The Last Storyteller (32 page)

“O, my lord, my lord! I have been so affrighted!”

Again, John Jacob rose to it and gave her Shakespeare’s next line: “With what, in the name of God?”

Venetia went into the speech as though she had been in a castle outside Copenhagen centuries earlier:

She paused, and John Jacob picked up his cue like a pro: “Mad for thy love?”

Venetia looked at him in a way that would have told any audience how to feel in the same circumstances. Miming all the actions, the hand-wringing, the trembling, she continued, “My lord, I do not know. But truly, I do fear it.”

Did John Jacob see some discomfort cross my face? He clapped his
hands and said, “Very good. I’m afraid my old head can’t remember the rest.”

Venetia turned to me. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Do you remember when I first saw you do that?”

“Ballyconnell,” she said, “on an August night. With the rain lashing down outside in the middle of a heat wave.”

“Do Portia,” I said. And I went on, for the next hour: “Give us Titania. Do Cleopatra. Miranda.” When I asked for Desdemona, for the beggarly divorcement speech, she began, “What shall I do to win my lord again,” then said, “Oh, I don’t remember this fully.”

I said, “What about Juliet?”

She looked at me and replied, so that I alone could hear, “No.” Then she turned to John Jacob and said, “It’s your turn.”

Logs on the fire. More wood ready nearby. Adjusting his place on the hearth. Arranging his pipe. Preparing his tobacco. And then, when all was ready and we had settled ourselves, as expectant and excited an audience as he might ever have known, he launched.

“This comes from the long, long ago,” he said, “and it has gone through many mutations. But my version, I believe, has the virtue of ancient truth, because the feelings that we’ll hear and see are the same to this very day all over the world. I took the versions of similar tales that I’ve heard all over the globe, I combined them, and settled them into a story that anyone can recognize.”

The skin on the back of my neck began to tingle. I ran my tongue across the ridge of my teeth. Venetia kicked off her shoes and curled her feet under herself in the chair. I organized my notebook.

“Ben,” said John Jacob, “you’ll recognize the names. And you, girl, may not, so I’ll pronounce them first for you. The names of the lovers. The man’s name is Diarmuid.”

“Deer-mid,” she said. “Deer-mid. What does it mean?”

“You’ll find it in many forms,” he replied. “I’m sure you know somebody named of ‘Dermot.’ It means a friend to all or a man loved by everyone.”

Venetia smiled.

“And his Juliet’s name was Grainne.”

“Graw-nyeh,” said Venetia, working hard to get astride all the references. “Grawn-yeh?”

“That’s it,” he said. “It means ‘love you’ or ‘love for all time.’ An Irishman will say,
‘Mo gra thu’
when he wants to say, ‘I love you.’ Note the root word for ‘love,’ ‘
g-r-a
’—which we pronounce ‘graw.’ ”

I had an impulse to leave. An urgent feeling. My shoulders tightened. But I could do nothing. Mustn’t cause offense.

So I sat back, and John Jacob O’Neill launched into one of our most famous legends, “The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne.” He told it in a surprisingly brief version; I’ve collected it a number of times, and one telling (in County Waterford) took six hours.

The old warrior Finn MacCool sat weeping and lonely in his summerhouse overlooking the sea. His beloved wife had died and left Finn alone. Upon her death, he had bound himself to the Irish tradition of mourning for a year and a day. The year had passed, and in keeping with tradition, he stayed up all the night before the single day, thinking memories of his wife, and waiting until he saw the next twilight. And down, down, down went the globe of golden flame, and Finn’s mourning was doused in the sea alongside the fire of the sun
.

The next night, his warriors came to see him with the news they’d been waiting months to bring: they knew of a new wife for him. Finn, they said, knew her too—Grainne, the daughter of the king, a girl of great beauty with magical powers
.

Finn, who had magic of his own, liked their choice. He ordered his warriors to kill a boar, his servants to prepare it, and his riders to take the animal
to the king for a feast. By such a rite would the king know that Finn wished to be a suitor for the princess
.

The king accepted the boar, and his guests ate it for dinner. They praised it, and they hailed the man who had sent it, and the king was well pleased. Now it was his turn to sample the animal. The guests included Finn’s riders, and they all watched the king eat. So did his daughter. And when they saw the king devour the slices of wild boar, they knew that the suit had been accepted. The next day Finn would be received
.

When, in the regalia of a great warrior, Finn MacCool arrived at court, he had as his bodyguard his finest, bravest, and most handsome warriors in the wide, rolling world. They rode beside him into the castle yard, they dismounted when Finn did, and they flanked him as he strode into the castle throne room. There sat the king and his wife, the queen, and between them their exquisite daughter, Grainne
.

Now, one of the warriors flanking Finn stood taller and more handsome than any man in the world. His name was Diarmuid, and the princess’s eyes alighted on him. As did the queen’s, and the eyes of every other woman in that court that day
.

Diarmuid’s reputation preceded him. He could jump over the back of a running deer. He could dive off a cliff by the sea and soar like an eagle on his way down. He could sing a song sweeter than that of the nightingales in the woods or the dawn larks in the fields
.

Grainne looked at Diarmuid and saw this embodiment of many gifts. Then she looked at Finn and saw an old and angry man, one whose sorcery had begun to fade. She made her decision
.

One of Grainne’s magic powers resided in speech. From her throne between her father and her mother, she began to speak a poem. The rhythm of her words rose and fell. One by one, she looked at every person in that court, and they began to fall asleep where they stood. Slowly, one by one as she looked at them, each person tumbled to the ground, so gently that no injuries were caused. And soon everyone there, including Finn himself and his warriors, had slumped to the floor in a deep sleep
.

Except one. Throughout her recital Grainne had not once looked at Diarmuid. Even as she spoke the most beautiful words in her long poem about how flowers eventually become the gemstones we wear as jewels, she didn’t look at Diarmuid. Even as she described how, during certain times of the night, we leave our beds and lie on the clouds and that is where we receive
our dreams, and that is why we must never lie on a black cloud, she didn’t look at Diarmuid. Even as she told the court how every man, woman, and child will leave the solid earth and in time become a wave of the sea, she didn’t look at Diarmuid
.

When her story ended, and all but Diarmuid had fallen asleep, she climbed down from the place of thrones, walked to Diarmuid, and took his hand. Stepping between the sleeping people, they left the palace. In the courtyard they mounted two white horses and rode out across the countryside, singing and laughing as the sun shone in their eyes
.

Every spell has to wear off, and the courtiers and visitors in the room of thrones began to wake up. Finn saw that Grainne had gone. Soon his men found the courage to tell him that Diarmuid had gone too, and the fur began to fly. Finn ordered his warriors to horse, and so, for seven days and seven nights, ran the famous and tragic pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne
.

The clouds parted so that the gods could look down on the drama unfolding below. And maybe direct it, because that’s what gods seek to do. They sent the lovers to spend their first night in the cave of a bear high in the mountains above the sea in County Down. The bear welcomed them and then stood guard outside the cave, while inside the lovers ate berries and drank clear water from the crystal spring in the cave’s floor
.

And when they lay down to embrace each other and then fell asleep, the bear tiptoed into the cave and covered them with great warm bearskins that had been worn by his ancestors. The next day, the lovers bowed to the bear, who returned the compliment and waved as they rode away. Half a day later, Finn and his warriors rode up to the cave, found the lovers’ traces, and killed the bear
.

The lovers spent their second night in the lair of a wolf deep in the plains of County Meath, not far from the high hill of Royal Tara. As they rode into sight, the wolf and his mate took their cubs by the neck and moved them to a quieter place nearby, so that Diarmuid and Grainne could spend an undisturbed night
.

But the lovers, when they had supped and dined, and before they lay down in each other’s arms for the night, played with the wolf cubs, who then slept curled up with them as the wolf and his wife sat guard outside the cave
.

The next day, the lovers thanked the wolf and rode away. Ten hours later, Finn and his warriors galloped across the plains of Royal Meath, found the lovers’ traces in the lair, and killed the wolf, his mate, and their cubs
.

The lovers spent their third night on the shores of the lakes in Westmeath. There they found an empty castle that seemed to have been vacated especially for them. Fires blazed in the courtyard and in the dining hall and in the bedchamber. When they sat in wonder on two great chairs at the head of the empty table, birds and squirrels and other woodland creatures, badgers and weasels, and great, happy, and fat smiling toads appeared and began to serve them rich food—berries, nuts, fruits, and mead
.

And when they retired for the night, the woodland creatures sent to them, as a living blanket, a thousand tiny and warm bodies of baby squirrels and rabbits and badgers
.

The next day, the lovers said farewell to the woodland creatures and rode away. Eight hours later, Finn and his warriors galloped along the shores of the lakes of Westmeath, found the lovers’ traces in the empty castle, and set fire to the place, killing every squirrel and badger and fox and all their little ones
.

John Jacob said later that we were the best audience he had ever found. I, already captive, took notes at the speed of light. Whenever I glanced at Venetia, her eyes had grown round as moons, and her face as flushed as fire. Her mouth almost moved in time with his, as she repeated phrases that he had just spoken.

On the fourth night, he told us, the lovers came to the stone lair of an eagle in the mountains of Munster. The eagle had made courteous inquiries as to their health and their future, as he gave them the hospitality of his aerie. The next morning, Finn himself slew the eagle with one launch of his spear high into the blue air.

They rode the sands of Kerry on the fifth night, and a great sea creature of the Atlantic, glassy of eye and booming of voice—“he sounded,” said John Jacob, “like the waves in the caverns of the deep”—gave them a welcome in seaweed halls, with a feast of lobster and salmon served by seals and dolphins. This time, Finn and his warriors put out to sea and with wide harpoons killed them all.

On the sixth night, they rode north to Galway, and out there on the white rocks of the Burren, the place on earth that looks most like the moon, because a piece of the moon fell off one day and landed there, they met foxes, of all colors—red and silver and gray.

And the foxes, creatures accustomed to pursuit, told them that Finn and his warriors were a matter of hours behind them. The foxes took them down into the underground, down a rich maze of burrows and coverts and into their own homes, those wide, low palaces beneath the earth, where fires blaze and food abounds, and there the foxes cared for the lovers because they recognized a princess when they saw one, and in Diarmuid they perceived a warrior who was kind as well as strong
.

By now, as the sun rolled around the sky to meet the moon, the lovers had fallen under each other’s spells. They saw little but each other’s eyes. They heard little but each other’s silver speech. They felt little but each other’s velvet skin. When not asleep, being watched over by the citizens of the natural world, they talked to each other all the time—of their plans, of their future home, of their life ahead
.

And all the while, Finn and his warriors grew ever closer. So close that the badgers and the rabbits and the foxes along the route wondered why the lovers couldn’t hear the hooves of their pursuers drumming along behind them. Or feel the hot breath of Finn’s anger, which had grown ever wilder as his pursuit drew ever closer. Or recoil from the growls of mounting rage that emerged from his throat
.

At noon on the seventh day, the lovers reached the foothills of the magic plateau, Ben Bulben, that stands high above Sligo Bay. Here, for the first time, they fell among humans—a chieftain and his family, who claimed to have magic powers that would protect them from Finn. Grainne, of course, had her own magic powers, but she wasn’t sure that they would be equal to the ancient ungodly powers of the great warrior-god himself
.

Diarmuid had made up his mind that they should stand up and confront Finn and declare their love for each other. So sure were they of this love that they felt it would quell all hostility
.

On the side of the mountain, the lovers made their stand. High above them, the clouds parted so that the gods could lean on their elbows, look down, and watch. From far away, Diarmuid and Grainne saw the warrior band riding hard for them. The riders drew nearer and nearer. Finn seemed to have gathered a number of supporters on his wild pursuit. What had left
the palace of Ulster as a party of not more than twenty men had now swelled to more than two hundred
.