This is the opening chapter of a novel TOF started writing in a night class he took from John Dunning, lo, these many years ago. It is sorta kinda complete, but it sucks. A few years ago, TOF conceived of rewriting it as a magical fantasy, but with the magic understated.
Uair robo tarisi le macaib Ruaidri a n-airecht fein arna cuired do cech oen fo leth dib-sin, acht mad Cormac mac Tomaltaig Meic Diarmata & Dauith O Flainn & a aes grada archena.
– Annála Connaught, 1225
The sons of Ruaidri felt confidence in their own lieges, having been asked to come into the country by each one separately, except Cormac son of Tomaltach Mac Diarmata with Dauid O Flainn and the rest of his officers.
– Annals of Connaught, 1225
Prologue: Knockmoy
Death was in the room; but Death was patient. Such was his cruelty.
Garbed in the gray robes of a monk, Cathal of the Red Hand O Conner, king in Connaught, lay on a pallet of down-filled cushions and moaned. Hands limp; bones protruding like rocks from the weathered earth; sweat glistening pond-like on skin; red-rimmed eyes filled with rheum that trickled down sunken cheeks. There was a smell in the air: one part each of sweat, urine, wine, the burnt odor of rushes in their sconces, the incense the monk sprinkled on his brazier, the heavy, pungent beeswax of the votive candles. There were sounds in the air: the barking of dogs outside in the courtyard, the murmuring of the monk at prayer, the harsh, labored breathing of the dying man. Cathal’s head moved to the side and a moan passed his lips, low and barely audible.
Felim O Conner, watching his father die with as much detachment as he could muster, thought, Dear God, spare him any more of this. The monk wet a kerchief in the water bucket and spread it across the king’s forehead, his lips moving in constant prayer. Felim could feel the force of it, feel the grace the holy man called down into the small, hot room. It was cool, like a spring breeze. Was the monk praying for life or for release, he wondered? Were they engaged, he and the monk, in a sort of spiritual tug-of-war that kept Cathal paused uncertainly on the borderland of death?
Felim searched his memories for the strong, smooth-muscled man who had tossed him terrified and laughing into the air, to catch him and embrace him in arms like oaken beams. Trust me, his father’s ghost proclaimed through pale, frozen lips. In my arms, you will always be safe. Felim listened for some echo in his heart of those lost days; but it was too many years, and he found only sadness at the long passing of a man who in all important ways had died already.
He cast a covert glance at his brother, Hugh, who stood rigidly at the foot of the bed tugging constantly on his lower lip. There was a need to break the silence of dying. “What news of Turlough?” he said.
Hugh started and his face set into its wonted petulance. “Cormac will tell us. I’ve sent for him.”
Felim grunted. And what could Cormac hope to learn that was not already plain to see? “How many chiefs can we number?” There was a hidden meaning there, a text beneath the text. How many chiefs have you already turned against us?
But Hugh was deaf to subtexts. He turned back to the deathbed. “Turlough will not take the High Seat from me. If his own father did not give him the white rod when he had the choice, by what right would he take it from me?”
By right of arms... But Felim did not voice the thought. When Cathal dies, every clan chief west of the Shannon will fly to the sword. He paced the room. It felt good to move around, as if the motion implied a destination. He wondered if he should pray for his father’s death. “He is taking a long time of it.”
Hugh looked back sharply. “Who? Cormac arriving or father departing?”
Felim did not answer. His restlessness brought him once more to the bedside, where he gazed again at his father. Torchlight danced in vacant eyes. In Cathal’s gaunt, wasted face he could see Hugh. Fat, foolish Hugh. Soon-to-be king Hugh. With the Foreigners castled at Athlone, Connaught needed no fool for her king. Why, father? Why him, and not me?
No response came that he could hear. He did not have the grace for it. “Turlough does have a claim,” he said. Goading Hugh was one of the few pleasures left him. “Himself being the material-of-a-king.”
Hugh answered through lips white from the pressure of them. “Turlough’s father chose his brother...” He dipped his head toward the figure on the cushions. With love? With impatience? “...and Cathal chose me.”
And so, Rory’s only wise act and Cathal’s only foolish one lay in their choice of successor. There was an irony in that, a symmetry of the sort that delighted schoolmen; as if the entire world were a syllogism and events were fashioned to balance and play off one another. Yet, if the world was a puzzle, it was not one to which Felim had found the key. God had a plan, the monks said. But precious secret He kept it.
Outside the chamber, dogs gave tongue and Felim heard the thud of spear shafts striking the planking of the floor. A gilly opened the door and tugged his forelock, “Begging your honors’ pardon, but The McDermott is come.”
Felim and Hugh exchanged glances. Even the monk looked up from his vigil. “Send him in,” Hugh said.
The door swung wide and the torches danced in the sudden rush of air. A brawny, sandy-haired man entered, his face flushed from the wind of his riding, and his cloak dusty with the miles behind him. He took in the room at a glance and strode to the deathbed. A bonnaught closed the door, shutting them all in together.
“Is he still with us?” Cormac asked.
“A matter of opinion,” Felim answered. “One foot in heaven, the other lingering in the clay. It will be God’s mercy when he dies.”
Cormac nodded, silent. A man sparing with words, Felim thought, until the drink had loosened his tongue; brave in battle; dogged, if not too clever. But then Ireland abounded in men who were clever, or thought they were, and Felim prized the ones who were not. Cormac struck a pose: arms crossed and legs akimbo. “I received your message at the Rock and came straight off,” he said to Hugh. The McDermott held Moylurg and the Plain and was nearly a king himself. He marshaled the Host of Connaught, whichever O Conner held the White Rod, serving from conviction, tradition and self-interest – and with the confidence of a man whose own stronghold was unbreakable.
Hugh took Cormac by the arm and led him to the other side of the room, away from Felim and the monk. Felim found a stool and pushed it with his foot next to the bed. Sitting, he thrust his great, long legs out, feeling the tired muscles stretch, and linked his hands behind his head. He made no secret of listening. Cathal’s labored moans formed a macabre background, as if of distant warpipes.
“Turlough and his brother wintered at The O Neill’s stronghold,” Cormac told them without prompting, “and by all appearances meant to stay until the Second Coming. But a week since, they were gone, and no one has seen them. I had this from an O Donnell who guested with me on his way to the Holy Land.”
Hugh tugged on his lip again. “Is there talk of them coming back into Connaught?”
Cormac glanced from Hugh to the sickbed and back. “Talk of little else. I spoke with The O Heyne, too, who has ears in unlikely places. He was all crafty like a fox and full of maybe this and maybe that.”
“Where does O Heyne stand if the sons of Rory come back?”
“Ah, he does not stand. He dances,” Cormac said dryly. Felim, listening, could not restrain a smile over the adroit phrasing. O Heyne would bear watching. “And the others?” he asked.
Hugh sent a scowl in his direction, irritated at the interruption. Who is king here? his face asked, and Felim’s hard grin answered, Not you. Not yet.
Cormac missed the byplay. “That, I know not. Few were the men traveling this winter, with the sickness about. Gossip stayed behind walls. O Heyne and my northern pilgrim were the first guestings at the Rock since the sun turned south.” He hesitated. “You may have heard. Donn Cathaig McGarrity is dead, too, this past February.”
“Then Donn Oc is chief.” The words drifted from Felim’s lips, as if someone else had spoken them. Involuntarily, he glanced at his father, wondering whether, despite appearances, Cathal might not be aware of the jackals worrying his bones, and himself still wearing them. A fine thing to take to the grave!
Hugh turned, his face pinched into that hard pout that Felim knew from childhood. “Clan McGarrity holds the lands around Cruachan. I’ll have a man I can trust in its Seat.”
Felim chose his next words with exquisite care. “Donn Oc is not a friend; but we may yet keep him from becoming an enemy. He is the darling of all the young men, and we need warriors of his skill against the Foreigners.” He kept his voice calm, though the effort cost him. Cormac, silent, looked from one brother to the other, his face unreadable.
“We may need the Foreigners,” Hugh said cryptically, “more than we need Donn Oc.”
Meaning that, if the chiefs went with Turlough, Hugh would call in the Foreigners in their shirts of iron. Felim’s lip curled. “So the rabbit would summon the fox for aid.”
Oh, and how that old comparison still rankled! Rabbit Hugh! Hugh stepped toward him with an arm half-raised and Felim rose to meet him. The monk, startled, backed into the corner by the fire. Cormac moved smoothly between the two brothers, separating them.
“Sure,” he said easily, “the knot of the Clan McGarrity needs no untying tonight.”
Felim nodded and held both hands up. Felim, warned his father’s voice, look after your brother. Take care of him.
He looked sideways at the old man. I’m sorry father. There had once been love, he remembered. He had loved the old man. But this one foolish decision had killed it. He wondered if Cathal had known that before the shadows took him.
Hugh placed a hand on Cormac’s shoulder. “I want you to visit the principal chiefs and sound them out in this matter. O Taidg, O Flannigan, O Flynn... All of them. But go without ceremony; go as a friend. Be subtle.”
Felim tried to imagine Cormac being subtle and discovered thereby the limits of imagination.
The McDermott ran his fingers through his hair and nodded. His tongue darted out and wet his lips. He knows, Felim thought, how uncertain lies the ground before us. The marshal was perfectly capable of playing the turtle. He could lace himself fast behind the walls of the Rock and dare all comers, until peace came by exhaustion and mutual consent. Without The McDermott, Hugh’s cause was lost and, like it or no, Felim was tied to his brother’s fate.
“Especially, David O Flynn,” Felim said. “Find what he intends if Turlough waves the bloody shirt.”
Hugh turned and frowned. “And why The O Flynn, especially?”
“Curiosity,” Felim told him. “I know exactly why he will choose his path. I just don’t know which path that will be.”
Cormac laughed and slapped his thigh, raising a cloud of dust from his kilts. “And is that not the very spit of the man!”
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