by Erin O'Quinn
“So when I name the days of the week, that concept is also foreign here.”
“The Sabbath is well known, and not just to Christians. It is part of a very long tradition, going back to the ancient Hebrews and perhaps even before. So it is only natural to begin to name the other days. Our own priests and monks are the chief users of the days of the week, and the practice is beginning to spread.”
“Bree, Jericho, I am fortunate to know such scholars. For how else would I learn about festivals, and days of the week, and all the other bits of knowledge?”
“Ye would learn them as the clansmen learn them, lass,” said Brigid, mimicking her own husband’s lilt and cadence. “Ye would learn them as ye have today—by seeing the great fire and asking questions.”
“And speaking of fire, I need to send a second signal. Ryan told me it is best to send your signal every ten or fifteen minutes to be sure it is seen and understood.” I left them while I used the signal blanket again. I stood watching my own handiwork as the puffs of smoke rose in the late-afternoon sky.
The sky was suffused with soft shades of yellow and pink in the west, the clouds full and slow. Again, as often lately, I marveled at the fair weather. It was as though nature itself was holding off its punishing chill until we had reached our warm destination. Perhaps we would not even need the extra thick blankets we had brought—not as covers, at any rate. Perhaps as downy comforters on the ground beneath us as we slept.
By the time I rejoined my companions, the horses were curried. We were fortunate to have found a rivulet filled with snow melt where our horses could slake their thirst. Now they stood, gleaming with the effects of our curry combs, tossing their heads in seeming delight at being away from the tethers of home.
That evening we ate a plump mountain hare, its white winter coat and tail now part of my growing collection. As we ate, I once again brought up the subject of cattle and drovers.
“I asked earlier—what are the rewards of living with slow-moving cows, seeing the same grasslands every day?”
Liam looked at me with just a trace of annoyance. “Life not always adventure, Cat. Or b’fhéidir…adventure lie between hoof of a cow an’ the next cairn stone.”
Liam’s words were greeted with silence. It seemed that everyone else agreed with him, and I was merely confused.
“Tá go maith,” I said at last. “I apologize, for my questions are born of ignorance. I would know how it works, this system of keeping and driving cattle. How the ones who drive them live from day to day.”
Liam sought Michael’s eyes. “Be me tongue,” he said simply, and Michael nodded. As Liam spoke his native language, Michael spoke as he had many months ago when Liam first told me all about his love, translating almost as his cousin uttered the words.
“An Éireannach—a person from Éire—counts his wealth in cattle. If he has no cattle, he has the equivalent in gold, or silver, or land, or crops. If something is worth a sét, it is worth half a cow. If it is a cumal, it is as good as having three milk cows. A man with both cattle and land is wealthy indeed. He has no need of gold rings or silver coins.
“Me father is a wealthy man. His holdings, near a land ye have already traveled, lie somewhere south of Tara in the province of Meath. They are larger than the entire bally of Derry, mo ghrá, so large it may take days to ride from one edge of his land to the next. His brothers, seven of them, hold lands also, in Connaught and Ulster. Some live with him now, but their lands are kept by their sons—me cousins.
“I grew up tending the land and cattle of me father. It was, and is, a life of hardship. But also a life of joy, and—yes, adventure, Cat. A kind of adventure that ye may not understand. Which calf will not survive until the next summer drive? How many cattle will be stolen if we leave this pasture for a few days only? Will the lake waters recede and give us a tur loch for summer pasture, or will we need to ride for days seeking undiscovered fodder for our herds? Will the cry of the wolf come in the night, and the next day find our darlings dead an’ gutted? Such be the adventures we face every day.”
By now, I was hanging my head, feeling very shamed indeed for my flippant attitude about driving cattle. Liam put his forefinger under my chin and raised my face. “Fester not, a Cháit. Keep your eyes always on the next hill, the next adventure. I could never have loved ye without your sense of excitement and new discovery. Do ye understand?”
I nodded, still contrite. And yet I still had to ask. “Could you not afford to pay others to drive the cattle? When the rains come, and the winds blow, and you are hunched down on the lee side of a hill to escape the sleet—do you never think of a warm home?”
He grinned at me. “Now that I have married ye, Cat, I could never again be a drover. I would want me large bed, me animal skins, and me warm wife every night. That is why the cattle drovers are mostly bachelors. Even Ryan may someday turn his nose from his cow’s nether parts and find the nether parts of a real woman.”
Everyone laughed—even Brother Jericho. “Tell me,” I persisted, “what do the drovers do in the winter, as now when the pastures are brown stubble, or frozen to the ground?”
“Then, lass, they build a little clay hut an’ stay with their cattle. They call it a shieling, a word used throughout Éire and Alba, too. When they can, they drive the cattle to their own homesteads, an’ their cattle are herded into byres, or cow sheds. The time between Samhain an’ Oimelc is long an’ cold. But it is what we do. It is our life.”
By now, other conversations had started, and I no longer needed Michael’s translation. Liam and I were talking between ourselves, and I had a tease left in me. “Tell me, O husband, is that the order of importance to you now? First the bed, then the skins—and last, your warm wife?”
“I will show ye later, little fox.” His head dropped down next to mine, and he sought my mouth. His tongue ventured out, exploring my lips, and I caught it and sucked it for a moment. Then I licked his silky mustache and found his own full lips. I pulled on his bottom lip slowly, sucking in and out, and he spoke with an effort into my mouth. “I will show ye, oh, I want ye—stop it, Cat.”
I laughed softly and drew back. “It is time for a tale,” I said to the company at large.
“Abair scéal,” said Brigid. “The ages-old cry for a story. What shall we hear tonight?” She settled back on the raised knees of Michael, her head thrown back and all her golden hair spilling over his legs.
“A tale of cattle,” I said.
“Then the teller must be me wife,” said Michael, stroking her soft curls. “Her namesake, the goddess Brigid, is the protector of cows.”
“Yes,” said Brother Jericho. “And tonight is her night, of all nights of the year. Um, to the local people, that is. Father Patrick is hoping to alter those old folk beliefs.”
She looked up dreamily to the top of the pines, where a few stars stood out against the black of the sky. “Tá go maith. I shall tell, for the many thousands of times over, the story of the great cattle raid. But from the point of view of a woman, the powerful queen Maeve.”
I knew the story, of course. It was one of the oldest in Éire, told by men as they quaffed their beer, recited by poets in the great mead halls of kings. For it was a tale of manly conquest, of warrior against warrior. The cattle raid itself was a mere excuse for a tale of bloody might versus might. I would enjoy a female version, and I settled back in the hollow of Liam’s shoulder to hear her story.
We all know that Maeve was a beauty, and she was the queen of all Connaught. Her fortunate husband, Ailill, enjoyed a life of sensual gratification because of her ready thighs, and a life of ease because of her bounty. And he knew it. She was loath to remind him, as long as he remained loving and true, and as long as he did not challenge her wealth.
One night, Maeve and Ailill were lying back on their golden bed strewn with mink furs and nosegays of lavender, basking in the glow of their lovemaking.
“Darling,” said Maeve, “the size of your loins is as great as t
hat of my strong, red- eared bull.”
“Really?” he murmured. “I would see this bull. For I say my great shaft is more like that of my own white-horned bull.”
“Challenge me not on this point, dear husband. How are you qualified to judge the nether horn of a bull?”
Ailill was rankled at her teasing. “Because I am a man,” he said. “Because White Horn belongs to me, and his size is a matter of pride.”
“Say you that your possessions—even a single bull—are greater than my own? Say you that my Red Ears cannot measure his horn against that of your White Horn?”
“Yes,” he said, convinced of his own manly prowess, blind to his wife’s growing vexation. For he was beginning to feel again the stirrings of desire, and his words amounted to an invitation to prove his proportions were worthy.
Now Maeve was no fool. She knew exactly what Ailill was doing and she, too, craved his nether horn for the second time that night. But she was also very competitive. She thought she would have his bull, and her own, too, thereby increasing her wealth and enjoying his dimensions at the same time.
“I propose a raid,” she said with a fire in her eye. “If you capture my red bull, I will give you the debate, and you may use that bull in any way you see fit. But if I capture yours, you must yield it to me any time, night or day, in any way I see fit.”
To unquenchable Maeve, this challenge was not just a competition. It was a way to ensure unheard-of gratification from her prodigious husband. But to Ailill, suddenly stubborn and proud, it was a way to best his overweening wife.
“By tomorrow night,” he said rashly, “your red-eared bull shall be mine.”
He turned his back then and slept, much to Maeve’s disgust. When he was snoring loudly, she crept from their fine bed and donned her leather slippers. Drawing her silken tunic around her ivory shoulders, she walked to the byres of Ailill where she knew a large white bull lay sleeping.
“O White Horn,” she murmured. “I have come to take you to my prize heifer, she of the lovely red shoulders, she who has never known the nether horn of a fine young bull.”
He opened one eye, loath to rise from the shelter of the byre and the plenty of the hay haggard.
“And,” said Maeve, “to sweeten the feast, my second virgin heifer waits for you, she of the deep black coat and milk-white chest.”
At these words, White Horn heaved himself to his hooves and began to beat his shaft against the sides of the byre in anticipation.
“Follow me,” she said sweetly, and he did. For Maeve knew the weakness of every male. And sure, that is the promise of yielding thighs with no payment on the morrow.
As soon as White Horn entered her own byres, she shut the paddock firmly and called her strongest guards to stand sentry. “So that none may disturb you,” she told him with a broad wink.
And then she returned to her mink-soft bed to exact her payment.
Brigid stopped speaking, and she and I started to laugh, first softly, then louder, until I felt tears at the corners of my eyes. “Brigid, you are a poet. If you were not a woman you would stand by the shoulder of the high king himself as his ollamh.”
“Ah, I think the woman’s perspective may rankle even the most benign of kings,” she said, raising her eyes to look at her husband.
Michael looked as if his dinner were not quite settled in his stomach. “The next tale at this fire, young Brigid, will be told by Ailill.” He seized her shimmering hair and pulled her head toward his, and I could see that her story had aroused him deeply.
I looked up at Liam, and I saw that he, too, had been affected by Bree’s taunting story. His eyes had taken on a deep fire. “I wait for Michael’s tale. Now time to sleep.”
He stood and went to where we had put our saddle gear. He returned to the fire with a large, rolled-up blanket. Brother Jericho, I noticed, had already drifted to a far pine-needled bed and had laid his head on Macha’s saddle. I followed Liam to a spot far from the fire and watched as he spread the heavy blanket on the ground.
“Come,” he said gruffly. He knelt on the blanket and, seizing my waist, he pulled me down to him. “We test the nether horn,” he said, and he caught my mouth in his, sucking and biting as if still hungry.
“Liam, no. Everyone can see us,” I protested.
“Look at them,” he breathed into my ear. I turned my head and saw a shapeless mass rising and falling near the fire. It was just about the size of two adults under a large cover.
“Tá go maith, a Liam. Póg dom.” I seized him by his short, silky beard and pulled his lips onto mine. “I would take the measure of the nether horn.” I pulled and bit at his mouth. “But first, suck me until I cry stop.”
Chapter 19:
Ballysweeney
The five of us rode at a brisk canter, sensing that Limavady was only hours away. The terrain was smooth now, with rolling hills and gentle glens that I remembered from my first trip here. Gorse was in bloom on every hillock, its distinctive sprays of yellow seeming to sweep the sky to a clean, bright blue.
When last I was here, in the late-summer months, this same expanse of land was green with grass and dotted with sprays of bright heather—purple, pink, and even white. With a small twinge I remembered stopping in this general area, dismounting from Macha, and standing while the wind caught my long skirts. I had stood waiting for the unknown as distant riders loomed toward me over the pasture land.
Sweeney’s drovers—hired for the purpose, not his own clan—had escorted us to his large brugh where the baleful baron sat glowering in his cripple chair, closely questioning me, subtly threatening me outside the door of his late wife’s bedchamber.
Back then, I was coming from another direction. I had approached his holdings from Father Patrick’s large monastery complex at Emain Macha near Armagh, far south of where we now rode. That was almost a year and a half ago, before the great Fair of Tara, before Sweeney had sat in judgment before the king, and before I also stood near the throne of judgment, a supplicant seeking my own domain in Éire.
Looking back on it, I saw now that Sweeney had every right to question my arrival, to be suspicious of why a wealthy, young woman would be traveling about with few retainers in this remote area. I also saw, as clearly as if it were a vision, that Sweeney had already divined my purpose in coming. Why had he not immediately seized me and thrown me into the slave quarters with my mother and the others? Or even throttled me in the same bed that his hapless, now-dead wife once slept in?
I knew now, looking back, that Sweeney was possibly innocent of all charges, but that he had already given up. He had tried in a feeble, indirect way, to befriend me—or even to seduce me. But my own gagging fear had made that impossible. And so my escape, my desperate freeing of my mother and the captives, had been made possible by surrender had been his way of being caught and punished for crimes never witnessed, perhaps never committed.
Some day, I vowed, I would know the whole story. And the first important part of unraveling that story lay a few miles ahead, in a sprawling homestead outside Limavady. And that was the shrouded figure of Mother Sweeney.
I was aroused from my thoughts by Liam’s terse exclamation. “Cat! Riders.” I looked ahead and saw three horsemen approaching us at a gallop. I dismounted and stood next to NimbleFoot, waiting as I had back then, with fear locked in my throat. What new threat lay in the sound of those frantic hoofbeats?
The riders came to a sudden stop, their horses rearing back as they pulled the reins stiffly. The tallest man leaned back in his saddle and regarded Liam and Michael, paying no attention at all to me. He asked, “Who crosses the pastures of the clans O’Cahan? And how come ye to signal the signature of our king?”
I was thunderstruck by his words. My “Caylith” smoke sign was the signal of the king himself? Ryan had lied to me, the scoundrel!
Liam calmly answered him in Gaelige, and I understood every word. “It is I, Liam O’Néill Mac Lóegaire, youngest son of Lóegaire Mac Néill.”
Michael echoed his formal greeting. “And I, Michael Mac Cumhaill, son of Conall, brother of the king.”
The speaker immediately dismounted and stood looking up at the two clansmen. His companions did the same. “We greet you, O brethren. For we are the sons of your uncle Fiachu, half brother of the king, and therefore your loving cousins.”
I was by now used to the endless rattling-off of sons of cousins of somebody, the way the clans identified their connections. It was confusing only to me, and vital to them.
The brothers stood looking up at their newfound cenél, or kinfolk. All three of them were dressed in woolen léines, tucked up into stout leather belts, and all of them wore long leather brógas that reached up to the knee. A finer-looking group I had not seen since I last met a gathering of Liam’s brothers and cousins.
Then Liam and Michael jumped from their horses, and the five men pounded each other’s backs and kissed each other’s hairy cheeks for five or ten minutes. By now, Brigid was standing at my side, and Brother Jericho sat quietly near us on the back of chestnut Macha.
At last, Liam and Michael paused in their back pounding and walked to where we stood. “This be me wife Caitlín.” Liam stroked my cheek lightly and smiled.
The tall one, whom I guessed to be the eldest and therefore the leader, took my hand and bowed. Like most of Liam’s kin, he was lanky, muscular, and brown of eyes and hair. His well-trimmed mustache and short beard were almost like Liam’s, but he did not have the distinctive dark auburn curls mingling with the lighter brown.
His words were clear and sure. “Turloch, lady. Men call me ‘Loch,’ though I be tall.” He grinned at his own jest, and I saw the unmistakable O’Neill characteristic—the tilted smile, combined with the ironic glint in his eyes. “Do men also call ye ‘Macha,’ after the red-haired beauty?”
Michael spoke then, touching the hair of his beautiful wife. “Me fair Brigid.”
“Ah, Brigid has come to oversee her feast day. Truly, another goddess walks among us.” Again he bowed over the hand of a cousin’s wife, and Brigid and I both looked at each other, flushing with pleasure. It seemed that the entire cenél of MacLeary possessed tongues of honey.
