Finn Mac Cool (39 page)
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
“People have often moved both up and down within the levels of status,” Cormac observed.
“Indeed. But this is the first time in the long memory of the poets that some Fir Bolg have become equal to the Milesians.”
Cormac stiffened. “They are not ⦔ he began angrily. Then he paused. As Flaithri waited, he forced himself to examine reality. “In fairness, they are,” he said at last. “And I would rather be remembered as a fair and just king than as a successful warlord and bloodletter.”
“So you shall,” Flaithri affirmed. “Until the mountains fall and the seas rise, the poets will celebrate you as the wisest king ever to rule in Erin, a man who cherished the law as much as the brehons do and let no person be treated unjustly.
“But as to this matter of Finn Mac Cool ⦔ Flaithri's voice abandoned hyperbole and turned practical, “is he entitled in your judgment to what he claims?”
“He is, through his own achievement.”
“Including his claim to Almhain through inheritance? I thought you gave it to him.”
Cormac lifted one eyebrow. “Through inheritance?”
“He has informed the genealogists that his mother was of the Tuatha Dé Danannâand his wife Sive also. He says his son Oisin is thus doubly entitled to Almhain after him.”
Cormac's second eyebrow joined the first. “Do the genealogists accept this?”
“They will if the brehons do. But, as you know, we are prohibited from making any judgment on the word of one man only. Will you support Finn's claim?”
The king stroked his beard, where silver threads now outnumbered the gold. He gnawed his underlip, realized it looked like the mannerism of a worried man, and stopped.
Flaithri cleared his throat.
Cormac continued to stroke his beard. Then he drew a deep breath. His expression cleared as if his troubled face was wiped calm by a resolute hand.
“It may happen that even a wise man erects an edifice upon a single pillar,” Cormac said. “Having done so, he would be unwise to fail to reinforce the pillar in every way he can. Tell the genealogists I vouch for Finn's claim. He once revealed his history to me.”
Bowing, Flaithri left the king's chamber. When he had gone, Cormac sat for a long time stroking his beard. “That wretched Finn,” he said at last, heaving a sigh.
At the next Assembly, that wretched Finn sat on a carved bench in the Banquetting Hall. The upper end of the hall was reserved for poetsâand for historians and brehons and genealogistsâas well as the noblest of the noble. Finn Mac Cool sat between them and the king.
Flaithri himself made the announcement. “The brehons here convened, having examined and debated the law as it pertains to the last year, have found areas where change is needed.
“Therefore, tonight we announce a change in the rank and privileges of the RÃgfénnid FÃanna. From this time forth, the man who commands the army of Tara is entitled to receive fifty swift riding horses, fifty milch cows, fifty heavy beeves, fifty sheep with the fleece on them, and fifty deep-bellied hogs each year, as his share of the tribute paid to the king of Tara from his tributaries.
“Likewise, he shall be given twelve gold cups, twelve drinking horns, and twelve high-sided carts with sufficient oxen to pull them, and stores of corn to fill them. Barley and wheat and oats are his to the value of six bondwomen.”
Before those assembled had time to express their surprise at this enormous largesse, Flaithri continued, “Furthermore, from this night forward, the honour price of the RÃgfénnid FÃanna, the price that must be paid to his family for damage done to him, is to the value of twelve bondwomen.”
There was a concerted gasp the length of the hall. “The king my father only commands an honour price of fourteen bondwomen!” cried a prince of the Laigin.
Cormac fixed him with a stern eye. “You question this judgment?”
In an eyeblink, the rÃgfénnidi stationed around the great hall had their hands on the hilts of their swords.
The Laigin prince hesitated.
Cormac gave a crisp nod to Flaithri, who went on smoothly. “In accordance with this rank, the sons of the RÃgfénnid FÃanna are to he educated in the skills to which princes' sons are entitled. They are to learn chess and board games, horse riding, and swimming in lakes, and to sing with a clear voice. His daughters are to be taught sewing and flower plaiting and to embroider with fine needles. They are also to be allowed property sufficient to make them wives of equal dignity for chieftains and princes of the tribes.”
The prince of the Laigin drew in a sharp breath. As one man, the rÃgfénnidi turned their heads toward him.
He bit his lip and said nothing.
“He's not quite as stupid as he looks,” Conan said in a low voice to Red Ridge.
The other replied, “He can't be too pleased to learn there's what amounts to a new king in his territory.”
Conan grinned a rare grin. “but what can he do about it? Apply to the king of Tara?”
Those nearest them laughed outright.
As he listened to Flaithri, Finn had closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his lids, she came to him. Sive. Sive, he said, I have given our son the status of a prince.
There was, of course, grumbling and resentment in some quarters. Warriors who did not belong to the FÃanna hated seeing others of their kind advanced so far above them. But they did not openly rebel. The unprecedented step of allowing members of a subjugated tribe to move so far up the social scale meant new opportunities for everyone of ability. This lesson was not lost on the meanest leather-tanner in the most stinking pit. What Finn Mac Cool had done, others might do. Achievement would be rewarded, whatever its source.
To Cormac's delight, this conferred new admiration on him. “Cormac Mac Airt is the most noble, the most generous, of all kings!” poets claimed the length of the land. “He shares his prosperity as no man has done before him!”
Finn actually had Fergus Honey-Tongue compose a long, highly coloured praise-poem to this effect and recite it everywhere they went.
Manissa was pleased with the inflowing of wealth to Almhain. She expanded the household at Almhain of the White Walls to take in more fosterlings. “Look around,” she would say complacently to visitors. “Can you tell which of these little ones was born to the wife of a chieftain and which to the wife of a woodcutter? We have both here. Finn insists we
foster them without regard to their rank, except in the matter of their education. He is a good-hearted man,” she added proudly.
foster them without regard to their rank, except in the matter of their education. He is a good-hearted man,” she added proudly.
Sometimes when she was not aware he was watching, Finn stood in the shadows, gazing thoughtfully at Manissa. “She is a good woman,” he remarked to Cailte. “She does everything a chief wife should do.”
“But ⦠?” enquired Cailte, always sensitive to the tone of Finn's voice.
“But.” Finn looked away, shadows in his eyes. “But.”
But there had been only one Sive. And there was only one Oisin. When Manissa bore him one daughter and then another, he was pleased and proud. But it was Oisin he took with him everywhere, Oisin who sat at his feet and listened to his tales at the end of every battle season.
Highly coloured tales they were, in that high summer of the FÃanna. As the king of Tara subdued the other kings and forced submission from them, an increased prosperity made the island of Erin more tempting to invaders from the western coasts of Alba and the land of the Britons. Foreigners crossed the sea in wooden boats, intending to plunder and pillage.
But Finn continually enlarged the FÃanna until Cormac's army was an armed presence the length of the coast, meeting beaching boats with irresistible battle-lust.
“The greatest kings in the world send armies against us!” Finn boasted in the hall when he had been drinking ale throughout the night from one of his gold drinking cups. “But we defeat them all! No king can stand against us!”
No one contradicted him publicly. Historians elicited and memorized carefully reported, less florid versions of events. But Oisin sat at his father's knee and drank in Finn's words instead of ale.
To Manissa's sorrow, she seemed able to bear only daughters to Finn. When their fourth was born, she told him, with tears in her eyes, “I wanted to give you a son.”
“I have sons,” Finn replied, swinging his arm wide to indicate the fosterling thronging his fort.
“I meant a son like ⦠like Oisin. A son of your heart.”
He was surprised that she understood this. He had not looked for sensitivity from her. He no longer looked for sensitivity from anyone. It was the source of too much pain.
“You should take another wife to give you sons,” Manissa insisted, mindful of her duty.
“Cormac Mac Airt has only a few sons, though he has many wives. Most of his children are daughters. Don't fret about it, Manissa.”
But for once, she could not obey. She kept on bringing up the subject until at last Finn mentioned it to Cormac himself.
“My chief wife thinks I should take a second wife.”
Cormac lifted his eyebrows. “You're lucky in your women,” he remarked enviously. “Have you a woman in mind? The smith's daughter was finally forced to take another man for husband, you know, butâ”
“My chief wife is of noble blood,” Finn said. “And my honour price is the equivalent of twelve bondwomen. I don't think it appropriate to marry a smith's daughter now.” His voice was cool. He had not realized Cruina had married someone else.
“The arrogance of princes,” Cormac commented as if to himself.
“What?”
“Nothing. I was just ⦠you want a noble wife, then?”
“I didn't say I wanted one at all, I merely said Manissa keeps suggesting it.”
“She feels guilty for not giving you sons and this is her way of easing that guilt,” the king told Finn.
“Are you sure?”
“I have an instinct about people,” Cormac said, though he wondered silently just how good his instincts were when it came to Finn Mac Cool.
“If it means so much to Manissa, I'll take a second wife,” Finn subsequently told Cailte.
The thin man bit back the impulse to laugh. “Kind of you to do it for her.”
“I think so,” Finn agreed in all seriousness. He did not, in spite of what Cailte thought, long for a new woman. Women were not uppermost in his thoughts at allâwith the exception of Sive, who was always there, her face softened by time, the memory more beautiful than the person had been. The pain unfaded.
But he set himself to the task of selecting a second contract wife as zealously as he did everything else. She must be an enhancement to the new prestige of the RÃgfénnid FÃanna. She must be a statement flung in the teeth of the world.
“She must,” he told Cailte, “be at least as good as Cael's Creide.”
“Perhaps one of Creide's sisters?”
“My rank is now higher than Cael's,” Finn reminded Cailte, dismissing the idea.
Winter was drawing down. At Almhain of the White Walls, the druid Cainnelsciath would be bringing boughs of holly and yew inside to keep the spirit of the evergreens alive through the cold season until time to burn them in the springtime bonfires. On the day before Finn planned to leave Tara for home, he was hurrying across the lawnâin reality a sea of mud churned by many feetâwhen he bumped into a slender figure hurrying in the opposite direction, talking to itself and unaware of him.
Finn paused to extend a steady hand. His fingers touched an arm in
a pleated linen sleeve, and a bright face peeped out at him from beneath a blue hood.
a pleated linen sleeve, and a bright face peeped out at him from beneath a blue hood.
“You've made me forget my poem,” the girl chided him.
She was some fourteen winters, just reaching the age for marrying, and her accents were purely Milesian. Finn dragged his thoughts back from wherever they had been to put a name to the face.
“Ailvi! You've grown so I hardly recognized you. It
is
Ailvi?”
is
Ailvi?”
“It is,” she said softly, suddenly shy.
“What are you doing reciting poetry?”
“I'm not reciting, I'm composing Or trying to.”
“And you a woman?”
“Women can be poets. They can even be satirists.”
“Some of the most cruel satirists are women,” Finn agreed. “I trust that's not your intention?”
She smiled. “Not at all. My poems are about the way the birds sing and the shadows race each other across the face of the mountains I love beautiful things. I try to capture them in poetry.” Her voice faded. Suddenly she was aware she was talking to the fabled RÃgfennid FÃanna himself and babbling on like a child.
But Finn did not seem to mind. His eyes kindled with interest. “Would you recite one of your compositions for me”
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