He accepted Finn’s calling him Oisin.
They took him home to Almhain of the White Walls.
On the way, Finn told the boy stories. The child sat on the mare’s withers and listened, absorbing everything.
“Almhain will be your inheritance,” Finn promised. “It was mine. I am entitled to build my stronghold there because it comes to me through the blood. That entitlement will be yours. We shall tell the historians your genealogy, so you can prove your right to all that is mine.
“You will be a man of high rank, Oisin. I’ve made certain of that, even before I knew there was … an Oisin. As son of the Rígfénnid Fíanna, you will be welcomed in every dwelling in Erin and permitted to stand at the right hand of every king. Och, you’re going to have a good life!”
The child listened gravely, his huge eyes never leaving Finn’s face.
When they reached Almhain, Finn proceeded to introduce Oisin as his son. He explained, “A dark druid stole Sive and her infant from me, but I never ceased looking for them. The druid put her under an enchantment to hide her from me, but I knew Bran and Sceolaun would recognize her no matter what shape she took. When at last they did find something of her, it was this boy they found, however. Oisin, who was born here, has come home!”
Cainnelsciath was not totally happy with this version of recent history. He approached Finn in private and told him. “You make a mistake by accusing a druid of stealing your wife. Why are you doing that?”
“I’m only telling what I know,” Finn explained patiently. “Sive, like me, has the blood of the Tuatha Dé Danann in her. She must have; it’s the only thing that explains her magical abilities.”
“Magical abilities?” Cainnelsciath raised an eyebrow. “I never saw any indication that—”
“She could shapechange,” Finn confided.
“She could? How do you know?”
“And me married to the woman? I knew everything about her!” Finn declared hotly. “Because she was of Danann blood, the druids feared her. Not you, I’m not blaming you for any of this, Cainnelsciath. Other druids.” Finn waved his hand vaguely. “They took her from me with a powerful enchantment. She would never have left me otherwise.
“The dark man who held her and made her abandon our child struck her with a stick, Oisin tells me. It must have been a druid’s rod; nothing else would have had power over her. They made her abandon the child because it was my child. But I found him anyway, and I’ve brought him home. Rejoice for us, Cainnelsciath!”
Later, speaking of this to Red Ridge, Cainnelsciath said, “I’ve read the signs and I find nothing in them to confirm this tale of Finn’s. It doesn’t even make sense … except to him.”
“If it makes sense to him,” Red Ridge replied, “then I accept it.”
So did Manissa. While she was astonished to see her husband arrive at Almhain with a little boy riding in front of him, she was mindful of the law. “I shall foster this child as if it were my own,” she promised Finn.
Under Brehon Law, the institution of fosterage underpinned much of Gaelic society. The personal relationships upon which both tribal and military alliances depended were developed and reinforced through fosterage. Members of the warrior aristocracy routinely exchanged children, and foster parents were often regarded with more affection than birth parents. The lower classes also practiced fosterage, however, including the taking in of orphans. Gaelic society, in which clan and tribe became extended family, was structured to prevent any child’s living as an orphan. Even Finn Mac Cool had been fostered by two old women.
There were two forms of fosterage, fosterage of affection and paid fosterage. In either case, the fosterers were required by law to maintain and educate the child according to its rank in society.
Determining Oisin’s rank in society provided a problem for the brehons. When the situation became known, Flaithri had a private discussion with Cormac Mac Airt.
“Your Rígfénnid Fíanna insists the boy is a child of his siring,” the chief brehon said, waving his hands in the air. “We accept his word, of course. Normally, any claimed child of a father begins life in the same level of society as that father, and may expect to command a commensurate honour price. However, with Finn Mac Cool, we have something of a problem.”
“Always,” Cormac interjected dryly.
“Finn began life as a Fir Bolg,” Flaithri continued, “member of a subjugated race, commanding no higher honour price than one of the unfree. When he joined the Fíanna, his honour price increased to the value of his weapons, but his rank in society did not increase. Even a Rígfénnid Fíanna had never been accorded the privileges one of the nobility expects.
“But Finn Mac Cool has drastically altered the standing not only of the Fíanna, but of their commander. His men are respected and welcomed everywhere, and he is given hospitality by princes. He lives and behaves like a member of the nobility. Furthermore, Cormac, you have made no effort to discourage this behaviour. If anything, you have encouraged it.”
“I need Finn,” Cormac said simply. “I do what I can to reward him for his services.”
“Your rewards are quite unprecedented, if I may say so.”
“It is not the function of the brehons to criticize my handling of the Fíanna,” Cormac replied, his voice hardening. “You make and interpret law, you do not run the military.”
Flaithri nodded. “Agreed. But the law permeates society and regulates its members at every level. In order to be of valuable service to the people for whom it was designed, the law must be flexible; it must grow and change with changing circumstances. Finn Mac Cool is a perfect example. We need to rethink his personal position, as well as that of members of the Fíanna. Until a new definition of rank applying to him and to them is determined, we cannot assign rank and honour price to his claimed son.”
“People have often moved both up and down within the levels of status,” Cormac observed.
“Indeed. But this is the first time in the long memory of the poets that some Fir Bolg have become equal to the Milesians.”
Cormac stiffened. “They are not …” he began angrily. Then he paused. As Flaithri waited, he forced himself to examine reality. “In fairness, they are,” he said at last. “And I would rather be remembered as a fair and just king than as a successful warlord and bloodletter.”
“So you shall,” Flaithri affirmed. “Until the mountains fall and the seas rise, the poets will celebrate you as the wisest king ever to rule in Erin, a man who cherished the law as much as the brehons do and let no person be treated unjustly.
“But as to this matter of Finn Mac Cool …” Flaithri’s voice abandoned hyperbole and turned practical, “is he entitled in your judgment to what he claims?”
“He is, through his own achievement.”
“Including his claim to Almhain through inheritance? I thought you gave it to him.”
Cormac lifted one eyebrow. “Through inheritance?”
“He has informed the genealogists that his mother was of the Tuatha Dé Danann—and his wife Sive also. He says his son Oisin is thus doubly entitled to Almhain after him.”
Cormac’s second eyebrow joined the first. “Do the genealogists accept this?”
“They will if the brehons do. But, as you know, we are prohibited from making any judgment on the word of one man only. Will you support Finn’s claim?”
The king stroked his beard, where silver threads now outnumbered the gold. He gnawed his underlip, realized it looked like the mannerism of a worried man, and stopped.
Flaithri cleared his throat.
Cormac continued to stroke his beard. Then he drew a deep breath. His expression cleared as if his troubled face was wiped calm by a resolute hand.
“It may happen that even a wise man erects an edifice upon a single pillar,” Cormac said. “Having done so, he would be unwise to fail to reinforce the pillar in every way he can. Tell the genealogists I vouch for Finn’s claim. He once revealed his history to me.”
At the next Assembly, that wretched Finn sat on a carved bench in the Banquetting Hall. The upper end of the hall was reserved for poets—and for historians and brehons and genealogists—as well as the noblest of the noble. Finn Mac Cool sat between them and the king.
Flaithri himself made the announcement. “The brehons here convened, having examined and debated the law as it pertains to the last year, have found areas where change is needed.
“Therefore, tonight we announce a change in the rank and privileges of the Rígfénnid Fíanna. From this time forth, the man who commands the army of Tara is entitled to receive fifty swift riding horses, fifty milch cows, fifty heavy beeves, fifty sheep with the fleece on them, and fifty deep-bellied hogs each year, as his share of the tribute paid to the king of Tara from his tributaries.
“Likewise, he shall be given twelve gold cups, twelve drinking horns, and twelve high-sided carts with sufficient oxen to pull them, and stores of corn to fill them. Barley and wheat and oats are his to the value of six bondwomen.”
Before those assembled had time to express their surprise at this enormous largesse, Flaithri continued, “Furthermore, from this night forward, the honour price of the Rígfénnid Fíanna, the price that must be paid to his family for damage done to him, is to the value of twelve bondwomen.”
There was a concerted gasp the length of the hall. “The king my father only commands an honour price of fourteen bondwomen!” cried a prince of the Laigin.
Cormac fixed him with a stern eye. “You question this judgment?”
In an eyeblink, the rígfénnidi stationed around the great hall had their hands on the hilts of their swords.
The Laigin prince hesitated.
Cormac gave a crisp nod to Flaithri, who went on smoothly. “In accordance with this rank, the sons of the Rígfénnid Fíanna are to he educated in the skills to which princes’ sons are entitled. They are to learn chess and board games, horse riding, and swimming in lakes, and to sing with a clear voice. His daughters are to be taught sewing and flower plaiting and to embroider with fine needles. They are also to be allowed property sufficient to make them wives of equal dignity for chieftains and princes of the tribes.”
The prince of the Laigin drew in a sharp breath. As one man, the rígfénnidi turned their heads toward him.
He bit his lip and said nothing.
“He’s not quite as stupid as he looks,” Conan said in a low voice to Red Ridge.
The other replied, “He can’t be too pleased to learn there’s what amounts to a new king in his territory.”
Conan grinned a rare grin. “but what can he do about it? Apply to the king of Tara?”
Those nearest them laughed outright.
As he listened to Flaithri, Finn had closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his lids, she came to him. Sive. Sive, he said, I have given our son the status of a prince.
There was, of course, grumbling and resentment in some quarters. Warriors who did not belong to the Fíanna hated seeing others of their kind advanced so far above them. But they did not openly rebel. The unprecedented step of allowing members of a subjugated tribe to move so far up the social scale meant new opportunities for everyone of ability. This lesson was not lost on the meanest leather-tanner in the most stinking pit. What Finn Mac Cool had done, others might do. Achievement would be rewarded, whatever its source.
To Cormac’s delight, this conferred new admiration on him. “Cormac Mac Airt is the most noble, the most generous, of all kings!” poets claimed the length of the land. “He shares his prosperity as no man has done before him!”
Finn actually had Fergus Honey-Tongue compose a long, highly coloured praise-poem to this effect and recite it everywhere they went.
Manissa was pleased with the inflowing of wealth to Almhain. She expanded the household at Almhain of the White Walls to take in more fosterlings. “Look around,” she would say complacently to visitors. “Can you tell which of these little ones was born to the wife of a chieftain and which to the wife of a woodcutter? We have both here. Finn insists we foster them without regard to their rank, except in the matter of their education. He is a good-hearted man,” she added proudly.
Sometimes when she was not aware he was watching, Finn stood in the shadows, gazing thoughtfully at Manissa. “She is a good woman,” he remarked to Cailte. “She does everything a chief wife should do.”
“But … ?” enquired Cailte, always sensitive to the tone of Finn’s voice.
“But.” Finn looked away, shadows in his eyes. “But.”
But there had been only one Sive. And there was only one Oisin. When Manissa bore him one daughter and then another, he was pleased and proud. But it was Oisin he took with him everywhere, Oisin who sat at his feet and listened to his tales at the end of every battle season.
Highly coloured tales they were, in that high summer of the Fíanna. As the king of Tara subdued the other kings and forced submission from them, an increased prosperity made the island of Erin more tempting to invaders from the western coasts of Alba and the land of the Britons. Foreigners crossed the sea in wooden boats, intending to plunder and pillage.
But Finn continually enlarged the Fíanna until Cormac’s army was an armed presence the length of the coast, meeting beaching boats with irresistible battle-lust.
“The greatest kings in the world send armies against us!” Finn boasted in the hall when he had been drinking ale throughout the night from one of his gold drinking cups. “But we defeat them all! No king can stand against us!”
No one contradicted him publicly. Historians elicited and memorized carefully reported, less florid versions of events. But Oisin sat at his father’s knee and drank in Finn’s words instead of ale.
To Manissa’s sorrow, she seemed able to bear only daughters to Finn. When their fourth was born, she told him, with tears in her eyes, “I wanted to give you a son.”
“I have sons,” Finn replied, swinging his arm wide to indicate the fosterling thronging his fort.
“I meant a son like … like Oisin. A son of your heart.”
He was surprised that she understood this. He had not looked for sensitivity from her. He no longer looked for sensitivity from anyone. It was the source of too much pain.
“You should take another wife to give you sons,” Manissa insisted, mindful of her duty.
“Cormac Mac Airt has only a few sons, though he has many wives. Most of his children are daughters. Don’t fret about it, Manissa.”
But for once, she could not obey. She kept on bringing up the subject until at last Finn mentioned it to Cormac himself.
“My chief wife thinks I should take a second wife.”
Cormac lifted his eyebrows. “You’re lucky in your women,” he remarked enviously. “Have you a woman in mind? The smith’s daughter was finally forced to take another man for husband, you know, but—”
“My chief wife is of noble blood,” Finn said. “And my honour price is the equivalent of twelve bondwomen. I don’t think it appropriate to marry a smith’s daughter now.” His voice was cool. He had not realized Cruina had married someone else.
“The arrogance of princes,” Cormac commented as if to himself.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was just … you want a noble wife, then?”
“I didn’t say I wanted one at all, I merely said Manissa keeps suggesting it.”
“She feels guilty for not giving you sons and this is her way of easing that guilt,” the king told Finn.
“Are you sure?”
“I have an instinct about people,” Cormac said, though he wondered silently just how good his instincts were when it came to Finn Mac Cool.
“If it means so much to Manissa, I’ll take a second wife,” Finn subsequently told Cailte.
The thin man bit back the impulse to laugh.
“Kind of you to do it for her.”
“I think so,” Finn agreed in all seriousness. He did not, in spite of what Cailte thought, long for a new woman. Women were not uppermost in his thoughts at all—with the exception of Sive, who was always there, her face softened by time, the memory more beautiful than the person had been. The pain unfaded.
But he set himself to the task of selecting a second contract wife as zealously as he did everything else. She must be an enhancement to the new prestige of the Rígfénnid Fíanna. She must be a statement flung in the teeth of the world.
“She must,” he told Cailte, “be at least as good as Cael’s Creide.”
“Perhaps one of Creide’s sisters?”
“My rank is now higher than Cael’s,” Finn reminded Cailte, dismissing the idea.
Winter was drawing down. At Almhain of the White Walls, the druid Cainnelsciath would be bringing boughs of holly and yew inside to keep the spirit of the evergreens alive through the cold season until time to burn them in the springtime bonfires. On the day before Finn planned to leave Tara for home, he was hurrying across the lawn—in reality a sea of mud churned by many feet—when he bumped into a slender figure hurrying in the opposite direction, talking to itself and unaware of him.
Finn paused to extend a steady hand. His fingers touched an arm in a pleated linen sleeve, and a bright face peeped out at him from beneath a blue hood.
“You’ve made me forget my poem,” the girl chided him.
She was some fourteen winters, just reaching the age for marrying, and her accents were purely Milesian. Finn dragged his thoughts back from wherever they had been to put a name to the face.
“Ailvi! You’ve grown so I hardly recognized you. It is Ailvi?”
“It is,” she said softly, suddenly shy.
“What are you doing reciting poetry?”
“I’m not reciting, I’m composing Or trying to.”
“And you a woman?”
“Women can be poets. They can even be satirists.”
“Some of the most cruel satirists are women,” Finn agreed. “I trust that’s not your intention?”
Finn Mac Cool Page 35