Brian Boru (2 page)

The longships came nosing through the mist that lay thick on the river. Their prows were ferocious wooden dragon heads, painted in the colours of fire and blood. They struck terror into the hearts of the Irish. Wherever the rivers flowed, the foreigners from the cold lands, the Danes and the Norsemen, sailed up them to pillage and plunder.

The foreigners called it ‘going viking’.

For as long as he could remember, Brian had heard terrible stories of Viking raids. When Kennedy’s family sat around the fire at night, and the old shanachy of the Dalcassians told tales of blood and death, young Brian felt a delicious shiver of fear.

But it did not last long. He could always shrug it off
by imagining himself as a mighty hero with a sword, driving the Vikings away. All his brothers would crowd around him and praise him, instead of teasing him because he was the youngest. And Bebinn would give him extra lumps of honeyed suet as a treat.

The threat of the Vikings did not seem real to him. He had never seen a Viking raid; it was just a story the tribe’s storyteller told to pass the long winter nights.

But then the longships came nosing up the Shannon.

At the time, Brian was with his brothers Mahon and Marcan, tending cattle on the upland meadows some distance from Beal Boru. Marcan, who was dreamy and claimed that God talked to him, was lying on his back chewing a blade of grass and staring at the sky while Mahon was teaching Brian how to watch for threats to the herd. Suddenly he stopped talking and lifted his head, listening. Then he said, ‘Did you hear that?’

Marcan took the grass out of his mouth. ‘Hear what?’

Mahon frowned. ‘Perhaps it was nothing. But I thought … there! There it is again!’

The wind had shifted and now all three heard the sound of screams in the distance.

‘That’s coming from Beal Boru!’ Mahon shouted, and began to run, with Brian at his heels. Marcan scrambled to his feet and ran after them, forgetting about the cattle.

The mist in the river valley was too thick. Looking down from the hills, they could not see the fort. But then they caught the first smell of smoke and ran faster.

As they drew near the fort they could hear the crackling of flames and see that the main gate had been torn off its iron hinges. ‘Stay here!’ Mahon ordered Brian, as he and Marcan hurried forward.

But Brian did not obey him. Though he loved Mahon, he did not like to take orders from anyone. He trotted
through the gateway behind his brothers, then stopped to stare.

He felt the world drop out from under him. Time seemed to stop, leaving him frozen. He could see everything far too clearly, yet he was unable to move.

Every structure inside the fort had been set afire. The main lodge was burning and so were the several outbuildings and smaller lodges for Kennedy’s dependents. There was a crash and a huge shower of sparks as a roof collapsed. With a gasp of horror, Brian jumped to one side, only to stumble over the body of the old shanachy. The man was dead and covered with blood.

There were bodies everywhere. One of Brian’s brothers lay near the gate, where he had died fighting. Beyond him was a farmer who lived nearby and had fled to the fort for safety, then died there with all his family huddled around him. Brian’s shocked eyes saw another of his brothers, with a spear thrust through him, and his mother’s favourite milch cow and several of his father’s hounds, all slain. Beside them on the earth lay a servant who had helped Bebinn with domestic chores, and then …

… and then …

He tried not to see her. He willed himself not to see her. Princess Bebinn of Connacht lay in a pool of blood where the Danes had left her.

Brian stumbled forward and fell to his knees beside his mother.

She could not be dead. This was some terrible dream. If only he could open his eyes he would find himself safe and warm in his own bed again, and Bebinn would come at his cry and laugh at him, and hug him, and make everything all right.

He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. But when he opened them again she still lay on the ground, not moving. There was an awful stillness about her.

Brian felt as if claws were tearing him apart from the inside.

He threw himself across her body and called her again and again, his voice rising until it tore his throat. But he did not feel the pain. The claws inside kept tearing at him until he could feel nothing else.

When he could not bear it any longer he got to his feet and stumbled through the ruins, seeking comfort. Seeing Mahon through tear-filled eyes, Brian ran to him. He threw his arms around Mahon’s waist. ‘Make Mother be all right again!’ he cried. Mahon must do it; he was the big brother who always fixed things.

But Mahon felt as sick and as helpless as Brian. This was also his family; his mother and brothers lying dead. He was dazed with shock. He gave Brian’s shoulder an absentminded pat but he did not hug the younger boy, or pick him up. He was hardly even aware of him. Instead he left Brian standing where he was and just walked away, shaking his head, fighting back his own tears. At that moment, Mahon had no comfort to spare.

Brian stared after his brother.

Mahon bumped into Marcan without seeing him. Marcan said, ‘It’s a blessing of God that our father was away trading cattle, or he might be lying dead here, too.’

‘A blessing of God …’ Mahon repeated the words. The two men looked at each other then, sharing the horror.

Brian watched them from a distance, feeling terribly alone. The worst thing in all the world had happened and there was no one to hold him, no one to hug him and tell him everything would be all right. That was the sort of thing Bebinn would have done. But she would never
hug him again.

Never again.

A cold wind seemed to swirl around Brian, chilling him to the marrow. ‘Mother,’ he sobbed.

No loving voice answered.

Brian made his way back to Bebinn and sat down beside her, drawing his knees up tight against his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He watched without really seeing as Mahon and Marcan began moving among the bodies, covering faces. Marcan appeared to be saying a prayer over each.

A shout from beyond the gate announced the arrival of another of Kennedy’s sons, who had been with a herd beyond Slieve Bernagh. Soon all the surviving members of the family arrived, summoned by the disaster. Each in turn stopped and stared as Brian had done.

Beal Boru was destroyed. Once it had been the proud stronghold of a tribal chieftain who owned many cows. Now it was rubble and ash, containing death. People seemed to notice Brian only because he was sitting by Bebinn’s body. No one knew what to do with him. The women of the clan had been killed or carried off by the Vikings. It had been they who cared for children, men had other work. The only survivors of the family were some of Brian’s brothers, men with no experience to equal that of a mother. They were not unkind to Brian, but they did not know what he needed.

Mostly they just left him alone. They had to put out the fires, and collect the dead.

The only time Brian said anything was when they wrapped Bebinn’s body in a cloak and carried her away. He followed her with his eyes, saying ‘Mother’ just once more.

Very softly.

That night the surviving sons of Kennedy slept together in the ruins of the old homestead below the grey crag. From there, they could not smell the ashes and burnt timber. Other Dalcassians had arrived and offered them help and hospitality, but by mutual agreement they had gone to their grandfather’s old fort instead. It was the nearest thing to their destroyed home.

Brian lay on the earth beside Mahon, wrapped in a woollen cloak. He did not think of himself as afraid, but sometimes shudders ran through his body.

A messenger had been sent to find Kennedy, who had gone across the Shannon to arrange a cattle trade with another tribe. When Brian tried, he found he could not remember his father’s face. But he could still see his mother as she lay dead.

In the night a shriek wailed down the wind. It was not a human voice.

‘It’s the banshee,’ Mahon said, feeling the hairs rise on the back of his neck. ‘Aval mourns the Dalcassian dead.’

No one slept that night, while the voice of the banshee ripped and tore the air.

Rebuilding Beal Boru began as soon as Kennedy returned and the dead were buried. Brian’s father was frightening in his anger. At first he hardly spoke to anyone. He broke branches in his rage and drove his fist through burned timber walls. He roared at people in a voice that did not even sound like his own, and Brian stayed as far away from him as he could.

Dalcassians of every rank came to assist their chieftain in rebuilding Beal Boru. Members of the warrior nobility wore gold and silver jewellery and pleated tunics. Freemen who farmed tribal land wore simpler clothing, and servants and unfree labourers dressed in the coarsest homespun, but all worked equally hard. Beal Boru was a
symbol of Dalcassian pride.

The surviving members of Kennedy’s family were changed by the raid. Kennedy himself was always angry. Marcan now prayed most of the time. Mahon seemed older, quieter, and did not play with Brian any more.

Brian began starting fights with the sons of nearby farmers. Fighting took his mind off his pain, for a while. He pretended the farmers’ sons were Vikings and beat them so savagely their fathers protested to Kennedy.

‘I’m sending that young troublemaker away,’ the chieftain promised. ‘To the monks at Clonmacnois, for his education.’

On the day Brian was to leave for Clonmacnois, his father sent him a set of new clothing, fit for a prince. He was given a linen undershirt with flowing sleeves, and a tunic dyed with saffron, to be belted with carved leather. A new mantle of dark red wool trimmed in otter fur reached almost to the ground, barely revealing snug woollen trews that extended from his hips to his ankles and were held in place by a strap under the arch of his foot. On Brian’s feet were the first shoes he had ever worn, a pair of soft leather boots cut low and embossed with a few strips of silver wire.

He hated the shoes. His feet did not like being trapped in leather, they wanted to feel the earth and the grass.

And the new woollen trews itched.

When Brian stood before his father for inspection, Kennedy’s first words were, ‘Stop scratching. You’ll get used to those trews.’

‘Do I really have to go away?’ Brian wanted to know. ‘I want to stay here.’

‘You’re no use to us here. You won’t be old enough to take up arms and go to war until you’re fifteen, and in the meantime you’re in everyone’s way. We don’t have
your mother to mind you now. Going to Clonmacnois is for your own good.’

‘Whenever someone wants me to do something I don’t want to do, they say it’s for my own good,’ Brian protested.

Mahon, who was waiting to take him to the monastic school upriver, chuckled.

Kennedy shot him a warning glance. ‘Don’t encourage the boy, there’s too much of the rebel in him already. I don’t envy the good brothers who will have to tame him.’

Mahon said little on the ride north, and Brian said less. The pain closed around him again. He was being sent away. He had lost his mother; now he was losing his home. He bit his lip and hated the Vikings. It had all begun with them.

When they arrived at Clonmacnois, the abbot who greeted them looked Brian over from his heels to his head. ‘What are we to make of you?’ he said at last.

‘A warrior. I’m going to kill all the Vikings.’

‘That is not worthy of a Christian,’ the abbot said sternly. But he gave the boy another look. There was something wild in the young Dalcassian’s eyes. This one will be a challenge, the abbot said to himself.

He led the way through a low stone archway into a paved courtyard. A number of scholars were sitting on wooden benches, listening to a monk who was speaking in a strange language.

Brian halted, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. He looked over his shoulder to see what Mahon made of this, but Mahon was gone.

He had left without saying goodbye.

Brian took a deep breath. He was hurt but he would not let it show. I am alone, he thought. Now I have no
one but me. He lifted his chin and swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. ‘What language is that man speaking?’ he asked the abbot. ‘Is he a foreigner?’

‘He is teaching Greek,’ the abbot explained, ‘which is a tongue, like Latin, that is read by civilised people. But he is as Irish as yourself, born no more than a morning’s walk from here.’

‘Are you going to teach me Greek and Latin?’

‘If you are capable of learning it. And if you are entitled to such an education. What is your ancestry?’

As the historian of the Dalcassians had taught him, Brian recited, ‘I am the son of Kennedy who is the son of Lorcan, King of Thomond, who was descended from Corc, first King of Thomond, who was descended from Cormac Cas, and through him from the Milesian princes.’

The abbot nodded. ‘You are entitled to all we have to teach, then.’

‘Will you train me in the finer arts of sword and spear?’ Brian asked eagerly.

The abbot frowned at him. ‘We serve the God of Peace here, not the gods of war,’ he said sternly.

But Brian had already noted the high stone walls built to protect the great monastic school that dreamed in the watery meadows beside the Shannon. He had seen the tall stone tower with its cone-shaped roof and asked Mahon about it as they were approaching the place.

‘That is a round tower where the monks keep lookout for raiders,’ Mahon had explained. ‘If they see Vikings coming up the river, they take the Church’s treasures into the top of the tower and pull up the ladder so no one can get to them. It’s the only way to protect gold and silver from the Danes and Norsemen … and from some of our own plundering clans,’ he had added.

So as he listened to the abbot, Brian was thinking to himself, war comes here in spite of what this man says. There is no safe place, then. But there should be.

There should be!

Brian’s early days at Clonmacnois were spent learning the discipline of monastic life. The monks were not gentle teachers. His frequent rebellions were met with frequent punishments, and the rope belt around the abbot’s waist was often removed and used across young Brian’s back.