“At first Cuchulainn won his combats in minutes, so that Maeve’s army crawled forward at an ant’s pace,” said Laeg. “But still no reinforcements came, and between combat and night patrols there was little rest to be had. Then Maeve began to cheat. She sent assassins into our camp by night and made a mockery of the rules of single combat.
“She sent twelve against him,” Laeg told us, the anger hard in his eyes, “and claimed that since they were all of one family it would count as but one man. And still Cuchulainn prevailed, but it was long and weary work, and meantime the army advanced. And we learned afterward that while they were far ahead of us and Cuchulainn hard pressed, Maeve sent part of her army in a loop toward Cooley, and that is the arm that the young lads from Emain encountered. And the vengeance Cuchulainn took, when word came to us of their slaughter, is beyond anything I can describe. The wrath of the Morrigu herself would not have been more deadly.”
Still my father suffered little hurt until he faced his final challenger.
“It was Ferdia who came at last,” Laeg told my mother, the words so bitter in his mouth you would think it was poison he tasted. “Ferdia, his own sworn arms-brother, his fellow in training with Scathach. And I swear,” he said, “it was not Ferdia’s strength and skill in arms but his betrayal that cut the Hound to the quick. Nothing would have turned him against Ferdia—not the riches Maeve offered, nor the promise of her daughter, nor the taunts and threats of her satirists either.”
They fought for three days, and each morning my father tried to turn Ferdia from the deadly path he had chosen, but it could not be done. And Ferdia, who had learned so many of the same feats and tricks as my father, was a fierce opponent. “Never have I seen men so wounded and fighting still,” said Laeg. “From dawn till dark they hacked at each other, until their bodies ran red with blood and the ground beneath them was slick with it. At times I had to goad and mock Cuchulainn, to stir up his strength and anger, yet it was weeping with pity I was, for all the hurts that were upon him.”
When they fought in the River Dee, at the ford they now call Ath Ferdia, it was clear that both men were near to death. Only in the last extremity did my father call for the Gae Bolga, his deadliest spear. And when my father finally killed Ferdia, launching the Gae Bolga from under the water with his foot and ramming it up under Ferdia’s iron apron, it is then he fell down weeping for the death of his friend and began to sink into a stupor from his wounds and sorrow and exhaustion.
Laeg managed to rouse him and drag him away from the open riverbank to safety, and there my father lay, unable to bear even the weight of a cloth upon his wounds, until the sounds of battle roused him. The men of Ulster had come at last, and when Cuchulainn heard the cry of the Ochain, Conchobor’s magic shield, his anger came upon him and he rose up despite his injuries, and fought alongside his people until Maeve’s army was utterly smashed.
He had not so much as lifted his head since.
The long months that my father lay in the Speckled House—for he had roused only long enough to insist he be taken to sleep there among the weapons and shields of the Red Branch—were
the strangest I had yet known. To be sure, there was grieving for the dead and doctoring for the living, but life soon returned to its normal bustle for everyone, it seemed, except me. My mother spent her days at my father’s side, trying to coax him out of the uncanny sleep that held him suspended between the world of the living and that of the dead. And just as my father neither died nor woke, so his wounds did not fester, but neither did they heal.
And I—I hung suspended also. I had no nurse, no chores, no lessons. For the first time I missed old Tullia, for all her fussy protectiveness. She would have scolded my idleness and found some task to keep me occupied. As it was, I had Fintan for company. Of course there were other children there, and I did sometimes join in their games, but I believe there was something—perhaps awe of my father’s state, or the druid’s raven on my shoulder—that made them wary of me, for I made no true friends.
We had lit the Beltane fires a couple of weeks before the army’s return. It hadn’t been much of a Beltane, not with so many of the men gone and more than a few women too, but we had put a brave show on it and honored the sun’s return as best we could.
By high summer my father was no better, and for once at Lughnasadh the games and contests were all won by other men. My mother left the Speckled House for the whole day to take me there, and she tried her best to hide her worries for my sake. “It is Lugh of the Long Hand your father loves above all gods,” she said. “It would not do for you to come all the way to Emain and miss his great festival. I promise you, you will never see the like in Muirthemne.”
We passed the day in a glorious confusion of color, noise and smell. The sun shone hot in a clear sky and lit up the bright
clothing we all wore to celebrate first harvest. Even the farmers and craftsmen sported ribbons and sashes to add color to their plain tunics, while their women wove flowers into their hair and wrapped swatches of dyed cloth around their waists. We had to yell to hear each other, for all around us people called to their friends, onlookers cheered the games, bards told their tales in voices that carried halfway across a field, traders haggled over their wares, musicians piped and drummed. People danced and laughed and fought and drank and ate a seemingly endless supply of food. The wafted smells of roasting meat, fresh-baked bread and barley beer mingled with the sharper odors of sweat and manure until I was light-headed with breathing them.
I was in a silly mood, jigging and gamboling about my mother like a pup on its first hunt. She only laughed at me, though, and even caught my hands and swung me into the air. I suppose we both exaggerated our high spirits that day. It had been too long since there was anything to laugh about.
But when I whirled about to see Cathbad’s feathered cloak in front of me, I was embarrassed at my foolishness. I felt my cheeks grow hot as his eyes rested on me. He exchanged greetings with my mother, and then he studied me again.
“How old are you, Luaine?”
A spring baby, I added to my count of years each Beltane. “This is my eighth summer,” I confessed. Too old for such nonsense, I imagined his voice saying.
Of course he said no such thing. All around me, grown men and women were acting just as giddy. In the right place, laughter honors the gods as well as solemnity. Cathbad turned to my mother.
“A child that age should be starting her education and training, Emer, surely.”
My mother looked startled, then flustered. “Yes, Cathbad, of course. At home she has begun her training already.”
It was quite true. I may have been raised in the quiet countryside of Muirthemne, but my mother, the druid’s daughter, saw to it that my education was not neglected.
Of women’s arts, I had already started to learn the needlework: spinning and weaving, sewing and embroidery. These my mother taught me herself, for her own needle was renowned. I never grew to love the work as she did—though I did enjoy the embroidery, the colors taking shape and meaning under my fingers—but thanks to her efforts, I eventually became a fast and precise seam-stress. I had also begun learning household management. Though we had servants, I would still have to learn what each task was, how to do it properly and when it should occur, so that I would be able to oversee my own household one day. So far my training had consisted mostly of being sent to help with various chores, but in the years to come I would spend many weeks with our cook, learning how the foods were stored, how to take inventory and calculate how long supplies would last, how to tell what was fresh and succulent, how to prepare dishes, how to plan menus for a feast or great gathering. I would pass as many days following the housekeeper, learning everything from how to bank the peat fire to hold heat through the night, to how to keep moths from the blanket chests and bugs from our mattresses.
The household tasks I endured and learned, but with little enthusiasm. Riding and horse husbandry I loved better, and better still the lessons I had started in singing and poetry. Like
most of the great families, we had our own poet. It is Lasair, in fact, who is responsible for some of the more outrageous verses about my father. He must have been delighted to have such a man for a patron, for he was never lacking for material or stuck with the task of singing undeserved praises. When he wasn’t traveling after Cuchulainn, he was my teacher, setting me to learn by heart the long histories of Ireland, the stories of our gods and goddesses and kings and champions. He taught me the proper forms of poetry as well as the art of riddles, rhetoric and repartee.
But a season and more had passed since we had left Dun Dealgan, and I heard Cathbad say to Emer, “It is not good for her to spend so much time alone. And who can say when your life at home will resume? There are many noble families who would gladly foster her.”
It was common for girls to be fostered at my age, though it was most often boys who were sent to be instructed by uncles or allies. But my mother shook her head, and I knew by the stubborn lift of her chin that not even the chief druid would prevail over her in this matter.
“No, I’ll not send my only living child away. Not now. We need each other now.”
The rush of love and pride I felt was ferocious, almost painful. I had felt myself a burden and thought she must begrudge the childish needs that took her from my father’s side. But she would not have it so. I pressed as close beside her as I could and still stand straight, as straight as Emer herself.
The old druid’s eyes crinkled in unexpected amusement. “I didn’t really suppose you would. Come and speak to me after
the festival, and we’ll see what can be done here in Emain.” And he strode off in a swirl of colors.
That evening, for the first time, I saw the serious side of Lughnasadh. I should have realized Cathbad would not don his robe of office to oversee a noisy party. We gathered on the shores of the little lake I had glimpsed from the embankments of Emain, and I watched as Cathbad and two other druids stood in the golden slanting light and chanted a long hypnotic prayer. A young bull was led to the altar, and the sacrificer slipped the knife in so expertly that the calf barely seemed to know he had been hurt, but stood quietly, his blood rushing into the great basin, until his knees folded under him and he sank slowly to the ground. Acrid smoke billowed up from the fire as his blood was sprinkled on the flames: blood carried up to the heavens, blood seeping down to the depths of the earth. Life shared with those who live above, below and beyond our own world. And then, at a word from Cathbad, those with special prayers or messages for the god stepped forward to the very edge of the water.
My mother went then, with the others. I could not hear what she whispered to the god, but I knew what she asked. And as the last rays of the sun lit up the bronze water, she removed the wide golden band that wrapped her bare arm and cast it far out over the still surface of the lake.
Of the finest metalwork, my mother’s favorite, that armband was. The great god Lugh was a patron of all skills and craftsmanship. He would appreciate its worth.
Of course the chief druid was not about to concern himself with cookery lessons. It was a wonder to me that he concerned himself
with my welfare at all. But he did allow me to come to the lessons held every morning for the sons of the noble families in Emain. Girls could be taught too, if their parents wished it, but we were generally given private lessons within the family grouping. Boys in their first stirrings of manhood are considered difficult enough to teach, I suppose, without the distraction of young females at their side!
In any case, I was too young to excite any attention at all from the bigger boys, and there was certainly room for me. Each class was a painful reminder of the death of the boy troop, for although Follaman, Conchobor’s son who led the boys, had made the youngest ones stay back, there were none past the age of thirteen left to teach. We made a small group, rarely more than ten.
I went every morning. I believe I was the only one who did, for these were warriors’ sons, destined for the sword and the spear, and most would take any excuse to miss their lessons. But I sat on the fringes of the restless, often reluctant, boys and listened as I never had before. The vastness of all there was to know was overwhelming: not only our histories, but calculation, star reading, navigation, herb lore and healing, natural and human law. Cathbad’s druids shared teaching duties, and as one or another would take the class, I came to see that each had his own deep pool of knowledge. It’s little enough I understood of what they said, but I ate up their words like a greedy nestling.
My father lay in the Speckled House, and the seasons turned. When the golden leaves of the orchards began to drift down, and the first night frost left the grass stiff and white at dawn, harvest took on an urgency that made the autumn air hum with purpose. Apples, grain, turnips—anything that would keep was gathered and stored, and anything that wouldn’t was eaten. The peat cutters stacked their dried bricks into huge mounds, and when the herdsmen began bringing the cattle and sheep in from summer pasture and the air grew sharp with the tang of slaughter and smoke, I realized with a start that Samhain was only days away.
I was frightened of Samhain. I expect all children are, at that moment when every fire and lamp is put out, and we stand so alone in the dark, so close to the Otherworld we feel its very breath on our necks. When the druids finally finished their chants and prayers and offerings and lit the Winter Fire, it was not only children who felt a surge of relief.
Samhain in Emain Macha was a huge event. Besides the rush to have all in readiness for the dark season, besides the ceremony itself, there was a great gathering of all the chieftains and lesser kings of Ulster. It was the greatest feast of the year, when Conchobor exchanged pledges with his sworn men and rewarded his champions. And then, in the days that followed, the Wise Ones would sit in judgment, to hear peoples’ claims and disputes.