Lion of Ireland (41 page)

“Was it?” they clamored to know. “Was his faith strong enough?”

“That’s another story, and must be told some other time,” Deirdre answered. “On clear days Tir-na-n-Og is sometimes glimpsed from the westernmost cliffs of Ireland, and its music comes drifting over the waters like a forgotten song. Many have dived into the sea and attempted to swim to it. The dark in heart are always drowned and washed back upon the rocks. Only the strong and beautiful in spirit wade through the surf and onto the shores of Hy Brazil.

“But few truly have the ability to be happy in such a world, strange as that may seem. There are those who grow discontented, even in Tir-na-n-Og, because there is no challenge for them there. They must return to the land of the mortals and continue to fight for life and food and a bit of earth to be buried in.”

“It isn’t heaven you’re talking about, is it, Mother?” asked Conor, wrinkling his forehead.

Deirdre’s smile was sad. “No, dear, it isn’t heaven. Not the heaven in the Bible. It’s a pagan place, and the stories about it are so old that no one knows where they came from.”

“But is it true, is there really a Tir-na-n-Og?” Emer crowded against her mother, looking hopefully into Deirdre’s

face.

There are some questions that must never be answered, Brian thought. He stepped from his hiding place into the light, and felt the old familiar pain when he saw the sudden fright leap in his wife’s eyes. Whatever malign force it was that had blighted her life with terror, it still stood between them. Cashel was not Tir-na-n-og; his lovely princess lived in a dark and fearful world.

His children regarded him with varying degrees of awe. He stood on one side of the invisible line called adulthood, and they on the other—and he could never remember having crossed over. He felt a mild surprise that they did not recognize in him their own sense of wonder, of fascination with the tales which were their common heritage. But he could not drop down on the floor with them and say, “Go on, Deirdre, tell us another story.”

He could not say, “Yes, there is a land of Tir-na-n-Og, and I will take you all there to be happy forever.”

He could not even say, “I love you, Deirdre—don’t look at

me like that.”

“Leave us,” he said to the children, not unkindly. “I need to talk with your mother.”

The flowerlike face she lifted to him was as beautiful as

ever, all traces of fear carefully wiped from the shadowed violet eyes. But he knew without having to think about it that if he put a casual hand on her shoulder she would tremble, and if he stood too close to her she would shrink inside her clothes, and tolerate him. Only tolerate him.

It was this place, this dark and gloomy pile of ancient stone, with its ghosts and its memories, its odors of sanctity and incense that somehow stifled children’s laughter. Mahon had wanted to turn it all into a splendid religious center, a shrine as far removed from life as Tir-na-n-Og was from reality, and had he lived there might have come a time when there were no banquet tables at Cashel, no marriage beds, no little ones racing and laughing through the passageways.

And it might be better so.

“My lady, I’ve come to bid you goodbye for a while,” he” began, couching his words as gently as possible. But she always knew.

“You’re going to war again?”

“It’s Molloy of Desmond. The time has come when he must stand to account for my brother’s murder; I can put it off no longer. I go to dispense long-overdue justice, Deirdre.”

She said nothing, merely watched his face. A fantasy flickered across his mind: Deirdre with tears in her eyes, throwing her arms around him, begging him not to leave. A warm and passionate Deirdre, clinging to him as Fithir had clung to Mahon the morning Mahon left for Bruree.

As Fiona had once clung to him.

“Be careful,” Deirdre said at last, her voice very low.

He had to leave her with something. “When I was a boy,” he told her, “there was a hill where I used to play. It was a piece of high ground overlooking the Shannon, not far from Boruma, and a favorite game of mine was to go up there alone and pretend that I was a king.”

Her eyes were fixed on his face.

“I am king now, Deirdre. King of Thomond, and, when Molloy is dead, undisputed king of Munster. And I want my own stronghold from which to rule. Let the priests have Cashel; that will please Marcan, he can offer it as a penance dearly bought with blood. If you like the idea, when I come back from the west country I will have a new palace built on that hill in Thomond, a home of our very own. A place of radiance.”

Her eyes widened; he had heard the story she was telling, then, and was offering to build a Tir-na-n-Og for her. If she had the strength to believe in it.

“Are you asking for my approval, my lord? You are the king; you need no one’s permission save that of God.”

“I can’t give a gift unless there is someone to receive it, Deirdre. Would you want me to build a palace for you on the hill at Kincora, if I promise you that it will be as beautiful and secure as mortal man can make it?”

She dropped her eyes to her hands, twisting together in her lap. It was so much easier to talk to him when there were other people around! “Yes, Brian,” she told him, her voice so soft that he had to lean over her to hear it, which alarmed her and irritated him.

“What did you say?” he snapped, feeling his good intentions slipping away.

She pitched her voice louder, so that it sounded shrill and unnatural to her own ears. “Yes, my lord! I would be very happy to share such a palace with you!” And then she knew that in some curious way she had hurt him, and her guilt gave her the audacity to reach out and take his big brown hand with her own small white one. “Please, Brian,” she said in a more normal tone, “I really would like it. It would be so good to leave here; I’ve always hated this place.”

He was surprised. “I didn’t know that! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know there was anything to be done about it.” “Ah, lady, there is always something that can be done. If I had known you felt that way we would never have lived here at all. We could have had a compound of our own beyond the Rock, or on the banks of the Suir. But you must share your feelings with me, Deirdre; don’t expect me to read your mind.”

“It is said that you have a gift for doing that.”

He shook his head regretfully. “It doesn’t work with women!”

Aware that Brian was coming for him, Molloy made one last desperate effort to recruit allies. But the name of Desmond had lost its magic. His defiance of God had made him many enemies; former friends shrugged eloquently and showed him their empty hands. With every threat or promise at his command he rode from tuath to tuath of his kingdom, waving his sword and hurling threats at Cashel, but most folk stayed indoors and barred their gates against him.

Some few Northmen stood with him, but when he marched to meet Brian’s forces at Belach-Lechta he still had only a thousand men, and the full weight of southern Ireland was bearing down upon him.

Belach-Lechta, near the pass of Barnaderg.

A stone cross stood there to commemorate the spot where King Mahon the Dalcassian had been slain; Brian and his officers knelt there and left a gift of flowers.

The two armies came together three miles beyond.

When camp was pitched before battle morning, Brian rode among his men, already savoring tomorrow’s victory and anxious to see it in their faces as well. They waved to him from their cooking fires; .relaxed, confident, aware that they had twice the number of warriors Molloy could hope to field, and Right was on their side. It was a holy war; a great man was being avenged.

Sophisticated tactics would not be required to defeat the Desmonians; it was to be a straightforward battle, a final mopping-up of the last rebels against the new rule in Munster. A good, clean battle.

Something prickled at the back of Brian’s neck, some atavistic-instinct warning him of the unexpected.

He reined in his horse. His escort, led by Fergus and Reardon Bent Knee, pulled up behind him. “What is it, my lord?”

“I don’t know .. . something . . . when things seem to be going too easily, watch out.” He raked his keen gaze over the spread blanket of his army, row upon row of seasoned warriors. It was a sight to reassure, not alarm.

And yet . . .

An officer’s tent, pitched in the center of a company of men, rippled slightly over its surface with a passing wind. A young face, a page perhaps, or a body servant, glanced .out briefly and then ducked back. Sitting on his horse, Brian froze.

“Whose tent is that?”

“I’ll find out, my lord.”

“It doesn’t matter, just bring me the lad inside there.

Quickly!”

He waited, tall on his horse, his face carefully clean of expression, while Reardon trotted over to the tent and vanished within. There was a sound of voices, a brief but loud protest, and then he returned, followed by Murrough.

A flushed, defiant Murrough, dressed in a soldier’s tunic that lapped his boyish frame and reached his knees. He stood bright-eyed before his father, his shoulders braced.

“Before God, I can’t believe this!” Brian swore, torn between anger and amusement. “Who helped you do this foolish thing, boy?”

“I didn’t need anyone to help me, my lord,” Murrough answered strongly although his voice began with a suspicious quiver. “I’m old enough to come to fight by myself.”

“But not so brave that you would do it openly, it seems. Does your mother know of this?”

“No, sir.” Murrough stuck out his chin. “I thought not. It probably never occurred to her that you were so eager to get yourself killed. I shudder to think what she would say to me if you went home with so much as a chipped tooth. You have put us both in jeopardy, boy, and I do not thank you for it.”

Brian’s men were smiling openly, their teeth flashing in their beards. Man and boy looked at each other, a generation separating them, and it was easy to see Brian’s youth reflected in his son. Even Brian recognized it, and it took a mighty effort of will to avoid being influenced by it.

He turned briskly to Fergus. “Take care of this whelp, Fergus. See that he gets a look at the fighting, so that he’ll know what it’s about, but don’t let him get in the way.” He turned back to his son. “I’ll deal with you later,” he promised.

The battle was brief, one-sided, its outcome predetermined. The Northmen who had stood with Molloy deserted him as soon as they became aware of the superior numbers arrayed against them, but Brian ordered a detachment to pursue and kill them anyway. “Let the foreigners learn what it costs to interfere in our affairs!” he cried.

Molloy led his men in the first few minutes of the battle, then disappeared from the scene, and with his going the heart went out of the Desmonians. The slaughter that followed was swift and harsh. Brian had given the order that men be cut down in their tracks unless they asked outright for mercy, and by the time the sun stood overhead there were hundreds dead where once the king of Munster had died alone.

Molloy was not to be found.

Brian raged among his officers. “He must be captured! That man cannot be allowed to live to enjoy another sunset!” He rounded on Cahal, who had led the assault on Molloy’s right. “I thought you had found him and marked him for me!”

The king of Delvin More snarled back, “I did, but the coward threw aside his princely cloak and abandoned his horse during the thick of the fighting. By the time you got to us, my lord, no one could identify him. And then he was gone entirely.”

“Damn it! I want every Dalcassian put to the task of finding him; now! There will be no fires lit and no food eaten until I have Molloy—and by God, if my own Dalcassians can’t catch him, then I’ll spread every man here over Munster like a net until that murderer stands before me. I have promised him to my sword!”

Search parties scattered in every direction. Fergus, as one of Brian’s inner circle from the outlaw days, should have been leading one of the companies, but he came instead to Brian, sweat on his face and a curious expression in his eyes.

“Yes, Fergus, what is it now?”

“More bad news, I’m afraid. Your son is missing also.” There was no way to tell that but baldly; the dreadful words spat out upon the air like arrows to wound and kill. Fergus shrank from the expression in Brian’s eyes.

“You’ve lost my son?”

It was well known of Brian Boru that he recognized no excuses, and Fergus offered none. “I had given him my horse to hold, my lord, and placed him well behind the front line. He simply handed the horse to someone else and vanished.”

Brian looked out in agony at the battlefield, where men still convulsed in the final act of dying, or shrieked and cried for water or mother. One of them might be Murrough. “Find him,” he said bleakly.

Among the anxious searchers who fanned out across the countryside was a tall man on a horse. His face was so closed, his manner so forbidding that even Padraic fell back and walked a dozen paces behind him. Alone, sick at heart, the easy triumph and sweet revenge soured in his belly, Brian moved among the dead, looking for his son.

The hut was long abandoned, tumbledown, its thatched roof reintegrated with its native soil. A great weight of hawthorn leaned against it, crushing it back into the earth. No door remained, merely a crooked aperture between two sagging posts, but it was sufficient for a man to squeeze through.

He stood very still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The air was close, dead, with a mustiness that made

his nose itch. Sweat trickled down his neck. It was very quiet in the hut; even the spiders that had laced its decaying walls with cobwebs were still, as if watching him.

He drew a deep, shaky breath. And then another. He felt greedy for the air that meant he was still alive.

No one had seen him headed this way, running doubled over among the trees, and it would be dark in a few hours. If he was still undiscovered by then, it might be safe to try to complete his escape. But not by going home—Boru would surely have men waiting for him there.