BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland (20 page)

“
Lugh!
What a beautiful son!” This burst from his lips before he could stop himself. Boann was not there, only the woman Airmid, and she did not take the child away but put his hand under the baby’s head. Airmid smiled at his expression, encouraging him.

Elcmar unwrapped the tiny bundle and examined the infant all over, then gently put him down upon the wrappings. “He is perfect. What is his name.” He spoke to her as a command in his language, and stared at the child.

“Aengus Og. It means, ‘the youthful son.’” She tilted her head, watching Elcmar. Perhaps this shining child shall bring peace, her look said. “Boann is having her swim at the stream. You might like to join her there?”

He closed his face into its proud expression again. “Yes. I will go to the stream to find Boann. Stay with the child, with Aengus.”

He caught up with Boann as she returned, skin glowing. He used the Invader tongue. “I see you’re after taking your bath without a companion, or a sentry. Will you ever follow the rules here, Boann? It’s a guard you must have, someone with you at all times.”

“Whose rules would that be? And welcome back, husband.” Her tone softened. She tried to touch his face but he stopped her hand. She stiffened. “Who would attack me? It wouldn’t be a Starwatcher, sure, and your people don’t bathe here with us. And which rules are you after mentioning? Our marriage agreement says that I am not your captive. I like bathing, and I will bathe on every dawning. We have already had this discussion, so.” She used the Invader language.

“I have reconsidered.” It disconcerted him to see Boann after seeing the beautiful boy child, Aengus, but he would not tell her that. He would not show any injury. Elcmar looked off into the distance, not at Boann. His anger hardened and took shape in words. “I have reconsidered many things. In fact, given the conflict for us with Starwatchers, the troubles caused during midwinter sun by your Dagda, I shall ban all use of the starchamber mounds.”

It vaguely amused him to be married to this little Starwatcher, but his attachment unsettled him. Never mind that she drew him safely home, a flame in darkness. If Boann could not prove useful as he had intended, then changes would be made. He turned away from her.

Boann took a step after him. What could he mean by banning use of the mounds? To retaliate for lost and frozen Invader warriors who had harassed her people?

“You cannot be serious! Your warriors ruined one of our mounds! There have been troubles enough, that is true. Both sides need to sit in council together.”

She tried to tell him about the winter solstice ceremony; that for her people, the solstice sunrise streaming into the passage or the full moon seen through the portal, were no more nor less than revered truths. “The stars tell us all that we need to know. We don’t put on a show with incantations, or cut open animals to rummage their intestines.”

Elcmar stopped. He turned, but his eyes avoided contact with hers.

She picked up two shrunken apples from the cold ground, showing him how the moon crossed the line of the sun’s ecliptic on a regular basis. She tried to explain how the position of the Bright One had lined up with the moon at winter solstice. “It’s nothing to fear.”

Elcmar stared directly at her now.

She faltered; Boann could see that he understood neither the sun’s movements nor the moon’s. He might not understand the import of the solstice. Did Elcmar know that the equinoxes set the cardinal directions of east and west? It was useless, even dangerous, to explain anything more to him about the movements in the sky. She tossed aside the apples.

“Right, so. Have you no limits on what you do?” She seethed.

He stared, his eyes cold and smooth as flint.

“My people’s starwatching shall continue at the mounds as before. That is part of our marriage contract.”

His voice came harsh. “You are mistaken. I own this land. And the mounds on it.”

“You own it, Elcmar? No one person owns this land. It has always been so. If anyone does own this island, it belongs to all Starwatchers!”

He took her arm roughly. He had not let her touch him in welcome, and now this. She restrained herself, seeing icy anger in his eyes.

“You keep only what you brought into this marriage. As you say, none of you Starwatchers own Eire. You don’t believe in ownership of land. This island is, therefore, ours. We have taken Eire and I hold all authority over it.” His words drove a dagger crueler than any metal into her heart. “Listen carefully, Boann. I never loved you. I want only this island. For my son. For Aengus.”

She twisted her arm from his grasp. Bresal’s lessons on the Invader concepts of property and inheritance came back to her. She thought of the seeds of doubt sown by Maedb. Elcmar would hear the gossip soon enough, if he had not already.

She struck back. “You cannot prove that Aengus is your son.”

He lunged for her but clutched his side.

She outran him though she could hardly breathe, her heart like a stone. She was lengths ahead, more fleet on foot. Had she looked back, she would have seen Elcmar drop to his knees, folded over in agony. It took him a long time to rise, alone, and fetch his horse that he found staked at a distance from the Starwatcher village.

Boann reached cover, a thick stand of yew trees where she could catch her breath. Her thoughts raced. She had known that leaving the camp to give birth to Aengus would be difficult to explain, but Elcmar pushed their argument well beyond that. All his words stung as if he had slapped her like he would a slave.

She leaned back against the smooth trunk of an ash, its bright yellow spears of new leaves furled tight in wait for spring, and tried to make sense of their quarrel. She had been glad for his return but saw him now all too clearly. Their intimacies and quiet moments, their pleasures as man and wife, meant nothing to him.
What, then, could he want with a woman?
His Invader concept of ownership and that it carried the right to abuse and discard land, things, and persons, was a lesson she did not want. She would not give way to tears though some slid down her cheeks.
I have simply been wrong about him. He wants only to exploit me, as he intends to exploit this island.
She must think what to do.

Elcmar asserted that he owned this island; that was ridiculous. No one could own or carve up the land any more than one could own or carve up the sky’s dome or the ocean. That Elcmar desired to have authority over Eire was a different problem. The Invaders must not be allowed to impose their ways at the Starwatchers’ expense. He showed no remorse for the destruction of Dowth.

Anyone could observe the skies’ movements, yet not one of the intruders could see them. Elcmar was quick and cunning about many things, but he hadn’t studied the skies. The Starwatcher facts which she took for granted were to him deep secrets. Worse, he was capricious as weather: sunny, then raining before one could blink. Perhaps that resulted from his chaotic early years, always scrabbling for food and shelter, on the move as he said it. Rarely sitting engaged with a task for his mind or free to play, unlike a Starwatcher child. Her child.

She drew her cloak tighter. She must protect Aengus, and deal with Elcmar and his hard-edged people as they were in the here and now among her people. She longed to talk with Sheela of the spirits, and closed her eyes to imagine their conversation.

You thought Elcmar would change but it is you who must change, wise Sheela said, sighing with the yew boughs.

Boann opened her eyes. Invaders could not grasp the Starwatchers’ way of life; so be it. She must be cleverer than Elcmar. She would not allow him to overwhelm her, nor use their marriage to claim this island. She understood now what Cliodhna warned her, what Sheela’s spirit was telling her. She must pretend to accommodate the Invaders, no matter how rude or ignorant she found their ways. I can be cunning, dissemble, and use guile if I must, she told herself; I can say yes when I mean no and no when I mean yes.

From now on she would react in strength rather than from fear. She lifted her face to the winter sun. If these Invaders interfered with use of the mounds, they would see dire consequences. No more compromising; she would convince her elders at the earliest opportunity.

Whether her child had a preassigned status or what he might inherit from Elcmar, did not matter. She would raise Aengus as a Starwatcher. Not as a warrior, to wander strange lands and compete for the absurd privilege of mounting a horse to appease invisible gods, or if he were scarred to then be scorned as blemished and not fit to lead. None of that made sense to her. Aengus would have a very different sense of himself and the world and his place in the world, than any of that. Aengus descended from the mother, in her line, like any Starwatcher.

She would guard little Aengus’ future. Elcmar only mentioned the child to her at the last, when he claimed ownership of Eire. Had he seen Aengus? The ash tree’s bare-limbed shadow on the frozen ground showed to her surprise that it was past midsun. She rushed back to Aengus at her father’s house.

The Invaders’
geis
began that very nightfall. Elcmar acted discreetly, sending armed warriors in the dark. One restrained Oghma while they took away his daughter and grandson before his eyes.

“Wait for word from me in our signs—” Boann called to Oghma in their tongue.

She refused to ride the horse offered to her. They traveled back to the Invader camp, a warrior sullenly leading two horses and another minding the
ard ri’s
woman who insisted on walking. She hugged little Aengus close to her.

On Boann’s arrival at the great hall, dimly lit and quiet, the slave Muirgen took Aengus from her arms. She anxiously followed the slave, who carried Aengus back to the sleeping chamber. Boann saw that a nursery area had been prepared for the infant there, where Elcmar waited. She sat away from Elcmar, in the shadows, tense while he held Aengus. She did not speak. It did seem to her that he handled the baby with care.

After a time, he indicated that the slave must withdraw from them and watched Muirgen leave. He turned to Boann. “You must also occupy the sleeping chamber in order to be near the child.”

Elcmar did not bolt the door and he wore no weapon in his belt. She relaxed enough to sleep in the bed beside him, but lightly, and she rose quickly whenever Aengus needed to nurse.

When she woke in the morning light, she found that Elcmar had left a white gown of cloth woven finer than any she had seen, and a belt woven in many colors, draped over her clothing baskets. Soft leather shaped to cover the whole foot, her first shoes, lay close by. His gesture touched Boann until she comprehended it fully from the slave girl, who returned to her and Aengus. Elcmar wanted a grand show of her arrival in the camp, as if to say that Boann returned of her own volition now that the
ard ri
had returned. Muirgen brought tepid water for a hasty washing of hands and face and neck, and secured the gold discs at her earlobes.

Elcmar paraded his wife in her new clothing together with little Aengus. The camp’s newcomers acted polite, almost servile in their attentions to mother and child. When Boann met the new sage, her skin crawled. Ith had dry cold hands, sunken eyes, and his thin mouth turned down at the corners in a narrow face without color; an altogether humorless apparition of a man. She hugged Aengus tight against her soft new tunic.

Boann chose to stay in the camp despite having been brought to Elcmar in darkness and against her will. If she aided Elcmar to save face with his people, he might reconsider his ban on use of the mounds. She would privately remind him of their marriage contract, that he needed their marriage to make any claim on her or Eire or Aengus. I can be as merciless as Elcmar, she told herself. And Elcmar has no other home but the Boyne and no boat to leave it.

Some days later, Boann hosted Maedb and her retinue. She refrained from comment while the gaily dressed and painted women bounced and jangled Aengus. Instead she signaled and the slave girl quickly brought aromatic water of Boann’s own blending, and served it to the women in the fine blossom cups of Cliodhna.

“Aengus Og!” Maedb toasted. “Aengus the young son.” Maedb held out her cup to be refilled and inquired pointedly about Cliodhna.

After an awkward pause, Boann answered her truthfully, “I do not know of Cliodhna. She has disappeared from this place.”

Maedb searched Boann’s face but it was smooth of concealment.

The slave Muirgen tactfully withdrew little Aengus from the women’s excessive handling, but not before Aengus spit up on one of Maedb’s companions, on a rare gown bordered with hundreds of tiny stone beads sewn onto it. Muirgen leaped to dab at the stain, and the intruder woman managed to be gracious about it to Boann.

Almost one lunate passed. In the camp an evil atmosphere hung like the oppressive winter skies. The intruders still chattered about their month of two moons and the portent of the second, dark red moon. Elcmar set the warriors and smelters and slaves to furious work, and made Bresal’s life grim by ordering no drink served to him before darkness fell. Bresal swore he would make darkness without end and challenged Ith to help him. Ith replied that he would leave that feat to Bresal’s own magic, perhaps another cloud of dust would suffice?

Whenever any issue concerning the Starwatchers arose, Boann made it appear that she deferred to Elcmar. Her relations with him remained polite, but they no longer coupled as during their first lunate together. He questioned her several times about Cliodhna, then abruptly dropped the topic. Even the slaves seemed to blame Boann for Cliodhna’s absence.