Princes of Ireland

  There must have been a thousand people watching. The circle of druids stood on the mound, where all could see them. On another mound, the High King was standing. The crowd had just fallen silent. They were bringing Conall.

  The High King gazed across the crowd, thoughtfully. It had to be done. He was not sure he liked it, but the thing had to be done. He caught sight of Goibniu. There was no doubt, the smith had been clever. The return of the penitent prince and his willing sacrifice was a masterstroke. Not only did it restore the royal prestige—the royal house was giving one of its own to the gods—but it left the druids in a difficult position. This was their sacrifice, too, the most important they could make. If the island suffered another bad harvest, it would be difficult for them to blame it all on the king. He knew it and they knew it. Their own credibility would be at stake.

  At his side stood the queen. She had been silenced as well. Ever since Larine had seen Conall on the little island, the king had known about her threats to poor Deirdre. He’d half suspected it all along. No words had needed to be spoken, but she knew that he knew. There’d be no more trouble from the queen for a good while. As for the girl, he frankly felt sorry for her. She would be allowed to return to her father and have Conall’s child. Even Goibniu agreed about that. One day perhaps he’d do something for the child. You never knew when a child from the fringes of the family might come in useful.

  A path was clearing through the crowd. Conall, Larine, and two other priests were passing along it. He wondered if Conall would glance up at him, but the young man’s face was staring straight ahead with a rapt expression. Thank the gods for that. They reached the druids’ mound and went up. The druids in their feather cloaks stood at one end of the mound, while Conall’s naked, red-painted figure stood for a moment alone and apart, so that everyone could see him. The High King glanced towards the east. The sky along the horizon was clear. That was good. They would see the sun as it rose. The horizon was starting to gleam. It would not be long now.

  Three druids came across to Conall. One was Larine. At a word from one of the older druids, Conall knelt down. From behind, the senior druid placed a garrotte around Conall’s neck, but he left it loose. The second held up a curved bronze knife. Larine held up a club.

  There had to be three deaths in a Celtic sacrifice: one for the earth, one for the air, one for the sky—the three worlds. In a similar manner, some offerings were burned, others buried, and others thrown in rivers. Conall, therefore, would undergo three ritual deaths. But the actual process was merciful. For Larine would deliver a blow with the club that would stun him; while Conall was scarcely conscious, the senior druid would apply the garrotte that would kill him. Then the curved knife, slitting his throat, would release the blood to be scattered.

  The High King glanced at the horizon. The sun was coming. Any instant. On the druids’ mound there was a movement as the other druids came across to form a circle around the victim. All the audience could see now was the backs of the druids covered with bright feathers, and in the centre, the club that Larine held high.

  And now the king saw the sun flash brightly towards Tara, and turned just in time to see the club fall and vanish with a crack that sounded across the enclosure, followed by a long silence broken only by the rustling of feathers from within the druid’s circle.

  He thought of the boy and the youth he had known, of Conall’s mother—his sister. It was hard, he thought, and he wished it could be otherwise. But Goibniu was right. The thing had to be done. In life there was always sacrifice.

  It was over. The druids pulled back, except for the first three. Larine had a large silver bowl in his hands. Conall’s red body, its head lolling forward at a curious angle, was lifeless. While the senior druid pulled back the head to expose the neck, the druid with the curved knife moved in swiftly, gashing the throat, while Larine, holding the silver bowl in front of Conall’s chest, filled it with his friend’s flowing blood.

  The High King watched. The blood, it was to be hoped, when scattered on the ground would ensure a better harvest. As he glanced round the crowd, it seemed to him that they were satisfied. That was good. By chance he noticed the girl, Deirdre, standing by her father.

  It was early afternoon when Deirdre announced that instead of remaining for the king’s feast, she wanted to go home to Dubh Linn.

  Rather to her surprise, nobody raised any objection. The High King, informed of her wish by her father, sent her his blessing and a ring of gold. Soon afterwards, Larine came to let her know that he would visit Dubh Linn soon and that two chariots were ready at their disposal. Her brothers, she was well aware, would have liked to stay for the feast, but their father had made them be silent. She knew she must go now. She could not remain at Tara any longer.

  Yet strangely, during the killing of Conall, it was neither grief nor horror that she had felt. She had known what it would look like. Hadn’t she seen the culling of the animals at Samhain all her life?

  No, the emotion she had felt was entirely different.

  It was anger.

  She had started to feel it almost as soon as Larine had left her the day before. She was alone. Conall had gone and would remain with the druids until the ceremony. She understood their strength, and the king’s, and the terrible power of the gods. But with a simple instinct she knew something else: no matter how it was explained, he had deserted her. And as she brooded about it during the night, it came to her again and again: all that time on the island, and even after Larine’s visit, he could still have escaped. He had given his word, of course. The king and the gods themselves had demanded it. But he could have escaped. Conall would never have considered such a thing; her father would have told her not to be foolish. But they could have fled together across the sea. He had had the chance. And he had not taken it. He chose the gods, she thought. He chose death, over me. That was all she knew. In her mind she cursed him, and the druids, and even the gods themselves. And so she watched his death with bitterness and anger. It protected her, for a while, from the pain.

  It was just before they left that afternoon that she had an unexpected encounter.

  She was standing alone by one of the chariots when she saw the queen coming in her direction. Thinking she had better avoid her, Deirdre looked for a means of escape; but the older woman had seen her and was coming straight towards her. So Deirdre stood her ground and hoped for the best. To her surprise, as the queen came close, she gave her a nod that did not seem unfriendly.

  “It’s a sad day for you, Deirdre, daughter of Fergus. I’m sorry for your trouble.” Her eyes stared at Deirdre without any malice. Deirdre wondered what to reply. It was the queen after all. She must show respect. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  “It’s not your good wishes I’m wanting,” she said bitterly. It was no way to speak to a queen, but she didn’t care. What else had she to lose?

  “You’re still angry with me,” the queen remarked, quite calmly. Deirdre couldn’t believe it.

  “Didn’t you tell me you were going to kill me?” she burst out.

  “It is true,” the queen agreed, then added, “but that was long ago.”

  “By the gods,” cried Deirdre, “you’re a strange woman.” But the older woman seemed to accept this, too.

  “He made a noble death, at least,” she said. “You can be proud of him.”

  Deirdre only had to bow her head or mumble something polite, but her anger was on her now and she couldn’t help herself.

  “Proud of a dead man,” she cried. “A lot of use to me, sitting all alone in Dubh Linn.”

  “He had no choice, you know.”

  “He could have chosen,” she said furiously. “He did choose. But it was not myself and his child he chose, now was it?”

  She had gone too far this time, and she knew it. She was insulting the High Kingship, the druids, Tara itself. Half defiant, half afraid, she waited for the queen’s wrath to fall.

  For a moment or two the queen was
silent. Her head was bowed, as though she was deep in thought. Then, without looking up, she spoke.

  “Did you not know about men, Deirdre? They always let us down.”

  Then she walked away.

  IV

  On the day of the midwinter solstice in her father’s rath at Dubh Linn, looking over the ford called Ath Cliath, Deirdre, as she had expected, had a son. To her, even at birth, he looked like Conall. She was not sure if she was glad or not.

  The weather was fine that spring, and also that summer. The harvest, though not especially good, was not ruined. And men said that it was thanks to Conall, son of Morna, nephew to the High King, who had influence with the gods.

  THREE

  PATRICK

  AD 450

  HIS FIRST VISIT had been inauspicious, and few of those who had sent him back imagined that he would achieve very much on the distant western island. Yet after his coming, everything was changed.

  He left an account of his life; yet that account, being chiefly a confession of faith and a justification of his ministry, leaves many details of his life a mystery. The stories about him were numerous, but they were mostly inventions. The truth is that history knows neither the date of his mission, the names of the Irish rulers he encountered, nor even where, exactly, his ministry was based. All is uncertainty; all is conjecture.

  But Saint Patrick existed. There is not a doubt of that. He was born a minor British aristocrat. As a boy, he was taken from near his home, somewhere in the western side of Britain, by an Irish raiding party. Kept on the island as a slave for some years, during which he mostly tended livestock, he managed to escape and find his way back across the sea to his parents. But by now he had already decided to follow the religious life. For a time he studied in Gaul; he may have visited Rome. He suggests that certain churchmen considered his learning to be below standard, no doubt because of his interrupted education. But there may be some irony in these statements, for his writings suggest a literary as well as a political sophistication. In due course he was sent, at his own request, as a missionary bishop to the western island where he had once been a slave.

  Why did he want to return there? He states in his writings that he had a dream in which he heard the voices of the islanders calling to him, begging him to bring them the Gospel. There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the record: accounts of supernatural visions and voices abound in the early Church, and have been recorded from time to time ever since. In Saint Patrick’s case, the experience was decisive. He begged to be given the thankless and possibly dangerous mission.

  The traditional date of his arrival in Ireland, AD 432, is only a guess. It may be too early. But at some time during the decades that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, Bishop Patrick began his mission. He was by no means the first missionary to reach Irish shores: the Christian communities in Munster and Leinster had already been there for perhaps a generation or more. But he was probably the first missionary in the north if, as seems likely, his base of operations was near Armagh, in Ulster, where the king of the ancient Ulaid, bullied into a reduced territory by the mighty clan of Niall, liked the missionary bishop enough to give him his local protection.

  Of Saint Patrick’s actual preaching, no reliable record remains. His famous sermon, in which he explained the mystery of the Holy Trinity by comparing it to a shamrock, is a delightful legend, but there is no evidence that he ever said such a thing. Equally, it may be added, no one can say with certainty that he did not. More can be inferred about Saint Patrick’s personality and missionary style. Humble himself, like all those who live the life of the spirit, as a bishop of the Holy Church he demanded and received the respect due to a Celtic prince. From his base in Ulster, he may have gone westwards and set up a second missionary front in Connacht. No doubt he was also in contact, from time to time, with his fellow Christians in the southern half of the island.

  And did he, upon his travels, descend the ancient road that led across the Liffey at the Ford of Hurdles, and come to the little rath beside Dubh Linn? History can only say that the record, upon this point, is silent.

  It would be any day now. They all knew. Fergus was dying. The autumn leaves were falling and he was ready to go.

  And now he had summoned his family to a meeting. What was he going to say?

  Fergus had ruled so long that he was the only chief that most of the folk in the area had ever known. With increasing age, his shrewdness and wisdom had continued to develop. Men came to him for justice from all over the Liffey Plain; and the territory around Ath Cliath had come to be known, in much of Leinster, as the Land of Fergus. And for the last twenty years, ever since the death of Conall, she had kept house for him faithfully. Day after day she had nursed him this last, long year, as his splendid old frame gradually broke down. Even now, at the very end, she always kept him clean. And he had been touchingly grateful. “If I’ve reached such a great age, Deirdre, it’s thanks to you,” he had told her more than once, in front of her brothers.

  Yet it was herself, thought Deirdre, who should be thanking him—for the peace that he had given her. Twenty years of peace beside the Liffey. Twenty years to walk beside its waters, out to the great open sands of the bay and the promontory she loved. Twenty years to bring up her son, Morna, safe under the gentle guardianship of the Wicklow Mountains.

  Morna, son of Conall. The one they all loved. The one they protected.

  The one they had hidden. Morna: the future. He was all she had.

  After Conall’s death, she had never taken up with any other man. It wasn’t that she hadn’t felt the need. Sometimes she could have screamed with frustration. The problem had been the men. At first she had supposed that she might find someone at one of the great festivals. “You won’t find another Conall,” her father had warned her. But she had hoped that perhaps some young chief might take an interest. Her time with Conall had at least given her confidence with men. She held her head high. She could see that she created a stir. But though people were polite—after all, she had been chosen as the bride of the High King himself—they were cautious. The prince who had gone to sacrifice was a figure of strange honour and awe. But his woman, the cause of the trouble, made people nervous.

  “You think I’m a bird of ill omen?” she laughingly challenged one young noble. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “I’m afraid of nobody,” he’d retorted indignantly. But he’d avoided her all the same.

  She’d stopped going to the festivals after a year or two.

  So what did that leave? A few brave souls in the Dubh Linn region. Two sturdy farmers, a widowed fisherman with three boats: they didn’t inspire her. Once her father had brought home a merchant from Britain, who’d sold him some slaves. He was more interesting. But she would have had to go and live across the sea. She was touched that her father should have suggested such a thing, for she knew that he needed her and that he loved his little grandson; when she hadn’t wanted to go, he had not looked too sorry.

  Morna, they had called him, after Conall’s father. His first two years, for her, had been especially difficult. Perhaps if he had not looked so like Conall it would have been easier. He had her strange, green eyes; but in all other respects he was the image of his father. She couldn’t help it. Every time she looked at his little face, she had visions of his father’s fate awaiting him. She had been troubled by nightmares: nightmares about Tara, nightmares of blood. She had developed a terror of druids—a terror that they would somehow snatch her baby from her and destroy him. A year after Morna’s birth, Larine had come, as he had promised that he would. She knew he meant it kindly. But she could not bear to see him and told her father to ask him to go away. Fergus was concerned that if Larine took offence, this might bring on a druid’s curse, but Larine had seemed to understand. She had not seen him since.

  Morna: he was such a sunny boy. He liked to play, to go hunting with her father. Fergus doted on him. To her relief, he showed no signs of going of
f alone or of moodiness. He was a lively, affectionate little fellow. He loved to fish, find bird nests, and swim in the waters of the Liffey or the sea. By the time he was four, she had taken him on her favourite walks up to the headland overlooking the island and along the shore where the seabirds cried. Her brothers were kind to him, too. When he was little, they seemed content to play with him all morning. They taught him to fish and drive the cattle. He laughed at their jokes. By the time he was ten, he would cheerfully go off with them on the long cattle drives that might last a month or more.

  But above all, it was Fergus who took the boy’s education in hand. Once, when Deirdre had started to thank him, he had cut her short. “He’s my only grandson,” he had growled. “What else would I do?” Indeed, the boy had seemed to give his grandfather a new lease on life. Fergus had seldom been depressed once he had Morna to look after. He drank sparingly. He had seemed to find a new vigour. But she knew there was more to it than that. For he had sensed a special quality in the boy. Everybody did. His quickness at learning delighted Fergus. By the time he was six, Morna knew all the tales of Cuchulainn, and the island’s legendary kings, and the ancient gods. He could relate the stories of his mother’s family, too, of the slaying of Erc the Warrior. It delighted Fergus to let Morna hold the old drinking skull in his hands while he told it. He taught the boy to use a sword and throw a spear. And, of course, Morna had demanded to know if his own father had been a great warrior, too.

  Deirdre had been uncertain what to say, but Fergus had satisfied him without any difficulty. “He fought all kinds of battles,” he would say airily. “But the greatest was against Finbarr. A terrible man. Your father killed him near here, on the shores by the Plain of Bird Flocks.” Morna never tired of hearing details of the battle, which in due course included the additional slaying of a sea monster. It was hardly surprising, then, that Morna should dream of becoming a warrior and a hero himself. But Fergus had handled this quite well. “I wanted the same thing when I was a boy,” he told his grandson. “But warriors mostly go across the sea to plunder other men’s goods; whereas look at all the cattle we have here. You will have to defend this place, though.” If, as he grew to be a man, Morna sometimes dreamed of being a warrior, he did not speak of it.