‘What’s wrong with that? But if I just thought that, I should shut down Scathagh’s Academy.’
‘Why don’t you?’
He gave a shout of laughter: ‘Good God, woman, my army isn’t big enough.’ Then he sobered up. ‘So what will you do? Marry? I can find you a good husband if you want one.’
‘Thank you,’ said Finn, ‘I shall never marry.’ Abruptly she told him what she had told nobody else. ‘I have to learn two things, and then we shall see. I have to learn to kill and to write.’
The King of Connaught blinked. ‘I gather Scathagh is teaching you the first; why the second?’
She leaned forward. ‘On their way to the Council of Mellifont some of the churchmen from Leinster and Munster called in at Kildare. Among them were the annalists from some of the great abbeys of Southern Ireland. I asked Sister Aine to find out from the monks what they had written against the date when Dermot invaded Kildare and had me raped. Some of them mentioned the attack on the abbey, though they didn’t mention me. The abbeys which were in Dermot’s pocket didn’t even mention the attack. The chronicle of Waterford, for instance, contained only the fact that the hazelnut harvest had been exceptional that year.’
Ruairi worked on it. ‘They’d written you out.’
‘Yes.’ The Word of Man.
‘I see.’
She was warmed that he did. Here, sitting in front of her, was a human being who encapsulated the spirit of the country which had given her refuge and which she had come to love. Whatever he did he was the supreme leader of all Connaught, whose luck was his people’s luck, who brought good harvest with his own fertility, the bridegroom of his land. The fact that he was probably still warm from the bed of Cuimne, a plougher of that pretty little earth, reinforced his symbolism to Finn. ‘He fought against his brothers like a dog,’ came the far-off voice of Boniface. ‘Nobody’s perfect,’ answered her Partraige ancestors, ‘He is our king of kings. Right or wrong you’re stuck with him because in him is two thousand years of this country’s birth and death, earth and water.’
Finn felt herself surrendering herself to him as his subject, prepared, like a good subject should be, to fight for him and the great tolerance he stood for. But she applied a last test.
‘What do you think of Cuimne’s baby?’ she asked. Against one of Scathagh’s strictest rules, Cuimne had one day brought her baby son for the candidates on Inis Cailleach to see. Dagda had hustled them both out quickly, but not before Finn had glimpsed the child. As with some of the other candidates, she found the sight of babies distressing. Cuimne’s was a fine baby boy, but flawed in having one of his hands completely covered by a birthmark as if it had been accidentally dipped in a mauve adhesive. Cuimne explained away the blemish as the result of ill-wishing by O’Conor’s queen, who was jealous of her and her child.
If Ruairi O’Conor was a man whose children had to reflect his own pride in himself, he would be ashamed of it.
The O’Conor beamed. ‘A son fit for a king,’ he said, ‘I shall call him Cathal of the Wine Red Hand.’
Finn went down on her knees and pressed her cousin’s hand to her forehead. ‘My lord,’ she said, ‘If there is any way I can ever help you, I shall do it.’ In the end you opted for what goodness you could get.
O’Conor took her homage pleasantly. ‘Regard the help as mutual. Are you going to see my friend the Pilgrim again, incidentally?’
‘Don’t you trust him, my lord,’ said Finn. ‘I’ve seen him before somewhere. I don’t remember where, but he’s not trustworthy.’
‘I like him,’ said the king, ‘and he certainly likes you.’ He was intrigued by how intrigued John was with this strange young woman who had once held one of the greatest positions in the land, not knowing who she was. He wished they could get together. Ruairi liked his subjects to be happy, their sexual pleasure enhanced his own, and an unsatisfied woman was an untidiness to be abhorred. He didn’t believe in chastity.
Why it came to her then she was never sure, but Finn had a piercing and disturbing moment of perception into the O’Conor’s character. He had fought for the kingship, but he lacked the statecraft necessary to to keep it in this modern world; his attention span on matters of importance would be limited, easily distracted by the minutiae of relationships, unable to concentrate on essentials. He would see things as he wanted them to be, just as he had offered her back the Comarbship without being able to deliver it. He was a light king, however lovely a man. Dermot was the bastard of all bastards but he was the weightier king.
It was an insight that made Ruairi vulnerable to her, just as the Partraige were vulnerable, but no less worth fighting for. He had come to her offering his protection, and they were ending up with her wanting to give him hers.
‘Just take care, my lord,’ she told him. She watched her king get into his curragh and row himself back to the island that contained Cuimne and her baby, taking with him much that was wrong and a great deal that was right with her country.
* * *
Seated in Iogenán’s sweating-house in the bog, Ruairi O’Conor looked with interest at the Pilgrim’s chest. ‘A nasty bruise.’
‘I fell on a tree stump,’ said John, carefully hiding other bruises, ‘How much longer do we have to stay in here?’
‘An hour.’
‘Judas priest, I’ll never stand it.’ It was not only bloody hot, it was claustrophobic crouched here in stone hut which resembled nothing so much as a seven-foot coffin in which a fire had been burning.
‘You’ll never get the rheumatism. I’m away back to court, John. Will you come with me?’
‘Wore you out, did she?’
Ruairi stretched. ‘What a woman. But there’s things to be done; Christmas court to hold, kingdoms to win and snow on the way. I can’t afford to winter in Partraige country, pleasant as it might be.’
‘When do you move against Ulster?’
‘In the spring.’
‘Can I come with you?’ To observe an Irish war at first-hand would complete the information for Fitzempress.
The King of Connaught was touched. ‘Pity on the poor MacLochlainn. We’ll beat him by ourselves, the two of us.’
‘I suppose I’d better stay here until then,’ said John, casually, ‘I promised Iogenán I’d Christmas with him, and I don’t want to appear rude.’
‘Nor would one want to miss battling with a madwoman.’
‘Do you know what the mad bitch did yesterday? I happened to be trotting along the western side of the lake…’
‘The bit where the Scathagh women go every day?’
‘Near there. And she comes galloping up on that colt of hers – this is no word of a lie – and challenges me to a race. I have to say, O’Conor, that I am surprised at the way you allow your women subjects to carry on.’
‘The Partraige have always been a law unto themselves. Did she win?’
‘She certainly did not, though it was a bloody near thing. I had to go some. She rides like the bloody wind and the colt’s got speed. I don’t mind admitting, O’Conor, that one of the reasons I’m staying on is out of interest to see just how much madder she can get.’
‘What other course could a sane man take?’ asked the King of Connaught before being dragged into the grey outside air by his feet and thrown into a pond on which a film of ice was beginning to form.
* * *
The women from Inis Cailleach bowed to their Christian upbringing and filed up to church for Christmas Mass along a path that had been dug through snow. In his sermon Baccaugh the priest prayed for the people of Erin, and especially those of Leinster, to stop their sinning so that God would ameliorate this winter with which He was displaying His displeasure. John had already discovered that the people of western Ireland reacted with something like terror to frost and ice, as if they were not used to them – which, indeed, they were not. Their hell was cold; eternal punishment for sin being not fire, but blocks of perpetual ice.
John kept his eye on the
row of shawled heads which stood apart from the rest of the congregation. ‘Which one’s Scathagh?’ he asked Niall.
‘Ach, she won’t be here. She never comes.’
‘How can the priest allow that?’
Niall shrugged. ‘Scathagh’s a law to herself.’
An irritation with this Irish tolerance for aberrations of behaviour burst into anger in the breast of John of Sawbridge. It was an insult to God that some hag should be allowed to absent herself from His house, let alone teach women to fly in the face of their nature. Under the feudal system to which he belonged every man and every woman knew their place in the general good; they weren’t allowed to wander at will out of the structure into some horrific cult left over from the Dark Ages. ‘You’re a decadent lot for all your charm,’ he thought with contempt, ‘and that’s why we’re superior to you and that’s why one of these days we’ll conquer you.’
He spent most of the Twelve Days of Christmas so drunk on Iogenán’s mead that he missed the new development on Inis Cailleach in which Scathagh’s pupils came ashore, carrying special spears and so wrapped in fur that they looked like bears, mounted the ponies that were kept for their use by the lakeside, and set off on expeditions into the Partraige mountains.
‘Do you fancy a bit of wolf-hunting now?’ Iogenán asked him, when the general hangovers were better. ‘With this shite winter they’ll be getting troublesome and we’ll be needing to nip them in the bud.’
‘I don’t mind.’ The wolf wasn’t his favourite quarry but it might keep his mind off things for a bit, and he certainly owed Iogenán some return.
But just as they’d got their equipment together and were about to set off, Blat came running in through the gates and whispered something to Iogenán, who in turn whispered to his huntsmen, who spat and dismounted. John only managed to hear a couple of the words. Iogenán turned to him in apology: ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he said, ‘The wind’s wrong now. Maybe tomorrow.’
John nodded. The wind was from the north as it had been for days. He watched the others return indoors and went down to the porter at the gate who, being tuppence short in the shilling, answered what he was asked.
‘What’s a conoel, Goll?’
‘Wolf woman,’ said Goll, crossing himself, ‘and it’s a hard night for it, a pity on the poor creatures.’
‘Open that bloody gate.’
He charged through it on one of the ponies which still had wolf spears strapped to its side. He could see the small band trotting off from the lakeside and then fanning out to take separate paths because whatever it was they were going to do, they were going to face it alone like the empty-headed, half-baked, embarrassing bunch of amateurs they were. He knew his madwoman now, however she was dressed, and he kept under cover until she was well on her way and then followed. He could tell from her every movement that she was scared shitless, and well she might be.
After two hours along tracks which went higher and higher, he rounded a bend to find her in the middle of the way facing him with a spear at the ready. When she saw who it was she blew out her cheeks in relief and then straightened up. ‘What the hell do you want?’
‘If you’re killing wolves you’ll need somebody to watch your back.’
‘One wolf. I’ve got to kill one wolf and I know exactly how I’m going to do it. Young man, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I need your help.’
‘It’s become a habit.’
‘Well, break yourself of it. Go home.’
She set off and he set off – in the same direction. He heard her swear something disgusting in Irish and she turned round. ‘If I let you come along, will you promise not to interfere? Just stay still?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right then.’
She’d gained confidence in the last weeks, he realised. That use of ‘young man’ had contained authority as well as being an attempt to distance herself from him. But he knew her; she was his quarry and, like a good huntsman, he was getting inside her – not as he wanted to get inside her, but it was a start – and he knew she was glad he was there. She’d been frightened on the journey up by the moaning of the wind, and the shadows. Her little superstitious Celtic brain had conjured up ice monsters, and her memory had resurrected whoever-it-was who’d sent her mad in the first place. Turning to face the steps coming up behind her hadn’t been a bad example of courage.
They went on for another hour and then turned off the track into what, in summer, would have been a stretch of high pasture and was now a good place to break your ankle, with hummocks and dips hidden under level snow. Towering above its north side was a crest of rock and nestling under the rock, with its opening to the south, was a beehive hut such as shepherds and herdsmen built for shelter. She took the spears out of the sheath on her pony and tethered its bridle under a stone. He did exactly the same. Carefully skirting the edge of the field so as not to leave footprints across it, and sniffing the wind, she made her way to a clump of small rocks which were within a short spear’s throw of the hut door. He followed with some respect; whether this worked or didn’t work, she’d certainly thought it out.
She threw a fur down under the rocks and sat on it, indicating a place for him. Pretending to stumble so that he could get nearer to her, he sat down.
‘What now?’
‘Keep your voice down. We wait. Put that at the back of your soul.’ She handed him a flask, and he knocked back a fair bit of it. When she’d put her hand inside her furs to get the flask out he’d felt her body heat.
She began to whisper, telling him about the wolves which she’d been studying in preparation for this night; she said they weren’t as dangerous as people thought they were, lived in family groups or some such nonsense. She wittered on while he went nearly mad every time she moved and he could smell her hair and skin. Whispering was evocative of bed. She must know what she was doing to him; all this lust couldn’t be going in one direction – the good, male, red-blooded God wouldn’t allow it. But he’d bide his time. He was a better hunter than she was.
‘In bad winters like this one,’ she was saying, ‘they keep down their breeding by having only one she-wolf and one male mate in a family. The other males go celibate and suffer frustration.’
‘I know how they feel,’ thought John. He wasn’t even put off her by hearing her talking in this detached way about such things.
‘And that’s why…’
From the rock crest, there came far-off sounds. When the man and woman turned over on their stomachs and looked up they could see flurries of snow and hear grunts. ‘They’re playing,’ said Finn. ‘In a minute they’ll sing.’
And they did, three of them, outlined against the moon, sitting in a circle with their muzzles up in the air, howling to raise ancestral hairs on the back of John’s neck.
Almost immediately there was a scrabbling inside the hut and a dog appeared in a doorway dragging on a rope around her neck to join in the howling.
‘Isn’t that Blat’s bitch?’
‘Half wolf herself, in season, and no better than she should be.’ Finn’s teeth showed in a grin that was lupine and John had a twinge of sympathy for the male beast that was going to come down from the crest in a minute.
It happened just as she’d planned it. A huge grey suitor came puzzling his way down the rocks in answer to the bitch’s invitation, sniffing suspiciously, and made a wide arc round the western side of the field until he was some yards in front of the entrance with the bitch on heat pulling at her rope and egging him on every inch of the way.
Very slowly the woman stood up and raised her spear. The wind was in her favour and anyway the wolf was too interested in whatever the bitch was telling him to notice any other movement. ‘Please, God,’ prayed John, ‘don’t let her miss. For both our sakes, don’t let her miss.’
The great, terrible shape against the snow sprouted a spear in its side, and John blinked. Somebody who knew how to do it had taught her to throw. The wolf rolled over and
lay still, and the yelping of the bitch in the doorway turned into whines. The loony lifted her head and gave out the high, boastful, ululating yell he’d heard Celtic huntsmen vent when they’d killed. She ran forward, drawing a knife.
What wasn’t in her plan and what she didn’t see in her triumph was two slinking shapes coming towards her from John’s side of the hut. He grabbed one of his own spears and threw it as he’d never thrown before, then bent down to pick up another, but the second wolf had run off. He went over and dragged his spear out of the body and stood between it and Finn, who was busy trying to saw her wolf’s head off and had noticed nothing.
She looked up at him. ‘Admit I’m a great hunter.’ But her face was green-white in the moonlight.
‘Never saw a better.’
She indicated her dead wolf. ‘Can you do this? I’ve got to prove to Scathagh that I’ve succeeded, and the body would be too heavy for my horse.’
‘Cut its tail off.’
‘Of course.’
She boasted as they made their way home – the unfulfilled bitch running beside them. ‘What a throw. Did you see it? Right in the heart. None of the Fianna could have done better, Cuchulainn couldn’t have done better.’
Boastfulness was an unattractive trait in a woman, he decided, and he only wished it made her unattractive. ‘What was this enterprise, an initiation of some sort?’
‘An initiative test. And didn’t I pass it?’ She raised her arms over her head in barbaric acknowledgement of her own prowess, and then looked at him with patronage. ‘You behaved well. Apart from one unfortunate lapse, you’ve been quite honourable. For a man.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t see why we can’t be friends. Scathagh says friendship may be possible between a man and woman once the right terms have been established.’
‘I’d like to meet Scathagh.’
They were nearly back at Lough Mask. She turned on her pony to look at him, and she actually laughed. ‘You wouldn’t. Believe me, you would not.’
Daughter of Lir Page 19