Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [73]
“But we have to tell him something,” he said. Morna was ten when his grandfather finally broached the subject.
“Your father had royal blood on his mother’s side,” he informed him one day. “But it didn’t do him any good. The High King took a dislike to him. It was the king who sent Finbarr to kill him.”
“Would the High King hate me, too?” the boy had asked.
“He’s probably forgotten you exist,” Fergus replied, “and you’re better off if he has. You’re safe enough here at Dubh Linn,” he added; and since Morna nodded quietly, the old man assumed he had accepted what had been said.
As for his mother’s role in the quarrel with the king and the sacrifice of Conall, Fergus gave orders to his sons and all his people that these things were never to be mentioned in the boy’s presence. And indeed, few people would have been inclined to do so anyway. The subject of the prince who had been sacrificed was something to be spoken of sparingly, in hushed tones. Many felt a sense of awkwardness about it; some openly said that the druids had been wrong to do it. The matter, by common consent, was best forgotten. A gentle and protective conspiracy of silence had arisen in the area. And if, occasionally, a traveller were to ask what had become of Conall’s woman, nobody even seemed to have heard of her.
As the years had passed, and nobody came to trouble them, Deirdre had found a sense of peace. Her position as matriarch of the family was assured, for neither of her brothers had wives, and Fergus relied upon her entirely. People in the area treated her with respect. And when, that summer, news came that the old High King had died, she had felt at last that she was free: the past could be laid to rest; Morna was safe. Morna—the future.
She did not know why her father had called them together. At his summons, however, her brothers had obediently come in from the pasture and Morna from the river, and they had all gone into the house. Now they waited to hear what he had to say.
He was a stately old figure, sitting upright, wrapped in a cloak by the fire. His face was pale and gaunt, but his sunken eyes were still piercing. He motioned Morna to stand on his right, and Deirdre on his left, while his two sons stood facing him. Whatever he intended to say, Fergus took his time, gazing at his sons thoughtfully as if he were gathering his strength. While she waited, Deirdre gazed at them also.
Ronan and Rian. Two lanky men. Ronan a little taller than his younger brother, his hair black where Rian’s was brown. His face showed some of the same proud features as her father’s, but had none of his strength; her brother had also developed a slight stoop at the shoulders, which gave him a hangdog look. Rian looked merely placid.
How was it, in all these years, that neither of them had managed to get a wife? At least one of them could have married. Yet had they even tried? It wasn’t as if they had no interest in women. There had been that British slave girl for a while. Certainly Ronan had slept with her. She thought they both had. There had even been a child, except that it had died. Then the girl had become sickly and in the end Deirdre had sold her. She’d offered to buy them another, but somehow the business had lapsed and they’d never brought it up again. She heard that they found women when they were away on the cattle drives or at the festivals. But never a wife. “Too much trouble,” they had told her. And more gratifyingly, “No one else could ever keep house like you.” In a way, she supposed, she should be grateful not to have rivals in her little domain. The years had passed anyway, and her brothers had seemed happy enough, hunting and minding Fergus’s herd of cattle which, it must be said, had grown.
Hadn’t her father been disappointed, though, at the failure of his sons to provide him with grandchildren? He probably had, but he never said so; and since during all the years that went by, he had never put any pressure on them to marry, she had realised that he must have come to his own private