Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
Finn Mac Cool (28 page)
By the time Sive and the guard of honour arrived, the little army that had thought to attack Finn had disappeared. At least, those still living were gone. As Sive approached her new home, her horrified eyes were greeted by the sight of a pile of bloodied bodies stacked near the gates.
Cailte was the first to recover from the shock and ran forward, calling Finn's name. The gates opened to him at once, and he and the others poured through.
Fergus Honey-Tongue held back, staying with Sive. He put a hand on her elbow to steady her; she looked as if she might bolt in terror at the sight of the piled bodies and at the stench of their emptied bowels. “Death takes a bit of getting used to,” he commented, adding consolingly, “but it's all right, our side obviously won. Those aren't our men feeding the ravens.”
Sive made a tiny sound in her throat.
Fergus guided her through the gateway and looked around anxiously for Finn. He would not have recognized him but for his height and his hair.
The RÃgfénnid FÃanna was literally bathed in blood. As he strode forward to greet Sive, flakes of dried gore fell from his clothing in a brown rain. For his wedding day he had selected a new shirt and tunic and a woollen cloak with three rows of fringe, but it was impossible to tell what colour any of them had been. All was the colour of blood now.
Sive's nostrils flared.
Accustomed to blood, Finn did not realize, until he saw the look on her face, what a shock his appearance must be to Sive. I should bathe, he thought. But he could not leave her when she had just arrived. He
could not leave her at all. If he issued the order to his feet, they would simply refuse to obey.
could not leave her at all. If he issued the order to his feet, they would simply refuse to obey.
He held out his hands to her. They too were caked with blood.
“This isn't the way I meant to greet you,” he apologized, “It was to he ⦠I had planned ⦠trumpets ⦔ He waved vaguely. A fénnid saw the gesture and tardily put a horn to his lips and blew. He was no musician. The trumpet made a sound like a slaughtered pig.
Finn looked stricken. The woman in Sive recognized his pain. Unflinchingly, she reached out and took his two bloody hands in hers. “I am glad to be here,” she said.
Finn held her hands, or she held his, flesh welded to flesh with no seam. “We'll make our vows now,” Finn decided, “before anything else happens.” He raised his voice. “Flaithri! Here, to me!”
Hurrying forward, the brehon discovered Finn and Sive in the centre of a circle of FÃanna, holding hands like two children at bay. Flaithri scowled disapproval. “You must go and bathe and put on fresh clothing,” he told Finn. “And surely your woman would like to refresh herself after her journey. Then you canâ”
“We're going to take our vows now,” said Finn.
“Butâ”
“Now,” said Finn Mac Cool.
He was gripping Sive's hands so tightly they throbbed with pain, but she made no effort to pull free. She had known fear in her life, and desperation. She recognized the grip of a drowning man.
“We take our vows now,” she said to the brehon.
Flaithri rolled his eyes sunward. “This is highly unusual.”
“Finn Mac Cool is highly unusual,” Fergus interjected, “and he has an awesome temper. I suggest you do as he asks rather than provoke one of his famous demonstrations.”
Nine rÃgfénnidi stepped, as one man, closer to Finn and Sive. Nine pairs of warrior eyes fixed themselves firmly on Flaithri.
The brehon knew a threat when he saw it. “It's your marriage of course,” he told Finn. “I shall certainly do as you wish.” Meanwhile, he was trying to ignore the blood drying on Finn's clothing and growing increasingly pungent as the day warmed. “Hold hands,” he instructed unnecessarily. “Now repeat the vows of first-degree marriage after me, the two of you speaking with one voice.”
They nodded, heads bobbing in unison.
As Flaithri recited, they echoed, “You cannot possess me for I belong to myself. But while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give. You cannot command me for I am a free person. But I shall serve you in those ways you require and the honeycomb will taste sweeter coming from my hand.
“I pledge to you that yours will be the name I cry aloud in the night, and the eyes into which I smile in the morning. I pledge to you the first bite from my meat and the first drink from my cup. I pledge to you my living and my dying, each equally in your care. I shall be a shield for your back, and you for mine. I shall not slander you, nor you me. I shall honour you above all others, and when we quarrel, we shall do so in private and tell no strangers our grievances.
“This is my wedding vow to you. This is the marriage of equals.”
As Finn and Sive repeated the words, the blended voices of man and woman became one voice.
Flaithri raised his extended arms above them toward the sun and solemnly intoned, “These promises you make by the sun and moon, by fire and water, by day and night, by land and sea. With these vows you swear, by the gods your people swear by, to be full partners, each to the other.
“If one drops the load, the other will pick it up. If one is a discredit to the other, his own honour will be forfeit, generation upon generation, until he repairs that which was damaged and finds that which was lost. The vow of first degree supersedes all others. Should you fail to keep the oath you pledge today, the elements themselves will reach out and destroy you.”
Surrounded by his FÃanna, bathed in blood, Finn let the words sink into his bones. Then, for the first time anyone could remember, he humbly bowed his head.
There was a wedding feast afterward, with dancing around the Beltaine pole and songs sung and stories told and massive amounts of barley ale consumed. It was an occasion of rampant revelry. No one could equal the FÃanna when it came to revelry.
But Finn did not join them. He led Sive into the house he had built for her and barred the door behind them.
The world went away.
In the house, their house, Sive knelt by the firepit and built a smaller house out of kindling to contain their first fire. Finn struck sparks from his flints, and she encouraged them with her breath. When the fire came to life, the house came to life.
Finn had acquired a copper cauldron for heating water, and working together, they dragged this close to the fire. They did not speak. Words were not necessary. The silent conversation went on as before, a dialogue now, and from time to time, Sive caught Finn's eye and smiled.
He could feel the wounds on his spirit healing.
As the water heated, Finn began to unfasten the bronze brooch that held his blood-stiffened cloak to his shoulders, but Sive reached out and pushed his fingers away, opening the brooch herself. She peeled the
sticky woollen cloak from the tunic beneath and dropped it heavily to the ground.
sticky woollen cloak from the tunic beneath and dropped it heavily to the ground.
Then she removed his tunic and shirt.
Finn stood unable to move. His eyes never left her face.
With tenderness, she stripped him. She did not appear to notice the tremors running along his thigh muscles. With her cupped hands, she took warmed water from the cauldron and poured it over his body, then wiped away the blood with a dampened cloth. She began with his face and neck and worked her way down, across his shoulders, his chest, his belly. Touching him gently in his private places, lifting and cleansing him with grave reverence.
He had been frightened, terrified of the moment when his manhood would be tested. But Sive was so gentle she encouraged gentleness in Finn, and with it came patience. He was able to control himself and let his desire rise easily, like a flowering.
Sive knelt before him to bathe his legs.
After a few moments he reached down and lifted her to her feet. Taking the cloth from her, he dropped it into the cauldron. Then he removed her garments as she had removed his, fumbling only briefly with the complexities of female dress.
He did everything very slowly, with a sense that time had stopped.
When she was naked, he gazed at her in the firelight and she stood vulnerable to him, her arms hanging at her sides, palms outward.
She was, he thought, the most wonderful being he had ever seen.
He ran his fingers from her collarbone to her nipples, watching in amazement as the pink cones stiffened to his touch. “Like you,” she said, looking down. He followed her eyes and saw his erection like a lance between them. One tiny move and it was pressed against her, sinking into the softness of her belly.
They gasped one breath together.
Sive cupped Finn's buttocks with her hands and drew him closer. Then she ran her warm palms up his body, up his rib cage, lifting them to frame his face so she could study his eyes.
He wondered what she saw.
He knew what others had seen, sometimes.
But Sive was not frightened. She looked deep into him, so deep, he thought, she must surely see the forest and the boglands and the wild mountains, must see the secrets of his spirit. “Come into me,” he said.
“Come into me,” she replied.
He lifted her in his arms. She weighed no more than a thought. A dream. Yet there was a warm, solid weight to her too, a smoothness of flesh and scent of hair that was unique to Sive. With his eyes closed, he would have known her among thousands. This is how Bran and Sceolaun
knew her, he thought. She was as instantly familiar to them as she is to me.
knew her, he thought. She was as instantly familiar to them as she is to me.
He laid her down on his couch of furs. The passion roaring through him was hotter than the fire on the hearth, yet not out of control as it had been with Cruina. When he was with Sive, their every move together was like a dance they both knew, and he made no mistakes. “Let me touch you,” he whispered. “Let me look at you.”
She parted her legs for him and let him see her secret mouth, like petals in soft moss, moist and open to him. He touched her and she gasped again, spine arching. Reaching for him, she put her hands on his hips and guided him toward her. Slowly, slowly. Savouring.
When he touched her, he was shot through by lightning. But he could contain the lightning. He could hold it within him, waiting, as she waited, while he slid into that soft, warm secret mouth and felt its lips close around him. Then all was silken heat and he did not have to wait any longer.
She had been like a wild creature, living by her wits, running on the hills. Her muscles were firm and strong and very much at her command. She squeezed him deliberately, deep inside herself, wringing a cry of astonishment from him.
Then she did it again. When he looked down at her, her eyes were brimming with mischief. She licked her lips.
She squeezed him a third time and the throbbing thunder overtook them. They cried out with one voice then, sharing an explosion of sensation beyond bearing in its intensity.
Finn Mac Cool was shapechanged by ecstasy.
Later, much later, he was able to draw away from her an infinitesimal distance and study her by firelight as she slept. Her fair skin was caressed by the piled furs on which she lay.
In the glow from the hearth, her skin tones were not pale, however. They were golden ⦠they were muddy ⦠like the hide of a red deer burnished by the westering sun.
Dreams, thought Finn. And reality. Which is she? Does it matter? She's here. She's here. He touched her curving flank, he ran his fingertip along the knobs of her spine, between the strong back muscles.
She's here.
Sive opened her eyes.
He continued his exploration of her, pausing when he found the first scar. “What's this?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“I was in a forest, and some hunters came. They must have mistaken me for an animal. I ran from them, thinking my father had sent them, but they ran after me and hurled their spears at me. One spear took me there, in the side. It fell out when I kept running, but it left a scar.”
The sight of the mended flesh gave Finn a pain more physical than his own injuries had ever caused him. He could have lost her! Some hunter's spear might have ended her life before he ever knew there was a Sive!
He seized her in his arms and pressed her against his chest as if he would fight off all the world for her.
She felt his heart beating against hers, with the same rhythm. Then the rhythm grew faster.
When at last they rested again, he continued his examination, questioning every scratch and scrape. There were pale white marks where briers had torn her legs; he kissed them. He kissed the calused soles of her feet, and discovered to his delight that the curve of her instep fitted the shape of his cheekbone.
Every part of Sive fitted every part of Finn.
Sometime before dawn he got up to feed the fire, and brought back the bathing cloth. He sat naked beside her on the furs and stroked her clean with aching tenderness, while she lay smiling.
“Is this a thing men do for their wives?” she asked him.
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