The Hound of Ulster (12 page)

‘It is only the wild geese flying over. Bide by the fire and go on spinning.'

And then between gust and gust of the wind there came a fumbling and a thumping against the timbers of the small strong door, and the voice cried, ‘Let me in! In the name of the sun and the moon let me in!'

And heedless of the old woman crying out to stop her, Deirdre leapt up and ran to unbar and lift the rowan-wood pin; and the door swung open and the wind and rain leapt in upon her, and with the wind and the rain, a man stumbled into the house place, and his sodden cloak like spread wings about him, as though he were indeed some great storm-driven bird.

He aided Deirdre to force shut the door. And as he came into the firelight that shone on his rain-drenched hair that was black as a crow's wing and on his face, and on the great height of him, Levarcham took one look at him and said, ‘Naisi, Son of Usna, it is not the time to be bringing up the year's supplies. You have no right in this place.'

‘Myself not being the King,' Naisi said, and let his sodden cloak fall from his shoulders, though indeed he was as wet within it as without. ‘A storm-driven man has a right to any shelter that opens to him.'

‘And shall we have your brothers at the door next? Seldom it is that you three are apart!'

‘We have been hunting together, but Ardan and Ainle turned homeward before I did,' said the tall man, and swayed. ‘Give me leave to sit by your fire until the storm sinks, for I have been lost and wandering a long while until I saw your light and—it is weary I am.'

‘Ach well, if you tell no man that you have been here,
there'll be no harm done, maybe,' said Levarcham. ‘Sit, then, and eat and drink while you're here, for by the looks of you, if I turn you away now, the Red Branch will be one fewer by morning.'

So Naisi sank down with a sigh upon the piled sheepskins, almost into the warm peat ash, and sat there with hanging head, the sodden hunting-leathers steaming upon him. Deirdre brought barley bread, and curd from their little black cow, and a cup of pale Greek wine, and set all beside him. He had been careful until then not to look at her, but when she gave the cup into his hands, he looked up to thank her; and having looked, could not look away again. And Deirdre could not look away either.

And Levarcham, watching both of them out of her small bright eyes, while she went on with Deirdre's abandoned spinning, saw how it was with them, and how the blood came back into Naisi's face that had been grey as a skull, and how the girl's face answered his, and thought to herself, ‘Trouble! Grief upon me! I see such trouble coming, for there's no grey in
his
beard, and she with all the candles lit behind her eyes for him! I should have turned him away to die in the storm.' But there was a little smile on her, all the same, for despite her loyalty to Conor Mac Nessa who had been her nursling, she had felt it always a sad thing that Deirdre should be wed to the King who was old enough to have fathered her.

After that, King Conor was not the only one to come visiting Deirdre, for again and again Naisi would come to speak with her, and Levarcham knew that she should tell this to the King, but the time went by and the time went by and she listened to Deirdre's pleading and did not tell him.

Then one evening when the wind blew over the shoulder of Slieve Gallion from the south and the first cold smell of spring
was in the air, Deirdre said to Naisi when it was time for him to go, ‘Let you take me with you, and not leave me to be Queen beside a King that has grey hairs in his beard.'

And Naisi groaned. ‘How can I do as you ask? I that am one of the King's own bodyguard, his hearth companion?'

And he went away, vowing in his heart that he would come no more to the turf house in the hidden glen. But always he came again, and always Deirdre would plead, ‘Naisi, Naisi, take me away with you, it is you that I love. I have given no troth to the King for none has ever been asked of me, and it is yours that I am.'

For a long while he held out against her, and against his own heart. But at last, when the apple trees behind the house were white with blossom, and Deirdre's wedding to the King no more than a few weeks away, the time came when he could hold out no longer. And he said, ‘So be it then, bird-of-my-heart, there are other lands across the sea and other kings to serve. For your sake I will live disgraced and die dishonoured, and not think the price high to pay, if you love me, Deirdre.'

In the darkness of the next night he came with horses, and with Ardan and Ainle his brothers; and they carried off both Deirdre and Levarcham, for the old woman said, ‘Grief upon me! I have done ill for your sakes, and let you not leave me now to the King's wrath!'

They fled to the coast and took ship for Scotland, and there Naisi and his brothers took service with the Pictish King. But after a while the King cast his looks too eagerly in Deirdre's direction, and they knew that the time had come to be moving on again.

After that they wandered for a long while, until they came at last to Glen Etive, and there they built a little huddle of turf bothies on the loch shore, and the men hunted and Deirdre
and the old nurse cooked for them and spun and wove the wool of their few mountain sheep; and so the years went by.

And in all those years, three, maybe, or four, Conor Mac Nessa made no sign, but sat in his palace at Emain Macha, and did not forget. And from time to time some ragged herdsman or wandering harper would pass through Glen Etive and beg shelter for the night, and afterwards return to Conor the King and tell him all that there was to tell of Deirdre and the sons of Usna—and they thinking themselves safe hidden all the while.

At last it seemed to the King, from the things told him by his spies, that the sons of Usna were growing restless in their solitudes; their thoughts turning back, maybe, to the life in a king's hall, and the feasting and the fighting to which they had been bred. Then he sent for Conall of the Victories, and Cuchulain, and old Fergus Mac Roy, and said to them, ‘It is in my mind that the sons of Usna have served long enough in exile, and the time comes to call them home.'

‘In friendship?' said Cuchulain, for he had never judged his kinsman one who would easily forgive a wrong, even after so long a time.

‘In friendship,' said the King. ‘I had a fool's fondness for the girl, but that is over long since. More it means to me to have the young men of my bodyguard about me. Therefore, one of you three shall go to Glen Etive, and tell them that the past is past, and bring them again to Emain Macha.'

‘And which of us three?' said Conall.

And the King considered, turning his frowning gaze from one to the other. ‘Conall, what would you do if I were to choose you, and harm came to them through me, after all?'

And Conall returned his gaze as frowningly. ‘I should know
how to avenge them, and my own honour that would lie dead with them.'

‘That sounds like a threat,' said the King, ‘but it makes no matter, since the question is but an empty one.' And he turned to Cuchulain.

‘I can answer only as Conall has answered,' Cuchulain said, ‘but I think that after the revenge was over, men would no longer call me the Hound of Ulster but the Wolf of Ulster.' And he looked long and hard into the King's eyes. ‘Therefore, it is as well, I think, that it is not myself that you will be sending to bring home the sons of Usna.'

‘No, it is not yourself, but Fergus Mac Roy that I shall send,' said Conor the King. And Fergus, who was no fool in the general way of things, was so filled with gladness—for he loved Naisi and his brothers almost as much as he did Cuchulain, as much as he loved his own sons, and his heart had wearied for them in their exile—that he lost his judgement and he did not see the look that Cuchulain had turned upon the King.

So Fergus went down to the coast and took ship for Scotland and at last and at last he came on a quiet evening to the cluster of green bothies on the shore of Glen Etive; and when Naisi and his brothers, who were but just returned from their hunting, saw him drawing near along the shore, they came racing to meet him and fling their arms about his shoulders, greeting him and marvelling at his coming, and demanding what would be the latest news out of Ireland.

‘The news out of Ireland is this,' said Fergus, as they turned back towards the bothies together. ‘That Conor the King has put from his mind the thing that happened four springs ago between you and Deirdre and himself, and can no longer get the full pleasure of his mead-horn nor the full
sweetness of harp song unless you return in friendship to enjoy them with him as you used to do.'

Now at this the three brothers set up a shout, for they were as joyful to hear his news as he was to tell it. But Deirdre, who had come from the bothies to join them, said, ‘The sons of Usna do well enough here in Scotland. Let you be welcome here at our hearth, and then go back and tell King Conor that.'

‘We do well enough here,' said Naisi, ‘but each man does best in the land that bred him, for it is there that the roots of his heart are struck.'

‘Ah, Naisi, Naisi, I have seen you and Ardan and Ainle growing weary of this happy Glen Etive; I know how you have longed for the King's Hall, and to be driving again like the wind behind the swift horses of Ulster. Yet I have had evil dreams of late and there is a shadow on my heart.'

‘Deirdre, what is it that you are afraid of?'

‘I scarcely know,' said Deirdre. ‘I find it hard to believe in the King's forgiveness. What safeguard have we if we give ourselves back into his power?'

And Fergus Mac Roy said, ‘Mine. And I think that no king in all Ireland would dare to violate that.'

Then while they ate the evening meal about the peat fire in the house place, Naisi laughed at her for her fears, swaggering a little with his thumbs in his belt, because the King had sent for him to come back to his old place again. And next day they gathered up all that they had of goods and gear, and went down to the coast, to where the ship that had brought Fergus from Ireland lay waiting on the tide line. And the bothies by the loch shore were left empty and forsaken.

The rowers bent to their oars and the long corach slipped seaward; and sitting in the stern with old Levarcham against
her knee, Deirdre looked back past the man at the steering oar towards the shores of Scotland, and a lament rose in her, and would not be held back.

‘My love to you, oh land of Alban; pleasant are your harbours and your clear green-sided hills. Glen Archan, my grief! High its hart's tongue and bright its flowers; never were young men lighter hearted than the three sons of Usna in Glen Archan. Glen-da-Rua, my grief! Glen-da-Rua! Sweet is the voice of the cuckoo in the woods of Glen-da-Rua. Glen Etive, my grief! Ochone! Glen Etive; it was there I built my first house, and slept under soft coverings with Naisi's hand beneath my head. And never would I have left you, Glen Etive, but that I go with Naisi my love.'

Scarcely had they set foot in Ulster once more, when Baruch, a veteran of the Red Branch, came to meet them, and bade Fergus, as an old friend, to feast with him that night in his D
Å«
n close by. And with him were Fergus's two sons, Illan the Fair and Buinne the Red, come to greet him on his return. Now Fergus did not know that the King had ordered that feast, but he knew that his oath to Conor Mac Nessa bound him to bring Deirdre and the sons of Usna straight from their landing place to Emain Macha, and he tried to win clear of the thing, saying that he could not turn aside from his way until he had brought Deirdre and the three brothers under safe conduct to the King's presence. But Baruch would not be denied, and bade him remember that his geise forbade him ever to refuse when bidden to a feast, and so at last despite Deirdre's pleading (for no warrior might go against his geise) he bade his sons to take charge of the party, and himself went with Baruch.

When the six of them drew near to Emain Macha, Deirdre said, ‘See now, how it will be. If Conor the King bids us to his
own hall and his own hearth-side, then he means us no ill; but if we are lodged apart in the Red Branch Hostel, then grief upon us! For all that I fear will come to pass.'

And when they came into the Royal D
Å«
n they were lodged in the Red Branch Hostel, to wait until the King should send for them. And Deirdre said, without hope of being heeded, ‘Did I not tell you how it would be?'

But Naisi only laughed and held her warm in his arms, saying, ‘Soon the King will send for us in friendship, and all things will be as they used to be.'

But first the King sent for old Levarcham, and she went and made her peace with him where he sat moodily in his sleeping-chamber with his favourite hound at his feet. And he asked her how it was with Deirdre, and if her beauty was on her yet, after so many years in the wilderness.

‘Ach now, what would you be expecting? Life in the wilderness deals hardly with a woman,' said Levarcham. ‘The skin that was so white is brown now, and the wind has chapped her lips and the sun has faded her hair. Her beauty is all gone from her and if you were to see her now you would think her any farmer's woman.'

‘Then I will not send for her when I send for the sons of Usna,' said the King, and he sighed. ‘Since Naisi has had her beauty, let him keep her. I will not see her again.'

But when Levarcham had been gone a while he began to doubt in his heart whether she had told him the truth, and he called to him his shield-bearer, and said, ‘Go you and find some means to look secretly at the woman that is in the Red Branch Guest House, and come back and tell me whether she is yet fair to look upon.'

So it was that when those within the Guest House were taking their ease after the evening meal, Deirdre and Naisi
playing chess together while the others lay about the fire, Ardan cried out suddenly and sprang to his feet, pointing to the high window in the gable wall. And looking where he pointed, Naisi saw the face of the King's shield-bearer peering in; and he caught up a golden chessman from the board and flung it at him, and it caught him in the face and struck out his left eye.