He left his chariot and took Éremón by the elbow. “Walk with me,” he suggested.
Éremón wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “That wasn’t so bad, Amergin; why did you startle me like that? Why come with every appearance of bad news? You played a cruel trick, and I will remember it.”
“You have not asked about your first wife,” the bard said. He tried to cushion his next words, but there was no way to make them any easier.
Éremón goggled at Amergin like a fish on a hook. “Odba? Dead?” He spoke the two words separately as if they had no connection. In his mind, they did not, could not. Wounds and fever and a vital, living woman suddenly dead and gone … it was too much to take in.
“I cannot believe any of this,” said the chieftain of the northern Gael, staring at the spoils of the chase heaped in wicker carts. The carts were still leaking blood.
A change took place within Éremón that not even a druid could have predicted. Before the sun had set, he was referring to Odba as “my beloved wife.” During her funeral, he wept copiously. After she was buried under a cairn built specifically for her, he talked endlessly of Odba’s exceptional beauty, her noble grace, her incredible courage.
While Taya recovered from the near rape and gave birth to a healthy infant, she had to listen to comparisons with Odba that made it sound as if Taya were the poor second choice. Which in Éremón’s mind, she was. After Odba was gone.
There was no doubt now that the natives on Ierne must be exterminated root and branch, once and for all. Éremón summoned every warrior in his command and sent a message to Éber Finn to do the same.
A fresh army of the Gael was required.
Éremón’s instructions were unambiguous. “Search the hills and scour the valleys, look behind every tree and under every bush, drive out the savages who murdered my mother and dear wonderful Odba. Slaughter them. Slaughter every one, even the smallest child. Pups grow into hounds.”
TWENTY-THREE
THE TÚATHA DÉ DANANN LEARNED about the new Mílesian campaign in a roundabout way, as they had learned most things since the Day of Catastrophe. During her ceaseless wanderings, Shinann observed a fully armed war party marching through the fields with deadly intent.
She followed them from a safe distance. Like many warriors, they were arrogant, never looking back, always assuming their enemy was in front of them. When they found a small Ivernian settlement—only three families—they killed them without mercy. Including the children.
Shinann returned to the caves to report what she had seen. She came to us first because, in spite of his protestations that he would not be our chieftain, everyone brought everything to the Dagda. The mantle of true authority becomes like one’s skin; it cannot be tossed aside.
The inhabitants of our cave that day included innumerable sleeping bats and wide-awake children who were desperately bored. When Shinann appeared unexpectedly, they made her welcome. Little Piriome even seized her by the hand and would not let go.
The youngsters crowded around us while Shinann related the fate of the unfortunate Ivernians. Because my cousins were hanging on every word, she turned her narrative into an adventure story to entertain them. She wisely omitted the more gruesome details, but the younger boys were enthralled by her description of warriors carrying brightly painted shields and gleaming weapons.
I was reminded of my misplaced delight in the word “rebellion” at my first Being Together.
Among the children, only Rimba realized the implications of Shinann’s information. In a voice that was not quite steady, he asked, “Are those men going to kill us too?”
Piriome burst into tears.
Melitt gathered the little girl to her bosom and glared at Rimba. “Have you no sense at all? Now look what you’ve done; you’ve frightened your sister to no purpose.”
Rimba asked innocently, “Would it be all right if I’d done it for a purpose?”
Our laughter disturbed the nearest cluster of bats. They did not fully wake up but rustled their wings in soft protest. Our gentle, accommodating companions.
It might be best to stay where we are, the Dagda said in my head.
I concentrated my thoughts. We cannot remain here. This is no life for the children.
Glancing at him sideways, I saw his sparse eyelashes flutter. He had heard me, then. And what about you, Joss? What about your life?
I want one! I replied silently, but so fiercely I startled myself.
The old man turned and smiled at me. If you want a life, you must go out.
He stated a fact I had been avoiding. Knowledge comes to us in one of two ways: either from outside or from inside. Inside myself, I knew what I should do but was unwilling to acknowledge it. In the caves, I could be an adult to the children while still feeling like a child with Melitt and the Dagda. I wanted to be both.
Under the circumstances, “going out” involved radical change. If I chose to make a life for myself outside the cave, I would have to take the others with me—all of them, not just the children and the elders. The surviving Túatha Dé Danann could not be left alone in the dark without leadership. We were a tribe or we were nothing at all.
But if I was willing to take on the responsibilities of a chieftain, I would have to set my own doubts and vulnerabilities aside. Give up being a child, when the child within me was still alive.
In addition, I would have to convince the other Dananns to accept me. When I gazed into a pool of still water, I could see the reflection of a man looking back at me, but did everyone else still see me as a boy?
Was I the only person to face such a dilemma, I wondered, or did it come to others too?
Some questions are so personal we can never ask them.
That night we went foraging as usual, those of us who were old enough or strong enough for the task. The best foragers were the women, who were well aware of hungry mouths back in the caves waiting to be fed.
As usual, Droma was in dreadful pain from his back, but he put on a crooked smile and did his share of the fishing. Droma could wade into the river and tickle a trout’s belly until it jumped up on the bank. Agnonis carried baskets for the rest of us to fill. As soon as one was filled, he produced another. Even without hands, Saball excelled at gathering soft fruits. When he brushed his one good arm along a bush, a rich harvest fell at his feet.
Tamal, who would give a violent start if a single leaf rustled, was assigned to be our lookout. Fortunately, we did not encounter any Mílesians, but I kept expecting them to leap out at us.
We collected all the edibles we could find and returned just ahead of the bats. After we had distributed the food, I ate my portion, then wrapped myself in a couple of blankets woven by my mother—oh so long ago—and fell into a fitful sleep.
When I awoke, the decision was made.
I lay rolled in my blankets, snug and comfortable. The bats and the children were asleep; not a sound out of any of them. By stretching time just a little, I could remain where I was and postpone the uncertain future. The smell of bat manure was not so unpleasant after all. I could still be a child if I wanted to, trembling on the brink but never quite becoming …
No. That is not who I am.
I threw my blankets aside and stood up.
“Joss? Are you awake?” Melitt’s voice was breathless. “I need you!”
I found her farther back in the cave, where my head almost touched the roof. Melitt was crouching beside the Dagda. He lay on his side with his arms tightly clasped against his chest. “He fell down, and I can’t get him up again,” Melitt told me apologetically.
I knelt on the floor of the cave with my knees on dry bat excrement and put one hand on the old man’s shoulder. It felt surprisingly thin; that broad shoulder that once had carried me so easily. “What happened?”
“I am quite all right,” the Dagda replied. His voice was strangely distorted.
Melitt said, “If you were all right, you would get up!”
“I will when
I can. Stop fussing over me, woman.”
Although it was daylight outside, in that part of the cave there was perpetual twilight. I could not make out Melitt’s features, but I knew her eyes were pleading with me.
“Can you put one arm around my shoulder?” I asked her husband. “Then I can help you stand up.”
He replied as if we were having a casual conversation. “I cannot move my arms. Or my legs. It’s too bad really.”
Melitt gave a little gasp.
In that moment, I became totally calm. It was an odd sensation, growing deaf to the clamor of anxiety within me. If I let either of them know I was upset, it could make the situation worse. “Don’t try to move,” I told the Dagda. “Let me do all the work. I can lift you on my own.”
I did lift him. The ease with which I raised him from the floor of the cave told me how strong I had become.
His legs would not hold his weight. He sagged against me. Melitt led the way to his bed—blankets spread on dry grass and leaves, like my own—and we eased him down. Quietly, so as not to wake the children.
His wife and I looked at each other across his supine body.
Without the Being Together, is there another healing ritual that would help him?
Melitt did not answer; obviously, she could not hear me.
However, the Dagda mumbled a few words aloud.
I bent down and asked him to repeat them. His eyes were closed and so were his lips. But to my relief, the rise and fall of his chest told me he was still alive.
Leaving Melitt to sit with him and care for the children if they awoke, I made my way to the other caves in search of help. Surely one of the Dananns would know what to do for the suffering man. The calmness that I had assumed stayed with me, sank into me like sunshine. The decision that had been made in the night was irrevocable. My dearest wish was for the Dagda to wake up so I could tell him.
I discussed his condition with the others as if it were a minor mishap. Only one of them had seen it before. Cleena, Samoll’s widow, told me that something similar had happened to her father. “He had become quite frail, so we were not surprised when he fell ill. We kept him warm and fed him like a baby, and he recovered a little, but he was never himself again. He just faded away. There was nothing anyone could do.”
Faded away. Mongan had faded away. My heart sank; the Dagda had limited time left with us.
He had made a wise choice in having Melitt for his wife; she took bad news without flinching. An old woman herself, she must have given more than a few thoughts to mortality.
“When it was too late, there were so many questions I wanted to ask my father,” I told her. “If the Dagda gets some strength back, I need to know.” The scale of what I needed to know was daunting, but Melitt understood. “Ask him,” she said.
“Will he give me simple answers?”
From within a net of wrinkles, her bright eyes twinkled at me. “That man does not know how to give simple answers, Joss. But I’m sure you can understand what he tells you.”
I hoped her faith in me was justified.
When I ran my hand across my jaw, I could feel my growing beard; it was sprouting soft and springy.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE BRIEF PEACE OF IERNE was shattered again, but many of Éber Finn’s men were unwilling to join Éremón’s army. Their land had been plowed and their grain committed to the care of the earth. They declared the climate as ideal for barley; extravagant forecasts were being made as to quality and size of yield.
Meanwhile, the ewes were lambing; the majority of them gave birth to twins. A few even had triplets. Soon the cows would begin calving. What wise man leaves his holding at such a critical time?
As if that were not enough, their womenfolk had long mental lists of the things they wanted done—more than a man could accomplish in a lifetime.
“At the end of the day,” Éber Finn declared, “it does a man a power of good to sit with the feet up and a bowl of beer in his hand and listen to the birds sing. We did our fighting already, why should we do any more? I’m sorry about Éremón’s wife, but he still has a perfectly good one. Let him stay home and enjoy her.”
The few southern warriors who traveled north conveyed these sentiments to Éremón. He furiously replied that Éber Finn was betraying him. “Just wait until those tattooed savages turn on him and he needs my support! He can appeal to me all he likes, but I won’t help him. Never again. I hope they burn his grain in the fields and drive off his cattle.”
This unfilial attitude had a strong influence on his followers. Men who greased their chins at their chieftain’s feast knew it was politic to adopt his views.
In the south, Éber Finn’s followers felt the same.
The border areas where the two factions met responded predictably. A man from the north claimed that one from the south had come across the river at night and taken his seed bull. A southern woman insisted that a northern man had tried to steal her from her husband.
There was no way of proving any of it. He said, she said, and witnesses were prejudiced. The lack of brehon judges among the Mílesians was deeply felt. Now that there was no going back, the settlers realized there were a number of things they had neglected to bring from Iberia—including more people who had memorized the law and could recite it word for word.
Twenty years was required to train a brehon judge.
For every problem that was discovered, someone had to be blamed. Like ice cracking, fissures of discontent spread. When one of Odba’s sons met Taya in the chieftain’s hall, he said coldly, “My mother would be alive if it were not for you.”
Amergin was in the hall that day and heard him. The bard was well aware of the underlying angers. The brothers had quarreled in Iberia too, but until Mílesios died he had been able to control his fractious sons. The Gael were like their hot-blooded horses: they required a light touch but firm hands. A pair who pulled in two different directions would overturn the chariot. The damage could be irreparable.
As Amergin made his way homeward, he thought about the souring situation. The Mílesians had left Iberia as a close-knit family. Since arriving here, they were degenerating into enemies, yet the land could not be blamed. Ierne—Eriu—was lovelier than they had imagined, and her bounty was greater than their expectations.
Laying the blame at the feet of the sacrificer was no good either. Colptha had done appalling damage for his own satisfaction, but his wicked tongue had been addressing a receptive audience.
Amergin had carved a number of harps for himself before he made Clarsah. None of those earlier instruments had been able to sing as she did, though the hand that shaped the wood and strung the strings was the same.
The flaw was in the timber.
Lost in thought, the bard allowed the chariot horses to slow to a halt. They stretched their necks. Lowered their heads. Gratefully began cropping grass. One by one, the birds in the trees concluded their bedtime songs. The only sound remaining was the contented munching of the horses. Amergin started to take Clarsah out of her case and capture the moment but decided against it. Serenity was precious.
Serenity was the color of Shinann’s eyes.
While he stood dreaming, a gentle twilight descended, a silvered darkness that was not darkness. Under the wondering gaze of the bard, Ierne began to shimmer and glow from within like the vanished Túatha Dé Danann.
He fully expected to see her coming toward him. A little woman no higher than his heart. “Shinann!” he cried, reaching out to her.
There was no reply.
At last, he gathered up his reins and drove home.
Shinann returned to the Dananns’ current refuge. Some of the tribe already had gone foraging, but Melitt stood in the mouth of one of the caves, cradling Drithla. “If you want to come up, we have extra food,” she called down to the young woman on the riverbank. “My husband is not eating his.”
Shinann hesitated. It would be cold in the Dagda’s cave. The Dananns relied on light from the
outside during the day, and at night they lit a single candle made of beeswax, but for the sake of the bats, they never built fires inside the caves. The little flyers whose apartments they shared were too sensitive to wood smoke.
On this particular night, Shinann, who rarely reacted to the weather, felt cold. In her cave, she had an extra cloak among her belongings; a deliciously warm cloak she could hug around her body. But the Dagda had become central to their lives. Although healing was not her gift, she wanted to see him first.
As she walked along the narrow spine of limestone that gave access to the front of the caves, she was not thinking about the old man. Lost in thoughts of someone else, she let her foot slip. Weathered limestone crumbled under her heel. Shinann flung out a hand to catch herself.
In the twilight, a much larger hand closed over hers long enough to steady her. Then it was gone.
Melitt saw Shinann lose her balance and start to fall.
Tucking Drithla under her arm like a loaf of bread, the Dagda’s wife rushed forward to help the young woman. The effort was wasted; Shinann made a recovery that was astonishing even for one of the agile Túatha Dé Danann. “Where is he?” she gasped.
“My husband? He’s inside with Joss. Come along now, and watch your step; you nearly tumbled into the river.”
Little Drithla chose that moment to scream in protest at her undignified handling. Melitt had to stop long enough to readjust the baby. While she waited, Shinann scanned the rapidly deepening twilight but saw no one else, neither on the path behind her nor on the riverbank below.
The Dagda and his bed were in the center of the cave. There had been considerable discussion between Melitt and Joss as to the best location for the stricken man. Melitt wanted him close to the cave mouth, where she could see him better. In order to keep the sufferer warm, Joss thought he should be at the rear of the cave, away from any draught.
Only the Stones Survive: A Novel Page 18