Chapter 19

They had gathered a great army, but for the most part the army sat.

Negotiations with Maelmorden stretched on endlessly, with a few minor clashes occurring between various troops.

They had Maelmorden well outnumbered, but Maelmorden had his uncle Niall, the Ard-Ri now, and if he were to die under such circumstances, Maelmorden might well claim the title. Though the son of the Ard-Ri frequently took the title from his father, it was not necessarily an inherited title. A man had to prove his worth to be the Ard-Ri.

Niall’s sons were young—they had been kept home from the fighting.

In the Christian world it had become customary to pay danegeld, or bribe money, to send Viking invaders on their way. But though Maelmorden had called on their ancient enemies, the Danes, to do his fighting, he wasn’t after a prize of gold. He wanted the lesser kings to accept his authority, to bow down before him.

Long weeks into the campaign Conar stood once more with Leith, Eric, his father, and his other brothers on a field, with Maelmorden and his berserkers standing before him. Again Olaf set before him the demand that Niall be returned. He would never accept Maelmorden, nor his son after him. The king of Con-naught cried out behind Olaf, and the other kings raised their voices.

Again Maelmorden went into a fury, swearing that Niall had little time left before his untimely demise.

In the end they all left the field. Tempers flared, skirmishes broke out. But there was no real fighting, and they returned to their encampments.

Conar slept that night right beneath the open sky. Watching the stars made him think of Ragwald, and then he thought of Melisande, though she was seldom out of his mind. He knew damned well that their position was precarious, and everyone knew that the Danes were amassing along the Frankish and Frisian coasts.

He wondered if there might have been some better way to answer her letter, then realized that there had not been.

He missed her incredibly. For all that so frequently rose between them, he missed her with an aching sense of loss that stayed with him night and day.

Night was worse, of course, because when he closed his eyes, the endless fields of men seemed to disappear, and he could hear her whispers again, see her as she walked to him across the room, naked. He could almost reach out and touch her.

In the long emptiness of the nights, when he reached over, his hands touched dirt where his wife might have lain.

There were women in the camp, but no matter how hotly his body burned, he had been startled to discover that he had no desire for simple appeasement; the little witch who had stolen his senses had also stolen his soul. He loved her. It was a strange emotion, not always so sweet, for it brought with it torture. He dreamed of her, he craved her, he thought of her by endless night and endless day.

Usually his dreams were sweet, but this night he found himself racing through the darkness, knowing he had lost her. He could hear the fierce pounding of his heart. His breathing was ragged and loud, his muscles ached and burned. He called her name and ran more quickly, and he heard her cry out in return, but he could not see her.

There were waves of the enemy before him. He stopped and suddenly became part of an ancient tree that stood beside him. As the tree he could move through his enemies. He sought her again, searching high and low. He heard her voice.

They had buried her. She was deep in the earth. Her voice cried out to him softly now. Melisande…there were tears in it, she wanted to come home to him.

He was so close to reaching her. He heard her voice. Heard it again. He would reach her, no matter how the enemy surrounded him.

He awoke with a start, banging his head on a tree limb. Thor was at his side, gazing down upon him. He groaned and sat up, cradling his head. Nearby, his brother Leith stirred, having chosen to sleep under the stars as well, his saddle pack his pillow. Eric lay just beyond.

“Conar!”

He turned. Leith, grown into a serious man, no longer a boy who would tease a brother by seizing a play sword, was studying him with a puzzled frown. “What is it? Are you all right?”

Conar nodded, studying his brother in return. “Why?”

“You’ve been tossing and turning, moaning in your sleep.”

He didn’t flush easily, but he felt a seeping of color rise to his face. Damn her! His wretched dreams about her were even visible ones.

He hesitated a moment, standing, listening to his body creak as he stretched out the night’s stiffness. Leith and Eric both rose as well, still watching him. Eric, more familiar with his life, asked him, “Are you worried about the situation at home?”

“I am always worried about the situation at home,” he agreed softly. He shrugged and grinned. “And when I am there, I worry about the situation here.” He paused a moment. “I had an interesting dream. That might stand us well.”

“What?” Leith demanded.

“We keep meeting them, army to army. What if we were to find out exactly where Niall was…and simply release him.”

“How?”

“One man slips in. One man, invisible when the enemy is looking for many.”

“Perhaps…” Leith said, looking at Eric.

They summoned their brothers and others in the family circle, then went to Olaf. Yet even before they spoke, they had sent spies out to the fringes of the enemy groups to learn where Niall was being kept.

“One man definitely risks his life. Perhaps capture, perhaps torture. Perhaps such a thing will cast us into further negotiations—” Olaf began.

“Father! How much longer can this go on!” Conar protested.

Olaf looked about. “Leith?”

“I believe my brother has a sound idea. Father, they keep us here endlessly, baiting us. We cannot rush them, fight them as we should, for if we were to slay Maelmorden, the Danes would slay Niall in retribution!”

“Who would go?” Olaf demanded.

“I would,” Conar said, dismayed by the chill that settled over him. “My dream, my thought. I must go.”

“How?”

“Monastic robes,” he said.

“My brother the monk!” Eric murmured, and there was a snort of laughter that broke some of the tension among them.

“Ah, but his habits have changed greatly as of late, haven’t you noticed?” Leith murmured. “What magic could have done this?”

“I believe she is tall, raven-haired—”

“And extremely willful and disobedient,” he replied, eyeing them one by one. “If we may get back to this?”

“Ah, of course. Back to business,” Leith stated.

“Father, I’d need to have secrecy to a certain point, then I’d need the whole of the army. I could get so far alone, then I would need help.”

“Niall is probably well guarded.”

“At the outer defenses. Within, I imagine he is watched by one or two men at a time. Yet his disappearance would soon be discovered, and that’s when the army would be so dearly needed.”

“What if Niall is injured, crippled?”

“It’s a chance I am willing to take, Father.”

“We’ll wait,” Olaf said. “We’ll wait until our people return and tell us what they know. Conar, stay a moment. I would have a word with you.”

The others departed, and Conar was left alone with his father in the swiftly built wooden long house where they centered their command. Olaf strode some distance from him, then turned.

“Have you heard from your wife?”

A cold wave, like a wall of ice, seemed to fall over him. “No, I have not,” he said. “Not of late. She wrote when she had received a message from Ragwald about the number of Danes arriving, and I answered her. I have not heard from her again. What is it?”

“Nothing, perhaps. Erin has written that Melisande sailed with Rhiannon for Wessex, that is all. I had thought she might have written for your permission.”

His temper soared, and his anger was doubled by fear. His mouth went dry.

“You’re free to return home, Conar. Someone else can carry out this plan. If—”

“No, Father. I will carry out the plan. Today. Then I will be free to leave.”

After a moment Olaf nodded. “Perhaps you are right. If you carry out this plan today, then we are all free.”

Their spies returned shortly. Niall was being kept in Maelmorden’s house, just behind the lines they had set for themselves. There were numerous people coming and going, indeed, members of the clergy, merchants, servants. The line of defense around the manor was all that protected it.

Niall and Eric were Conar’s escorts to the outer defenses. He left Thor in their care and knew that they would be waiting for him, that they would not fail him. Then, in his monk’s cape and cowl, he walked toward the enemy line.

They stretched out before him, Irishmen, Danes. Some in loose trousers, some in knee-high pants, their hairy legs bared. Many wore furs against the chill, all carried their battle-axes.

He was approached at last by a one-eyed man in a massive coat of bearskin. “What do you do here?”

“I’ve come to tend to the soul of one you keep behind this line.”

“Niall?”

“Indeed. As you would seek to reach the halls of Valhalla, milord Niall seeks a different heaven, and might need guidance at this time.”

The man grunted and told him to wait. In a while he was back, saying that Conar could go through. Maelmorden hadn’t given a damn about a black-cowled friar entering his domain.

Conar swiftly walked the distance from the lines to the manor, which stood far back from them. Chickens and pigs blocked his way, even here, at a king’s house. It was the least well kept Conar had seen. His father’s Dubhlain was great with its walls, and his own fortress…

This manor was little more than wood and thatch, with strange additions built of wattle and daub.

He passed through the yard unmolested. A wide-eyed child greeted him.

The doorway was low. There were but two men before it. They ignored him, parting to let him enter, then continued with their conversation.

He ducked beneath the low frame of the doorway and entered the main room of the manor. There was a peat fire burning, and a veil of smoke filled the place, stinging his eyes. The floor was raw earth and rushes. Dirty, half-clad children scrambled about.

At a table in the center of the room Maelmorden sat, pointing out places on a rough map to the men who stood at his rear. He paused, looking up, when Conar entered the room.

Maelmorden was a tall, husky man, well built, with a wild mane of reddish brown hair and dark eyes. Conar had despised him from the moment he had first seen him—there was a flaw in his eyes, they were small, set too close together. They glinted quickly with greed.

Maelmorden looked up at Conar and grinned broadly. “You’re not one of mine, Brother, nor do ye have the look of a man of the cloth. But I hear you’ve come to tend to the Ard-Ri, and I’d not be denying any man his right to absolution.”

Conar bowed. “No last rites, Maelmorden. I’m a monk, not a priest. I’ve come only to give him company, spiritual guidance in these great days of travail.”

“He needs a priest,” Maelmorden said, and the men behind him burst into laughter.

Conar wondered if he hadn’t come just in time, if they weren’t planning his uncle’s murder even now.

“If he desires one now, I will send a man in my stead.” Conar assured him.

Apparently Maelmorden had given the matter enough time. He waved a hand in the air and beckoned to a thin, dark-haired woman who hovered in a corner of the room.

“Bring him to our—guest,” Maelmorden commanded.

He was taken down a long, dank hallway. A huge Viking sat on the ground before a heavy wooden doorway.

“The friar would enter,” the woman said.

She left him. The flame-haired Dane seemed completely uninterested in him. He grunted and shoved the door open. Conar entered a small, drafty, peat-filled room with no windows. In the darkness he could barely see. He realized a man sat upon a bed of rushes on the floor, leaning against the wall.

“Welcome, Brother,” Niall said softly after a while. “Take your time entering. I have been here long now, and my eyes have grown accustomed to this darkness.”

Conar quickly made his way to his uncle, hunching down beside him.

“Have you come to raise my spirits, man? They have never fallen, and what comes will come, as is God’s will. Maelmorden will kill me, but he will never win. If my life no longer stands forfeit, my family will crush him.” His uncle sounded amazingly like his grandfather. Aed Finnlaith had been such a man, to calmly curl his fingers around that which he could hold—and defy fate when it could defy him.

“Aye, Ard-Ri!” Conar said softly. “But your family does not intend your life to be forfeit!”

“Who is it?” Niall whispered.

“It is I, Conar.”

He felt his uncle’s fingers touch his face. “Dear God, Conar! You’ve come alone? What foolishness! I have aged, my boy, my death would not be such a tragedy. You are young, with life stretched out before you!”

“Uncle, we haven’t the time to discuss that at the moment. I have to know, can you stand, can you walk?”

Niall was quickly on his feet, not unsteady in any way. “We risk all the fury of the gods!” Conar muttered.

“God, son. God. One God. This is Eire. Your father has turned Christian!”

Conar sighed. “Uncle—”

“Aye, time, time! What is the plan?”

Conar was pulling off his robes. “Put these on.”

“But you—”

“I slay yonder dragon, lying at the door, seize his armor, and escort you out. Do you see?”

“Aye, it could work, it could work…”

“It has to work!”

Conar left him and returned to the door. He watched the man and slowly drew his knife from his calf.

He threw open the door.

The Dane saw him, his eyes widening with shock. He scrambled to unsheath his sword, but even as he drew it, Conar’s knife found its mark on the man’s throat.

He caught the massive Dane as he fell, then quickly divested him of his mail and horned helmet, knife, mace, and sword.

He hurried back into the room. There was no going back. Speed was everything.

Niall was clad in the robes. He silently accepted the weapons his nephew offered him, then studied Conar. “Aye, you’ll pass for him!”

“Then we move now.”

Conar took his uncle’s arm and led him down the long hallway. They came into the center room, where Maelmorden was still complaining about the strength of his enemies.

The Norse languages were nearly the same, yet there were subtle differences in the words spoken by Danes and Norwegians, and Conar was careful to guard his tongue as he grunted out the statement that he was seeing the friar out.

“His soul’s a loss, eh, brother?” Maelmorden said, and burst into long spates of laughter. Conar pressed his uncle’s arm, and they started out together. They quickly walked the long distance from the house to the line of guards surrounding it.

His father, his brothers, the other allied Irish kings, could see them now. They would know that the plan had been successful thus far.

He had only to cross the line.

Then came a wild cry of fury from behind them. Conar swung around. Maelmorden was bursting from the house, his teeth gnashing, his mouth near foaming. He drew his sword, racing forward with his men behind him, yelling in a dark rage for his men to slay them both.

But there was a cry from the fields as well. His father’s forces came bursting out of the trees, riding down thunderously upon the line of defense and the manor. He saw his brother Eric sweeping toward him and thrust his uncle toward him. Eric reached for Niall, and Niall shed the monk’s robes, reaching for his nephew, leaping up behind him on his horse, the sword Conar had given him from the slain Dane held high in his hand.

It was well Niall had reached his family, for the enemy was upon them. Eric and Niall hacked and slashed from atop Eric’s horse.

Conar met the men who charged him from the ground, swinging in a broad arch that silenced several in one sweep, keeping his back to his brother’s horse.

A second later a known enemy pit himself in fury against him.

Maelmorden himself.

The rebellious Irish king was a battle king, well trained, hardened, and in a rage. Conar thought back to all his training as Maelmorden faced him again and again, as their swords clashed and shuddered, as they broke away from each other. Maelmorden was smiling, displaying broken teeth. He fought like a berserker, foam forming upon his lips.

Never lose your temper in battle…

So had been his father’s warning when he had been a child. He remembered it now.

When the powerful Maelmorden rushed him next, he simply moved aside. And when the man passed him, he drew up his sword and slashed it down.

Maelmorden fell before him. The small eyes looked at him once again. The man smiled. “Would that it were to your Valhalla, where battles are fought daily, that I might go!”

His eyes closed. Blood bubbled from his lips.

He died.

“Conar!” Leith was riding in hard, leading Thor. Conar leapt atop his horse and rode into the rest of the battle.

There was not much more of it. With Maelmorden gone, the backbone of the resistance was broken. With Niall freed, order was restored. Most of the Danes fled. The Irish cast aside their weapons and bowed low in fealty to Niall on the battlefield where their comrades lay dead.

At long last it was over.

They ate in Maelmorden’s house that evening, and Conar was honored by his father, uncle, brothers, and the other kings.

“What boon would you ask of me, nephew?” Niall asked him.

“No boon, Uncle. Except to give me your blessing to sail. I wish to reach my own land as soon as possible now.”

“Melisande has gone to Wessex—” Eric began, frowning.

“No. Melisande used Rhiannon to reach Wessex, and from there, sent for her own ships. I am deeply worried about things at home.”

“You’ve more than my blessing, Conar. You’ve my full support,” Niall promised him. “You’ve this land in Maelmorden’s stead, awaiting you always, should you choose to return.”

Conar thanked him and retired. He awoke Swen and Brenna and the rest of his men early, riding hard for Dubhlain, where his ships waited. He forced them to travel hard, covering more than fifty miles a day.

In Dubhlain he discovered what he had expected.

Rhiannon had written Erin to tell her Melisande had chosen to go home.

Melisande had written that times might soon be desperate.

Erin had just told her that the men had not returned from the north, that Niall was still hostage.

“I’ll write again immediately—” Erin said.

“Nay. I sail now. For home. And my wife.”

“You must long to hold her—”

But his eyes were cold. She had cut him deeply, and he determined that he would bury his heart against her.

“To slit her throat!” he swore to his mother, and Erin fell silent. She kissed his cheek.

“Give her a chance—”

“Mother, I only pray that I arrive in time to do so!”

He sailed immediately, heedless of the tides. He did not need Brenna or Mergwin to warn him that time was of the essence.

The days seemed to pass endlessly for Melisande. She was most concerned with the wall of the fortress, which still seemed to have weaknesses. She sent men to acquire stones to repair it from the Roman ruins and gathered them inside the fortress, not certain as yet just how she wanted it repaired.

She heard frequently from Odo, who seemed concerned for her safety. She also heard from Erin and knew that nothing had changed in the north.

She felt as if she had been away from Conar forever. She ached for him, yet at times he even became vague in her mind, for he was so far away and so distant. She had not heard a word from him, and she knew that he was probably coldly furious, and that he might well despise her all the more for what she had done.

Maybe he would never come, she thought. He was too fiercely loyal to his homeland. That was what he didn’t understand. This was her homeland. She had to care about the fortress, had to defend it. Even at risk to herself.

To their child.

Eire was vast. Conar would always have his place within it. This was her land, and she had to fight for it.

She was called upon to do so when she had been home scarcely three weeks. Philippe came to her in the great hall to tell her that a group of raiders were pillaging a fishing village just to the north of them. She had been studying a letter from Rhiannon, reading to see if Eric had mentioned his brother or her, when she heard his breathless arrival and looked up.

“What do we do, milady?”

She hesitated a moment. “We defend them,” she said. She stood. “I will ride with you.”

Philippe gaped at her. “Milady, do you think that wise?”

Ragwald came thundering into the room. “It is not wise indeed! The count would be furious!”

“But the count is not here,” Melisande said coolly. “I will ride with you.”

She hurried to her room and opened the trunk with the gilded mail. She quickly donned the armor, then lifted the pretty sword.

Her fingers trembled when she remembered the last time she had wielded it. A sudden, anguished longing swept through her. She fought it.

He would have to have known that she had come here. And still he hadn’t come. Yet he had always sworn that he would never let her go.

But she had left him, and perhaps now he had decided that she and her fortress were not worth the effort. What difference did the anguish in her heart mean now anyway? If he came here, he would be ready to kill her. Aye, as fearsome as any enemy.

She shook off the tremors that had seized her and hurried down the stairs. Ragwald and Philippe remained there, worriedly discussing her actions.

“Do I ride alone?” she asked from the bottom of the stairs.

Philippe hastily joined her.

They rode hard upon the enemy, and Melisande knew that she drew her people’s loyalty and that riding at their head, she gave them strength.

They were quickly victorious, for the small party of Danes that had set ashore had done so for rape and plunder, they quickly discovered, with no intent to stay. Even as the invaders saw the horses sweeping down on them, they cried out, seeking their ships.

Philippe managed to save a pretty child from being kidnapped, grasping the babe from a fleeing Dane and returning it to the outstretched arms of her wailing mother. Gaston, the old but talented fellow, managed to slay their leader, ducking the man’s battle-ax, catching him in the midriff with his razor-edged sword.

Melisande watched it all, hating it, feeling ill. Yet she felt that she’d had no choice but to ride.

Conar would never see it that way.

If he ever found out.

If he lived.

If he returned.

Days later an Irish player arrived on their shores. He came to her and sang, setting a recent poem to music, explaining that she would enjoy the words.

It was about the great fight in the north, its having just been won. Niall was freed. The player knew only the message in the poetry, for details were still not known, all that passed south like wildfire had been that the Ard-Ri lived, the Irish forces had tricked Maelmorden, Niall had been taken, and Conar had slain their enemy and received titular head as king in Maelmorden’s stead.

Melisande thanked the player for coming to her.

“He will come now,” Ragwald told her.

She shook her head. Would he? If he did, she must fight against him. Nay, they needed him.

But what would he do to her now?

“He will not come. They are eager to make him a king in Ireland.”

“He has a wife.”

“In Eire a man may set his wife aside if he so chooses!” she said softly.

“He will come,” Ragwald insisted.

Yet the next morning, when she awakened first, it was not Conar who had come.

Gaston rushed in upon her. “Jesu! Jesu! You cannot imagine! It has come at last, Geoffrey’s attack. Lady, they are lined upon the ridge, lined there endlessly!”

She was freezing. Oh, so stiff! It was damp and miserable and dark in Geoffrey’s awful prison beneath the earth.

She had fought against her fear, remembering.

All those men lined there! And that just this morning!

Thus had begun her day. She had donned her gilded mail again. She had fought Geoffrey, and then Ragwald had been right—and she had been wrong.

Conar had come in his magnificent ships. Beaten back Geoffrey’s troops, thundered through the wall.

Come to her, claimed her anew, spoken to the people with her.

And she had fought him. She had told him that she loathed him when she loved him.

He had touched her again. Taken her to heaven, no matter what the tempest. He had made love to her.

I will never let you go. Aye, he had said it time and time again. But what chance did he have now?

Melisande pulled the cloak more tightly about her shoulders as she sat in the dank prison so deep in the earth, where Geoffrey had cast her. She fought tears, fought screaming. But who would see her tears, or hear her screams?

She closed her eyes, praying that it would take Geoffrey a long, long time to come back for her. If he touched her, she would want to die.

She couldn’t die. She was expecting a child.

Should she tell Geoffrey that? Would that keep him away from her?

Nay, he’d be convinced he needed to slay her quickly.

She rose, but the darkness was complete. She hugged the cloak to her and tried to move. Her feet were bare, blistered, bleeding. She trod carefully.

She heard the squeal of a rat, and her breath caught, and she jerked her hand back.

She had to escape. If God ever gave her a chance again, she would…

What?

Ah, indeed, what? she mocked herself. Tell him that I love him, that we are to have a child. That I was hurt and willful most often because he did not understand that I needed to fight with him, I thought that I battled alone, but I needed him.

She thought of his tenderness, thought of the way that he touched her.

If Geoffrey came, she would die, by his hand, or by her own.

What a fool! she cried to herself. She had to keep fighting, she had to escape, find the door…

But she went dead still. She could hear the ancient door creaking. She could feel things, sense them in the darkness, she had been here so long.

She stood on her toes, flat against the damp wall, listening. She held her breath. Her heart hammered furiously.

She was no longer alone.

Someone had entered into the stygian darkness of the room with her.

Someone who closed the door quietly in his wake, locking them in together.

A silent scream welled in her throat.