Finn Mac Cool (48 page)
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
Diarmait ran after her.
He did not know if it was a game, or serious. There was no time to think. He knew only that it was very exciting and that he was having a wonderful time.
He caught her and tumbled her gently to the ground. She looked up at him. He could not tell if he saw fear or desire in her eyes, or some other emotion he did not know. “We have to keep running,” she said breathlessly. “We must not stop now. They'll catch us. Later, though. I promise you. Later.”
“You really promise?” He clutched her shoulders and squeezed, hard.
“I promise. Now let me up.”
He helped her to her feet and they set off again, running shoulder to shoulder this time, with Diarmait holding back so she could match his pace. He thought at any moment they would turn around and go back.
They must go back.
This could not be serious.
At some time, though, it began to be borne in upon him that it was serious. Grania had no intention of going back. She was fleeing Finn Mac Cool, and he had got caught up in the momentum of her flight.
Diarmait felt as if a cold hand clutched his heart. He stopped running
between one stride and the next. “The sun's up,” he panted. “We must go back right now, we're in enough trouble as it is.”
between one stride and the next. “The sun's up,” he panted. “We must go back right now, we're in enough trouble as it is.”
But she ran on.
“Grania!” he shouted. “Listen to me, we have to return to Tara! Your husband's waiting!”
“I've taken you for my husband,” she called over her shoulder, running.
Diarmait stared after her in consternation.
“Come on!” she called urgently.
She was intoxicated with her first true taste of feminine power. Marrying Finn Mac Cool was surely prestigious, and pleased her father, but it was nothing compared to snatching up this beautiful young man and making him turn his back on his commander and his oath of loyalty and run away with her. She felt blazingly alive. Her thoughts did not go so far as to tomorrow, or even to the night to come. She knew only here and now. Here and now was thrilling and she wanted it to last.
“Come
on!”
she cried again.
on!”
she cried again.
Diarmait, torn, looked back toward Tara. The golden thatch, illumined by the early morning sun, glowed like lost treasure. Banners were fluttering in a rising wind. Clear and terrifying to his ears came the sound of a horn, a hunting horn.
They had been missed already. Someone was after them.
With a cry of anguish, Diarmait set off after Grania.
If he had not heard the horn, he could have gone back, he thought. But somehow that one sound, trumpeting his betrayal, had cut him off from hope of return. If he did go back, he would be seen. Questioned. Everyone would know of his foolishness.
It was too much; he had to keep running.
Then too, she was so beautiful. Her eyes had said magic things to him, and Diarmait came of a race that believed in magic.
At last they found a small cave in a riverbank, its mouth well-screened by alders. Slipping inside, they lay breathless and listened to the thudding of their hearts.
“We've done a mad thing,” Diarmait said at last. “There will be no forgiveness for either of us. Och, the king may forgive you, you're his daughter, but the commander never will. And what he will do to me doesn't bear thinking about. I've stolen from him and disgraced the name of the FÃanna.”
The full meaning of his deed swept over him like dark floodwater.
“Disgraced the FÃanna,” he repeated in a whisper of disbelief.
She was afraid he would leave her to her fate. She rolled over against him, pinioning him with her body, and pressed herself against him. “But I can't go back,” she said. “Not to that old man.”
“What old man?”
“Finn Mac Cool, of course!”
Diarmait pushed her off and sat up. He stared at her in the dim, watery light filtering through the mouth of the cave. “Finn isn't old.”
“He is! He's generations older than I am.”
“You and I are only two years apart, I'd say,” Diarmait replied, “and he doesn't seem old to me. He's a strong man.”
“You don't see him as I do. I don't want to look at him at all, in my bed or out of it. I only want to look at you.” Grania reached for Diarmait, her lips parted and soft. He meant to pull away from her.
Afterward, he could not have said why he went into her arms instead.
Grania made up in eagerness what she lacked in experience. The excitement of the elopement had stimulated her to an almost unbearable pitch. Diarmait's touch made her moan; every movement of his body made her wriggle closer to him until they were locked together so tightly it was hard for either of them to breathe. Her frenzy set fire to him, and he stopped worrying about pursuit or loyalty to his oath or anything else. There was only Grania in a cave filled with watery light, as if they were under the sea. And magic was all around them.
Magic, in time, faded into reality.
Diarmait lay on his back, wondering what to do next. Grania was curled up against him like a kitten, sleeping. Her breathing was shallow and delicate. She seemed fragile. He felt an obligation to protect her against whatever they had brought on themselves.
At last he stirred, adjusted his clothing, touched her shoulder. “Stay here,” he whispered.
She awoke and clutched at him. “Don't leave me!”
“I'm not going to leave you. I'm just going back to Tara long enough to find out ⦠find out how Finn's responded to this, and try to get some sort of idea of how much trouble we're in. I have friends in the FÃanna, they'll advise me what to do next.”
“Don't go!”
“I must, Grania,” he said, trying to reason with her. “Maybe there's still time to ⦠to make things all right.”
“I don't want things to be all right. I want to go on just as we are, you and me together.”
“It won't be that simple,” he warned her. “We can't just go on together and trust we'll be forgotten. I heard the sound of the hunting horn; that means someone's looking for us already. And Finn Mac Cool's the best hunter in Erin.”
“I won't go back to him.” Had she been standing, Grania would have stamped her foot for emphasis. “I want you, not him, not that old man. I want to be
your
wife.”
your
wife.”
Even in his distraught condition, Diarmait was man enough to be flattered, and far enough under her spell to be glad of her words. But he had been thoroughly trained. He knew the demands of honour. He would have to go back, if only long enough to try to explain.
The oath of loyalty he had pledged to Finn Mac Cool lay in him like a stone.
“You can't be my wife, my contract wife, while you're wife to Finn Mac Cool,” he reminded her gently. “We can be lovers, we can enjoy a marriage of lesser degree, but a woman can be contract wife to only one man at a time.”
“He can have more than one wife, though. Why can't I have more than one husband? And stay with the one I choose?”
“It's the law,” Diarmait said.
“I refuse the law, then,” she replied. “I refuse all law that keeps me from you!” She threw her arms around him.
It took all the fortitude Diarmait possessed to disengage himself from her embrace. “Try to understand, Grania. I want you too, and I'll come back to you. But first I must return to Tara and undo the damage I'veâwe'veâdone. I
must.
”
must.
”
She had begun to love him, truly love him. She heard the need in his voice and reluctantly submitted. “Go if you must,” she said. “But give me your word you'll come back to me.”
The return journey to Tara seemed much longer than the flight from it. Twice he had to hide from a search party. With every step Diarmait took, his crime loomed larger in his mind.
He had stolen Finn's wife and the High King's daughter! What compensation would the brehons demand for such a theft? Grania was a princess; under the law, he would owe the injured parties not her honour price, but theirs. Theirs jointly, Finn's and Cormac's together, king and husband.
The combined property of himself and his father and all their tribe would not be enough to pay it. He had impoverished his people.
By the time the palisades of Tara rose before him, he was sick with hopelessness. He actually turned to go back to Grania because there seemed nothing else to do, when the sentry on the Slige Dala gate hailed him.
Fortunately for Diarmait, the sentry was Lugaid's son. “Hssst! Run quick and hide yourself in that hollow! I'll join you!” Lugaid's son, after making sure no one was watching, put deed to word.
“Now, Diarmait, tell me. What in the name of the four winds possessed you to lay violent hands on the High King's daughter and steal her from her wedding bed?”
“Is that what they're saying I did?” Diarmait asked with a sinking feeling.
“That and worse things. No one seems quite sure just what did happen, actually, except the two of you were seen leaving the banquet together. and shortly afterward neither of you was to be found in Tara.”
“Is Cormac very angry?”
“It isn't Cormac you need worry about, though he is as angry as a hornet's nest. Your problem is the RÃgfénnid FÃanna. You not only took his wife from him, but you know yourself he's always demanded we treat women with the utmost respect and obey every aspect of the law concerning them. Have you not heard him say, time and again, that kidnapping women is strictly forbidden to the FÃanna? But now you've done this. You're in more trouble than a quartered deer boiling in a fualacht fiadh.”
Diarmait slumped onto the ground and buried his face in his hands. “I never meant any of this,” he said muffledly.
“A bit late now,” was the accurate reply.
“What am I to do? I need help, advice. Could you find Oisin inside and bring him out to me? He's my friend, I can trust him.”
“Wait here and I'll try,” promised Lugaid's son. “But keep your head down and if anyone catches sight of you, run like a hare!”
Hot with shame and cold with fear, Diarmait waited for an eternity. At last Lugaid's son returned with Oisin and some other members of the FÃanna, mostly of Diarmait's own age. They made a circle around the unfortunate man, further concealing him.
Oisin said, “This is a terrible twist you've got yourself into.”
“And I knowing it. But what am I to do?”
“Return what you've stolen,” said Cailte Mac Ronan, stepping through the circle of younger men. His face was stem, his eyes agonized.
Diarmait shook his head. “I can't. She won't go back to Finn. Nor, to be honest, do I want her to,” he had to admit. “She's put an enchantment on me. I think.”
Cailte narrowed his eyes to slits, trying to see into the inmost recesses of the other man. Finn believed in the power of enchantments, he knew. It could be possible that something such as had happened with Finn and Sive had happened again with Dorm's son, and if it had, there was no fighting it.
Cailte gave a weary sigh. “I see.” He sounded almost envious. “You don't mean to return her, then.”
“I can't. I just came back myself to ⦠to find out what had happened when our absence was discovered, and to try to explain.”
Oisin spoke up then. “Does Crania want you, Diarmait?”
“She says she does.”
Oisin sounded openly envious. “I would never dare take a woman promised to Finn Mac Cool, but if she wants you and you want her, then neither the sky nor the sea should stop you!”
Cailte whirled on him. “Don't encourage him, do you not realize what he's letting himself in for? Himself and the girl too?”
Diarmait said, “What am I letting us in for, Cailte? How has Finn reacted?”
The agony in Cailte's eyes grew more pronounced. “You had not been gone for very long before those who were still awake, and saw you leave together, made Finn aware of the fact.”
“They would,” commented Lugaid's son. “Conan, I suppose?”
“Indeed. You know him. But others too, whispering, speculating. At first Finn tried to shrug it off. He said you had undoubtedly escorted the girl to her bed to wait for him. He left the hall then and went to join her.
“He came back with a look on him such as I have never seen, and I've seen him in some bad times. He stood in the Doorway of Fate ⦠of Fate! ⦠and cried aloud like a man in mortal pain.”
Diarmait was almost afraid to ask. “What did he say?”
“He said âAbandoned!' in a terrible voice, like a voice issuing from a tomb. He cried the word aloud three times, then he collapsed in the doorway. We carried him back to what should have been his marriage bed, but he refused to lie on it. He seemed in mortal agony, yet he would not let the physician touch him. He writhed from side to side like a chained animal and gave great hoarse dry sobs.” The deflected pain in Cailte's eyes made Diarmait wince.
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