Lion of Ireland (42 page)

Perhaps they were already there, tying up his sons, putting their hot hands on his wife ... he swore bitterly and rubbed his hand over his eyes. The stinging salt sweat made them itch, and he swore again.

Molloy of Desmond sank down against the wall and leaned back gingerly, ignoring the rustle of disturbed vermin in a pile of thatch. By looking straight up he would see a piece of blue sky. He picked at his nose, adjusted his clothing, ran through various plans in his mind and discarded them one after the other.

The defeat was total; there could be no doubt about that. All’ Munster would accept the Dalcassian upstart now, it would not be possible to put together a force large enough to drive him out, even if the Norsemen and the Danes could be convinced to take part in such an attempt. Which looked highly unlikely.

He sat and thought about defeat.

Something moved outside; something too large and heavy. It crashed through shrubbery and then reached the collapsed door, breathing heavily. Molloy’s hand was on his sword hilt and he held very still, trapping his breath in motionless lungs.

Someone squirmed through the opening and into the hut. Molloy almost laughed aloud. The newcomer was only a large child, a boy who surely had no more than ten or eleven years on him. He was wild-eyed and flushed, his black hair tangled with twigs, and when he saw Molloy he started.

The prince of Desmond got to his feet and bowed with

sarcastic silken courtesy. “If you’ve come for hospitality I can show you little, good fellow,” he said. “I’m new here myself.”

The boy circled him warily, looking him up and down. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Just a soldier who got tired of fighting,” Molloy answered casually. “This locked like a quiet place, out of harm’s way, and I thought I’d stay here until it was safe to go home.”

“You’re a deserter, then.”

“You might say that. What about yourself? You look too young to be a warrior.”

“No, I’m not!” The boy straightened to his full height and tossed his head, flinging aside a tumble of raven curls. “I’m old enough to fight, and I can wield a sword as well as any man!”

“Ah-huh.” Molloy edged sideways, trying to get the boy to follow him into the shaft of light that pierced the ruined roof. The lad looked well nourished and well dressed—ah, yes, when the light struck him it was obvious he had a noble’s face. Some important family would pay a good ransom to get him back.

Perhaps enough to buy passage to the Cornish coast, and bribe the Munstermen to look the other way.

Molloy spread an ingratiating smile across his face and held out his hand. “Come closer, lad, I won’t hurt you.” The boy took a step backward, shaking his head. “It’s glad I am to have you here for company, my man,” Molloy continued, trying to edge closer unobtrusively. If he could get a hand on the youngster, tie him up with something .. .

Murrough watched the man’s eyes above the dark beard. The lips were smiling, but the eyes were not.

Murderer! Assassin! Murrough continued to back slowly away from him, and with one hand he sought beneath his tunic for the knife hidden there.

He had been holding Fergus’s horse, chafing with impatience and enduring the cramped muscles of one who has stood too long on tiptoe as he craned to watch the battle. And then he had seen the Desmonian slip past, cutting across the rear of Brian’s line, moving not away from those who sought him but directly behind them. The man wore the plain clothing of a foot soldier, but the gilded hilt of his sword caught the light and Murrough’s attention.

It must be the prince of Desmond. Without thought, Murrough tossed the horse’s reins to a surprised slinger standing nearby and ran in the direction of the swiftly retreating back.

While ducking and dodging through the trees, it had been exciting to imagine himself confronting the treacherous prince, capturing him alone, and handing him over to Brian in triumph. In a boy’s fancy such deeds are easily done, but now, alone in the smelly hut with a grown and dangerous man, he began to realize the vast gulf between imagination and reality. Molloy was a skilled warrior, a big man with a heavy sword and a feverish glitter in his eyes.

Murrough’s mouth went dry.

There was a commotion outside. Brian’s men were passing nearby, calling Murrough’s name.

Momentarily distracted, Molloy turned away from his intended victim and stepped catlike to the opening.

Careful to keep his face hidden, he peered outside, trying to determine how near the soldiers were.

There might not be another chance. Shaking with terror and very sick to his stomach, Murrough pulled out his knife and clasped it tightly, one hand locked over the other. Without allowing himself to stop to think, he ran full force at Molloy’s unguarded back and put his whole strength behind the blow.

It was frightening, how tough that back was! It was not like cutting into meat at all; more like trying to sink your blade into a tree trunk. The shock of the blow rocked Murrough and he let loose of the knife and stumbled backward, waiting in terror for the infuriated Molloy to turn around and strike him down.

But Molloy did not turn. He stood unmoving for a terribly long time, then made a strange gurgling sound, and sank to . his knees, arms upraised, hands clawing at his shoulders.

Murrough screamed, then, with all the air he could draw into his lungs. “Help! Help! I’m here, I’ve got him! Help!”

And then strong hands were ripping down the flimsy walls of the hut, and Brian’s soldiers poured in upon them.

By the time Murrough had repeated his story to a score of soldiers, it had changed from the deed of an impulsive child committing a rash and dangerous folly to a feat of heroic proportions. In spite of the fact that the dead prince lay on his face, a knife hilt protruding from between his shoulder blades, by Murrough’s account he had been slain in savage hand-to-hand combat by an intrepid young man who knew what he was doing every step of the way.

When Murrough was brought before his father-accompanied by Molloy’s body on a litter—the boy was glowing with pride and self-importance.

Brian’s furious face was like a dash of icy water.

“How could you do such an insane thing!” Brian yelled, his relief roaring out of him in the shape of a thunderous rage. “You could have been killed—you should have been killed! Molloy should have spitted you like a pig and had you for his dinner. Idiot child, do you think war is a game for babies to play?”

The exuberant light faded from Murrough’s eyes. “I’m not a baby,” he said with a sulky edge to his voice. “I was old enough to kill the prince of Desmond, wasn’t I? I thought you wanted him dead.”

Brian struggled with the urge to put his hands around the boy’s throat and throttle him. The memory of painful, fearful love was wiped away, and he felt something very near to hatred for being made to suffer such anxiety. And beneath that, a burning, shameful resentment for having been cheated of the revenge he had promised himself for so long. It was not the sword of Brian Boru that brought Molloy down.

He forced himself to look at Murrough, and remember that this was his son. “Get out of my sight, and stay out of it until we are back at Cashel,” he said in a voice rough with anger.

He turned to Leti. “Tie his hands, if you have to, and keep him within arm’s reach at all times!”

When at last he had a chance to be alone in his tent, with only Padraic for company, Brian began to let the tension drain out of him. He leaned back against the firmly planted tentpole and stretched his long legs in front of him, crossing them comfortably at the ankle. His hands lay quietly along his thighs, palms downward, and beneath them he could feel the swell of iron muscles.

He watched Padraic prepare their evening meal. Outside there was shouting and the singing of men well gone in drink, the sounds of celebration that follow a victory.

Brian wondered why the joy of it eluded him.

Mahon, he thought, the name crossing his mind as it did so often in unguarded moments. It was a spear of pain. And Murrough’s name might have been added to it, another burden of guilt.

The more I have the more I can lose, he thought. The price for my dreams keeps getting higher.

“I am raising him to be a king,” Brian said darkly, mostly to himself, “and he is willing to throw his life away for a moment’s adventure. He is rash and quick-tempered, but are those youthful follies alone? Will he outgrow them when he comes into manhood, or am I wasting all my dreams?”

Padraic, quick to respond to the pain in Brian’s voice, said, “Oh, no, my lord; Prince Murrough will do you proud some day, I know it. He is young yet, that’s all; there’s sturdy timber underneath. You are training him to the kingship and he will not fail you.”

Above his beard, Brian’s gray eyes brooded.

The palace of Kincora rose on the west bank of the Shannon, stone upon stone, timber wedded to timber in an embrace meant to span the centuries. When Brian could make time for it he rode up to supervise the building, suggesting a window here, insisting on a stouter wall there. The builders were surprised at his grasp of their craft, and annoyed at his insistence on perfection in the most minute details.

But as the compound grew they began to take a special pride in it. It was, truly, a house fit for a provincial king, a splendid citadel, and in the years to come men who did no more than straighten bent iron nails or tamp clay would boast to their grandchildren, “I built Kincora, you know!”

The chambers were to be circular, free of shadowy corners. The grianan was built around an enormous, gnarled apple tree, which had been spared the woodman’s ax and allowed an opening in the roof. Cages for Emer’s songbirds were to be hung from its branches, and the slant of the trunk was inviting to the feet of small climbers.

The huge banquet hall was to have two long galleries leading to the kitchens, so that a steady flow of servants could come and go without having to dodge one another. “No one has done it that way before, my lord!” the chief builder complained, and was irked to see that his argument only pleased Brian.

“That’s all the more reason for doing it,” the king said. Care was taken that light and air should reach the inmost recesses of the king’s hall, and bright colors blazed everywhere, replacing the gloom of Cashel with the brilliance of Kincora. Painted leather hangings were commissioned for the many separate guest houses and apartments, and Brian’s treasurer complained to him of the cost.

“In the spring we’ll demand an additional tribute from the under-kingdoms, if we must,” Brian told him.

“I’ve spent a fortune already on repairing their roads and giving them military protection; they shouldn’t object to a little more gold for Kincora.”

“But my lord, tributes are always resented. Callachan was a frugal man, and his son after him, and even your dear brother, God rest his soul, spent nowhere near such sums as these.”

Brian arched an eyebrow. “All the more incentive for me to do an excellent job as ruler of Munster, wouldn’t you agree? My people will have such security as they have never known, and the prosperity peace makes possible; they won’t resent the cost when they see how I earn it in full measure—twice over. The first rule of kingship should be that a king is always worth his keep.”

As Murrough grew, his father’s concept of kingship began to squeeze him like tight clothes. In keeping with his new rank, Brian had not sent his children to the monasteries to be educated, but had brought in the best of the monastic tutors to instruct them at home. The endless lessons pleased scholarly Conor, but Murrough hated them.

“Why do I have to stay inside and study all the time?” he complained to Brian. “I don’t want to be a priest-king, like my uncle, so I don’t need to know Latin and all that. I want to be a warrior-king, like you!”

“I thought like you, once,” Brian told him, “but then I learned that a man must have much knowledge and many skills to rule well, and so I have never ceased my education.”

“But what does a lot of history about dead civilizations have to do with here and now?” Murrough argued, thrusting out his lower lip in the small pout that was characteristic of him when he felt abused.

“When I am king I’ll have slaves around me who understand mathematics and astronomy and all those boring things; I won’t need to know them.”

“Every lesson is valuable, if only for the discipline it gives you,” Brian replied. “You are to be more than just my successor, Murrough; you must be the best king I am able to produce for my people, or my whole concept of succession has no validity. Can’t you see that? Besides, I think you will find, as I have, that you will have the opportunity to make use of everything you learn as life goes by.”

“I doubt it,” Murrough told him flatly. The boy had spent a lifetime listening to the tales told of his father, and they were all of great deeds, not of dry books. The vast reservoir of unused energy within him bubbled and steamed; the peace Brian had brought to Munster did not feed his active imagination.

He approached his father with a project. “I want to take a horse and ride out with one of the patrols when they go looking for outlaws and Northmen,” he began enthusiastically. “I wouldn’t get in the way, I’d just watch, but I could be a lot of help to them, holding horses and so forth, and I could . . .”

“You’re still a child, Murrough,” Brian interrupted him, with the disconcerting feeling that he was hearing an echo of his own youthful voice. “And you caused enough trouble on your last military venture. I prefer to keep you at home, at least until you have a beard and a little wisdom, so that you cost me no more than you already have.” “What have I cost you?”

“I had to pay a huge fine to the family of Molloy of Desmond because of your rash deed,” Brian reminded him.

“You paid the eric for Donovan’s death, too, under the Brehon Law, and I don’t remember your complaining about that,” Murrough said sullenly.

“I didn’t complain in your hearing. But it was costly; the case for murder with malice is twice that for a simple killing, and in both cases it was certainly with malice. Those men were princes; their deaths cost me a fortune in cows.”