“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 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 wistfully.
“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 pa
st? 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.
Chapter Nineteen
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.”
Gormlaith raised her eyebrows. “Cinnamon, you say? Real cinnamon, not shaved tree bark you’re trying to pass off on the ignorant Irish? Let me see.” Shoving past the startled man, she leaned over the side of his cart and threw back the hide covering.
“Now wait here …” The Norseman reached for her just as a spear interposed itself between him and the woman. He looked up to see a Danish warrior on a horse glaring down at him.
He was not to be intimidated. “This is my wagon and these are my goods!” he protested. “Some strange woman can’t just …”
“She is the Princess Gormlaith,” the mounted man informed him.
“I don’t care if she’s the Goddess Freya, she has no right to paw through my goods!” The Norseman had started to say something else when, tardily, he recognized the name of Gormlaith. When accompanying his father to Kincora as a youngster he had never met the woman, but he knew who she was.
Everyone knew who she was.
He hesitated, unable to believe that the harridan rummaging through his trade goods like an avaricious badger could possibly have been the most beautiful woman in Ireland and wife to three kings in turn.
Gormlaith extracted a muslin bag and held it to her nose, sniffing suspiciously. “It is real cinnamon,” she conceded at last. But as she tossed the bag back into the wagon she told the Norseman, “Of course you could be planning to cheat them some other way.”
The young merchant glowered at her. “I don’t cheat anyone. I give honest value for honest coin.”
Her green eyes suddenly sparkled. “Coin? Did you know that my son Sitric ordered the first coinage ever to be struck in Ireland? You probably have some. His profile is on them. He wanted to use mine, of course, but I convinced him his own face would be more appropriate.”
At this Gormlaith’s escort exchanged glances and bit their lips. It was well known in Dublin that Gormlaith had campaigned vigorously to have her face reproduced on the coin, and made Sitric’s life hell for months afterward because he used his own image instead.
She continued, “If you’re going to Kincora, it must be to try to sell your rubbish to my other son. But he won’t buy it. He has excellent taste; he learned it from me.” She cast a final contemptuous look at the contents of the wagon and went back to her cart. With one foot on the step she paused. “Do you know this woman he’s supposed to be marrying?” she called to the Norseman.
The encounter was so bizarre he was not certain whether he should answer, but the warrior on horseback prodded him gendy with the tip of his spear.
“I know her. Know of her, that is. She is sister to the wife of Teigue Mac Brian.”
“How many cattle does her father have? You trade with him for his leathers?”
“We don’t trade with him; his cattle have poor-quality hides.”
“Hah!” Gormlaith exulted, springing into her cart with surprising agility. She snatched up the whip and curled it over her horses’ backs and they leaped foward. In a moment the cart was whirling away with its escort in hot pursuit, leaving the Norse traders in their dust.
The leader of the traders gazed after her thoughtfully, wondering if it might not be more prudent to bypass Kincora altogether and sell his goods to the chieftains beyond Nenagh instead.
Most of the invited guests had already arrived at Kincora and been shown to their accommodations, in private chambers if they had sufficient status or in one of the large wattle-and-timber guesting houses.
While awaiting the formalization of their marriage, Donough and Neassa had been assigned an apartment once reserved for Murrough. It would have been unthinkable to return Neassa to her father before the wedding; such an insult would have meant a clan war. With or without contracts and blessings, she was now wife to Donough and his responsibility.
Already that responsibility was beginning to chafe slightly. At night among the furs and blankets he enjoyed her, but during the day he wanted to put her out of his mind and devote himself to solidifying alliances. Yet no sooner had he found an out-of-the-way corner where he could discuss politics in private than Neassa would appear at his elbow.
“Ah here you are, Donough! I was looking for you. Tell me, do you think I should wear these beads my sister gave me for our wedding? Or are these better?” She pirouetted for his inspection, oblivious of the other men with him, destroying a mood Donough had been at pains to create. No matter how he tried to get rid of her she would linger, talking about trivia as if it were the most important thing in the world, until the men whose support Donough had been wooing abandoned him to her.
Fergal summed it up. “Neassa chatters constantly and says nothing.”
“She’s just young and excited,” Donough defende
d her. He must be loyal to her in front of others; that was part of the marriage contract under Brehon Law.
His cousin scoffed, “You say that now, when she has you by the balls, but wait until she’s older. She won’t improve.”
Donough did not want to believe him. He determined to find admirable hidden qualities in Neassa that no one but himself could appreciate.
They must be there. He wanted to love her.
He wanted to be happy.
Surely all it required was an effort of will.
The wedding was to take place on the first day of the new moon. A few guests were late in arriving, and a messenger had brought a chillingly curt response from the prince of Desmond to the effect that he and his wife did not care to attend any festivities honoring Donough Mac Brian.
“Trouble there,” Teigue remarked to his wife. He promptly summoned Donough for an explanation.
“Father married our sister Sabia to Cian of Desmond for the express purpose of making peace between the Dal Cais and the Owenachts,” Teigue reminded his brother. “Yet now there seems to be a new grudge developing. What happened?”
“We quarreled, but it was nothing.”
“Nothing? If it’s cost me the support of the Owenachts it could mean serious trouble for my kingship.”
Donough folded his arms. “You’re determined to be King of Munster, then?”
“Father held that title until he died and I’m his oldest surviving son.”
“According to the tradition of tanistry, any of our close cousins might make an equal claim to the title,” Donough pointed out.
With a wave of his hand, Teigue dismissed tradition. “But none of them has, out of respect for our father. In case you have forgotten, Donough, it was Brian Boru’s plan to found a ruling dynasty based on direct succession, father to son, like the royal families of the Britons and the Gauls.”
“I’m not arguing that point. I’m just questioning whether you are the best man to follow Brian Boru as king.”
Pride of Lions Page 11
