Lion of Ireland (9 page)

Brian let the mare run herself out. At last she dropped back to a jolting trot, and then to a walk, her heart hammering against his calves as strongly as his own was still pounding in his breast. The little bay pony eventually caught up to them, covered with lather and whinnying pitifully in its fear of being left behind.

The young man was surprised to find his body had forgotten its earlier soreness. At a safe distance from the outlaws he began to think that perhaps he could have turned and fought them, if only his mare hadn’t chosen that moment to run away. His knife was sharp and a stout blackthorn club was securely lashed atop his luggage. He sat straight once more, the sun beating down on his head, and, smiling to himself, he imagined the heroic battle he might have waged.

Midafternoon found him crossing a broad valley where the warmth of summer lay in a golden haze upon the land. The rich, heavy scent of loamy earth filled his nostrils and coated the back of his throat. Green was everywhere, in every conceivable shade, not only in the trees and grass but in the air itself; a verdant light filled with magic. Everything the eye met was softened, the edges blurred, the distances melting into one another until all perspective was lost.

He stopped by a stream to water the horses and wash his face with the cool, sparkling liquid that laughed to itself as it tumbled over its stony bed. The last fly-orchids were still blooming in the marshy patches, and the meadow was carpeted with gold and crimson vetch and the blue flowers of the milkwort. Bees hummed. The horses finished their drink and began cropping the thick grass that grew temptingly close to the water’s edge. Warm air moved languidly, caressing the sweated skin.

Pagan summer, voluptuous, overflowing with seductions. The abundance of the land seemed to offer a promise of inexhaustible riches. Without conscious guidance, Brian’s feet began to move in little patterns on the grass, and soon he was dancing with abandon access the meadow, celebrating his youth and his freedom with an exuberant whirl of his own invention. «

When the earth began to spin faster than he, he staggered to a stop, laughing, his legs braced wide apart.

Then the laughter froze in his throat.

Directly in front of him at the edge of the woods stood a slender young girl, her hair the exact color of oak leaves in autumn, her wide brown eyes watching him curiously. “Are you mad?” she asked in a soft, breathy voice.

The honeyed call of summer reached even to the Druid’s hut, deep in its damp and mossy glade. All day Fiona had been aware of the warmth beyond the woods, the dazzle of sunlight sifting through the interlaced branches of the trees. She went about her tasks with a faraway mind, sweeping her grandfather’s hearth and preparing his food without paying any attention to what her hands were doing.

When Camin lay down for his customary afternoon nap, she unwrapped the apron from her waist and hung it on its peg. Enough of aprons! Enough of pots, and brooms, and being under a roof. Camin was very dear, but he was so old, and his sour breath rattled his beard as he slept. Fiona felt that if she stayed in his company one more minute her own hair would start to gray and her shoulders stoop with the weight of the years.

Out, out into the fresh air and the singing of birds! She knew each songster by its real name, its Druidic name, and she called greetings to her friends as she passed by. She walked beneath the oaks and felt them stretching upward, yearning for the sun. She reached out a slender arm to let her fingers trail across the trunks of the familiar giants, feeling the strength in this one, the tenderness in that one.

“Each tree has its own name and its own personality,” Camin had taught her when she still had her baby teeth. “You have only to touch them and open you mind. Make your mind empty of all things that are about you, blank as a blue sky, and wait for the tree to give you its thoughts.” He took her tiny hand and pressed it against the trunk of a sapling alder. “Just wait,” he said, “and be empty. The tree will fill you with itself.”

She stood patiently, almost holding her breath, trying to cut off any random thought of her own. And at last it came, an awareness that was not hers. Her eyes lighted with wonder as she turned to her grandfather, astonished with the miracle that coursed through her fingertips. “I feel it!” she cried. “It’s without words, but it’s like .. . like knowing ...” The girl’s forehead scrunched into a childish imitation of a frown. “The tree is frightened, Grandfather!”

Camin smiled, pleased with her success. “So it is, my child. See how the ivy is growing around it, starting the climb upward? Ivy is very powerful; in time it will choke the life from the alder.”

Fiona was horrified. “The tree has to stand here and just wait for that to happen, feeling so helpless and afraid? That’s awful!”

“It isn’t helpless,” Camin comforted her, “because we will befriend it.” He crouched down and untwined the ivy with gentle fingers, freeing each small sucker with great care so as not to damage the plant. Then he led the vine over the ground to a large gray boulder that rose cleanly from the soil, and on this he curled the ivy, winding it about the rock until it was secure enough to stay in place by itself. He staked it along the ground with several small twigs, to prevent its return to the alder.

“Now, my child, we will leave your new friend. But we will come back tomorrow and you can listen to the tree again.” True to his word, on the following day Camin took his granddaughter back to the alder, and placed her hand once more on its trunk. She stood for a moment, her head cocked to one side, her small face very serious. Then she broke into a wide grin.

“It’s happy! The tree feels so happy now!” She seized Gamin’s hand and bounced up and down in her excitement. The old Druid’s dark eyes sparkled. “It had a narrow escape; life is experienced most intensely after such moments.” “But why did we have to wait until today to feel the tree being happy? Wasn’t it relieved yesterday, when you pulled the ivy away?”

Camin squatted on his heels, to put his eyes on a level with his granddaughter’s; he reached an arm in a sheltering arc and drew her close to him. “Time is not the same for all living creatures, Fiona. We Celts reckon its passage in nights, the Northmen measure it by days. But for the trees, the measurements of time are summer and winter, spring and fall. So they live much more slowly than we do, and every change within them is gradual. If a tree is cut down today, it may not realize what has happened and begin to die until the next sunrise. Everything has its own time.”

She thought of that now as she passed beneath the big oaks that had witnessed all of her childhood, and the first bloom of her womanhood. Measured by the trees’ time, this was the height of the day. The hour of utmost living, when the roots pushed hungrily through the soil and the greedy leaves drank in the sunlight.

There’s a world out there beyond these woods, she thought, and I may never see it. I may live and die right here, and never know what lies more titan a few miles away. She shivered, though the day was warm.

Beyond the woods the sunlit meadow beckoned. How delightful it would be to gather an armful of bright flowers and arrange them in a bowl to put on the table with the evening meal! Some living color in that perpetually dark hut would be just the thing to restore a little of the warmth of youth to Gamin’s old flesh.

She started out into the clearing, only to pause midstride in astonishment.

A young man was dancing there, all alone, whirling dizzily in a shaft of sunlight. His hair flamed like polished copper, and his face bore the pallor of one who has spent much time under roofs. But there was a wild joy in him that spoke to something in the lonely girl. She could see no visible reason for his rapture, and yet it was an echo of something she felt within herself, a celebration of life engendered by this radiant day.

He spun to a halt directly in front of her and opened his

eyes—clear gray eyes, fringed with a silky crescent of gold ashes. His expression was compounded of exultation and shock. He could have been a dangerous lunatic on the verge of attacking her.

“Are you mad?” she heard -herself asking. Even as the words left her, she was aware how ridiculous they would be if he were really mad, but it was too late to unsay them.

Fortunately, they had a steadying effect on Brian, whose’ only insanity was that of youth and freedom.

He made a visible effort to gather his wits and give her a reassuring answer. “I don’t think so,” he said at last, trying to sound sane in spite of the foolishness he felt. “I mean, no one has ever called me mad, so I suppose I’m all right.”

That didn’t sound convincing, even to Brian. Flustered, he began again. “I mean, I’m fine, really! It’s just that the day is so beautiful, and a while ago I outran a whole pack of outlaws who meant to rob me, and .

. . and . . .” He ran down, unable to think of things to say and wishing he could melt into the earth.

Fiona grinned, white teeth flashing in her heart-shaped face. There was obviously no harm in this boy, whatever the reason for his abandoned dancing on the meadow. “It’s all right,” she assured him, “you don’t have to explain. I was merely surprised at seeing you here like this; I’ve never seen anyone quite like you before.”

“Neither have I,” Brian agreed. “I mean, anyone like you!” He stopped in confusion, aware that he was beginning to stammer, his feet were too big, and he did not know what to do with’ his hands.

They stared at each other; shy, embarrassed, both desperately eager to reach out to someone new. His years at Clonmacnoise had brought Brian into little contact with the opposite sex; he knew them mainly through troublesome dreams whose memory made him blush as his eyes strayed down the girl’s body.

Her swelling breasts, the obvious curve of her hips, even the tangled length of her unbound hair captivated and terrified him. A living girl . . .

The silence lengthened. “How far is it to Kilmallock from

here?” Brian ventured at last, only to have his voice humiliated him by cracking in mid-word and dropping to an unexpected bass.

But Fiona did not laugh. She could not be critical of Brian’s voice, when something had gone wrong with her own breathing and her heart was hammering in a most strange fashion. She worried that he might notice it, leaping like a netted trout beneath her plain wool bodice.

“It’s too far to ride by sundown,” she ventured to guess, not really knowing. “But you’re -welcome to stay the night with us, my grandfather and me, if you wish. It is lawless in these parts; you would not be safe camping out by yourself.” She could not let him ride away, not yet, not when his presence was making these thrilling things happen inside her.

A bedazzled Brian collected his horses and led them into the woods, following the Druid’s granddaughter.

The old man was awake when they arrived. Brian gaped at Gamin’s hut in frank curiosity, never having seen such a house before. It was built among—or of—the trunks of ancient trees. Part of it was—perhaps—a cave, leading back into a grassy hillock. Its exact outlines were concealed and camouflaged by a mass of shrubbery and vines, tumbled mossy rocks and slabs of old wood leaned against one another in haphazard fashion. It seemed not so much a construction as an accident of nature.

Their approaching voices had awakened Gamin from a dream of himself as a young man. He rose to meet them, his brain still fuzzed with sleep, and was startled at the appearance of the youth who might have been himself in his dream. Had he moved through time, then? Started over, gone back—or forward?

“Grandfather, I have asked this traveler to honor us by being our guest for the night,” Fiona told him, shyly proud of showing off her good manners in front of Brian. “I told him you would make him welcome,” she added, catching her lower lip between her teeth and begging him with her eyes.

But there was no resistance to be feared from Gamin. At last recognizing himself as the old man in the scene, and the

youth as a newcomer, he lowered his white head in a deep bow and extended his two hands before him, palms upward. Brian touched them with his own, thus formally acknowledging that both men were unarmed. “I am Brian mac Cennedi, prince of Thomond,” he announced. But his tide, small though it was, had even less weight here. It seemed to make no impression on either of them, and he felt a pang of disappointment. What good was noble birth if someone, somewhere, did not react with deference?

Fiona insisted on caring for his horses herself, admiring their beauty and whispering to them as she worked. Then she prepared a meal of boiled roots, seasoned with mushrooms and a variety of unfamiliar but tasty herbs. Her bread was coarse and dark, equally delicious, and Brian complimented her by eating every last crumb.

Camin ate little and said less, his eyes watching Brian.

Fiona served an ancient mead, its honey long since fermented into something more potent, and her grandfather mumbled a blessing over their wooden cups in a tongue so archaic Brian could understand nothing of it.

As they sipped the brew, Fiona attempted shy conversation. “Your lovely black horse—what’s her name?”

“I haven’t given her one; actually, I hadn’t even thought

about it.”

The girl was scandalized. “Oh, but you must’ name her! Names are so important, everything must have its own word and symbol. Horses have their true names, of course”—Brian was mystified by this statement—“but you should also give her a name of your choosing.”

He swirled the mead in his cup, looking down into its amber depths. “I can’t think of one.” Then he thought of a gift he could give her, and seized on the opportunity. “Will you name her for me? I would treasure any name you gave her.”

A blush moved up from Fiona’s bare throat to her rounded cheeks, visible even through the light tan that had become her permanent complexion. Keeping her eyes downcast, she considered for a moment and then offered, “You might call her Briar Rose. She is beautiful, like the rose, but something in her eyes tells me she has thorns as well.”

Brian burst into laughter. It was such an accurate description of the essence of the mare; it seemed that no other name could ever have suited her. “Briar Rose! From this day forward!” he promised, and saw a light leaping in Fiona’s eyes. After the meal came the hour in which Camin customarily went off by himself to pray. Hospitality required that he entertain his guest, but the religion in his blood was older, more demanding, than the social conventions. He gave Fiona one long and searching look, then left the hut.