“The children are growing fast. From time to time the twins need a little mothering, but the eldest have all but flown their nest.”
“An empty nest makes room for new eggs.”
“I believe she intends that.”
“Between you and me, I am surprised she hasn’t hatched one already.”
“Well, you know how these things can be,” she said, tearing a piece of sweetbread and dipping it into the cream pot. “My cousin Lally took three years to conceive her first, then had twins two years running.”
I winced at the thought. My midwife had assured me I was only carrying one, and I knew that I would burst if it grew an inch bigger.
At that moment Guennola, my sister’s maid, appeared. Without invitation, she sat beside us and poured herself a cup of water. She was a sour old puss, her lips permanently downturned at the edges and her eyes as narrow as her nose. She had been my sister’s maid for as long as I could remember, though I couldn’t for the life of me see why. If I woke to find her face before me, I think I’d roll over and close my eyes again.
“We were just discussing how my sister is settling into Sidhe Fionnachaidh,” I informed her. At this, she shifted her rat-like gaze from her cup to Sorcha, as though warning her not to speak of her mistress to me. I was shocked by that look. What did she imagine Sorcha could tell me of my sister that I could not guess for myself? In an attempt to save my friend from reprisal, I turned the object of our conversation. “And you, Guennola, how are you enjoying your life there?”
“Aye,” she said, nodding slowly. “I like it well enough.”
“It’s cold, I hear?”
“I can’t say as it troubles me.”
No, I thought, wondering whether anything could be colder than her manners.
Aodh
He’d gone by the time I made it down the hill to the circle of sand where the warriors wrestled. I scoured the crowd, looking for a shock of red hair amongst the blond and the brown.
“Aodh!” I heard a voice call.
Turning with hope in my eyes, I saw the slender figure of Luiseach walking towards me, swathed in her dress of cornflower blue.
“What is it?” she asked. “Are you not glad to see me?”
“Of course!” I implored. “I’m just surprised, is all.”
“Me too,” she smiled. “My father hardly ever saddles his horse to ride further than the Grey Ford, but he enjoyed his time at your father’s fort so much that he decided we should come to the Red King for Áenach Tailteann.”
“Well, it is the only place to be if he enjoys his ale and his dancing.”
“Hmm,” she said, pressing her pale lips together. “I fear it is more for the fighting he comes. There is little my father enjoys more than watching warriors tear themselves to pieces. Although, ale beforehand and dancing after would no doubt enhance his pleasure.”
I smiled and looked deep into her eyes. Luiseach was still as pretty as I remembered her, those days splashing in the water by the crannóg; her father’s knowing glances over venison stew and cured ham.
“I am glad you are here,” she whispered, taking my arm in hers. “I wasn’t sure that I would know anybody.”
We walked up along the highest mound of the fort. From there, on a clear day, you could make out the shimmer of the far-off sea. It was misty that evening though, and even the woods were about to be swallowed. Down below, the yellow banners of her father’s camp, and the blue banners of my own, joined a hundred other colours, fluttering in the coastal breeze.
“How do they feed so many men?” she asked. “I’ve often wondered. I know our grandfather has cattle and sheep aplenty, and the druids make their sacrifices for the feast. But imagine that were an army. Imagine it were the invasions, rather than a celebration. How would they feed so many men?”
“I imagine they’d take what they needed from the forts they conquered.”
She thought about this for a while, her own father a Man of Dea like myself. Had we been in the presence of my mother, or of Lugh’s kinsmen, I am sure she would not have raised such a question. Our ancestors had taken these lands, yet they had allowed many to live. To sing of the battles fought and won was one thing, to ask honest questions of what happened, quite another.
“I expect you’re right,” she said, drawing her shawl about herself.
“It’s turning cold. We should head back down to the fires and eat.”
Not until the next day did I set eyes on Caílte. My grandfather held a formal feast, with a long wooden table and silver goblets. My aunt Ailbhe sat with Aoife and my father close to the centre. Fionnuala had settled further down the table with Sorcha and the twins, and I chose to sit beside Luiseach and her father, the fearsome Laisrean. He was one of the strangest looking men I had ever seen, for his thick, black hair and beard were dappled in part with Bodb’s bright red. He looked like a skewbald pony, neither one colour nor the other. One of his eyes was light blue, and the other dark blue. Yet it was rumoured he had the strength of six men inside him, and that one blow from his axe was enough to fell an ancient oak.
Despite this, I was not afraid of the man. After all, my father was Lir, King of the Sea. Laisrean would never dare threaten me, and I didn’t intend to give him reason to. I could tell by the way he was watching that he approved of my friendship with his daughter.
“My own wife,” he began, after several flagons of ale, “—my own wife, her mother,” he jerked his chin towards his daughter, “now she was a wild thing. Plucked her from the depths of the Wolfing Wood, that one. Married for a year and a day and she bore me no children. A year and a day later a daughter, then she left me for my younger brother. Could have murdered the bitch, but he was my brother, what’s a man to do? I have five sons now, but this one here’s my only daughter. Mad like her mother.” I tried hard not to glance at Luiseach, though I could feel the shame radiating from her like a cattle iron. “Can’t keep hold of wild things,” he concluded, sucking back the last of his cup and reaching for the flagon.
Turning to his neighbour he began to recount a fight he’d once had with a Fomori warlord, leaving us to our own conversation.
“She didn’t leave him for his younger brother,” she said quietly. “She threw herself from the cliffs.”
“You must hate him,” I replied.
“No, he is right. She was quite mad.”
When I looked into her eyes I saw no sadness, simply truth.
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged and reached for her cup.
He saw me before I saw him. I leant to brush a strand of hair from her wine. When I glanced up I saw Caílte, at a table far from ours. He sat beside his uncle, the fearsome warrior Cumhaill, and his brother at arms, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne. His chestnut eyes were fixed upon me, yet they lowered when I met them, a strand of Luiseach’s hair still wrapped between my fingers.
Fionnuala
All through that long summer I had thought of little else. As I sat watching the twins build mud forts by the lake, and the wild horses thunder across the valley, my mind was swept away on a tide of longing.
Conall of the Red Rock had hardly changed since last we met. His dark brown hair a little longer perhaps, but that was all. He still walked with that easy gait, relaxed, confident. His smile generous, his hands wide and used to the weight of a sword.
“Fionnuala fair,” he addressed me, appearing by the fire that third night.
I had searched the camp for him, but although Ailbhe had promised his presence, I was unable to locate him amidst the throng. Even more clans than last year had descended upon my grandfather’s caiseal. It was impossible to find your own hut unless you flew a flag from the door.
“Conall!” I cried, rising to greet him.
“How have you been?” he asked, studying me with those dark eyes.
“Well. And you?”
“Yes, a long year in your absence, but a productive one. My father has extended his lands to the East after the death of his
brother, we have gained a second fort and doubled our harvest.”
“How wonderful.” I smiled, having only half heard his words in my enthusiasm to please.
“What of your own fortunes? I believe there was a wedding when last we met?”
My face fell a little, as that wedding had put pay to all romantic notions that night. One moment we had been dancing, his hot hand holding mine, my skirts brushing against his thigh, the next, two hands raised to the sky, the whole world falling still about them.
In my hurry to find my brother, I had squeezed his hand and left. So hasty had I been that I offered no explanation. Though I had looked for him the next morning, and every morning before we left, I could not find him, or else he had been avoiding me. Being Conall of the Red Rock, I doubted he was used to being left to dance alone. It was only on that final day, when we were to leave, that he came to say goodbye, and I was too shy to ask what had kept him.
How fast a year slips by. When I saw him again by the fire, I apologised once again for my former behaviour, but he would not hear of it.
“My lady, it is I who must apologise to you.” Though what he wished to apologise for he never did say, steering the path of our conversation back to where we had once left it. “Would you care to dance with me?”
I took his hand and he spun me around, catching me in his arms as I fell, laughing and giddy.
That next morning, I went to bed with sore feet, for we had danced all night. He still smelled of salt and earth, his smile white and his arms thick as tree trunks beneath his tunic. I was as mesmerised by his living form as I had been by Sorcha’s shadows as a child.
Aodh
“He’s not here,” Cumhaill said, whirling his claideamh from shoulder to shoulder as he walked towards me. He was a formidable figure, thickset and muscular, his shoulders as broad as an ox and his wild blond hair ragged as a horse’s mane.
“I saw him, I know he’s here.”
“Aye, he’s here. But he’s not here, here. You get me, lad?”
I knew from the way Cumhaill rested his sword across his shoulders that he wanted me to leave. There was nothing respectful in the way he looked me up and down, an insignificant sprat in his wide ocean.
Fionn mac Cumhaill was head of the mighty Fianna, a band of warriors who had travelled across the sea and back many times in the service of their king, yet they bent their knee to no man. Their battle cry, the diord fionn, was said to turn men’s blood to ice.
He stared me down until I turned away, fists clenched to control my anger.
From the main hall I went to the store huts, from there to the inner stables and then the upper walls. It was like searching for a single blade of grass in a meadow. If Caílte did not wish to be found, there was no way of finding him.
Fed up of trying, I walked down the hill and straight into him.
He was crouched outside the hut of an old woman, helping her to skin hares. When he looked up I could tell that he had not expected to see me, but beyond that he masked his feelings well.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I said.
“Aye, well I’ve been here.”
Already short on patience, I stared up at the sky, trying to decide whether all that had occured last year had simply been a strange imagining. Had anything that happened between us mattered? After a year, did it matter anymore?
Caílte ran the back of his bloodied hand across his nose, before flinging the torn skin onto a pile and handing the meat to the old woman. As he leant forward to scrub his hands in the water pot, he spoke again.
“Why were you looking for me?”
“Maybe not in this part of the land, but where I come from, it’s customary to greet your friends.”
He stared silently ahead at his own thoughts.
“You’re busy,” I observed and made to go.
“Hold up,” he said, appearing by my side. “Which way are you walking?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I admitted.
Before I had a chance to draw breath, he grabbed me by my wrist and dragged me sideways into an empty hut.
“Welcome back,” he said, pressing his lips to mine.
I clenched his hair in my fist, his sweet, familiar smell igniting my desire as before.
We did nothing but kiss for an age, our hands exploring the changes in each other since last we met. He had seen more swordplay than poetry over those months, for his arms were growing thick like his uncle’s. Mine were thicker too, but still willow to his oak.
Eventually he drew back, breathless.
“I’ve missed you,” I told him.
“Aye, I can taste it on your lips, all that missing. It tastes like Luiseach ní Laisrean.”
“And what would you know of how Luiseach ní Laisrean tastes?”
I thought he’d see the humour in that and laugh, but instead he leaned against the wall, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re a lord, and I’m a warrior—”
“You’re a poet.”
“Whatever else I may wish to be in this world, I am a warrior first. I’m the nephew of Fionn mac Cumhaill, a brother of the Fianna. Aye, they’ll let me say a poem over the dead, but only once I’ve made some dead to say it over first.”
“What’s your meaning?”
“My meaning,” he said, slapping his hand against the wall by my ear, trying to rein in his frustration, “is that I am expected to love my brothers, and you a wife.”
I felt a chill across my skin, the way the autumn air threatens winter even as the sun still shines. He was right, of course. Warriors were meant to take their brothers to their beds. What need was there for children before their wars were won? It was more important their needs were met in other ways, their minds left clear for battle, their love of their brethren inspiring them to fight for one another from here to the Summerlands.
“I’m not the only heir to my father’s fort,” I reminded him.
At this he did laugh.
“You would throw away your rightful claim, to join the Fianna?”
“Why not? I hear there are plenty of forts to be won and traded in your line of work.”
He pulled me to him, kissing with harsh passion.
“Don’t be a fool,” he whispered. “Go to your lady love, do what is expected of you.”
He left me there in that hut, too stiff to walk. The presence of him was more powerful than ever before. We had both grown in that time, physically and in confidence. He was like a glove, and I the hand. We fitted each other perfectly. I liked Luiseach, I always had. She was a sweet, beautiful girl, and had I never met Caílte, I’m sure I would have been satisfied with her. Yet you can never force the moon and the sun to set in the east, to push back the days one by one, to unmake the makings of your fate. She was a good woman, and would make a good wife, but Caílte was my love. I needed to make him believe that.
Two days later, an opportunity presented itself. Luiseach had sat with me every day at meals, and danced with me most of the night whilst her father looked on from afar, stroking his mottled beard and drinking his weight in wine.
I did not wish to offend the girl, but I no longer wanted to encourage her affection. It was clear what she wanted – what her father wanted – and I had to put a stop to it before Laisrean spoke to Lir, for he considered Laisrean a friend and would most likely agree to the union.
“My sweet,” I smiled, pulling her from her place by the fire. “Have you had the good fortune of meeting my friend?”
I placed her delicate white hand in that of a young man with outstanding features. His thick, beech-brown hair hung in a loose ponytail behind, his wide lips and pinched ears carrying something of the fay about them. Her eyes met his and rested there a while.
“This is Garrett of the Red Rock. A fine dancer and an even finer swordsman. I am exhausted and must rest a while, but please, my lady, I would consider it a personal favour if you would keep my friend from mischief.”
I hardly had to utter another w
ord, for they were already moving away. I had met Garrett last year, he had almost bested me on the sparring grounds. Afterwards, his brother came up to congratulate me and that’s when I realised he was a member of the Red Rock clan. They didn’t look so alike for brothers, but in mannerism they were the same. Both knew how to fight and knew how to dress, and knew how to address the daughters of chiefs. Garrett and I shared a few flagons of ale and talked about our respective homelands. I spoke a little of how distant my father had been through grief, and he spoke the same of how distant his father had been through pride, believing that his sons should learn by example rather than practise, each mistake they made carrying with it a punishment more severe than fatherly love would usually ascribe.
From that night I found myself free to sit with whomever I chose.
Fionnuala
Of all the trials the champions fought over Áenach Tailteann, I loved the swimming most of all. Any chance to be beside the sea was a pleasure, for salt ran through our veins on our father’s side, and to hear the waves crash against the rocks revived us.
The water gave the warriors’ muscles that slick appearance, like the oil used when they wrestled. It defined their strong bodies and turned their hair to seaweed. As they left the water they looked like legendary Glashtyn, arising from the seabed to carry away our womenfolk.
“Who do you favour to win?” Conall asked as we shaded ourselves beneath his clan’s canopy and picked at fruit and sweetmeats.
“Goll mac Mórna, without doubt.”
“He only has one eye.”
“Yes, but look at his arms, they are twice as broad as any other. They’re like oars, pulling him through the water.”
“I won’t argue with you, my lady. However, my money is on Oisín. He’s the smallest, but by far the quickest.”
“In a fight, perhaps, but in water?”
“Well, we are sure to see.”
I had been right, of course. Goll, with his mighty strength, pulled himself through the water like a trade ship, leaving the other Fianna lengths behind.
The Children of Lir Page 11
