Lion of Ireland (29 page)

He turned the container upside down and shook it over his palm, but not even a drop remained.

Behind him Deirdre lay sobbing on the bed, her face hidden in the crook of her arm. The rage had passed as quickly as it came, leaving only the misery she seemed unable to shake off. If only there were just a few drops of the Druid’s medicine, to give her an hour’s rest!

The elixir had done her much good; everyone had commented on how relaxed and happy she had been, while it lasted. Fithir had said to him then, “Marriage to you seems to have been good for my sister.” .

No one had known that Deirdre lay like a log beneath him in their bed, allowing him to perform what had come to be a solitary and joyless act while she suffered him in silence. Yet that was obviously her best effort, requiring all the will power she possessed, and Brian could not bring himself to criticize her.

“Brian?”

She had lifted her head and was staring at him with a pained intensity. Sweat beaded on her forehead and upper lip, but her eyes were rational and the tears had stopped.

He leaned toward her warily, half expecting a renewed attack of invective and fury. “Are you all right?”

“I ... yes, I think so. I didn’t mean ... I don’t know what came over me. They shouldn’t have sent for you, I know they must have called you away from something important. Can you forgive me—again?”

Her eyes were contrite, big with pleading.

“Of course, it’s no matter. If you’re certain you’re all right now I’ll send your maid in to you and see you later in the evening. Try to get some rest.” He brushed her clammy skin with his lips and rose, thankfully, to go, but a whispered voice—that might have been imagined—hissed at his back: “Coward!”

Brian froze. The relief drained from him, and he turned slowly to face her. “Did you say something?”

She came alive then, with a suddenness that startled him. She drew herself into a tense crouch on the bed, her face contorted with an expression of disgust that made her almost ugly.

“Yes, you! You’re a coward, all men are cowards, always attacking the weak! But you want to run away now, don’t you? You want to run away and leave me like this!”

He started toward her, wishing he could face a sword instead. “That isn’t true,” he lied. “I really want to help you, but you won’t let me, you keep working yourself into these fits and it all seems so senseless ...”

“Senseless to you, but necessary for me! It’s as if I have this great boiling inside me and I can’t go into battle or hit at somebody to work it off. So this is my battleground, and I have to do all my fighting alone because you’re afraid to stand with me.”

She was slipping beyond his grasp. He made another effort to reach her before she was gone forever to some dark place he could not find. “It’s not necessary for you to do this to yourself, Deirdre,” he began, trying to communicate with the gentle mind trapped behind the glaring eyes. “Just tell me what you’re fighting and of course I’ll stand with you, but I can’t combat shadows mat have no names.”

“Shadows ... ,” she said, her voice trailing away.

“These spells of yours are driving us apart,” he began again, “and I would give anything to have it otherwise. I can’t help believing you could control yourself if you would only try! I have so many other situations to deal with right now, I can’t function if I have to fight you and the Northmen too. Just tell me what’s doing this to you!”

She slumped back on the bed and shook her head, very slowly, from side to side, her eyes never leaving his face. “I’m afraid,” she said in an almost inaudible voice. “I’m afraid of almost everything, and I don’t even know why; I don’t think I used to be like that.”

She began to cry again, softly and without hope. She made a mighty effort to block out the dizzying surge of feelings that threatened to sweep her away. It would be so easy to give up to them, to submit and let herself be carried into that gray world that smelled of roses and sounded like the sea, where nothing was real and when she reached out she felt only the swirling fog. But she might never get back to Brian. This time, he might not come for her.

She clenched her hands into fists until her nails broke through the skin of her palms, but she did not notice. She saw only his worried eyes, and tried with all her worn strength to win him as her ally.

“Don’t hate me, Brian,” she whispered. “I need you so much!” He started to speak but she held up her hand to stop him and he saw the shocking half-crescents, oozing red. “You look at me with pity now, instead of love, and I suppose I can’t blame you for that. But I do blame you for leaving me when I need you most, running off to drill your soldiers or fight your battles or make speeches to get more men; all diose things are more important to you than I am.

“You put such a value on bravery, and you talk in the hall of saving the land from the foreigners, but you aren’t brave enough to stay with me when the shadows close in. You sit beside me until you have fulfilled some imaginary degree of obligation and then you hurry off, and I see the look of relief on your face as you go. If only you’d stay with me just once, all the way, go all the way to the bottom with me and help me come out in some safe place on the other side!”

Looking at her, Brian saw only a sickness that wanted to be’ shared, a contagion she would infect him with in the name of love. “You want me to be like you, out of control?” he asked, revolted.

She shook her head, with the damp ringlets clinging to it. “No, of course not. I only want you to stay to the end. For once. The bitter, bitter end.” Her voice was heavy and tired.

“And what good would that do, Deirdre?” he asked. He

truly wanted to know, but even as he framed the question he saw there would be no answer. She had left him; her eyes were blank and empty, everything drained out and replaced by a depth of exhaustion even he could not imagine.

All for nothing! he thought. She sat there, miserable and alone, her delicate beauty disfigured, her mind shut away, and what had been accomplished?

Yet that which made no sense to him obviously had some terrible logic for her. For one brief moment he had almost understood it, and as he watched her he felt a deep regret that the kernel of it had escaped him, perhaps forever.

When he was gone, Una hurried to wrap Deirdre in blankets and make her comfortable in the bed. The tears were trickling down Deirdre’s cheeks again, but this time she cried without sound, as people do when they are truly alone.

He ordered a horse bridled for him and vaulted onto its back, shouting as he did so for the fortress gates to be opened. He rode at a dangerous gallop down the road from the Rock, his face set in grim lines.

When he reached the small cluster of cottages which included Fiona’s, he yanked his mount back on its haunches and stared at the little empty house, its door sagging ajar, all sign of human habitation gone. A stray dog came and peered at him around the door frame, then ducked back inside.

Fiona would never tolerate a dog in her house; they made her favorite cat nervous and worried the hens.

He went inside and saw the bare shelves, the cold hearth, the two empty pegs where her clothing had hung. It was as if she had never been there.

The lathered horse plunged up the Rock again, Brian kicking it without mercy every step of the way.

He strode into their chamber, not looking at Deirdre. He pawed through his small assortment of personal possessions, his comb-bag and hand mirror, his box of flints, his knives and scissors and salves, until he found the other jar. The one he had never opened. The one Fiona said was an aphrodisiac.

With trembling hands he broke the seal and poured its

contents into a wooden cup. Pale, straw-colored liquid, with a faint smell not quite like honey.

He tossed the liquid into the night-jar, then threw the wooden cup after it. He stood for a moment, thinking, then carried it, jar and all, to the blazing hearth and pitched the contents into the fire. There was a sizzle and a gust of hauntingly sweet smoke.

There was no way of knowing if Fiona’s calming potion had damaged Deirdre in some way, possibly contributed to those attacks of irrationality. There was no one he trusted enough to ask, no one to whom he was willing to confess his possible complicity. Perhaps the medicaments were just what Fiona claimed . . . but if so, why had she fled without a word?

And if they were some subtle poison, why had she waited so long to flee?

They were seeking out the Northmen in earnest. Wherever the Norse or Danes strayed too far from the port cities, there they were likely to encounter a company of well-armed and well-trained Munstermen.

The old overland routes from Limerick to Cork and Waterford were all but closed off to Ivar’s merchants and the Irish who trafficked with them. Even their highways, the rivers, were no longer safe; and the Munstermen began assembling a rudimentary naval force to patrol the southern coastal waters.

Brian’s new light cavalry, mounted on the best horses available, began searching out and exterminating the wandering bands of Norse-Irish outlaws that had ravaged the province for generations.

The Northmen had encountered armed resistance before, but never such an organized campaign. With every week that passed more warriors came to Cashel to join the army, and if they found Brian’s endless drilling and iron-fisted discipline alien to their natures, they bore it anyway for the obvious success it brought.

Other Munstermen, furious with the drying-up of their lucrative trade arrangements with the Northmen, threw in their lots with Ivar.

There were problems. Mahon was popular with his officers, many of whom had served under him since the first incursion into south Munster with’ Cennedi. His thought patterns were similar to theirs; his orders could be anticipated. But Brian was like lightning. When they least expected him he appeared, checking on some small and seemingly insignificant detail of planning or equipment, or making a speech to the foot soldiers without even bothering to discuss it first with the officer in command.

Aggrieved captains began complaining to Olan, and through him to Mahon. “Prince Brian was giving instruction in the javelin today to a bunch of new recruits! He wants to do everything himself; he won’t delegate authority or listen to the opinion of older, wiser heads.”

“He has books in his tent, manuscripts and charts of wars fought centuries ago, and he insists that we should learn from them. He gives lectures on the campaigns of men called Alexander and Caesar and is forever drawing diagrams and pegging them up on trees for the men to study. We’ve never done it that way before!”

“Your brother simply refuses to accept the established chain of command,” Olan said flatly to Mahon.

The old soldier’s chapped complexion was more ruddy than ever, his eyes deeply sunken in pouches of flesh. “I grant you, he’s an inspired fighter, but he has radical ideas.

“You and I have been together many years, my lord; you know I’m not an unreasonable man. But I’ve forgotten more of the skill of waging war than is written down in all those books.”

Mahon tried to placate his friend. “No doubt, no doubt, but you must admit that his is the impetus behind this effort. I’m sure the time will come when he will turn to you for advice, but until then, try to keep harmony among the officers, won’t you? If it were not for Brian’s vision and the force of his will, you and I would still be raising cows in Thomond.”

Olan’s heeding brows drew together over the bridge of his nose. “Aye, and we might be a damned sight better off,” he said gruffly. “I’m not one to say doom, but there are moments I fear we may be getting into very deep waters.”

“Don’t tell my brother!” Mahon said with a laugh. “He’ll march you all to the bank of the Suir and give you swimming lessons!”

In private, he worried about the growing divisiveness. Fithir saw it in his eyes and questioned him gently, drawing out the irritating thorn. The good widow seemed to have a gift for diminishing his worries; she was always an attentive listener, and her placid nature made him think of a snug harbor into which a small boat might sail in time of storm. Their wedding day was announced to coincide with harvest time; a man could happily look forward to a cold winter spent with such a warm wife.

“The officers are jealous of Brian,” he told Fithir as they shared a mead cup while bees droned in the lady-garden. “The men seem devoted to him, but the captains quarrel among themselves about his policies. Very definite factions are forming that could split the army.”

Fithir’s eyes were kind, unalarmed. “My dear, it is the nature of our people to be contentious; Connacht argues with Meath, Leinster feuds with Munster—but all men will respond to your brother’s golden tongue and vision of unity, you will see. When the time comes, your army will march as one.”

Roses rioted around them, moss of a color that might be the distilled essence of green spread over the gray stones. Military problems seemed distant, abstract; his more immediate thoughts centered about the dimple that winked in and out in Fithir’s cheek. “I wish I could be certain,” he said, anticipating the comforting way her head nestled against his arm.

“You don’t think they would refuse to follow him?”

”This army has never faced a really sizable army of the foreigners in battle. So far, my brother has managed to keep our campaigns at the level he knows best: skirmish, surprise attack. But the day is coming when Ivar will pit all his strength against us, and without the unhesitating support of our officers we could be in serious trouble.”

. “God will be with you,” Fithir told him with the strong assurance she felt that he was seeking. Grateful, he put his arm around her and hugged her to him.

This is the real reason for having a mate, he thought. The private ear into which you can pour the worries that would otherwise sour in your belly and make you sick. How lucky I am, in this woman!

“Speak to your brother,” Fithir advised him. “Make him understand how important it is that he secure the allegiance of your officers. You’re a very persuasive man yourself, you know.” She smiled up at him and Mahon felt larger and warmer than he had minutes before. “If you explain it to him I’m certain he will listen to you.”