Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
Finn Mac Cool (20 page)
Cormac took his wife on a tour of Tara, proudly showing her the royal magnificence he had created. Always they were accompanied by Fiachaid's men, almost like a human wall between Ethni the Proud and the FÃanna. This was so much a matter of routine that none but Finn gave any thought to it.
“This is the Assembly Hall,” Cormac said, showing his wife the centrepiece of the new Tara. “It used to be just a rectangular wattle-and-daub structure capable of holding at most a hundred men. Now it is capable of containing the largest banquets ever served in Erin. The length is three hundred cubits, the width fifty, the height thirty. A bronze lamp is always kept burning inside. It can hold one hundred and fifty benches for feasting, plus one hundred and fifty warriors to attend me, and a cupbearer for every man I entertain here.”
“Do you need so many doorways?” asked Ethni. “Doesn't that create a chilling draught?”
“The doorways are traditional. Even when this was a much cruder structure, there were fourteen of them, one for each of the reasons a visitor might approach the king here.”
Ethni swept a coolly appraising eye over the new structure, which ran north and south along the slope of the hill. Its woodwork was carefully joined and finely planed. All the doorways were elaborately carved. The new thatch gleamed like a roof of gold, with layered patterns along the ridgeline of the roof where the thatch had been worked into swags and scallops. Turning slightly, she surveyed the other buildings now crowding
the interior of the palisade until Tara resembled a town rather than a fort; a brand-new town, perfect and prosperous and impregnable.
the interior of the palisade until Tara resembled a town rather than a fort; a brand-new town, perfect and prosperous and impregnable.
“You are king of all this?” she asked her husband.
Cormac nodded gravely.
“And our eldest son Cairbri will be king here after you?”
“If I can hold it until he is old enough to succeed me, and I am ready to give up my kingship to him.”
Ethni gave her husband a hard look. “Do you mean to hold on to it selfishly all your life?”
“I can be king,” Cormac reminded her, “as long as I am unblemished and strong enough to wield a sword. That's the law.”
“Sons often grow tired waiting for their fathers to relinquish the sword to them.”
Cormac dropped his voice so no one else could hear as he said, “Are you threatening me, Ethni? Are you so ambitious for an infant still at the breast?”
“All mothers are ambitious for their sons,” said Ethni the Proud with the faintest shrug of one strong shoulder.
That night the king held a great banquet in his new hall, in honour of his wife's arrival. It was the first true banquet ever to be held in Cormac's Banquetting Hall, and would set the pattern for innumerable events to follow.
Cormac and his retinue reclined on fur-draped couches on the west side of the hall. The king was attired in his best: his crimson cloak, his gold torc around his neck, a white linen shirt threaded with crimson at the throat and wrists, a multicoloured tunic belted with a girdle of gilded leather inlaid with precious stones. Even his leather shoes were banded with gold.
For this occasion Ethni feasted beside her husband, in the company of bards and brehons. Beyond them were the members of the king's court in order of descending rank, and as this was no Assembly and so no other nobles were present to fill the hall, the rest of the vast space was occupied by Fiachaid and Finn and their men.
“Watch the king as a hawk watches a sparrow,” Finn had warned his fÃan before they entered. “Do whatever he does, the way he does it. Eat as he eats, drink as he drinks. Don't root at your food like hogs in acorn mast, but follow Cormac's example in manners at all times. I want it to look as if the Banquetting Hall is filled with nobles, not rabble.”
“I know how to eat,” growled Conan. “I've been doing it for years.”
Cailte added, “There's only one way to eat, and that's right- and left-handed and as quickly as you can, before someone takes it away from you.”
Finn glared at him. “No one's going to take anything away from us.
Eat as if you expect there will be more whenever you want it, because there will be. Eat like a king.”
Eat as if you expect there will be more whenever you want it, because there will be. Eat like a king.”
That night, among the fragrant cedar pillars that upheld the roof soaring high above them, Finn's fénnidi watched Cormac covertly and tried to eat like kings.
Sometimes, as Finn continually tested his men and devised new challenges for them, Cruina the smith's daughter came to watch. The practice sessions of the FÃanna were drawing spectators from throughout Tara by now. Ethni's servant women came every evening to stand on the sidelines, pointing out with a stabbing finger or a darting eye this or that man, commenting on his prowess, or possible prowess, giggling behind their hands.
“Ignore them,” Finn commanded his men.
He was aware of Cruina. but he paid no heed to her. Then on one exceptionally cold evening, when the wind was howling through Tara like a mad thing, he saw from the corner of his eye that she was shivering. She stood apart from the other women, watching silently, her arms wrapped around herself, shivering. Finn abruptly turned and went to his own quarters. When he came back, he had the great animal-skin cloak over his arm. Without saying a word, he put it over Cruina's shoulders and went back to his mean.
Lochan, when he heard of it, was overjoyed. He took the gesture as a public sign of commitment and began referring to his daughter Cruina as being “married to the RÃgfénnid FÃanna, you know,” with great pride. He did not quite dare say “wife,” however. He was very aware there had been no contract.
He was also aware, as was Cruina, that Finn made no other gesture toward her.
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Lochan would have been horrified to learn of any relationship between one of his daughters and a fénnid. Already that time was over.
Finn Mac Cool was proving himself a force to be reckoned with, a hero and champion whose embrace would honour a woman. Several of the noblewomen who had accompanied their cousin Ethni to Tara turned to look at him as he strode by.
One or two of them also cast speculative glances toward his band; his always-burnished, always-gleaming band, whose unfailing courtesy toward women was being rigidly enforced by their RÃgfénnid FÃanna.
Finn found himself lecturing Fergus Honey-Tongue almost daily. The man seemed constitutionally unable to avoid passing remarks with women, and for him. oral conversation was just a prelude to physical communication.
Finally an exasperated Finn dragged him into the stable and threatened,
“If I see you put your paws on one more woman, I'm going to break both your arms, Fergus!”
“If I see you put your paws on one more woman, I'm going to break both your arms, Fergus!”
The warrior was perplexed. “But she smiled at me, Finn. She likes me. Are you trying to say I can't ever enjoy another woman? That's madness!”
“I didn't say that at all. I'm just telling you not to gobble them right- and left-handed. See how the king treats his wife? As if she's valuable, not digestible.”
“But she is valuable. If someone harmed her, they'd have to pay her family three white cows as an honour price.”
“Then,” ordered Finn, “treat every woman as if she were worth three white cows.”
Fergus looked at him aghast. “I don't understand Finn anymore,” he subsequently lamented to Goll Mac Morna.
“Did you ever?”
“I thought so. He was just one of us.”
“Is that what you thought?”
“And why not? When we joined the FÃanna, he was simply another fénnid. Better with weapons, maybe, but aside from that, no different. Quieter, sometimes. And ⦔ Fergus paused, slowly enumerating in his mind those things that after all, he now realized had made Finn different from the beginning. “And bolder sometimes. And that poetry ⦠he goes off somewhere inside his head when he's composing or reciting poetry, someplace we aren't allowed to follow him.
“He does that out in the country, too. Once we're in a forest, or on a hilltop, have you ever noticed what happens to Finn, Goll? He sort of ⦠glows. It's like he's come home again. He gets a look about him I never see on his face when he's under a roof.”
Goll said, “Finn's wilder than the rest of us. He has a quality in himself you and I don't have.”
Fergus, thinking he understood, nodded. “The magic, you mean. His mother being of the blood of the Tuatha Dé Danann and all that.”
“That's not true, Fergus.”
“What are you talking about? Of course it's true. Finn told us himself.”
“And that makes it true?”
“Is he not always talking to us about honour? Insisting that we be honourable no matter what? It's practically the only song he sings. Do you really believe a man like that would lie?”
Goll's lips twisted cynically. “In my experience, it's a man like that who's most likely to lie ⦠if only to himself.”
“Then you don't understand Finn at all.”
“And you do? You just said you didn't.”
Fergus snapped, “Obviously I understand him better than you do, Goll Mac Morna!”
Goll's patience with Finn was running thin. Even though he was older than the others and had once commanded the FÃanna himself, Finn insisted he perform the same feats and pass the same tests as everyone else. Goll considered this insulting. And almost impossible, physically. Years of battle and hard travel had ground him down more than he wanted to admit.
He began to suspect Finn not only knew this, but was deliberately taking advantage of it to undercut his position with the other men. That meant Finn must still see him as a rival; an obscure compliment.
Goll began trying harder than any of the others during the almost nightly competitions at Tara.
The days were growing longer, however; more work was being done, leaving less time for Finn's incessant drilling. As Lochan frequently remarked to his daughter, “Beltaine's approaching faster than you think, Cruina. Has Finn said nothing to you yet? No mention of a contract, or of a marriage at the dawn of summer?”
“How could he, when he doesn't speak to me at all?” she replied sadly.
“Then that's your fault, isn't it? Make an effort, girl!”
Cruina began dyeing her fingertips bright red and curling her hair into ringlets that looked like frizzed hemp whenever it rained, which was often as spring descended on Tara. She stationed herself where Finn could not fail to see her a dozen times a day.
He always nodded formally and walked past without a word.
Finally she could wait no longer. The promise of spring was thick in the throat of the day, reminding men that battle season would soon begin. Last details of construction were being completed by the fénnid. even as professional carpenters were being recruited from the nearby populace to replace them when the FÃanna took to the hills again.
On a misty morning with vapour rising in silver waves from sodden earth, Cruina stepped directly into Finn's path and stood there, daring him with her eyes to dodge around her.
He stopped. “Can I do something for you?” he enquired politely.
“You can talk to me.”
“What have we to talk about?”
“Our marriage!” she burst out.
“You said there was no marriage. Is there anything else, or can I go?”
“You said you wanted a contract marriage!”
“That was then and this is now.”
“You don't want to marry me?” She met his eyes squarely. “Answer me, Finn. They are saying of you that you tell the truth, that you insist
upon it for all the FÃanna. Tell me the truth now. Do you not want me?”
upon it for all the FÃanna. Tell me the truth now. Do you not want me?”
To his dismay, Finn realized his heart was pounding. She was standing a little too close to him. The day was a little too warm. Blood was running in his veins like a river.
“I want to lie with you,” he said in a voice from which he withheld any trace of emotion. “I want to lie with many women. I want to eat all the fat meat in Tara and drink all the ale. But I don't do it; I have other things to do.”
“Are you going to take me as your wife at Beltaine?” Cruina demanded to know.
He smiled then. “Cruina of the Questions.” He almost reached out. He almost touched her. But he could not risk another humiliation with this woman. The next time he touched a woman, he had promised himself, it would be one who did not know about his initial failure. “I shall soon be away for a long time. If I wed you at Beltaine, you would not see me until Samhain, and perhaps not then, depending on what happens in the coming year,” he told her. “Better for you if things continue as they are.”
Giving her a smile that she could interpret any way she chose, Finn left her standing there.
Cruina stood for a long time, head down, listening to his words in her mind. Analyzing the tone of his voice. Trying to believe what she wanted to believe.
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