Imagining stratagems, Goll was slow to fall asleep.
Finn did not sleep at all.
Crossing his arms behind his head, he lay and watched the play of firelight and shadows—distorted shadows—on the walls. As in all prosperous households, a few candles were left burning throughout the night, but nothing could chase away the shadows.
Finn could see faces in them Women’s faces.
A deer’s face.
A worm of pain twisted in his belly, gnawing.
Speculation was rife in the morning. “Why Cael? Is his spear that much longer than other men’s?” Red Ridge asked Madan.
“I’d say about average. Perhaps his gift is his tongue.”
There was a wave of knowing laughter.
Creide left no doubt that she was willing to many Cael. She said it right out in front of the Fíanna. “He’s such a wretched excuse for a man I might as well take him, no one else would have him,” she said, groping beneath his tunic as she spoke.
Finn’s mouth went dry, watching them.
“I’ll bring some of my women and follow the army,” Creide promised. “Women fight. I can fight. Would you like to see me carrying a spear in your wake, Cael?” Her eyes danced.
“I’d rather carry a spear in yours. This spear.”
“We’d better go away now!” Blamec moaned to Cailte, who nodded agreement.
The laws of hospitality required them to stop several days with Creide, however; several days that were a torment for Finn’s men, being forced to observe the abandoned delight Cael and Creide took in one another. Creide kindly offered those of her bondwomen who wished to partake, but Finn gave strict orders that his rígfénnidi refuse. “We can do better than bondwomen,” he told them. “Look at Cael.”
Looking at Cael was almost painful, however.
They were very glad when their commander announced that the visit was concluded and they must return northward. When they left, Creide stood in her gateway promising Cael she would follow him with a band of women as soon as she could equip them.
“And she will,” Cael assured his companions cheerfully.
Midday found them climbing a heathered hill with a soft wind at their backs. The air was sweetened with birdsong. On a day so radiant, Finn’s companions expected him to recite a poem of his own composition. They kept cutting their eyes toward him expectantly.
But though he chewed on his thumb as if deep in thought, he said nothing. His face was closed.
At last Goll remarked, “That trail off through the heather would take us eventually to the stronghold of Gleor Red-Hand. We could demand hospitality for the night and you could enjoy a reunion, Finn.”
Finn turned his back on the indicated trail and set off in the opposite direction. Beneath his billowing cloak, his shoulders were rigid.
“Who’s Gleor Red-Hand?” Blamec wanted to know.
“Just someone Finn knows,” Goll replied. “At least, Finn knows his wife. Knew her intimately at one time.”
Finn whirled on him, his face livid. “I told you before, Goll: leave it! That’s an order!”
As Goll had intended, Blamec misunderstood. “So you’ve enjoyed the welcome of a Kerry woman’s thighs also, Finn?” he asked innocently.
The next moment Blamec found himself lying on his back in the heather, gazing up at a sky so blue and bland he could not understand why it was also filled with whirling lights.
He saw a circle of faces looking down at him. “What happened?” he asked his friends. “Was I struck by lightning?”
“As near as makes no difference,” replied Cailte. “Finn hit you. You said something he didn’t like.”
“And he hit me for that?”
“Look at that sky. You weren’t struck by lightning.”
A member of Blamec’s company extended a hand and helped him to his feet. He was excruciatingly embarrassed. Being struck by the Rígfénnid Fíanna in front of his own men was almost unprecedented. What could have come over Finn? he wondered. But he did not ask, nor did he argue.
It seemed prudent for once to say nothing.
The army marched on, though not into the territory of Gleor Red-Hand.
Goll was pleased with himself. It was a petty satisfaction, but that did not make it less pleasant. Wounding Finn and letting someone else suffer the punishment improved the game considerably in his opinion.
Two nights had passed before Blamec regained sufficient confidence to complain, “I thought the king promised us horses. Seasons ago. Whatever happened to them?”
“They’ll be waiting for us at Tara,” Finn assured him. “Cormac wants to make something of a ceremony of their presentation, I believe.”
“I’d be happier with less ceremony and less walking,” Blamec replied. “Couldn’t he have given us horses at the start of battle season this year?”
“He could have. But he wants to do it at the Great Assembly, where everyone will see. His will be the first army to have all of its officers mounted; it’s an important occasion, and sure to impress the other kings and chieftains.”
Fergus wanted to know, “Will we be expected to ride them right away? In front of everyone?”
“I suppose so,” Finn told him. “That’s the point.”
“But I’ve never been on a horse.”
“Anyone,” Madan declared, “can ride a horse. You’ve seen Cormac do it, it’s just like sitting on a bench.”
Fergus looked dubious. “I don’t think that’s all there is to it.”
“It is of course. Just watch me when I get my horse.”
Cailte. enquired, “Have you ever ridden a horse, Madan?”
“I have not. But I know I can.”
“Your men are too arrogant, Finn,” Goll remarked, “and you’ve made them that way. But I suspect your first experience with horses will teach you all a little humility.”
Finn did not reply, but later in the day he ordered Cailte in a confidential tone, “Send Taistellach ahead to locate the next noble stronghold along our way that has some riding horses.”
Swift-footed Taistellach sped away, to return in due course with reports of the stronghold of a wealthy chieftain on the banks of the Blackwater. The man, who was called Dorbha, had some cattle, flocks of sheep, and a herd of horses penned near his fort.
“He appears to be very proud of his horses,” Taistellach said. “And of his women, for that matter. His household’s full of them. He keeps them warm with cloaks of otter skins so there must be good hunting along the banks of the river. He has vats of ale and buttermilk, almost like a hosteller, and a fine reputation for generosity among his tribesmen.”
“The very man we need,” replied Finn Mac Cool.
He picked up the pace.
Dorbha was at first alarmed to find the majority of the fíans of the Fíanna descending upon him, but relieved when Finn requested quartering and hospitality only for himself and his officers. “The rest of my men provide their own beds and feed themselves,” he was assured.
His alarm returned, however, when a thin man with hair just beginning to turn grey said quietly to him, “The Rígfénnid Fíanna has a mind to try one of your riding horses. Only for himself, you understand. Out of sight of the others.”
“The Fíanna are going to take my animals,” Dorbha predicted gloomily to his senior wife.
She glared at him. “Don’t let them!”
“This is the Fíanna we’re talking about, woman! They could take the hide off your body and mine if they wanted. We should be thankful if we lose only the horses to them.”
To his surprise, however, they did not lose any horses. While the other officers were eating and drinking in Dorbha’s banquetting hall, Finn and Cailte slipped away to a hidden copse, leading a single grey horse.
Cailte held the animal by its bridle while Finn vaulted aboard. The horse did not move and seemed unaffected by the clamping of a stranger’s legs on its sides.
“This isn’t so hard,” Finn said. “Give me the rei
n, Cailte.”
“Are you sure?” Cailte was watching the horse’s eyes.
“I am of course. I could almost put my feet down and touch the ground; what could possibly happen?”
Shrugging, Cailte surrendered the single rein. Finn, seeing Cormac in his mind’s eye, gave the animal a kick.
Nothing happened.
“We should have brought a horse-goad,” Cailte said.
“Nonsense. I can make this creature go, just with the strength of my legs.” Finn kicked again—and this time he kicked as hard as he could.
The astonished grey let out a great whoosh of air, then threw its head down between its forelegs and gave a mighty twist to its back.
Finn found himself in exactly the same position Blamec had occupied a couple of days earlier, examining an equally blue sky similarly spangled with whirling lights.
“I don’t think,” Cailte drawled, “that you’ve perfected the art of riding yet, Finn.”
Finn laughed in spite of himself and got to his feet. “Madan seems to have underestimated the difficulties,” he admitted. “Let’s try it again.”
They spent the evening with the grey horse, the long summer evening of Erin that faded only into a semi-darkness, then brightened again. By the time Finn felt confident he could at least stop, start, and turn a horse under normal circumstances, Cailte was eager to try his own luck, so they changed places.
“Don’t ever tell anyone I let you do this, though,” Finn cautioned his friend with a wink.
Cailte replied, “I never tell anyone anything. I’m famous for it.”
They spent several more nights with Dorbha. During the day, the other officers joined their fíans hunting around the Blackwater, but Finn and Cailte used the time to practice riding in secret. If they sat down a little more gingerly than usual, no one noticed.
At night, the women of Dorbha’s household offered the visiting rígfénnidi every form of Gaelic hospitality, including the welcome of their thighs; their noble thighs. The Fíanna were no longer men to be despised.
Excited by the recent example of Cael and Creide, Finn’s officers responded enthusiastically. “The voice of the cuckoo is sweet in our ears,” Fergus Honey-Tongue claimed rapturously.
On what was to be their final night with Dorbha, Finn’s officers were given a woman for every lap. The woman who came to the Rígfénnid Fíanna was the finest the household had to offer, one of Dorbha’s own daughters, a supple-hipped woman with long, shapely hands. She approached Finn diffidently, half-expecting he would turn away, as he had not yet shown any interest in women, unlike the rest of his men.
But Finn could no longer avoid being aware of humid looks being exchanged, ardent caresses, sudden catches of breath. All around him, his men were enjoying themselves. Life was being lived. Life … the word made him ache.
He experienced a sudden, startling sense of bilocation. He seemed to become a passive observer watching a second Finn. He tried to have some influence over this second Finn, but could not reach him.
Between them was a crystal wall. Nothing passed through.
Finn the observer watched a flushed, sweating warrior called Finn Mac Cool take the proffered woman by one of her long, pale hands and pull that hand down to his lap, deliberately inviting her to fondle him.
The woman complied, dropping to her knees in front of Finn’s bench. Her eyes, the observer noted, were blank and blue. Eyes should not be blue. Eyes should be brown. Sive’s eyes were brown.
Does the Finn on the bench with the woman’s hand at his crotch remember Sive? the observer wondered. Does he have my memories at all? Do we dream the same dreams? Or are his different from mine? When I go to sleep, is he awake?
This different person who is also me—where does he go when I can’t see him?
Am I inside, and he outside?
Or is it the other way around?
The blue-eyed woman reached under Finn’s tunic and smiled with astonishment. Over her shoulder she called, “This man deserves to command armies! This man deserves to be king! He is mightily armed!”
The Finn on the bench laughed and rumpled her hair and swept her into his arms, pressing her body against his. Dorbha looked on, approving.
At some point, observer and observed became one again, but a fracture had taken place. Insulated by pain, the man who loved Sive hardly felt what was happening. His body responded as nature dictated it must, but with neither joy nor grace.
In the false glow before dawn, Finn sought his bed and took with him the blue-eyed woman.
Her name, he learned tardily, was Manissa. She had strong white legs to wrap around his waist and she clutched him with rapturous delight, pulling him deeper and deeper inside her.
The observer returned. He seemed to be hanging in space somewhere above them, slightly to the left and behind Finn, looking down. Listening to the repetitive slap of flesh against flesh and the expected moanings and praisings. With a cold mind he judged the quality of the passion the woman appeared to display, and found it lacking. She was not Sive. She was not anyone. Just a woman.
He wanted to cry, for her and for Finn.
In the morning, as the Fíanna were preparing to leave, Finn took Manissa aside. “I need a wife,” he said bluntly. “A marriage of the first degree, that’s what’s appropriate for the Rígfénnid Fíanna. Your father is a man of rank and prestige, so we would have equal status, you and I. You would be my wife of equal dignity. Shall I arrange it?”
Manissa was taken aback. From a man known as a warrior-poet, she had expected something less brisk, less bald. But Finn stood before her with his face closed and his eyes guarded, obviously eager to be on the road, giving her this one chance to become a wife to the famed Rígfénnid Fíanna or probably never see him again.
“I … I am willing to be your wife,” she said with a dry mouth
“Good,” he said briskly, as if concluding a negotiation for a hunting dog. “Next Beltaine, then. We take no property with our women, so you won’t require a dowry, but I shall offer your male kin appropriate coibche. What is your honour price?”
Under the circumstances, Finn announced they would stay with Dorbha for one more night. It seemed discourteous to rush off so abruptly after agreeing to marry the man’s daughter. Dorbha was delighted with the arrangement, already imagining the benefits that would accrue from being the father of the Rígfénnid’s wife. No one would ever dare raid his herds again!
Finn’s men, of course, were equally delighted to enjoy one more night of Dorbha’s hospitality.
A fine banquet, surpassing those previous, was hastily arranged in Finn’s honour. Dorbha gave him his own carved bench to sit upon, and Manissa seated herself on the floor between his knees, occasionally favouring the other women with a small, smug smile.
She wondered why he did not touch her as she sat thus.
When the first hunger was sated and the men were beginning to pick marrow out of bones and look for forgotten scraps of bread to throw the hounds, Dorbha ordered another log placed on the fire. “I have no bard of my own,” he lamented, “although my daughter is about to enter a society where every household has a bard. But I myself am able to recite a—”
“I can be your bard for the night,” said Finn Mac Cool.
21
GLANCING DOWN INADVERTENTLY, FINN’S EYES FELL UPON the mantle of otter skin Manissa had draped around her shoulders against the cool of the evening. Then he cleared his throat.
His men exchanged knowing glances. “It’s a long time since we heard him recite,” Blamec whispered to Conan.
“He saved all his pretty speeches for Sive, I suspect. But he’s not saving any more!” the bald man sniggered.
Finn drew back an imperceptible degree from the woman at his feet. The silent observer who was also Finn understood and approved. He began speaking in a tightly controlled voice from which he withheld any trace of emotion, a voice that somehow made the story more powerful by contrast.
“Abha
inn Mor, great river of black water, knows no time,” he said. “Rivers cannot die, so they need not measure nights and days. But there are spirits living in them that do recognize time, and for some of those, its passage is an agony. As it is for some of us,” he added in that uninflected voice.
“There is a story told of one such creature who lived in the bitterest loneliness in the darkest depths of the black water. Once the creature had walked the fern-soft earth of Erin in the sunlight, as one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. But when the Dananns were defeated by the Milesians, this particular spirit transformed itself and took refuge in the river rather than be slain or driven from the land.
“It lives there still.
“In order to experience some of the life it had once enjoyed, the creature assumed a body of muscle and bone. The Dananns had that gift, you know. They could take shapes for themselves. This particular one chose to appear as an otter, most of the time.”
The hunters exchanged a different sort of glance now. There was not a man among the rígfénnidi who had not speared at least one otter during their stay at Dorbha’s fort.
Glas the Grey whispered urgently to Fergus Honey-Tongue, “Is Finn trying to tell us we’ve done something wrong, killing otters?”
“You never know exactly what Finn’s saying with these stories,” Fergus replied. “Just listen to him. I think they have hidden meanings only he knows.”
Goll said nothing, but kept his eyes on Finn.
“The Danann became a she-otter,” Finn was saying, “a supple, shining animal with large … brown … eyes. But it was not like the other otters and they recognized this; none would mate with it. The Danann otter remained alone and lonely in her river.
“Then one day a shepherd drove a flock of sheep to the Blackwater for a drink, and knelt on the bank himself to cup his hands in the water. From concealment beneath an overhang, the otter saw him. There was something almost familiar about him, some plane of cheek or brow she thought she knew from another time.
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