Brian Boru (11 page)

With Tara rising behind him, Malachy approached Brian across Mag Breg, the Plain of Hills. He came as a High King should, accompanied by his standard bearer and most loyal princes, and followed by a guard of honour comprised of his best warriors with their swords.

The warriors carried the swords outstretched, in surrender.

This was the moment Brian had waited for, for so long. He wanted to stop time, so he could enjoy it. But it would rush past and be over; even he could not stop time. His bard and historian must capture the moment for him.

As he watched Malachy approach his tent, Brian issued an order. ‘Collect as many of our best horses as Malachy has warriors with him.’

When the High King was twelve paces away, Brian stepped forward six paces, halving the distance.

Their warriors formed a circle around them, jostling one another in their eagerness to be in front and see and hear all that was said.

Whatever Brian might take from him, Malachy was a prince of the O’Neills, a man of dignity and personal courage. He held his head high and met Brian’s eyes with a steady gaze of his own. ‘If those who should have supported me had not failed me, I would meet you with raised shields between us, Brian Boru.’

In a deep voice Brian replied, ‘I am willing to meet you in single combat any time, Malachy.’

The High King sighed. ‘It would serve no purpose.
The contest between us is already over, and we both know it.’

Raising his arms, he lifted a circlet of gold from his head. ‘I have worn this for twenty years,’ he said to Brian. ‘See if it fits you.’

Brian took the crown of the High King. Gazing down at it, he turned it over and over in his fingers. The men watched eagerly but his face told them nothing of the thoughts behind his eyes.

This is only metal, he was saying to himself. Like the title, High King, it means nothing by itself. Whatever meaning it has, men give it.

He looked up and gave Malachy a gentle smile. ‘You are a noble man,’ he said. Then, to the astonishment of all, he put his arms around the smaller Meathman and embraced him. As they broke apart Brian put the crown back into Malachy’s hands.

‘This isn’t mine until I am made High King in the ancient ritual,’ he said. ‘Until then, it should remain with you. And I should also like to give you the sort of gift kings of equal rank exchange.’ He turned and beckoned. Horseboys ran forward, leading the best Munster horses, one for every member of Malachy’s party.

The High King’s own men cheered Brian Boru.

Now that it was too late, Malachy began to realise what he had done wrong. He had followed all the traditions. As High King, he had demanded taxes in the form of tributes, taken sides in tribal feuds, fought and feasted and enjoyed the wealth of his rank. He had done what all the High Kings before him had done.

But Brian Boru had a different idea of kingship. He won support and admiration through gestures such as this, without fighting. He had made himself the image of what a High King should be.

Nobility comes more naturally to him than it does to me, Malachy thought sadly, though I was born to a great tribe and he an unimportant one. It was my misfortune to be born in the same generation as such a man.

Malachy ordered the feasting hall of Tara swept and garnished once again, so he could serve a feast in honour of the Lion of Thomond. He shall at least see me lose gracefully, Malachy promised himself. One last feast in the ancient hall, while the crown is still on my head.

‘I assume that Prince Murcha will be his father’s Tanist, the man chosen to succeed him,’ Malachy told his servants. ‘I have heard that Brian has been trying to train his oldest son for that purpose. So seat him at his father’s side for the feast.’

Sitting beside Brian, Murcha watched him closely. Other men at the feast were eating right-and-left handed and emptying their wine cups as fast as they were filled. Brian ate well, but drank very little. He sat quiet and watchful, always in control of himself.

When a servant approached with more wine, Murcha put his hand over his cup as Brian did. I can learn from you, father, he thought to himself. He saw Brian’s glance flick towards him, noticing. Then Brian gave the smallest nod of approval, one that none but Murcha saw.

Murcha smiled.

My son seems to have learned something from my bloodless victory, Brian thought. He is looking at me with new respect in his eyes. I suppose he never really expected me to become High King.

Nor did I! Brian suddenly admitted to himself. He felt joy swelling his chest. Joy, and a growing sense of the huge responsibility he was about to take upon himself.

At the doorways of the feasting hall, the banners of the chieftains hung from their poles. For the first time a
banner of yellow silk hung among them – yellow silk, upon which were three crimson lions.

Brian did not send for Gormla to join him when he was formally made High King. Gormla had been Malachy’s wife. He would not use her as salt to rub in the other man’s wound.

At Kincora, she complained bitterly about being left out.

Brian’s army remained encamped on the plain below Tara while preparations were made for the ceremony. It was best to be prepared. No one could say how the tribes of Ireland might react to this break with tradition. The overthrow of a High King could shake the very earth upon which they stood, even if it was done without blood.

Each of the five great roads leading to Tara was guarded by a company of armed Dalcassians.

On the appointed day, a huge crowd came up those roads to see Brian become High King. Farmers had left their fields, women had left their pots boiling over the fire, children had left their play. Everyone wanted to be at Tara. An excited buzz ran through the crowd. ‘The Stone of Fal is supposed to cry out when a true king is crowned. Will it cry out for the Dalcassian, do you suppose?’

No one knew.

As historian of the south, Carroll had argued that Brian should be crowned at Cashel. But Brian had replied, ‘I am already King of Munster. The Stone of Fal at Tara is the sacred symbol of high kingship. I shall claim Ireland from the Stone of Fal or not at all.’

Hearing these words, Brian’s men had exchanged worried looks. Everyone knew the legend about the Stone of Fal, but most thought it was only a legend. Had
the stone cried out for Malachy? Had he even bothered to stand upon it, according to the ancient tradition?

Brian sent for his brother, the abbot Marcan, to place the gold circlet upon his head when the time came. When Brian mentioned the Stone of Fal, Marcan said, ‘The voice in the stone is the voice of a demon, brother! It cried out for pagan kings. A Christian should have nothing to do with such a symbol.’

Brian gave Marcan a long look. ‘This land was pagan before it was Christian. This land is many things. You cannot cut out the parts you don’t like and throw them away, any more than I could drive out the Vikings.’

Of all of Brian’s followers, Murcha was the most worried. ‘What if my father steps onto the stone and it makes no sound?’ he kept asking Mac Liag. ‘What sort of poem will you compose then?’

Brian knew how important symbols were. He had made much use of symbols in his career. The strong walls of Kincora, the generosity of his gifts, the size of his army. These were symbols everyone understood. The Stone of Fal was the greatest symbol of all.

On the day before the ceremony, Brian went to see Tara for himself. No kings lived there now, but it was the true heart of the land as it had been since the days of the Tuatha de Danann.

‘I am here at last, Aval,’ Brian whispered to the wind. ‘On my own terms.’
He stopped before the Stone of Fal. The bards said the stone had been brought to Ireland by the Dananns in ancient times, before the coming of the Gael. The Gael had fought and defeated the Dananns, but kept their magical stone to crown their own kings upon. As a little boy, Brian had never tired of hearing the tales of conquests and heroic deeds.

So many conquests, he thought. Let it be over now.

The surface of the grey stone was rough and pitted. It lay flat on the earth, atop the Mound of the Hostages, as the sacred oak of the Dalcassians had stood on its mound at Magh Adhair before Malachy cut it down. There were two shallow hollows in the stone like the prints of forgotten feet. These marked where a king should stand – if he dared.

Brian walked slowly around the stone, his eyes narrowed in thought.

Tomorrow the Stone of Fal must cry aloud. It must announce him as the true and rightful High King.

Nothing must be left to chance, he told himself.

At dawn the next morning, Marcan came for him. Brian had dressed with care for the most important occasion of his life. His mane of red-gold hair was fading at last, and streaked with grey, but its damp waves bore the toothmarks of his comb. His head was bare, awaiting a crown.

He wore a new tunic with bell-shaped, pleated sleeves, and Celtic knotwork around the hem. It was belted with fine Munster leather, ornamented with gold. But the belt held no scabbard. For the first time in many years, Brian Boru carried no weapons.

His standard bearer came forward, lifting the banner of three crimson lions. The king and his party followed it up the hill. They were soon surrounded by the crowd of
people who had come from as far away as Dublin to see the event. The air was filled with the voices of trumpets.

When Brian entered the main gate of Tara, a hush fell over the crowd. Malachy was waiting near the Stone of Fal. Malachy had not used the Stone during his own inauguration ceremony. His priests had been against the pagan custom. Now Malachy could not help noticing the way the people looked at the stone, with fear and something like reverence. Pagan and Christian lived side by side in these people.

The ceremony began with a reading from the Book of Rights, describing the duties of kingship. These laws had come to Ireland with the Gael, fifteen hundred years before Brian was born. When he swore to uphold them, the people nodded approval.

‘He looks like one of the kings from the ancient stories,’ they said to one another.

Next the historian recited Brian’s family history, so all present would know he was of noble blood. Finally, Marcan turned to Malachy and held out his hands.

Malachy had tried to prepared himself for this moment. But when he lifted the gold circlet from his own head and handed it to the Dalcassian abbot, he felt an awful sense of loss.

Marcan carried the circlet to Brian. As chief poet to the king, Mac Liag would hand Brian the white rod of authority, another pagan symbol. Marcan would set the High King’s crown on Brian’s head and recite a Christian blessing. The old and the new were mingled in the ceremony.

Irish and Viking were mingled in the audience, watching. Among them stood the leading clerics of the area, bishops and abbots from Kells and Clonard, Durrow and Finglas. Brian had given gifts to all their
churches.

An ancient wind sang through the halls of Tara.

With the rod of polished hazelwood in one hand, and the gold circlet on his brow, Brian stepped on to the Stone of Fal.

For many years afterward, people would ask each other, ‘Were you on Tara Hill when the Stone of Fal cried aloud for Brian Boru?’

Even those who had not been there would claim, later, that they had. Even those who had not heard the Stone would try, later, to describe its sound for others. The sound was not to be forgotten. It was a chilling wail that rose like the shriek of a banshee and arched across Ireland like a rainbow, uniting the Hill of Tara with the Grey Crag of Thomond.

Afterwards, Brian returned to Kincora. It was time to start putting into effect the years of plans he had stored in his head. There were so many things he wanted to do for the land he loved; the land that could not die like a mother, or disappoint like a son, or be carried away like gold.

Brian built churches and schools and bridges. When men broke the law, he dealt justice with such a firm hand that violence all but disappeared from the land. When tribal quarrels broke out, Brian was tireless in settling them.

Step by step, day by day, he enforced his will on the people as no High King before him had ever attempted to do.

And step by step, day by day, a new serenity extended over the island of Ireland.

Mac Liag wrote with delight of a time when a fair maiden, dressed in all her finery and jewels, could travel the length of the land without meeting theft or insult in
any form.

‘Let no man forget,’ Brian told the historians and scribes, ‘that I have a strong hand. I am not afraid to give out punishment, as three thousand Danes learned on Singland Hill after the battle of Sulcoit. They used violence against my people and I met them with a greater violence. Let that be a warning.’

Brian did not want anyone to forget that he could be savage. The war-loving princes of the tribes must know that his strong hand was uppermost.

Brian was sixty-one years of age when he became High King, but as his giant shadow stretched across the land, people did not think of him as old. He was Ireland’s strength and her pride.

With peace came growth. More children lived to grow up. Seedlings were planted to replace the timber the Vikings had taken for their ships. Even the weather seemed milder, so that spring lasted for half a year and fine crops were harvested.

‘I intend to involve myself in things Malachy never thought about,’ Brian told Murcha. He made a tour of the entire island, talking to its people, examining its coastline, planning how it should be defended if invaders ever came again. These plans he told to Murcha, to remember and use if they should ever be needed. ‘Pass them on to your son,’ Brian said.

He also visited Armagh, in the north, where he left a gift of twenty ounces of gold on the altar and declared Armagh to be the primary ecclesiastical city in Ireland.

The bishops were highly pleased. They offered a vellum book for his inscription, to be added to the Annals of Armagh.

‘You have won the hearts of the Ulstermen,’ they assured Brian.

‘They may speak for God,’ The High King said quietly to Carroll, who was with his party. ‘But I doubt if they speak for all of the O’Neills. Still, it is no small thing to have won the support of the Church in the north. Fetch your inks and quills, Carroll, and let us attend to this page.’

When the vellum page was returned to the bishops they read, in a beautifully clear and trained hand, the words:

‘St Patrick, when going to heaven, decreed that the entire fruit of his labour, as well of baptism and causes as of alms, should be rendered to the apostolic city, which in the Irish tongue is called Ard Macha. Thus I have found it in the records of the Irish. Thus I have written, in the presence of Brian, Emperor of the Irish.’

Emperor of the Irish. The bishops clustered around to read the words.

Written by Maelsuthainn mac Carroll, those words on that page survive until this very day, and may be read still in the Book of Armagh.

Brian made many other journeys. His relentless energy had not deserted him. He accepted the submissions of chieftains who had hardly heard his name before he appeared in their gateways with an army at his back. There was little fighting done, however. Usually the sight of Brian’s strength was enough.

Peace spread and multiplied. Children slept safe in their beds.

But there was not much peace at Kincora. Gormla had never forgiven Brian for not taking her to Tara, to share his glory. She had wanted to throw her triumph in Malachy’s face. Her disappointment made her curdle like milk left in the sun.

When Brian was with her she gave him the sharp edge
of her tongue. He was more patient with her than he should be, some said.

‘If my wife spoke to me like that I would pluck her like a chicken,’ said Brian’s confessor, who was a gentle priest with a fine Christian spirit and a devoted wife and children. Priests in Rome did not marry, but Irish priests had not accepted that custom. They considered families sacred.

Brian had laughed at the priest’s words. ‘What Gormla says can’t hurt me. People have said much worse things about me.’

Murcha pointed out, ‘It isn’t what she says, Father. It’s what she may do. She might try to turn her brother and even her son against you.’

Murcha did not like young Donncha, son of Brian and Gormla.

But Brian ignored the warning. Murcha has not liked any of my women, he told himself. I can handle Gormla.