Finn Mac Cool

by Morgan Llywelyn

  He took her to the surprisingly well-concealed gateway and gave a low whistle, a series of notes like the cry of a nightjar. Oak gates opened fractionally on oiled iron hinges. Conan Maol peered out.

  “It’s me,” said Finn.

  “Is it?” Enjoying the moment, Conan favoured Finn with a long, suspicious stare before finally stepping aside and letting him enter. “And who’s this with you?”

  “The woman I’ll marry on Beltaine,” said Finn. “I’ve brought her here to show her the home I’ll give her.”

  “And what’s she giving you?”

  “She doesn’t have to give me anything, Conan. You know my rule.”

  “So what sort of a marriage is it to be, then?”

  “The marriage of equals,” said Finn Mac Cool.

  Glowing with pride, he led Sive from building to building, starting with the outhouses and storehouses and working his way up to the great round structure, stone-based, fragrant with adzed cedar, which would be their dwelling.

  “This is the first roof that’s ever been my own,” he told her.

  Inside, he showed her the numerous small tables, the benches, the couches draped with hides and furs, the carved boxes and chests, the wall hangings, the unlit fire laid on the hearth, waiting the touch of his wife to bring life to the house. “Firedogs,” he said, showing her. “Shears, on a rope. A loom, for you. A henbox for fowl, so we can have fresh eggs. New pots and baskets. Platters. Everything we need.”

  She dutifully examined each item, praising its workmanship or convenience or ingenuity. “You’ve thought of everything, Finn. I’ve nothing left to desire.”

  Light shifted in his eyes. Desire, said a voice in his mind. Desire.

  He had sent a request to Tara for the king’s own brehon to witness their marriage contract. After Fithel’s death, the position had been taken by his oldest son, a man called Flaithri, whose only resemblance to his father was in the extravagance of his gestures. Still, he had been trained by Fithel himself and was now the foremost living expert on the law.

  No one else would do for Finn on his wedding day.

  The Beltaine pole was raised beside the gate of the new stronghold and painted in vivid colours and explicit symbols of virility and fertility. Finn invited the entire Fíanna to attend his wedding, an event that would therefore see them conveniently assembled in one place at the start of battle season, so orders could be issued to the whole army at one time.

  The night before the wedding, Cailte, at Finn’s request, sat watch with the Rígfénnid Fíanna. They built a small fire outside the new residence, which would not be occupied until Sive came to live there. She was still sleeping with the mason’s family. In the morning Finn would send a guard of honour to bring her to him.

  He was so nervous that Cailte had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing at the spectacle of the feared Rígfénnid Fíanna, pale and tense, a muscle clenching in his jaw, trying to pretend he was not anxious.

  “Relax,” the thin man advised. “You aren’t going into a battle, you’re just taking a wife.”

  “I know what to do in battle,” Finn said hoarsely.

  “You know what to do with a wife, too.”

  Finn turned an anguished face toward him.

  “Don’t you?” Cailte asked.

  “I … I haven’t had any noteworthy success with women so far,” admitted Finn.

  “None?”

  “None.”

  “In all this time?”

  “In all this time.”

  Cailte was thunderstruck. “Why, Finn? Surely the women are throwing themselves into your path like hailstones, you have only to reach out and take one. You must have—”

  “I haven’t. And tomorrow—”

  “You at least know what to do,” Cailte said. “I mean, you’ve seen animals. , .”

  “I’m not an animal.”

  “And neither is she,” Cailte replied, trying to lighten the moment. To his astonishment, Finn groaned as if in pain.

  “Is it different?” he asked Cailte. “Between people and animals, I mean. Is it different?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I … nothing. Pay no attention to me, I’ve lost the run of myself tonight. I’ll be all right tomorrow.”

  Cailte said, “You’d better be. This is something you’ll have to do yourself, you know. No one can help you.”

  “No one can help me,” Finn echoed in the voice of a man anticipating his doom.

  Long before dawn, Finn Mac Cool began preparing for his wedding day. He selected his clothing, changed his mind, made new selection. Cailte. had to plait and re-plait his hair, though there was no difference between the precision of the first plait and the second). But Finn was not satisfied.

  He sent for Flaithri to discuss the matter of contract and vows yet again, having done so seven times previously. Flaithri was out of patience. “There’s no point in continuing to plough the same ground, Finn! The contract you’ve described is very clear and boringly simple. Your rights, her rights, the rights of any children … without arrangements for property, there’s hardly anything to contract. But I must say, it’s highly irregular. A marriage of the first degree, the most prestigious, with no property even mentioned …”

  “Each marriage is shaped by its own requirements,” Finn said. “Is that not part of Brehon Law?”

  “It is,” Flaithri agreed, having become aware that the Rígfénnid Fíanna had made a more extensive study of the law than one would have expected of a man of his station. “Tell me, Finn, since I have not spoken with the woman herself. Is she satisfied with this contract? If not, she is free to refuse it, you know.”

  “She left it up to me,” Finn replied.

  Flaithri was astonished. In his experience, women were not that passive. The construction of their marriage contracts was of paramount importance to the sex whose biology demanded practicality. Marriages, even of the first degree, lasted only as long as the partners desired, but the futures of children must be safeguarded before they were ever conceived.

  But the only time Finn had mentioned the contract to Sive, her reply had been a simple shrug of one shoulder and the words, “What are contracts to me? You have said you will take care of me, that’s all I need to know. I have no property of my own, and it’s safe to say I have no family either. I am free,” she added in a tone that might have been joy or regret.

  I made you out of my dream, Finn said to her in his mind. Of course you have no family, no property. And I provided for that eventuality long before I found you!

  When the sun was halfway between horizon and midpoint, an honour guard led by Finn’s original fían, together with the cream of their companies, marched away from the Hill of Almhain to bring Sive to Finn Mac Cool.

  No sooner were they out of sight than another group of warriors approached from the opposite direction.

  Finn was the first to see them, having mounted the sentry platform above the gateway so he would have the first glimpse of Sive. Instead, he saw hostile warriors approaching at the trot. He gave a howl of disbelief. “Someone’s breaking his pledge to the king of Tara!” He leaped from the platform without bothering with the ladder and ran for his weapons.

  The choicest warriors had gone to escort Sive, hut Finn swiftly rallied the rest.

  “Whoever the warlord is who has broken his peace agreement wirlr Cormac,” he vowed grimly, “he made a mistake by doing it on my wedding day. He’ll not leave the Hill of Almhain alive.”

  The attack was led by a disaffected clan chieftain called Ilbrecc, who had chosen to disregard the arrangements made between Cormac and the kings of the Laigin. He had a long-standing quarrel with the king of his tribe anyway, and considered the man a traitor for giving in so easily to the power of Tara. He had chosen his time with great care for expressing his feelings. Like the Ulaid, he attacked just outside the recognized boundaries of battle season to take advantage of the element of surprise.

&nb
sp; He received some surprises himself, however.

  The first came when his scouts could not find a way into Finn’s stronghold. They reported, “There’s a wall all the way around but we see no gates.”

  “There have to be gates! There are always gates!”

  “This is the site of an ancient stronghold of the Tuatha Dé Danann,” one scout said nervously, showing white all the way around his eyes. “Perhaps they worked their magic, perhaps they’re in league with Finn Mac Cool.”

  “Nonsense. There’s a gate, I tell you. Find it and break it down!” Ilbrecc commanded.

  They marched uncertainly forward to be met by a rain of spears hurled over the wall.

  “If men are inside, they had to have some way to get in,” Ilbrecc reasoned. “And if they got in, so can we!”

  A second attack was mounted. This time, more by chance than cleverness, they stumbled upon the gates concealed by the hawthorn. Logs were brought up to use as a battering ram.

  “Open to them before they damage my new gates,” Finn ordered.

  The gates swung open. Ilbrecc rushed forward first—to find himself facing a single, startling apparition, a tall, silver-haired man who stood with legs braced wide and a sword in his hand. And clothes on his body fit for a king.

  Finn smiled pleasantly. “You are very welcome, stranger,” he said in a dangerously quiet voice, “if you come as a guest to my wedding.”

  Ilbrecc was disconcerted. He skidded to a halt, his men crowding against his back. “I’ve come to kill you!”

  “Have you now?” Finn asked in the same quiet voice. He did something with his sword—a move so swift that witnesses afterward could never agree on what it was—and Ilbrecc’s head rolled across the grass.

  The body stood on its legs a moment longer, then fell backward into the press of men behind it.

  They scattered like sheep to let it fall.

  A fountain of blood erupted from the severed jugular, drenching Finn in his wedding clothes, crimson dripping from linen, soaking into wool, as he hurled himself over the still-falling body and flung himself upon Ilbrecc’s retreating men, scything his sword.

  The deliberate narrowness of his gateway meant that no more than four men could enter the fort abreast at any one time. Added to this was the cluster of hawthorn shielding the gateway, a serious impediment to men trying to get their weapons into the clear for fighting. It seemed in retrospect, when the survivors told of it later, that the hawthorn actually conspired with Finn to block their way and entangle their sword arms, while allowing Finn to move freely. He hacked and hewed and Ilbrecc’s men fell, unable to strike him in return.

  One of them began to scream. “The Sídhe!” he howled in terror. “The Sídhe!”

  His companions in the front line whirled and tried to run, only to find their way blocked by the men behind them. They attacked their own allies in their panic, desperate to escape Finn and the hawthorn and the mindless fear from the past that rose like dark clouds over the Hill of Almhain.

  Inside the palisade, Finn’s own men were jostling for position and trying to get outside to help him. But the congestion of packed and struggling bodies at the gate stoppered them like a cork stoppering a bottle. They could only rage impotently and call to Finn, who was too busy to answer.

  The stopper gave way. The survivors fled the hill, shrieking. Finn Mac Cool clambered over piled bodies to watch them go and shake his sword in the air at their fleeing backs. “It was my wedding day!” he cried in outrage. “It was my wedding day!”

  By the time Sive and the guard of honour arrived, the little army that had thought to attack Finn had disappeared. At least, those still living were gone. As Sive approached her new home, her horrified eyes were greeted by the sight of a pile of bloodied bodies stacked near the gates.

  Cailte was the first to recover from the shock and ran forward, calling Finn’s name. The gates opened to him at once, and he and the others poured through.

  Fergus Honey-Tongue held back, staying with Sive. He put a hand on her elbow to steady her; she looked as if she might bolt in terror at the sight of the piled bodies and at the stench of their emptied bowels. “Death takes a bit of getting used to,” he commented, adding consolingly, “but it’s all right, our side obviously won. Those aren’t our men feeding the ravens.”

  Sive made a tiny sound in her throat.

  Fergus guided her through the gateway and looked around anxiously for Finn. He would not have recognized him but for his height and his hair.

  The Rígfénnid Fíanna was literally bathed in blood. As he strode forward to greet Sive, flakes of dried gore fell from his clothing in a brown rain. For his wedding day he had selected a new shirt and tunic and a woollen cloak with three rows of fringe, but it was impossible to tell what colour any of them had been. All was the colour of blood now.

  Sive’s nostrils flared.

  Accustomed to blood, Finn did not realize, until he saw the look on her face, what a shock his appearance must be to Sive. I should bathe, he thought. But he could not leave her when she had just arrived. He could not leave her at all. If he issued the order to his feet, they would simply refuse to obey.

  He held out his hands to her. They too were caked with blood.

  “This isn’t the way I meant to greet you,” he apologized, “It was to he … I had planned … trumpets …” He waved vaguely. A fénnid saw the gesture and tardily put a horn to his lips and blew. He was no musician. The trumpet made a sound like a slaughtered pig.

  Finn looked stricken. The woman in Sive recognized his pain. Unflinchingly, she reached out and took his two bloody hands in hers. “I am glad to be here,” she said.

  Finn held her hands, or she held his, flesh welded to flesh with no seam. “We’ll make our vows now,” Finn decided, “before anything else happens.” He raised his voice. “Flaithri! Here, to me!”

  Hurrying forward, the brehon discovered Finn and Sive in the centre of a circle of Fíanna, holding hands like two children at bay. Flaithri scowled disapproval. “You must go and bathe and put on fresh clothing,” he told Finn. “And surely your woman would like to refresh herself after her journey. Then you can—”

  “We’re going to take our vows now,” said Finn.

  “But—”

  “Now,” said Finn Mac Cool.

  He was gripping Sive’s hands so tightly they throbbed with pain, but she made no effort to pull free. She had known fear in her life, and desperation. She recognized the grip of a drowning man.

  “We take our vows now,” she said to the brehon.

  Flaithri rolled his eyes sunward. “This is highly unusual.”

  “Finn Mac Cool is highly unusual,” Fergus interjected, “and he has an awesome temper. I suggest you do as he asks rather than provoke one of his famous demonstrations.”

  Nine rígfénnidi stepped, as one man, closer to Finn and Sive. Nine pairs of warrior eyes fixed themselves firmly on Flaithri.

  The brehon knew a threat when he saw it. “It’s your marriage of course,” he told Finn. “I shall certainly do as you wish.” Meanwhile, he was trying to ignore the blood drying on Finn’s clothing and growing increasingly pungent as the day warmed. “Hold hands,” he instructed unnecessarily. “Now repeat the vows of first-degree marriage after me, the two of you speaking with one voice.”

  They nodded, heads bobbing in unison.

  As Flaithri recited, they echoed, “You cannot possess me for I belong to myself. But while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give. You cannot command me for I am a free person. But I shall serve you in those ways you require and the honeycomb will taste sweeter coming from my hand.

  “I pledge to you that yours will be the name I cry aloud in the night, and the eyes into which I smile in the morning. I pledge to you the first bite from my meat and the first drink from my cup. I pledge to you my living and my dying, each equally in your care. I shall be a shield for your back, and you for mine. I shall not slander you, nor you me. I shal
l honour you above all others, and when we quarrel, we shall do so in private and tell no strangers our grievances.

  “This is my wedding vow to you. This is the marriage of equals.”

  As Finn and Sive repeated the words, the blended voices of man and woman became one voice.

  Flaithri raised his extended arms above them toward the sun and solemnly intoned, “These promises you make by the sun and moon, by fire and water, by day and night, by land and sea. With these vows you swear, by the gods your people swear by, to be full partners, each to the other.

  “If one drops the load, the other will pick it up. If one is a discredit to the other, his own honour will be forfeit, generation upon generation, until he repairs that which was damaged and finds that which was lost. The vow of first degree supersedes all others. Should you fail to keep the oath you pledge today, the elements themselves will reach out and destroy you.”

  Surrounded by his Fíanna, bathed in blood, Finn let the words sink into his bones. Then, for the first time anyone could remember, he humbly bowed his head.

  There was a wedding feast afterward, with dancing around the Beltaine pole and songs sung and stories told and massive amounts of barley ale consumed. It was an occasion of rampant revelry. No one could equal the Fíanna when it came to revelry.

  But Finn did not join them. He led Sive into the house he had built for her and barred the door behind them.

  The world went away.

  In the house, their house, Sive knelt by the firepit and built a smaller house out of kindling to contain their first fire. Finn struck sparks from his flints, and she encouraged them with her breath. When the fire came to life, the house came to life.

  Finn had acquired a copper cauldron for heating water, and working together, they dragged this close to the fire. They did not speak. Words were not necessary. The silent conversation went on as before, a dialogue now, and from time to time, Sive caught Finn’s eye and smiled.

  He could feel the wounds on his spirit healing.

  As the water heated, Finn began to unfasten the bronze brooch that held his blood-stiffened cloak to his shoulders, but Sive reached out and pushed his fingers away, opening the brooch herself. She peeled the sticky woollen cloak from the tunic beneath and dropped it heavily to the ground.