Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [98]
Nonetheless, it suited the family’s pride that they should be its guardians, and in recent generations the chief of the family or one of his brothers had generally taken the position of lay abbot, which allowed the family to benefit from the modest living afforded by the place as well as giving it their protection. Such arrangements were quite common, both on the island and in many other parts of Christendom.
“Well,” said Caoilinn crossly, “if we can’t use the chapel, then it’ll have to be somewhere else.” She thought for a moment. “We’ll go to the mound,” she then announced. “Have you got the ring?”
“I have the ring,” he replied patiently, and reaching into the leather pouch hanging from his belt he pulled out the small ring, made of deer antler, with which he had already wed her at least a dozen times.
“Come on, then,” she said.
The game had been going on for almost a year now: the game of getting married. She never seemed to tire of it. And still he did not know—was it just a little girl’s game, childish and without meaning, or was there some serious intention behind it? He was always the one she chose to be the bridegroom. Was that just because he was her cousin and he played along, and she was afraid the other boys might have laughed at her? Probably. Wasn’t he embarrassed? Not really. He could shrug it off. She was just his little cousin. Anyway, Osgar might be slim, but he was taller than most of the other boys of his age, and he was sinewy. The other children treated him with a cautious respect. So he usually indulged her. Once when he was busy, he’d refused, and seen her face fall and watched her grow silent. Then, with a defiant toss of her head, she’d come back at him.
“Well, if you won’t marry me, I’ll have to find someone else.”
“No, I’ll marry you,” he had relented. Better himself, after all, than another.
The mound wasn’t far off. It stood on a grassy platform a little way back from the mudflats that lay downstream of the dark pool’s inlet. When the Vikings first saw it they had named the place Hoggen Green, which meant “graveyard”; and as the Nordic people often did when they found a sacred place near a settlement, they used Hoggen Green for their assemblies where the freemen of the town came together to hold counsel and elect their leaders. And so it was that while the graves of his descendants, including Deirdre, Morna, and his children, gradually sank down until they were level with the rest of the grass at the Viking meeting place, the mound that was the last resting place of old Fergus was built up to be used as the platform on which the Viking headmen would stand to conduct their assemblies. The assembly was called the “Thing.” Old Fergus’s grave, therefore, had nowadays acquired a new name. It was known as the Thingmount.
Before the Thingmount, the two children stood and prepared to get married. The marriage, they both knew, was appropriate. They were second cousins: Caoilinn’s grandfather had become a craftsman and moved into Dyflin, while Osgar’s had remained at the family farmstead by the monastery.
The stately old Thingmount by the quiet river was also an appropriate place. For both knew that it was from under it that their ancestor Fergus had emerged to be baptised by none other than Saint Patrick himself. And both Osgar and even nine-year-old Caoilinn could recite with familiar ease the twenty-five generations that joined them to the old man.
As he always did, Osgar had to act the part of both bridegroom and priest. He did it very well. Since his father had died four years