Finn Mac Cool

by Morgan Llywelyn

  All they had left was each other.

  Diarmait moved against her, growing hard. She smiled dreamily. “Diarmait,” she said again. In her increasing passion, she turned her head, her unfocussed gaze sweeping along the ruined roof of thatch.

  She drew in her breath suddenly. Diarmait thought it was in response to him as he slid into her warm and welcoming body. But she had seen, framed by dead brown straw, the limb of an overhanging tree. And peering down from that limb, a face she knew.

  Over Diarmait’s shoulder, Grania gazed up at Finn Mac Cool.

  We are dead, she thought.

  Like Diarmait. breaking through the wall, the acceptance of finality liberated something in her. Holding Finn’s staring eyes with hers, she smiled. Slowly. Voluptuously.

  Punishing him.

  Punishing him with the sight of her body joined with Diarmait’s.

  She writhed beneath her lover and ran her hands down his back, fingers following the ridges of straining muscle. She groaned louder than she had ever groaned before, so that the sound carried to the watcher above. Shifting her hips, she clutched Diarmait tightly with her inner muscles to squeeze the utmost pleasure from him, abandoning herself to one last glorious, protracted, rippling convulsion of delight.

  The cry she wrung from Diarmait echoed primal joy.

  Staring at them, unaware that he was simultaneously sweating and shivering, Finn felt a mist come over his eyes. They were so beautiful! He had forgotten …

  He had not forgotten. The mist softened Grania’s piquant features until they … changed. Changed subtly into a lovely, eloquent, remembered face, with huge, wide, doe-like eyes.

  Sive looked up at him.

  And the broad muscular back that shielded her was his own.

  30

  FINN MAC COOL ENTERED TARA BY THE SLIGE CUALANN gate. His fíans followed silently.

  The sentry on duty lowered his spear in a salute, expecting Finn to return the greeting as he had always done before, but the Rígfénnid Fíanna walked past him with no sign of recognition.

  His face was very strange.

  As soon as he had disappeared inside the palisade, the sentry called to the nearest guard on the wall, “Did you see that? Finn Mac Cool’s back!”

  “I see him,” the other replied. “He’s heading for the House of the King.”

  “How does he look to you?”

  “He’s walking very rigidly, I’d say.”

  “You should have seen his face up close. It would put the heart crosswise in you. Do you suppose it’s over? Do you suppose he’s … killed them?”

  The man on the wall could not answer, only stare after the silveryhaired figure in the billowing cloak as it passed through the private gateway to the House of the King.

  Cormac Mac Airt was not alone.

  Angus of the Boyne had arrived that very morning, having at last decided there was nothing left to do but go to the High King and plead personally for the life of his foster son. Donn had tried it already to no avail, but Angus was a chieftain, a man whose support Cormac needed, and he might he willing to listen.

  “If Cormac will agree to forgive Diarmait, perhaps Finn will have to also,” he had told his household before his departure for Tara, with an optimism he did not feel.

  He had argued throughout the morning, and had finally received Cormac’s agreement when Finn Mac Cool strode through the doorway with a face like death.

  Angus’s heart sank.

  “What have you done to them?” he cried.

  At that moment someone else burst through the doorway, ignoring the sentry’s challenge. Only Finn could enter at will; even Goll Mac Morna should have waited for permission. But he had not.

  Hearing Angus’s cry, Goll echoed it. “What have you done, Finn? They just told me you’d arrived. Look at me! What’s happened?”

  Cormac sat silently on his bench, waiting.

  Finn turned to face his old adversary rather than speaking first to the king. “What I’ve done is no business of yours,” he snarled.

  “So you have killed them! You’ve got your revenge, have you? In spite of everything? Then I tell you you’ve dishonoured the Fíanna more than your father ever did! You made it something special, something magnificent we could all be proud of. You gave us … nobility. Now you’ve taken it away. You’ve broken the oath you took against revenge and by doing that, returned us all to where we were before, men not to be trusted, men without honour. Oath-breaker. Oath-breaker!” He hurled the name as an epithet.

  Cormac’s attendants gasped. Angus looked from one warrior to the other, expecting a killing before his eyes. The king rose from his bench, determined to interpose his own body between them if necessary.

  Finn had one hand on his sword hilt, but he did not hook the scabbard with his leg and draw the great blade. “I heard you, Goll Mac Morna,” he said. “I’ve heard every word you ever spoke to me, every criticism. Once I tried to model myself on you and win your approval. I actually admired you; can you imagine? But no more. No more. After this, there is nothing but enmity between us.”

  “Then I’ll take my men and leave the Fíanna!” Goll cried. The skin of his scar was livid and twitching as if with a life of its own.

  “You’ll split the Fíanna permanently!” Cormac shouted. “Stop this, the two of you!”

  But Goll said sneeringly, “Split the Fíanna? There is no Fíanna anymore. Finn’s ruined it. All that’s left are his followers and mine; mine the old, true warriors, his the fawning hounds who lick his fingers!”

  In a faraway voice, Finn murmured, “You should have waited.”

  It made no sense to Goll. “Waited? I’ll never wait for you again! We’re gone!” Throwing one last arrogant one-eyed glance at Cormac, he bolted from the hall, and a few moments later they could hear him shouting hoarsely for his men.

  Cormac sat down slowly, looking at Finn. When he spoke, his voice sounded very tired. “Now see what you’ve done.”

  “I’ve dune nothing, I told him, he should have waited.”

  “What do you mean?”

  It was Finn’s turn to sit down. He lowered himself onto the nearest bench as if his legs would no longer hold him. At a gesture from the king, a cupbearer brought him wine, but he pushed it away.

  “I had them,” he said in a low voice, staring at nothing. “Diarmait and Grania; I had them.”

  “I knew it,” whispered Angus, already grief-stricken.

  “I had them and I left them,” said Finn.

  “Left them … alive?” Angus could hardly believe his ears.

  “Alive indeed. Unharmed. I shall not raise my hand against them again.”

  Cormac let out a groan and wiped his palm across his brow. Angus was still struggling to understand. “You mean you found them and didn’t kill them?”

  The awful mask that was the face of Finn Mac Cool seemed to crack a little, just around the edges. For a heartbeat, a merry boy peered out, a boy who said teasingly, “Is there another language you would understand better?”

  Cormac said, “It’s over, then,” with infinite relief.

  “It’s over,” Finn agreed. “They are safe from me.”

  “And from me,” the king told him. “I had already agreed to forgive them. Angus here convinced me.”

  “But who convinced you?” Angus asked Finn.

  Finn Mac Cool reached out then and took the proffered cup, draining it in one long swallow. He held it up for more and drained that too, as if he could not get enough.

  “Who indeed?” he said at last.

  That was all the answer they got.

  News that the terrible hunt was over spread quickly. Oisin was the first to come to the House of the King and hear the tale from his father’s own lips, but he learned no more than Cormac and Angus had. His relief was equal to theirs, however.

  “You would not have forgiven yourself if you’d done this thing,” he said to Finn.

  “Who told you that? It doesn’t sound
like you.”

  “Cailte.”

  “Och, Cailte.” Finn smiled faintly. “He knows me well, does Cailte.”

  Cailte arrived soon after Oisin. and was heartened to discover that Finn’s stony countenance and fetal glare had faded, were being replaced by a semblage of the old Finn, though one very battered and aged.

  “I think he’s coming back to us,” Cailte said to Oisin behind his hand.

  If so, it would be a long journey. Finn was obviously exhausted, mentally it not physically. Cormac insisted on his being well fed and well rested, given all the time necessary to restore him. The women fussed over him. His rígfénnidi called upon him, one by one, to re-establish the bonds so cruelly strained.

  Only Goll did not come to him. Goll was gone.

  “Deserted,” Finn said to Cailte. He was lying at his ease on a couch in the house set aside for his personal use, and Cailte was lounging in the doorway, eating some of the fruit the women were continually bringing.

  “That’s a hard accusation,” the thin man told Finn. “You and Goll had a quarrel and he left, but that hardly amounts to desertion.”

  “He took his fíans and the officers from Clan Morna with him, and you know he won’t be back. That’s desertion.”

  “I suppose so. But don’t think about it now, Finn.”

  “I have to think about it. I’m the commander. I can’t allow desertion.”

  “What will you do about it?”

  Finn closed his eyes and lay back on the couch. “I’ll have to go after him,” he said.

  Cailte felt a pricking of alarm. Was the Diarmait situation beginning all over again? “Surely you won’t seek revenge?” he said.

  “For desertion? I shall not.” Finn sounded painfully, agonizingly tired. “Goll accused me of being an oath-breaker, but I haven’t broken that oath, as it turns out, nor do I mean to in his case. Going after Goll won’t be vengeance. It’s a matter of discipline. Deserters have to be punished, and only I can punish one of my own rígfénnidi. It’s as simple as that.”

  He seemed to fall asleep then. Cailte waited a little while longer, then took a last apple from the pile on the nearest table and sauntered out.

  Finn was not asleep. He lay behind closed eyelids, looking at a face, a dear face lately restored to him. A face that watched him, lovingly, from huge brown eyes.

  I’m all right, Sive, he said. I think I was … away for a while. But I’m all right now.

  Yet he was not purged of the bitterness. It returned at unguarded moments in waves of anger and resentment directed not at Diarmait specifically, not at Goll, but at the chaos known as fénnidecht, the condition of being a Fir Bolg warrior before Finn Mac Cool had reshaped the Fíanna. Fénnidecht meant running headlong and heedless through life, taking what you wanted, refusing responsibility for your actions, everything out of control … as Diarmait and Grania had been out of control, as Goll was now beyond Finn’s control.

  As Cuhal Mac Trenmor had been out of control.

  Chaos.

  It lay like a dark pool at the bottom of Finn’s mind, waiting. As long as he could hold on to his vision of Sive, he could push it down and back. But when he lost contact with her …

  Now that he had the High King’s daughter, Diarmait applied to Cormac for property suitable to her rank on which to build a fort. Cormac consulted with the brehons at some length.

  “She is contract wife to Finn Mac Cool,” they reminded him unnecessarily.

  “Finn has relinquished his claim and forgiven them.”

  “But the Fíanna does not take property with its women,” Flaithri pointed out.

  Cormac replied, “Diarmait is no longer one of the Fíanna. He has a right to ask for property with her, and I want to see my daughter well cared for.”

  The brehons shut themselves away in the Fort of the Synods, consulted long and diligently, and at last announced they saw no impediment.

  To spare Finn the painful reminder of seeing them together, Cormac gave Diarmait and Grania a landholding at Ceshcorran in the far west, making an arrangement with the king of Connacht in order to secure his daughter’s future there. After a complicated exchange of cattle and bondwomen and sureties, Diarmait was informed it was safe to take Grania away and build a new home for her.

  They left without Finn ever seeing them.

  But he could not forget them.

  Once the pursuit was officially over, chieftains and tribal kings who had helped Diarmait decided they needed to restore themselves to the good graces of the Rígfénnid Fíanna.

  They began visiting Finn, one after the other, each disavowing any sympathy with the former fugitives. “Diarmait Mac Donn brought shame on the Fíanna!” they proclaimed stoutly. “We gave them no help at all. Our sympathies were always with you, Finn.”

  Finn listened with increasing cynicism. The bards were already commemorating the dramatic pursuit, and listing the names of those who fought for Diarmait and those who fought against him. The tale was becoming an epic in its own time, and with every telling it grew, so that common storyspinners in humble huts were soon claiming the terrified lovers had slept “in that very glade beyond this hill!”

  “Diarmait and Grania appear to have visited every clanhold in Erin,” a wryly amused Blamec remarked to Fergus Honey-Tongue, who was telling his own version of the story, replete with new details as they occurred to him.

  But no one told it in Finn’s hearing.

  On the surface, things returned to normal. Ignoring Connac’s offer of another daughter to be his wife, Finn threw himself into the familiar business of leading the Fíanna. There were always young warriors to be tested, sporadic skirmishes and battles to be fought or quelled, depending on the politics of the moment, and in the high, hot days of summer or the crisp days of autumn, there were the hounds and the chase.

  He no longer watched for a singular red doe. He did not think he would find her again in that guise. She was back in his head, safe there. At least she was there sometimes.

  Other times he could not find her but felt the dark pool instead, waiting to rise and flood over him.

  “Your father is permanently changed by what happened,” Cailte advised Oisin.

  “We are all of us permanently changed,” Oisin replied coldly. He had grown; he was a man, his bones long and slabbed with powerful muscle, his sinews taut and hard, his voice resonating in his chest. Among the fénnidi, he had no equal as an athlete, and his successes in battle were already inspiring the bards. Since the pursuit of Diarmait, he and Finn had been estranged, however. He followed the Rígfénnid Fíanna and obeyed orders, but the old closeness of father and son was gone, which saddened Cailte.

  Finn never spoke of it, one way or the other. But Cailte fancied he could see pain in his eyes when he looked at Oisin.

  “Finn was doing what he had to do,” the thin man tried to explain. “His duty, as he saw it.”

  “He saw killing Diarmait as his duty? Have a brehon recite for me the law that made it so.”

  “Och, Oisin, don’t be so hard on him.”

  “And why should I not? Finn’s hard on everyone else.”

  “Hardest on himself,” Cailte replied, but Oisin did not seem interested in continuing the discussion; he walked away.

  Regaining his prestige within the Fíanna was proving a challenge for Finn. Not only Oisin still bore a grudge, but many other fénnidi and officers had been alienated during the pursuit and must be won back. He tried in the old ways, challenging them physically and inspiring them intellectually with spectacular boasts and claims of magic.

  Some listened, believed, responded.

  Oisin did not.

  He no longer saw Finn Mac Cool as magical and magnificent. “Why does he keep on telling those lies?” he asked Fergus Honey-Tongue in disgust.

  Fergus was shocked. “They aren’t lies! No one questions Finn’s honesty.”

  “So I’ve always been told. But I’m no fool, Fergus. I don’t believe that story about
the salmon and being able to stick his thumb in his mouth and know things not anymore. I don’t believe any of his stories anymore.”

  “But you must. We all do especially Firm himself. They are part of him, they make him what he is.”

  “Perhaps. But he’s not the man I once thought he was,” Oisin curtly replied.

  At the back of Finn’s mind lay an awareness of Goll Mac Morna. The matter of his desertion was unresolved; it must be faced eventually. But Firm found himself putting it off.

  He did not know how he felt about Gold.

  The one-eyed man had served him long and well under the most difficult circumstances. They hand always been rivals, but it was a rivalry grown comfortable, a defining fact in both their lives. Goll had been, in many ways, Finn’s standard of honour, though he would never have told him so.

  For that reason if none other, the desertion rankled. And it must be punished, there could be no doubt. Otherwise an unfortunate precedent would be set and Clan Morna would not be the only company of men to simply walk away from the Fíanna when they felt like it.

  But one season passed and then another, and still Finn did not go after Goll.

  Cailte began to hope he never would.

  Oisin took a wife. In far Ceshcorran, Diarmait and Grania had a son, and then another.

  In his own stronghold in the west, Goll Mac Morna began to relax and quit looking over his shoulder every time he thought he heard someone behind him.

  Diarmait and Grania had a daughter, then another son.

  Finn’s silvery hair faded into white almost unnoticed.

  But his vigour was undiminished. He still loved to hunt. When he could, he ranged farther afield, leaving Almhain behind to explore the remotest reaches of Erin with his hounds and his huntsmen. Sometimes some of his rífénnidi accompanied him, as much for the sake of hearing him tell his tales beside a campfire as for the thrill of pursuing stag or boar. They were older, as he was older, and knee and hip joints were stiffening. Going hunting was becoming an exercise in nostalgia, though none would admit it except Conan Maol, who flatly refused to go at all.