A low murmur of voices, half awed, half angry, sounded all down the crowded benches of the hall; and the stranger looked round him with eyes that blazed like a wolf’s when they catch the edge of the firelight. ‘The Heroes of the Red Branch are accounted foremost in all Ireland for courage, honour, strength and truth; therefore, let you prove it by finding me, from among you, a man to keep this bargain with me—any man save the King.’ His voice rose to a roar like that of a gale among trees. ‘If you fail to find me such a champion, then must I say before all men that Ulster has lost her courage and is dishonoured!’
Hardly had he made an end than Laery sprang from his seat. ‘Not yet is Ulster without a champion! Give me the axe, and kneel down, fellow!’
‘Not so fast! Not so fast, manikin!’ Uath the Stranger laughed and began to caress the gleaming axe blade, murmuring over it in a tongue that was strange to all men there. Then handing the weapon to Laery, he knelt and laid his neck over a mighty oak log beside the fire. Leary stood over him, swinging the great axe to test its weight and balance, then brought it crashing down with such force that the stranger’s head leapt apart from his body, and the blade bit deep into the log.
Then a horrified gasp broke from all beholders, for as Laery the Triumphant stood back, the body of the stranger twitched, then rose and pulled the axe from the block and picked up its own head from where it had rolled against the hearthstone, and strode down the hall and out into the wild night; and it seemed that the very flames of the torches burned blue behind his passing.
And Laery stood beside the fire, looking as though he had been struck blind.
Next evening the Red Branch Warriors sat at supper in the King’s Hall. But they ate little and talked little; and all eyes were turned towards the door. It burst open as before, and in strode Uath the Stranger, with his hideous head set as firmly as ever on his shoulders, and the huge axe swinging in his hand.
As before, he came and leaned against the roof-tree and looked about him with yellow eyes under his brows. ‘Where is the warrior with whom I last night made a bargain?’
And King Conor Mac Nessa demanded also of his warriors, ‘Where is Laery the Triumphant?’
And up and down the benches the warriors looked at each other, but no man had seen Laery the Triumphant that evening.
‘So not even among the flower of the Ulster Warriors is there one to keep his word! Never think again to hold your heads high among the Chariot Chiefs of the world, oh small whipped curs of Ulster who cannot count among you one champion whose honour counts as much with him as a whole skin.’
Conall had returned from his hunting and was in the hall that night, and he sprang up, crying, ‘Make the bargain afresh, oh Uath the Stranger; make it with me, and you shall not have cause a second time to cry shame on the men of Ulster!’
So the stranger laughed again, and made his magic in a strange tongue, and knelt for Conall as he had knelt for Laery. And again when the blow had been struck, he rose and took up the axe and his own severed head and strode out into the night.
The next evening Conall took his accustomed place among the warriors at supper, white and silent, but determined on his fate. Only when the door burst open as before, and the dreadful figure came striding up the hall, his own courage broke, for it was one thing to die in the red blaze of battle, with company on the journey, and quite another to lay one’s head on the block in cold blood, for such an executioner; and he slipped down behind the benches and made for the small postern doorway of the hall.
So when Uath the Stranger called for Conall of the Victories, there was no answer save the click of the falling door pin.
Then Uath looked about him at the shamed and angry faces of King and warriors. ‘A pitiful thing it is to see how men such as the Red Branch Warriors hanker after a great name and yet lack the courage to deserve it! Great warriors indeed you are, who cannot furnish forth one man to keep his faith with me! Truly even Cuchulain, though he is nothing but a boy that must stain his chin with bramble juices when he wishes to seem a man, one would think too proud to behave as these two mighty heroes have behaved!’
Cuchulain rose from his place among the Royal kinsmen, and flung his defiance down the hall in a trumpet shout, ‘Young I may be, Uath the Stranger, but I keep my word!’
‘Come you and prove it, then,’ said Uath the Stranger, ‘for it is one thing to say and another to do!’
And with a great cry Cuchulain came leaping down the hall and seized the axe from the giant’s hand, and springing up from the floor, smote the Stranger’s head from his shoulders without even waiting for him to kneel down.
Uath the Stranger lurched like an oak tree in a gale, then steadied, and took back the axe from Cuchulain as though there were nothing odd in the way of it at all, and strode after his head which had bounced like a great hurley ball far off under one of the benches; and so walked down the hall and out into the night, the flames of the torches burning blue behind him.
Next night Cuchulain took his usual place among the warriors. And though the rest, watching him, saw that he was very white and that he scarcely touched the food but drank more than usual of the mead, he had not the look of a man who would take one step backward from the thing that he had come to meet.
Late into the evening, once again the wind rose and the door burst open, and in strode Uath the Stranger, wearing his terrible majesty like a cloud of darkness upon him, and cried out, striking the butt of his axe against the roof-tree, ‘Where is Cuchulain? Let him come out to me now, if he would keep his bargain!’
Cuchulain rose in his place and stepped forward. ‘I am here.’
‘The sadness is in your voice,’ Uath said, ‘and who shall wonder. Let it be a comfort to you when the axe falls, that you have redeemed the honour of Ulster.’ He fingered the axe edge with head cocked, as a harper tuning his instrument. ‘Kneel down, now.’
Cuchulain cast one last look round the great hall, seeing Emer’s white stone-still face among the women’s benches, and the faces of the King, and his friends, and the hounds that he had loved. Then he knelt and laid his head on the great log beside the fire.
‘Stretch out your neck farther,’ said the voice of Uath, tree-tall above him.
‘You are playing with me as a cat plays with a bird!’ Cuchulain said angrily. ‘Kill me swiftly, for I did not torment you with waiting last night!’
The stranger swung up his axe until the butt of it broke through the rafters with a crash like that of a great tree falling in a storm, then brought it sweeping down in a glittering arc; and the crash of the blow seemed to make the whole hall jump on its foundations. And of the men watching, some covered their eyes, and some could not look away from the horror.
But the young warrior knelt perfectly unharmed, and beside him, no longer the hideous stranger, stood Curoi of Kerry, leaning on his great axe which had bitten deep into the paved floor, smashing the flagstones within a hand’s breadth of Cuchulain’s head.
‘Did I not send you the word through my Queen that I would bring you my decision by and by?’ said Curoi. ‘Rise up now, Cuchulain.’ And as Cuchulain got slowly to his feet and looked about him, as though he were not sure even now that his head was secure upon his shoulders, he said, ‘Is the thing still in doubt? Here stands the Champion of all the Heroes of Ireland. The only one among you all, who dared to keep his bargain with death because he gave his word. There is none among the Heroes of Ulster to equal the Hound for courage and truth and honour, and therefore to him I adjudge the Championship and the Champion’s Portion at any feast where he may be present, and to Emer his wife, the first place among the princesses of Emain Macha.’ For an instant he seemed almost as terrible as Uath the Stranger had been. ‘This is the word of Curoi of Kerry, and woe to any warrior who shall dispute it!’
And as he spoke, suddenly it was only his voice that was there, and the firelight shining through the place where he had been. And with the last words spoken, nothing was left of Curoi at all,
only the foredoor of the hall crashed shut as though a great wind had blown it to.
For the time that a man might take to draw seven breaths, no one spoke or moved in the hall of Conor the King. And then men began to leave their places and crowd round Cuchulain where he still stood beside the hearth.
Laery came with the rest, and Conall of the Victories to set his arm about Cuchulain’s shoulders.
‘Why did you speak evil words of me to such as Bricrieu Poison Tongue?’ Cuchulain said.
And in the same instant Conall said, ‘Why did you speak poison of me to Bricrieu the Gadfly? I would not have spoken so of you.’
And Laery grumbled in his russet beard, ‘Young cubs, you are, to say scornful things of me to that bird of ill omen, Bricrieu! But I am older, and should have had some wisdom.’
And they looked from one to another in sudden understanding. ‘Bricrieu! Of course!’ and then began to laugh, and the laughter spread all up and down the hall and broke in waves of mirth against the rafters.
And from that time forward, Cuchulain was acknowledged by all men to be Champion of all the Heroes of Ireland.
9. Deirdre and the Sons of Usna
NOW WHEN CUCHULAIN and Emer had been together a few years in the sunny house that he had built at Dūn Dealgan, a great sorrow and the shadow of a great threat fell upon Ulster. But the beginning of that wild story was long before, in the year that Cuchulain first went to the Boys’ House.
In that year a certain Ulster chieftain called Felim made a great feast for the King and the Red Branch Warriors. And when the feasting was at its height, and the Greek wine was going round and the harp song shimmering through the hall, word was brought to Felim from the women’s quarters that his wife had borne him a daughter.
The warriors sprang to their feet to drink health and happiness upon the bairn, and then the King, half laughing, bade Cathbad, who was with him, to foretell the babe’s fortune and make it a bright one. Cathbad went to the door of the hall and stood for a long while gazing up at the summer stars that were big and pollen-soft in the sky, and when he came back into the torchlight there was shadow in his face, and for a while he would not answer when they asked him the meaning of it. But at last he said, ‘Call her Deirdre, for that name has the sound of sorrow, and sorrow will come by her to all Ulster. Bright-haired she will be, a flame of beauty; warriors will go into exile for her sake, and many shall fight and die because of her, yet in the end she shall lie in a little grave apart by herself, and better it would be that she had never been born.’
Then the warriors would have had the babe killed there and then, and even Felim, standing grey-faced among them, had nothing to say against it; but Conor Mac Nessa, his own Queen having died a while since in bearing Follaman their youngest son, had another thought and he said, ‘Ach now, there shall be no slaying, for clearly this fate that Cathbad reads in the stars can only mean that some chieftain of another province or even maybe of the Islands or the Pict Lands over the water will take her for his wife and for some cause that has to do with her, will make war on us. Therefore, she shall grow up in some place where no man may set eyes on her, and when she is of age to marry, then I myself will take her for Queen. In that way the doom will be averted, for no harm can come to Ulster through her marriage to me.’
So Conor Mac Nessa took charge of the child, and gave her to Levarcham his old nurse who was one of the wisest women in all Emain Macha. And in a hidden glen of Slieve Gallion he had a little house built, with a roof of green sods so that above ground it would look no more than one of the little green hillocks of the Sidhe, and a turf wall ringing it round, and a garden with apple trees for shade and fruit and pleasure. And there he set the two of them, to have no more sight of men, save that once a year his own most trusted warriors should bring them supplies of food and clothing, until the child was fifteen and ready to become his Queen.
So in the little secret homestead with her foster mother, Deirdre grew from a baby into a child and from a child into a maiden, knowing no world beyond the glen, and seeing no man in all that time, for every year when the warriors came, Levarcham would shut her within doors until they were gone again. Every year the King would send her some gift, a silver rattle hung with tiny bells of green glass, a coral-footed dove in a wicker cage, a length of wonderfully patterned silk that had come in a ship from half the world away. ‘What is a ship?’ said Deirdre to her foster mother, ‘and how far is half the world away? Could I get there if I set out very early in the morning and walked all day until the first stars came out?’ And at that, Levarcham grew anxious, knowing that her charge was beginning to wonder about the world beyond the glen.
In the year that she was fourteen, her gift was a string of yellow amber that smelled fragrant as a flower when she warmed it between her hands, and that year the King brought it himself, and came with it into the house under the sheltering turf. And so for the first time, he saw Deirdre, and he with the first grey hairs already in his beard. And sorrow upon it, from that moment he gave her his heart’s love, and she could never be free of it again.
That was in the summer, and before the cuckoo was gone, and before the last scarlet leaves fell from the wild cherry trees, and before the first snow came, the King returned to the glen for another sight of Deirdre. She knew that she was to be his Queen, but ’twas little enough that meant to her for good or ill, for it was a thing that belonged to the outside world, and the outside world as yet seemed very far away.
And then one winter night the outside world came to her threshold.
A wild night it was, with the wind roaring up through the woods and the sleety rain of it hushing across the turf roof, and Deirdre was sitting at old Levarcham’s feet, spinning saffron wool by the light of the burning peats, when she thought she heard a strange cry, mingled with the voices of the storm, and lifted her head to listen. ‘What was that, my Mother?’
‘Only a bird calling to its mate through the storm. Nothing that need concern you,’ said Levarcham.
But the cry came again, nearer now, and Deirdre said, ‘It sounded like a human voice—and the voice of one in sore trouble.’
‘It is only the wild geese flying over. Bide by the fire and go on spinning.’
And then between gust and gust of the wind there came a fumbling and a thumping against the timbers of the small strong door, and the voice cried, ‘Let me in! In the name of the sun and the moon let me in!’
And heedless of the old woman crying out to stop her, Deirdre leapt up and ran to unbar and lift the rowan-wood pin; and the door swung open and the wind and rain leapt in upon her, and with the wind and the rain, a man stumbled into the house place, and his sodden cloak like spread wings about him, as though he were indeed some great storm-driven bird.
He aided Deirdre to force shut the door. And as he came into the firelight that shone on his rain-drenched hair that was black as a crow’s wing and on his face, and on the great height of him, Levarcham took one look at him and said, ‘Naisi, Son of Usna, it is not the time to be bringing up the year’s supplies. You have no right in this place.’
‘Myself not being the King,’ Naisi said, and let his sodden cloak fall from his shoulders, though indeed he was as wet within it as without. ‘A storm-driven man has a right to any shelter that opens to him.’
‘And shall we have your brothers at the door next? Seldom it is that you three are apart!’
‘We have been hunting together, but Ardan and Ainle turned homeward before I did,’ said the tall man, and swayed. ‘Give me leave to sit by your fire until the storm sinks, for I have been lost and wandering a long while until I saw your light and—it is weary I am.’
‘Ach well, if you tell no man that you have been here, there’ll be no harm done, maybe,’ said Levarcham. ‘Sit, then, and eat and drink while you’re here, for by the looks of you, if I turn you away now, the Red Branch will be one fewer by morning.’
So Naisi sank down with a sigh upon the piled sheepskins, almost in
to the warm peat ash, and sat there with hanging head, the sodden hunting-leathers steaming upon him. Deirdre brought barley bread, and curd from their little black cow, and a cup of pale Greek wine, and set all beside him. He had been careful until then not to look at her, but when she gave the cup into his hands, he looked up to thank her; and having looked, could not look away again. And Deirdre could not look away either.
And Levarcham, watching both of them out of her small bright eyes, while she went on with Deirdre’s abandoned spinning, saw how it was with them, and how the blood came back into Naisi’s face that had been grey as a skull, and how the girl’s face answered his, and thought to herself, ‘Trouble! Grief upon me! I see such trouble coming, for there’s no grey in his beard, and she with all the candles lit behind her eyes for him! I should have turned him away to die in the storm.’ But there was a little smile on her, all the same, for despite her loyalty to Conor Mac Nessa who had been her nursling, she had felt it always a sad thing that Deirdre should be wed to the King who was old enough to have fathered her.
After that, King Conor was not the only one to come visiting Deirdre, for again and again Naisi would come to speak with her, and Levarcham knew that she should tell this to the King, but the time went by and the time went by and she listened to Deirdre’s pleading and did not tell him.
Then one evening when the wind blew over the shoulder of Slieve Gallion from the south and the first cold smell of spring was in the air, Deirdre said to Naisi when it was time for him to go, ‘Let you take me with you, and not leave me to be Queen beside a King that has grey hairs in his beard.’