by Sarah Rayne
“Once inside it is up to us,” said Amairgen.
“What explanation do we give?” asked Flynn. “Who do we say we are?”
“Travellers seeking shelter. No more and no less.” Again there was the brief sweet smile. “Somewhere in Lethe history was a famous man who said one should never explain or apologise. His name is lost, but his words have survived and they are good words. So whoever he was, let us follow his philosophy.”
“All right. Yes.”
“Come then. If we are to find Joanna, we must not lose any time.”
*
The road they now travelled was like no road any of them had ever seen. “And yet,” said Flynn once, “I believe I could almost identify parts of the countryside. Perhaps after all we have not come so very far.”
“Ten thousand years, or half a league,” said Amairgen.
The landscape was strange and wild. “But it is the blues and the greens of the true Ireland,” said Amairgen in deep content. “The Old Ireland.”
They walked on, neither tired nor hungry, “Although,” said Flynn, “we should stop to eat and rest from time to time, don’t you think?”
They met no one, although several times both Flynn and Amairgen had whisked round, hands on the knives thrust into their belts, only to be confronted with the long empty road. Once, Portan scuttled into the undergrowth at the side of the road as if to take cover.
“A feeling,” she said. “Nothing more. I am sorry. Imagination.” But the two men knew that Portan had not imagined it, and they became warier.
Even so, the road was smooth and easy to travel, and the brief stops they made were refreshing. Flynn was glad he had been able to bring all the food so carefully packed by Michael. Amairgen and Portan had gathered fruit from the orchard at the farm while they waited for him, and there was plenty for all.
“I climbed to the topmost branches,” said Portan. “The sweetest fruit is always at the top. I remember that from — oh from somewhere in the world. I do not know. And I saw the countryside spread out below me. A marvellous thing for me. You cannot imagine how marvellous.”
But both men thought they could realise a little what it must have been like for her. “And it was worth it for these pears,” said Flynn, grinning.
They washed in the streams that ran alongside the path and then disappeared, silver, snakelike and silent into the great forest that fringed the road. They rested beneath the trees and talked, or were silent, and Flynn felt tireless and so charged with energy that he could have torn down the trees and marched up to Tara and battered down the doors single-handed. He felt that he was riding out at the head of a fearsome army and that he was invincible.
At his side, Amairgen spoke softly, “Finn of the Fiana. It is returning to you, my friend.”
Flynn said, “What?” rather sharply, because he was not always entirely sure that he liked his thoughts being plucked wholesale from his head.
“Finn mac Airmail, the great warrior who served the High Kings and founded the ancient and honourable Order of the Fiana, the fighting young men of the old families who swore to defend the High King, and who must undergo stringent tests before they could be admitted to the brotherhood.” He smiled. “They were strong and fearless, but they had also to be educated and cultured. They had to forswear their families and go wherever their leader took them.”
“Harsh,” said Flynn.
“Perhaps. But they were young men of adventure and imagination. They fought battles and routed the High King’s enemies and there was a tradition that no girl of good family could be given in marriage until she had first been offered to the Fiana. I daresay it was not so bad a life,” said Amairgen blandly, and Flynn laughed and was sorry he had been brusque. He took Amairgen’s arm, and began to sing a song he could not remember ever having been taught.
The sun was sinking as they rounded the last curve in the road, and there, against the sky, was Tara, blood red in the glow of the dying sun, every window afire with light … Waiting for them.
Flynn drew in a great breath. “Well?” he said, looking at Amairgen. “Do we in truth go up and request admittance?”
“We do.”
“And if they refuse?”
Amairgen said slowly, “They will not refuse. I cannot tell why that will be or how I know. But I do know. It is preordained this, Flynn, and we must go on and play our parts.”
“Very well then,” said Flynn. “Here we go.”
*
Eochaid Bres had not really wanted to be King. He had much preferred to leave all that kind of thing to Cormac who, after all, had been brought up to it, and he had not really understood why Mother and Bricriu had thought it necessary to depose Cormac in the first place. He had not, truth to tell, been entirely comfortable about deposing Cormac, because wasn’t Cormac the true King? Wasn’t he a direct descendant of the first rulers of Ireland? Eochaid knew how it worked, because Mother and Bricriu had explained it to him. It was father to son and so on, all down the generations. Well, down the centuries really, because it was certainly hundreds of years since Dierdriu of the Nightcloak had ruled Ireland with her special blend of charm, strength and sorcery. They had never had a High Queen to match her since, although it did not do to say so in Mother’s hearing, of course. Mother called herself the Queen Mother now — “Quite correct,” Bricriu said with one of his sly smiles — and liked to think that she would make as strong a mark on history as Dierdriu had. Eochaid thought glumly that she probably would, but for different reasons, and wished that he could close his ears to the sniggers of his courtiers. The Queen Mother would send for, and tire out a dozen men in a night, they said. Absolutely insatiable. Bricriu the Fox was thinking of setting up a detachment of the army especially for her, they said. Six months’ secondment to the Queen Mother. Six months’ service to the Queen Mother, added the younger ones, and grinned, and told how you’d be reduced to half an inch within the week. She’d devour you, they said, and spit out your bones in the morning.
Eochaid tried not to hear the talk, because it made you feel a bit of a fool, well, more than a bit, to know such things about your own mother. It lessened your dignity, and dignity was important if you were a High King. Cormac had never bothered of course, but Cormac had been brought up to it all, and in some mysterious way did not need to bother. Eochaid wondered whether it was perhaps because Cormac had not bothered about dignity that people had obeyed him. You could call Cormac a lot of things, but dignified was not one of them.
Eochaid had not been very happy about the revolution which Mother and Bricriu had mounted. Well, he had been very unhappy about it indeed, if he was to be truthful. And it had all been a bit tedious in the beginning, because there had been meetings, at which he usually fell asleep, and there had been Strategy and Tactics, and it had all been a touch boring.
But Mother had been insistent; the Wolfline must be deposed, she had said, and Bricriu, called up from Tara to be their guest, had nodded and smiled in his foxy way, and said: yes, to be sure they must, and wasn’t this to be the Grand Revolution that would free the people of Ireland from tyranny. Eochaid had not previously considered Cormac in the light of a tyrant, and found it difficult to do so now, but he did not say this, in case he was wrong. It would not have done, especially not when they were going to make him High King. He would quite like to be High King — well he would like it a lot, really.
And so they had raised an army — several people had said with a smirk that Mab had enjoyed doing that, but Eochaid had pretended not to hear — and they had ridden down to Tara from the north which was where they lived. “In squalor,” Mother had said, and made one of her grand gestures, but Eochaid had quite liked living in the north, where life was quite peaceful and where he knew everybody. He would not know everybody at Tara, and he would probably forget people’s names and it would all be very worrying.
He had asked why they had to depose Cormac, and Mother had said impatiently, “Because he is a tyrant and because the Wo
lfline has ruled for too long,” and Eochaid had said, “Oh. I see.” And gone away more puzzled than before.
He had quite enjoyed riding out at the head of the army, with the lion pennants fluttering in the breeze (Bricriu’s idea), although he had not really enjoyed beating Cormac’s men because he had had the dreadful suspicion that Cormac had only been beaten because Tara and the soldiers had been taken by surprise.
“Unprepared?” Bricriu had said, suave and smooth as butter from the churn. “Why, Your Majesty knows I sent two Marshals of the Lists to issue the challenge.”
They all knew, of course, that Bricriu had done no such thing, and Eochaid had mulled this over and had wondered whether it might not have been outright treachery, although he had not liked to say so.
He had been allowed to appear at the battles, “But not to fight,” said Bricriu firmly. “We dare not risk Your Majesty being wounded.”
This had been a pity, because he would have enjoyed a good fight, although he had not really wanted to fight Cormac particularly, and he had been secretly relieved when they told him to stay behind the lines. And of course, it had been grand to come riding triumphantly into Tara after Cormac had been taken to Scáthach; Eochaid had had a new white palfrey for the occasion, and worn his best robes.
There were endless Council Meetings which he had to attend, with rambling discourses which he did not understand, all about taxes and levies and the paying of Senboth’s Pence and Partholon’s-geld, and feu and scutages and bondages, and other unpronounceable things, which all seemed to relate to money. “So sordid,” Mother said with one of her grimaces and one of her wonderful airy waves of the hand. But, “Necessary,” said Bricriu firmly, and tried to drill Eochaid into understanding about venery rights and the proper maintenance of the northern borders, and the bestowing of lands to people who had done the High King a service.
There were delegations, as well; visits from people who wanted tasks performing, towns rebuilding, or City Gates manning.
Eochaid went along with it, and was gracious to visiting chieftains, and tried hard to distinguish between people who ought genuinely to be helped and those who were out for a few cheap acres, but he thought it all a great waste of time. But Bricriu said no, they must do it; the chieftains in particular had to be kept happy because they would ride out to defend the King, they could whip up an army in no time at all, a massive and truly terrifying force which, added to Eochaid’s own Royal Guard, could repel all invaders. Tara was invincible, of course, everyone knew that, but Eochaid must never forget that this would not deter enterprising enemies from launching attacks now and again. Far better, said Bricriu, far safer to be able to call on the chieftains to ride out. All they had to do was to get Conaire, who had a good-ish vein of eagle blood in him, to send out a call to the birds, and the message would be with the chieftains inside an hour.
Eochaid had seen the force of this, of course; even so, it all got a bit tiresome. Nor did he altogether trust Conaire, who had been a drinking crony of Cormac’s.
There was so much to remember. The chieftains from the north liked a bit of life: bull-feasts and jousts and hunting the white stag. They usually visited Tara on the feast of Dagda the Father-God, when flares were lit the length and breadth of Ireland, and of course, on Beltane and Samain, which meant bonfires, which was all very well if you did not have to consider the restrictions on tree felling.
The chieftains from the south were not nearly as wild as their northern counterparts. They were smooth and courteous; they considered themselves men of culture. They considered themselves widely read, which meant that Sean the Storyteller, Eochaid’s official ollam, had to ransack the great library for something they would not have heard. It was all very well to tell the northern chieftains the tried and trusted tales about Amairgen the Traveller, and Bran the Voyager; or to recite the famous and magical Táin Bó Cualinge which was so hedged about with rule and ritual that no one dared to speak during the recital for fear of saying the wrong thing and spoiling the spell, and during which Eochaid nearly always fell asleep. The southern chieftains knew all about Amairgen and Bran; they knew about the Táin as well, and they knew all of the side rituals to it, and they had to be given something a bit more up-to-date. They liked the company of young girls, and Sean the Storyteller was usually despatched to round up as many of the village girls as could be persuaded to yield their virtue which was not, properly speaking, Sean’s job, but which he usually volunteered for, because he could sample the wares for himself on the way.
And so what with one thing, and what with another, the visits were apt to be bothersome. They were certainly expensive, because you could not give a bull-feast without a pretty generous supply of bulls, which did not come cheap these days, and village girls nearly always had venal fathers who would not be letting Kate or Ethne or Niamne come along up to the feasting without an earnest of payment, which generally meant a field or two, if it did not mean a fully built house.
Eochaid found it all very tedious, although he did not say so to Mother who had worked so hard to put him here — “With my life’s blood, Eochaid Bres,” — or to Bricriu, who would look shocked and fix Eochaid with his queer colourless eyes, and say, “But Your Majesty knows that to be a High King of Ireland is the greatest honour that can befall a man.”
Eochaid knew it was an honour, but it did not stop him from wondering how to pay for bull-feasts, or trying to find out whether the trees were truly dead or only snoozing to fool everyone, or falling asleep during the recital of the Táin and nodding off in Council Meetings.
“His Majesty’s dozed off again,” they said when he did that. “Oh well, let him be, for he contributes little enough to the discussions anyway.”
He knew he did not contribute very much, but he thought they might at least have pretended.
He was going to assert himself tonight.
Eochaid was going to let them all see he was the King. It was all very well for Bricriu and Mother to plot their plots and manipulate their pawns; Eochaid was not a pawn and he was not going to be manipulated and plotted with, and that was that.
He dressed carefully in the tawny velvet that he always fancied became him best. It was not that he precisely emphasised his antecedents, although he did not see why he should not, because lions were as good as and better than wolves any day. No, it was simply that he liked wearing golds and bronzes and rich ambers.
He trimmed his beard because he did not want to appear unkempt and he combed his thick springy golden hair, and dabbed a touch of scented oil behind his ears and then he was ready.
*
Tara was en fete tonight, eager to entertain a minor chieftain — who was not so minor that he could not command a degree of respect and a not inconsiderable army — and to pay compliments to his lady, who was not so aloof that she could not be judiciously wooed by the younger men. The vast Sun Chamber, built for Dierdriu of the Nightcloak, and angled so precisely that it caught the first dawn light every morning and the last starlight every night, glittered and sparkled with life. It gave Eochaid a headache even to look at it. What gave him a worse headache (and had, in fact, even kept him awake at nights) was the way in which the people of the ancient Bloodlines had taken to clustering together every evening. There they were now, all seated around a table at the far end, apparently talking and laughing quite openly; some of them ostensibly eyeing the women. They made Eochaid vaguely uneasy. He could not forget that they had all been Cormac’s friends and extremely loyal to Cormac; he could not rid himself of the idea that they might be plotting in secret to bring Cormac back from Scáthach.
He had, greatly daring, put this notion to Bricriu, and Bricriu had looked startled, and said, “Oh no, Sire, I don’t think they’re planning a Restoration. We’d surely know if they were.” He smiled the fox-smile. “We have our own spies, remember.”
Eochaid knew all about Bricriu’s spies, who were rather unpleasant, slightly rat-faced people, given to scuttling out of the way whe
n you approached them.
“Ratblood,” said Mother, with the shrug of one to whom such things are beneath notice. “Bricriu makes use of some nasty little tools at times.” But even she had added, “Although, if they are loyal, I do not think it matters what they are.”
Loyalty was very important in a spy, Eochaid quite saw that. You could not have spies turning about and selling secrets to the other side, especially when the other side might consist of Cormac and of people who wanted him back at Tara.
“Oh, the Bloodline are not plotting Cormac’s restoration,” said Bricriu. “Dear me, Sire, we know all about the Bloodline and their little plans.”
Eochaid asked how did they know.
“Because,” said Bricriu, surprised, “the spies listen to everything they say.” And then, as Eochaid frowned, “That is what spies are for, Sire.”
Eochaid had not liked to point out that the problem was not what the Bloodline were saying that they could all hear, but what was being said that could not be heard. Speech without words. The Samhailt. That was the real problem.
“But,” said his mother, when Eochaid carried this weighty problem to her, “the Samhailt has been outlawed.”