The carters stared. The captain said, “One.” The sword lifted, gleamed. The carters exchanged a look. “Two… three… fo-”
Reins dropped. The carters scrambled from atop their sloshy load. Hitching up their smocks’ long skirts of reddish-brown homespun, they made haste into the night, heading for shadows back in the direction whence they’d come.
Behind them, the captain and his sentry laughed.
“Spoils of war!” the captain cried, and his eyes gleamed bright as the sword he now swiftly sheathed. The slap of peasantish boots faded into the night. “Into the camp with it, Brion-it’s I and yourself are about to become the most popular men in all Meath this night!”
Brion saw the two peasants disappear from his view behind a hairy, sprawly clump of furze that reared up in the darkness. Grinning he took up the reins of their horses. He did not see the two men slow to a jog; did not see the smiles spreading across their faces. They proceeded into the deep shadows of a growth of rowan bound about with last year’s woodbine and this year’s new green runners.
Around them men rose up in the darkness, and Forgall and Cormac were handed their proper clothes. Soon whispering, hopefully smiling men were helping them into their chaincoats. The clump of rowan was alive with men of Forgall-and nine others, handed into his command. The nine were all that remained of their own Fifty, with their captain and his seconds all slain on the Plain of Sorrow.
Amid the trees, crouching behind the haw that partway ringed the grove like a low defense-wall, they waited.
Weary weapon-men practically held their breaths in silence. Excitement and the hope given them by the plan of their comrade Partha had restored them as though they’d slept many hours. Soon it came: plainly they heard the sounds of revelry from the Meathish cattle-camp.
“The sons of sows are snorting up that ale as if the High-king had decreed it out of existence on the morrow!”
“Hush. We hear them.”
“Hump! They hear nothing.”
“Mayhap it’s they who’ll be out of existence soon, happily and insensibly guzzling…”
“Pray they do indeed guzzle just so: to insensibility!”
“Be silent.” Forgall’s voice slashed among his men’s, low and angry. “An… one of those yonder steps away to relieve himself, and wanders this way…”
There was no need for him to say more; there was silence. They waited, six-and-thirty men of Leinster, armoured, armed, waiting, hoping, hearts pounding, helmets doffed against a betraying flash of steel in the moonlight. Not a man but held his breath in order to hear the better-and against being heard by the joyous, ale-guzzling men of Meath.
Measured against the branches and tops of trees, the moon visibly moved in the cloud-drifted sky. A little breeze came, and tarried for a time, and retired for the night. Squatting men moved, stifling grunts, for toes and calves had begun to ache. They waited. The noises from the Meathish camp commenced to diminish. They diminished. Now but three or four continued to sing, to shout, to laugh. Then there were definitely but two voices. And then one.
That man sang a couple of lines, shouted again, bellowed curses on his weakling fellows. He essayed another line of song, an obscenity. There came a crash; wood splintered. Another great string of curses. And then silence.
And silence. Not even a cow lowed.
The men of Leinster waited. Their heads they cocked, with one ear turned toward the cattlecamp, holding their breaths and straining to hear.
There was naught to hear. Not even the wind soughed.
Forgall made them wait longer than any other man would have done. All chafed. Cormac chafed-and mentally congratulated his leader. Patience, he thought, and perhaps he matured a mite more.
Then, with a little rustle, Forgall Mac Aed rose. All about him, with rustles and clinks and little grunts as circulation rushed back into limbs in which its flow had long been disrupted by their squatting, the others rose.
Six-and-thirty men moved from the rowan grove and paced toward the Meathish camp. Helmets capped their heads now, and shields bobbed high at their sides, and swords and axes were naked and sinister in their fists.
They discovered no need for their weapons. Drugged with quart upon quart of ale and the sleep-inducing oil of boar-blossom with which the Leinstermen had steeped it, the cattle-guards lay deep in slumber. Each sprawled where he’d sagged or toppled. The camp’s only sounds were snores.
Grim-faced Blueshirts stood over sleeping Meathmen. Sword- and ax-hands twitched. Their owners looked to their captain. Forgall too gazed upon the slumbrous men, and regarded the blade bared in his fist; he reflected on slain Leinstermen.
A hand touched Forgall’s arm; it was a big hand, unlined, and Gael-dusky.
“Best we leave them asleep and alive,” Cormac Mac Art dared counsel his leader. “Will be greater insult and shame on them and High-king Lugaid, that the entirety of the ‘tribute’ was retaken without the spilling of one drop of blood!”
A smile spread over Forgall’s features. “Aye,” he muttered low, and he lifted his blade on high so that all his men saw. Then he sheathed it.
Silent men of Leinster began to move among sleeping cattle and used spear-hafts as goading staves. Then came forward darling Bress Mac Keth. Before him walked a Meathman, at sword’s point.
“Thisun drank not deeply enough, Forgall: Or vomited it up, more like.”
“One sound,” Forgall muttered, “and you die.”
“So I told him,” Bress muttered, and the prisoner started, feeling swordpoint at spine.
Forgall drew steel. “Bind him. Gag him. You, my glaze-eyed friend of Meath, will be after telling your fellows precisely what took place here.” Forgall smiled tightly. His sword held the Meathish weapon-man now, whilst Bress bound the fellow-with unnecessary tightness, of course.
“If these drunken sots ever awaken,” Forgall said, “do ye be telling them-and His Arrogance the High-king-that was Forgall Mac Aed of Athmore and Carman who did this… along with his sword-companion Partha Mac Othna. And it’s the king of Leinster we both serve, little fellow.
Bound hand and foot and gagged with cloth and cord, the single wakeful Meathman was dumped to ground-his fall cushioned by two cow-piles of excellent size-and left. His comrades slept on. Weapons and shields not worn were piled on the ale-cart with surprising lack of noise. Smiling men ringed the vast herd of cattle, knowing the thousands would follow the hundreds once they were set moving. They started the beasts amove, southward. The Leinstermen even repossessed their ale-cart, piled now with spears and shields, axes and swords, and a few helmets.
The ale had not been sufficient to keep these men of the High-king asleep throughout the raid, however silent; was Cormac’s suggestion of the druid-learned soporific that accomplished the snorey slumber, and all his comrades knew it.
Several cages of fowls the Leinsterman left, and Forgall stood over the dung-besmirched man they had gagged and trussed.
“The birds we leave. Tame fowls. It’s feathers you fine warriors will be eating, without beef or milk, when Lugaid on Tara-hill learns of what happened here this night!”
Laughing, the Leinstermen tramped south behind their cart. Brain, Cormac mused had prevailed over blade.
Chapter Eleven:
Samaire
News of the deed reached Carman before the doors themselves.
General Fergus’s men arrived to cheers, and to the discovery that a celebration had been arranged in their honour. The feast was being laid on by King Ulad Ceannselaigh himself. It would be held in the Assembly-house, to accommodate the remainder of Forgall’s Fifty-and its nine new members. For craft and guile had ever been highly respected and loved in Eirrin.
However excited and anticipatory, Forgall’s men and the rest of the army took almost at once to their beds. There most spent the greater part of the next twenty hours.
Then it was up to bathe and see to their hair, with Cond much in demand, and clean their boots; in high jocularity
they referred to their preparations as prettying themselves for society. The while, the men of Forgall laughed and shouted jests and threats and called one another flatha: warrior-nobles. And then they trooped into Carman, and were cheered through the streets.
In clean unwrinkled shirt or long-sleeved tunic each man walked, with leggings of his choice over tight breeches of white linen tucked into newly-gleaming boots. Ceremoniously they carried their polished helms, and each wore his best cloak and brooch and bunne-do-ats.
The Feis-tech was Leinster’s greatest hall. Present for the celebration of a Leinsterish victory over Tara were nobles from Carman and elsewhere in the realm, and the poets and historians, minstrels and mages. Finely coiffed and bejewelled ladies, too, had come to do honour on the men who had outfoxed the High-king’s men-and returned five thousand cattle. The hall was scintillantly ablaze with richly-dyed robes, with buckles and ornaments of silver and gold, with pearls and gemstones, with coloured bits of glass and brilliant enamel-work, all flashing in the light of more candles and torches than any had seen before in one place.
Musicians played. Nobles babbled to each other and to common soldiers no longer so common. Servants scurried so that ale flowed like a mountain stream, foaming and bubbling.
Drisheen or black pudding there was, a rich mixture of entrails and blood; pork too in plenty, along with fresh-butchered beef (and jokes about its being the best-travelled beef in the history of Eirrin). The boards groaned beneath more side-dishes than most of Forgall’s men had known could exist. Among the red trout and cakes made of oaten meal, there was an abundance of the famed honey of Carman itself, and sloak and dulse from the nearby sea, as well as its game: millicks, or periwinkles still in their shells, scallops and the meaty black sole. To wash all down the hall fair swam in good brown ale, and beer made from wheat and honey, and that different drink also made from honey and called mead.
Ladies and their daughters wore crimson dyes on their nails, the black or deep blue of berries on their eyebrows, and other vegetable dyes here and there to enhance their faces-or so at least they thought, those noble women of Leinster. Golden rings or hollow balls of gold bound hair braided and curled to hang in dangling spirals; others wore their thick manes up, held by pins and pearls of gold. Soldiers-aye, and others who fancied themselves more sophisticated-goggled at the wife of one king’s cousin: she had dyed and bleached her hair so that it was an impossible silver-white. Some of these women of metropolitan Carman, Cormac noticed, even wore their beautiful combs of bone or horn. All the people of his isle were fond of their hair and its care, and their combs, but this style of making combs into ornaments was a new one to the youth from Connacht.
With winter-tide gone from the earth and summer not yet here, the well-born and high-placed of Leinster wore silks and satins and furs, along with light linens and heavier woolens. A filay or poet from Athaircthech over near Osraige affected clothing of peasantish russet-and displayed himself well, as he stood out among the sumptuously attired throngers.
Many wore the peallaid- originally a sheepskin and now a long strip of cloth adorned with stripes that crossed to form a design called plaide.
Fresh rushes crackled and hissed underfoot and the candles flickered so that the marvelous figures that decorated the wall-hangings seemed to roam and gambol on those huge panels of white linen.
Much in evidence all about was the superb work of the needles of Eirrin’s women and the delicate, brilliant work of jewel and metal-smiths. Clothes and ornaments, were broidered and purfled and picked out in sindle-whorls and fretwork, spirals and enamel inlays. Beside Cormac, Cas remarked the fact he’d looked at seven noble necks ere he saw a plain torc, and Cormac advised the farmer’s son that these people possessed more than one of those neck-ringing badges of Celtdom. Most he saw were indeed ornate, worn only for dress occasions, and among them were those that wore gold lunulae or bore pendent sun-disks.
Cormac saw too more than one man, and woman, and girl and boy, who wore the necklace of good fortune: garnets and jet beads strung on gold or silver wire. And despite winter’s being surely beyond the point of a surprise return, he saw two who were still wary of colds, for each wore the foot of a hare around his neck.
Rich clothing and precious metals and jewels blazed, in the Feis-tech.
Cormac was hardly the only blue-shirted guest who could not control the constant swiveling of his neck and his eyes that were bright in their sockets. He saw that the women much noted one another, too. It was just, he realized, that they were more circumpsect about it, as if afraid of being seen appraising or envying one another.
Twisted bands of bronze or silver-gilt or even gold flashed from womanly arms, and he was hard put not to gawk at one young woman-married; she wore the rolled linen hood. The bust of her rowanberry-hued gown was decorated with miniature shield-bosses! Of silver they were, the inward-whirling design of each centering in a wrought rowanberry of red enamel. A carnelian dangled and flashed from each of her ears, and her eyelids fairly dripped some pale violet dye.
King Ulad himself, in white and yellow and gold and wearing a lunula big as his head, bespoke the heroics, the genius, and the courage of the guests of honour. Then his own filay, chief poet of Leinster, had ready a narrative for the occasion. Proud was Leinster; proud the poet; exaggerated was his droning account-and long. Ale or mead wetted his lips-and the listeners quaffed each time he did.
The eye of mac Art was drawn quite naturally to a passing pretty young lady of worth. Seated at the high table she was, and nigh-orange of pearl strewn hair, with beside her a flame-topped lordling. Both wore plaides of Leinster blue crisscrossed with yellow stripes. They to the king’s left; on his other side sat his elder sons. Cormac’s mouth went dry and he trembled. Stunned, he promptly poured a draught of ale down the wrong tube and embarrassed himself with a long coughing fit.
Wiping away the choke-tears, he demanded of a solicitous servant the identities of the two youths to the king’s left.
“Why, my lord Tara-baiter: those are Ceann Mong Ruadh and Samaire, younger son and only daughter of our king!”
And Cormac stared on them, for last time he’d seen those two they had been but a rag-tag minstrel and a merchant’s daughter named Aine.
He continued to stare, helplessly, the while his full belly sank and strove to convince him it was empty. He’d thought he had lost his love, his first love, and her gone home to Ailenn. Och and ochone, but no! He had, lost her the more! For it was Samaire ingin Ulaid-Ri she was: Daybreak, daughter of King Ulad!
It’s the blood of old nobility warms my veins, but… it’s no suitor for the king’s own daughter my father’s after raising in me! Behl preserve and Crom protect, she and I have… we have…
And gone from mac Art was the celebratory fever-though hardly from his comrades-at-arms. And he ached and felt hollow and chill within, as though some part of him were missing and his heart pumped not hot blood but cool.
At last the poem ended. Cormac hardly noticed. Up rose the king, and called out the name of Aed’s son Forgall, who rose amid cheers and was asked to speak. Ablush with embarrassment and much ale, Forgall falteringly said he would not, could not take much credit. Then-once renewed cheering and board-drumming had risen and sunk-he pointed out and called loudly the name of their successful plot’s master mind.
That same Partha mac Othna had to be nudged into attention, and nigh shoved to his feet, for he’d been elsewise distracted. Another great cheer rose: for this young warrior from afar who’d be receiving a golden torc from the king’s own artisan. Another poet seized the opportunity to begin to put together words about Othna’s crafty son, and soon Partha’s canniness was being compared with that of the heroes of Eirrish legend. Cormac’s blood warmed again; his face, at least, seemed to burn.
And sure all were most impressed and thricehappy… saving only Bress Long-arm. His hate-filled glower Cormac saw, though he was too doubly flustered to take note. As for the young woman beside Br
ess-hmp. Never had Cormac seen so much bosom displayed, on a clothed woman.
Somehow he managed to express his love for his “adopted land” and its “noble king” and his happiness for having aided in “easing its Burden,” and the throng thundered acclaim, and ormac sank swiftly down intohis seat. There followed more drinking, and eating, and more drinking still. Only the most private of conversations could now be attended, for the members of each pair or trio of speakers sought to make himself heard above all others in the hall.
Cormac could not wrest his gaze from the high table. Thus he noted disagreement betwixt the younger royal siblings. He caught too the darkish look Prince Ceann shot him, and was amazed. Even then Princess Samaire, orange-gold ringlets of hair dangling, dancing before either ear, was calling a wand-slim servant to herself. The two girlish heads bent close, and for an instant the gaze of Aine/Samaire locked with that of Partha/Cormac. His stomach promptly executed a curvet like an unbroken stallion, and he swallowed hard.
“What think ye of our pretty princess?” he was asked, by Cethern of Dinn Rig, who sat at his left.
“Ah-she-oh. The king’s daughter? It’s on that girl she just spoke to I’ve had these eyes, Ceth-ye be looking at the king’s daughter, man?”
“Och-I but look! And that servant of hers has less meat on her than my spear!”
Then Cethrn had to lean away-for the servant in question was there! Cethern made a ridiculous face at Cormacover her back, as she bent between them. She whispered in Cormac’s ear, whilst he sat bolt-still and his colour rose.
“Put your hand around me and pat my backside, Partha mac Othna, so these louts think we’re at the flirting, and attend me: Drink lightly, I am commanded to tell ye, for one called Aine would have converse with yourself later this eve. Come, man, act flirtatious-there. Not so hard!”
And she straightened, and went away, and Cethern laughed and kissed his palm; Cormac had not touched the girl at all.
Elated, he did as she’d bidden, and suffered Cethern’s jesting-and Cas’s too-powerful nudge in his right side-when she passed again later, behind him, and trailed her hand caressingly across the span of his shoulders. Nervous but forcing himself not to drink, he soon became very alone in that hall. At the king’s leave, some nobles departed. Cormac was not even aware that he received a sheep’s-eye or two from this or that noble lady. All others meanwhile, aye, including the women of Eirrin who were not chattel to their men, descended with great gusto and passing swiftness into stuffed, barbaric drunkenness. That gave way by degrees to stunned drunkenness, so that most of the assemblage were passed out across crumb- and bone-strewn boards, or amid the rushes on the floor.
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