Fionn and the Legend of the Blood Emeralds

by Tom O'Neill

  ‘That’s not a bad morning at all now, sir,’ said Matha, as he prepared to walk around the enormous lunatic.

  Finally the figure became aware of him and stopped the ranting. Matha couldn’t believe it as he stared at the enormous man with the long hair, the blue and yellow tunic, the heron skin sack, and the spear. There was nobody in the whole country, as far as he knew, who looked like that – other than the man who had ignored warnings and left the Tara fires to go out for a stroll the night before. Or could it be that Fionn had a deranged twin?

  The man stared at Matha with a crazed look in his eyes. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I just said that it was a good day, Fionn Mac Cumhaill, and now I’ll leave you in peace and be on my way. I’m sorry to have disturbed you in your... reverie.’

  ‘What?’ Fionn was still staring, bullish anger coming into his eyes. ‘What did you say? How do you know my name?’

  ‘It’s me, Matha.’

  ‘What kind of trickster are you?’ he yelled. ‘What torment do you bring?’

  ‘Nothing Fionn, I was just on my way...’

  Before he knew it, Mac Cumhaill was towering over him. His face was masked in a storming black rage. Matha didn’t get another word out before Mac Cumhaill’s fist hit him on the side of his head and he flew off the path to hit the ground twenty feet down the valley beside it. The pain was the worst he’d ever felt. He tried to get up to run but he was too dizzy. In two steps, Mac Cumhaill was standing over him. With his thumb and forefinger he picked Matha up by his tunic, twisting it around his neck so he couldn’t breathe. Mac Cumhaill brought him level with his own face. A face that Matha didn’t recognise anymore. He yelled so loud that Matha thought his hearing was gone, ‘You are another who has come to torment me, are you not?’

  Matha tried to speak but he could only squeak. Mac Cumhaill spat the rage into his face and then began hitting him again from underneath with his free hand. Matha could hear crunching. The worst pain was now in his chest. Tears of blood rolled from his eyes.

  ‘Phaw!’ yelled Mac Cumhaill with contempt and flung him on the ground again. Matha couldn’t make out much anymore but he felt the great foot being pressed on his already broken chest and he could hear the familiar sound of the bronze sword being drawn from its beautifully decorated sheath. He had always admired that so much but never told anyone. That was a strange thing to be thinking as he was about to lose his life.

  Matha couldn’t believe what Dreoilín had done to him. ‘On this shortcut you will pass through a certain valley,’ the druid had said casually. ‘The Valley of Regrets, I believe they call it. For some reason. When you are there, keep a look out for anything unusual.’ Dreoilín must have known that Mac Cumhaill was out here.

  Now Matha cried with the pain and spat through his teeth, ‘The curse of a thousand sleepless nights on you, Dreoilín, for sending me here, and when he kills me altogether, my blood will be on your hands and not his.’

  The blow never came. Instead Mac Cumhaill fell down on top of him and multiplied the pain. Next Mac Cumhaill was sitting up in the grass and, as far as Matha could tell, he was wailing like a gloomy hound.

  After a while this stopped too and the words became calmer for a moment. ‘Matha? My clever and loyal young man? Is it you? You are bloody and hammered. Who did this to you? I’ll have his life.’

  After a while, Matha lifted his head painfully and turned it a fraction. But in the interval, Mac Cumhaill had risen to his feet and moved a few paces off, staring at a hill to his left.

  After another while, Matha tried to sit up. When he wiped his eyes, he could see through the blur that Mac Cumhaill was now pointing at the hill, although there was nothing there. Just then, a crooked shape appeared beside Mac Cumhaill. A rough cloudy-looking man, somewhat disfigured. Maybe his head was on crooked. He sat on a bony horse that looked like it was about to collapse. Mac Cumhaill didn’t seem to see either horse or rider. When the figure spoke, Mac Cumhaill could hear it though.

  ‘You remember me, Mac Cumhaill, you foul beast?’ He spoke with a foreign voice.

  ‘Bolcán?’ cried Mac Cumhaill feebly. ‘Is that you? Where are you?’

  ‘Me, the King of Gaul! Come to your lands merely to rescue my daughter,’ the man croaked.

  ‘With respect Bolcán, your daughter pursued me here. She came by choice. I did not invite her. And then you came with an army instead of an emissary. What could I conclude but that it was your pride you came to rescue, not your daughter?’

  ‘My only daughter. My darling!’ The man broke into a crooked scream: ‘I was driven mad. Mad! MAD!’

  Mac Cumhaill said nothing but just looked down at the ground as he had been doing when Matha came on him.

  ‘And then my reward,’ the madman continued, ‘was to be cut down by your hand and left there in the bushes for the scavengers to have their choice of me. My eye!’ He clapped his hand over the hole in his face. ‘A foul grey crow picked it from me. You condemned me to forever wander alone in this land of heathens, like a common vagabond.’

  Bolcán raised a club over Mac Cumhaill. Matha saw it. He didn’t warn Mac Cumhaill. Why should he? In fact he hoped Bolcán would inflict some measure of the pain that was in his own body now. Bolcán hit out very hard.

  Mac Cumhaill stumbled, but the pain didn’t draw a sound from him.

  ‘I am sorry for your state, Bolcán,’ he said quietly. ‘What was I to do? If I hadn’t slain you, you’d have slain me. That is the way. What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘By the Gods, I will slay you now,’ said Bolcán, suddenly gaining a cold focus in his voice that left Matha in no doubt that he intended to do exactly what he said.

  The large bockety King pulled a sword from his belt. It was stout and broad and its lethal silvery blade was untarnished. There was nothing ghostly about the way he swung it through the air above his head. It whistled wickedly. Even though he had heard all this, Mac Cumhaill still did not run or duck or do anything at all. It was like he didn’t care whether Bolcán killed him; like maybe he even wanted it.

  Matha, through all his own soreness and anger, thought it might be best if this did not happen. He slowly lifted himself from the ground.

  The mad dead King was holding the sword in his two hands, pulled back over his right shoulder and ready to eat its way into Mac Cumhaill’s bowed tree-trunk neck. ‘Yes! I will kill you here in this cursed valley where you can spend the rest of time unable to escape the torments. Never more to escape in sleep or alcohol. Evermore to be tormented by the wrongs you have done.’

  Matha knew by now that there was no point in shouting at Mac Cumhaill. He would pay no attention. Instead Matha found strength in his legs. He walked and then ran. The only thing he could do was attack the unfortunate misery of a horse, whose reins the King had let go of so as to work the cleaver with both arms. Matha made a mad buzzing sound he’d learned as a child and pricked the bony hip with the tip of his knife, confirming for the poor animal that it was being set upon by a warble fly. It found strength. Matha got a kick from its rearing hind legs and then it bolted. Matha could now add an injury to his stomach to his list of troubles and as he lay groaning on the ground it took him a few seconds to feel the cold of the body he was lying beside. He turned over to see the one good eye of the King staring at him. The sword was protruding through the King’s chest from the way he’d fallen. This was not the kind of memory Matha had hoped to add on his final trip home but now he would never be able to go anywhere without it. When he got up off the ground, the King and his horse were gone.

  Matha came to Mac Cumhaill and said, ‘Come with me. Let us get you out of this valley before we meet further troubles.’

  He was surprised that Mac Cumhaill didn’t argue or shout or have other plans. He simply walked slowly along with Matha, not talking. Matha reckoned the shortest way out was over the hill to the left, and that was the direction in which he led Mac Cumhaill. He didn’t think anything much of the
fact that it was the same direction as Mac Cumhaill had been pointing in.

  Matha only realised too late that Mac Cumhaill was not focused on getting to the top of the hill with him, but on a solitary rowan tree about half way up. That was what he’d been staring at. As they got nearer and tender words began to reach his ears, he knew that instead of escaping further troubles he had walked Mac Cumhaill right into them.

  He parted the branches of the tree with his black thorn walking stick to find the source of the softly-spoken words. There, hanging by its long black hair from an upper branch, was the head of a white-faced young man, not even as old as Matha himself, with only the startings of soft black hair on his face.

  Mac Cumhaill had surely heard the voice from way below in the valley. And he certainly knew it well because he crumpled onto his knees before the tree. By the way he stared at the tree trunk, Matha realised that Mac Cumhaill could not see the head. Again, this misfortune was reserved for him alone. He did not know what ability it was that made him able to see what others couldn’t. He knew now this was why the canny Dreoilín had sent him. Dreoilín had known that whatever little chance Matha had of bringing Mac Cumhaill out of this, he had more chance of doing so than any of the warriors who were not cursed with such sight and hearing. Matha damned these powers of his and again cursed Dreoilín. He did not want to see the severed neck that was before him or the dripping blood. And yet he was compelled and could not look away.

  ‘Deimne?’ the sweet face kept calling, ‘How are they all? Conán and Goll and Diarmuid?’

  ‘They are well,’ said Mac Cumhaill.

  ‘And my soulmate, my brother, Fiachna, he is well?’

  Fionn said nothing.

  ‘Save me,’ continued the head gently. ‘Take me home. If you please.’

  ‘Where are you, boy? Show yourself!’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘I ... I want to see you again.’

  ‘It is me, Innsa,’ said the boy.

  ‘I know it is you. A boy I fostered and brought up as my own. How could I ever forget your dewy voice. I ought never have set you to train as a soldier. In my heart I always knew that a poet or a teacher was your calling. Instead I sent you to drill, to make a man of you. And let you be put to waste in a battle you were not fit for.’

  ‘It’s alright, father,’ said Innsa. ‘But I only wish to come home now. I am tired.’

  These words of forgiveness cut Mac Cumhaill even worse than the mad anger of Bolcán. Matha waited there a long time with the kneeling Mac Cumhaill shaking like a wounded dog, listening to the gentle boy’s appeals. There was nothing Matha could think of doing as he could not bring himself to try to drive the tragic, severed head from the tree.

  Eventually, the pleadings of the boy got more distant and Matha stood again to part the branches and look inside the tree. The head was gone. But his relief lasted only a minute. Next there was a small shrill voice. In the branches appeared a beautiful woman of the little people and she was keening her heart out.

  ‘What ails the woman ag caoineadh?’ asked Mac Cumhaill, putting his hands over his ears.

  ‘Why, Mac Cumhaill?’

  ‘Créidhe?’ said Mac Cumhaill looking all around him.

  ‘You took my sweet noble Cáel. He was an innocent. He followed you blindly, his hero, into the battle on Fair Hill. Not knowing in his innocence that it was never a fight between good and evil. Not knowing that valour was no shield against death. His and all the other innocent lives were thrown away in a calculation, in a contest of wills and pride between you and another like you from Gaul. You spent his life for a manoeuvre not for a cause. Is that not so?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mac Cumhaill, ‘you don’t understand. And then your own death, falling into the grave of your beloved Cáel, it moved every heart in the land. My people united with your people of the Danann, stricken. And you left me with no chance to explain it all to you. All that had happened.’

  ‘Explain?’ she laughed. ‘To the dead? When I fell down into his grave I did not know that we would still be separated even in the other world, the dé Danann and your people. But I understand everything now, Mac Cumhaill. Do you not know that? I have time now, separated forever from Cáel. Time for bitterness. About Cáel and about other things. I have learned that my mistake was to ever trust anyone who was not from my own people. And do you know who has become my mate in bitterness here? One who has told me how the great Fionn Mac Cumhaill got his position by killing him. A prince. Your people called him an ogre.’

  Her face became twisted and ugly.

  ‘That was not what happened. He was not. Aillén was not a prince, not princely, he’s beneath you ... I had no choice.’ Mac Cumhaill spoke weakly: ‘Please, Créidhe, understand.’

  ‘Understand!’ she screeched in a pitch that could tear the innards of any ears in the valley. ‘Cáel and a thousand others, dead because of your pride.’

  Matha turned to Mac Cumhaill as this woman faded. He was lying on the ground now, curled up. Matha said to him, ‘Fionn, we have to leave this valley. We must go the last piece of the way. Just over the top of this hill and there I am sure all of this will stop. I am certain of it.’

  But Mac Cumhaill wasn’t getting up and all of this was not going to stop; this stream of people from Mac Cumhaill’s past, none of whom Matha had ever heard a single word spoken about. Next was a fine warrior, tall and broad, with his head armoured and his brown muscular chest bare. He was roaring from beside the rowan tree where he had appeared. He had a different accent again than Bolcán. ‘Ógarmach at your eternal service, Mac Cumhaill.’

  ‘Ógarmach!’ Mac Cumhaill lifted his head to listen. ‘The fiercest soldier I ever met in combat. But what disrespect have I done you? Why do you not rest?’

  ‘Why do I not rest?’ The big man put his head right back and laughed a laugh that echoed from the sky. ‘As I fell exhausted in the last, I asked for mercy in return for my service to you for eternity.’

  ‘People will say and ask the queerest things to avoid dying,’ said Mac Cumhaill quietly. ‘Surely that is not a secret to you, a seasoned warrior with many killings to the credit of your own blades?’

  ‘What other people beg for and what I beg for are not the same thing to me,’ said Ógarmach. ‘We each get only one life and have to mind it carefully.’

  ‘But one death each too is assured. Only honour can live on,’ Mac Cumhaill mumbled. ‘Who would trade eternal honour for a few more years of empty life? By postponing your death on the terms that you betray your people, I would have extinguished your eternal honour. That is why cowardice is the worst vice. It wishes to protect the body over the spirit.’

  ‘Fine words that I do not understand at all. What use is honour? You can’t eat it. It doesn’t tell pleasant lies or give you a warm hug. What good is it when you are stopped breathing? I, a mere slave with no quarrel with you, begged you for my life. You gave me your “honourable” bronze in my chest as your answer.’

  ‘You are right.’ Mac Cumhaill looked at him helplessly. ‘What kind of man am I?’

  ‘Don’t listen, chief.’ Matha didn’t know what it was that made him speak then. But he heard himself saying to Mac Cumhaill, ‘You are not the worst kind of man.’

  Suddenly they were both looking at him, Mac Cumhaill in dazed confusion and Ógarmach as though he were no more than a buzzing horsefly. Like lightning, Ógarmach drew a hand from his belt and a hatchet came twirling through the air and the blunt side hit Matha a terrible blow on the neck. Before he had even hit the ground, the giant had resumed his address to Mac Cumhaill.

  ‘Besides, you and your people here are great ones to preach. Do you not think the battle might have gone a different way for you had you not the advantage of an enchanted spear and a heron skin bag full of protections? And you let me think I was fighting a mere mortal like myself! Where was the “honour” that day? What fairness? My fate was certain before I ever lifted my sword.’

  Mac Cumhaill said nothing.

  ‘And d
o you remember that after you pulled your blade back from within my heart, I stood and ran like a beheaded hen. I ran with eyes wide and my arms out, thinking I saw my mother and I clutched at her asking her to save me. But it was only you I was clutching and you tried to shake me off. But I held on tight looking up at you for my mother. And you stood there not even able to look down as I slid away off you.’

  Matha had no idea at all how he might stop such a ferocious man should he draw his sword. Mac Cumhaill lay prone on the ground. Matha picked up a large stone for each hand and stood in front of Mac Cumhaill determined to at least make dents on the giant’s face when he approached.

  ‘Well kill me now while you have the chance,’ were the words Matha wished he was not hearing from Mac Cumhaill. ‘If that is what you wish for, since I failed you before, I will grant your wish on this occasion.’

  ‘That is no longer my wish at this moment,’ said the giant, ‘that is your wish. Mine is to stay with you in this valley and watch your torments.’

  Ógarmach moved back a few paces down the hill. But the tree was not going to let Mac Cumhaill rest.

  Next was an old man. He emerged from the ground and poked his stick into Mac Cumhaill’s head. He said, ‘How can you deceive my son and pretend that all is well between our families now?’

  ‘Liath?’ Mac Cumhaill whispered.

  Matha was shocked as he realised who the son was that they were talking about. Mac Liath, Conán.

  ‘My son thinks he’s your closest friend now. You and yours have sweet-talked him into forgetting the honour of his own family. But don’t think I have forgotten how you struck death into an old man to steal his purse.’

  ‘The heron sack was mine, Liath,’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘You should have let go of it. You should have known you could not stand between me and that which my father had bequeathed me.’

  ‘Pah!’ exclaimed the old man, poking Mac Cumhaill in the ear and then trying to put his eyes out with the stick. ‘One day when you have been here long enough to lose all your senses, I will bring Conán for a glimpse of his great friend and show him the punishment for betrayal.’