Winter Serpent (34 page)

She shook her head. A woman could never live with a man such as this. The tending of a household and the duties of life would be impossible after nights like this. The ordinary fact of day and the wild delicious secrets of night would never mix. It would be like living a terrible dream, half world, half paradise.

He stirred beside her and looked up. “Where are you going?” he asked her.

“I must see to the child,” she said coldly.

He seized her and drew her down beside him.

“And the frown on your face? Is this the reason for it?” “Yes.”

He pulled her head down until her mouth touched his. “Not yet,” he murmured.

She pulled against him.

“Not yet, wait a while. This is what I am saying to you and yet you pull away from me. Are you the same woman who screamed out and urged me…”

She covered his mouth with her hand.

“Hush!” she said frantically. He was laughing and she drew her hand away. “You are caught and cannot get away. For that matter, so am I. I am fool enough to admit it. I will drag you before the priests with face red with your shameful longing, and declare you as my wife. It is a beautiful child you have
with you, and the next shall be mine.” “Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes?” he mocked her. “Is this all you can say to such noble intent?” “Yes,” she repeated urgently.

The following day Comac Neish led the party on a wide detour to avoid the warring clans of the mac an Leigh whose rival chiefs were laying the land waste about them. For the first time Comac rode with Doireann and talked with her, telling her of the fierce mac an Leigh and the atrocities they had brought on each other.

“It is a sad thing,” he said to her, “to think of brothers and cousins turning against each other. These blood quarrels are the most savage of all. It is because love and hate are so closely mixed.”

“I hate Calum macDumhnull who is my blood kin,” she said soberly, “but now of a sudden I am glad that there will be a peaceful hearing before the brehons concerning my troubles. There will at least be no bloodshed.”

“Well, it is a better beginning, perhaps, but you cannot know the ending of these things Many bitter quarrels have begun where the brehon judges’ decisions left off.”

“That will not be the way of it, I swear it,” she said fervently. “If the Coire is to be for me and mine, then Calum is too much of a coward to draw a sword for it. And if the judgment falls against me, and Calum and his brother Donn are given the chieftains’ chair, I will not fight it. I do not have enough allies.”

He looked at her keenly.

“Ah, you forget your friends. They are many and powerful. There is Alpin, the Ard-Ri himself, who has gone to great lengths to fetch you home. And I have the curadhs. My name is yours, and that of my kinsmen in Eire. When we get to Cumhainn I will send Diarmidh by a fast ship to Ulaidh to the hall of my cousins, and they will lend me swordmen and the weight of their prestige, as kinsmen should. They will command respect for you in Cumhainn as no barefoot hill-chiefs could.”

“It is not necessary that you do this for me,” she said.

“Necessary? I do it not only for you but for myself. You do not think I would let the macDumhnulls outface me nor the woman I have said I would marry?”

The day was suddenly hotter, more oppressive, and her heart began to beat heavily.

“Comac Neish,” she told him, “if I say that I trust you, remember that I have never before given my love to any man. I am alone, and have only the child. Promise me that there will be no shedding of blood in the Coire.”

He reached out and pulled at the reins of her horse. The mounts stopped, and he looked down into her face.

“Are you not the famed woman of Lorne whom men are fated to love? Are you not also my beloved? I give you my hand, which has brought the death
of many brave men, and tell you that it is always there to protect you. Those who would strike at you will also strike at me and my kinsmen. With me by your side you shall claim your father’s hall and there shall be none strong enough to challenge you.”

She lifted her eyes to him and saw in the glaring sunshine his rough face and smiling wild eyes.

“You would stay with me then, and my hall would be yours?”

“I am homeless and landless,” he said, suddenly bitter. “What could have been mine was forfeited unjustly in a quarrel, and it is gone. I am pledged to Alpin’s service, but he would free me if I asked it. Yet I would always owe him loyalty, and the tribesmen with me. I would also say this bluntly out of respect for your trust: if I were your husband in Cumhainn it would not be long before the clans there would call me chieftain.”

“I don’t know,” she said suddenly. “I am thinking that you are too clever for me.” “And this is as it should be, for I would fear you greatly if you were the

clever one.”

In circling the lands of the mac an Leigh they were close to the valley of the crannog of Glen Laghan. In a thoughtless moment Doireann chattered to Comac Neish of the winter flight she had made to the deserted village and of the hermit who lived there. In the midst of the recital she remembered Flann and turned to look at him, her voice fading guiltily away. His face, after the first shock, was unreadable.

“Did you then learn the name of this mad holy man?” he asked her quietly. “He said his name was Kevin, but of what clan or what land he did not

say,” she whispered.

“But after you had met with me in Inverness you suspected something of his story and mine? That he was, my brother and that I had spent many seasons in search of him here and in Ireland?” Flann pursued.

The curadhs drew up their horses and listened, their faces turning from one to the other interestedly. Doireann was full of flushed confusion. She glanced at Comac for support, but his eyes were bland.

“I was not sure,” she cried.

“You listened to Conor the bard telling of the three brothers of the Ui

Cinnsealaigh and it did not remind you off my journey and my quest?”

“You do not know it is the man,” she flung at him. “Why do you blame me now?” “It was to find my brother that I came into the land of the Picts and endured captivity. In all this wandering the thought of my failure has dogged
me with my other failures, when a word from you would have spared me!” “But all men know of the wild man of Glen Laghan,” she protested. “It is
no secret. You would have heard of this in time.” Her eyes dropped before his and she averted her face.

“You would have left me,” she whispered. “And I am alone enough now.” Flann sighed.

“There is a great wonder in me concerning the power which you have and which you foolishly abuse.”

She scrambled down from her horse and went to him and laid her hand on his arm.

“I have done nothing wrong,” she told him. “Gladly would I give you the tongue out of my head if it would pacify you. Suppose it had been Barra who had done this, thinking to keep you with us for our safety. Would you condemn him then?”

“So reckless are you in your self-seeking that you can not give thought to others!” he cried. “Did you think, as Conor said, that I had no other purpose, in this life save to wander the land with you, a prisoner in your train? I am not your servant, but a man of God!”

“So these are the evil things you have been thinking, this strange mood which has lain upon you since we left Inverness! Then I will prove to you that you have lost no time in your precious search. I would not have you with me unwillingly! I will go to Glen Laghan with you, for I am sure you will find what you are seeking there. I am not afraid of the place.”

But Comac Neish protested.

“We should not turn aside from the path to Cumhainn,” he warned her. “We are now in the land of many small tribes and there are here clans of the macDumhnulls who might be sympathetic to the Red Foxes.”

“I have told you what I will do,” she said stubbornly, “if only to prove to Flann the Culdee that his time with us has not been wasted. I will ride into the valley of Glen Laghan, and if you and your curadhs do not wish to enter you may wait for me in the pass.”

Glen Laghan was changed. It was as silent as ever, but the flat plains about the lake were covered with tall grass which rippled in the dry August wind and appeared as desolate as the expanse of the great sea. Without a word Doireann handed Ian to Barra and spurred her horse after the Culdee, who had descended the hillside and was making his way through the shoulder-high grass toward the lake.

When she had come abreast of him she dismounted and followed him on foot, leading the horse.

“Flann,” she called breathlessly after she had walked for some time, “I cannot keep up with you.”

He did not answer her and she pulled at his bare arm. He had laid aside his spear but he still wore warrior dress.

“In God’s name,” she cried, “will you not speak to me, or are you still angry?”

“I am not angry with you. But there is nothing that I have to say to you now.” “In a little while we will part,” she said, desperately. “Have you no bless-

ing, no advice?”

“Why do you ask advice of me now, you who have so confidently followed your own way?”

“Oh, Flann, do not quarrel with me now, as you leave me.”

“I cannot quarrel with you. Nor can I advise you, for the burden of my past counsel rests heavy on my heart.”

“You blame me still for the blood which was shed at Inverness!”

“I am past blaming you. I can no longer find the right in your affairs. I have abandoned reason, for the world is mad. I cannot even judge God’s methods with reason, for it is too imperfect an instrument with which to approach the Infinite. Now you have my dilemma. I am like a ship which is driven upon the rocks of faith and lies stranded there. I am tired, tired, and I no longer understand this life about me. It seems that the very earth languishes with me and I suffer when it suffers. I dread the onrushing night of the pagan. The dry death of this hell-filled summer oppresses me, and my heart is filled with foreboding.”

“Do not say these things!” she cried, shaken. “You are a monk and know
God and are at peace with Him. What is the matter with you?” He took off his helmet and spread his arms wide.

“Do I look the man of peace and the man of God?”

“But what of me? I suffer also! What am I to do without you?”

“You have leaned on my faith because you have none of your own,” he accused her. “Has this comforted you, this borrowed strength? Well, then, regard me and know that I despair, and that we are both comfortless.”

“No, this is not true!” she said frantically. “Why do you leave me saying this when you know I am already frightened and alone?”

“You are not alone,” he reminded her, and she flushed. “As for your fears; I pray they will someday drive you to God, for I cannot.”

“So it is because you think I will be happy in another man’s arms that you are angry with me! You will have me miserable and unhappy and my mouth full of prayers, for that is the only way you may possess me.”

He smiled thinly.

“You are not a stupid woman. See your words and the extent of your selfdeception. You may follow your path blindly and listen to the evil advice of others, but you are sinning against yourself as well as God. There was once a time when you were innocent of much that befell you, but this time is past. You must begin to reckon the penalty which you must pay. And the penalty which your child will pay for your mistakes. As I rode with you this day I shaded my eyes, for it seemed the blazing sun played tricks upon them and I
could see a red haze of dust and death about you. Then above your head I saw a shadowy cross and I was reminded of the cross you wear about your neck. The cross on which I took my vows. Though I despair, I am not helpless, for I turn to God and am not alone. But I would spare myself this last agony, this sight of your death.”

“I shall remember the words you have spoken to me!” she cried, shaking with fright. “I see you have much to bring to your brother the wild hermit, for you are both mad!”

She mounted the horse quickly and jerked its head about.

“You are right that this is a mad world without reason,” she shouted at him, “and a mad God and insane priests in it! I do not need your help. Go to Kevin and wander the crannog and pray. You will still be comfortless when you have finished!”

She kicked the horse sharply and it leaped forward, and they went down the wind through the tall grass as though pursued by the devil.

18

T
he wind was offshore, blowing hot as a furnace from the mountains and creating an ugly swell in the sea. The Viking ships bobbed up and down in the trough and the crest. The sky was like a brass bowl overhead and Sweyn went among the half-naked men with a bucket

of sea water, drenching their sunburned backs. Yet they rowed steadily against the wind, holding the ships near the land just over the horizon. The two men at the fire amidships were red-faced and sweating, although the man they held between them was white as death and cold to the touch.

“He will talk soon,” Sweyn said, coming to the Jarl. “He is near death.” The other man looked down at the group before the mast, his face
expressionless.