Around the two golden baubles with their glittering stones, five other hollows of differing shapes and sizes gaped empty of occupants, their emptiness seeming to mock the aspirations of this puny, short-lived mortal man called Brian.
With one finger on his left hand tugging absently at the golden torque that encircled his thick, muscle-corded neck, he used a finger of his right to press into each of the vacant hollows in turn, while he mused on the absent pieces.
“The Shield of Laigin should come to me easily, for the bouchal who now rules there acknowledges that he owes me a debt for taking to a large measure his part against Rome. I think that when I’m ready to ask, he’ll bring it to me with no trouble.
“The Star of Munster.” His finger moved on to the next hollow. “That Italian conndottiere-type, di Bolgia. seems honest enough on the surface and even just below it. but all Italians are a sly, tricky breed. At least he’s astute enough to recognize Ri and Righ Tamhas FitzGerald for the incipiently dangerous slop-brain that he is. Now if I can ferret out just what it is that di Bolgia wants of me—and I know damned good and well that he wants something—I think that the Star of Munster will soon be in its place, here.
“Not that I like the idea of putting another FitzGerald onto the throne of Munster, for the blood is tainted, the entire line is eaten out with rot, like the most of the Norman ilk. But if there must be another of them, and I suppose that there must be, for di Bolgia has weighed accurately the sentiment in Munster and to place or try to place a new dynasty as kings of Munster would surely precipitate an uprising, and not just an uprising of the nobility, the FitzGerald kindred, but a general uprising of all the people . . . and that would be calamitous, at this juncture, giving as it would just the kind and size of an opening that Rome needs to start her mailed foot into the political affairs of Eireann. . . .
“No, I’ll let them crown this Sean FitzRobert when they feel the time is ripe, and I’ll give him a few years to show his stripes. Then, if he seems your normal land-hungry
FitzGerald, I’ll just march down there and crush him and see if I can unearth one FitzGerald who is not a savage thief or a simpleton, which is about as likely as finding rubies in an old, rotten dungheap. But maybe, if I can find a brave, wise, cooperative man from among the descendants of the pre-Norman kings, the Ua Briains, the people and what I leave alive of the nobility will accept him as Righ of Munster.”
The Ard-Righ’s finger strayed to the next hollow pressed into the velvet lining. It was more than twice as deep as any of the other hollows and near as big as a man’s clenched fist. “The Dragon of Connacht,” Brian said. “That’s one that I’ve never seen, since there’s never been any long period of peace with Connacht during either my reign or my lifetime, but men and manuscripts say that it is a huge hunk of solid amber, clear but reddish, as if fresh blood had been mixed with it. and with a small dragon, one as long as a man’s forefinger, encased within it.
“The thing surely came from the Baltic, that’s where all amber comes from, but the various legends and manuscripts disagree on its age, how long its been in Connacht. Were it almost anywhere else, I’d surmise that it was brought in by Vikings, but there were never that many long-term Viking settlements in most of Connacht. So, like so many of the others of the Jewels, I suppose that the true genesis of the Dragon of Connacht is just another lost in the dim mists of the long ago, never to again be known as fact by any man.
“The Striped Bull of Ui Neill, now, the Jewel of the Northern Ui Neills, is supposed to be of Viking origin, and there are indeed some runes carved into it and a Norse sunstone set between the horns. Yet each time I’ve seen it, I’ve wondered where the Vikings who carved in those runes got that little statuette of banded agate. I’m dead sure that no Viking ever carved the thing, for who ever saw a bull with horns shaped like that one? Even the head and body are decidedly different from any living cattle I’ve ever seen, either in the flesh or drawn on parchment, nor has any one of the hordes of foreigners who’ve come to
court ever reported ever seeing the like of such cattle as the sketch I had made of my cousins’ Jewel.
“As tar as getting possession of the Striped Bull is concerned, I think that all that is needed is to overawe my cousins with a strong force . . . Can I ever find the time to march north during Fighting Season? Perhaps this great captain that Cousin Arthur is going to send me can take his condotta up there?”
His fingertip tapped beside a long, narrow hollow in the velvet. “The Nail and the Blood, Holy Jewel of Breifne. Just an old. pitted, wrought-iron spikelet, cleverly encased in a crystal tube, the whole then set in a gold brooch and surrounded by small pigeon-blood rubies. All the people of Breifne and most of the churchmen to whom I’ve spoken declare that the nail is one of those that secured Christ to His Cross
“It’s possible, I suppose, for it does date back to just about the time that the men of the First Crusade to recapture Jerusalem would have been coming back, and I’d like to believe in the truth of at least one myth, but then I always recall what old Abbot Cormac used to say about supposedly holy relics.”
“Look you, young king-to-be.” The old man shoved into the center of the parchment-littered table a shred of one of his thumbnails he just had gnawed off. “What would you say if I told you that this was an authentic piece of a toenail of the Holy St. Lazarus?”
Brian, then in his early teens and completely at ease with his longtime mentor and teacher, had laughed and replied. “I’d say to find a fool to cozen. Father. What else would I say?”
“Ah.” went on the elderly monk, “but what, say, if you were a ruler and in need for some reason of a holy relic to give lodgment within your holdings? What then would be your reply, eh? Let us say that the continued safety, security, and well-being of all your folk and kin depended upon your acquiring a holy relic—would you then agree that a piece of an old abbot’s thumbnail might truly be pan of one of St. Lazarus’s toenails? Of course you would, for a ruler who will not do all in his power to see to the continued prosperity and peace of the people God has placed under his suzerainty is no true ruler, but a tyrant.
“Brian, in my travels as both youth and man, I have seen or heard of enough True and Most Holy Nails to be rendered into enough other nails to shoe every horse in Eireann, and the forge fire could be kept hot for the entire time it took by feeding it with bits and pieces of dusty wood avowed to be parts of the True Cross of Christ.
“But, Brian, listen you well and remember: While you or I may scoff and laugh at the naivety of those who truly believe such clear frauds, recall that those who originally perpetrated the conversions of a bit of iron from a blacksmith’s scrap heap or a section of wood from a wrecked ship into holy relics very likely had most commendable motives for so doing, and that those souls who believe in the relics long after the fact are often uplifted, made into better people, by their firm beliefs, their sincere faith.
“When you are Ri and Righ and, perhaps, Ard-Righ. as well, my boy, be publicly open-minded and ever-doubting, for that is your nature and you must always be true to yourself in all things, but at the same time, be careful lest you undermine the faith in possibly spurious things that many a poor wight needs to simply survive in this world.
“When you face a liar, look not first at the lie itself, but try hard to learn more of the liar and reason out just why he tells such a falsehood before you render judgment upon him.”
Ard-Righ Brian, sitting now in his bright-lit strongroom in his castle-palace at Lagore, sighed, missing his old, long-dead teacher and friend. Then, with another, deeper sigh, he let his finger go on to the next hollow, the seventh one, the last.