Snorting with laughter, the stable master loped over to rescue me.
“Can you regain your seat, young miss, or will you and your horse be parting company?”
“Get me down, Niall!” It was a long way to the ground and an ugly landing at the end.
“That I will not. But I will show you how to get yourself down should this ever happen again. Though you would do better to keep control of your steed in the first place.”
Strong hands supported me, guiding my head down beside the horse’s neck and drawing my feet up and over in a somersault. To my surprise, I landed with a bump and a stagger but on my feet.
“Luaine!”
It was my mother, striding toward the paddock with my nurse fluttering behind. There was a controlled urgency to her voice that made it clear this was no time for protests or games. I looked to Niall.
“Go on, then,” he said as he boosted me over the fence. “I’ll take care of this old bugger.”
My mother hurried to meet me. “Come along, Luaine, you can’t stay out here.” She held out her slim hand and pulled me up the steep path that led to our gate.
We were nearly across the yard before I managed to ask, “What is wrong, Ma?”
“I’ve just had word your father returns, and with the battle-frenzy still upon him. He scarce knows friend from foe while the red wrath drives him. It’s inside and out of sight with you, now. I will come when it is safe for you to see him.”
“Mistress,” my nurse quavered, “should you not hide yourself here as well? Will you not be in danger also?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” My mother stopped and turned to Tullia in genuine indignation. “I will greet my husband as is my duty and my privilege. He is no danger to me.” She said this in utter confidence, and I understood suddenly that not only was she unafraid, she was glad of the challenge. There was honor and pride for her, in knowing how to gentle my father back to himself. “Tullia, you had best stay here with Luaine. My lord would not wish to strike off your head unawares.”
Poor Tullia blanched at the reproof and drew me hastily into my mother’s workroom. Tucked beside our main hall, the room was dominated by her great loom and cluttered with bags of fleece
and bright skeins of wool. It was a room for women’s arts and my father never went there.
As we sat silently in the room’s darkest nook, I thought of the wild descriptions I had heard of my father in battle. How my eyes shone with excitement, and my mother’s with pride, when he recounted his victories! All mighty warriors know the frenzy—the battle madness that gives them strength and reckless ferocity—but my father’s, to hear tell, was truly terrifying. I shuddered as I tried to picture it: the fire flashing from his bared teeth, the spout of smoking blood rising out of his skull, the one eye sucked deep in his head while the other hung down over his cheek. A nightmare come to life.
Even at seven, I knew some of what was told was plain nonsense. How could a man be after fighting with his legs and feet turned backward in his skin? But the thought stole over me, when I heard the thunder of hoofbeats and the rumble of chariot wheels that heralded his arrival, to see for myself.
I bolted away from Tullia and scrambled up the ladder to the loft that ran right around the big circle of our house. Hurrying past the tidy storage areas for grain and herbs, sausages and hams, bedding and extra sleeping pallets, I made for the spot just above the door. Then I pulled out the small work knife I carried at my waist and began hacking at the roof thatch, not minding the damage I was causing or the scratches I suffered as I thrust my thin arms into the bundled reeds. It was dauntingly hard work—thatch, I discovered, is a lot tougher than you might think—and hot up there under the eaves. By the time I finally had a peephole carved out I was afraid it might be too late. But I crouched and put my eye to it nonetheless, and I caught my breath at the view that spread
out below me: a long sweep of thatch and then the crescent of our yard, edged with the strong fence and heavy front gate, and beyond that the plain of Muirthemne, green on green on green to the very end of my sight.
Up until that day I had never been afraid of my father. I saw but little of him for he was often away, but he was always kindly and fair-spoken to me. And then of course, he was so handsome. Women adored him, and I suppose I was no exception. He had a smile on him that poured over you so that you had to smile back, just for the joy of seeing it. When he looked at you—
really
looked at you—with approval or affection, you wanted to swim forever in the dazzling blue light of his eyes.
He was young and boyish still, full of tricks and playfulness. And if he had sometimes forgotten his strength and caused hurt to his playmates as a boy on the field of Emain Macha, he never did so with me. He would throw me high into the air—not some little toss, it’s looking down on the thatch of the roof I was—and catch me as gently as if I were landing on a feather pillow. He would take me up on his great gray horse and we would race across the plain till the world streamed by me in a blur, and never did it occur to me that I might fall. For my father himself had tamed that horse, which nobody else could approach, and ridden him without once losing his seat while The Gray bucked and fought over all the provinces of Ireland. It must have alarmed my mother when he began to play with me so, but no doubt she soon saw that he kept care for me, for she did not speak against it.
She liked it better when he entertained us with his feats and tricks, for then she could relax her mother’s watchfulness. “Fetch
the apples,” he would say with a wink, and I would run to the pantry and struggle to drag out the big basket of them, determined I would need no help. He would start to juggle, a few at first, then more and more until the air was thick with apples. And I would squirm and giggle in anticipation, for suddenly his sword would be out, and the apples falling in halves around us in a great pile, with none ever landing in one piece.
When we had done laughing and clapping, my mother would call for a servant girl. “Take these in to the cook. It’s honeyed apples for everyone tonight!”
I could have clung to that happy image of my father, and part of me did want to run back to my nurse’s arms and stay a baby. But the stronger part of me needed to know. And so I ignored Tullia’s fearful call, and I watched.
My mother stood entirely alone, a straight still figure. I thought she must be the most beautiful woman on earth, with her hair that gleamed bronze in the sunlight and the smooth white skin of her arms. Gold caught the light at her neck—the rich red gold, it was, that looked so fine with her hair.
Cuchulainn’s chariot thundered over the plain with a din that made me cover my ears—oh, it was a brave sight, though, with the two great horses racing before it and the silver knives bristling from its wheels! Then it was my father, vaulting over the side before the horses could stop and striding up to the open gate where my mother waited. She bowed her head very deeply and did not move.
I was relieved to see his eyes both where they belonged. But on my soul, they were not the eyes I knew. Wild and bloodshot,
they squinted at my mother as if he could barely see. With the gold gleaming on him and the stain of blood streaked over his body, his clothes rent as though he had burst out of them, he was the most fearsome thing I had seen in my short years. The face on him was dark with rage; his muscles rippled and clenched; the breath heaved out of his chest with a noise more like to a beast than a man. Indeed he seemed scarce able to speak as he wrestled to subdue the frenzy that rode him.
His sword was still unsheathed in his hand as he towered over my mother.
He will kill her, I remember thinking. He will give in to the pull of the sword. My heart knocked about in my chest like a weasel in a trap.
“Welcome, Cuchulainn, Lord of Muirthemne and Champion of Ulster.” My mother had very slowly raised her head and spoke now clear and calm. She did not flinch in any way from his wildness but met his eye head on. “Welcome to your home. I am your own wife, Emer, and it’s glad I am to rejoice in your victory.”
My father did not move for several breaths, as though the words had to burn through a red fog to reach him. Then his eyes seemed to clear a little, and he peered at my mother as if really seeing her.
“Emer.” The word was thick with effort.
“Will you bathe, my love? There is clean water prepared for you.” Still my mother did not move. I held my breath, knowing this for a critical moment. The cool water would quench the fire that burned in him, if only my father would accept it.
He did not speak but only glowered there, until slowly my mother reached out and took his bloody hand and urged him gently forward to the bath.
Why had my father come rushing home in such a state? I dared not follow to the baths to find out, but the stables would be safe enough. I slipped out to find Laeg.
My father’s charioteer deserves a larger place in the stories, for his horsemanship was a wonder to behold and his faithfulness and courage unshakeable. Yet such is the way of the world: It is the kings and warriors whose praises are sung, not the advisors who guide them nor the charioteers who keep them alive.
He had unyoked the horses, but to my surprise they were not in the stable but out in the paddock, still in their harnesses and war-trappings. The Black had his nose deep in a grain bucket; still I gave him a wide berth as I edged past. He had a vicious leg on him, and I had seen him shatter an unwary groom’s knee.
Laeg had tethered The Gray to the apple tree that shaded one end of the paddock and was cleaning out his hooves. I forced myself to walk carefully, not wanting to spill the jar of beer I had thought to take from our stores on my way out. Silently I held it out to him.
His eyebrows, furrowed in concentration, lifted at the sight. Nodding his thanks, he put down the pick and stretched out a long freckled arm for my drink. Everything about Laeg was long—legs, arms, even his narrow face.
“I’ll not deny I’ve a terrible thirst,” he said. “My thanks to you, Luaine.”
“Laeg, why have you not stabled the horses?” I blurted. I didn’t even wait for him to take a swallow.
Laeg drank anyway and then looked down at me for a long moment, his face grave.
“Your father is setting out again, as soon as may be,” he said finally. “He has stopped here only to speak with your ma and give instructions to his men.”
“But why?” I persisted. “What has happened?”
Laeg shook his head. “That is for your parents to tell you, little one.” Then he grinned, but it was not a grin to make you smile back. It scared me. “The Hound is on the hunt,” he said, “and his prey will regret the day he caught their scent.”
The Hound of Ulster, they called him. Hound of the Forge.
My father, born Setanta, earned his warrior’s name as a young boy. Cu Culain—the hound of Culain. Culain was a smith, maker of the finest weaponry and armor in all Ulster. His dog, though, was a beast to be dreaded. Huge, savage, heedless of any hand but its master’s, it was loosed each night to stand guard and would tear apart any unlucky intruder.
One night my father, just a small boy at the time, followed King Conchobor’s chariot tracks to a feast at Culain’s home, batting a ball with a hurley stick along the road to amuse himself as he ran. The dog, clamoring in a murderous fury, sprang at him. The men inside rushed out at the commotion, fearing to find someone dead. But my father had batted his hurley ball right down the hound’s throat, and then he dashed it to death on a rock, with no injury to himself at all.
Culain, though, was grieved, for the great hound had guarded
his home and flocks and herds. So my father, little as he was, promised to keep watch in the dog’s place until another could be found and trained. And Cathbad the druid said that Cuchulainn should be my father’s name from that day forward.
I had heard Laeg call my father “Cucuc”—little hound. It was a mark of the friendship and trust that was between them. But now when he spoke of the Hound, and flashed his teeth in that wolf’s grin, I saw with a chill that it was no hearth-dog Cuchulainn was named for. It’s a battle-hound he was, the watchdog of our people.
It was not skill at arms, or even the battle-frenzy, that won my father the championship of Ulster. This tale was my favorite as a child, the one I would beg our poet, Lasair, to recount, for it never failed to make my heart beat fast with fear and my eyes grow round with wonder. And I still think on it often—for it reminds me of the manner of man who sired me and of the courage I should find within myself as well. At that time there were three contending for the championship: Laegaire, Conall and my father. And they were set many trials by Conchobor, but although my father always prevailed, the other two would not accept his championship, but made excuses for every contest.
Conchobor could not have his best men at each other’s throats, so at last he sent them to Cu Roi of Munster to have the matter judged. But he warned them: “He will give you a right judgment, but it is only a brave man will ask it from him, for he is wise in all sorts of enchantments.” So off they went to Munster, only to return with the issue unsettled, for Cu Roi had been away on his own journey.
Well, time passed, and the championship remained unclaimed. Then one night, into the hall lumbers this great fellow, frightful to look at and massive in build. He is clothed in rough undressed skins and in his one hand he bears the biggest ax they have any of them ever seen. He says his name is Uath, the Stranger, and that he has traveled all Ireland looking for only one thing: a man who will keep his word and hold to an agreement.
“What agreement is that?” they ask.
And it’s a strange thing indeed. For Uath says he wants someone to strike off his head with the ax, and then on the morrow, he will come and strike off their own head! And, he says, since the men of Ulster have such a name for greatness and strength, surely there is one among them who could hold to such a promise.