Pride of Lions (42 page)

"Do not scowl at me, good friends. The high kingship is not to be taken away from our tribe and our blood, I swear this to you on the sacred wounds of Christ. There are several moves by which I shall forestall the ambitions of the clan O Brian. The first concerns Tara, and for this I need your support."

Tara was the ultimate symbol of high kingship. Malachi now proposed to abandon the ancient royal site altogether. By this official act he meant to deny its possession to whoever succeeded him.

He vowed that no son of Brian Boru would ever hold court in the banqueting hall with the fourteen doorways.

With some reluctance, the chieftains agreed to his plan. Ending the supremacy of Tara would be a blow to Meath prestige, but they would rather see it fall into final decay than revert into the hands of Munstermen.

With a weariness he would admit to no one, Malachi visited Tara one last time. He rode in an old-fashioned chariot bedecked with plumes and gaudy with colors, and he took as escort the battle-champions of Meath.

In the end, however, he paid his final visit alone.

"Wait for me," he instructed his driver.

Stepping down from the chariot, he entered through the great northern gateway and proceeded up the ceremonial avenue on foot.

A cold wind was blowing. The rats chewing Malachi's old bones bit deeper.

For eight hundred years this had been Tara of the Kings, and before that the stronghold of the Tuatha De Danann. But whatever sorcery might still linger could not prevail against the power of time. Earthwork embankments that once stood taller than six men were gradually sinking, victims of centuries of human wear and elemental erosion. The timber palisades that encircled the site, mile upon mile of them, were rotting. An attacking force could breach them with little effort.

But no one would attempt Tara now; its symbolic value was ended. The Ard Ri had so decreed.

Malachi shivered. Suddenly he wanted very much to be gone from here. Tara had never been his, not since Brian Boru stood on the Stone of Fal and it screamed aloud for him.

The Stone had never screamed for Malachi.

When he realized the sun was beginning to set he trudged back down the ceremonial avenue. The farewell tour was over, the silent good-byes said.

His chariot was waiting just beyond the gateway; a brisk drive would take him back to Dun na Sciath, to hearth fires and ale and the forgetfulness of old men.

At the gate he paused without meaning to and looked back. The westering sun gilded Tara.

Decaying thatch blazed gold.

Atop the Mound of the Hostages, the recumbent Stone of Fal was struck by a slanting sunbeam.

Malachi gasped.

For just one moment he thought a man stood there, his coppery hair aflame in the setting sun.

A giant.

Cumara was worried. Anxiety came

naturally to him; the permanent frown on his forehead had been stitched there when he was still a young boy. It was his lifelong habit to awaken each morning asking himself what might go wrong in the day ahead.

But now he did not have to ask. He knew.

The stronghold was no longer a comfortable place for a man to be. Since his marriage to Driella, Donough was more short-tempered than ever. Even Fergal had begun guarding his tongue; his sarcasm no longer amused Donough but made him angry.

Almost anything could make Donough angry.

No one knew when they might receive the sharp edge of his tongue. He took the most casual comment the wrong way, seeing insult where none was intended.

For the first time, he began wearing sleeves so long they concealed his mutilated arm. If he thought anyone was looking at it he glared at them savagely.

Cumara told Fergal, "I'm going to leave here and go back to Thomond. The atmosphere in this place makes me nervous; it's as if the fire on the hearth is about to explode."

Fergal said quickly, "Don't go! You're a good influence on him. At least he plays the harp occasionally for you, the only time he seems to be in relative good humor."

"I'm a poet's son," Cumara pointed out,

"and I have my father's temperament if not his talent.

Discord upsets me. It's all very well for you; warriors thrive on conflict. But some nights I can't even eat my meal, my stomach is so roiled. A couple of times recently I've vomited blood. I'm going back to Thomond."

"I thought you gave your house away."

"I did, but I have friends who will take me in.

Friends of my father's will welcome me in his name."

"What will Donough do if you go?"

"I worry about that," Cumara replied.

But he left; an act of self-preservation after a life dedicated to others.

Donough was too proud to ask him the reasons for his leaving, although deep in his heart, he knew.

As Cumara was taking his leave of Carroll, he warned the old man, "Keep an eye on that Saxon priest, will you?"

"What can I do? I'm a guest here, I have no right to interfere."

Cumara's naturally lugubrious

face lightened briefly. "When did you not interfere, Carroll?"

Donough needed no warning about Geoffrey of the Fens. The man's presence was a constant irritant, yet he could not send him away.

Only Geoffrey could translate what he said to Driella, or she to him, and the young woman seemed unable to learn any language other than Saxon.

At first Donough agreed with Fergal; she was simply stupid. But as time passed he began to suspect she was deliberately refusing to learn so she would have to keep Geoffrey with her.

Yet he never caught them together in any compromising position.

When Carroll remarked on their constant companionship, and Driella's total dependence on Geoffrey, Donough's pride made him say in her defense, "I cannot imagine my wife betraying me with a priest or anyone else.

She's nothing like my ..."

"Like your mother? No, she is nothing like Gormlaith," Carroll agreed.

But Driella had other faults, he

observed.

A lifetime spent absorbing every tenet of the Church with no sense of discrimination had rubbed away her own personality, leaving her as featureless as an ocean-scoured pebble. She was submissive and self-effacing to an infuriating degree.

Old as he was, Carroll began

speculating about what it was like to bed such a woman.

The first night had been awkward, but no more than Donough expected. Driella was a virgin and there were tears and blood and moans of pain.

Cera had been a virgin, he recalled against his will. And there had been blood, but no tears, only radiant smiles and ...

Driella had submitted totally to him in spite of her pain, spreading herself beneath him like a sacrifice. She lay with eyes screwed tight shut and endured him. Had there not been so much pent-up lust in his body, Donough would have got off her and walked away. He felt as if he were pounding himself into a piece of meat.

The next morning he had barely left their bed when Geoffrey came bustling in, all unctuous sympathy, and knelt to pray with the deflowered bride.

"No one sent for you," Donough had said coldly, but the priest replied, "I'm only here to help. This child needs me now; due to the rigors of the voyage she brought no womenfolk of her own. Surely you have enough delicacy to understand?"

That same day Donough arranged for female bondservants but they proved of little use except for menial tasks. They spoke no Saxon.

Geoffrey seemed to be constantly counseling Driella. When Donough bit back his pride long enough to ask what they were discussing, the priest replied, "I am giving her advice as to her conjugal duties."

Yet Driella's response in the marriage bed did not improve. She accepted. She endured. The only emotion she ever displayed was when she shrank from the most inadvertent touch of her husband's maimed arm.

After each night spent with Donough, in the morning her first act was to pray with Geoffrey.

"We are praying that she will conceive," Geoffrey said.

Donough discovered a curious thing about himself.

Passion was a powerful, a compelling force in him, but he could direct it into other channels such as fighting--so long as there was not a woman to focus his desire.

With the plump young Saxon in his bed, however, he thought constantly of sex. If he did not have intercourse with Driella he lay awake, smelling her skin and hair, intensely aware of her slightest movement, suffering from a painful erection and aching testicles. If he rolled over and entered his wife he found momentary relief, but was plagued afterward by a sense of profound disappointment, almost of disgust with himself.

Marriage, he concluded, was an arrangement like any other political arrangement. Driella provided him with important alliances and he had no reason to doubt she would in time give him sons. Such assets came at a price, but it was a price he must pay.

Compromise, he thought with a sense of irony.

The skill Murrough never mastered.

When Driella began to ripen with a child, compromise seemed justified.

The birth of Donough's first live child, a boy he called Murchad, did not merit an entry in the annals. For that year Brother Declan wrote: "Branagan, a chieftain of Meath, was drowned in Lough Ennell, and Mac Conailligh, chief brehon of Malachi Mor, died, after the plundering of the shrine of Saint Ciaran by the both of them. The King of Leinster gained a victory over Sitric of Dublin at Delgany. Donough Mac Brian mediated between them and brought an end to dreadful slaughter."

Since abandoning Tara, Malachi had not summoned Donough to his banner. So Donough now sent a full report to the Ard Ri detailing his negotiations between the King of Leinster and the Dublin Danes, demonstrating that he was as skilled at bringing peace as at waging war. The unspoken but implicit addendum was: make me your successor.

Malachi did not respond.

The following summer found him leading an army against Sitric and the Dublin Danes at the Yellow Ford of Athboy, amid a shower of hailstones the size of apples.

Once more Donough Mac Brian had not been summoned.

Only a month later, Declan wrote,

"The Age of Christ, 1022. Malachi Mor, High King of Tara, pillar of dignity, died on an island in Lough Ennell in the seventy-third year of his life. He relinquished his soul on the fourth of the Nones of September, after doing penance for his sins and receiving the body and blood of Christ. Masses, hymns, psalms, and canticles were sung throughout Ireland for the repose of his spirit."

Cathal Mac Maine directed his scribe to add, "Splendid though they were, the obsequies for Malachi Mor were a mere shadow compared to those for Brian Boru."

The Abbot of Kill Dalua had not attended either funeral, but he had Dalcassian honor to uphold.

Malachi was deeply mourned by his many adherents. Poets lauded his exceptional generosity. Donough confided to Carroll, "I am surprised to find myself genuinely grieved by his death. Malachi has been a part of my life, in one way or another, for as long as I can remember."

"I too mourn him," Carroll replied,

"though perhaps for different reasons. He was of my generation; if he has walked over the rim of the world, I must shortly follow."

A fierce light leaped in Donough's eyes.

"Not until you see me inaugurated Ard Ri!"

He thought it would be soon.

He was totally unprepared for the shock that followed.

The news was shouted across the countryside like an announcement of the end of the world. Thunderstruck, Donough saddled his fastest horse and galloped headlong to Kill Dalua to await formal confirmation.

The abbot was as taken aback as himself.

"Malachi Mor has robbed the Dal Cais of their entitlement!" he complained.

But his anger was nothing compared to Donough's. "That wretched schemer must have made these plans long before he died. When I last saw him--and we shared a cup together--he already knew. He knew and said nothing and smiled at me like a fond uncle, Cathal! And to think I was mourning him! How did he manage to persuade them? Did he offer gold to Lismore to get the abbot to agree?"

Cathal was offended. "Impossible. A man of God?"

"This entire arrangement is impossible!"

Donough vehemently protested. "He--they--cannot possibly be High King. How could two men hold one high kinship?"

The question was being repeated throughout Ireland in every noble household.

Assiduously searching Irish law, even the brehons were astonished to find nothing that could prevent the High King from naming dual successors if he chose. Brian Boru had endowed the office with unprecedented powers. In the last official act of his life, Malachi Mor used those powers to the fullest.

Henceforth Ireland was to be governed jointly by Cuan of the line of Lochlan, chief poet of Meath, and Corcran Cleireach, a renowned holy man and anchorite under the supervision of the Abbot of Lismore.

The title Ard Ri, however, was to be held in abeyance.

Tara would remain deserted.

The explosion Cumara had expected came at last. Donough unleased his rage.

While his mother was alive he would maintain a degree of amity with Sitric, but no one else was safe from his fury. He resurrected old Munster tribal feuds and initiated new ones.

He flung himself from one battle into another with an energy that astonished, and eventually exhausted, his followers.

The Dalcassians' traditional rivals the Owenachts were his principal targets, but he also undertook raids into Ossory and Muskerry, bringing back hostages for whom he demanded a very high ransom.

Teigue was appalled. "I shall be blamed for this," he complained to his courtiers at Cashel.

"The other provincial kings will think I'm encouraging him in preparation for invading their kingdoms."

"You might do," suggested a bored warrior hopefully. "You might reach beyond Munster and start laying claim to all of Ireland. There's plenty would support you."

"I have everything I want here," Teigue insisted when he saw the sudden fear in his wife's eyes.