by Tom O'Neill
When he got home, the kitchen was filled with smoke. An east wind always blew smoke back down the Aga flue. He opened the front and back doors, allowing a draught to clear the smoke taking the heat along with it. His thoughts were of Ciara. And of bad luck and hateful chimneys.
Maybe someone who had seen them together in town had advised her to keep away from him. Maybe Magill had shared with her his view that he was a boy ‘committed to a future in muck and ignorance’. Or maybe Kevin had told her about the ‘sometimes hard’ life in Kill and about ‘Connie and all’. Okay, but that was her choice then. He would be fine about that. He had other things to be worrying about.
He was a while standing with his back to the open oven door thinking on this before he even remembered to check in on Connie. The sheets were pulled back and the bed was empty. The room was silent. He finally noticed that the whole house was silent. Dark took such a fright that his fingers trembled on the screen of his phone as he called his mam.
‘He’s here,’ she started explaining calmly. ‘Back in the University Hospital. He’s in ICU.’ Her attempts at being level trailed off and she dissolved. After a bit, she resumed, ‘He is in a tent with tubes and wires all over him, Arthur. He was too weak to resist when the ambulance came. The GP shouted at me for not having called him sooner. Rightly so. I don’t know what I was thinking about. Can you get something for yourself to eat? I’ll probably stay down here for the night and I’ll ask Brian to bring you through tomorrow after school.’
On his own in the house that night with no chance at all of sleep descending, he headed down to the rath earlier than usual. The Fear Dearg appeared before the Old Man or any of the others. He was the last person that Dark wished to deal with tonight. But he greeted Dark civilly for the first time. Maybe he thought his clever bitterness would be wasted without witnesses.
‘Maybe you know where I’d go if I wanted to bump into the Noble Lady?’ Dark ventured.
‘She’ll be around somewhere, that I do know,’ he said quietly.
‘I’d be very thankful for anything more you can tell me. I believe that you’re not as bad as you make out.’
‘Watch your mouth, boy,’ he growled.
‘And I know you are very wise,’ said Dark.
‘Are you trying to cod me?’ said the ugly red púca testily. ‘Do you think you can cod the greatest codder of them all?’
‘No, that’s what they all say about you,’ lied Dark.
‘Indeed!’ He came down from a high oak branch and stuck his chest out. Then he let out a gargling laugh. ‘I know you’re trying to butter me up, boy. But I like it. And I’ll allow you credit for not being as gormless as you look.’
‘Where could I find her?’
‘She won’t be far from here and she’ll know you’re looking for her. She’ll introduce herself if it pleases her to. If it doesn’t there isn’t a damned thing anyone can do about it. Surely you didn’t think the big auld fella would keep her hiding place secret from you if he knew it? Although some of Mac Cumhaill’s friends might be stingy, some stupid, and some as dry as donkey droppings in June, there’s no one coming here that would set out to make things harder for you with puzzles and conundrums. Surely to Daghda you know that much by now?’
‘I suppose I do know that.’
‘Well, you just keep coming down here as long as you are welcomed and that’s your best chance of seeing the lady.’
‘Thanks,’ said Dark.
‘Don’t be asking me stupid questions you lanky amadán,’ screamed the púca suddenly. He had seen the others approaching and he didn’t want his reputation damaged. As the long-haired woman, Conán, and the Old Man came through the trees he added, ‘I have a good mind to beat some sense into you!’
The Old Man asked Dark how things were and Dark told him.
‘Son, courage is not for good times, it’s for bad times,’ said Mac Cumhaill, then paused as he looked at him. ‘I hope you will find enough of it inside you now to carry you through.’
Then they all sat at the fire and the Old Man started.
Chapter 6a
THE INTERESTING STONES
Mac Cumhaill had known when making the offer of a permanent lodging within his family stronghold that it was not an offer that would be of much physical comfort to Matha. The spell of restlessness that was on Matha was one that Mac Cumhaill had seen before. A person under such a geis couldn’t eat two consecutive meals at one table or sleep two nights in one bed unless he found his way home. Most who had fallen under it never did find home. They spent the rest of their days travelling the by-ways, never able to put down a root any place. But neither Mac Cumhaill nor Dreoilín had the heart to tell this to Matha.
Matha had a great sleep on his first night in his new lodgings. He was really hoping he might have another. Mac Cumhaill decided to save Matha from discovering his plight so soon. He said, ‘Here, I have a small mission to run. You might as well come along with me today. The man I’m going to meet has a map inside his head and on it is recorded every inch of ground, every river bend, every weir, millstone, pond, scelp of turf bog and most of the sheep, donkeys, horses and cattle too. He certainly knows your valley and possibly every blade of grass in it. He might also have an idea where it could be gone to.’
Mac Cumhaill yoked up one of his larger chariots and as he headed off with Matha alongside him he explained more. They were going up to Emhain Macha to see a man called Tíreach. He was the King of Uladh, a thorny individual. The purpose: to prevent a war. Tíreach felt he was being provoked by the woman in charge of Connacht. Yet again. And Tíreach, yet again, was preparing for war.
Mac Cumhaill stopped the chariot not an hour from his fortress and picked up another passenger. It was Cormac, the High King.
Cormac nodded to Matha, and then said to Mac Cumhaill, ‘Where’s your usual accomplice?’
Mac Cumhaill said, ‘Conán has business to attend to away in the Black Mountains. Matha is coming with us instead.’
The King looked a bit unsure.
Mac Cumhaill winked at Matha and said, ‘This lad has special powers, I think he may be useful on this mission.’
‘Fair enough, then,’ said the King. ‘Good man yourself, Matha. It’s a pleasure to have your company.’
He seemed to have forgotten that he had ever met Matha before. They travelled in silence, Mac Cumhaill at one with the horses and the King over-acting his farmer disguise as he tried out a weather-beaten nod to people along the wayside. When they stopped to give the horses a chance at some wild parsley, the King pulled out his velum from under his tunic and told Matha again about all the knowledge in the world.
Tíreach’s settlement was windswept and hungry looking. There were no flags or fanfare. All the cabins inside the fortification were the same size and none looked to Matha like a place where a king or even a chief might live. The defenders had a sharp look about them. To Matha’s surprise, Mac Cumhaill greeted the gaunt suspicious man who came out of one of the cabins as Tíreach. He was clad in a bat-damaged leather tunic the same as his soldiers. He was not in disguise like Cormac though. The place spoke of no hidden royal finery. This was him.
Tíreach forgot to greet them, he was so anxious to get to the point. ‘The Malleys from Connemara. They’re relatives of hers, you know. They’re after letting goats wander onto sheep ground on a part of a mountain that was always grazed by the Murtagh clan. All the Murtagh clan grounds fall within my province,’ he said in severe agitation. ‘I’d know those goats from two miles off. They think I don’t know. But Tíreach is no fool.’
That was when Cormac came into his own. He clapped Tíreach heartily on the back and laughed, ‘What my good man, are you not even going to let us get off this contraption and get a bit of food into us after our long journey before you start talking business? Can you see this poor young lad here with the walls of his belly touching his back bone from sheer hunger.’
‘Oh humble apologies, welcome, welcome to you, welcome,
come on inside.’ Then he turned with suspicion resuming its place on his brow and looking properly at Matha for the first time. ‘But who is this lad, though? Do we know him? He has the look of a Connacht man about him. Can we discuss these critical matters in his presence?’
‘This is a young friend of mine,’ said Mac Cumhaill, ‘He is from Mumhan and has never even been to Connacht despite a few years of wandering. He has a question to ask you, on account of your great knowledge of the geography of this country.’
‘Good enough. Come in and welcome, and what is your question,’ said the King of Uladh.
‘Well sir, it is the little valley that local people call Choill Rua. It is south of Sliabh na Mban. I doubt you ever heard of it?’
‘Heard of it? Indeed I have.’ said the King of Uladh. ‘That’s the valley where the slow fat Rian is chief, pardon me if he is a relation of yours. There’s a low crooked stone wall runs down the hill to a stream. There are seventeen cabins, three botháns, a small pocket of grain ground, a lot of very poor grassland with the grazing only of thirty-three cows, four bulls, and their followers in total. There are ...’
‘Does any of that sound right, son?’ said Fionn, cutting him off.
‘It is all exactly right,’ said Matha, astounded, ‘including the description of the chief, who I am told is indeed a relative of mine.’
‘And I can tell you another thing about that valley,’ the King continued. ‘A very peculiar thing.’
Matha was very eager to continue this conversation but the dark worry had returned to Tíreach’s brow and his attention had drifted to the issue that was to the forefront of his own mind. ‘That people over beyond in the west, that people think Tíreach an eejit. Tíreach is no eejit. I’m telling you now, this won’t be put up with.’
They went into Tíreach’s little cabin. They sat down to share his evening meal. Matha bit his lip trying not to show his surprise at what was set before them. He had seen better meals in the poorest of homes. They were to share a scrawny pigeon, poorly plucked and barely boiled. Tíreach’s nephew who did his house-keeping obviously had as little time for niceties as the King of Uladh himself. Tíreach didn’t even notice the raised eyebrows. He went back to his subject. He was a man possessed. ‘If it’s trouble they want I’ll sort them out for once and for all. These men of mine are trained to show no mercy.’ He was standing and sitting and walking in circles. He couldn’t even eat the little wing of pigeon he had taken for himself. Mac Cumhaill had seen it all before. All the warning signs.
‘Sit down man,’ Cormac said, in his jovial calming voice. ‘Can you not get us a drink after our long journey. Something to wash down your fine meal. And tonight we’ll have an old yarn about times gone by and maybe you can get in a poet or a few musicians to take the weight off our minds. Then you’ll show us where we can rest so we can discuss all this unnecessary war talk in the clear sensible light of tomorrow morning when we are all refreshed and thinking straight. How does that sound to you?’
Tíreach ordered drink to be brought. The nephew brought a large urn of cold water. The King of Uladh didn’t approve of alcohol and thought milk made babies of men. He started again about the crowd over in the west. ‘I’m just giving you due warning. I know you’re the High King and I give you every respect but I’ve been pushed beyond my limits. Just remember I didn’t start this.’
‘I know that hill of the Murtagh’s,’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘As I recall, it is mean and useless land. There’s hardly a decent shelf between the walls of rock and hardly enough grass for a rabbit. I don’t think your man Murtagh has run a sheep on it in years. His family has not the stamina to follow sheep up there. So are you telling us that Murtagh would rather see it go to scrub than let anyone else have use of it?’
‘Indeed, Murtagh is a lazy useless lump,’ said Tíreach, spitting. ‘But he is one of ours and the land is ours. They encroach. It’s an insult. There is no option left to me but war.’
‘Tíreach, do you not think that they may just be playing a joke of sorts? Just trying to get you excited?’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘The best cure for that would be to ignore this thing entirely. Let them graze their scrawny goats without saying a thing. That will really confuse them.’
Of course this was not going to work. The problem with Tíreach was that for all the facts he knew, he had no knowledge of people. He knew precisely in paces how far it was between any two points in his entire province of Uladh. He could calculate with amazing accuracy how many sacks of barley would be saved across the entire country on any given year. He knew how many healthy calves had been born in each clan stronghold across the country every year since he was a boy. He knew the bulls that had been used for breeding, going back twenty generations in his own herds. But despite all that knowing, people remained a mystery to him. He couldn’t keep a poet, so there were no good stories being composed about him. Poets would get fed up of him wanting to add many details to their verses. He couldn’t have a wife because even when he met a girl he liked he would soon start suspecting her motives; thinking her family had sent her to try to gain favour for themselves. He could never figure out when he was ahead. When things were good, he inspected them too closely and always found the bad side. Even if a neighbouring king made him a generous gesture or a peace offering, he would accept it at first but then persuade himself it was a trick; that they were trying to cod him. Soon he would throw it back at them. As a result, now the neighbouring chiefs and kings actually were trying to cod him. They sent young lads in to rob his orchards just to make him mad. Or they let out the few goats on his mountain. Just to rile him up. The good woman over in Connacht seemed to have perfected the art of getting entertainment at Tíreach’s expense.
‘Bloody blackguards,’ continued Tíreach. ‘Just playing a joke eh? That might very well be the truth.’
‘Well then,’ said Mac Cumhaill, ‘do you see now that the best way to cod them back might be to do nothing at all.’
Tíreach wasn’t happy, but that was how the conversation ended for the night. There was no music or entertainment. Tíreach didn’t believe that the sound of merriment was the right noise to be coming from the house of an upright leader. Wooden boards with the hospitable indulgence of only a thin scatter of straw on them were provided for the visitors to sleep on. Mac Cumhaill and Matha were put in one hut and the High King was put in an adjoining one. And indeed, save for the occasional sound of a dog barking in the distance, the tiredness of a hard day’s activities meant that most of the night was as silent in the middle of that big encampment surrounded by many men and families, as it would have been sleeping on your own in the middle of a forest.
In the early hours, Matha sat upright. He plainly heard talking. It was a hoarse voice with a strange accent and it was talking to Cormac in the next cabin. ‘Whisht, ssh, don’t be alarmed, hero,’ the voice was saying. ‘Don’t panic, the name is O’Blinn, a humble cattle man from the midlands, no need to wake the soldiers. I thought what I had to say to you, you might want to keep private.’
Matha woke Mac Cumhaill who could hear nothing and because his own hearing was very good indeed, he reassured Matha that he was imagining things.
When Mac Cumhaill had gone back to sleep, Matha couldn’t. He went outside quietly. He could see the guards still fully alert at the entrance. He wouldn’t have expected less in Tíreach’s fort. So he couldn’t imagine how this O’Blinn could have got past them. He went quietly to the King’s hut and looked through a bad joint between two upright poles.
What he saw didn’t alleviate his surprise at the guards’ failure to notice a stranger. There was a sturdy, very noticeable gentleman in the King’s room. And he almost did look the part of a midlands cattle man. He was short, well-fed and dressed in grey tweed. He had particularly hairy nostrils and a sneering hard-done-by look on his face. But a scarlet scarf peeped out over the collar of the drab over-tunic. Not exactly what you’d have expected on a real bog man. And Matha noticed a slight shuffling as
the man walked up and down beside the bed, quite different from the rolling walk of the cow men he had grown up with. As his trunk was very short compared to his legs, it looked very much like he was walking on some kind of big-heeled shoes.
‘Your Majestic Highness?’ continued Mr O’Blinn.
‘What? Who’s that raimésing at me?’ The King sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes to get the small man in focus. The creature now had the tweeds off and his tight scarlet outfit was revealed. He had also kicked off the high shoes, complaining that they’d been hurting his toes. So now he was only at eye level with the boards the King had been sleeping on, though his stout muscular body looked broader than that of any full-sized soldier. All pretences of being a midlander were gone.
‘What in the name of Mórrígan are you? Who let you in here? Guards! Guards!’ the King started shouting.
‘Wait, wait, wait, wait!’ cried the stranger, putting his hands in the air. ‘Wait till you see what I’ve brought you, you wonderful, famous man.’
The King was as fond of praise as the next person and his voice was softer now, saying, ‘Well get on with it, good fellow, what have you brought for me?’
‘Yes of course,’ said the stranger. ‘I know you’re a very busy man, with all the affairs of your people weighing on your shoulders. Oh, from all I’ve heard, may I say that you are a wonderful king. If only more kings were like you.’
‘Stranger, I like your thinking.’ The King was swelling with pride. ‘It’s rare to never that my own appreciate me. Tell me where you come from, what gift you’ve brought, and what the humble High King of Éirinn, namely my good self, can do for you.’
‘The gift is in my hand,’ the stranger said, holding up a clenched fist.
‘What? What trick is this? What miserable gift can fit in one puny closed fist?’
