Lion of Ireland (59 page)

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,” Dunlang

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!”

Leti of the Long Knife died quietly in his sleep. His wife and daughters respectfully left the house when Brian came, alone and bareheaded, to say goodbye to his old friend. He brought with him his harp and a gold crucifix he wished buried with Leti.

The covered form lay in impossible stillness on the bed. Brian lifted the edge of the blanket and laid bare me face. In death, Leti looked as if he had never been alive; even the livid scar he had earned saving Brian’s life was faded and insignificant, a mere track across his waxen skin. There was little resemblance to the old warrior’s virile countenance.

Brian looked down at him, waiting for the pain. But it was such an easy death; it scarcely seemed to have hurt Leti at all, nor Brian either. “It isn’t the end you would have chosen for yourself, old comrade,” he whispered to the unfamiliar face. “You should have had a sword in your hand and a shield on your arm.

They won’t recognize you in heaven if you arrive there looking like this.”

The pain came then, and he bowed his head and played a last, private lament on the harp for the doughty warrior he remembered.

“That wasn’t Leti,” he told Padraic, afterward. “It was some old man I didn’t know.”

“Cairbre said it was a good death, my lord.”

Brian shuddered. His eyes were like dark smoke. “Not for a warrior, Padraic. He should have been able to look into the face of the enemy that brought him down. I pray God I may die on my feet, with a sword in my hand!”

In private, he repeated his prayer. If I have found any favor in Your eyes—Whoever You are—spare me Lett’s death.

So many gone now. He counted them on his fingers. Led. Illan Finn and Fergus and Brendan lost to Morse axes. Laoghaire the Black dead in an oak forest with a knife in his back; Laoghaire the Red killed in a meaningless quarrel over a woman. Reardon ... I have had so much practice at this, why does it never get easier? ... Liam ... Ardan ... Nessa ...

Mohan.

He clenched his hands into fists, swallowing the fingers into lumps of naked power. Stop thinking about it.

Stop counting. Go on. The road is just now opening in front of you; you cannot be defeated unless you defeat yourself. Go on. For Leti and Ardan and Nessa, go on. That is the only way. Just ... keep ...

going.

The winter was mild. The trees shed their clothes and stood naked, baring their strengths and weaknesses to the world, but the grass retained its color and was still springy underfoot. Hard rain made the bogs more dangerous than ever, and more than once Brian ordered companies of men turned out to search for a lost child or a cottager who had failed to return home.

The roads became rivers of mud.

The unrelieved wet weather held Maelmordha captive beneath his roof at Naas, and he began to smolder like wet grass piled too high. He found much justification for his bad humor.

“Look at this!” he growled at his steward, unrolling a long parchment bound with strips of silk. “The king of Munster has silk to spare, yet he sends demands for more tribute. Just look at this list!”

Maelmordha ran his finger down the neat rows of figures. “Cattle. Where am I going to get this many cattle? I might even be forced to send him some of my own; I can never collect so many from the lesser tribes at this season! And he wants bales of wool ... how did that man know I had wool stored? And malt. And timber.

“And this!” His finger continued down the sheet and then stopped, stabbing at the parchment in fury. “He has the temerity to demand that I supply weapons for his army! My weapons! Swords, knives, spears, even horse-bits and harness. Leinster needs those things here, not shipped off to Brian Boru!

“Someone is always trying to rob us; I’d rather be plundered by the Northmen than by Munster. At least the Norse and Danes do it openly; they don’t pretend to be anything other than thieves and looters.” He paused, his eyes burning dark with sudden fever. “The Northmen ...” he repeated, smiling crookedly.

A damp wind blew inland from the Irish Sea, sweeping over the heathered hills, seeking out the cracks of the timbered halls with greedy ringers. Candles flickered and torches cast writhing light; the princes of Meath ordered new logs put on their hearths and fresh rounds of heated wine.

At Dublin the wind followed the river, moaning as if in

competition with the cries of the gulls who wheeled above the whitecaps in the bay. The weather was mild but the voice of the wind was bitter. Even Gormlaith shuddered at the desolate wail of it and forsook her solitary walk to sit at her son’s hearth, poking the coals with a bronze poker. Her eyes reflected a shower of sparks, gold against emerald.

The heralds announced the arrival of the prince Maelmordha.

“Well, brother,” Gormlaith greeted him, “you must have had a wet ride.”

“I’ll have nothing left to ride soon if I don’t do something to better my situation,” Maelmordha replied glumly. “Where’s Sitric?”

“Down at the harbor, I suppose; I really don’t know. He doesn’t consult with me about his day’s activities. If something weighs heavily on you, why not discuss it with me instead? There is nothing you would say to Sitric which he would not tell me, and if you need advice, I could . ..”

“You haven’t changed, have you?” he interrupted her. “You still want to be involved in everything; it’s a miracle of God that your nose isn’t as long as your arm. Why not go mind your loom, Gormlaith, and leave men’s affairs to men?”

The look she gave him was frosted with contempt. “Because I don’t know any men, Maelmordha! And as you well know, when I try to use a loom I have six thumbs.”

“It’s a pity you grew up in a household of brothers, with no good woman to set you a pattern,” he commented.

“I grew up in a warrior’s household and I’ve never regretted it! I learned early how hard life really is, and what matters in this world. If I had been what you call womanly, I would have cried at father’s knee and begged for a ‘love-match’ instead of being willing to do my duty and make an advantageous alliance for our tribe with Olaf Cuaran. Father told me I was a good soldier, then. He was proud of me. But you—you were always jealous of me, Maelmordha.”

“Of a woman!? Don’t be ridiculous. I bow to no woman nor to any man, which is the reason for my visit.

And I’ve had enough of this titter-tatter; just call someone to.fetch Sitric, for I must have a word with him before another night passes.”

Sitric arrived, in a good humor from observing the wealth of pirated goods being unloaded from Norse ships in the harbor. He did not seem overjoyed at the prospect of spending the evening with his dark-visaged and irascible uncle, but his pleasant mood lasted long enough to allow the ordering of food and drink in the cavernous timbered hall of the Norse stronghold.

As always, Gormlaith insisted on sitting at the dinner table with the men. She leaned on her elbow, toying with her food and making an occasional bored response to the conversational gambits of the jarls around her. How ignorant they were, these kinsmen of her son; how boring their interminable talk about boats and seas. To listen to them talk one would suppose that the land was just a convenient stopgap between waters, a place of no consequence. They had no art and no learning. Even the addition of her brother to the scene did not broaden the scope of conversation appreciably, for all he wanted to discuss were his grievances.

At last she tired of it. “Maelmordha,” she said, leaning forward and breaking into the men’s talk, “you resent the tribute Munster takes from you; you feel it is humiliating and unfair. I, too, have humiliated and treated unfairly, by that maggot Malachi Mor, the other half of this new Irish alliance. You want my son to give you the strength of this Norsemen to resist Boru, and I want revenge against Malachi!

“I suggest to you that we can do both things together, drive one sword through two foxes. There is enough strength available to us to destroy both men, if we bring it to bear in one place. And if all these Norsemen”—she cast a contemptuous glance around the hall—“cannot do the task, there are Danish fleets off the coast of Alba and the Saxon lands. They might be glad to join us for their share of the plunder.”

Maelmordha narrowed his eyes. “You think it can be done?”

“Of course it can! It’s to Sitric’s advantage to crush Boru, for that man is a lifelong foe of the Northmen.

Eh, Sitric?”

“I .. . ah . . . wasn’t really looking for a war . ..” Skric began, over a rising accompaniment of Norse enthusiasm. Battle-heat was already warming the bones of his jarls, and they were banging their fists and their drinking horns on the table. “Kill both the Irish kings!” someone shouted, and there was general laughter.

“Has your Irish blood weakened the viking strain in you, Silkbeard?” Svein Iron-Knuckle challenged.

“This is a splendid opportunity for brave hearts; the new Irish partnership can be no match for the followers of Red Thor!”

Sitric had scowled at Svein’s calculated insult, and now he rose with the rest of them, raising his drinking horn high above his head. “I am Olaf Cuaran’s son!” he assured the hall.

Gormlaith favored him with a radiant smile.

He was lean again, flat-bellied, the muscles sharply defined beneath skin almost as taut as it had been in his youth. The sculptural quality of his face stood out strongly above the lightly grizzled beard, and his eyes were the calm, savage eyes of a lion. Brian Boru was riding to victory with the warriors of Leth Mogh at his back.

They were marching north over the Wicklow Highlands, intending to crush the rebellion in Leinster on their way to establishing a blockade of Dublin. A false marching order for a fortnight later had been widely circulated, and now Brian was hurrying to rendezvous with Malachi Mor well ahead of the expected time, in order to add the element of surprise to their attack.

Just as the army began its march Murrough had arrived, unannounced and unexpected, bringing a large company of

men with him. Armed men. They rode into camp with their weapons ready, and a circle of Dalcassians materialized almost magically, to stand with their own weapons in hand around Brian, facing outward as his son advanced upon them.

Brian, furious, ordered them away. “If my own son is a threat to me, then nothing I am doing has any meaning anyway!” he hissed through his teeth. “Let him through!”

Murrough halted before his father. The two warriors, one fair and one dark but both with the same face, locked eyes in a tingling silence.

“I have come to fight beside you,” Murrough said tightly.

Brian cocked one eyebrow but said nothing, forcing his son to fill the silence further. “This time, we are in agreement,” Murrough continued.

“And when we are not?” Brian asked.

Murrough hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said at last, carefully. Then he saluted Brian formally and went to gather his men and position them with the rest of the army.

The agreed meeting place for Brian and Malachi was the valley of Glenmama, near Dun Lavin, an easily defensible site rising upward toward the slope of Saggard Malachi brought his men in from the west, having crossed the Liffey and made a wide circle around Naas to avoid alerting Maelmordha’s outposts.

The soldiers of the two armies flowed together, north and south, as the waters of two rivers flow into one sea, and soon the men of Leth Mogh and Leth Conn were sharing stories and aleskins.

“How easily men become friends if someone does not encourage them to be enemies,” Malachi commented, watching the scene with Brian.

“That’s a pleasant philosophy,” Brian replied, “but the novelty will wear thin soon, and we’ll have two packs of hounds circling one another and snarling unless a hare runs through here for them to pursue jointly.”

“You have a low opinion of human nature, Boru.”

“No, I’m merely a lifelong observer of it, and I remember

what I see, even if it doesn’t please me to do so. We can all be good-natured and charitable in the abstract, but given the hard realities of a jostled elbow or a stolen supper we tend to return to our most primitive selves. We can unify the Irish so long as we have an invader for them to face, and for that reason even the Northman has his value. I’ve only begun to see it as I’ve grown older, but everything does, truly, fit into some giant plan.”