Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (70 page)

Next day, late next day, when at least some of my companions were in a fit state to talk, I tried to have a word with Cuchullain. There was the question of the Gold to discuss, and that would be a question of the conquest of the South-East, and that was where Rhiannon was. There would be no need to hurry yet; no harm would come to her among the Irish, I knew, not to a princess of an ancient house of Britain, not to the Mother of Those Below. But once the legions landed, there was no knowing what the Irish might not do to keep her out of harm’s way – her very presence in the island, they would think, would be a lodestone to draw Roman vengeance on them. They had no real idea what the Empire was about, or what the army was for. They saw it not as a great union of peace and trade, held together by an army of engineers and builders and messengers and administrators: they thought of it as a despotism in other interests than their own, symbolised by the fierce shield wall of the legion. The Irish knew well the rule of their own custom: but the rule of law that we live under in the Empire was beyond their comprehension.

However, there was no talking to Cuchullain, now the battle was over. He was surrounded all the time by his fine friends from the North, who came in to Tara all the day, more and more of them. Clan chiefs and pirates they were who raided the coasts of Britain and Gaul, and each other, but who were too cautious to risk the battle, because that was only for desperate men who had nothing to lose: they were ready enough now to share the pickings and rule all Ireland. The only man of importance who had been in the Fianna was Callum the Hairy, and he was the chief of the poorest and most desperate nation of all the North.

But the chiefs who came down brought their own warbands, and though many of those were only armed with cudgels or with knives tied on to the ends of poles, there were enough swords and spears dug out of hiding, now it was safe, to have filled our ship twice over. And there were slingers too, and if only they had come earlier, we would not have had those moments of terror when the chariots came at us, because I am sure that a squadron of slingers and another of men with long pikes would break up any charge.

But even the Northerners who came with their cudgels tucked under their arms were enough to frighten me away from Cuchullain. And not only me. The two dozen who had hidden out with him in the hills all winter, even Callum, who came at last in the ship and fought well in the battle, won it for him really, they could not get near to speak to him either. And this went on for day after day, and the longer it went on the worse it got, more and more important princes coming down from the North, and Cuchullain always too busy to talk, and we men from the ship now even shut out of the nightly feasts in the hall, where there was no room for any of us, even for Callum, and getting our food where we could, and not many of the smith’s little black pigs left. And why wait, I asked, like this, why wait?

‘We’re waiting to collect the army for one thing,’ said Aristarchos, who as Heilyn was getting his orders from someone who got them from someone who got them from some northern prince who occasionally saw Cuchullain. ‘He won’t sweep into the West with a little band like we beat their king with. Cuchullain wants to raise an army big enough to pour across the plain
and crush all three of the other Kingdoms, and any army they can raise now. The Ulstermen want to do to the South what the South did to them. The Queen of Connaught has a new husband already, they say, and she claims that he is the High King now by right of marriage. But Conchobar says that he is High King because he was married to her first, and because they finished half the enthroning ceremony on him before the Westerners came sweeping into Tara to spoil it and Maeve went off with the King of Connaught. So now, the King of Ulster is on his way here to finish his consecration, and when he has done that, when he is married again to Ireland, then he can go back home safe to the North again, while we do the work.’

‘We do the work, as usual.’

‘We do, that. Have you noticed that they don’t use any money here in Ireland?’

‘No more they do,’ I agreed. ‘I suppose they do any trade they can by barter.’

‘Oh, no. They have a currency, of sorts. The smaller unit is a cow.’

‘And what is the larger? A dead elk?’

‘No. Four cows, one slave woman they say. I have a feeling that the Ulstermen intend a certain amount of inflation. And a debasement of the higher unit. By the time they finish, they hope to have a woman for two cows, and a horn of ale for two women.’

There, I thought, you have the whole lack of system in Barbarian life exposed. To a Barbarian, a slave is something to use for pleasure. We in the Empire know that nothing a slave does is equal in quality to what a free man does, whether you are thinking of a mason or a miner or a sailor or a ploughman or a prostitute. Therefore they use slaves in ones or twos, in bed or kitchen. But we use slaves only in large groups, and only in tasks which no free man will do, which no freed man will continue in. And if there were anything better than the fickle, mischievous, unhealthy slave to give us the power we want to break stone or pull ploughs or build, then we would use it. But there is, and can be, nothing else in nature that will ever serve.

It was the end of May when the King of the North arrived.
He had taken his time, but now he came galloping into Tara in his chariot as if he were in a dreadful hurry to be enthroned as High King, or to finish his enthronement. And this, the people of Tara said, was wrong. By rights he ought to wait to the Feast of Tara at Samain to be enthroned, and to argue that his enthronement had begun at a Samain and been interrupted was surely better cause for waiting for Samain and starting again rather than finishing it out of season. And sure, had not the last three High Kings who had been enthroned out of season died a violent death? But, I reminded them, had the last forty-three kings not died a violent death, however and whenever enthroned? But, no, the people of Tara said, that was pure coincidence.

And sure, they told me, was it not necessary for the High King to receive the sovereignty at the hands of a woman, and that the right woman, and was not the right woman missing and had she not shown clearly that there was no High Kingship she would be giving to Conchobar now, and was it not only his word alone that we had that she had ever given it to him? So there were some that agreed with the King of Ulster, that it was only necessary for him to carry out those ceremonies that had been omitted, and others said that there was nothing for it but to begin again from the beginning, and with this last party it was said that Cathbad held. As for Cathbad, some said that he thought thus because the Queen of the West had paid him, and others said it was because the part of the ceremony that would be taken as done was the bull sacrifice, and he wanted his fill of the beef, which otherwise he would be unable to taste.

But the King of Ulster had his way, and the day after he arrived he was enthroned under the same blue sky, because there had been no rain since the day that we had marched to the battle across the mud of the horse pastures. I woke early and I climbed up with some other warriors on the top of the great mound, because I realised now that there would be no special treatment for me, whatever I was owed, unless I demanded it in some spectacular way, and I was not doing that while Cuchullain could in any way plead that he was bound by his overlord. The mound was a trifle far off to see everything in detail, but at least I got there. I saw the new High King ride up in his chariot, driving it himself,
and showing his skill by passing so close to a standing stone that the felloe of the wheel scraped it and threw out sparks and yet the chariot did not overturn. But he did not do the other feat that was expected, driving his chariot between two other standing stones, because, some said, he had already done it once before, or because others said, he was afraid that the stones would catch him and crush him between them as they were supposed to do if anyone who was not by rights High King rode between them.

The King dismounted then and went to the flat stone on which he was to be enthroned, and they brought the white mare that the smith’s wife had spoken of. I will not tell what happened then, because there are things a man may stomach to do in darkness in the rites of a mystery, but to do it in broad day in sight of ten thousand people as the High King must do – I will not speak of it. I will only say that I was sorry for the horse.

After it was over, the King killed the mare with the slash of an iron knife across her throat. Then he went from his stone to the cooking fire outside the Wall of Tara, and from that he went twenty paces to the west. There he piled brushwood for a new fire, and returning to the standing stone he had ridden by he struck fire from it with his sword – and not really his own sword, but the sword with which by proxy he had won the High Kingdom, and with which his champion had cut off the old High King’s head – he struck more sparks to kindle timber, and that he carried back to light a new fire.

They put three stones about the new fire, and on this a massive iron cauldron, and by the working of it I could see that this had been made in Britain and brought across the sea, though whether by trade or by theft I do not know: I think by theft. They had this full of boiling water already, or we might have waited all day for the next part of the ceremony. The King began to joint the mare, and of course other men helped after the first cut of the royal knife. They hacked her into gobbets which they dropped into the cauldron, and they boiled the meat for some little time. Then when the King and some of his more favoured warriors and nobles, like Cuchullain, had eaten a little, His Majesty threw the rest into the crowd, lump by lump, and the men fought for them.

I did not join in this struggle, but Aristarchos did, and he came to me a little after licking his bloody fingers, because the flesh had not had time to be thoroughly cooked or even more than blanched on the surface. The riot merged with no further ceremonial into the feast in the Hall, to which neither he nor I nor any of the Gauls who came in the ship had been invited, and so we all went back to the smith’s house, and there we found a cauldron of our own, and in it we put one of the little pigs and a couple of hares and a calf that we happened to come on by accident when nobody was looking our way because they were so engrossed in a fight between two of the Gauls who made more than enough noise to cover us and get up an appetite of their own. The cauldron we boiled on the smithy fire, and at last had it well cooked. There was not enough to drink, though, till one of the Gauls went off and reconnoitred the kitchen, and came back laden with mead jars, good stuff intended for the High King’s own cup.

We sat there outside the smithy, which was only a booth open at two sides, and ate and drank, and talked about the good times one could have in Britain, and about how kings who wanted to keep their thrones paid their debts, and how at least that was a lesson Caesar had learnt, and how profitable it must be to serve in the Praetorian Guard at the death of an Emperor, all that was what we were saying, when the people of the village of Tara began to join us, and we had to talk more carefully, though they all agreed with us. We were all beautifully, ecstatically depressed, a fine contrast to the chieftains in the hall, who were, by the sound of it, in the grip of a different kind of ecstasy. Suddenly there was a movement in the circle, and the songs died. Cathbad the Druid had sat down with us.

I had never seen the Druid in all his splendour sit so near a smithy, or come so near meat cooked in a pot of iron. But this was no ordinary night, and this no ordinary place. He sat there in silence, and we all looked at him and waited to hear what he would say.

We waited for Cathbad to say something, or to recite some poem that would give us, even in a Delphic form, his real thoughts, because there are limits to the things a Priest can say
to an all-powerful King. But he just sat and watched us, and listened to the small talk that sprang up again, how this man had killed three great chieftains in the battle, and how that one might have done better if only a cursed useless chariot had not got in his way, and men compared the armlets and collars they had taken from the enemies they had killed, and indeed this was what we had talked about every night for weeks now. Then all of a sudden Cathbad spoke, and spoke to me.

‘Mannanan, whether you stay within the plain of Tara and keep your life, or whether you go out of the plain, and risk it, is all one to me. But it will all end in tears, and it is your doing, but there is no blame at your door: it is fated.’

And then, in the way Druids have, he was gone, and we did not see him again, that night or after.

There was a whole week of feasting, and even on the day after the last feast there was still no one but myself who was both ready and eager to march into the South and West. You can fight a battle with a headache, but you cannot march a mile. But the day after that, the new High King rode north to safety in Ulster, and the Champion of Ulster led the army of Ulster out of Tara, to conquer the island for the High King, and to bring back for him cattle and women without number, and most important of all, among them the Queen of Connaught for his bed and her cattle for his table or for his stud.

Cuchullain, then, led his army down to the river that was the southern boundary of the plain of Tara, and even in that country of no roads there were at least fords here and there, and the army had to come down to one ford and to one ford only. The chariots were at the head of the host, my chariots, all gilded and painted and set with gems, my chariots that I had brought in my ship, that I had bargained for and paid for, that I had broken a legate for, my chariots. And in the first chariot, with the head of the High King that was hanging by its hair from the pole, and other heads with it now, stood Cuchullain.

The Champion did indeed make a fine sight. He wore his particolour hair long down his back, as a challenge to whoever should want to take his head. So, I remembered, did Pryderi wear his. This, I thought, is how Pryderi would like to ride, at the head of an army, sweeping a country bare of women and food and beasts, and it is only for preventing this that he has this hatred for Rome. Oh, yes, war is a fine thing for nobles and leaders, even in defeat; but for the defeated, or the weak on either side, there is little to be said for it, and if you can think what that little is, then tell me, because I cannot think what it is.