With that grim pronouncement hanging over them, Fergal led the fianna from the yard. Six days later, they glimpsed Tara Hill in the distance and Conor’s spirits rose at the sight. It lifted a little more when he saw Donal and Calbhan riding out to greet the returning warriors. Seeing them from a distance, Conor urged Búrach to quicken his pace and galloped to meet them. As he drew nearer, a thought occurred to him: what if all was not well? They had been away almost a fortnight; what if some disaster had occurred in his absence?
‘Welcome, lord,’ called Calbhan as Conor came within hailing distance. ‘The battle went well?’
Conor meant to return the greeting and relay the sorry news, but the first words out of his mouth were ‘How is Aoife?’
Donal laughed. ‘Good to see you, too, brother. Allow me to relieve your misery. Your son is not yet born.…’
‘Is he not? Then there is still—’ It was then he caught the odd emphasis in Donal’s reply. ‘Why? What has happened?’
‘You have a daughter.’
‘A daughter!’
‘Aye, a daughter,’ replied Donal, beaming such uncontained joy anyone would have thought the child his own, ‘dark-haired like her mother and sweet as honeyed milk.’
‘A daughter…’ Conor lifted his eyes to the flattened top of Tara Hill. Then, with a sudden slash of the reins, the stallion leapt away.
‘Aoife is well, too, since you ask,’ Donal called after him, but Conor was already gone.
A wild dash to the top of the hill brought Conor pounding into the yard. He hit the ground as soon as Búrach juddered to a halt and, without thinking, ran to the hall—only to be met there by Fíol, Dearg’s second, who was busy strewing clean rushes onto the floor. ‘Your lady wife is not here, lord,’ explained Fíol.
‘Not here!’ cried Conor. ‘But I thought … Where is she? Where is she?’
‘All is well, lord. She is in the women’s house. She is…’ Conor was out the door again before he finished.
Racing across the yard to the still-unfinished house, Conor shoved through the oxhide covering, shouting, ‘Where is she? Where’s Aoife?’
He was met by Noirín, a young Auteini woman Aoife had adopted as one of her handmaids. ‘My lady is within, lord,’ she replied, raising the back of her hand to her forehead. She half turned and pointed to a corner of the room that had been hastily partitioned off by a grouping of cloaks hung upon a wooden frame to form a temporary chamber.
Conor hurried to this crude bower and, throwing aside one of the cloaks, stepped in to find his wife cradling his infant child to her breast and crooning softly. Aoife was sitting on a pallet piled with fleeces; her long dark hair was combed and neatly braided, and she was wearing her best blue mantle and her silver torc, looking regal in every line. ‘Conor!’ she gasped upon seeing him.
‘Aoife! I’m here,’ he said. ‘Are you well? Are you—’
The infant stirred and gave a little squeak. ‘Shh! She’s trying to sleep,’ Aoife told him. ‘Keep your loud voice down.’
‘But I want to see her,’ protested Conor. ‘Here—’ Kneeling down beside the pallet, he held out his hands for the cloth-wrapped bundle.
‘Ach, well, then I suppose you must. Here, my husband, meet your new daughter.’ Smiling proudly, she withdrew the baby from her breast and gently placed the newborn in her father’s hands.
The little bundle, wrapped in a scrap of well-used cloak, weighed nothing and seemed barely big as a new-baked loaf. ‘Careful,’ Aoife told him, smoothing the fluff of hair, ‘you’ll be squashing her in those big rough hands of yours.’
‘Never that,’ Conor whispered, gazing into the tiny scrunched-up face as a mixture of strange emotions swirled through him: wonder and delight, and an awe tinged with terror. How was he to protect and provide for one so small and defenceless? How could he not?
‘She is … she is…’ Words failed him and he reached for the first thing that came into his head. ‘… so red!’
Aoife laughed and cupped a hand to the tiny head. ‘She is not!’ she chided. ‘A little warm maybe, but beautiful all the same. And will you just look at all that dark hair!’
‘Aye, beautiful—just like her mother.’ Conor reached out a finger and stroked it across the infant’s brow.
At his touch the child squirmed and opened her eyes, looked up with a somewhat milky gaze, then promptly closed them again.
‘What are we to call her?’ wondered Conor, gazing in wonder at the tiny face.
‘I thought we might call her Ciara.’
‘Ciara,’ Conor repeated, smiling. Then, with a shock, he glanced up into his wife’s smiling face in surprise as a memory surfaced from long ago. ‘Ciara! But that was my mother’s name.’
Aoife laughed at his reaction and nodded. ‘And I know it, do I not?’
‘How?’ wondered Conor, gazing on the child with renewed respect and wonder. ‘I’m certain I never told you.’
‘And it’s certain I am that name never crossed your lips, husband. But I was that many years a master of song in your father’s hall, if you spare a thought to recall. Of a time, Ardan would speak of her—when a song touched him, or stirred up a memory. And then,’ she added, ‘Rónán reminded me.’
‘Rónán … my brother Rónán?’
‘Is there another hereabouts? Aye, your brother Rónán. He’s here at Tara. He came to see you and arrived in time for Ciara’s birth, and I am that glad of his help.’
‘Rónán is here,’ said Conor.
‘Is that not what I am saying?’ Aoife laughed. Little Ciara squirmed and squeaked again; Aoife motioned for him to return the baby and Conor carefully placed the bundle in her hands. ‘He says he has news.’
‘Aye? What is that then?’ asked Conor absently, unable to take his eyes from the newborn infant, now snuggled in her mother’s arms.
‘No one knows save Rónán alone, and he is being most mysterious about it—saying no one can hear this news until he has told you. So, you best go find him and see what it is. Then come back and tell me what he said.’
Conor agreed, but made no move to rise or leave; he remained kneeling beside his wife and new daughter.
‘Today at all?’ asked Aoife after a moment, immensely enjoying the sight of her lordly husband so awed and stricken by the newborn child.
‘She is so beautiful,’ he said, reaching out to stroke the tiny head once more.
Aoife laid a hand on his and gazed at the newborn in her arms. ‘Aye, my heart, she is that.’
13
‘Donal told me what happened,’ said Rónán. ‘I’m sorry.’
Conor regarded his younger brother curiously. He felt he had been living as one in a dream lately. That any nobleman could act out of such pettiness and spite as Vainche did—betraying his swordbrothers and delivering them to the slaughtering spearheads of a merciless enemy … Conor would not have believed such a thing possible if he had not been there to see it. Nevertheless, this was the world in which he lived; a world as real and strange as any faéry realm, but twisted and poisoned at the root. ‘Aye,’ he murmured, ‘and so am I—sorry to the blood and bone of me. We lost the battle. Thirty-two men dead and seventeen wounded!’
‘You did your best, Conor,’ Rónán replied. ‘How were you to know the depth of Vainche’s duplicity?’
‘I should have known,’ snapped Conor. ‘He has ever been a liar and deceiver. By my sword, I never imagined he would perform some trickery to mock me and show me for a failure.’
‘You should have known?’ said Rónán, thrusting himself back in his chair. ‘Aye, and the Scálda should never have come to Eirlandia.’
They were sitting alone in the temporary dwelling Conor and Aoife used for their lodging before the baby was born. ‘Or, are you responsible for the arrival of the Scálda, too?’
‘I hardly know what to think anymore. Do you know what I have been asking myself? I have been asking myself if I have been deluded all my life. Maybe I was only seeing the world as
I wished to see it, and not as it is. Because it was not just Vainche that stabbed us in the back on the battlefield, it was our brother, Liam.’ Conor gazed at Rónán, a note of pleading in his voice. ‘Liam! And not those two only, but every one of our swordbrothers who deserted the field with them. Men that I know, that I have lived with, our kinfolk, and Aoife’s, too. I have sat beside these men at the feast bench, passed the cup of welcome with them, trained with them. These selfsame men fought together on this very hill not so long ago. Bold souls of Eirlandia! And yet a word from their master—a word they must have known was death to honour and dignity—and they left us. Left us to fall beneath the blades of our common enemy.
‘It hurts, Rónán. It hurts and the ache is deep.…’ Conor paused, choked up and blinded by the tears that suddenly filled his eyes and began coursing down his cheeks. And had he been able to see through them he would have seen tears standing in his brother’s eyes as well.
‘And I wonder,’ he continued after a moment, ‘I ask the same question over and over, with no answer … Did they turn back?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Rónán.
‘I mean, did even one of them feel a pang of conscience, or regret, and turn back to see how we fared? I could believe it of Vainche that he rode away with a high, stiff neck—I can well believe that. But did any of the others so much as glance over their shoulder to see us run down by enemy war carts? Did any of them turn to watch the slaughter they arranged for us?’
‘Would knowing make a difference?’ Rónán said after a time. ‘Let it go, brother. If it is as you and Fergal have said, Lord Vainche will be brought to justice.’
‘If? What do you mean by this if? Is it me or Fergal you doubt?’
‘I only meant—’
‘Where is Fergal?’ Conor jumped to his feet. ‘Let’s go get him and let him tell you to your face.’
‘Conor, wait—’
Out in the yard, Conor saw a few of the fianna moving toward the gate. He called to them and was told Fergal had gone down to the washing stream with some of the others. ‘Let’s go,’ he said to Rónán. ‘We can talk on the way.’ Rónán rose and fell into step beside him.
Crossing the yard, the two started down the long sloping path to the plain below. Rónán steered their talk toward Conor’s plans for the Tara settlement and the surrounding lands: the farms and holdings, the horse breeding stables and pens, and building up the fianna, and all the rest until, approaching the river, they began meeting warriors on their way back to the hill. ‘Where’s Fergal—have you seen him?’
The warriors pointed to a section of the river screened off by a stand of young birches, and there they found a few warriors stretched out on the mossy bank to dry in the sun, talking in low tones as they enjoyed the warmth of the day. Conor hailed Fergal, who was standing out in the middle of the stream, and called him to the bank. But Rónán, seeing the warriors so enjoying themselves, said, ‘Our talk can wait a little. Go join your men.’
Conor, still agitated, made to refuse, but Fergal called out that he was almost finished. At Rónán’s urging, Conor shucked off his siarc, breecs, and brócs, and splashed into the shallow water. Rónán found a lump of soap one of the warriors had left behind and tossed it to his brother, then settled on the bank to wait.
Something about the mundane task of bathing in a cool, slow-running river put Conor in mind of all the times he and Rónán, and Fergal and Donal and the other boys of the clan, had enjoyed swimming and sporting in the rivers near Dúnaird. From the earliest times he could remember, Rónán had always been there—more so than Liam, who never seemed to have much time to spare for him, nor for the youngest of Ardan’s three sons.
As he sluiced the water over himself the years seemed to fall away and, if only for a moment, he was that boy again. Conor smiled to remember those far-off happier days from a time before the Black Ships came and the Scálda spread death and destruction across the land.
‘There is a big fat rat in the ale tub,’ Fergal announced, striding up out of the water. ‘What are we going to do about it, eh?’ Snatching up his cloak from the bank, he flopped down on the ground. ‘Vainche is that rat and what he did cannot go unpunished.’ He looked to Rónán. ‘So now, I’m asking you, my druid friend, what are we going to do about it?’
‘And have not Conor and I been discussing this very thing?’ said Rónán.
‘Tell him what happened up at Mag Cró.’ Conor shook water from his hair, picked up his siarc, spread it next to Fergal, and sat down. ‘I told him already, but he wants to hear it from you.’
‘That is not what I said, and not what I meant,’ Rónán replied evenly. ‘There is a remedy for treachery of the kind you describe,’ Rónán explained. ‘But in such cases it requires the witness of two lords. Conor can be one of them. Who else?’
‘Ach, well, everyone saw it—Lord Morann, who was with us, and Toráin, Aengus, and Laegaire. They were all in the battle. They all know what happened and all lost men because of it.’
‘We will leave that aside for now,’ Rónán told him, ‘and determine who would be best to speak to what happened on that day.’
‘Leave it aside? Why!’ demanded Fergal. ‘Good men died because of Vainche’s treachery. That is the very heart of the matter.’
‘I’m not saying they didn’t,’ Rónán replied patiently. ‘But it was a battle and men are killed in battle—are they not? There is no way to say how many would or would not have been lost if Vainche had or had not done what he did.’
Conor gave a mirthless bark of laughter. ‘Only a druid would see it like that.’
‘Be that as it may,’ continued Rónán unperturbed, ‘I will speak to these other lords and hear from them what happened.’
‘You can start with Morann—he and his people are at Tara now,’ said Conor. ‘The battle took place on Auteini land and he fought alongside us.’
‘Then that is where I will begin. I’ll speak to him today.’
‘And then?’
‘Once I have spoken to the lords who were present, then I will personally make the case against Vainche before the brehons.’
‘What about Liam?’ said Fergal. ‘He sided with Vainche.’
Rónán’s eyes narrowed. ‘If he aided in the betrayal, he must suffer the consequences. But, tell me now, from the beginning, everything you can recall of the battle and what happened on the field.’
Conor rose and began pulling on his clothes. While he dressed, he explained about the Scálda landing on the Auteini coast and driving Morann’s tribe from their fortress, and how the neighbouring lords had gathered to turn back the incursion. He described the battles and how, in the second foray, Vainche had agreed to aid the attack, but had removed his battle group during the most perilous phase of the battle, leaving Conor and the fianna exposed and on their own behind the enemy chariot line. He concluded, saying, ‘We were able to breach the chariot line and make good our retreat,’ Conor concluded. ‘We left thirty warriors behind and could not even retrieve their bodies to offer them a warrior’s burial.’
Conor finished and Rónán drew a deep breath and looked to the sky and the bright clouds drifting over. ‘This is how it will be,’ he said after a moment. ‘I will speak to the lords, as I said, and then I will bring the charge before the brehons. They will hold council and determine how best to proceed.’
‘A council?’ wondered Fergal. ‘What good will that do? Treachery demands punishment—swift and severe.’
Conor rose and took up his cloak. ‘We will leave it in your hands, brother. Just know that Tara’s gates stand open to you if you wish to hold your council here. In fact, I would welcome it.’
‘Let it be as you say.’ Rónán bowed his head slightly. It was not a brother’s assent that he saw; Conor understood that he was looking at Rónán the druid now.
Later that day, Rónán gathered everyone together at the burial mound and, as the dying sun set the cloud-fretted sky alight with flames of red and yel
low gold, he observed the funeral rite for a warrior fallen in battle. There was no corpse to place in the dolmen; there would be no bones to gather and wrap in rich cloths and carry to the tomb: this was a rite for warriors whose bodies could not be recovered, whose corpses had been defiled and destroyed by the Scálda. So, the brehon improvised the rite and substituted new words for those traditionally spoken at the death of a ruler, and he substituted a damaged shield and a broken spear for those whose sacrifice he honoured.
As the starry legions claimed the night sky, the people of Tara left the tomb more unified than when they first arrived at the burial mound. In this way, the healing of the loss and the recovery of the dignity and pride of the survivors was begun.
The next morning, Rónán departed on his errand to visit the northern kings to obtain evidence of Lord Vainche’s treacherous act.
14
Work at Tara proceeded much as before, only now there was a distinct feeling of kinship among the groups from various tribes. Slowly, the season of Lughnasadh approached and people began to wonder if this year, as in the one just past, their lord would observe the festival that marked the beginning of harvest. Conor heard the whispers and, although the idea appealed to him, there was the cost to be reckoned. He and his ail-duinn had just begun to discuss this very thing when Rónán returned from his circuit of the northern kings.
He appeared without warning one day as the fianna had just finished their morning’s training. Conor had been with them and was on his way to the bower he and Aoife still shared until the inner chambers of the hall were finished. He halted when he heard a voice calling to him from across the yard. ‘Rónán!’ he cried, and hurried to greet his brother. ‘I was just on my way to see Aoife and the baby. Come along, Aoife will be glad to see you—and you won’t believe how much little Ciara has grown.’
Rónán embraced his brother and fell into step beside him. ‘Well?’ said Conor expectantly. ‘How was your journey? You were gone a long time.’
In the Kingdom of All Tomorrows--Eirlandia, Book Three Page 13
