Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [23]
Whether the queen was thinking about the mare or not was hard to say; but after a little time she spoke again, in a low voice.
“The harvest was ruined.”
The High King frowned. Involuntarily he glanced back inside the empty hall, where the three-faced head was gazing out from its totem pole into the surrounding shadows.
“That is your fault,” she added.
And now the High King pursed his lips. For this was politics.
The High King was very good at politics. When he put his arm round a man’s shoulder, that man was always his to command—or to be duped. He knew most men’s weaknesses, and their price. His family’s success had been remarkable. His royal clan had come from the west and they were hugely ambitious. Claiming descent from mythical figures like Conn of the Hundred Battles and Cormac Mac Art—heroes they may even have invented—the clan had already pushed many Ulster chiefs off their land. Their rise had culminated, in quite recent times, in the successes they ascribed to their heroic leader Niall.
Like many of history’s successful leaders, Niall was partly a pirate. He knew the value of wealth. Since his youth he had led raids across to the island of Britain—easy pickings with the Roman legions withdrawing or gone. Mostly he had stolen boys and girls to sell to the slave markets; the profits he could use for himself and his followers. It was the custom, when one king submitted to another—when he agreed to “come into his house,” as the saying was—that he would pay tribute, usually in cattle, and give hostages for his continuing loyalty. So many kings were said to have sent their sons as hostages to Niall that he was remembered as Niall of the Nine Hostages. His mighty clan not only had dominated the island and claimed the high kingship but had forced the Leinster kings to give them the ancient royal site of Tara which they intended to make into their own dynasty’s ceremonial centre, from which they could rule the whole island.
But mighty though the clan of Niall might be, even high kings were at the mercy of larger, natural forces.
It had happened quite unexpectedly, immediately after the Lughnasa festival. Ten days of drenching rain: the ground reduced to a bog, the harvest utterly ruined. No one could remember a summer like it. And it was the High King’s fault. For though the motives of the gods were seldom clear, such terrible weather could only mean that at least one of them was offended with him.
Every place had its gods. They grew out of the landscape and the stories of the beings who had dwelt there before. Everyone could feel their presence. And the Celtic gods of the island were bright and vivid spirits. When a man went up to the island’s high places and gazed across the emerald woods and pastures, and breathed the soft island air, his heart almost burst with gratitude to Eriu, the mother goddess of the land. When the sun rose in the morning, he smiled to see the Dagda, the good god, riding his horse across the sky—the kindly Dagda from whose magic cauldron all the good things of life were provided. When he stood on the shore and looked out at the waves, it might seem to him that he almost caught sight of Manannan mac Lir, the god of the sea, rising from the deep.
The gods could be fearsome also. Down off the island’s southwestern tip, on a rocky outcrop in the roiling waters, lived Donn, the lord of the dead. Most men feared Donn. And the mother goddess, when she took the form of the angry Morrigain and came with her ravens and screeched over men in battle, she, too, could be a terrifying figure. Was she angry now?
Kings were powerful when they pleased the gods. But a king had to be careful. If a ruler annoyed a god—or even one of the druids or filidh who spoke to them—he might lose a battle. If men came to the High King for justice and got none, the gods would probably send plague or bad weather. Everybody knew: a bad king brought bad luck; a good king was rewarded with good harvests. There was a morality in it. People might not be saying so openly yet, but he knew what they were thinking: