Brian Boru (10 page)

Malachy had not been so cheerful for years.

The priests of Munster, including Brian’s brother, the abbot Marcan, did not openly criticise this new marriage. Brian had been very generous to the Church. He had rebuilt many churches and abbeys and endowed more. No man could claim Brian Boru did not serve God well.

Nor did any one speak openly about the traditional offerings he still took to the spirit who watched from the grey crag.

Even Murcha did not complain about Brian’s marrying Gormla. He said to his wife, ‘I expected my father to blame me for Ducholi’s desertion. He has not done so, and now I know why. He is always making plans in his head, and this Gormla is part of his latest plan. Marrying her will give him an alliance with Leinster, as well as with Dublin. This is just another move in the game he plays, I see it now. It does not mean he loves the woman. He loved only my mother,’ Murcha insisted. He had convinced himself of this now. As a result, he found it easier to be with Brian, and so in time he came to Kincora, met the newest wife, and was even pleasant to her.

Gormla liked Kincora. From the beginning, however, she had suggestions for making it better. ‘You should have fourteen doorways in your feasting hall, like the feasting hall at Tara,’ she told Brian.

‘What makes you think I want to copy Tara?’

Gormla laughed. ‘Ah, Brian, I know you better than you know yourself. We are very much alike. I don’t think you want to copy Tara. I think you want Tara.’

He did not argue with her.

Gormla was a very different sort of woman from Brian’s other wives, gentle Mor and merry Achra and elegant Ducholi. Gormla had a restless mind that was always planning and scheming.

Like Brian’s own.

At first Brian enjoyed her. But as the days passed and she continued to make suggestions that were sounding more and more like demands, he began to ignore her.

‘Gormla has a great opinion of herself,’ he told Mac Liag. ‘She thinks every idea she has is a pearl. But she is already with child, I am happy to say. That will fill her thoughts soon enough and she will stop hanging over my shoulder.’

Mac Liag, who had been watching the Leinsterwoman, was not certain even motherhood would change her as Brian expected.

Even when she was large with child Gormla always managed to be on hand when a messenger arrived with news from the world beyond Kincora. She had very definite ideas about how Brian should enlarge his rule, and she did not hesitate to tell him. Continually.

‘My son Sitric is unmarried,’ she said. ‘And you have a daughter just reaching the age for marriage. Such a tie would bind Sitric and his Norsemen more surely to you.’

For once, Brian agreed with Gormla’s suggestion. He asked his daughter Emer to come to him in a small private chamber where they could talk. Emer was a daughter of his second wife, Achra, and was a girl of spirit and laughter. Of all his daughters, she was the one
closest to her father.

Brian patted the bench beside him, inviting Emer to sit on the carved oak seat with its down-filled cushion. At first he spoke of homely things – ‘How is your embroidery? Do you like the caged larks I gave you?’

Then he slowly brought the talk around to the subject at hand.

‘When Vikings have visited me here at Kincora, you have admired them,’ he reminded Emer.

‘Many of them are good to look upon,’ the girl replied.

‘Have you thought of marrying one?’

Emer blushed.

‘If a daughter of mine were married to a Viking,’ Brian went on, ‘it would show everyone that I mean to bring Irish and foreigner together as one people.’

‘Is there one particular Viking you have in mind?’ Emer wanted to know.

‘Sitric, King of Dublin, is young and strong, a man-sized man who owns many ships.’

‘Gormla’s son?’

‘The same.’

Emer considered this. ‘Would it please you, father, if I married Sitric?’

Brian smiled fondly at his favourite daughter. ‘It would please me if you want to marry him after you’ve met him. I would never ask otherwise.’

Emer blushed again. In a low voice, she said, ‘Then invite him to Kincora, Father.’

Gormla was delighted. ‘What a good team we make!’ she told Brian. ‘Admit it, you would not have thought of such a thing without me. But it is good for all concerned.’

Brian had to agree. The next day he said to Mac Liag, ‘I was clever to marry a clever woman.’

Emer waited eagerly for Sitric Silkbeard. She was
prepared to accept him even before she saw him. In asking her to consider the match, Brian had been asking for Emer’s help. She loved her father with all her heart. What other maiden had such a father? She had never been able to do anything to help him, he was always so busy, striding here, galloping there, meeting with his princes, issuing orders. He was like a comet flashing by.

Now at last he needed her.

And fortunately, Sitric when he arrived was indeed good to look upon.

When the proposed marriage was announced, Murcha came at the gallop. ‘This is another mistake,’ he said to Brian. ‘We recently fought Sitric. Why marry your daughter to him? He is your enemy.’

‘That’s the very point, Murcha. I am trying to change things so he won’t always be my enemy. Emer will bear his children and turn foreigners into Irishmen.’

Aware of Brian’s political moves, Malachy began to feel the hot breath of the King of Munster on his own neck. He had no doubt that Brian would challenge him for the high kingship soon. So he summoned all his allies to a great meeting at Tara.

Malachy was disappointed at how few men came. Most of them were Meathmen. The northern O’Neills sent a token party only. According to tradition, when Malachy was no longer High King his place would be taken by one of the northern O’Neills. They were merely waiting for him to die.

Waiting for Brian Boru to kill me, Malachy thought bitterly. But the O’Neills will never let him seize the high kingship. Never!

Then Brian Boru marched an enormous army out of Munster, northward. In advance of this movement,

Brian’s new son-in-law, Sitric Silkbeard, had made a raid by river and sea into Ulster with Brian’s lion banners fluttering from the prows of his ships.

The message was not wasted on the O’Neill princes in the north. The King of Munster was now allied with Dublin. That meant he had the strength of the Norsemen behind him. He also had the support of Connacht still, and he had demanded and received warriors from Maelmora of Leinster.

As Brian told his historian, Carroll, ‘When the time comes for me to challenge Malachy for the high kingship, I must know if his O’Neill kinsmen will support him.’

‘Are you prepared to fight the princes of Ulster?’

‘I hope I won’t have to,’ Brian replied. ‘If I have planned wisely, and the size of my army makes them timid, I may win without shedding a drop of blood.’

‘This is a strange sort of warfare altogether!’ Carroll said.

Brian laughed. ‘Many of the things I do seem strange to other people.’

‘That’s because you think in new ways,’ the historian told him.

‘I wish my son Murcha understood that.’

‘Ah, Brian, I think he does. He just won’t admit it. He’s as proud as you are.’

Brian’s army flowed across the land. Considering that their leader wanted to avoid bloodshed, they were heavily armed indeed. In addition to the usual foot warriors, Brian had a cavalry comprising both Irish riders and Norsemen from Dublin, mounted on sturdy ponies.

The army advanced on Ulster. People all along the way came out of their forts and farms to see them pass. Points of light glittered on the polished weapons and in
the eyes of the warriors. There was no singing along the way. These men were veterans of battle and the singing had gone out of them.

Meanwhile, Malachy was sending frantic messages to his northern kinsmen, asking their support against Brian. But as Brian moved deeper into Ulster, the princes of the north observed the size of his army and delayed sending a reply of any sort to Malachy.

Brian marched on. He never attacked, he never declared war on any person. He merely marched, and his army followed.

The princes of Ulster stayed quiet behind barred doors. Not one of them could command as many warriors as Brian Boru.

At last one, the Prince Hugh, felt he must face the Dalcassian. According to tradition, Hugh should follow Malachy as High King.

Gathering his followers and the warriors sworn to him, Hugh went to meet Brian at Dundalk. With him were a number of the Ulster princes. There was the usual argument among them as to who should formally greet the King of Munster.

Brian’s army waited like a dark mantle spread across the land. Finally Hugh himself came forward, fully armed and looking tense.

When they met, Brian said, ‘I call the blessings of God upon the tribe O’Neill.’

Hugh was caught unprepared. ‘You are not here to attack?’

‘Attack?’ Brian asked as if he did not know the meaning of the word. He seemed unaware of the huge army at his back, though Hugh kept looking at it.

‘You invade Ulster with an army,’ Hugh accused.

Now Brian glanced around, then looked back at Hugh
and grinned. ‘You mean my followers? They are merely good people who have made this journey with me because they want to see more of the land than just Munster. We have not harmed a person we met along our way.’

Hugh was not reassured. ‘The High King sends word to us that you are threatening him.’

Brian grinned even more. ‘You just said I brought an army to Ulster. So how can I be threatening Meath? I assure you I don’t have two armies. The men you see with me are all I have.’

The men with him were quite enough, Hugh thought.

Hugh was not a reckless man. Nor was he a young one. If there was going to be a struggle for the high kingship, he decided he was too old to get involved. The one time he had visited Tara he had thought the place shabby and in need of much repair. No High King had made it his residence for a very long time. Now it was used only for ceremonial occasions, as Brian used Cashel. Tara’s timbered halls were rotting, and a constant wind blew across the green ridge and through holes in its roofs. A wind like a banshee’s cry.

‘If you intend no harm you’re welcome,’ Hugh said to Brian.

‘I intend the opposite of harm. I want to right a wrong. I understand that some raiders from Dublin, flying my standard, recently pillaged your lands?’

‘They did.’

‘Then rather than taking cattle, women and hostages from you, will you allow me to offer you a gift to make up for what was taken?’ As he spoke, Brian gave a signal and some of his men trotted forward, carrying great chests filled with treasure. They set these at the feet of the astonished Hugh.

‘I would not have the noble O’Neills suffer any loss in the name of Brian Boru,’ the King of Munster said.

Hugh looked past Brian one more time, at the huge army with him. An army large enough to take anything in sight, if it wanted.

If Brian Boru wanted.

Hugh was a wise man. ‘The O’Neills of the north have no quarrel with Brian of Munster,’ he announced at last.

Brian spent three days with the northern princes. They served great feasts in his honour, and his bards taught their bards the poetry of the south.

‘And that’s how you win a war without bloodshed,’ Brian told Carroll when they were on their way back to Munster.

When they reached Kincora, they found that a small war had broken out there. Gormla had been bored with Brian away. She had managed to start a fight among some of the Dalcassians left to guard his stronghold. Brian arrived just in time to put a stop to it before someone was killed.

The quarrel was forgotten when the annual tribute from the Limerick Danes arrived. Every year since their defeat at his hands they had sent him 365 tuns of wine containing 32 gallons each. This was kept in the winecellar Brian had built across the Shannon, out of easy reach of his warriors. But to make his Dalcassians put aside their differences he ordered the wine to flow like water at Kincora, until no man remembered what the fight was about.

Brian did not take part. He climbed alone to the grey crag. There he whispered, to the listening spirit of Aval, ‘When I married her, I thought Gormla would make me happy. She was not like any of my other women. I could talk to her and she understood. I thought she would be a
companion as we grew older.

‘Perhaps I made a mistake, Aval.’

He looked out across the land, across Lough Derg and the shimmering Shannon and the walls of Kincora.

‘Perhaps the only thing which it is safe to love is the land itself,’ Brian said sadly.

The land could not die. The land never disappointed him.

He stretched out his arms in love and longing, as if he would embrace all of Ireland.

Marcan mac Kennedy was pleased with the abbey his brother Brian had ordered built for him. As its abbot he had reached the limit of his worldly ambition. He also enjoyed knowing the abbey was safe from raiders. In the land Brian Boru controlled, raids on abbeys and monasteries had all but ceased. When anyone sought to plunder them, Brian hunted down the thieves and punished them savagely.

If Brian was trying to bring peace to Ireland, it seemed he was also trying to make his own peace with God.

But peace was not as easily won as a battle. In the province of Connacht, King Conor decided his daughter Ducholi had been insulted by Brian. ‘But I don’t want to live with him anymore, Father,’ she insisted, but Conor would not listen. He rebelled against Brian and declared support for Malachy instead.

Brian was forced to march into Connacht and put
down the rising. Irish blood was shed by Irish men, and Brian felt it on his hands.

How long could he hope to hold his allies together, he wondered? Irish and Viking were an uneasy partnership at best. He did not believe Sitric and Maelmora would be loyal to him just for the sake of Gormla. She was using her influence on his behalf now, but that could change. One could never predict what Gormla might do.

Brian sent for Mac Liag. They sat together drinking red wine in a stone chamber lined with hangings of brightly dyed wool. A fire burned in a bronze brazier near their feet, to keep away the chill that lingered in spite of the springtime. One of Brian’s beloved shaggy hounds was stretched beside the king’s bench. The dog appeared to be asleep, but when Brian spoke it opened its eyes and thumped its tail against the stone floor.

‘Malachy will probably never again feel as weak as he does now,’ Brian said. ‘I know he isn’t afraid of me. I have simply outsmarted him. If I am ever to challenge him, this is the time. And I should like Donncha, the son Gormla has given me, to grow up as the son of a High King.

‘I shall ask Marcan my brother to come from his abbey and bless me, Mac Liag. Then I shall lead an army into Meath and demand Malachy submit to me.’

For a long time, Mac Liag had expected to hear those words. For a long time, Brian had made no secret of his ambition.

‘Take me with you, Brian,’ said Mac Liag. ‘I want to see it happen with my own eyes, so I can compose a great poem about it afterwards.’

‘You and Carroll will both go with me,’ Brian promised.

Murcha was going too. On such an occasion, Brian
could not leave his oldest son behind. Even knowing there might be trouble between them – for when was there not? – Brian asked Murcha to ride at his shoulder.

All the years of planning and dreaming were coming together now. If Brian succeeded and Malachy surrendered the high kingship to him, he meant to rule a newly united Ireland, a thing that had never been before. And he wanted Murcha to be part of it, to understand, and to follow him when he was gone, and hold together what Brian had built.

Irish and Viking together at peace. Peace among the tribes. A land where no child would find its mother slaughtered.

In the early summer of the Year of Our Lord 1002, Brian Boru marched into Meath. The lion banner was vivid in the sunlight.

Brian sent a messenger ahead to Malachy, demanding that he surrender Tara and the high kingship.

The army advanced very slowly. Brian wanted to give the High King time to accept his fate and submit without fighting. Once again, the people watched as Brian Boru passed by. Some among them noticed that he wore a cloak of seven colours. Only the High King was entitled to wear seven colours.

When he learned that Brian was approaching with an army, Malachy sent one last, desperate appeal north, to Ulster.

The reply came back. ‘If you want us to stand with you against Munster,’ Hugh O’Neill said, ‘you must give us half of Meath.’

Malachy could not give up his homeland. Feeling totally deserted, he waited alone, except for his little band of loyal Meath princes, in the echoing halls of Tara.

At last runners came to tell him Brian and his army
were setting up camp on the plains beyond. Malachy felt a curious sense of relief. At least the long wait was over. ‘How large is the army?’ he asked.

‘They blacken the earth, and the smoke from their fires blackens the sky.’

‘Ah,’ said Malachy. ‘Ah.’

Twilight fell on royal Meath. By himself, wishing no company, Malachy wandered through the deserted halls of Tara, murmuring their names to himself. The Fort of the Kings. The Fort of the Synods. King Laoire’s Fort. The great feasting hall with its fourteen doorways, where he had celebrated in times past. Empty now, the chieftains who had cheered him gone. Their banners hung limp and forgotten in the damp evening air.

Malachy wondered what Kincora was like. Larger than Tara, some said. Grander than the Fort of the Swords.

‘I have been a good king,’ Malachy said aloud, as if challenging the night wind to answer him.

He walked a little farther. A stone glinted white in the fading light. Drawing back his foot, Malachy gave it a kick, then listened to it rattle away in the darkness.

‘What did I do wrong?’ he asked aloud.

The night wind had no answer for him.

At dawn, a sleepless and red-eyed Malachy put on his finest robes and prepared to meet Brian Boru.