But Saint Patrick existed. There is not a doubt of that. He was born a minor British aristocrat. As a boy, he was taken from near his home, somewhere in the western side of Britain, by an Irish raiding party.

Kept on the island as a slave for some years, during which he mostly tended livestock, he managed to escape and find his way, back across the sea to his parents. But by now he had already decided to follow the religious life. For a time he studied in Gaul; he may have visited Rome.

He suggests that certain churchmen considered his learning to be below standard, no doubt because of his interrupted education. But there may be some irony in these statements, for his writings suggest a literary as well as a political sophistication. In due course he was sent, at his own request, as a missionary bishop to the western island where he had once been a slave.

Why did he want to return there? He states in his writings that he had a dream in which he heard the voices of the islanders calling to him, begging him to bring them the Gospel. There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the record: accounts of supernatural visions and voices abound in the early Church, and have been recorded from time to time ever since.

In Saint Patrick's case, the experience was decisive. He begged to be given the thankless and possibly dangerous mission.

The traditional date of his arrival in Ireland, ad 432, is only a guess. It may be too early. But at some time during the decades that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, Bishop Patrick began his mission. He was by no means the first missionary to reach Irish shores: the Christian communities in Munster and Leinster had already been there for perhaps a generation or more. But he was probably the first missionary in the north if, as seems likely, his base of operations was near Armagh, in Ulster, where the king of the ancient Ulaid, bullied into a reduced territory by the mighty clan of Niall, liked the missionary bishop enough to give him his local protection.

Of Saint Patrick's actual preaching, no reliable record remains. His famous sermon, in which he explained the mystery of the Holy Trinity by comparing it to a shamrock, is a delightful legend, but there is no evidence that he ever said such a thing. Equally, it may be added, no one can say with certainty that he did not. More can be inferred about Saint Patrick's personality and missionary style. Humble himself, like all those who live the life of the spirit, as a bishop of the Holy Church he demanded and received the respect due to a Celtic prince. From his base in Ulster, he may have gone westwards and set up a second missionary front in Connacht. No doubt he was also in contact, from time to time, with his fellow Christians in the southern half of the island.

And did he, upon his travels, descend the ancient road that led across the Liffey at the Ford of Hurdles, and come to the little rath beside Dubh Linn?

History can only say that the record, upon this point, is silent.

It would be any day now. They all knew. Fergus was dying. The autumn leaves were falling and he was ready to go.

And now he had summoned his family to a meeting.

What was he going to say?

Fergus had ruled so long that he was the only chief that most of the folk in the area had ever known. With increasing age, his shrewdness and wisdom had continued to develop. Men came to him for justice from all over the Liffey Plain; and the territory around Ath Cliath had come to be known, in much of Leinster, as the Land of Fergus. And for the last twenty years, ever since the death of Conall, she had kept house for him faithfully. Day after day she had nursed him this last, long year, as his splendid old frame gradually broke down. Even now, at the very end, she always kept him clean. And he had been touchingly grateful. "If I've reached such a great age, Deirdre, it's thanks to you," he had told her more than once, in front of her brothers.

Yet it was herself, thought Deirdre, who should be thanking him-for the peace that he had given her.

Twenty years of peace beside the Liffey. Twenty years to walk beside its waters, out to the great open sands of the bay and the promontory she loved. Twenty years to bring up her son, Morna, safe under the gentle guardianship of the Wicklow Mountains.

Morna, son of Conall. The one they all loved. The one they protected. The one they had hidden. Morna: the future. He was all she had.

After Conall's death, she had never taken up with any other man. It wasn't that she hadn't felt the need. Sometimes she could have screamed with frustration. The problem had been the men. At first she had supposed that she might find someone at one of the great festivals. "You won't find another Conall," her father had warned her. But she had hoped that perhaps some young chief might take an interest. Her time with Conall had at least given her confidence with men. She held her head high. She could see that she created a stir. But though people were polite-after all, she had been chosen as the bride of the High King himself-they were cautious. The prince who had gone to sacrifice was a figure of strange honour and awe. But his woman, the cause of the trouble, made people nervous.

"You think I'm a bird of ill omen?" she laughingly challenged one young noble. "Are you afraid of me?"

"I'm afraid of nobody," he'd retorted indignantly. But he'd avoided her all the same.

She'd stopped going to the festivals after a year or two.

So what did that leave? A few brave souls in the Dubh Linn region. Two sturdy farmers, a widowed fisherman with three boats: they didn't inspire her. Once her father had brought home a merchant from Britain, who'd sold him some slaves. He was more interesting. But she would have had to go and live across the sea. She was touched that her father should have suggested such a thing, for she knew that he needed her and that he loved his little grandson; when she hadn't wanted to go, he had not looked too sorry.

Morna, they had called him, after Conall's father.

His first two years, for her, had been especially difficult. Perhaps if he had not looked so like Conall it would have been easier. He had her strange, green eyes; but in all other respects he was the image of his father. She couldn't help it.

Every time she looked at his little face, she had visions of his father's fate awaiting him. She had been troubled by nightmares: nightmares about Tara, nightmares of blood. She had developed a terror of druids-a terror that they would somehow snatch her baby from her and destroy him. A year after Morna's birth, Larine had come, as he had promised that he would. She knew he meant it kindly. But she could not bear to see him and told her father to ask him to go away. Fergus was concerned that if Larine took offence, this might bring on a druid's curse, but Larine had seemed to understand.

She had not seen him since.

Morna: he was such a sunny boy. He liked to play, to go hunting with her father. Fergus doted on him. To her relief, he showed no signs of going off alone or of moodiness. He was a lively, affectionate little fellow. He loved to fish, find bird nests, and swim in the waters of the Liffey or the sea. By the time he was four, she had taken him on her favourite walks up to the headland overlooking the island and along the shore where the seabirds cried.

Her brothers were kind to him, too. When he was little, they seemed content to play with him all morning. They taught him to fish and drive the cattle. He laughed at their jokes. By the time he was ten, he would cheerfully go off with them on the long cattle drives that might last a month or more.

But above all, it was Fergus who took the boy's education in hand. Once, when Deirdre had started to thank him, he had cut her short. "He's my only grandson," he had growled. "What else would I do?" Indeed, the boy had seemed to give his grandfather a new lease on life. Fergus had seldom been depressed once he had Morna to look after. He drank sparingly. He had seemed to find a new vigour. But she knew there was more to it than that. For he had sensed a special quality in the boy. Everybody did. His quickness at learning delighted Fergus. By the time he was six, Morna knew all the tales of Cuchulainn, and the island's legendary kings, and the ancient gods. He could relate the stories of his mother's family, too, of the slaying of Ere the Warrior. It delighted Fergus to let Morna hold the old drinking skull in his hands while he told it. He taught the boy to use a sword and throw a spear. And, of course, Morna had demanded to know if his own father had been a great warrior, too.

Deirdre had been uncertain what to say, but Fergus had satisfied him without any difficulty.

"He fought all kinds of battles," he would say airily. "But the greatest was against Finbarr. A terrible man. Your father killed him near here, on the shores by the Plain of Bird Flocks." Morna never tired of hearing details of the battle, which in due course included the additional slaying of a sea monster. It was hardly surprising, then, that Morna should dream of becoming a warrior and a hero himself. But Fergus had handled this quite well. "I wanted the same thing when I was a boy," he told his grandson. "But warriors mostly go across the sea to plunder other men's goods; whereas look at all the cattle we have here. You will have to defend this place, though." If, as he grew to be a man, Morna sometimes dreamed of being a warrior, he did not speak of it.

It was not, in any case, his potential as a warrior that had so impressed his grandfather. It was his quality of mind. It showed in all he did. By the time he was ten, Fergus made him sit at his side whenever people came to him for justice. After some years, the boy knew almost as much as he did of the island's ancient brehon laws. He delighted in the knottier kinds of problem. If a man sold a single cow and then a month later she produced a calf, to whom did the calf belong: the new or the former owner? If a man built a water mill powered by a stream that came down from another man's land, did the latter have a right to use the water mill free of charge? And subtlest of all, which of two twins was the elder, the firstborn or the second?

Elsewhere in Europe, it was the firstborn, but not always on the western island. "For if he comes out behind the other," Morna reasoned, "then he must have been in there first. So the second-born is the elder."

His sons would never have worked that out, Fergus thought. Unless the case concerned themselves, such abstract problems did not interest them.

There was something else about Morna, something hard to define. It showed in his love of music, for he played beautifully on the harp. It showed in his bearing-and it went beyond his dark good looks.

Even as a youth, he had the dignity of old Fergus; but there was something more, a magical quality which drew people to him. He was royal.

It had not been easy, deciding what to tell Morna about his royal ancestry. Deirdre had wanted to tell him nothing. "He'll get no good from that quarter," she had argued, "anymore than his father did."

Royal blood was a curse, rather than a blessing.

Her father didn't disagree with that assessment.

"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. caret 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 conclusions about his sons.

At last Fergus spoke.

"My end is drawing close. A few more days.

Then it will be time for a new chief of the Ui Fergusa."

The Ui Fergusa: the descendants of Fergus.

It was the custom on the island for a clan to elect its chief from the inner family-normally the male descendants, down to second cousin, of a single great-grandfather. In the case of the little clan who held Dubh Linn, there were no surviving male descendants, apart from Deirdre's brothers, of Fergus's father, Fergus, nor even of his grandfather who had supplied them with the old drinking skull. After Deirdre's brothers, therefore, unless they provided male heirs, the clan would have a problem. The rules, however, were not absolute. Survival was the key.

'Old though I am," Fergus pointed out, "there has never been a designated Tanaiste." This was the recognised heir to a chief. It was quite common for a clan to name an heir during a chief's rule, even from the moment the chief was chosen. "Assuming one of you two, Ronan or Rian, should succeed me, there is no one to inherit after you except Deirdre's son."

It would have to be Morna," they both agreed.

"Morna should be chief after us."

"Would he make a good chief?" he asked.

"The best. No question," they both replied.

"Then here is what I propose." He gazed at them calmly. "Let Morna be chief instead of you." He paused. "Consider. If you choose him yourselves, no one can argue as to his right. You both love him like a son and he thinks of you as a pair of fathers. Unite behind Morna, and the clan of Fergus will be strong." He stopped and looked carefully from one to the other. "This is my dying wish."

Deirdre watched them. She had no idea that her father was going to propose such a thing. She had assumed that Morna might inherit from his uncles in due course, even though not in the male line. But she saw the deep logic in the old man's words. The truth was that neither of them was really fit to be a chief, and in their heart of hearts they both probably knew it.

But to have their hands forced like this, to give up their claims to their sister's son, who was still a youth? That was a hard thing. In the long silence which now followed, she wasn't even sure how she felt about it herself.

Did she want such a thing so soon? Would this cause bad feelings, and even expose Morna to danger?

She was just wondering whether to intervene and ask her father to reconsider, when her brother Ronan spoke.

"He is too young," he said firmly. "But if I am chief, then he can be named as my Tanaiste.

What can be the objection to that?"

Deirdre stared. Ronan had gone pale; Rian was looking uncomfortable. Morna glanced at her, uncertain and concerned.

"I should prefer to wait," he said to his grandfather respectfully. "Ronan's suggestion would make me happy."

But the old man, though he smiled at his grandson, shook his head.

"It is better this way," he answered. "I have considered this matter carefully, and I have made up my mind."

"You have made up your mind?" Ronan burst out bitterly. "And what does that signify? Isn't it for us to decide after you've gone?"

Deirdre had never heard her brother address her father with such disrespect, but Fergus took it very calmly.

"You are angry," he said quietly.

"Let Morna have it, Ronan." It was Rian who interposed now, his voice gently pleading. "What would either of us do with the chiefdom anyway?" It suddenly occurred to Deirdre that Rian might prefer having Morna as chief, to being ruled by his brother. As she looked at the two of them, she saw how deftly her old father had handled the business. For not only would Ronan have made a poor chief, but once they heard that Fergus had designated Morna, none of their people at Dubh Linn would accept her brother as chief anyway.

And in the silence that followed, Ronan must have realised this, too.

For after a while he sighed.

"Let the boy have it then, if that is your wish." He gave his nephew a wry smile. "You'll make a good chief, Morna. I won't deny it.

With a little guidance," he added, to save his face.

"That is what I had hoped to hear," said Fergus.

"You have shown wisdom, Ronan, as I knew you would."

And now, placing a hand on Morna's arm, the old chief slowly rose.

Since he hadn't walked unaided for nearly a month, Deirdre could only guess what the effort must be costing him, and she almost moved to help him; but she understood that this was not what he wished. With the cloak still wrapped round him, Fergus stood there like a statue, his gauntness only adding to his dignity.

"Bring the drinking skull," he quietly ordered her; and when she had done so, and held it in front of him, he placed his hand upon it and indicated that Morna and his uncles should do the same.

"Swear," he commanded them. "Swear that it is Morna who shall be chief."

So they swore. And when the thing was done, they embraced each other, and agreed what a fine thing it was that they had done; and then Fergus rested. And Deirdre, uncertain whether she was glad or not at what had just come to pass, could only wonder one thing: Ronan had given way to Morna gracefully, but would he keep his word? *bb* The single chariot arrived the following afternoon. It was a swift and splendid vehicle. Morna and his uncles, as it happened, were away with the cattle; Fergus, feeling weak after the events of the previous day, was resting inside; but Deirdre, who had been sitting in the sun outside the rath mending a shirt, had watched its approach with interest. It was not often such a noble equipage came that way. Standing in it, beside the charioteer, was a young nobleman of about Morna's age, with long dark moustaches and a fine green cloak, who glancing down at her called out to know if this was the house of Fergus.

"It is, but he is sick. What is your business with him?"

"None of yours, I should think," the young warrior, who obviously thought she was a servant, replied casually. "But it's Morna, son of Conall, I have come to find."

"Morna?" She was suspicious at once, and was wondering what to reply when her father's voice came faintly from within.

"Who is it, Deirdre?"

"Just a traveller, Father," she called, "passing upon his way."

"Let him come in, then," he cried weakly, but this was followed by a cough and the sound of the chief struggling to catch his breath again, so that it was easy for her to give a firm reply.

"I am Deirdre, daughter of Fergus. As you can hear, my father is very sick. Indeed," she lowered her voice, "it cannot be many more days now that he will live.