Lion of Ireland (69 page)

The tiny pockets of the Old Religion clutched at the tenuous threads of existence in secret places. In the heart of the forest, woods-women met to celebrate life and gaze into the clouded future, praying. The little old woman with brown eyes like dark stars turned to the others and shook her head. “A storm is coming,” whispered Fiona. “We must make ready.”

In hidden glens, in misty fairylands of fern and moss, growing things pushed upward to the light and found their way blocked by stone. With the stubborn persistence of life, they split the stone.

Wild geese battled in the shallows, fighting to prove themselves in the sparkling eyes of a watching female who pretended to be busy preening her feathers-Children ran and played and quarreled, fought and cried and played again.

In a sunny courtyard at Kincora, a fat tabby cat lay stretched upon the stones, lazily flicking the tip of her tail as she watched her kittens tumbling over one another. A wee black one spied the slight, rhythmic movement and crouched down, wagging his own small stern to build up momentum. Then he launched himself into the air and fell on his mother’s tail with savage fury, biting and growling, striving to disembowel this delightful new enemy with the absurdly tiny claws of his miniscule back feet.

In the spring, the wolves came down from the hills and attacked the new lambs.

Maelmordha felt as tight as twisted hemp. Of late, everything that happened in his life seemed to be a direct assault on his person by some inscrutable Fate. The well at Naas went bad and his family sickened; he developed a painful boil in his armpit and the physician who lanced it opened a vein by mistake; he awakened every morning with a mouth that tasted like an open grave and the expectation that the day would go badly.

His wife was whey-faced, his children stupid, even the walls of Naas exuded a miasma that added to his depression. Then he thought of his sister, living in luxury at Kincora. Kincora, with sweet water and skilled physicians and seaweed brought all the way from Cape Clear to salt the food. Kincora, with beautiful women and casks full of wine.

He decided to pay a royal visit to his near-brother, the Ard Ri, and see the lovely ladies Gormlaith mentioned continually in her letters. The prospect of making the journey to Thomond cheered him, but only temporarily. By the next morning his enthusiasm had faded and he lay in bed, staring at the walls and thinking darkly of all the things Brian Boru had that he, Maelmordha, had not. When his body servant came to dress him he cuffed the boy and swore at him, and that morning he stomped about his fortress, overseeing the preparations for a state journey and cursing resentfully at every one of them.

“Why should we always have to take presents to the Ard Ri?” he snarled at his steward. “Why doesn’t he give them to us?”

The steward, well aware of the many gifts Maelmordha had carted home from Kincora in the past, rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“A man ought to be able to go for a pleasant little trip across the countryside to visit his sister, without impoverishing himself to please her husband,” he growled to his wife. She, who was thinking how nice it would be if he took his increasingly black mood elsewhere, made a noncommittal answer and a hasty exit.

The forests of Figili had yielded a splendid crop of timber that year, including three tall and perfect pines that seemed made to be the masts of ships. Maelmordha, who built no ships, had had them set aside for trade with the Dubliners, but now his eye fell on them and he determined to take them to Kincora as a present for Brian. “They’re no use to me, anyway,” he said with satisfaction.

The trees were too long to be carried on carts, and so a company of men was assembled to hoist them onto their shoulders and move them in that way across the heart of Ireland. It meant the journey would be slowed to their pace, but Maelmordha found a small pleasure in imagining what an impressive picture they would make upon their arrival—the great long trees, the sweating Leinstermen struggling beneath them. Surely the Ard Ri would be moved to give some particularly sumptuous gift in return!

The trip proved long and tiresome, and Maelmordha fretted at being forced to creep along at the speed of the tree-carriers. He galloped his horse up and down the line of his entourage, cursing under his breath. “It’s Gormlaith’s fault that I got involved in this ridiculous escapade,” he grumbled to one of the chieftains accompanying him. “She’s forever complaining of Boru’s mistreatment of her. If I didn’t have such a good heart, I wouldn’t waste my time going clear across Ireland to bring a little comfort to the woman—she never does anything for me.”

The road narrowed to a thin trail, winding through a bog whose treacherous ooze was notorious for the lives it had claimed. As the log-carriers reached the tightest part of the path, an argument broke out among them as to who should take the lead.

“Another delay!” Maelmordha fumed. “Before God, you all do this on purpose to frustrate me!” He swung from his horse to the road and stalked over to the leader of the company. “Here, I’ll put my shoulder to that log, and then there can be no question about who goes first!” He grabbed the man by the arm and jerked him roughly out of the way, setting his own shoulder beneath the coarse bark of the unpeeled log.

Maelmordha was wearing a gold-bordered silk tunic Brian had sent to him, a tunic further enriched with elaborate silver buttons. As he stomped along the path, swearing and shouting at the other members of the party, one of the buttons was torn loose by the tree bark. A page retrieved it and returned it to his king when they reached the far side of the bog.

Maelmordha stared down gloomily at the little silver disc. “Boru can afford silver buttons,” he remarked.

“And I, the king of Leinster, have to carry trees through bogs!”

The delegation from Leinster arrived at Kincora after a difficult river crossing, in which two of the log-carriers slipped on the new Killaloe bridge and one man was crushed. Maelmordha sent his page to the palace gates to have the herald announce him, only to have the boy return with the news that Brian had gone to Cashel.

A sulky Gormlaith greeted him. Even at a distance she could see that her brother was in one of his evil tempers, and it seemed unfair to her that she should be left alone at Kincora to deal with it while Brian was in the south, collecting concubines and calling it statecraft. As servants hurried to prepare guest chambers for the king of Leinster and his party, Maelmordha and his sister faced one another with flaring nostrils in Brian’s banquet hall.

“I risked my life coming here to bring the Ard Ri some unusually fine masts for his ships,” Maelmordha complained, “and then he isn’t even here to see them arrive.”

Gowned in a robe of blue velvet, with chains of gold links crossed between her breasts, Gormlaith sank onto a cushioned bench close to the hearth and gave her brother a heavy-lidded look of contempt. “Why did you bother? Why come creeping across the land like some whipped cur to offer the Ard Ri your pitiful little gifts?”

“You wrote that you were unhappy and I wanted to comfort you,” he answered, trying briefly to control his choking

distemper. Getting into a quarrel with Gormlaith could profit him nothing and only make him feel worse.

“Ha!” she sneered. “You forget, brother, how well I know you. I’ve written you many times of my problems and you never lifted a hand to help me. No, you’re here now because you got bored at Naas, or you need the Ard Ri to do something for you, or for some other selfish reason. You cannot fool a woman sprung from the same womb you were, Maelmordha.”

“You sound even more bitter than you did the last time I was here,” he told her.

“I have my reasons.” She turned away from him to gaze into the fire.

“Well, here, this will give you something to do to take your mind off your troubles.” He fumbled with the belt at his waist and pulled his damaged tunic free, lifting it over his head while Gormlaith turned back to watch him. The mat of hair on his chest was gray and coarse, and the rank smell that came from him to her flinching nostrils was of a sour body and a more sour disposition.

He tossed the tunic into her lap. “Since you reminded me that you’re my sister, sew this button back on for me before Boru returns and sees that his gift was damaged. You might as well be of some use.”

Gormlaith grabbed the soft fabric and leaped to her feet, glaring at him. “You dog! You lickspittie weasel! You come here knowing full well that I never do sewing, and yet you throw your filthy clothes at me—at me, your queen!--and demand that I work for you!” She whirled and tossed the tunic into the flames. It flared brightly into a shimmer of red and gold and a stink of burning cloth.

“There, sew it yourself, underling!” she snapped at him. “If I’m fit to wait on others so are you, Maelmordha; you’re little more than a servant to Brian anyway, sending him the spoils of Leinster, handing him a submission he would never have gained from our father or our father’s father Shame on your beard, you so-called king!”

He stiffened in rage as she offered him the ultimate insult.

Under the law, a woman could be set aside for calling shame on her husband’s beard, but there was no such redress for a sister’s venomous tongue. He stared at her in speechless fury while the rest of his silver buttons melted in the flames.

Gormlaith saw that she had stung him deeply, and pressed her attack with pleasure. “You are a nonentity to the Ard Ri, Maelmordha. He has no respect for you at all, didn’t you know that? He never has had, since he defeated you at Glenmama. He thinks so little of you that he feels free to ignore me, knowing that I may be offered any insult and you will do nothing about it. My own brother won’t defend me because he is a craven coward, dust beneath Boru’s feet!”

He would have struck her as he had on more than one occasion in their childhood, but the hall was full of her servants and Brian’s warriors. And all of them were laughing at him. Blind with anger, he bolted for the door to seek his own chambers. He felt a dizzying desire to howl and smash faces, curbed only by his equally strong instinct for self-preservation. He passed a miserable night in the guest house, mauling his servants and drinking copious quantities of Brian’s ale. Sometime during the night he heard sounds which might have been the Ard Ri returning, but he did not venture out to see. He stayed in self-imposed isolation and nursed his grudges.

In the morning, hunger drove him to the banquet hall. Brian had indeed returned, but had not yet come to the hall. However, there was a bustle of activity, as usual. An impatient Gormlaith was awaiting her husband. Tables had been set up and a number of the nobles were playing chess, while others stood around watching them and making wagers.

Nearest the door were Conaing and Murrough, deeply involved in a game that might have been a life or death struggle. Maelmordha paused beside them, his attention momentarily drawn by the possibility of a gambit he had had some success with himself. He leaned over the chessboard, studying it intently, but neither man appeared to take any notice of him. He cleared his throat and Conaing flicked one glance at him, a glance that seemed brimming with contempt.

The smoldering within Maelmordha flickered into flame once more. Moving around to Murrough’s side of the table, he leaned over the shoulder of Brian’s son and whispered in his ear, “I promise you,, if you move your bishop there, in two moves you will have the game.”

Murrough was tired. He had ridden through most of the night to see his father on a matter of some urgency, a rare disease that had broken out among the wild pigs and seemed to be infecting the domestic livestock in his tuath as well. The disembodied voice from behind suggested a move he had overlooked, and he followed it by making a confident swoop across the board with his bishop.

Gormlaith, noticing her brother with the group at the chessboard, sauntered across the room to watch..

Conaing hid a smile of victory in his beard and countered Murrough’s play with an innocuous-seeming move by one of his pawns.

Within two more plays he declared checkmate.

Gormlaith laughed.

Murrough scowled with annoyance, then suddenly realized the identity of the advisor who had misled him. He turned around to glare at Maelmordha. “Who are you to presume to instruct me in strategy, Leinster?” he asked in a voice sharpened by fatigue. “I seem to remember your giving bad advice to the Norsemen at Glenmama, too! Your judgment is always terrible, isn’t it?”

Gormlaith looked from Murrough to her brother. “Are you going to let him criticize you like that publicly?” she demanded. “Have you no pride at all, Maelmordha?” Her tone was contemptuous.

Maelmordha felt hot blood flood across his cheeks, staining them with the color of war. “Next time I will give the Northmen better advice and they will cut Boru down!” he cried. “He is not invincible; he is an old man and his enemies are anxious to sing at his wake!”

Murrough was on his feet in the blink of an eye. His hand was on the hilt of his knife. “You better find another yew tree to hide in, you coward!” he hissed. They leaned toward each other, the air between them tingling for the first blow.

“Please, my lords,” Conaing cried, stepping between them. “You are in the king’s house!”

“There will be another time, then,” Maelmordha promised, reluctantly turning away as he became aware of Brian’s men crowding around them.

“Whenever you say!” Murrough called to his back. “Soon!”

Maelmordha went to his .chamber and ordered his servants to repack the garments they had just finished unpacking. “You won’t wait to see the Ard Ri?” they asked in surprise.

“We’re going back to Naas. Now!”

“But .. .”

“I have been insulted! Insulted in the High King’s palace, by members of his own family. So much for Boru’s precious hospitality! He is my mortal enemy as I always knew he was, and I will not spend another moment within his walls!”

When Brian came to the banquet hall to greet his guests he found the room a-buzz with news of their sudden departure. A hundred matters waited for his consideration, not the least of them being this new problem of Murrough’s, but if the king of Leinster was upset it must be dealt with immediately. Like his sister, Maelmordha soured as easily as milk in the sun.