Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale (3 page)

“But didn’t he tell you everything later?” asks Brigid.

“He never got the chance. When he came to, he screamed with such pain, we poured mead down his throat and kept pouring”

“Will he be all right, Mother?”

Mother rests her cheek on top of Brigid’s head. She doesn’t speak. She seems defeated.

“Of course he’ll be all right,” I say in a defiant burst. I rub Brigid’s hands within mine. “Why, old man O’Flaherty of Connacht lives fine, mean as a boar. And he lost his whole arm when he was just a boy.”

“Which is why he never became king,’ says Mother.

The hair at the nape of my neck bristles. “What do you mean?”

“A true king must be perfect,
dianim—
without blemish.”

I shake my head. My little brother has been bred to a certain future. He must have that future. “Nuada will be a perfect king. People feel calm when they hear him.”

Mother’s eyes widen. “You listen, Melkorka. Listen to yourself. Think about what you’re saying. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.”

“I don’t understand, Mother.”

“Nuada couldn’t have protected Downpatrick. He doesn’t excite fear” She reaches out and touches Nuada’s shoulder gently. “He couldn’t be king. My sweet son.”

“Don’t talk like that!” Brigid’s face crumples. “Don’t say terrible things in front of Nuada.”

“He cannot hear us, Brigid. He is senseless. But we are not. Despite our grief, we must be as sensible as we can right now” She sits tall and sets her jaw. “We must face the needs of our world.”

“You’re talking about the cursed Vikings, aren’t you?” My words come like a revelation. “You’ve always told us how horrible they are. We have to keep armies because of them!”

“The Vikings are wicked, yes,” says Mother. “But if not
the Vikings, then another Irish king. Melkorka, my dear one, don’t you know? Irish kings all die violent deaths, at one another’s hands if not at invaders’ hands. We’re a bunch of squabbling families, stealing from one another.”

“But then who will be King of Downpatrick after Father?” I ask.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to get together and decide. I’ll let it be known that we’re forming a council. Otherwise the monastery will try to impose someone on us.”

“I know what,” says Brigid. “. can be queen. She’s older than Nuada anyway. We won’t need a king.”

A queen without a king? Me?

“Silly one.” Mother sighs. “I’m queen because I married your father. The only way Melkorka will ever be a queen is if she marries an heir to a throne.”

“But—”

“Hush now,” says Mother. “Go to bed, girls. There’s time enough to figure out the question of succession. Besides, your father is going to be king for many years yet.”

I take Brigid by the hand and lead her to our bed mats, on the floor in Father and Mother’s room. We pass an open window. The moon is bloodred. I rub my eyes, but the color stays.

Maybe the moon was just so two nights ago as well. I didn’t look then. Maybe if I had, I would have seen the
warning. I wouldn’t have asked to go to Dublin.

I tuck Brigid in and crawl under my own covers. Maybe, maybe, maybe. My head hurts with all these maybes.

What actually happened? Was it an unfortunate accident? But it takes a lot of force to sever a hand. A tremendous amount. Was there an ax? Did a Viking wield it? I hate those heathens. All Norsemen are crazy. They’re all Vikings, really. I hate them. I hate them.

Brigid tugs on my covers. I lift the edge and she crawls in beside me. I usually can’t stand it when she joins me, she tosses so. But tonight I gather her in close. Her face is wet against my neck.

She’s asleep almost instantly.

I can’t sleep, though.

In the old days women fought alongside the men. Savage warriors, they say. But not these days, not in the year of our Lord 900. Women are exempt from military duty now, so hardly any of us fight. And even if we do fight, it’s a crime to kill a woman in battle. The new laws treat us as though we’re fragile.

But I’m not. I want to be in battle. I want to fight. I want to be killed fighting to protect my family.

Maybe I was the one who should have been born a boy, born to rule. Maybe little Brigid wasn’t so silly, after all. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Feet scurry outside the bedchamber, quiet, quiet. So quiet my eyes pop open in dread.

I work my arm out from under Brigid and look around. Mother and Father are not on their bed mats. Nor are our personal servants.

I change into my tunic.

Should I wake my sister? Loyalty tells me she’ll want to know everything I know. But it’s barely dawn, and we had so little sleep, and she’s only eight. And if it’s the worst news, she doesn’t need to hear it. Not yet.

I go straight to the sickroom and listen from outside. I hear Liaig.

“The fever struck during the night. If it gets much higher, he’ll convulse. I’ve been waging war against it without stop. Without stop”

Father curses. He and Mother come out of the sickroom. They see me here, but they don’t address me.

“If Nuada dies, we must avenge him,” says Father.

If Nuada dies. Oh, Lord, where have you gone? My
eyes blur.
Digal—
vengeance—is the only way to restore honor. But it could do much harm, I’ve heard Father’s reputation, though the last battle he fought took place before my birth: Father is a fierce avenger—
diglaid.
We could be at war soon.

“You do your part.” Mother sets her jaw firm. “I’ll do mine.”

“I’ll take Caley and Strahan, They’re my best men. We’ll find out what really happened,” Father gathers Mother’s hands in his and turns them palm up. He kisses them and buries his face there a moment, then he’s gone, with loud footfalls this time.

I move close to Mother, “If we go to war, will it be with Vikings?”

“That depends on what your father finds out.”

“But Dublin is a Viking city. It had to be Vikings.”

“Dublin has decent Norsemen, too. And Irish. Vikings aren’t the only vicious ones in this world.”

My arms and chest go hot, “If there’s a battle, I want to fight for Nuada, I want to be a warrior.”

“Enough talk about women warriors.” Mother walks toward the kitchen. “I have to alert the abbot.”

I call out, “Women used to be warriors….”

She stops. “Hush, I said. You need to learn when to hush, Melkorka, No talk now. We have a job.”

“We? You and me?”

“And Brigid. Go wake her.”

“What’s our job?”

“Saving Nuada’s life.”

Soon Brigid, Mother, and I set out on the mission. It takes us across the fort grounds, for our manor house nestles within the fort walls.

The fort is a depot for military supplies and a resting base for the town patrol. During time of attack, it can also serve as barracks for the fighters, like Irish forts everywhere. But, while typically no royalty lives inside fort walls, Father is a more cautious king than most, so he had our manor house built right here.

In the center of this stony walled area is a field. When I was small, we used it for agriculture. But now it’s where cattle graze, with dovecotes at one corner.

We have more than three hundred pairs of pigeons in our two dovecotes. I rarely venture near the smelly things, but Brigid goes right in often, and collects eggs for custard pudding. The birds don’t peck her, like they do the servants. They don’t even scream at her; they let her take the eggs, just like that.

They’re noisy this morning. And the smell is putrid. We walk by so close, I pinch my nose shut.

Men race past us, and older boys. Any male strong enough is assembling at the fort, waiting to find out if Father is going to wage war. News travels so quickly, it seems like magic.

The church is the first town building outside the fort walls. But Mother keeps walking.

“Why aren’t we stopping?” asks Brigid.

“The abbot’s conducting a special Mass to pray for Nuada’s return to health. He’s using the cathedral.”

“So far outside town?”

“That way everyone can come—all the country folk as well.

The three of us follow the stone path to the livery and climb into a chariot and ride out the southwest town gate, over the double ditches. Windmills on the grassy hills spin like children cartwheeling.

We pass clusters of
clochan,
homes the poor live in, set on islands the people have built of earth and stone in the marshes. They aren’t wood, like those of the well-off families in town or in the defended farmsteads ruled by vassals or lesser kings—the ringforts. They’re stone-and-mud ovals, dug half into the ground. The roofs are thatched. I look at them and think of beehives, of the
people inside crowded together in the dark—only one door, and hardly any air.

On the far side of the river, stone walls separate fields from one another. In the summer I love to come out this way. Breezes sway the oats, barley, rye. And corn, yes, corn is the best to see then, tall in the sun.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you for making this stretch of Eire the most arable land of the entire country. The taxes the farmers pay to our town on all that harvest keep my family rich.

Right now, though, it’s barely the start of spring. The fields are used for grazing. The field walls stand tall enough to prevent sheep from leaping over them and dense enough to prevent rats from getting through. Our chariot stops for slave boys driving a sheep flock from their night enclosures across to those fields, where they’ll tend them all day. The boys have perhaps a month left of this routine before they’ll urge the flocks along the droving lanes farther into the countryside to graze on wild grasses by day. Then other slaves, male and female, will plow with oxen and sow the fields. They’ll tend them and harvest them, swinging those big sickles.

I think of the abbot standing in the entranceway of the cathedral and looking out on these fields. He preaches that slavery should be banned—and, of course,
he means Father should ban it. He tells us, again and again, the story of Saint Patrick, our patron, who was born on the other side of the Irish Sea five hundred years ago and snatched from his home, stolen as a slave. For six years Saint Patrick herded pigs—just like those boys are herding sheep—before he escaped.

Father answers without hesitation. He says trying to rid the country of slaves is as pointless as trying to rid it of fairies. They are part of the fabric of Irish life. After all, no one would be rich without the work of the slaves. Including the church.

And then there’s silence on the matter for the next few months. Until the abbot preaches again.

I can’t decide what I think. But now Nuada is on my mind—and so I remember what happened last year. Nuada was offered a
cumal—
a female slave—for three cows. He didn’t buy her, but he came home and told me. His eyes glittered with anger. He said civilized people don’t own other people.

I couldn’t believe he turned down such a good offer. But now I hope Saint Patrick remembers that Nuada didn’t buy the slave girl. We need him on our side today.

Our chariot stops a second time for three more slave boys and many more sheep. I’ve never known a smart slave. Some are of ordinary intelligence, but most are
stupid. Saint Patrick was a smart slave, though. Otherwise he would have died a slave.

And maybe Brogan is smart. I think of what he told us last night about his previous owner, that brute. It wasn’t proper that he spoke so crassly in front of Brigid and me. But the very fact that he got away impresses me. Where was Brogan stolen from originally? I know he was a child when it happened. He told me once he was part of a group of children and women whisked from a hillock. That’s how he said it—whisked. I didn’t ask him anything then. Does he miss his mother? Does he remember life before he was a slave?

I watch for signs of intelligence in these boys crossing the road, but not a one returns my gaze.

The chariot at last pulls up in front of the cathedral and we enter. The nave is already crowded with veiled heads, women’s heads. The men are few and elderly, naturally—given the assembly at the fort. We walk to the front, before the altar.

The air stinks like sheep. No one is wearing a cloak this morning, the weather has warmed so. Instead they have on long-sleeved tunics. And the tunics of the peasants are wool, not flax, of a quality nowhere near as refined as what my family uses. From the stench, I wonder if the wool was even washed properly before it was spun.

The displays of saints’ relics that line both sides of the cathedral are practically empty. The bishop took most relics on a circuit about a month ago, to raise consciousness among the rural people. And to raise money as well, of course. Donations of every sort. Silver.

I hate silver now. I wish I’d never wanted a silver brooch. I wish I’d stayed by Nuada’s side. I wish his hand was safely on the end of his arm.

I bow my head, but I can’t listen. Mother was wrong: It’s not our abbot performing the ceremony. It’s the bishop. He says he hurried on horseback from the far northern edge of Ulster to be here just for this Mass. He says how fortunate he was to have heard of the royal disaster in time to get here. He goes on and on about the glory of my father’s reign, whining like an insect drone, distant and increasingly incomprehensible. I know he’s doing his best. I know he’s trying to help Nuada. But I cannot force my attention to his words. Besides, now he’s turned to Latin. Nothing makes sense.