“I thought so too,” said Finn.
He was almost disappointed that the king had not challenged him on the issue. He had expected Cormac to make a point of stating his own supreme authority, perhaps by countermanding Finn’s orders and sending someone to bring back Goll Mac Morna.
But the king had accepted Finn’s authority without protest.
Finn knew a moment of elation.
I am stronger than the king, he dared whisper in the inmost recesses of his mind.
I am not only as good as he is, but my will is stronger and he knows it.
I could be a king.
A sudden superstitious twinge raised prickles on his arms and he braced himself, half-expecting lightning to strike him from the heavens, or the earth to open and swallow him.
Neither happened.
Cormac turned and said over his shoulder, “I’ll go back to the House of the King and give orders for its defense.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Finn called after him. “No Ulidian will enter Tara.”
Cormac. kept on walking, however.
The army of the Ulaid, descendants of the once-invincible Red Branch, did not march all the way to the walls of Tara. They prudently halted a long walk away and regrouped, drawing themselves into their own approximation of a battle formation, which meant a broad line stretching almost from horizon to horizon but only one man deep. Seen thus, they believed they appeared more numerous than they were. Through chants and exhortations, the druids who marched with them raised their battle lust to fever pitch, until many of the painted Ulidians were in a state of full erection, the swords of their manhood as stiff as the iron swords in their hands.
Then, howling, they charged toward Tara.
They had intended a glorious battle.
They met Finn Mac Cool.
Finn had waited in front of the northern gateway until he could see their formation clearly as it ran forward. Then with a few swift words, he ordered his own men into a triangular shape like the head of a spear, with himself at the point. They marched stolidly forward to let the broad line of the Ulaid break itself on this spear.
The advancing Ulidians found it difficult to determine just how many tightly packed warriors were in the solid mass behind the silver-haired leader of the Fíanna. But they did not flinch or slow their pace; they thundered their feet on the earth of Mid beneath a golden autumn sun and tried to keep thinking about the epic poem their bards would compose to celebrate this victory against the full strength of Cormac Mac Airt.
An earlier attack would not have been as prestigious.
As the two armies came together, the air sang with spears.
Men shrieked; men fell. There was a great thudding of bodies hurling themselves against each other, a ringing of iron swords, and a roaring of battle cries as each man shouted the motto of his clan and tribe.
It might be the last chance he would have in life to identify himself as an individual
Finn Mac Cool did not cry out the name of his clan and tribe. Not did he call the name of Cormac Mac Airt. He gave one piercing scream that blew like the wind into the faces of the Ulidians, and the sound of the wind was the name:
“FÍANNA!”
The battle that followed was hard and bloody.
In the forefront, Finn was the target of every Ulidian spear. Yet they all sailed harmlessly past him. He ducked and swerved and spun like a blown leaf, and was as hard to hit. Then, sword in hand, he closed with the Ulidian leader, easily identifiable because like most of his tribe, he smeared himself with paint, which in his case included a sun symbol on his forehead to proclaim himself superior.
In battle skills he was not superior, nor even equal, to Finn, who hacked through his knees with an angled blow of his sword, then thrust Fiachaid’s spear through the man’s throat and left him dying, pinned to the earth he’d tried to win.
The Ulidian was dead before he knew he’d been wounded.
Finn’s followers included not only his original fían and the additional bands of nine, but also a number of other fíans that had not yet left for winter quarters. Numerically the Ulidians were superior, but they were facing men who had been fighting and travelling and fighting again all summer, men who were rock-hard and supremely confident. Men who had passed the most strenuous tests Finn Mac Cool could devise for them, and were not about to be beaten by painted northerners.
The battle did not last very long. The sun was still high in the sky when the surviving Ulidians turned and fled.
Wiping his bloody hands on his arms, Finn watched them go. “I thought you wanted to fight!” he called derisively.
No one turned to answer him.
The next morning Cormac waited in the Assembly Hall with his officials and the Rígfénnid Fíanna, and in time an emissary from the Ulaid arrived. He was a big-nosed, big-eared man, with a voice like chains dragging over stone, dressed in a cloak striped black and cream and fastened with a brooch of iron. He was obviously unhappy.
“You have done great damage to our fighting mean,” he lamented to the king of Tara.
Cormac nodded gravely but said nothing.
“Our warrior force is depleted. If an enemy attacks our homes, who will defend them?”
Cormac nodded again.
The Ulidian made a third attempt. “We offered you honourable battle but you showed us no mercy.”
Cormac smiled. “You came here looking for mercy?”
“We came here to take back what was rightfully ours.”
“Tara was never rightfully yours. It was built by a people older than yours or mine, and made into a kingly seat by men of my blood.”
“And fairly won by men of mine,” the emissary pointed out.
“And fairly lost as well. Tell your kings for me to give over now, and submit to me as their High King. They will find me merciful then.”
“Submit.” The emissary tasted the word, working it around in his mouth. “I have no orders to offer submission.”
“Then why did you come?”
“To offer … a truce.”
Cormac glanced meaningfully toward Nede, his chief poet. A truce was traditionally arranged through bards.
Nede was a handsome, broad-headed man with thick yellow hair belying his age, and a presence that commanded attention. Dressed in the six colours allowed a bard and standing tall beside his king, he intoned, “As you ran from us, we shall dictate the terms of truce.”
The big-nosed man growled, “Agreed.”
“Your leaders are to send to Tara three hundred cattle, three hundred sheep with the wool unshorn, and three hundred servants.”
The emissary shook his head violently. “That is not acceptable! You would rob us!”
“If three hundred is not acceptable,” Nede replied with composure, “then I change the number to six hundred.”
The emissary drew a swift breath. “Three hundred is acceptable. Three hundred cattle, that is.”
“And sheep. And servants.”
“Sheep, three hundred,” the emissary agreed, looking more unhappy than ever. “But it is not possible to deliver three hundred servants, we simply don’t have them.”
Cormac spoke up. “I doubt that. It is well known that marauders from Ulidia routinely plunder the coasts of Alba. Surely you bring back slaves?”
“Some few, I suppose, but—”
“Quality slaves?” the king went on.
“Some few, but—”
Cormac silenced him with a hand and turned toward Nede again. “An adjustment,” he said softly.
The bard told the emissary, “We will accept one hundred quality slaves, strong men, and women of accomplishment.”
“And if we cannot deliver them?”
Cormac looked in the other direction, toward Finn Mac Cool, who had been standing all this time immobile and with his arms folded. At the king’s signal, he unfolded his arms and took one step forward, standing as tall as he knew how. The emissary looked into his face.
&
nbsp; Something looked back at the Ulidian out of Finn’s eyes.
The man swallowed, hard. “I think we can deliver one hundred quality slaves,” he said.
That night there was feasting at Tara.
In due course, herders arrived with three hundred small black cattle and three hundred woolly black sheep. It was a very small price to pay for a truce, but as Cormac explained to his court, “Showing them generosity now will help avoid animosity later. I could have demanded much more, but the Ulidians would have simmered with resentment and boiled over sooner rather than later.”
Finn said, “You expect them to boil over again?”
“Ah, they never give up, the northerners. Once they think something is theirs, they fight for it as a hound fights for its bone, past all reason, even if it means the bone itself is destroyed in the fighting. They’ll attack again, Finn. But not, I trust, in the immediate future.”
Finn was satisfied with the reply. As long as Cormac expected ongoing trouble, his Rígfénnid Fíanna was invaluable to him.
The one hundred quality servants arrived a day after the livestock, though under almost identical circumstances. They too were herded down the Slige Midluachra by men with wooden staffs to prod them into a pack and keep them there. Reaching the gates of Tara, they stood in a wordless huddle, eyes on the ground, awaiting their fate with equanimity, though one or two looked coldly angry.
When they were brought inside, Dubdrenn the steward was put in charge of examining the men and assigning them work, and the chief attendant of Ethni the Proud examined the women. Cormac’s wife took no part in this operation. She considered herself above dealing with raw material. “If any of them seem suitable to attend me,” she commanded, “train them properly before you bring them to me. I would not object to finding a better hairdresser, if there is one among them with that skill.”
Finn’s men watched the parade of new women with interest. They were looking for other skills, and as the captives from the north were led through Tara to their assigned quarters, the fénnidi commented on this one and that one, not always quietly.
“Hair like a raven’s wings!” Fergus Honey-Tongue said admiringly of a tall woman with a sumptuous bosom.
“She could not drown, that one,” added Blamec with a snigger.
Finn overheard. Before Blamec knew what hit him, he found himself sitting on the ground with a sore jaw. “Speak respectfully of women!” Finn commanded.
“I thought I was.”
“Then think again.”
Blamec looked up at Fergus. “What did I do this time?”
“Opened your mouth,” replied Fergus. “Never a good idea for you.”
One of the women was exceptionally beautiful by any man’s standards. That night in the hall, Dubdrenn remarked to Cormac, “There is one female servant you might want to take a look at—privately.”
A light came into the king’s eyes. “Something special?”
“Something very special. You’ve been talking about a reward for the Rígfénnid Fíanna for his defeat of the Ulidians. This might be the very thing.”
“Bring her to me—privately—in the morning. If she’s good enough, I think it would do no harm to make Finn a gift of her. I’d say he’s ready for a woman; he certainly pays no attention to the one we thought he’d chosen.”
But when Dubdrenn brought the woman in question to Cormac’s chamber the next morning, Finn Mac Cool went out of the king’s mind.
She was bronze-haired and red-lipped and her eyes were smoky. She did not bow her head in the king’s presence, but gave him a long look and then smiled with pleasure at what she saw. “Am I to be yours?” she enquired.
Cormac drew a deep breath. “I have not … ah … decided. What are you called?”
“I am Carmait of the Cruithni.”
“Have you a husband anywhere?”
“None. But I am strong. I could beat strong children,” she added proudly. Her cheeks glowed with the red blood coursing through them—and through her lips. Cormac kept looking at her lips. They would he like drinking wine, he thought.
The king remained in his chamber all day with the door closed. When people asked for him, Dubdrenn said he was occupied with important matters.
When night fell, customarily Cormac would have returned from the House of the King, his official and formal residence, to Cormac’s House, his new and private home where Ethni waited. But that night he did not leave the House of the King.
In another break with custom, Dubdrenn personally carried food and drink to him, rather than leaving that chore to lower-ranking servants. Only Dubdrenn saw Cormac; only Dubdrenn knew what was so totally occupying his time.
“This is for me,” the king told his chief steward. “This its something I am doing just for me for a change.”
Built around Cormac Mac Airt. Tara was sensitive to his every mood and undertaking. He had been shut away in the House of the King for less than half a day before people began wondering and speculating. No one spoke openly, but glances were exchanged. Eyes rolled heavenward. Lips smiled or smirked or tightened. A strange sense of playfulness seized the inhabitants of Tara, relieved to discover their king was as human as anyone else.
“I saw that woman,” Madan Bent-Neck told Cael Hundred-Killer. “When she first arrived, I saw her, and the face on her almost put out the eyes in my head.”
“That ugly, was she?”
“That beautiful.”
“Carnait of the Cruithni,” Fergus Honey-Tongue pronounced, “is the sun breaking through a bank of clouds.”
But other clouds were building. Even in a stronghold as large as Tara, such a secret could not long be kept. When on the second day Cormac was still shut up in the House of the King, Ethni the Proud decided there was some aspect of his life from which she was being excluded. A few judicious questions were asked, and by the time the sun was at midpoint in the heavens, she knew as much as anyone else about Carnait of the Cruithni.
Ethni was furious. “I’m his wife,” she complained to Fithel the chief brehon. “He cannot do this.”
Fithel contradicted her. “He can of course. There is nothing in the law that forbids him having as many women as he likes.”
“Then there should be!”
“But,” said the brehon reasonably, “if you legislate to restrict the freedom of the man, you also restrict the freedom of the woman.”
“I’m not asking for freedom to take another man.”
“You are not, but you cannot speak for every member of your sex, Ethni. It is imperative that society be governed in ways that will avoid creating unnatural situations that force people to act counter to natural law.”
A thin, hard line formed between Ethni’s black-dyed brows. “What does that mean?”
“It means, simply, that Brehon Law takes into account the desire of men for women and women for men.”
“But what about my children? My status as his wife?”
“Neither of which is under threat,” Fithel pointed out.
“What about my pride?”
“Ah.” The brehon made smoothing gestures with his hands. “Your pride. Pride cannot be legislated, it is in the hands of each individual to govern his own. If I assure you the king has chosen a woman of incomparable beauty, can you not take pride in having such a creature become part of the royal family? She may give him children as finely made as herself who will do honour to the household of Cormac Mac Airt. Do you not seek his honour? Was that not part of your marriage contract?”
“Agreeing to concubines wasn’t part of my contract.”
“I did not say he wanted her for his concubine.”
Ethni’s eyes blazed. “I’ll never give permission for her to he a wife! Never. My husband has done this without even consulting me once, he who talked with me about everything. He has made a grave mistake.”
Fithel did not like the look in Ethni’s eyes, and privately resolved to speak to Cormac himself as soon as possible.
B
ut still Dubdrenn denied anyone access to the House of the King. Conan Maol had been stationed outside, spear at the ready, looking decidedly unlazy for once, almost menacing.
Fithel went to Finn Mac Cool. “I need to see the king, you must have your man let me in. There is a matter of urgency of which the king must be informed before the situation becomes untenable.”
Finn spoke to Dubdrenn, who spoke to Cormac. The word came back.
Leave things as they are.
All that day Tara brooded under the lowering skies of autumn. In the Grianan, ostensibly sewing with her sewing-women, Ethni the Proud sat in frosty silence and none dared speak to her. Cold rage radiated from her in ever-widening circles.
As the light began to fail, she returned alone to Cormac’s House and ordered a huge fire built in the central firepit, beside which she sat brooding and sleepless throughout the night. Her attendants tiptoed around her.
On the morning of the third day, Cormac returned to find a coldly hostile woman whom he hardly knew occupying his house. Ethni barely spoke two consecutive words to him. But she was proud, she did not question him. She simply treated him as if he were a mange-ridden hound who had entered by mistake.
Cormac had been king of Tara long enough to refuse to cower to anyone. “What’s wrong with you, woman?” he demanded to know. Better to bring it out into the open than let it fester, he thought. “Are you angry because I have another woman?”
Ethni turned her left side toward him, a deliberate gesture of insult. “I’m surprised you’re capable. You’ve had very little use for your rod with me since I’ve been here, you’re always too busy and preoccupied. I thought it had dried up and fallen off.”
“When did you show any particular interest?” he asked, the quarrel escalating. “You’re always busy with your women, your sewing and embroidery, the children, your chatter …”
“Things I use to fill my time while waiting for you!” she countered.
“You never wait for me. You live your life, as you should. I’m living mine. This has nothing to do with you.”
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