CHAPTER II
Conachúr mac Nessa was preparing a feast.
Household banquets were common matters at his court, but this was to be a State banquet, and every person who could be thought of as noble or notable was invited to the Red Branch.
As well as an aristocracy of birth there was in every Irish court an élite of excellence. Those who were foremost in learning, the arts, or the crafts, had the privilege of visiting the king equally with those whose merit rose from their fathers’ graves or their skill at arms. A king was then close to his people, and he was by training and habit a connoisseur in many things which all could understand. A commonwealth of taste is the only one which can admit equality—it is democracy. He could commend with knowledgethe man who built a house or the man who did the carvings in it. He could speak to the maker of his chariots or the breaker of his horses in terms that apprehended to the last shading the matter that was being discussed, and, so, to the expert who cured his bacon or the sturdy master who superintended the brewing of his beer. All arts were household arts; all crafts were arts; and the knowledge of these was culture. A gentleman would know of all the music that was worthy of being played, for a musical person formed part of every household. He would remember the songs that had outlived time and could discuss their excellences; and the only art which he need regard as occult would be poetry itself; for, while all other arts come by memory and experiment, poetry, which is not an art, comes solely by grace.
“Lavarcham,” said Conachúr, “have you heard any talk of the banquet?”
“Indeed, master, I have heard nothing else.”
“Will there be any notable absentees?”
“None but those who are dying of wounds or sickness.”
“Cúchulinn has stayed at home for some time now?”
“For a year after marriage one is still newly married,” the conversation-woman submitted.
“I fear that boy’s love for me has bounds,” Conachúr pursued.
“The king has been too kind to him,” cried Lavarcham harshly.
“The king cannot help himself,” he corrected, “for I love the lad, and I could no more do him an ill turn that I could do one to myself.”
“I, too, love him,” said Lavarcham, “but he is more forward than is proper, even in a prince.”
“Can you tell me, Lavarcham, why he objected to my sovereign privilege with his wife?”
“Pride,” she replied briefly. “He is prouder than ten kings.”
“It is so, and it is a gentleman’s prerogative to be proud,” he continued. “But if such objections were allowed government would become impossible. Do the people still talk of his refusal?”
“The people know that the king did sleep with Emer.”[9]
“Yes, they may know that, but do they know that Fergus slept on the other side of her as a guard?”
“No,” she replied; “that is known to but five people, and they are all loyal to the king.”
“Tell me,” and Conachúr scrutinized her gravely, “do you love Cúchulinn better than me?”
“I love you best of all, master,” said Lavarcham.
“I think you do, my friend, but they say that every woman loves the Cú.
“As to Fergus”—he muttered and went silent for a moment—“I do not yet know how much Fergus loves me. I am not sure that a loyal man would have undertaken a duty against his sovereign such as Fergus accepted for Cúchulinn.”
“He did it because he loves both of you, master, and it is surely better that such an arrangement should be known only between friends.”
“Possibly,” said Conachúr. “And yet I had passed my word that if my right was conceded I would not touch the girl. Is a king’s word not accepted any longer bythose Ferguses and Cúchulinns?” he cried furiously.
“It was Cúchulinn’s doing,” said she.
“It may have been Fergus’s,” he retorted, and went moodily silent. “Who knows what that man thinks of?”
“Feasts,” said Lavarcham. “He loves food.”
“I was tempted,” the king gritted, “to try in the night whether he dared obstruct me, and to see if he dared thrust the sword he went to bed with into his king—but I had passed my word. If,” he continued irritably, “the Cú had only asked Conall Cearnach or Cruscrid Menn or any gentleman of the household to be his surety instead of the man he did ask, I could have borne it.”
Lavarcham chuckled respectfully.
“How did that night pass, master?” she inquired.
Conachúr gave a great laugh.
“Fergus and I went to bed, and the girl went to bed between us, and we all had our clothes on. My bed is small enough for me when I am alone, but to pack a large girl into it with all her clothes on, and thento pack an overgrown vast bullock of a man like Fergus into it also, cannot be done. I made but one resolve that night, that on no account would I be pushed out of my own bed, and I was not; but every time that Fergus closed an eye he fell on the floor and the girl woke up and screamed.”
Lavarcham let out a shrill titter, and begged the king’s pardon.
“How did Emer behave?” she asked.
“She went to sleep,” said Conachúr sourly. “She slept hard and kicked hard for seven long hours; and this I know, that if she has the round knee of a woman, which she has, for it was thudded into my back a thousand times, she has also the sharp elbows of a girl, so that after a time it seemed to me that there was a bundle of live bodkins in the bed. I never knew how long a night could be until that night: and we had even to prolong it out of courtesy to the lady! I shall keep a painful memory of that sweet girl until I die, and the Cú is welcome to every royal remittance he can desire on her behalf. But now, about the banquet. Is everything in order?”
“Everything, master.”
“The brewers, the bakers, the cooks, they have their equipment and instructions?”
“Your butlers must answer for that, master.”
“True, but as you went among these people how did they seem? What do they say about the feast?”
“They are excited and delighted. All their talk is of the famous people and the great retinues that are coming, and of how Ulster will show the Five Kingdoms what a real feast is like.”
“They are good folk all,” said Conachúr. “They are very good folk. You have no other news?”
“There is nothing to report, master, but that everything is well.”
“You have no tidings from Scotland?”
“None, master, or little.”
“Even a little news is news,” said he. “Tell it, however little it be.”
“They have been chased again,” said Lavarcham in a low voice. “Everywhere they go they are hunted like foxes. They live under the weather, crouching like wild creatures in the bracken of a hill-side, or hiding in rocks and caves by a howling shore.”
“They were delicately reared,” he murmured.
“They never knew hardship,” Lavarcham whimpered, “and my babe——”
“Ah yes, your babe! How old would she be now, that babe of yours?”
“Close on twenty-three years, master.”
“And I am forty-seven. She has all her days in front of her still.”
“What days will they be, and she quaking in a burrow like a hare, or rising thin-legged from the bog like a yellow bittern?”
“It is still the King of Scotland who pursues them?” Conachúr queried.
“Yes; since he set eyes on her seven years ago he has given them no rest, and he will give none until he has killed the three brothers and taken the girl for himself. That is the welcome of a king in Scotland. It is not the welcome the same lord got when he came here in fosterage.”
“He is still a young man,” said Conachúr.
“Young or old, it is not the act of a prince.”
“The acts of a prince need a prince’s criticism,” said the king severely.
Lavarcham went silent.
“Young men go wild at times, and it is their right; but older men can be of a wildness that no young man can understand,” said the king.
He twisted sternly on Lavarcham.
“Love is told of in this way and that, but it is not told of as it is.... It is savagery in the blood, and pain in the bone, and greed and despair in the mind. It is to be thirsty in the night and unslaked in the day. It is to carry memory like a thorn in the heart. It is to drip one’s blood as one walks. Leave men to the things they know, and do you meddle with your own female businesses.”
“Those children,” said Lavarcham stubbornly, “are a woman’s business, and his own subjects are matter for a king.”
“They are our kinsmen indeed,” said Conachúr thoughtfully, “and their troubles shall be looked into. We shall speak of this again after the banquet.”
Lavarcham’s eyes were shining:
“Yes, master,” she crooned.
“Send in our butlers and all our masters,” said Conachúr.
[9]Emer = pronounced Ever.
[9]Emer = pronounced Ever.