Finn Mac Cool

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Among them was a youngster called Dairmait, who was not many seasons older than Oisin, being the first son of Donn. Lugaid also sent his oldest son to Finn as he had promised, and the two young men arrived together on a wet morning at Almhain of the White Walls.

  “What are you called?” demanded the sentry at the gate.

  “Cormac Mac Lugaid,” was the first reply.

  The sentry looked the lad up and down. “That’s awkward,” he decided. “And I don’t think anyone should be called by the name of the Ard Rig but the man himself. We’ll just call you Lugaid’s son. And you … what’s your name?”

  “Dairmait Mac Donn Mac Duibhne.”

  “Mmmm. Dairmait. That’ll do us. Open the gates for this pair,” he bellowed over his shoulder, “and tell the commander that Dairmait and Lugaid’s son have come to him for training if he wants them!”

  The two young men entered together. They had attained the age for taking up arms, but neither had yet reached the age of beard encirclement and their faces were relatively smooth, save for the moustaches they were frantically trying to grow. Lugaid’s son looked very like his father, but Dairmait looked only like himself.

  Donn’s son had thick brown curling hair, and eyelashes longer than any woman’s. From the moment he entered Almhain, he swam through a sea of admiring female eyes. Every woman in the stronghold, from the oldest bondservant to the youngest girl child, turned to watch him stroll by, though he was quite oblivious to them.

  His thoughts were on Finn and the Fíanna and the future stretching before him, bright with glory.

  Donn himself proudly introduced his son to Finn. “Dairmait was fostered in a noble household,” he boasted, “and has all the arts and skills of a chieftain’s son.”

  “Noble households clamour for the privilege of fostering the children of rígfénnidi now,” Finn said calmly. “Once, Donn, you’d have been fortunate to have him taken in by a stonemason.”

  “We all know what you’ve done for us. Now do something more and take my son and train him as you would your own.”

  “I show no favouritism, Donn, you know that. I shall accept him and Lugaid’s son if they prove themselves, but they will have to pass tests to justify being here at all.”

  The first tests were the easiest, but even they weeded out many applicants. During Finn’s long years as leader of the Fíanna, he had devised a series of steps by which a prospective warrior could prove himself, and then a second series by which he could qualify as an officer. Neither was dependent on age or birth rank; what a man could do on the day was sufficient. But the tests, particularly for officers, had grown more demanding with the years.

  Several days later a proud Donn was able to tell Madan Bent-Neck, “My son has recited his twelve poems already, not a word put in, not a word taken out. And he’s won two footraces and one javelin-hurling.”

  “Did he outrun Oisin?”

  “He wasn’t raced against Oisin,” Donn said tightly.

  Lugaid’s son proved himself adept with the sword and the sling, and though his mastery of poetry was obviously more difficult for him than for Dairmait, he succeeded in reciting to satisfaction. Both young men defended themselves successfully in the trench when attacked by nine, and removed thorns from their feet while running. They also demonstrated their ability to ride horses, swim rivers, and cobble together footgear for themselves, if necessary, from pieces of untanned leather.

  They passed the first tests; they were put into fíans, though not into the same bands.

  Oisin also was in a different fían. Finn sprinkled the sons of himself, and his companions impartially through the army. Yet almost from the first, the younger generation seemed drawn together as if by invisible bonds and were often to be found in one another’s company.

  Dairmait was popular with everyone. He was so unaware of his physical beauty, so eager to please, so full of gentle laughter, that even older, hardened warriors enjoyed being with him.

  On the day when the newest members of the Fíanna were given swords of their own to carry in Cormac’s service, they gathered afterward for a private and impromptu feast to celebrate the event. But nothing at Almhain could ever be kept secret. Lugaid’s son had taken a bag of hares with his slingshot, and they had begun to roast the meat on spits over a small fire when someone noticed the smoke and ran to see what was happening.

  “You can’t cook here!” protested an outraged Garveronan.

  Lugaid’s son looked up at him from where he crouched on his heels, rotating a spit over the flame. “Why not?”

  “Look over there, you fool. That’s thatch on that house. One spark and it goes up like the sun. If you want your meat cooked, take it to a proper firepit.”

  “This is just for ourselves,” Dairmait said. “We didn’t want to bother anyone.”

  “Your mean you didn’t want to share. Don’t you understand what it is to be one of the Fíanna? You share, young man!”

  “We only have four hares!”

  “Then offer your four hares to everyone at Almhain.”

  Dairmait and Lugaid’s son exchanged dismayed glances. Then they realized Garveronan had put one hand over his mouth to stifle laughter. “Finn used to have an officer who played tricks like that,” he told them. “Cael, his name was.”

  The two young men laughed with him then. “It’s not a bad idea, sharing,” Dairmait admitted. “We should. Is there anyone who will eat with us, Garveronan? Not too many!” he added hastily.

  Smiling, the steward left them. He soon returned with Finn and Cailte—probably the last men with whom the two newest warriors expected to share a meal.

  What had seemed a feast when they were planning it for just the two of them seemed embarrassingly humble when offered as a meal to the Rígfénnid Fíanna and his favourite companion. Dairmait blushed. Lugaid’s son mumbled. But Finn and Cailte crossed their legs and sat on the ground as if they were the lowest-ranked of warriors and gobbled the meat and wiped their mouths on their arms and had a wonderful time.

  Soon the four were laughing and talking together as if they were of an age and a rank.

  At one stage Finn got to his feet, brushed himself off and went away, only to return with Oisin. “There are enough scraps here to feed a fifth,” he told the others, adding his son to the circle.

  Firelight gilded their faces and returned Finn’s silvery hair to its old lustre. Sitting there, he could almost imagine he was back in the beginning, on Black Head perhaps, with the future in front of him and all the victories yet to win. In that moment he envied Oisin and Dairmait and Lugaid’s son as he had never envied anyone.

  Mellow with the mood, Dairmait held up his new, unblooded sword. “I’m going to call it Liomhadoir, the Burnisher,” he said.

  Finn was taken aback. So many battle seasons, so many swords … he had never thought to name one. They got lost or stolen or broken, or given away, and another was forged, and then another. To name a sword was like naming a hound, making it a friend. A permanent memory.

  “Mine is called Mac an Luin, Son of the Waves!” he cried spontaneously. “I wear the bag that once belonged to Manannán of the Sea!”

  He fingered the ubiquitous neck bag that he still wore with a perverse pride, and the tale came flooding back to him. He told it again beside the small cook fire as he had not told it in years, and the others leaned on their elbows and listened with shining eyes, dreaming of Manannán Mac Lir.

  “You’ve never told it better,” Cailte said as the two men walked toward their own dwellings later.

  “I haven’t told that particular story in a long time. Not even to Oisin, though he loves hearing my tales.”

  “He does of course. We’re all interested in our histories,” Cailte, responded.

  Finn stopped walking and turned to look at the thin man. “Is that my history?”

  Cailte’s face was devoid of guile. “You said it was.”

  They walked on.

  The infusion of a new generatio
n into the Fíanna brought new energy. There was a veritable spate of naming weaponry, which until then had merely been the tools of war. Finn entered into the spirit by calling his shield Storm Shield and his golden banner Sun Shape. Oisin proclaimed that when he became an officer, his banner would be known as the Dark Deadly One, but happy-hearted Diarmait said his would be the Shining Silver.

  But before the young men fought in their first battle, Almhain of the White Walls was attacked by an enemy against which swords and spears were useless.

  One of Garveronan’s children was the first to fall ill. Bebinn worked frantically with the little boy but could not save him. Like a fire in dry grass, the illness spread. It sent a dry cough rattling through the youngest and the weakest, though the strong were able to throw it off.

  Unfortunately, Ailvi had just given birth again and did not have the strength to resist. When both she and her baby began to cough and choke, Manissa joined Bebinn in caring for them and worked untiringly to save them.

  She saved the baby.

  “I did all I could,” she told Finn. The first tears he had ever seen her shed were running down her cheeks.

  Finn took his wife into his arms and patted her shoulder distractedly. “I know you did. You are …”

  “ … a good woman,” she finished for him. To his surprise, he thought he heard a note of bitterness beneath the sorrow.

  Finn grieved for Ailvi, for her brightness and her sweetness. But the silent observer in him noted dispassionately that he did not mourn her as he had mourned Sive. Ailvi was not irreplaceable.

  Then Manissa began to cough.

  Within a fortnight of Ailvi’s death, Finn found himself wifeless.

  When the two women were gone, he discovered he missed them more than he had expected, and valued them more than he had realized. Particularly Manissa. She seemed, in retrospect, to be the mother he had never known, though he could hardly articulate such a thought even to himself. But there was a hole in the world and he did not know how to fill it.

  At the bottom of night’s well when he lay sleepless, he imagined that hole as a small, dark lake into which had fallen Sive and Bran and Ailvi and Manissa, a lake that would swallow everyone in time, himself also.

  Manannán Mac Lir, he thought. The waves reclaiming their own.

  Because Ailvi had been Cormac’s daughter, Finn announced funeral games to be held at Almhain in her honour. Cormac sent word that he would attend. It was a singular mark of honour. Never before in the memory of the poets had funeral games been held for the wife of a Fir Bolg.

  But before they could take place, Manissa died, and Finn announced that the games would now be held as a memorial to both his wives.

  Goll Mac Morna protested. “You can’t do it, Finn. Manissa was only a chieftain’s daughter. Her rank doesn’t entitle her to any sort of funeral games.”

  “I demand it by right of my own rank.”

  Goll shook his head. “You can’t. As long as you were married to the daughter of the High King, you could. But you aren’t husband to the High King’s daughter anymore. With Ailvi, you lost a certain rank. Surely you know that. If you don’t believe me, ask the brehons, they’ll tell you.”

  Finn was coldly furious. “Everything I have I won for myself. Nothing depended upon the women I married. I did not even take property with them.”

  “Still,” Goll insisted, “your situation is not quite what it was when Cormac was your father-in-law.”

  An angry Finn consulted the local brehons, who confirmed what Goll had told him.

  Ignoring them, he ordered the funeral games held in the names of both women.

  When he was informed of this, Cormac refused to attend.

  The High King had never acquired the soul-friend and confidante he had once envisioned, the position to which Finn had once aspired. It just never happened, the right man did not appear at the right time. He found no Cailte Mac Ronan to love him and trust him implicitly and guard his secrets, so over the years he had been forced to keep his own counsel. There were many matters he could not discuss beforehand with the brehons, for they must remain objective. And the men who were officially designated his counselors would, he had learned, say whatever they thought he wanted them to say.

  So Cormac found himself considering this latest problem over Finn Mac Cool alone. At the bottom of the well of night.

  “There has to be a point at which I stop giving in to Finn,” he said aloud as he sat on a bench staring into the banked fire in his firepit. His voice was pitched low so the many other occupants of his lodge could not hear him, but he found its human resonance gave him a certain comfort.

  “This is that point,” he decided.

  Later he would justify his decision to those around him by saying, “In the heel of the hunt, Finn shows his origins. He does not have the same innate sense of what is appropriate that a Milesian would. If he did, he would realize I cannot honour his other wife equally with my daughter—nor should he do so. The very fact that he has developed outside the bounds of society and rank makes it all the more important that I, as king, uphold such values and set an example. Without a clear understanding of each person’s place in the whole, Erin would disintegrate into chaos, with bondservants demanding to be treated like princes and no man certain of his honour price.”

  His court, of course, agreed. “He is wise!” they said.

  When Finn was told that the High King would not attend the funeral games, he took the news in a silence so cold, so furious, that the messenger turned heel and ran. The expression in Finn’s eyes terrified him.

  “The games proceed as planned,” Finn announced with no further comment. But as he strode through Almhain, people stayed out of his way.

  Lugaid travelled to Finn’s stronghold for the event, where he joined the other original companions, plus Red Ridge, to serve as judges of the games. He and the others exempted themselves only from those contests in which their sons were taking part. At the start of the games, there was considerable boasting and wagering by the various rígfénnidi, each man backing his own sons, but it soon became obvious who would do the most winning.

  Finn did not act as a judge. He stood watching on the sidelines while Oisin won one competition after another.

  The first man to congratulate him was always Diarmait.

  “Was ever a young man so generous and so beautiful?” Donn asked the other spectators.

  “He may not be able to defeat Oisin,” Blamec conceded, “but he’s already made himself very popular.”

  The women, watching, were of the same opinion.

  When the games were concluded and the poets recited the last praise-poems in honour of Finn’s dead wives, Finn sadly gathered their trinkets and treasures. Had either wife brought property to the marriage, he would under the law have been entitled to keep it now, but all that remained were their personal jewels and ornaments, their mirrors, their clothing, their jewelled cups, their looms and needles.

  Manissa’s things Finn returned to her family, together with a gift the equivalent of her father’s honour price, quite astonishing the old chieftain.

  But he sent nothing to Cormac Mac Airt.

  They sat each on his respective hilltop, with a sea of anger between them.

  “I fear you made a mistake,” Fiachaid told Cormac. “You appear to have alienated your commander. What if war breaks out? What if—”

  “There is peace,” Cormac said firmly.

  “This is Erin,” Fiachaid replied.

  And so it was. The Ulidians broke the truce at midday on the longest day of the year, storming down from the north with painted faces and howls of fury to attack Tara in force.

  Fiachaid, who had grown paunchy and forgotten his battle skills, found himself thrust unprepared into the heart of war, and without even waiting for Cormac’s authorization, sent a desperate message south to Almhain. “Come to us!”

  Finn sought out Cailte. “Walk with me.”

  “Where?”
r />   “Just … out. Outside the walls. Under the sky.”

  Leaving Almhain of the White Walls, they strolled out across bogland, drifting aimlessly while Finn’s sentries stood at his gates, weapons at the ready, and waited. The Fíanna waited also.

  Finn walked for a long time without speaking, but Cailte was a patient man. At last Finn said, “He insulted my wife, Cailte.”

  “I don’t think he meant to insult Manissa. I truly don’t. Cormac isn’t like that and you know it.”

  “I wanted her to have the same honours Ailvi received.”

  “And she did, you saw to it.”

  “The Ard Rig himself should have wept over her!” Finn cried suddenly.

  Cailte waited a moment before replying in a gentle voice, “You didn’t.”

  Finn turned toward him. “Didn’t I? Just because you don’t see my tears, Cailte, doesn’t mean they are unshed. The bitterest weeping happens inside.”

  Cailte changed the subject. “What will you do now? You command the Fíanna and the king has sent for you, for you and the army. Without you …”

  Finn nodded. “Indeed. Without me … Cormac knows that. He chose to forget it for a time, but now he remembers. I suspect that right this moment he wishes he’d come to the funeral games.”

  “He was doing what he had to do, Finn. That’s what it means to be the nobility.”

  “How would you know?” Finn asked harshly.

  “Because you’ve made us nobility too,” Cailte told him. “You’ve put obligations on us we never had before, so I can recognize those on Cormac. And you can too, if you think about it.”

  Finn gave the thin man a long, searching look. “And the obligations on myself,” he said at last. “I recognize those.”

  He sighed, a sound dragged up from the bottom of his spirit. “It would be a good day to take the greyhounds and chase hares,” he said wistfully, his eyes sweeping the horizon. Then he turned around and set his face toward Almhain. “Come on, Cailte,” he said in a changed voice. “We’re needed.”

  Before the sun set, Finn and his men were armed, organized, and on their way to Tara.