack on Dun na Sciath. “He knows better than to march into Munster, and so he falls on the easier opponent.”

  “Will you fight?” Conaing asked with blazing eyes. “Will we go to war against that murderous Leinsterman now?”

  Brian shook his head. “Not if it can be prevented.”

  He sent emissaries to Leinster, urging that the peace not be broken, but many were slain and none were heeded.

  Malachi suffered a heavy defeat at Drinan, near Swords, when his own young son Flann and several of the princes of Meath were slain by the combined forces of Maelmordha and Sitric Silkbeard. In desperation he sent a plea to Kincora. “My lord begs you to know that his kingdom is being plundered, his sons and foster sons slain,” his messenger said. “He prays you not to permit the Northmen and the Leinstermen, the men of Brefni and Carbery and Cenél Eógain, to all come together against him.”

  “Tell me, historian,” Brian asked Carroll, “has any king ever been able to establish a permanent peace, anywhere in the world?”

  “Not so far as I know, my lord. As the Romans would say, the dogs of war are always unleashed, eventually.”

  “And I wanted to alter the whole pattern of history.” Then Brian’s gray eyes warmed with light. “But I did for a while, didn’t I?”

  “Ah yes, my lord. You succeeded grandly, for a while!”

  Brian ordered all of Thomond fortified, and prepared
, in the dawn of his seventy-second year, for another war.

  He divided his armies into two powerful forces. At the head of one he ravaged the rebellious lands of Ossory. Murrough led the other force up through Leinster, devastating the country as far as the monastery of Glendalough, then marching northward to encamp at Kilmainham, near Dublin. Here he was joined by his father in early September, and together they blockaded the city.

  But the garrison of the Northmen was heavily armed and supplied with ample rations to last through the winter, and though they answered the Irish with taunts and jeers hurled from Dublin’s walls, as well as a goodly stock of javelins, they were not to be taken without great loss of life. At Christmas Brian ordered the siege raised and returned to Thomond, Murrough grumbling in his wake.

  It was a bleak Christmas. Brian summoned all his family to Kincora for the holy days, but there was little of the festive mood. Since his mother’s banishment to Dublin young Donnchad had been restless and moody, and even the arrival of his kinsmen did not improve his humor. Murrough’s son Turlough was nearest to him in age, and tried to keep him company, but the younger boy was a lone wolf by nature, preferring to prowl the courtyards and hillsides alone.

  “You should have sent him away with his mother,” Murrough commented after Turlough came to him in anger, stung by Donnchad’s latest rebuff.

  “He’s my son as much as you are, Murrough,” Brian answered. “He should be with me, not isolated from his tribe and forced to grow up as a Norseman. His mother would be a bad influence on him, and as for Sitric …”

  “As for Sitric,” Murrough growled, “I can hardly wait for the day he and I meet on the battlefield.”

  “You may have a long wait.”

  “Sitric fought at Drinan, against Malachi.”

  “No,” Brian said, “Silkbeard was present on the field of battle at the start of the engagement, but I have heard no man say he actually fought.”

  “He’ll fight with me when I catch up to him,” Murrough promised. “I’ll hit him such a blow it will turn his ears around.”

  He is as lusty to swing a sword as he ever was, Brian thought. “You would kill your kinsman with such pleasure, Murrough?” he asked.

  Murrough flared, “Sitric Silkbeard is no kin of mine! He’s the son of that woman you married, but I no longer consider that any deterrent to striking off his treacherous head. If anything, it’s all the more reason to hate him. He’s a Northman, isn’t he?”

  “And so, of course we must hate him, is that what you’re saying?”

  Murrough glared at his father. “You just don’t understand!”

  Brian only shook his head gently and made no answer.

  At Dublin, Gormlaith scarcely took notice of the feast of Christ’s birth. The final rejection had destroyed the woman in her; all that remained was the passion for revenge. She burned with it like a white flame, making everyone uncomfortable in her presence, but she would not stay in the house Sitric gave her. Daily she came to his new hall, upsetting Emer and drawing Sitric away from his own affairs.

  “The Irish have lifted the siege,” she kept reminding him. “We can get men out of Dublin now; we can send for aid.”

  “Everything is being done as it should be, woman,” Sitric assured her. “At the moment I am very much involved in preparing for the spring campaign—or was, before you interrupted me. What more would you have me do?”

  “If you seriously intend to stand against Brian Boru” (she spoke the name as if it were tainted with vinegar), “then you will need more allies than my miserable brother and his Leinstermen, or even all the armies of Ulster. You should go across the sea, to the white Norse and the dark Danes, and offer them sufficient inducement to send men and ships to your aid.”

  “It is not that easy to get allies,” he told her. “Svein Forkbeard fights Aethelred for the Saxon lands; the Danish king is aided by Olaf Tryggvesson of Lochlann and they have made a long campaign of it and smell victory now. There may be no warriors to spare us from the northern kingdoms.”

  “But Dublin is important to the trade and prosperity of the sea-kings! Surely there are those who will stand with us for the sake of gold, if not for blood. I want you to go to the Orkneys—you, yourself, my son, and apply to Sigurd Hlodvisson. Make him whatever offer he indicates he would be willing to accept, but be certain that we can count on him to fight the Ard Ri.”

  The court of Sigurd the Stout, jarl of Orkney, made Sitric Silkbeard welcome. The Norse chieftain gave him a superb drinking horn and an ax that had once belonged to Sigurd’s grandsire, Thorfinn Skull-Splitter, and listened with interest to Sitric’s proposals.

  “You make an alliance sound very attractive,” Sigurd said at last, when the whole idea was laid out before him. “But I have been hearing tales of the Ard Ri for many years now, and I think he is a difficult man to kill. As long as he lives, no Northman will rule Ireland.”

  “Boru is old,” Sitric said contemptuously. “My mother says his hair is white and his eyes are dim; surely, that is no opponent for you to fear.”

  “Your mother—the princess Gormlaith?”

  “That is she.”

  Sigurd Hlodvisson fingered his neatly braided beard. His eyes, set in deep folds of flesh, glinted above his pouchy cheeks. “Ah, that is a woman! Fit for a viking queen, she is; much too good to be wasted on the Irish.”

  Aha, thought Sitric. “Many men have tried to tame her, and been forced to give up the struggle because they were not man enough …”

  Sigurd squared his beefy shoulders. “That is because none of them was Sigurd Hlodvisson! Tell me, Silkbeard, is she still … toothsome?”

  The leer in Sigurd’s voice made the hands of Gormlaith’s son itch to close on that fat throat, but his voice revealed nothing as he lied, “Gormlaith never changes.”

  “I see.” The jarl sat for a long time, considering. Sitric emptied his new drinking horn and held it aloft for a refill.

  Sigurd broke his silence. “I like the idea. I will make you this offer, and you may take it back to Dublin with you. Give me the princess Gormlaith, and the rule of all Ireland when the Ard Ri is dead, and we will go viking together. I promise you enough men and ships to wipe this Irish plague off the earth!”

  Gormlaith asked one question. “Will Sigurd destroy Brian Boru?”

  “Completely; he vows it. He means to rule Ireland himself.”

  “Very well. You may send word to him by the fastest ship: The day Boru is dead and Sigurd Hlodvisson controls Ireland, I am his.”

  But even the addition of Sigurd’s fleet to the armies to be brought against Brian did not give Gormlaith peace in her bed at night. She remembered the Dalcassian as she had seen him many times, girded for battle, his sword in his belt and his war-horse prancing beneath him. In her memory he grew larger and the years that separated their ages diminished. She forgot the white in his hair and remembered the strength in his hands, and she writhed beneath her blankets.

  She made another trip to Sitric’s hall. At the sight of her husband’s mother, come to inveigh further against Brian Boru, Emer went to her chambers and wept into the thick fall of her hair, so that none but her maidservant heard her.

  Gormlaith was feverish with her newest idea. “In the harbor they are saying that there is a fleet of thirty Norse ships anchored off the Isle of Man, under the command of two brothers, Ospak and Brodir. I want you to set sail quickly, Sitric; hurry to them and urge them to join with us! You said Sigurd and his allies will arrive around Eastertime?”

  “We agreed that he would sail into Dublin harbor on Palm Sunday.”

  “Then use whatever it takes, but convince Ospak and Brodir to bring their fighting men here at the same time. It’s imperative that we have a force large enough to crush the Ard Ri in one blow, or we will lose everything!”

  Sitric looked at his mother. “You’re really afraid of him, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Gormlaith shuddered slightly. “No,” she said, “I’m not
afraid of Brian Boru.” Her voice was so low he could hardly hear it.

  Brodir was impressive. Even Sitric was taken aback at the sight of the savage Norse chieftain. He was a tall, powerfully built man, and he had neither the silver-blond hair of the Norseman nor the swarthier coloring of the Dane. His hair was coarse and almost black, and he wore it so long that it was tucked under his belt to keep it out of the way of his sword arm.

  His reputation matched his appearance. Sitric had hardly set his anchor than he began hearing whispers of Brodir’s dark history. It was said that he had once been a Christian, even a deacon, but that he had renounced his faith and reverted to the worship of Thor and the most bloodthirsty of the pagan pantheon. Seeing him, Sitric could believe it.

  Ospak was not available for the meeting, being away on a voyage to the land of the Scots, but Brodir assured Sitric he could speak for both of them. “My brother does what I tell him,” Brodir announced firmly.

  Sitric explained the alliance he had formed with the Leinstermen and the agreement with Sigurd Hlodvisson. Brodir’s teeth flashed in his tangled black beard. “You have already given away everything worth having, Silkbeard. I see no reason why I should fight for nothing.”

  “There will be much plunder!”

  “I have the whole Saxon coast to plunder. Offer me something I can get nowhere else. Offer me what you offered Sigurd the Stout.”

  “You want me to dishonor my pact with him?”

  Brodir’s smile remained; it was the mirthless grin of a wild animal baring its gleaming fangs, and the eyes above it were soulless and empty. “Words don’t matter,” he said in a harsh voice. “Nothing matters but the blood and the fire. Promise me what you offered him, and I will see that he dies on the battlefield as soon as the Ard Ri is dead. Give me Ireland—and this Gormlaith—or try to win without my help.”