Pride of Lions (11 page)

But Donough, who had spoken out of an excess of emotion, did not notice.

Maeve did, however. Suddenly she had the strange sensation that the ground had shifted under her, under all of them, and she wanted to run to her husband and feel his arms around her. With an effort she restrained herself.

Teigue turned toward the chief brehon.

"I do not accept my brother's claim of a will in his favor," he announced in a voice stiff with formality. "Unless and until such a claim is proved, I intend to retain the control of Kincora, which my father gave into my hands for safe-keeping."

Donough whirled on him. "Do you claim all else that was his as well? Do you mean to be King of Munster too, and possess the fortress of Cashel?" He started to say more but common sense finally caught up with him and he refrained from asking if Teigue wanted to be Ard Ri.

What he had already said was enough to constitute a challenge, however. Teigue's pride forced him to respond, "I will serve my people in whatever way they decide."

"The Owenachts may fight you for the kingship of Munster," warned a prince from the Slieve Aughty mountains.

"Then I'll fight," Teigue replied grimly.

In spite of himself Donough laughed aloud.

"Teigue Mac Brian, fight? The closest you ever came to emulating our father was when you made canoes out of bark and sailed them on the Shannon. And then you let them get away from you."

Maeve hurled her thoughts at her husband with all the strength she possessed. Leave it be! she shouted at him silently. Stop now before this goes any further!

But he did not hear. Addressing Donough, but speaking for the benefit of everyone in the hall, Teigue announced, "In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I must consider myself Brian Boru's heir. Donough, I invite you to remain as my guest at Kincora until Carroll and the others return from Armagh. If at that time your claim to our father's stronghold is confirmed, I will of course surrender it to you. In the meantime I ask those present to vote on the chieftaincy of the Dal Cais."

"And what of Munster?" someone called.

No! Maeve shouted silently.

With shadows in his eyes Teigue said, "If I become chief of the Dal Cais, I am willing to hold the kingship of Munster for my tribe."

For a man who was chief poet of Munster, a rank second in status to that of the king, Mac Liag had a very modest home. Built of timber planking, it was rectangular in shape with a sod roof and only two chambers. But Mac Liag loved his house by the lake. It had, he rhapsodized, "An ash tree on one side of the doorway and a hazel on the other. A row of pines behind, singing with the wind. Salmon and pike and perch and Gillaroo trout for my supper, and the song of the lark to wake me in the morning."

In the poet's old age his widowed son Cumara lived with him and tended his simple needs.

It was Cumara who answered Donough's knock on the doorframe--the door itself was hardly ever closed--and made no effort to hide his surprise. "No one calls on my father here,"

he told the unexpected visitor. "The Ard Ri was the only exception. This is father's private place; those who wish to see the chief poet attend him at Kincora."

"I want to see him, but I don't want to talk to him inside Kincora," Donough told the round-shouldered, brown-haired Cumara, who in spite of being a widower was but a decade older than himself.

"I'll send him out to you if he's willing," the other man replied.

As Donough waited he gazed out across the lake. Lough Derg, the Red Lake. Sometimes carmined by sunset, sometimes flushed with tides of roseate plankton that appeared and vanished inexplicably.

Sometimes stained with blood.

"You sought me, Prince Donough?" inquired a mellifluous voice behind him.

Donough turned and looked down at Mac Liag. He had last seen the poet in the hall at Kincora three months earlier, but in those three months Mac Liag had aged years. His subcutaneous fat had melted away, leaving his flesh sagging from his bones like a garment borrowed from a much larger man.

Donough said, "You were my father's friend, and I need a friend now."

Inclining his head in the direction of Kincora, Mac Liag replied, "Surely you have many friends inside."

"Do I? And who would they be? Friends of my mother's, perhaps?"

"Perhaps."

"Come now, Mac Liag, you know she had no friends here."

"That was her own doing. Brian gave her every opportunity to have a good life with him. Had she made him happy, his friends would have been hers."

It was the first time Donough had ever heard anyone refer to his father's happiness--or lack of it.

Such a possibility had never crossed his mind.

He was so young that the emotions of others were still abstractions to him, Brian's most of all.

"Isn't being a king enough to make any man happy?" he asked.

Mac Liag gave him a long look.

"Walk with me, lad. Walk with me and we shall talk of kingship. And other things." Over his shoulder he called, "We'll be back by sundown."

The poet's son appeared in the

doorway. Cumara had the face of the perpetually anxious, with deep frown lines scoring his brow, and pale blue eyes that anticipated bad news. "Don't you need me to come with you?"

"Not necessary. If I require an arm to lean on I'm sure I can rely on my young friend here," Mac Liag replied.

They strolled away from the house by the lake, following a winding path among the murmurous pines. Donough waited for Mac Liag to begin the conversation, but the poet, for once, was silent.

Even their footfalls were hushed by the centuries-deep carpet of pine needles.

When Donough cleared his throat to speak, Mac Liag put a restraining hand on his arm.

"Smell."

"Smell?"

"The fragrance of the pines. My feet press out perfumed oils as I walk, and the blackbird on the high branch sings to me. And I am happy, do you understand?"

Donough was plainly puzzled. "Not really. I thought we were going to talk about kingship."

"We are," said the poet. "I know what happened in the hall yesterday, even though I was not present. There are no secrets at Kincora.

You were foolhardy to challenge Teigue for your father's palace."

"I have as much right to it as he has."

"But you are ..."

"Don't tell me I'm too young!" Donough flared. "I'm a man by every law, including that of nature."

"I was going to say you are inexperienced," Mac Liag replied smoothly. "What do you know of managing a vast strongholding?"

"I've spent my life at Kincora, watching Brian Boru. Surely that's enough experience."

"You've spent your life at Kincora, but not watching Brian Boru. Until he threw her out, your mother kept you as far away from him as possible. You weren't trained at his elbow, you were hidden behind her skirts. And I never noticed you rebelling," Mac Liag added.

"I did rebel! Every chance I got. But she was always ..."

"I know. Gormlaith did everything she could to keep you a child. You were an ornament to be taken out and paraded when she wanted to boast of her motherhood at an age when other women are boasting of their grandchildren."

Donough turned and faced the poet squarely.

"Do you hate Gormlaith the way everyone else does?"

"Hate?" Mac Liag considered the word. "I never hated her. Do you hate the storm that blows down your trees?"

"Then will you be my friend although I am Gormlaith's son?"

Pity moved the old man to say, "Of course I will be your friend, lad. For your father's sake.

He used to come here, you know. To my little house."

The trained voice, which age had not destroyed, grew reminiscent. "We would sit for hours at my hearthside, talking. Sometimes he played his harp for me here. Or he would summon me to a banquet at Kincora and give me the first drink of red wine from his own cup." The faded eyes misted.

Donough was too impatient for the future to be enthralled with the past. "As my friend, you must support my claim to Kincora."

Mac Liag's eyes opened wide. "I did not say ..."

"When Kincora is mine, you shall come to every feast and always have the first drink from my cup," the young man promised.

"Listen to me, Donough, while I give you a friend's advice. The possession of a palace will not make you happy. Your father had Kincora but there was always a hunger in him, a longing for something else; something more. Don't I know? I, who was with him?

"He was a lonely man; to the very end he was a lonely man. Murrough's mother died in his arms, other women were never enough for him, and then finally Gormlaith ...

"Even with all his power, the Ard Ri was not happy. I don't think there was one day when he experienced the contentment I know in my little house by the lake. Out of a lifetime of experience I tell you: that feeling is more to be desired than all the noble strongholds in Ireland."

"Your "little house by the lake,"" Donough quoted. "Your own place. Well, Kincora is my own place. And I depend upon you to help me get it!"

Later, as he sat brooding by his

hearthside, Mac Liag said to his

son, "How do I find myself in such a patch of nettles? Teigue has been elected

chieftain of the Dal Cais and will no doubt become King of Munster. When that happens, he intends to rule from Kincora as his father did before him.

"As chief poet of Munster, my loyalty is to the king.

"But now I've told ... worse than that, I've promised ... young Donough that I would be his friend. For a moment there, in the shadows of the trees, he looked so much like his father ... I'm a sick man, Cumara, I'm not able for this," the poet moaned. "Being caught between Brian's sons will destroy me entirely. I've heard my last cuckoo sing from the whitethorn."

For as long as he could remember, Cumara had heard his father complaining about various ailments.

Brian Boru's death had unquestionably hit Mac Liag very hard, but Cumara privately believed the old poet had the constitution of bog oak. In spite of that he was worried; it was his nature to worry. Patting Mac Liag's hand, he said, "Put it out of your mind, father. Let Teigue and Donough sort it out between them and you stay clear."

"I want to be waked for six days," Mac Liag said. "Six; it is an honor I deserve."

"You aren't going to die, you won't need a wake."

"Six days, with candles lit 'round my bier.

And Cathal Mac Maine to pray over me, no one else. Do you understand? Bury me at Cashel, the royal seat of Munster. Though, mind you, I would rather be buried here beside the lake.

But we must think of my station."

"Yes, father." Cumara sighed.

"And one more thing--be sure to tell me as soon as Carroll gets back, will you? I need most urgently to talk with him."

As Kincora waited for the late Ard Ri's retinue to return from Armagh, Donough busied himself mustering support. One he was relying upon was his cousin, Fergal Mac Anluan. He found Fergal in the low stone building Brian had constructed as an armory. Together with Odar the smith, Fergal was counting the various weapons the Dalcassians had reclaimed from the dead and brought back to Kincora; weapons that gave mute evidence of the ferocity of the battle. The light of smoking fat burning in bronze lamps revealed substantial damage.

"Some of these blades are beyond repair," Odar was saying as Donough ducked his head under the lintel and entered the building. "The best thing to do is melt them down and reforge them. We can still use most of the old hilts, though; particularly for the short-swords. The great-swords are another problem. Being two-handed, they need to be shaped to the wielder's grip, so we'll have to assess them individually.

"Now these axes are a different matter; they're made to stand more battering. A hammering here, a new edge there, and they're ready to kill a man tomorrow." Odar squinted at Fergal. "You know the test of an expert axeman? Cut a man in three pieces, first with a forehand blow and then with a backhand, before his dead body can hit the ground?"

"I not only know it," retorted Fergal,

"I can do it."

"Can you now?" Odar did not sound convinced.

"It's an achievement rarely seen. Why, the last time I saw ..."

"You probably saw my father do it," said Donough, stepping forward into the lamplight, which threw the bones of his maturing face into stark relief.

"I believe I did. In the battle of Glenmama."

"Could you teach me?"

"Did the Ard Ri not teach you?"

Donough busied himself with pawing through the pile of damaged weaponry and did not answer.

"You can do something for me," Odar said to him.

"When you next talk with your brother, tell him he'll get as many as three hundred usable weapons out of this lot."

Donough swung around to glare at the smith.

"He'll get? These are mine; I brought them back."

"Of course you did, and fair play to you, but the chief will have the distributing of them among his Dalcassians."

"My Dalcassians. I brought them back, too."

Odar took a long, slow look at

Donough. The smith had not lived in the heart of a warrior society all his life without being sensitive to shifts in the wind. He stole a glance at Fergal, but the son of Anluan was keeping his face studiously blank.

"I had best get to work," said Odar in a tone that made plain they were both expected to leave him to his craft.

Outside the armory, Donough caught his cousin by the arm. "You know the Dalcassians are mine, they followed my banner home."

"They aren't your private army," Fergal pointed out. "The chief of the tribe is their ultimate commander."

"Are you not on my side? What about the will?"

"That was different."

"How?"

"I thought you made a good argument; you should have Kincora. Besides, I like you and it's always a good idea to have a prince owing one a favor. That's worth a small lie."

"A lie? Are you saying you didn't hear my father make me his heir?"

Fergal narrowed his eyes. "Are you saying he did?"