Finn Mac Cool

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “Don’t go!”

  “I must, Grania,” he said, trying to reason with her. “Maybe there’s still time to … to make things all right.”

  “I don’t want things to be all right. I want to go on just as we are, you and me together.”

  “It won’t be that simple,” he warned her. “We can’t just go on together and trust we’ll be forgotten. I heard the sound of the hunting horn; that means someone’s looking for us already. And Finn Mac Cool’s the best hunter in Erin.”

  “I won’t go back to him.” Had she been standing, Grania would have stamped her foot for emphasis. “I want you, not him, not that old man. I want to be your wife.”

  Even in his distraught condition, Diarmait was man enough to be flattered, and far enough under her spell to be glad of her words. But he had been thoroughly trained. He knew the demands of honour. He would have to go back, if only long enough to try to explain.

  The oath of loyalty he had pledged to Finn Mac Cool lay in him like a stone.

  “You can’t be my wife, my contract wife, while you’re wife to Finn Mac Cool,” he reminded her gently. “We can be lovers, we can enjoy a marriage of lesser degree, but a woman can be contract wife to only one man at a time.”

  “He can have more than one wife, though. Why can’t I have more than one husband? And stay with the one I choose?”

  “It’s the law,” Diarmait said.

  “I refuse the law, then,” she replied. “I refuse all law that keeps me from you!” She threw her arms around him.

  It took all the fortitude Diarmait possessed to disengage himself from her embrace. “Try to understand, Grania. I want you too, and I’ll come back to you. But first I must return to Tara and undo the damage I’ve—we’ve—done. I must.”

  She had begun to love him, truly love him. She heard the need in his voice and reluctantly submitted. “Go if you must,” she said. “But give me your word you’ll come back to me.”

  The return journey to Tara seemed much longer than the flight from it. Twice he had to hide from a search party. With every step Diarmait took, his crime loomed larger in his mind.

  He had stolen Finn’s wife and the High King’s daughter! What compensation would the brehons demand for such a theft? Grania was a princess; under the law, he would owe the injured parties not her honour price, but theirs. Theirs jointly, Finn’s and Cormac’s together, king and husband.

  The combined property of himself and his father and all their tribe would not be enough to pay it. He had impoverished his people.

  By the time the palisades of Tara rose before him, he was sick with hopelessness. He actually turned to go back to Grania because there seemed nothing else to do, when the sentry on the Slige Dala gate hailed him.

  Fortunately for Diarmait, the sentry was Lugaid’s son. “Hssst! Run quick and hide yourself in that hollow! I’ll join you!” Lugaid’s son, after making sure no one was watching, put deed to word.

  “Now, Diarmait, tell me. What in the name of the four winds possessed you to lay violent hands on the High King’s daughter and steal her from her wedding bed?”

  “Is that what they’re saying I did?” Diarmait asked with a sinking feeling.

  “That and worse things. No one seems quite sure just what did happen, actually, except the two of you were seen leaving the banquet together. and shortly afterward neither of you was to be found in Tara.”

  “Is Cormac very angry?”

  “It isn’t Cormac you need worry about, though he is as angry as a hornet’s nest. Your problem is the Rígfénnid Fíanna. You not only took his wife from him, but you know yourself he’s always demanded we treat women with the utmost respect and obey every aspect of the law concerning them. Have you not heard him say, time and again, that kidnapping women is strictly forbidden to the Fíanna? But now you’ve done this. You’re in more trouble than a quartered deer boiling in a fualacht fiadh.”

  Diarmait slumped onto the ground and buried his face in his hands. “I never meant any of this,” he said muffledly.

  “A bit late now,” was the accurate reply.

  “What am I to do? I need help, advice. Could you find Oisin inside and bring him out to me? He’s my friend, I can trust him.”

  “Wait here and I’ll try,” promised Lugaid’s son. “But keep your head down and if anyone catches sight of you, run like a hare!”

  Hot with shame and cold with fear, Diarmait waited for an eternity. At last Lugaid’s son returned with Oisin and some other members of the Fíanna, mostly of Diarmait’s own age. They made a circle around the unfortunate man, further concealing him.

  Oisin said, “This is a terrible twist you’ve got yourself into.”

  “And I knowing it. But what am I to do?”

  “Return what you’ve stolen,” said Cailte Mac Ronan, stepping through the circle of younger men. His face was stem, his eyes agonized.

  Diarmait shook his head. “I can’t. She won’t go back to Finn. Nor, to be honest, do I want her to,” he had to admit. “She’s put an enchantment on me. I think.”

  Cailte narrowed his eyes to slits, trying to see into the inmost recesses of the other man. Finn believed in the power of enchantments, he knew. It could be possible that something such as had happened with Finn and Sive had happened again with Dorm’s son, and if it had, there was no fighting it.

  Cailte gave a weary sigh. “I see.” He sounded almost envious. “You don’t mean to return her, then.”

  “I can’t. I just came back myself to … to find out what had happened when our absence was discovered, and to try to explain.”

  Oisin spoke up then. “Does Crania want you, Diarmait?”

  “She says she does.”

  Oisin sounded openly envious. “I would never dare take a woman promised to Finn Mac Cool, but if she wants you and you want her, then neither the sky nor the sea should stop you!”

  Cailte whirled on him. “Don’t encourage him, do you not realize what he’s letting himself in for? Himself and the girl too?”

  Diarmait said, “What am I letting us in for, Cailte? How has Finn reacted?”

  The agony in Cailte’s eyes grew more pronounced. “You had not been gone for very long before those who were still awake, and saw you leave together, made Finn aware of the fact.”

  “They would,” commented Lugaid’s son. “Conan, I suppose?”

  “Indeed. You know him. But others too, whispering, speculating. At first Finn tried to shrug it off. He said you had undoubtedly escorted the girl to her bed to wait for him. He left the hall then and went to join her.

  “He came back with a look on him such as I have never seen, and I’ve seen him in some bad times. He stood in the Doorway of Fate … of Fate! … and cried aloud like a man in mortal pain.”

  Diarmait was almost afraid to ask. “What did he say?”

  “He said ‘Abandoned!’ in a terrible voice, like a voice issuing from a tomb. He cried the word aloud three times, then he collapsed in the doorway. We carried him back to what should have been his marriage bed, but he refused to lie on it. He seemed in mortal agony, yet he would not let the physician touch him. He writhed from side to side like a chained animal and gave great hoarse dry sobs.” The deflected pain in Cailte’s eyes made Diarmait wince.

  “We only eloped together,” he tried to explain. “It wasn’t so terrible as that. Men and women have run off before …”

  “Women have run off before,” Cailte stressed. “From Finn. And this one was one too many.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to understand. You have to take the woman and run and keep running if you value your life and hers.”

  “Would he hurt Grania?” Diarmait asked in disbelief

  “I honestly don’t know what he’s likely to do. He’s gone … mad, Diarmait. Quite mad. I’ve seen Finn disturbed in his head before, but never anything like this. Something seems to have broken inside him.

  “He wanted, so much, to have a wi
fe again and a warm bed and a cheerful companion. I know he did. He once had a wife he loved very much—”

  “My mother,” interjected Oisin, who had heard all the stories.

  “—and I think Finn hoped to find something of that again with Grania. Now she’s left him too. You could not have done the man as much damage if you’d run your spear through his heart.”

  Diarmait was appalled. “If I went to Finn right now and asked his forgiveness and mercy, would he—”

  “Don’t even think it,” Cailte warned him. “Just run.”

  “Where can we go?”

  “Anywhere, as far from here as possible.”

  “There are hounds after us already, I heard them.”

  “Cormac sent that party searching for you,” Oisin explained. “He gave the order while Finn was too upset to issue any commands.”

  “But Finn will recover,” Cailte warned. “He’ll recover enough to come after you himself, and then there’ll be no tree tall enough for you to climb or sea wide enough for you to swim to escape him. And he won’t listen to apologies or to reason, I promise you. I know him. As he is now, he won’t listen to anything.”

  Diarmait said, “Why do you even speak to me, you who are the commander’s closest friend, if I’ve done something so terrible to him?”

  “Because I am his closest friend,” Cailte replied. “If and when he ever comes to his senses again, he will regret any violence lie does to you or the girl. I know him. So until that day comes, I will do what I can to protect the two of you so he will have less to reproach himself for.”

  “You love him very much,” Diarmait said, suddenly aware.

  “As you and Oisin love each other, I do. I guard his back,” Cailte added simply.

  Oisin went to stand beside Diarmait. “And I guard yours,” he vowed.

  “Even against your own father?”

  “We do not choose our parents, but we choose our friends.” The words were difficult for Oisin, but he said them. As far back as he could remember, he had been the son of Finn Mac Cool and proud of it. But the man he had seen raving inside Tara a short time ago was not the father he loved and admired. Today’s Finn Mac Cool was like a wild animal, terrifying in its unreasoning rage, and he did not want to be associated with such a creature. Diarmait Mac Dorm, pale with anxiety but still sensible, still his merry-hearted companion, was his choice of the two.

  In the shadow of the walls of Tara, the young men made their decisions. The majority went with Oisin to stand beside Diarmait, silently pledging to him.

  We would have so pledged to Finn, Cailte thought but did not say aloud, remembering how it was with himself and the original nine. He respected Oisin for his courage.

  Lugaid’s son went back to stand guard at the gate as if nothing had happened in order to allay any suspicions, while Oisin and some of the others went to the stables to get horses for riding out across the plain. But they did not mount the horses. Instead, they brought a pair to Diarmait in his place of concealment and urged him to take one for himself and one for Grania and flee before the sun went any farther toward the western sea.

  “You have hardly any chance of escape,” Cailte concluded sadly, “but none if you stay here. Go now, quickly, and we’ll do what we can to help you.”

  So Diarmait Mac Donn, bright young hero and most popular member of the Fíanna, was forced to turn his back on Tara and run for his life.

  At first he galloped with tears in his eyes. But as he drew nearer the place where Grania waited hidden, he began to feel her calling him, drawing him like a tidal tug, and his pain eased just a little.

  He would salvage something. Out of this youthful madness, he would take something of value and hope it made the cost worthwhile.

  28

  THIS TIME FINN WAS NOT LONG INCAPACITATED BY MADNESS. Within a day and a night he was in control of himself again, or in as much control as he could be of the raging beast within him. Too much hurt had been done to him, too many times. He had met the world with a smile on his lips and poems in his heart, and the world had bashed and battered him and taken from him everything that mattered, including the hard-won honour of the Fíanna.

  Only Oisin was left to him, and when he saw his son’s face, he knew Oisin’s sympathies were with Diarmait Mac Donn.

  I am alone, Finn thought. I am as alone as I was after I left my foster mothers and went roaming through the wilderness. Being alone did not bother me then. It seemed natural. Why should it bother me now?

  He thought this with his head, but he did not feel it in his heart. From some place deep inside him, in the marrow of his bones, rose an ache beyond endurance.

  Once he would have talked to Sive about it, trusting the fact of her being to soothe away the pain, any pain.

  But Sive had left him.

  Muirinn had left him.

  Now Grania. And when he allowed himself to even think the name ot that slant-eyed girl, black rage rose up in him and choked out all his rational thinking like briers choking healthy fruit.

  Cormac Mac Ain was deeply upset. “I am sorry about this, Finn,” he told his commander “More sorry than I can say. It appears now that my daughter went willingly. She may even have enticed young Diarmait, from what one or two of the servants are saying. If that is true, she has disgraced not only herself, but me, and I will accede to any punishment you demand of her.”

  “Punishment?” Finn’s teeth grated on the word. “Revenge? I foreswore revenge a long time ago.”

  Cormac gave a small, relieved laugh. “It’s glad I am to hear you say it, because—”

  “But I take back that oath,” Finn went on relentlessly. “When I find Diarmait and Grania, and I will, I will be revenged on them as no man has ever been!”

  In horror of the thing he saw in Finn’s face, Cormac took a step backward. “You’re very angry and you have every right to be, but I beg you, remember the law. We can work out compensation. In all the years I’ve been High King, there are hundreds of situations that have been brought before the brehons instead of resulting in bloodbaths. Compensation restores goodwill between people. I’ve upheld that principle as has no king before me. In this matter too, we can arrange for compensation …”

  “I cannot be compensated for what’s been done to me,” Finn said flatly.

  “You can of course, there’s always a way. We can have my daughter shorn of her hair perhaps, and the young man’s clan, even his tribe, will be forced to pay—”

  “I cannot be compensated,” said Finn Mac Cool. “But I can exact vengeance.”

  Arguing with him was useless. In the end, Cormac had no choice, as one of the aggrieved parties, but to support him. They would combine forces in the search for the runaways.

  What happened when Diarmait and Grania were found was a problem for the future.

  An icy Finn Mac Cool, embittered almost beyond recognition, issued orders to the Fíanna. Huge hunting parties were to be formed to comb Erin from north to south and from east to west. Bands were to station themselves at every bay and harbour, denying the fugitives any chance of escape by boat.

  “That’s not possible,” Goll tried to tell Finn. “There are hundreds of hundreds of places around the coast of Erin where one can launch a boat. We can’t guard them all.”

  “Try,” commanded Finn Mac Cool.

  But Diarmait and Grania were not making for the sea.

  When Diarmait returned to their hiding place with the pair of horses, Grania was overjoyed to see him, but puzzled as to why he had brought horses. “So we can flee more swiftly,” he explained.

  “But I cannot ride a horse, Diarmait. I’ve never even tried. I’d fall off, I know I would.”

  He felt young and foolish. “I should have thought of that.”

  “I can ride in a chariot, though. Can you get us a chariot?”

  “I cannot, I don’t know where …” His eyes brightened. “I do know! There is someone who will give us a chariot! Someone not too far from here. If w
e travel by night, we may be able to reach his home without being caught.”

  Under cover of darkness, Diarmait mounted one of the horses, balanced a fearful Grania on the animal’s rump behind him, and led the other horse at a careful walk. “Don’t go any faster,” Grania kept saying, holding him around the waist hard enough to shut off the workings of his gut. It was obvious she would indeed require a chariot, she would never endure a flight on horseback.

  Diarmait made his cautious, wary way to the banks of the river Boyne, to the stronghold of the chieftain who had fostered him there in the years of his beardlessness. Angus was a strong, proud man who adhered to the old ways and still kept chariots long after the fashion for using them in warfare had died.

  Angus was delighted to see his fosterling. “Come inside and take hospitality!” he insisted. “And your woman too. Who is this? Have you taken a wife?”

  “I am his wife,” Grania announced, sliding thankfully off the horse.

  But Diarmait’s personal honour forced him to say, “She is not wife to me. We have a marriage. By abduction.”

  “By abduction! Good on you, lad! Strong, hot blood in you, then! I thought that sort of thing was forbidden to the Fíanna these days Come in and drink ale with me and tell me all about it, eh? Eh?”

  Diarmait was relieved to know that the full details of his crime had not yet reached far beyond Tara. If they had, Angus might not have given him the same welcome. But he went inside his foster father’s hall and drank ale and ate meat by his fire, and let Angus’s women tend the weary Grania.

  And late in the night, when the shadows of the fire threw grotesque shapes on the walls and the wind rose, he divulged the entire story.

  Angus was understandably taken aback. “Not good, this, not good at all. You have the High King and the Rígfénnid Fíanna against you; that’s quite an achievement for so young a man. And the debt you owe is monstrous. Neither your sire nor I could ever pay such a price.”