BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland (25 page)

Next Cian gave her buttons that he carved from antler bone. Boann could see that these ovoid buttons took much time, to slice the antler and then patiently pierce with an awl from two directions, to make a shank for attaching the button.

“I have admired such buttons on intruder clothing. You have carved and polished these to be better than any I have seen.” She held them, her voice low and soft.

He opened the last bundle for her. Boann hesitated, and then she accepted a small triangular knife of shadow moon metal. This weapon they deposited quickly under a heavy stone until she could hide it elsewhere.

Then he asked many questions about Aengus, and she was full of stories of her firstborn, eyeing Cian as she spoke. She spilled over, brimming with every detail about the infant Aengus. Cian nibbled the steamed roots and beef strips she had brought him, beaming at her, occasionally scanning the horizon. Early stars were appearing; no other person was about.

A look passed between them when she finished speaking of Aengus.

“Aengus was born at the solstice,” she said. It was then she saw the bright fire behind Cian’s eyes. His look seared her, a look of total understanding. She wanted to put him on his back and take the sweetness from Cian that she had not known with anyone else.

But she sobered, as she told him about the violence at Dowth.

He knew each of the young Starwatchers who had been killed or injured. “How can it be that I survived voyages to the Seafarer peninsula and back, but some of our companions who remained here walk now with the spirits,” and he shook his head sadly.

“Then value your time among the living… and go forward with us,” she said.

She posed questions about his travels. His clipped replies about the ocean crossings implied dangers and uncertainty beyond telling. He shrugged off her concern, described new things he learned on the waters, particularly for navigating. “Seafarer communities favor the Seven Stars and orient many of their coastal mounds to this constellation. They light fires on their mounds as beacons. Their mariners memorize the night skies and travel over water like we do the land. They observe old ways but have become new men, explorers of places unknown to us.”

She murmured of hearing similar things from the slaves. When he assured her that the seas flowed smoother after spring equinox, Boann touched his arm. “Why do you tell me this, Cian?”

He held back his answer to her question. He changed the subject, describing new foods and herbs and the strange etiquette at Bolg’s feast. “The men eat in strict separation from women, and talk of trade dominates all else.” He mentioned the increasing flow of goods; that traders exchanged metals, salt, and rare beads for hides and other produce, some from far lands. Given Eire’s paucity of animals and crops, he didn’t go into detail.

He mentioned that all the traders he had seen wore long knives and a privileged few Seafarers carried metal daggers or long knives. Cian said, “I know the elders will talk further with the Starwatchers about these things, for I met with our elders through to dusk.” He emphasized to her, “At the Lake Of Many Hammers, and on the Continent, the land suffers. That pungent odor from smelting was worse at the copper mine and again on the Continent.”

At his mention of the Lake mine, Boann asked eagerly, “And Cliodhna?”

Cian could only shake his head. “All anyone knows was that she left Eire by boat from the southwest coast, not far from the mine, with a man named Iuchnu. Given all the coastlines and islands where they might hide from traders, it could be a long time before anyone learns the outcome of their journey.” It was not the fault of Sreng, they agreed. There was nothing more to say regarding Cliodhna’s fate and they fell silent.

He regarded her face tenderly. Would Boann ever see the Continent, he wondered, but he would not suggest that. Women did not usually make long voyages, Lir told him. Nor did Cian dwell on the array of rich furnishings, the lavish personal adornments and clothing he had seen. How could he possibly describe the serving girl’s revealing string skirt? Boann had already admired his well-stitched tunic and leggings, and his light but tough foot coverings. She wore a fine linen tunic that must have been brought to her by Elcmar, and over her shoulders a beautiful robe of matched skins.

He tucked a spray of apple blossoms into her hair and saw matching pink suffuse her cheeks. Not all of their time together would be spent talking, he decided. Cian gently removed the fur robe in which Boann wrapped herself against the damp grass.

Suddenly shy with him, she chattered and showed him the robe, told him how she pieced it using needle skills learned from Airmid. “We used the softest winter rabbit skins at hand to us. I saved the robe for this time, for your return.”

The first act of vanity in her life, he knew, and his heart pounded.

Cian embraced her against the robe and she arched against him, blood racing together. He let down her heavy hair and lost himself in her. They lingered under Boann’s robe while the turning patterns above went unnoticed. They made slow, all-consuming love, bodies joined in their own universe shot through with glittering, innumerable stars. Two halves of the entire, reunited, and they clung together until the morning stars showed.

They stirred, and they smiled and clasped hands. Cian leaned up on one elbow, his face serious again as he touched hers.

“I have told the Dagda, your father and all the elders: they shall receive an object from me, by and by. This thing, a disk like the sun, shall be kept hidden. It is of great value to the Starwatchers and it must be kept safe. You shall know this object when you see it. The elders will give it to you to teach Aengus, when that time arrives. This metal disk could replace our building of starchambers. It might even solve the problem of the shifting constellations.”

He had more to share. The two had not spoken privately in many lunates, not since Elcmar found her lying in the meadow. Cian could feel the sun’s light coming in the northeast; soon it would be time to leave her. For once, he would open himself to Boann.

She wanted to question him. What wondrous object could ever replace their starchambers? Why would Cian himself not teach Aengus with it? But he put his sweet long fingers on her lips. His least touch felt like shooting stars. He started with what he knew of the death of Sheela. Boann heard with astonishment…

On that equinox dawn, Connor discovered Cian sneaking back inside the camp. He took Cian along to guide an early hunt. “We were four or five, a small intruder party. We came along the stream on foot. There you were. Connor stumbled ahead to assault you. The others’ knives held me back!” His eyes smoldered.

Boann nodded. She knew too well this paralyzing fear of the shining, deadly knives.

“You got away—clumsy as he was and a head on him from the drink. Later with the sun lowering, we were all back inside the Invaders’ walls. Connor left the camp again, but Elcmar stood watching me and so I could not follow. By next light, Sheela was found murdered. Ardal got word to me. I guessed that this mayhem and death was Connor’s work even before I saw his wounded hand. I slid between the camp and our village to attend the council, to warn our elders against reprisal.” Cian did not elaborate how he slipped in and out of the Invaders’ camp except by saying with some disdain, “The Invaders believe that I change shape from a man to an animal and back.” He continued, his words rushing against sunrise.

“Not one intruder showed concern about the murder of Sheela. They quarreled night and day over making of their new
ard ri
. They questioned me about Connor’s swelling hand. I urged the Invaders to have a Starwatcher treat the wound. In that way the Starwatchers would know who was Sheela’s murderer.” Cian struck the earth with his fist. “Bresal agreed to bring in a Starwatcher healer since as he said, it appeared to him that Connor might die anyway. So it was that the Invaders ignored the Starwatchers’ request to meet in council and demanded instead that our elders send a healer.”

He choked. “Boann, when they brought you into the camp, I was beside myself. If you had been killed—” She squeezed his arm to go on.

“After they amputated Connor’s red hand, turmoil continued as the warriors fought to elect their new champion. Intrigue fed upon intrigue. Maedb added me to her enemies, and claimed it was I who murdered Sheela. Elcmar no longer allowed me out of his sight. To be sure, he and I foiled several attempts on your life by Maedb’s assassins. Each having different reasons than the other man, perhaps, but there it is.

“He learned when another attempt would be made, and Elcmar rode out with his own warriors—and me—to look for the assassins. We hunted down your hunters, and this time we disabled them. A warning to Maedb. But a waste of sound men, it angered Elcmar. He rode off. Shortly he waved his blade above the grass, and we followed after not knowing what to expect. He’d found you, sleeping there under the sun in the meadow, and it’s alive you were. I spoke to make you heed the danger, not knowing then if you had two enemies: Maedb, and Elcmar. He kept his watch on me. So I kept a watch on Elcmar! When his position as the new champion appeared secure, Elcmar announced that he would have a marriage with the Starwatchers.” About the choice Boann made and her sudden marriage with Elcmar, Cian said nothing. She stroked his cheek.

“Connor of the Red Hand remains at large in the north, as you know. And Elcmar sent me off the island. The smith Gebann thinks Elcmar banished me so he could seek the sun metal, the gold, for himself. But that’s not it, not at all. Elcmar had to keep you for himself, Boann.”

“Elcmar cares nothing for me! I see that Maedb resents me—I don’t take food or drink from her hands.” Boann sighed. “Is this all we can learn from these Invaders? Intrigues? Killing?”

Cian’s voice took on an edge. “I saw a cave on the Seafarer peninsula littered with bodies of young people, over thirty bodies. It is the end of that tribe. Long knives killed their young people for not submitting to the Invaders. Now some of the Seafarers build strong camps to live in like the Invaders. Those people live inside walls on the high places, instead of using the high places to watch the stars.”

He was thinking out loud. “I warned the elders. The great water insulated us, protected us from many evils. The new ships can bring good things to us, but we must be careful of what enters Eire, whether people with new ways or a new weapon.”

He stopped speaking for a moment. Boann kissed his hands, his beautiful hands so strong and brown, not roughened any longer with carving stone. She rested her head on his chest, smooth skin with a mat of curls; he smelled like salt and leather, good smells. She guessed what he wanted to say, what he had never told her.

“Duty prevented me from acting on my desires, just as duty made your decision in this matter.” Then he did tell her: he loved her, and he would always love her. He shared his hopes for Aengus and for the future, a future free of the Invaders’ shadow.

“I know that you must stay here. I must go.” There was still more to say but his time with her ran short. “I cannot stay on Eire, not at present.”

Boann raised her head to see into his eyes. “You must go?—Cian, when are you coming home?”

“Not for many seasons of the sun. I must leave you at once, before the sun’s shoulders clear the horizon.”

He held Boann while she allowed herself to weep. The truce proved itself a sham, already the troubles resumed. Clashes between Starwatchers and Invaders paralleled her own with Elcmar. Maedb would try to kill her, or Ith. Ith tracked her like a wolf.

She said only, “It is too much to hear that you leave us again, and so quickly.”

He held her until the weeping exhausted her. She drifted into a light slumber, and when she awoke under sunshine grazing the tips of the young grass and flowers, he had gone.

Her heart almost stopped. She felt at her neck for the cord carrying the seawater-colored stone. It was her only means to be sure that the night she remembered with Cian was not just a dream.

Cian traveled light. He had given away what he carried to the elders, and Boann, including all but one of his copper knives. Gebann freely gave him those knives, metal knives though he had nothing to trade the smith for them. He must retrieve the gold to return what he owed to Gebann and to Lir and others, or he could have no welcome back on the Continent, no safe haven there. Nor any here in Eire, and he felt at his belt for his one knife.

He passed undetected, cutting through woods south of the sacred river and then through the plain beyond, avoiding areas with signs of Invaders and their horses. He traveled south by southeast, keeping the mound at Fourknocks to his left. You shall not come sunwise across this plain, he could hear the Dagda’s admonishment. He still wasn’t sure what that meant, but now it helped him stay clear of wandering Invaders.