Finn Mac Cool

by Morgan Llywelyn

  She stood on the very brink of the abyss, silhouetted against the lingering light of the twilit sky.

  From the size and shape of her, Finn recognized a young doe, hardly more than a fawn in spite of the lateness of the season. Her slim legs were bunched under her in arrested flight. She was staring fixedly toward the hound racing up the summit to her.

  “Sive!” Finn cried with all the power in his lungs.

  The deer turned her head toward him. Though he could not possibly have seen her eyes, he thought she looked at him. Then she whirled in one smooth motion and leaped, leaped for freedom, out into space to plunge into the lake fatally far below.

  Bran hesitated for a sliver of an instant. The great hound glanced back one last time at Finn, made an assessment of the man and the situation and the agony that only Bran could know, then bounded after the deer again.

  Bounded out into space.

  Finn’s second cry was not remotely human.

  He raced forward to fling himself belly-down at the edge of the precipice. He was in time to see the second splash subsiding. Concentric circles spread out and out until they vanished and the surface at last became a smooth, dark mirror, glimmering faintly. Undisturbed.

  When Finn had not returned after three nights, Caurag asked Iruis to organize a search party.

  “If any man in Erin can look after himself,” Iruis replied, “I’d say that man is Finn Mac Cool.”

  “It is,” Caurag agreed. “That’s why I’m worried. If something had not happened to him, he would have been back here by now.”

  “How do you propose to find him in an area so large?”

  “Och, that’s easy enough. He took Bran and Sceolaun with him, but his other hounds, Lomair and Lomluath and Brod, can track them, no matter where they’ve gone.”

  “Across the stone of the Burren?”

  “Across the water of the great sea!” Caurag claimed. “These are Finn Mac Cool’s hounds we’re talking about.”

  They set off at dawn. The party consisted of a number of armed men and several porters to carry supplies, in case the trail led them far from Black Head, or in case they found Finn injured somewhere and in need of tending.

  “I can apply a poultice or bind a broken hone if need be,” Caurag assured Iruis. “Finn likes us to be resourceful.”

  “I hope he’s resourceful enough to get out of whatever trouble has been keeping him,” Iruis replied.

  The sleet Finn had encountered initially had been replaced by a few days of false warmth. Autumnal sunshine poured like honey over the grey slabs of the Burren as if promising that no matter how bleak the winter to come, the days of light would eventually return.

  At Caurag’s signal, the hounds cast and cast again for a trail. When they found it, they set off toward the southeast, the men following eagerly.

  Eventually they found Sceolaun. Starving, shivering, but true to her god, she was sitting on her haunches in the place Finn had left her, waiting for his return.

  Caurag was horrified both by her condition and by finding her alone. “This is bad, very bad. Finn would never have gone off and left her like this without returning for her. I knew something had happened to him.” He crouched down beside the bitch, who weakly licked his face. “Where is he, Sceolaun? Do you know? Can you take us to Finn? And Bran?”

  She got to her feet, painfully. When she tried to walk, she was unsteady. Caurag gathered her into his arms. “We can follow the direction of her gaze,” he told Iruis. “She knows which way they went, she can show us that much.”

  Using Sceolaun’s head as a guide, they followed the way Finn had taken. When they neared the region of Ceentlea, she squirmed and Caurag put her down. The search party followed her slow progress as she made her way step by step after Finn. The other hounds stood back and let her lead them, though they could have run ahead easily enough.

  At the edge of a small dark lake below an overhanging crag, they found him. Like Sceolaun, he was just sitting. His arms were wrapped around his legs, knees bent, feet flat on the earth. His unmoving gaze was fixed on the surface of the water.

  His face was stone.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Iruis asked in a whisper. “He doesn’t seem to see us.”

  Sceolaun went to Finn and licked his face, but he paid no attention. She stood beside him with her head cocked, studying him. Then she followed the direction of his gaze.

  Slowly, one step at a time, she left him and waded out into the lake.

  The men paid no heed to her, being preoccupied with Finn. He seemed unhurt, he was not visibly ill—he was just absent. There was no spark of life or recognition inside the strong body. Caurag and Iruis both tried to talk to him, but it was useless.

  Finally Cuarag said, “Help me get him on his feet, will you? I’ll have to take him back to Almhain, there’s nothing I know to do for him here.”

  But at that moment Finn’s eyes focussed. “Sceolaun,” he called in a rusty voice.

  They turned to look then at the hound neck-deep in the lake. She had advanced as far as she could without swimming and was just standing there, undecided.

  Finn pulled away from the men holding him and staggered a few steps forward. “Come away,” he told the dog. “Come away. There’s nothing for us here. She gave me Oisin and she’s taken Bran. It’s compensation. Compensation.”

  In the lake, her head seeming to float on the surface of the water like a disembodied creature, Sceolaun lifted her muzzle skyward and began to howl.

  To the horror of all who heard him, Finn howled with her.

  “I thought I was hearing wolves,” a shaken Iruis confided later to his friends. “I thought I was hearing a pair of wolves on a cold winter night.”

  Finn was strangely docile during the return journey to Almhain. He had bidden a perfunctory farewell to Iruis and instructed Caurag to fashion a sling so he might carry Sceolaun on his horse instead of making her walk. But aside from that, he said nothing as they crossed Erin—except, occasionally, to murmur, “Compensation.”

  Forming the core of Brehon Law, the laws of compensation and distress affected every aspect of Gaelic life. The honour price a man must pay for injuring another, or for taking a woman against her will, was but a small example of the way in which retribution was attained for every injustice, down to the smallest insult. The point of compensation was not to punish the wrongdoer, but to re-establish amity between himself and the person he had wronged, or their family, so there would be no need for the acts of revenge that were a legacy of man’s more savage past.

  It did not always succeed, of course. The feud between Clan Baiscne and Clan Morna was an example, though one exacerbated by an outside force for personal reasons.

  As a result of hearing the brehons adjudicate matters of compensation at the Assemblies for many years, Finn had the concept burned into his brain. It made sense to him in a world in which little made sense anymore.

  The more he thought about what he had seen at Ceentlea—and he was thinking of nothing else—the less he was certain of the evidence of his senses. Had it been Sive out there on the brink of eternity? Had Bran ceased baying before running out to her, going in glad silence instead? And if it was not Sive, why had Bran followed her over the edge?

  If it was Sive, why had she not given Finn some signal, some ease for his pain?

  Compensation.

  She had given him something. She had given him Oisin. By that gift, Finn had contracted an obligation, however, and Bran had paid his debt. Compensation.

  That must be it.

  Must be.

  Must.

  He rode with blank, unseeing eyes, and after a time a worried Caurag took the rein out of his hands and led the horse himself to keep it from wandering off with Finn and Sceolaun.

  As they entered the territory of the Laigin, Finn became agitated, rubbing his hands together, chewing on his thumb, casting wild glances to left and right. Caurag began to feat he would not be able to handle him. He took a
small diversion to the stronghold of Sciathbracc of the Speckled Shield, an old ally, to ask for help.

  “His mind is troubled,” Caurag explained to Sciathbracc, a broad, stout, freckled man who claimed with some justification to have three hundred children. “I’m afraid I may not he able to get him the rest of the way to Almhain without help.”

  Sciathbracc looked at Finn, sitting on his horse with the old bitch riding comfortably in her sling across the animal’s haunches. “I’d say his mind is troubled. Whoever heard of carrying a hound on a horse?”

  “He won’t hear of her walking,” Caurag replied. “She’s very old and footsore.”

  The freckled man shrugged. “We all get old and footsore. What do you want of me?”

  “Send a runner on to Almhain to request that some of Finn’s men come here to escort him home.”

  While they waited, Sciathbracc offered what hospitality he could to Finn, who seemed unaware of it. He was seated on a bench by the hearthfire and given food and drink he did not touch. Sceolaun lay at his feet and he fed the food to her in tiny morsels.

  Sciathbracc was concerned. To be seen as failing in hospitality was to dishonour oneself. “Suppose Finn someday tells that he was a guest in my fort and did not eat? He must take something.” From one of his women came the suggestion, “Have a fair young girl serve him, he won’t refuse from her.”

  The chosen servitor, a plump and pretty person called Dairann, stood in front of Finn holding out a cup to him. “Drink this for my sake,” she urged.

  With an effort, he collected himself enough to accept the cup. “What is it?” he asked as he stared down into a dark liquid.

  “It’s very strong mead, the best we have.”

  “Mead is gold. This is dark, like a dark lake …” Finn took a sip. Then another. Then he threw back his head and tossed off the contents of the cup with desperate gulps as if he could not get enough, as if he would drown himself in the dark liquid.

  By the time a party arrived from Almhain, he was roaring drunk and abused each of his men in turn, quite publicly.

  They were horrified.

  Only Cailte stayed close beside him, ignored the curses and insults hurled indiscriminately from the drunken mouth, and urged the others to do the same.

  “I don’t have to stay with him and take this,” argued Blamec. “Did you hear what he said? He just told me I have a face like toad shit.”

  “You do,” Cailte replied amiably. “So it isn’t an insult. Help me get him on his horse, will you?”

  Sciathbracc watched them ride off. “I never thought I’d be glad to see the back of Finn Mac Cool,” he remarked to the wife standing nearest him.

  At Almhain, Bebinn the physician ministered to Finn while Manissa and Ailvi hovered in the background, feeling superfluous.

  “He’s very drunk,” was Bebinn’s uncontested opinion, “and because he’s got drunk on mead, he’ll be very sick when it passes off.”

  “But will he be himself again?” Manissa asked anxiously. “His men say he’s been acting very strange.”

  The three women looked at Finn, who by this time had been laid on a bed in Manissa’s house and was muttering to himself soddenly.

  Bebinn, her professional expertise impugned, raised herself to her full height and said stonily, “The treatment I am going to give him has never been known to fail!”

  As Finn’s wives watched, she prepared a decoction of masses of dried peppermint mixed with the crushed flowers of cowslip and camomile and arnica. To this she added an infusion of willowbark and thistle, then poured the result into a silver cup. Sitting beside Finn, she held his nose until his mouth opened, then she poured in the drink.

  Choking and spluttering, Finn sat up. His red-rimmed eyes glared at Bebinn. “Poison!” he accused thickly.

  “Nonsense. Have another drink.”

  He tried to avoid her but found Manissa holding one of his legs and Ailvi the other. Normally he could have thrown them both off with no effort, but he was very drunk. He could not coordinate his legs.

  Bebinn pinched his nose again and got another drink down him.

  Allowing him to fall back on the bed muttering more darkly than before, she then instructed Manissa to have a quern brought to her. “And a raw liver,” she added.

  Garveronan the steward was embarrassed to admit there was no raw liver at Almhain of the White Walls.

  “Then slaughter an ox!” Bebinn ordered impatiently.

  She ground the hot, steaming liver, fresh from the ox, in the stone quern, turning it into a paste. This time she actually had to sit on Finn’s chest while his wives held his arms and Cailte and Red Ridge held his legs, but they finally managed to force the liver paste down his throat.

  He vomited violently.

  Bebinn gave him another dose.

  Afterward, Finn curled into a ball with his back turned toward them and was totally unresponsive.

  “Let him sleep,” Bebinn advised. “No matter how bad he seems now, he’ll be all right when he finally wakes up.”

  Finn lay on the bed through three nights and three days, until, as Manissa said with distaste, “He has made the whole house stink of himself and his sickness.” On the fourth morning he awoke feeling as weak as an infant, but with a clear mind.

  He lay watching a thin sliver of light filter in through a chink in the wall.

  It’s day out there, he thought.

  He could hear sounds: the rumble of cart wheels, a man shouting orders, the murmur of women to children, the gabble of Manissa’s hens outside the doorway.

  It’s day and I’m alive, Finn thought regretfully.

  He sat up very slowly, waiting for the headache to thunder through his skull.

  When it did not come, he got to his feet like an old, weak man and tottered to the doorway, holding on to things as he went. When he pushed the door open, he expected the sound of the iron hinges would make him cringe, but it did not.

  He held on to the sides of the oak doorframe with both hands and looked out. The sky was grey-white, banked with clouds. Finn knew the weather too intimately to mistake them for snow clouds, but their appearance confirmed his inner conviction.

  “The summer is truly over,” said Finn Mac Cool.

  And so it was. For a long time no one else realized that the high summer of the Fíanna had slid into autumn, but Finn’s internal season had changed and he would carry the Fíanna with him.

  Sive, he believed, was truly lost to him. The hope that had kept him roaming Erin with Bran was dead, as dead as Bran.

  An end to it, then.

  A different future to face, with other possibilities.

  So long as he had believed Sive just might be his again someday, he had been able to float on the surface of life in a sense, living in a state of expectation, making the best of things until his real life began again.

  But now he saw he had been living his real life all along. Manissa and Ailvi were real women, his women. If he took more women, they would be real too. And they would be all he had.

  There would be a huge lacking in his life, always. Like a scar—like Goll’s missing eye, it could not be repaired. Goll’s scar was on the outside, Finn’s on the inside, but of the two, Finn’s was worse, he knew.

  Under the law, a man with a blemish could not be a king.

  Oisin was becoming a young man. He was being trained as if he were a Milesian. Finn insisted the finest poets tutor the youth in the art of training his memory, the best horsemen perfect his riding, the purest voices teach him to follow them in song. Long before he would be permitted to take part in battle, Oisin had mastered the skills of sword and shield and javelin and talked continually of the battles lie would someday win. But he always wore the clothes of a prince.

  Finn’s companions welcomed him into their circle as if he had been one of the original nine. “He’s so much like Finn was when we first knew him,” Cailte observed. “Merry and full of himself. Finn was a joy to be with in those days.”


  “Is he not now?” enquired a new rígfénnid.

  “Och, it isn’t the same. We’ve seen a lot and done a lot and it changes a man.

  “Funnily enough,” he went on, “somehow I never thought the passage of years would change Finn Mac Cool, though. It’s only now, looking at Oisin, that I realize how much it has done.”

  Fergus Honey-Tongue interjected, “We thought Finn would always have a wild young heart.”

  “If that is gone out of him, then a light has gone out of the world,” said Goll, to everyone’s surprise.

  25

  THE BATTLES WERE AS FIERCELLY FOUGHT AS EVER, WlTH as much style as any particular situation allowed, but there were fewer of them. Fewer men, native or foreign, were willing to defy the power of the High King of Erin as represented by his Fíanna. As a result, the fénnidi had more time to spend hunting during battle seasons.

  Finn, once the most devoted of hunters, rarely joined them, however.

  “He lost his pleasure in the chase when Bran died,” Caurag sadly concluded.

  To tempt Finn, Caurag acquired other hounds for him of the same type as Bran and Sceolaun, huge animals bred to hunt wolves or take down grown stags. Finn responded to only one of them, an animal known as Conbec of Perfect Symmetry, who looked something like Bran. When the Fíanna were on the move, Finn took Conbec into his bed on cold nights to keep him warm.

  When Sceolaun died quietly in her sleep, having attained an unprecedented age for a hound, Finn wept for one of his dogs for the last time. “I called her Survivor, and survivor she was,” he told Caurag. “Bury her deep and put a cairn over her.”

  “Like a person?” The huntsman was surprised.

  “Like a person.”

  Season gave way to season, and the tales told of Finn Mac Cool multiplied in inverse ratio to the number of adventures he had and battles he fought. The length of Erin, storyspinners heard men and women alike clamouring for new tales of Finn Mac Cool and complied with Finn and The Pigs of Angus, Finn and the Phantoms, The Red Woman, The King of the Foreigners, The Giantess, The Cave of the Sídhe …

  … and, and, and. There was no end to the stories, or to the young men who, hearing them, longed to join the Fíanna and flocked to Almhain for testing and training.