Finn Mac Cool (51 page)
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
Before Finn could answer, Oisin spoke up. “Oisin Mac Finn of Clan Baiscne. Come out under my protection. Even my own father will not hurt you then.”
Finn cast a furious glance at his son.
But Diarmait called, “I dare not. Who else is there?”
To Finn's great anger, Cailte spoke next. “Cailte Mac Ronan. I add my protection to that of Oisin.”
Oisin and Cailte. Diarmait began thinking there was just a ray of hope. “Who else?”
“Goll Mac Morna,” came the answer in a husky voice.
“Madan Bent-Neck.”
“Gonna of Clan Navin.”
“Clan Navin have never been friends of mine,” Diarmait replied. “Who else is there?”
“The RÃgfénnid FÃanna,” said a voice.
Diarmait closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed hard. Four who might not be quick to strike the fatal blow, and two who would. One of them Finn Mac Cool.
His fear was so total, so terrible, he knew only one defense against it. Giving a cry of mortal terror, he burst through the wall, rather than the
doorway, of the wickerwork hut, attacking the nearest man with all his strength.
doorway, of the wickerwork hut, attacking the nearest man with all his strength.
The nearest man was Oisin, who fell back before he could stop himself.
There was a wild flurry of flashing sword. Finn had been on the other side of the hut. By the time he ran around it, Diarmait Mac Donn was gone.
Finn's bellow of fury brought the rest of his men flooding in, almost stumbling over one another, but too late. Their prey eluded them, following the route Angus had taken.
Finn unleashed his rage on everyone ⦠but Oisin. When he sought to club Oisin with a mad fist, the young man looked fearlessly back at him out of Sive's face, and Finn's arm dropped to his side. A great sob was wrenched from him and he ran from them. going deep into the woods while the rest of his men hunted, desultorily, for the vanished Diarmait.
Finn raged through the forest like a wild beast. In his mindâin the clouded, howling, aching emptiness that filled his mindâhe was dimly aware of the goads that drove him.
Duty. Obligation. Both willingly accepted at one time. Both burdens beyond bearing now.
His duty to the FÃanna to punish members who broke the law.
His obligation to his father to at last take revenge for his murder.
In organizing the army to his pattern, it had been Finn himself who appointed the RÃgfénnid FÃanna as the ultimate disciplinarian. And it had been Finn who, sometime over the long years, had unconsciously accepted the fact that the matter of Cuhal's killing must not go unresolved.
Goll had been one of those who let Diarmait escape.
Goll, Goll, Goll!
Meanwhile, Diarmait, running for his life in spite of all his courageous intentions, eventually caught up with Angus and Grania. Their relief knew no bounds. But they had no time to celebrate. Driven by the sure knowledge that Finn would be after them again, they provisioned themselves as best they could and set off once more, seeking an even more secluded hideaway where the pair could subsist through the coming winter. Angus did not urge them to return home with him. “Finn sends men to my stronghold every so often, just to make certain you aren't there,” he said. “It would be the least safe place for you now.”
Finn ordered his men on a great sweep of the region, but Erin was a land of hidden glens and wild mountains and deep forests, and even the full force of the FÃanna would not have been enough to search all of them.
But Finn did not have the full force of the FÃanna
After the incident at the hut, he did not speak to Goll Mac Morna, nor to Madan Bent-Neck. He stared through them as if they did not exist and no orders were issued to them. Their fÃans were not included in any arrangements he made.
At last Madan apologized to him. But Goll did not. Goll treated Finn in kind, keeping his men with the body of the FÃanna only out of his older loyalty to the army and the kingship, but disregarding the commander.
It was a situation that could not last, and both Finn and Goll knew it.
It was different with Cailte. Somehow Finn could not quite bring himself to ostracize the thin man, though they stayed warily out of reach of one another.
Oisin was another matter again. “My father treats me as he did before,” he said to Cailte. “He pretends nothing happened. Yet he's furious with the rest of you, though it was I who let Diarmait slip away. Why should I be the only one forgiven?”
“You aren't forgiven,” Cailte told him. “It's just the fact that you have your mother's face, I think. Finn can't take out his anger on you, so he takes it out on the rest of us.”
But Goll Mac Morna was the principal target. Unfinished business. After Diarmait, Finn silently vowed, Goll.
They ran out of time that autumn. Even Finn in his madness would not disregard the imperative to return to Tara for the Samhain Assembly.
There he reported to Cormac, “We've spent the summer seeking your daughter and the man who stole her. Once we almost had them, but at the last moment they got away. Next summer, however ⦔
Cormac gave his RÃgfénnid FÃanna a hard and searching look. Finn seemed to have aged decades that summer. His face was deeply seamed, his eyes sunken in his head.
“Let them go, Finn,” Cormac said gently.
“I cannot.”
“I have other daughters.”
“I took her as wife. She betrayed me. And Donn's son betrayed his oath to me. There is nothing more sacred than an oath, nothing!”
The years had taught Cormac Mac Airt a great deal about compassion. “Did you never break an oath, Finn?” he enquired. “Are you not as human as the rest of us?”
Finn stared at him blankly. “I am of the Tuatha Dé Danann,” he said.
“If I accept that, I must at least remind you your father was human, a Fir Bolg.”
“I am obligated to be better than my father,” Finn replied.
There was no talking to him. Cormac was greatly pained by the change in Finn, but the king's son Cairbre, who had never liked Finn,
had less mercy. He began openly criticizing the commander of the FÃanna and saying to his friends, when he had drunk too much, that once he was Ard RÃg, he would have a different leader for his army.
had less mercy. He began openly criticizing the commander of the FÃanna and saying to his friends, when he had drunk too much, that once he was Ard RÃg, he would have a different leader for his army.
Someone from Clean Morna, perhaps.
Inevitably, someone told Finn what young Cairbre was saying.
Because he had no one else, Finn spoke of the matter to Cailte. “Goll Mac Morna never stops. He's been whispering and promising, and he's convinced Cairbre that Clan Baiscne is no good and Clan Morna deserves command of the FÃanna. He wants my position for himself again.”
“He doesn't Finn. Even Goll must how to the years. He's far too old and he knows it.”
“For his kinsmen, then. For the line that murdered my father. It never stops, does it? It goes on and on.”
“You stopped it when you swore us all not to seek personal revenge.” Cailte reminded him.
“Did I? Then that was a mistake,” Finn said flatly.
Cailte tried to reach him with calm and reasonable words, but Finn went deeper and deeper inside himself to a place no one seemed able to reach, that clouded and howling place where he dwelt alone now, living only for vengeance.
On the first day of summer the next year, the hunt for Diarmait and Grania was resumed.
All winter the bards had told their tale in the great halls, and story-spinners had repeated their own versions in humble dwellings. The sympathies of most of Erin were with the fugitives by now. Wherever they fled, there was always someone to warn them and hide them or help them on their way.
Wherever they went, Finn Mac Cool followed.
Fewer of the FÃanna were with him. The number whom he felt he could trust in the situation had dwindled drastically. He tried to take only. those from outlying territories who had not known Diarmait personally, leaving Goll and Madan and Cailte, and even Oisin, to conduct the usual battle summer while he pursued Diarmait with a handful of fÃans.
Late in bilberry season, he caught up with them again.
There had been many days of unrelenting rain, making tracking difficult. Almost by accident, Finn and his men stumbles across a small hut of wattle and daub, once long abandoned, but now reoccupied. Someone spotted a woman who fit Grania's description trying in vain to dry clothing in front of a fire beside the hut.
“We have them now,” Finn said.
Again he ordered his men to surround the area. Rut this time he went forward alone. He would not make the mistake of taking someone who might betray him at a critical moment.
I will do what has to be done myself, he vowed.
His met let him go gladly. None of them, even the most demoted, wanted to be remembered by the poets as the claver of Diarmait Mac Donn
Finn approached the hut through a driving rain, lances of silver water beating against his uncovered head. He did not feel them. He felt nothing. He put one foot after the other and went forward, numb to all but his impending victor.
Drawing near the hut, he found that it stood alone at the edge of a strip of trees. It was otherwise surrounded by meadowland. There was no easy way to approach it without being seen and warning Diarmait. if he was standing watch.
But there were the few trees â¦
Finn had spent a childhood in the wild places. Tree climbing was a skill never forgotten. Selecting a likely specimen that stood tall enough to give a view down onto the hut, he spat on his hands, jumped up to catch the lowest branch, and began climbing.
How strange that something once so easy should be so hard! He had to try several times before he was able to drag himself onto the limb he had chosen and look down. His heart was hammering violently â¦
⦠as he peered through a broken patch of roof directly into the chamber of Diarmait and Grania.
Ignoring the rain, or perhaps to distract themselves from it, they had made a soft bed against the far wall opposite the hole in the roof, and were locked in each other's arms.
Finn stared.
“Diarmait,” Grania murmured, running her hands through his hair. It was heavily streaked with grey now, as if denying his youth. She did not feel young herself, not anymore. Youth had been left behind on some mountaintop or in some windswept pass or at a lovely ford.
All they had left was each other.
Diarmait moved against her, growing hard. She smiled dreamily. “Diarmait,” she said again. In her increasing passion, she turned her head, her unfocussed gaze sweeping along the ruined roof of thatch.
She drew in her breath suddenly. Diarmait thought it was in response to him as he slid into her warm and welcoming body. But she had seen, framed by dead brown straw, the limb of an overhanging tree. And peering down from that limb, a face she knew.
Over Diarmait's shoulder, Grania gazed up at Finn Mac Cool.
We are dead, she thought.
Like Diarmait. breaking through the wall, the acceptance of finality liberated something in her. Holding Finn's staring eyes with hers, she smiled. Slowly. Voluptuously.
Punishing him.
Punishing him with the sight of her body joined with Diarmait's.
She writhed beneath her lover and ran her hands down his back, fingers following the ridges of straining muscle. She groaned louder than she had ever groaned before, so that the sound carried to the watcher above. Shifting her hips, she clutched Diarmait tightly with her inner muscles to squeeze the utmost pleasure from him, abandoning herself to one last glorious, protracted, rippling convulsion of delight.
The cry she wrung from Diarmait echoed primal joy.
Staring at them, unaware that he was simultaneously sweating and shivering, Finn felt a mist come over his eyes. They were so beautiful! He had forgotten â¦
He had not forgotten. The mist softened Grania's piquant features until they ⦠changed. Changed subtly into a lovely, eloquent, remembered face, with huge, wide, doe-like eyes.
Sive looked up at him.
And the broad muscular back that shielded her was his own.
FINN MAC COOL ENTERED TARA BY THE SLIGE CUALANN gate. His fÃans followed silently.
The sentry on duty lowered his spear in a salute, expecting Finn to return the greeting as he had always done before, but the RÃgfénnid FÃanna walked past him with no sign of recognition.
His face was very strange.
As soon as he had disappeared inside the palisade, the sentry called to the nearest guard on the wall, “Did you see that? Finn Mac Cool's back!”
“I see him,” the other replied. “He's heading for the House of the King.”
“How does he look to you?”
“He's walking very rigidly, I'd say.”
“You should have seen his face up close. It would put the heart crosswise in you. Do you suppose it's over? Do you suppose he's ⦠killed them?”
The man on the wall could not answer, only stare after the silveryhaired figure in the billowing cloak as it passed through the private gateway to the House of the King.
Cormac Mac Airt was not alone.
Angus of the Boyne had arrived that very morning, having at last decided there was nothing left to do but go to the High King and plead personally for the life of his foster son. Donn had tried it already to no avail, but Angus was a chieftain, a man whose support Cormac needed, and he might he willing to listen.
“If Cormac will agree to forgive Diarmait, perhaps Finn will have to also,” he had told his household before his departure for Tara, with an optimism he did not feel.
He had argued throughout the morning, and had finally received
Cormac's agreement when Finn Mac Cool strode through the doorway with a face like death.
Cormac's agreement when Finn Mac Cool strode through the doorway with a face like death.
Angus's heart sank.
“What have you done to them?” he cried.
At that moment someone else burst through the doorway, ignoring the sentry's challenge. Only Finn could enter at will; even Goll Mac Morna should have waited for permission. But he had not.
Hearing Angus's cry, Goll echoed it. “What have you done, Finn? They just told me you'd arrived. Look at me! What's happened?”
Cormac sat silently on his bench, waiting.
Finn turned to face his old adversary rather than speaking first to the king. “What I've done is no business of yours,” he snarled.
“So you have killed them! You've got your revenge, have you? In spite of everything? Then I tell you you've dishonoured the FÃanna more than your father ever did! You made it something special, something magnificent we could all be proud of. You gave us ⦠nobility. Now you've taken it away. You've broken the oath you took against revenge and by doing that, returned us all to where we were before, men not to be trusted, men without honour. Oath-breaker. Oath-breaker!” He hurled the name as an epithet.
Cormac's attendants gasped. Angus looked from one warrior to the other, expecting a killing before his eyes. The king rose from his bench, determined to interpose his own body between them if necessary.
Finn had one hand on his sword hilt, but he did not hook the scabbard with his leg and draw the great blade. “I heard you, Goll Mac Morna,” he said. “I've heard every word you ever spoke to me, every criticism. Once I tried to model myself on you and win your approval. I actually admired you; can you imagine? But no more. No more. After this, there is nothing but enmity between us.”
“Then I'll take my men and leave the FÃanna!” Goll cried. The skin of his scar was livid and twitching as if with a life of its own.
“You'll split the FÃanna permanently!” Cormac shouted. “Stop this, the two of you!”
But Goll said sneeringly, “Split the FÃanna? There is no FÃanna anymore. Finn's ruined it. All that's left are his followers and mine; mine the old, true warriors, his the fawning hounds who lick his fingers!”
In a faraway voice, Finn murmured, “You should have waited.”
It made no sense to Goll. “Waited? I'll never wait for you again! We're gone!” Throwing one last arrogant one-eyed glance at Cormac, he bolted from the hall, and a few moments later they could hear him shouting hoarsely for his men.
Cormac sat down slowly, looking at Finn. When he spoke, his voice sounded very tired. “Now see what you've done.”
“I've dune nothing, I told him, he should have waited.”
“What do you mean?”
It was Finn's turn to sit down. He lowered himself onto the nearest bench as if his legs would no longer hold him. At a gesture from the king, a cupbearer brought him wine, but he pushed it away.
“I had them,” he said in a low voice, staring at nothing. “Diarmait and Grania; I had them.”
“I knew it,” whispered Angus, already grief-stricken.
“I had them and I left them,” said Finn.
“Left them ⦠alive?” Angus could hardly believe his ears.
“Alive indeed. Unharmed. I shall not raise my hand against them again.”
Cormac let out a groan and wiped his palm across his brow. Angus was still struggling to understand. “You mean you found them and didn't kill them?”
The awful mask that was the face of Finn Mac Cool seemed to crack a little, just around the edges. For a heartbeat, a merry boy peered out, a boy who said teasingly, “Is there another language you would understand better?”
Cormac said, “It's over, then,” with infinite relief.
“It's over,” Finn agreed. “They are safe from me.”
“And from me,” the king told him. “I had already agreed to forgive them. Angus here convinced me.”
“But who convinced you?” Angus asked Finn.
Finn Mac Cool reached out then and took the proffered cup, draining it in one long swallow. He held it up for more and drained that too, as if he could not get enough.
“Who indeed?” he said at last.
That was all the answer they got.
News that the terrible hunt was over spread quickly. Oisin was the first to come to the House of the King and hear the tale from his father's own lips, but he learned no more than Cormac and Angus had. His relief was equal to theirs, however.
“You would not have forgiven yourself if you'd done this thing,” he said to Finn.
“Who told you that? It doesn't sound like you.”
“Cailte.”
“Och, Cailte.” Finn smiled faintly. “He knows me well, does Cailte.”
Cailte arrived soon after Oisin. and was heartened to discover that Finn's stony countenance and fetal glare had faded, were being replaced by a semblage of the old Finn, though one very battered and aged.
“I think he's coming back to us,” Cailte said to Oisin behind his hand.
If so, it would be a long journey. Finn was obviously exhausted, mentally it not physically. Cormac insisted on his being well fed and well rested, given all the time necessary to restore him. The women fussed over him. His rÃgfénnidi called upon him, one by one, to re-establish the bonds so cruelly strained.
Only Goll did not come to him. Goll was gone.
“Deserted,” Finn said to Cailte. He was lying at his ease on a couch in the house set aside for his personal use, and Cailte was lounging in the doorway, eating some of the fruit the women were continually bringing.
“That's a hard accusation,” the thin man told Finn. “You and Goll had a quarrel and he left, but that hardly amounts to desertion.”
“He took his fÃans and the officers from Clan Morna with him, and you know he won't be back. That's desertion.”
“I suppose so. But don't think about it now, Finn.”
“I have to think about it. I'm the commander. I can't allow desertion.”
“What will you do about it?”
Finn closed his eyes and lay back on the couch. “I'll have to go after him,” he said.
Cailte felt a pricking of alarm. Was the Diarmait situation beginning all over again? “Surely you won't seek revenge?” he said.
“For desertion? I shall not.” Finn sounded painfully, agonizingly tired. “Goll accused me of being an oath-breaker, but I haven't broken that oath, as it turns out, nor do I mean to in his case. Going after Goll won't be vengeance. It's a matter of discipline. Deserters have to be punished, and only I can punish one of my own rÃgfénnidi. It's as simple as that.”
He seemed to fall asleep then. Cailte waited a little while longer, then took a last apple from the pile on the nearest table and sauntered out.
Finn was not asleep. He lay behind closed eyelids, looking at a face, a dear face lately restored to him. A face that watched him, lovingly, from huge brown eyes.
I'm all right, Sive, he said. I think I was ⦠away for a while. But I'm all right now.
Yet he was not purged of the bitterness. It returned at unguarded moments in waves of anger and resentment directed not at Diarmait specifically, not at Goll, but at the chaos known as
fénnidecht
, the condition of being a Fir Bolg warrior before Finn Mac Cool had reshaped the FÃanna. Fénnidecht meant running headlong and heedless through life, taking what you wanted, refusing responsibility for your actions, everything out of control ⦠as Diarmait and Grania had been out of control, as Goll was now beyond Finn's control.
fénnidecht
, the condition of being a Fir Bolg warrior before Finn Mac Cool had reshaped the FÃanna. Fénnidecht meant running headlong and heedless through life, taking what you wanted, refusing responsibility for your actions, everything out of control ⦠as Diarmait and Grania had been out of control, as Goll was now beyond Finn's control.
As Cuhal Mac Trenmor had been out of control.
Chaos.
It lay like a dark pool at the bottom of Finn's mind, waiting. As long as he could hold on to his vision of Sive, he could push it down and back. But when he lost contact with her â¦
Now that he had the High King's daughter, Diarmait applied to Cormac for property suitable to her rank on which to build a fort. Cormac consulted with the brehons at some length.
“She is contract wife to Finn Mac Cool,” they reminded him unnecessarily.
“Finn has relinquished his claim and forgiven them.”
“But the FÃanna does not take property with its women,” Flaithri pointed out.
Cormac replied, “Diarmait is no longer one of the FÃanna. He has a right to ask for property with her, and I want to see my daughter well cared for.”
The brehons shut themselves away in the Fort of the Synods, consulted long and diligently, and at last announced they saw no impediment.
To spare Finn the painful reminder of seeing them together, Cormac gave Diarmait and Grania a landholding at Ceshcorran in the far west, making an arrangement with the king of Connacht in order to secure his daughter's future there. After a complicated exchange of cattle and bondwomen and sureties, Diarmait was informed it was safe to take Grania away and build a new home for her.
They left without Finn ever seeing them.
But he could not forget them.
Once the pursuit was officially over, chieftains and tribal kings who had helped Diarmait decided they needed to restore themselves to the good graces of the RÃgfénnid FÃanna.
They began visiting Finn, one after the other, each disavowing any sympathy with the former fugitives. “Diarmait Mac Donn brought shame on the FÃanna!” they proclaimed stoutly. “We gave them no help at all. Our sympathies were always with you, Finn.”
Finn listened with increasing cynicism. The bards were already commemorating the dramatic pursuit, and listing the names of those who fought for Diarmait and those who fought against him. The tale was becoming an epic in its own time, and with every telling it grew, so that common storyspinners in humble huts were soon claiming the terrified lovers had slept “in that very glade beyond this hill!”
“Diarmait and Grania appear to have visited every clanhold in Erin,” a wryly amused Blamec remarked to Fergus Honey-Tongue, who was
telling his own version of the story, replete with new details as they occurred to him.
telling his own version of the story, replete with new details as they occurred to him.
But no one told it in Finn's hearing.
On the surface, things returned to normal. Ignoring Connac's offer of another daughter to be his wife, Finn threw himself into the familiar business of leading the FÃanna. There were always young warriors to be tested, sporadic skirmishes and battles to be fought or quelled, depending on the politics of the moment, and in the high, hot days of summer or the crisp days of autumn, there were the hounds and the chase.
He no longer watched for a singular red doe. He did not think he would find her again in that guise. She was back in his head, safe there. At least she was there sometimes.
Other times he could not find her but felt the dark pool instead, waiting to rise and flood over him.
“Your father is permanently changed by what happened,” Cailte advised Oisin.
“We are all of us permanently changed,” Oisin replied coldly. He had grown; he was a man, his bones long and slabbed with powerful muscle, his sinews taut and hard, his voice resonating in his chest. Among the fénnidi, he had no equal as an athlete, and his successes in battle were already inspiring the bards. Since the pursuit of Diarmait, he and Finn had been estranged, however. He followed the RÃgfénnid FÃanna and obeyed orders, but the old closeness of father and son was gone, which saddened Cailte.
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