Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [76]
The messenger stayed only briefly before departing. With him he carried messages of loyalty from the old chief and the clear impression that young Morna would hasten eagerly to the feis if he reached the island’s shores in time. Her performance, Deirdre told herself afterwards, had been rather impressive. There was only one problem.
She had just lied to the High King.
Why had she done it? She could hardly say. But Morna must not go. She felt sure of it. Even during the brief time the messenger had stayed at the rath, she had sat there in a state of misery. When he left, it seemed to her as if a dark and dangerous presence had departed from the place. That night, she had a nightmare in which she and Morna were approaching Tara and the starlings were rising up from the ground again in a black mist. She awoke in a cold panic. No, he must not go.
The next day, Morna and her brothers returned. She had given the slaves instructions to say nothing of the messenger’s visit. But in any case, no one had heard what had been said. None of them—Morna, her brothers, nor the chief himself—had any idea what she had done.
There was risk, of course. If the new High King ever discovered the lie, he would consider it an insult. But at least the lie was hers. He could do to her what he liked. She didn’t care. Indeed, there was only one small, niggling doubt that briefly troubled her conscience. Was it possible that she was wrong, that the new High King meant only courtesy or friendship—that in truth there was no danger to Morna in the invitation at all? Could it be that her fear was not so much for his safety, but rather that if he went to the High King and found favour at his hands, he might not want to return to her at Dubh Linn? Was she being not only foolish but even selfish? No. That wasn’t it. She put the unwelcome thought out of her mind.
The final decline of Fergus the chief began three days later.
They were trying times. There was the sadness of watching her father slipping away; the sadness, too, of seeing Morna’s grief at his passing. Her two brothers were subdued; several times Rian had seemed close to tears, and if Ronan felt anger at being passed over, even that seemed to be forgotten now. She nursed the old man assiduously. She was determined that his passing should be as gentle and as dignified as possible. But she had to admit that there was also one other consideration in her mind.
If she could just keep Fergus alive until Samhain. Let him die, if die he must, just after that. Even if the High King found out that Morna had been at Dubh Linn then, he would hardly complain about the young man remaining to attend his chief and grandfather on his deathbed. Live, she willed him. Live another month for me. “Let him live,” she prayed silently to the gods of her people, “at least past the festival of Samhain.” And when, instead, he had slipped from her in early October, her grief was made even sharper by her desperate anxiety.
They gave a fine wake for him. Nobody could fault the family of Fergus for that. For three days the guests had drunk and talked, eaten and sung. They had drunk as only the friends of the dead can do. Chiefs, farmers, cowherds, fishermen, they had all turned up to drink him into the better world beyond. “A fine wake, Deirdre,” they said.
They buried him, perhaps not quite as he might have dreamed—standing upright, fully armed, staring across the ford at his invisible enemies—but honourably enough, under a handsome mound beside the estuary waters. And at the same time, they proclaimed that Morna was the new chief.
With the wake over, Dubh Linn returned to its customary quiet and settled into the rhythms of autumn. Morna and his uncles brought the cattle in from the summer pasture. In the woods, the pigs were getting fat on the fallen acorns. Down the road towards the mountains, one could hear, from time to time, the roar of a stag in the rutting season. At the rath, all was quiet. A morning might pass with only the sound of the stream splashing