Lion of Ireland (64 page)

Gormlaith had a powerful effect on many men, but he had never seen quite such a result as this. They might have been old friends sharing some secret jest. Standing together, towering in the torchlight, they might have been of another race, ageless and more beautiful than mere mortals.

The Irish delegation returned to its encampment, a bemused Brian with them. He immediately summoned Carroll to his tent.

“What do you know of my daughter Emer, historian?” he asked abruptly.

“I ... ah ... that is to say . . .”

“Don’t stammer; I put a straightforward question to you and I expect an answer in kind. She gave a flower to a man

as we left Kincora; I glimpsed it while thinking of something else. Who was that man?”

“Oh! I believe it was the harper who entertained us the day before, my lord. He had played some special requests for her.”

“You’re certain ii wasn’t Donogh, or one of the Dal Cais princes?”

“No, my lord, I’m sure of that. I can see his clothing quite plainly in the window of my memory. If you’re asking what I think you are, I don’t believe the princess Emer has given her heart any man but her father and Christ.” Carroll smiled the rueful smile of a man recounting an unpleasant truth he has already accepted.

Brian took a deep breath. “Ah, Well, then. If her heart is still mine I can transfer it with a clean conscience. Thank you, Carroll. As you leave, send my page; I have a message to be taken immediately to Sitric Silkbeard.”

The wedding was held at Kincora. Many hostages had to be sent back to their homes in order to make room for guests; almost the entire tribe of the Hy Faelain, Gormlaith’s family, arrived en masse to sample the hospitalities of the Dal Cais. At Brian’s specific invitation Maelmordha of Leinster came to Kincora in the state befitting a great prince. Upon his arrival Brian staged an impressive ceremony wherein he restored Maelmordha to much of his former power, even elevating him above his nearest rival, Donnchad mac Domnaill.

“I proclaim you king of all Leinster, my tributary province,” Brian announced formally and Maelmordha received the long-desired prize from the hands of his erstwhile enemy with very mixed emotions.

Gormlaith, with a full retinue of servants, was installed in a splendid new apartment built for her a short distance from Brian’s private chamber. The inner walls were hung with green velvet and a blanket of white fur covered the bed. Gormlaith looked around her new home with satisfaction. “At last I have what I deserve,” she remarked to her body servant.

The maid, who was of another opinion, made no answer.

Marcan, who had added to his titles that of abbot of the new religious community at Iniscealtra, performed the purification rites before the ceremony, and the bishop of Cashel celebrated Mass. In the banquet hall Brian and Gormlaith stood together to hear the reading of their marriage contract; he, clothed in royal purple and holding the wand of his authority, she, dazzling in cloth-of-gold, a fortune in pearls starring her high-piled hair.

MacLiag exhausted himself creating an epic poem which he recited at the lavish wedding feast, and took to his bed for a fortnight. Maelmordha quarreled with Core, Brian’s head steward Thomaus, King Lonergan, and Murrough, who in turn argued with Cian, Duvlann, Leti’s eldest daughter, and the wealthy king of Onaght—who stomped from the hall before the sweetmeats were served. His wife watched him go and sighed, then swiveled around on her bench to resume her conversation with Donogh—a pleasant man of even temper who knew how to talk to a lady.

Murrough’s pregnant wife ate too many scallops and was extravagantly sick. One of the hounds overturned a lamp and the resulting fire smoked a freshly limed wall. Six buckets of water and a barrel of wine were required for its extinguishing—the water going on the blaze and the wine into the fire fighters.

The musicians played until dawn, and the dancers overflowed the banquet hall and swirled through the courtyards in a rainbow of brilliant colors, their laughter a little drunken, their hilarity unrestrained.

Brian waited in his chamber for his bride to be brought to him. He dismissed his body servant and paced restlessly about the room, pausing to pound a cushion into plumpness, smooth the linen sheet on the bed, extinguish a lamp.

He waited.

He combed his beard once more, making sure the track of the comb lay in precise, wavy patterns through the dampened hair.

No one knocked at the door.

He opened it and peered out, startling the guard. “You aren’t needed here tonight; go away!” he ordered the man, who bowed respectfully and marched off.

No one came.

At last, in a cold fury, he wrapped his bratt around him and stalked to Gormlaith’s apartment, flinging the door wide and dismissing her maid with a curt nod.

Gormlaith sat on a fur-cushioned bench, her hair falling about her in a gleaming curtain, a half-drained goblet in her hand. The honeyed scent of mead was on her breath. “What right have you to burst into my chamber!” she exclaimed.

“I sent for you, my lady, a long time hence. May I remind you that I am your king and husband, and this is our wedding night?” To his surprise he found that his hands were shaking and he clenched them into fists, holding them close to his sides.

“I know that, Brian,” she replied coolly. “May I remind you that I am not accustomed to being ‘sent for,’

as you put it? I am no slave to be ordered about! When I am ready to join you, I will; I think it imperative that we establish the grounds for our relationship at the very beginning, to avoid future misunderstandings.” As she spoke she tossed her goblet to the floor, spilling the dregs into the scented rushes freshly spread there. She stood up with deliberate languor and looked haughtily into his eyes.

Suddenly he knew her. Knew her all the way, as a man knows a familiar room. It had long -been said of him that he could see into the hearts of men; for the first time in his life that was true of a woman as well.

He saw her as she was and as she might have been, almost a twin to him, his character expressed in the female. But in her case the powerfully driving ambition was thwarted, the tremendous pride rubbed raw, the fine intellect unused, the rich passion prodigally misspent. Somewhere inside her had dwelt a child not unlike his own small self, full of dreams and optimism. Life had soured that aspect of Gormlaith, turning the child into a vicious and destructive imp that would punish the adult world with whatever weapons came to hand.

There was a time when he might have found her, touched hands with her, led her forward with him into the future that was so right for both of them. But they had been miles apart then, unknown to one another and growing in different directions. Whatever she contained of gentleness and poetry had become buried beneath a crust so hard it abraded all who came in contact with her. Her abilities wasted, all gifts save that of her body unwanted, Gormlaith stood before him armed only in her defiance, and Brian understood her completely.

I could have tamed her, he thought. When I was younger, tireless, I would have tamed her and taken joy in doing it. But in all those days I never found the woman on whom I could spend all of myself, just as she obviously never found the man to meet her challenge. There is nothing in her that asks for love in this moment—she only demands to be conquered.

“Yes,” he said aloud to her, his deep voice thunderous in the quiet room, “I think we should establish our relationship, right now. You are a prize of war, Gormlaith. A trophy. Mine, to do with as I will!”

Her face went white with anger. She clamped her full lips into a thin line, a crimson slash between locked jaws. She raised her hands, hooking them into predatory claws that raked the air, the polished nails seeking his face, but he caught them easily and held her at arm’s length.

“You forget yourself, woman,” he told her as she fought with astonishing strength to free herself. “I am the master here!”

He slung her away from him so that she staggered backward until the bed struck the backs of her legs and she fell across it, screaming her rage at him. In one swift movement he divested himself of his tunic and threw his body over hers pinning her beneath him. It took all the experience of a warrior to hold her there while he ripped her clothing aside, for she fought him as no woman ever had, and when the barrier!

between their bodies were removed he took her with neither art nor tenderness.

It was like plunging into heated honey.

Once I would have done this night after night, he thought, ramming into her with all his strength. Might after night, like pounding beef with a stone to make it tender. I ached for that, lay awake in agony imagining it. Where were you then, Gormlaith?

Writhing beneath him, fighting, scratching, pummeling his hard back with her fists, Gormlaith realized quite suddenly that she was only acting out a role. I am playing at being Gormlaith as she has always been! she thought, with vast surprise.

Brian’s strength was so far beyond hers that it no longer seemed necessary to challenge it. More than anything else, she found herself wanting to melt into boneless surrender. Through slitted eyes she saw the beads of sweat on his brow and longed to reach up and wipe them away—gently. As the thought came to her, something gathered itself in her body that had never been there before; a heavy, unbearable sweetness, an intense concentration of pleasure almost identical with pain, a maelstrom spiraling downward into a total loss of self she had never imagined and could have never surrendered to until this moment.

She ground her hips together, squeezing him with the female power she had never fully appreciated before, drawing from him the explosion of ecstasy that must be had at all costs. It was impossible that there could be so much, but there was, there was, there was!

They lay on their backs, side by side, their hoarse breathing a perfectly merged duet. Brian felt burned the length of his body by the incredible heat of the woman. The total expenditure of himself left him drained, unable to move, listening with a foggy sense of detachment to the pounding of his own heart.

The pounding was too violent and it lasted too long, and finally he realized it. He began to draw deep, careful breaths, willing the overtaxed machinery of himself to reduce its pace. My God, he thought, uncertain if it were prayer or profanity.

Their shoulders were touching. Gormlaith felt a powerful urge to roll over and snuggle in his arms, a hunger almost as intense as the irresistible sexual hunger so recently satisfied.

Would he hold me? Would he push me away? It was the Gormlaith I have always been that he responded to; what if I were to reveal this new, soft side of myself? Would he welcome it? Or be bored by it?

Behind her closed eyelids-she pictured him, taller even than she, stronger, a creature out of legend. He thinks he has found in me a complement to himself, she reasoned carefully, reluctantly. There must have been many gentle women for him, but who else could come close to matching him physically? That must be what he wants from me—a mate for a lion. He would only have contempt for me if he knew about this new aspect of myself that I have just discovered, this tender, submissive Gormlaith who must have hidden inside me all these years without my knowing.

If she were any other woman, I could hold her close now, Brian thought. Mow would be the tender time.

The body cools too fast, suddenly separated from other hot flesh, and I feel strangely hollow. But if I reach out and put my arms around Gormlaith she might scratch out my eyes; she might do anything.

He shifted slightly and felt the sharp sting where her nails had raked his back and sides.

Yes, better to leave her alone.

I am afraid, Gormlaith thought. I really am afraid. I am no longer in possession of my self! Please, God ...

I do not want to be vulnerable!

When Brian’s breathing told her he had fallen asleep, she eased her body from the bed and went to get a light for her candle. She set the glowing cylinder of mutton fat on the chest next to the bed and sat down again. Slowly, with infinite care, she drew her feet up and then rearranged her body until she lay stretched beside him. Propped on one elbow, she studied his features in the golden light. There was nothing in that face that disappointed her, not one strong plane or chiseled curve she would have changed. Boru, she said in her heart. Boru.

It was Carroll who voiced the question burning every man’s tongue. “My lord, you are undisputed ruler of the greater part of Ireland,” he began one day as the two sat together, going over his records of the preceding year’s events. “Malachi rules only the north portion, and that indifferently. The Norsemen raid at will and he hears of it and sends warriors after the ashes have cooled. The northern tribes fight among themselves as constantly as ever. Travelers say that, compared to the peace and unity of Leth Mogh, Leth Conn is a miserable place.”

Brian finished reading a passage inked on vellum in Carroll’s flawless Latin, nodded approval, and carefully set it aside. He looked up. “So, historian?” “The time has come ... that is, everyone agrees ...”

He paused, chewing on his underlip. How Gormlaith would laugh if she could hear him edging timidly around the topic. She, who never hesitated to say in a strong voice on every possible occasion, “Brian Boru should be the Ard Ri!”

Brian took pity on him. “It’s all right, Carroll. In fact, I’m ahead of you. The news from Leth Conn is very disturbing to me; there are too many problems there which could erupt like running sores and poison in the south.

“Malachi has had ample opportunity to prove himself true king. The poets have always assured us that in the reign of a good and just prince the land will prosper, the cattle grow fat, and both men and animals be fertile. That situation exists in Leth Mogh, but not in Leth Conn. Irish people in the north are suffering and I can wait no longer.

“Yestereven I ordered officers to review their warriors and weapons supplies and start gathering whatever additional troops they may need, not only from Munster and Ossory but also from south Connacht, Leinster, and Sitric’s kingdom. The Ard Ri sits with his council at Tara, debating over problems he is unable to solve. Prince Donogh is a fine horseman and a cool leader of men who can be trusted not to make a thorny situation worse, so I am putting him in charge of a mixed cavalry to ride on Tara.”