Cold as he was, he stood on Iogenán’s ramparts to watch her until she’d paddled her way to the island.
‘We’re to be just friends, are we?’ he said to the dawn, ‘Lady, if you think that, you’re even madder than I thought you were.’
Chapter Six
Not all the candidates got their wolf on the same night that Finn got hers. Aragon and Bevo had both chosen Finn’s method but the bitches they picked for the trap turned out to be seductive wash-outs, unable to tempt even the most sex-starved male wolf to his death. Bevo subsequently used Blat’s bitch, this time successfully; Aragon resorted to the wolf-pit method that Niav and Muirna and Tailltin had decided on and, although it took time, there were eventually six wolf-tails ready to join the others won by previous candidates in the gallery of Hag’s Island.
The celebration feast was uproarious. Iogenán had sent sides of pork and venison to the tower for Christmas, but with the wolf-hunt hanging over them none of the candidates had felt like eating, so the meat had been packed in ice to await this occasion.
Outside, the world had frozen hard. Blat had to crash a stave through the ice on the lake by the steps every morning to get water and to keep the ducks happy. But inside the hall there was warmth from peat fires, candles, good food and the knowledge that they had passed the second stage of their training with honours. Until Niav stood up and said: ‘I’m sorry, it’s no good.’
Scathagh, looking more horrendous than usual with a wolf’s tail over one ear, stopped eating and the others put down their cups in the general dread of what the girl was going to say. They had become not so much a group as a pack, each one’s welfare dependent on the others, able to sixth-sense what another would do under crisis circumstances – it had saved their lives more than once. Niav had always been the vulnerable one in it, but until now their group strength had managed to cover up for her. Their corporate mind had always contained in it the knowledge that the pack’s increasing physical prowess merely reminded Niav that her baby would never grow up to know anything like it. Muirna put out her arms as if she would prevent Niav admitting what they all knew, but the girl moved away from her.
‘It won’t work,’ she said. ‘It nearly does, but then it goes again. I could manage everything if it weren’t for my baby. Muirna killed my wolf for me. I didn’t want to. I don’t want anything except for this nothingness to stop.’
She went out. All eyes turned to Scathagh. ‘What can we do?’
Scathagh shrugged and returned to her meal. ‘Nothing.’
* * *
In response to a message from him Finn met her cousin, Nessa, on Swan Island – no man was allowed to visit Hags’ Island, or wanted to.
Rare among the Partraige, Nessa was a worrier, a man concerned with correctness, who would pursue a detail until it dropped dead from exhaustion. He sat on a stool in Finn’s hut, fidgeting and talking. She gathered, without him actually saying so, that war raged in his soul between pride that she had once been the Comarba of Kildare and shame that she had been brought so low.
He did not approve of Scathagh. ‘Are you all right with her?’ he asked, ‘These survivals of the old days should be allowed to die out; it is not right that women should have to undergo such things. It gives them strange ideas.’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘Would you be wanting to marry again, do you think? There are those who have approached me with a view to it.’
She was touched and amused. ‘Really?’ Then she paused: ‘What do you mean – “again”?’
Nessa held out his long hands to the fire. ‘We’re not cut off here, cousin, you know. I go to Dublin twice a year to trade hides for the tuatha with England and Normandy and, although I say it myself, I do not think that the Partraige have ever suffered through my dealing.’
‘I am sure they have not.’ His thin jawline was peculiarly muscled; Blat had once told her that Nessa believed food should go down to the stomach well masticated, and chewed each mouthful forty times.
‘I hear things. And it is said – forgive me, cousin, this is a matter of business and must be approached as such – that there was a priest present on that disgraceful night; words were uttered, there was a question of marriage…’ It wasn’t until he blanched that she knew how formidable she had become.
‘I will not discuss this.’
‘No, no, of course not. But, cousin, rid your mind of the personal view and the circumstances. If it had been an ordinary rape… well, the man was an Englishman and I think, under English law, if we could produce the priest and prove the marriage – yes, I know you did not consent, but legally the man would be required to marry the woman. In the ordinary way.’
‘Nessa, continue on this line and I’ll take you by the neck and throw you into the lake.’ The realisation that she probably could deflated some of her anger with the stupid little man.
But Nessa couldn’t leave it. ‘Don’t you be distressed now; this is business. The man may have had goods which are rightfully yours.’ Nessa would lie awake at nights at the thought that any of his family were missing something to which they were entitled. ‘I merely want to make enquiries on your behalf when I go to Dublin in the spring. I might even go to Bristol. He was a Bristol man, you know.’
‘I don’t want to know. Leave me alone.’
‘But I think I must…’
‘Oh, do what you bloody well like.’
* * *
Muirna and Finn were practising Scathagh’s Ploy Number Six, only to be used in extreme circumstances, because it was lethal. Both of them were wearing iron collars. The others were practising wrestling with Dagda, who was being infuriating and saying things like: ‘Can’t you attack harder than that? When I want to be tickled to death I’ll let you know.’
Then she said: ‘What’s the matter?’ All five of the candidates had suddenly become still because they were only five.
‘Where’s Niav?’
‘She was here a second ago.’
They moved, running for the steps to the tower door, which was open. Finn slipped and clawed to the top on her hands and knees. ‘Please don’t,’ she was begging, ‘Please don’t.’ She was saying it as they climbed down the still-swinging rope ladder. They saw Niav for a second standing on the steps which led directly to the hole in the ice before she went into it.
They flung themselves down, plunging their arms into the water to grab her when she should bob up again, but Niav had kicked herself under the ice. They could see the green-white, blurred shape of her hands pressing against its underside to walk her away from them. Aragon ran for Blat’s stave and began thudding it into the ice, following the movement underneath, but the hands pressed determinedly on until they slowed and fell away and there was just a dark shadow, like a seal, rolling to show what might be a face and then rolling again in a current that took it deep into the lake.
* * *
The bell on the roof of Hag’s Castle hadn’t rung for help in ten years, but it rang now. ‘There’s one of the women under the ice,’ reported Goll, and Iogenán laid a hand on John’s arm, though his own face was white. ‘There is no need to rush, my son. She is dead at this minute.’ They knew the lake so well that after they’d questioned the man who’d brought the news, who’d had it shouted at him from the tower, they could estimate which current had taken the body and where it would be debouched. They gathered down at a backwater inlet a mile away under overhanging alders which striped it in the moonlight, and hammered at its ice until they had uncovered a long, black finger of water. After that there was nothing to do but wait. More flares were brought, somebody handed round ale. Baccaugh joined them, carrying his box of holy oil. ‘Was it an accident?’
Niall of the Poems turned up with his small harp and sang quietly a song of mourning for a drowned woman. ‘The crabs have your eyes,’ he moaned, ‘Fish swim through your white arms.’
Iogenán tried to comfort the Pilgrim. ‘There, don’t be worrying. It won’t be her. She’s strong. It’s only the
weak ones who go, and them so damaged that they’d be no use to anyone anyway.’ The Pilgrim didn’t seem to hear him so Iogenán left him alone.
On the Maumturks Hills some wolves were howling as if for a dead enemy.
‘There’s something,’ shouted one of the men further out on the ice, as an indistinct darkness travelled slowly below their feet. John saw a white face streaked with black hair, which was what he had been expecting to see. Baccaugh began muttering the prayers as the body was lifted out of the water.
‘Leave it,’ said a voice, and a woman shouldered her way into the crowd. ‘She’s ours. We’ll carry her to the church.’
Baccaugh looked up. ‘Not until I know about it, you won’t. How did this woman die? I’m having no suicide in my church.’
Dagda stared him out. ‘An accident. She slipped on the step.’ The other women from Inis Cailleach were with her.
Baccaugh asked them: ‘Do you say the same?’
‘Yes,’ said Finn.
The priest sighed. ‘God have mercy on her soul and yours.’
John unfolded his arms and flexed fingers which had gone numb; he had been standing still for so long that he staggered briefly as he moved. He watched the women wrap their dead in a cloak and carry her away.
Later that night, just as the priest was getting off to sleep at last, with the comfortable shape of his wife fitted against his back, he was woken up by the Norman pilgrim and hauled out of bed. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Has the world gone mad this night? Put me down, you foreign bastard.’ Kicking and swearing, Baccaugh was carried out of his house and into the comparative warmth of his cowshed and the smell of ruminated hay. Across the lane the light of candles flickered in the church where the hags were keeping a vigil over the body of their companion.
‘Now then,’ said Sir John, ‘Regard this as confessional and shut up about it. I want you to exorcise me. I’ve been bewitched. Spelled. Possessed by some demon.’
‘Serve you right,’ said Baccaugh, ‘Show me the demon that did it and it’ll have my blessing.’ But he was intrigued. ‘Who bewitched you?’
John jerked his head towards the church. ‘One of them, the crazy one I brought here. She’s bound me with a magic which means I can’t think of anything else. It’s unnatural. I thought it was her under the ice just now…’ Baccaugh saw that the man was trembling, ‘…It’s unknightly to feel like this and I want it done with. I want her out of my mind.’
‘“Ah Corydon, Corydon, what is this lunacy you’re possessed by?”’ quoted the priest, who was a romantic. He got up from the straw and fetched a bucket and began milking his cow; he might as well use this hideously early morning to advantage. ‘It may not be a spell, my son. There are natural explanations for feelings between a young man and a maid. If you could win her…’
‘The name’s John,’ said John impatiently, ‘and just between ourselves, Father, I don’t want to win her, I want to screw her. It’s all I think about. If I could do it I’d be happy to undergo my penance, but since that doesn’t seem likely, her being as mad as she is, the church will have to intervene. I want rid of her, finished. And don’t tell me it’s bloody natural – I’ve never felt like this in my life.’
The priest’s hands moved rythmically up and down and milk hissed into the bucket. His head was against the cow’s side and he hummed as he worked. ‘Scathagh has the old power, no doubt about it,’ he said, ‘and the good God knows what she teaches those who fall into it. Well, my son, there are procedures against witchcraft which the blessed church has laid down and it may be that we could try some as a protection against this Galatea of yours.’
‘Finola.’ Sir John stood up. ‘When can we start?’
‘After that poor creature is buried,’ said the priest firmly. ‘Until then I have a lot of praying to do.’
* * *
John afterwards blamed the failure of the anti-witchcraft exorcism on the priest’s love of Virgil. Himself, he followed all the procedures to the letter, drinking the disgusting purges Baccaugh concocted for him, patiently enduring the sprinklings of holy water, repeating uplifting psalms and St Paul’s thunderings to the Galatians against the witchcraft of the flesh. But what stuck in his mind were the words the sentimental old fool would utter softly, almost helplessly, as they looked out on the lake together, weaving the enchantment it contained closer about him than ever.
‘More sweet than thyme, more fair than pale ivy,
more white than swans you are to me.
Come soon, when the cows through the meadows are homing,
come soon, if you love me, my nymph of the sea.’
When the thaw began and warmer air from the Atlantic raised mist from the ice of the lake so that John could no longer see it, the priest said: ‘Are we doing any good here, do you think?’
‘No. The moment the roads are open I’m off to join the O’Conor in his war.’
‘Have you ever thought of marrying the woman? There’s nothing like marriage to kill an enchantment.’
Sir John looked down at Baccaugh, appalled. ‘Marriage is business,’ he said. ‘The future, my whole advancement rests on marrying for advantage. If you think there’s any profit in marrying a penniless madwoman from some swamp, then I don’t.’
‘Our boys marry for advantage too,’ said Baccaugh calmly, ‘but they have another wife or two for pleasure, though it’s very cross my bishop would be to hear me say so.’
The gulf that lay between the Irish and the stern, upright Christianity of the Norman way of life yawned before John and shocked him into the realisation that he not only must, but wanted, to leave this place with its mist and its sensual siren harps which could cling to a man’s soul like weed to his legs and drag him down. It did him good to recognise it. His sinews were stiffened. He would go off to the Irish war and then return to the clean, clear, masculine thinking of Fitzempress’ court. ‘I’m joining the O’Conor,’ he said, ‘I won’t be back.’
‘“Soft meads, cool streams you would find here, and woodlands, dear Lycidas,”’ murmured the priest, ‘“A paradise where we could have grown old together.”’
‘The name’s John,’ Sir John told him, ‘and shut up for Christ’s sake.’
A week later he left Lough Mask for the O’Conor court at Tuam. Iogenán’s household and Baccaugh saw him off. He thanked them all courteously and tried to urge his horse into a trot though the mud brought about by the thaw sucked at its hooves. He didn’t look back.
‘“But I’m a soldier,”’ completed the priest, ‘“forced by insensate zeal for the War God to go where weapons fly and the foe’s in battle formation.” Ah the poor lad, the poor pilgrim.’
* * *
The hopelessness which waited to ambush them at every set-back seeped through the Inis Cailleach tower as did the mist, rotting mental and material fibre. The Hy Fiachrach girls keened for Niav until the place reverberated like a bell-chamber. Aragon and Finn grieved more quietly, and Dagda went off on a lone hunting expedition into the mountains.
Scathagh let them wallow for a week and then called a council of war: ‘Training begins again tomorrow.’
‘I’m not beginning again,’ said Aragon. ‘There is no point any more, there never was.’ She had the courage from knowing that all the others agreed with her.
Scathagh’s awful head swivelled towards her. ‘How interesting. What are you going to do?’
‘Go home. The seas will be open soon and the O’Conor said he would pay my passage.’
‘And what will you do when you get there?’
Aragon shrugged: ‘What can I do? Marry again, I suppose, but what man would have me without a dowry…’ her head went down into her hands as she envisaged the sort of man he would be.
‘A man, though,’ said Scathagh, ‘we all must have one of those to protect us, mustn’t we?’ She was making them nervous. ‘What would you like to do?’
Aragon pushed back her thick, black curls. ‘Like? I would like
to go into the shipping business. There’s money there, and possibilities to build up a fleet of traders and…’
‘Then why don’t you?’
Aragon stared at her. ‘I have no money. I am a woman. I have no ship.’
‘You had a ship, or your husband did. You are owed its salvage at least. Get it. There are laws – man-made laws I grant you, but they can be made to work for us if we know how to use them.’ She spat onto the floor. ‘Now listen to me. Niav failed the course because she couldn’t survive what men had done to her. Men are the enemy. Never forget that. When eventually you leave here you will be going into enemy territory, but if you finish your training you will be equipped to survive in it because you will not be weak and you will not be afraid.’
‘We’ll be misfits,’ said Tailltin.
‘Misfits can survive. Well, what will it be?’
‘Survival,’ they said.
* * *
In the early spring Iogenán took his pitifully small army to swell the ranks of Connaught. Men useful to the community like smiths and horse trainers and tanners and poets overnight turned into boastful warmongers brandishing newly-polished spears and galloped off with them.
The women on Inis Cailleach went on with their training, perfecting the skills they had acquired and learning new ones. Scathagh gave them lessons on law, not only Irish law, but Norman, and how to manipulate it to their advantage. She also taught them duplicity. ‘If you’re going to flourish among the enemy,’ she told them, ‘you must learn to lie, cheat and steal.’
They were taught to disguise themselves, and had to go to the aenacht at Cong dressed as old male pedlars – the fish glue with which Scathagh stuck on their goat-hair beards smelled awful, but nobody seemed to expect pedlars to smell of violets and they got away with it. While Scathagh kept a look-out from the top of the tower they had to invade it from the shore without her seeing them, swimming, lying still under water and breathing through a reed stuck up through the surface when she looked in their direction. If she spotted one of them they had to go back and start again. This wasn’t as difficult as the assignment to steal Iogenán’s favourite hunting spear from the wall of his hall, although even that wasn’t as tricky as Scathagh insisting, when they got back, that they should lie to her about how they’d got it and then cross-examining them on their story.
Daughter of Lir Page 20