Pride of Lions (14 page)

"Could he have meant to single out Donough for special privilege, even above his brothers?"

"Possibly," Carroll conceded. "It was hard to know what was on Brian's mind at the time. He was old and tired and a terrible battle was just ahead.

Had he been thinking clearly, I cannot believe he would have bestowed favors on the child of the woman who caused the battle. Surely Brian never loved Gormlaith!"

Mac Liag allowed himself the faintest of smiles. "Do you remember how she looked when they were first wed? The sight of her was enough to stop your heart." With an effort, the old poet dragged his thoughts back to the present. "But you're right of course; it would be a dreadful mistake for the boy to inherit Kincora. It could only do him harm."

"There was no will," Carroll reiterated now.

"I'm sorry."

Donough looked astonished. "But there must have been! He told me his intentions!"

"I cannot deny what he may have said to you, but I assure you he left no written will with me, nor did he dictate one to me."

Donough glared at Teigue. "Did you order him to say this?"

"Not at all," was the honest reply. "Try to be reasonable, lad. You and your, ah, your Neassa are welcome to live at Kincora as my guests while we make the appropriate arrangements to celebrate your marriage and placate her father's tribe."

The mention of Neassa reminded Donough that on the ride back to Kincora, he had promised her the palace would be hers to command. This was going to make her unhappy, and he already knew her well enough to know she was not a woman to suffer in silence.

News traveled rapidly across Ireland when it concerned the marriages of kings and princes, involving the complicated network of tribal alliances. In Dublin, Gormlaith listened to the tidings from Munster with growing anger.

"My son marrying a mere cattle lord's daughter? He can't!" Her eyes flashed with a trace of their old fire. "Did he learn nothing from me? A marriage must enhance status or enrich the clan. He understood that. He married one of his daughters to my son Sitric and another to a prince of the Scots. And married his other sons into the most noble families of Ireland ... except for that foolish Teigue, of course, who never did have sufficient ambition."

Gormlaith snorted with contempt. "What can a cattle lord's daughters offer to the clan of an Ard Ri? My son is young and foolish and they are taking advantage of him in Thomond. A cow-eyed girl has wrapped her plaits around him, obviously. Or her thighs. Well.

I'll soon put a stop to her gallop."

When his mother came storming into the hall to announce that she must leave Dublin at once, Sitric felt a powerful desire to fall to his knees and offer sacrifices of thanksgiving to Odin. With an effort he restrained himself. He knew Gormlaith too well to agree with her; that would only make her change her mind.

"Leave the lad alone," Sitric said, combing his beard with his fingers. "You're out of it now, away from Kincora and all its unpleasant associations. I thought you never wanted to see the place again."

"I do not. But he is my son and I have an obligation to him."

"I need you here, Mother," Sitric replied, straight-faced.

"You certainly do, you're not capable on your own of minding mice at a crossroads. But I am going to Kincora to stop this ill-advised alliance, so I insist you provide me with a cart appropriate to my station. And a guard of honor."

In all of Dublin, Sitric knew, there was no cart which Gormlaith would consider fine enough for her, but he commandeered the best vehicle available and had it further fitted out with cushions and fur robes. A pair of swift horses were put into harness, another pair provided for a change of team, and a guard of sturdy Dublin Danes hastily assembled.

Sitric's instructions to them were cryptic.

"Do not let my mother out of your sight," he said.

"But should some misadventure befall her, take your time about rescuing her."

Although he did not explain, his men understood.

Like a storm blown inland from the Irish Sea, Gormlaith swept toward Kincora.

During the reign of Brian Boru

a woman could travel unmolested from one end of the island to the other wearing all her jewels, but Brian was dead, and already outlaws were gathering in the forests. An elderly woman swathed in furs and glittering with gold should have been a prime target.

Yet no one bothered Gormlaith.

"Doom rides with her," people whispered to one another, regarding her with the superstitious fear usually reserved for druid stones and fairy trees.

She took the reins of the team away from the appointed charioteer and drove the horses along the Slighe Dala herself, lashing them unmercifully with the long whip. Her guard on horseback was hard-pressed to keep up with the careening wicker cart. "She'll overturn herself and be killed,"

one of them remarked to another.

"Not that one," was the reply. "You couldn't kill Gormlaith with an axe."

Throughout the journey she complained continually about everyone and everything, including the accommodations provided each nightfall by chieftains through whose territory they passed. None wanted to put a roof over Gormlaith's head, but none dared turn her away.

They offered only minimal hospitality, however.

In return Gormlaith insulted the proud Irish chieftains to their faces.

One of her embarrassed escort commented, "Now I understand why Sitric Silkbeard has turned as gray as a badger. That woman lives under his roof."

"And his wife is a daughter of Brian Boru," a companion pointed out. "Can you imagine what life must be like for Sitric, caught between those two women?"

"Better for him if he had swung an axe at Clontarf and let the Ard Ri kill him,"

said a third.

The others nodded agreement.

For the men assigned to accompany Gormlaith the trip seemed interminable, but she was even more impatient. With each turn of the wheels she grew increasingly worried that her foolish son might be married before she could get to him.

Her fears were well-founded. Teigue had urged a speedy wedding to mollify Neassa's kinsmen, and Donough did not argue.

Once the formalities were observed, he intended to reassert his claim to Kincora.

Neassa wanted to invite everyone she knew to watch her wed the Ard Ri's son.

"We are not going to offer hospitality to every playmate of your childhood," Maeve informed her sister.

"Why not? Brian Boru entertained hundreds of people all the time, he ..."

"My husband has a very different temperament, and I assure you he does not want some huge crowd devouring his stores and lingering for weeks in his hall."

Neassa pouted. Maeve ignored her.

There was to be no huge crowd invited, but Donough had insisted that his father's closest friends attend the wedding. From Mac Liag he begged a list of Brian's favorites known to be still alive.

They sat together beside the hearth in Mac Liag's house, squinting at the names by firelight while an early summer storm lashed the waters of Lough Derg to a froth.

"Who's this?" Donough queried, pointing.

Mac Liag bent closer. "Och.

Padraic, of course."

"Padraic?" Donough did not recognise the name.

"He was your father's spear carrier originally, when Brian was still a young man. In time he became a trusted confidante. At the Battle of Glenmama he suffered an injury that cost him his eyesight and Brian pensioned him off.

"No man ever loved Brian Boru more--or was more loved by him," Mac Liag added wi/lly.

"I'm surprised he wasn't kept at Kincora to end his days in comfort with my father."

"Bit of politics there," Mac Liag explained. "You see, Padraic had become, ah, involved with a woman who was not a Christian.

A druid, a follower of the old ways."

"A druid?"

"Indeed. A woman called Niamh.

Padraic was very fond of her and I always thought Brian encouraged it, because he had a certain sympathy with the druids himself. Not that he would ever admit it, what with trying to keep the support of the Church for his various policies. But I knew what was in his heart. Did I not see him sneaking out in the dawn to carry little gifts to herself on Crag Liath?"

Cumara, tending the fire, stiffened at the mention of Crag Liath, and Donough threw Mac Liag a startled glance, but the old man did not notice.

"In time the woman called Niamh left Padraic," the poet went on. "No one knew where she went, only that her mother came for her and took her away. Padraic grieved for a long time. I personally think that's why he was careless in battle and got himself blinded.

"He never stopped yearning for her, and Brian assured him she would return one day. And so she did. But Brian could hardly invite a druid woman to stay around Kincora what with bishops and abbots coming and going like changes in the weather, so he gave Padraic a holding near his birthplace, somewhere beyond Ennis."

Donough was intrigued. "He lived there with a druid?"

"Indeed. When she came back to him she brought a child who was the very image of him, and they had more children after, who were raised in the Old Faith." The poet chuckled. "Padraic's eyesight was all he had lost. Everything else worked just fine."

"So they married?" Donough had marrying on the mind.

Mac Liag paused to rub the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. "I wouldn't say they married, exactly. Druid rituals are rather ... different. But they were devoted to one another.

When Niamh died Padraic requested permission from Brian to raise a great cairn in her honor, and Brian himself placed the last stone.

"You should have heard the lament I composed, one of my best efforts." The old man's voice trembled. "Everyone wept. We came back here afterward and Brian sat right there where you sit now and we talked ..." He drifted off into his memories.

Cumara touched Donough's shoulder. "There's a break in the weather for the moment, so you had better go now. I'll put him to bed before he begins to cry."

When Donough left Mac Liag's house and set out upon the muddy, well-worn footpath leading back to the gates of Kincora, he found himself glancing off to his right toward the forested heights of Crag Liath.

Lowering clouds hid the summit. The already-saturated air was charged with the certain return of the storm. Donough stopped; stared toward the brooding crag.

He had always accepted without question that the guardian spirit of the Dal Cais was a ban shee, a disembodied relict of the race of sorcerers called the Tuatha de Danann who had been defeated by his own Gaelic ancestors fifteen hundred years earlier. The ban shee had warned him of Clontarf.

But now he found himself wondering. Who--or what

--dwelled on Crag Liath? To whom had his father carried "little gifts"?

A ban shee from the pagan past? Or someone more substantial? How could Brian have known the druid woman would return to Padraic?

Donough suddenly found himself wondering how much he really knew about Brian Boru.

The marriage of Donough Mac Brian to Neassa Ni Gadhra would encompass several components. First Donough and Neassa would agree to the provisions of a marriage contract in front of a brehon, as Irish nobility had done since before the coming of Christianity. This contract dictated the terms upon which the relationship would be conducted. Afterward the guests would assemble to hear the ranking cleric, Cathal Mac Maine, deliver the blessings of the Christian faith.

The servants were gossiping in the kitchens as they prepared the banquet that would follow. "The Ard Ri would have sent hunters out to fetch every wild boar and red deer in Thomond for the feast," they told one another. "What sort of a princely celebration serves common mutton and pike from the river?"

Teigue's steward Enda silenced them. "My master does not want to give young Donough ideas above his station. This is not the marriage of a king, but merely of a younger son. It is to be festive but restrained."

Restrained. The servants looked at one another.

"Alas, Kincora," one muttered under his breath, repeating the refrain from Mac Liag's lament for Brian Boru.

At Clontarf Brian Boru had broken the power of the Vikings, but as he had foreseen they were not to be driven out of Ireland. A string of traders'

wagons belonging to Norse merchants based in Limerick encountered Gormlaith as she turned onto the road to Kincora.

The Norse merchants of Limerick were only peripherally aware of the great battle that had taken place on the other side of the island, although warriors from that city had marched with Brian Boru. Limerick's principal interest was in trade. Using the sea lanes, a constant stream of goods poured into and out of Ireland no matter what battles were being fought. Irish gold and leather were much valued abroad, while Irish chieftains were a reliable market for luxuries the Vikings imported from as far away as the shores of the Caspian.

At the sight of the traders Gormlaith signaled a halt. She stepped down from her cart and with her cloak billowing behind her strode toward the Norse wagons.

Sitting on their horses, her escort watched impassively.

Gormlaith demanded of the burly blond man walking beside the first team of oxen, "Where do you think you're going?"

The Norseman gaped at her. He was young; this was his first venture in charge of his father's wagons.

He had hardly expected to be challenged by an aging Irishwoman wearing more gold jewelry than he had ever seen on one person in his life.

Resting one hand on the broad, warm back of the nearest ox, he said, "We are on our way to Kincora, mother," automatically using the Norse term of respect applied to any female out of childhood.

Gormlaith glared at him. "I'm not your mother.

And who invited you?"

The woman's tone was deliberately rude.

His spine stiffened with indignation but he refrained from looking back at the other drivers to see how they were reacting. He was in charge now.

"We are traders," he said. "Traders are welcome everywhere. As it happens, we are taking ale and silks and cinnamon to Kincora for a marriage celebration."