And Naisi groaned. ‘How can I do as you ask? I that am one of the King’s own bodyguard, his hearth companion?’
And he went away, vowing in his heart that he would come no more to the turf house in the hidden glen. But always he came again, and always Deirdre would plead, ‘Naisi, Naisi, take me away with you, it is you that I love. I have given no troth to the King for none has ever been asked of me, and it is yours that I am.’
For a long while he held out against her, and against his own heart. But at last, when the apple trees behind the house were white with blossom, and Deirdre’s wedding to the King no more than a few weeks away, the time came when he could hold out no longer. And he said, ‘So be it then, bird-of-my-heart, there are other lands across the sea and other kings to serve. For your sake I will live disgraced and die dishonoured, and not think the price high to pay, if you love me, Deirdre.’
In the darkness of the next night he came with horses, and with Ardan and Ainle his brothers; and they carried off both Deirdre and Levarcham, for the old woman said, ‘Grief upon me! I have done ill for your sakes, and let you not leave me now to the King’s wrath!’
They fled to the coast and took ship for Scotland, and there Naisi and his brothers took service with the Pictish King. But after a while the King cast his looks too eagerly in Deirdre’s direction, and they knew that the time had come to be moving on again.
After that they wandered for a long while, until they came at last to Glen Etive, and there they built a little huddle of turf bothies on the loch shore, and the men hunted and Deirdre and the old nurse cooked for them and spun and wove the wool of their few mountain sheep; and so the years went by.
And in all those years, three, maybe, or four, Conor Mac Nessa made no sign, but sat in his palace at Emain Macha, and did not forget. And from time to time some ragged herdsman or wandering harper would pass through Glen Etive and beg shelter for the night, and afterwards return to Conor the King and tell him all that there was to tell of Deirdre and the sons of Usna—and they thinking themselves safe hidden all the while.
At last it seemed to the King, from the things told him by his spies, that the sons of Usna were growing restless in their solitudes; their thoughts turning back, maybe, to the life in a king’s hall, and the feasting and the fighting to which they had been bred. Then he sent for Conall of the Victories, and Cuchulain, and old Fergus Mac Roy, and said to them, ‘It is in my mind that the sons of Usna have served long enough in exile, and the time comes to call them home.’
‘In friendship?’ said Cuchulain, for he had never judged his kinsman one who would easily forgive a wrong, even after so long a time.
‘In friendship,’ said the King. ‘I had a fool’s fondness for the girl, but that is over long since. More it means to me to have the young men of my bodyguard about me. Therefore, one of you three shall go to Glen Etive, and tell them that the past is past, and bring them again to Emain Macha.’
‘And which of us three?’ said Conall.
And the King considered, turning his frowning gaze from one to the other. ‘Conall, what would you do if I were to choose you, and harm came to them through me, after all?’
And Conall returned his gaze as frowningly. ‘I should know how to avenge them, and my own honour that would lie dead with them.’
‘That sounds like a threat,’ said the King, ‘but it makes no matter, since the question is but an empty one.’ And he turned to Cuchulain.
‘I can answer only as Conall has answered,’ Cuchulain said, ‘but I think that after the revenge was over, men would no longer call me the Hound of Ulster but the Wolf of Ulster.’ And he looked long and hard into the King’s eyes. ‘Therefore, it is as well, I think, that it is not myself that you will be sending to bring home the sons of Usna.’
‘No, it is not yourself, but Fergus Mac Roy that I shall send,’ said Conor the King. And Fergus, who was no fool in the general way of things, was so filled with gladness—for he loved Naisi and his brothers almost as much as he did Cuchulain, as much as he loved his own sons, and his heart had wearied for them in their exile—that he lost his judgement and he did not see the look that Cuchulain had turned upon the King.
So Fergus went down to the coast and took ship for Scotland and at last and at last he came on a quiet evening to the cluster of green bothies on the shore of Glen Etive; and when Naisi and his brothers, who were but just returned from their hunting, saw him drawing near along the shore, they came racing to meet him and fling their arms about his shoulders, greeting him and marvelling at his coming, and demanding what would be the latest news out of Ireland.
‘The news out of Ireland is this,’ said Fergus, as they turned back towards the bothies together. ‘That Conor the King has put from his mind the thing that happened four springs ago between you and Deirdre and himself, and can no longer get the full pleasure of his mead-horn nor the full sweetness of harp song unless you return in friendship to enjoy them with him as you used to do.’
Now at this the three brothers set up a shout, for they were as joyful to hear his news as he was to tell it. But Deirdre, who had come from the bothies to join them, said, ‘The sons of Usna do well enough here in Scotland. Let you be welcome here at our hearth, and then go back and tell King Conor that.’
‘We do well enough here,’ said Naisi, ‘but each man does best in the land that bred him, for it is there that the roots of his heart are struck.’
‘Ah, Naisi, Naisi, I have seen you and Ardan and Ainle growing weary of this happy Glen Etive; I know how you have longed for the King’s Hall, and to be driving again like the wind behind the swift horses of Ulster. Yet I have had evil dreams of late and there is a shadow on my heart.’
‘Deirdre, what is it that you are afraid of?’
‘I scarcely know,’ said Deirdre. ‘I find it hard to believe in the King’s forgiveness. What safeguard have we if we give ourselves back into his power?’
And Fergus Mac Roy said, ‘Mine. And I think that no king in all Ireland would dare to violate that.’
Then while they ate the evening meal about the peat fire in the house place, Naisi laughed at her for her fears, swaggering a little with his thumbs in his belt, because the King had sent for him to come back to his old place again. And next day they gathered up all that they had of goods and gear, and went down to the coast, to where the ship that had brought Fergus from Ireland lay waiting on the tide line. And the bothies by the loch shore were left empty and forsaken.
The rowers bent to their oars and the long corach slipped seaward; and sitting in the stern with old Levarcham against her knee, Deirdre looked back past the man at the steering oar towards the shores of Scotland, and a lament rose in her, and would not be held back.
‘My love to you, oh land of Alban; pleasant are your harbours and your clear green-sided hills. Glen Archan, my grief! High its hart’s tongue and bright its flowers; never were young men lighter hearted than the three sons of Usna in Glen Archan. Glen-da-Rua, my grief! Glen-da-Rua! Sweet is the voice of the cuckoo in the woods of Glen-da-Rua. Glen Etive, my grief! Ochone! Glen Etive; it was there I built my first house, and slept under soft coverings with Naisi’s hand beneath my head. And never would I have left you, Glen Etive, but that I go with Naisi my love.’
Scarcely had they set foot in Ulster once more, when Baruch, a veteran of the Red Branch, came to meet them, and bade Fergus, as an old friend, to feast with him that night in his Dūn close by. And with him were Fergus’s two sons, Illan the Fair and Buinne the Red, come to greet him on his return. Now Fergus did not know that the King had ordered that feast, but he knew that his oath to Conor Mac Nessa bound him to bring Deirdre and the sons of Usna straight from their landing place to Emain Macha, and he tried to win clear of the thing, saying that he could not turn aside from his way until he had brought Deirdre and the three brothers under safe conduct to the King’s presence. But Baruch would not be denied, and bade him remember that his geise forbade him ever to refuse when bidden t
o a feast, and so at last despite Deirdre’s pleading (for no warrior might go against his geise) he bade his sons to take charge of the party, and himself went with Baruch.
When the six of them drew near to Emain Macha, Deirdre said, ‘See now, how it will be. If Conor the King bids us to his own hall and his own hearth-side, then he means us no ill; but if we are lodged apart in the Red Branch Hostel, then grief upon us! For all that I fear will come to pass.’
And when they came into the Royal Dūn they were lodged in the Red Branch Hostel, to wait until the King should send for them. And Deirdre said, without hope of being heeded, ‘Did I not tell you how it would be?’
But Naisi only laughed and held her warm in his arms, saying, ‘Soon the King will send for us in friendship, and all things will be as they used to be.’
But first the King sent for old Levarcham, and she went and made her peace with him where he sat moodily in his sleeping-chamber with his favourite hound at his feet. And he asked her how it was with Deirdre, and if her beauty was on her yet, after so many years in the wilderness.
‘Ach now, what would you be expecting? Life in the wilderness deals hardly with a woman,’ said Levarcham. ‘The skin that was so white is brown now, and the wind has chapped her lips and the sun has faded her hair. Her beauty is all gone from her and if you were to see her now you would think her any farmer’s woman.’
‘Then I will not send for her when I send for the sons of Usna,’ said the King, and he sighed. ‘Since Naisi has had her beauty, let him keep her. I will not see her again.’
But when Levarcham had been gone a while he began to doubt in his heart whether she had told him the truth, and he called to him his shield-bearer, and said, ‘Go you and find some means to look secretly at the woman that is in the Red Branch Guest House, and come back and tell me whether she is yet fair to look upon.’
So it was that when those within the Guest House were taking their ease after the evening meal, Deirdre and Naisi playing chess together while the others lay about the fire, Ardan cried out suddenly and sprang to his feet, pointing to the high window in the gable wall. And looking where he pointed, Naisi saw the face of the King’s shield-bearer peering in; and he caught up a golden chessman from the board and flung it at him, and it caught him in the face and struck out his left eye.
The man loosed his hold on the window-ledge with a sobbing cry and dropped to the ground, and ran and stumbled back to King Conor with his bloody face in his hands.
‘The woman in the Red Branch Guest House is the fairest that ever I have seen. And if Naisi Son of Usna had not seen me and put out my eye with the fling of a golden chess piece, it is in my heart that I would have been clinging to the window-ledge and gazing at her still.’
Then Conor Mac Nessa in a black fury came out into his great hall and shouted to his warriors that were feasting there to be out and bring the three sons of Usna before him, he cared not whether alive or dead, or if they must pull down the Red Branch Hostel timber by timber and turf by turf to do it; for they were traitors that had done him foul wrong in the matter of the woman Deirdre.
The warriors sprang from the benches and snatched up their weapons and ran out, shouting, tossing the war-cry to and fro among them, and some, in passing the fires, pulled out flaming branches and whirled them above their heads as they ran, and so Naisi and the rest within the Hostel saw the red flicker of the firebrands through the high windows, and heard the shouting. And Deirdre cried out, wild as a storm-driven bird, ‘Treachery! Naisi, Naisi, I told you that I feared evil, but you would not listen to me!’
And in the same moment Naisi himself had leapt to drop the mighty bar across the door.
‘Look to the windows! The windows, my brothers, and you sons of Fergus who came here with us in his stead!’
And each catching up their weapons, they ran to their places, and for a breath of time there was stillness in the hall. Then the great voice of Celthair Son of Uthica cried to them from before the door. ‘Out with you, thieves and rievers! Come out to us now, and bring with you the woman you stole from the King!’
And standing within the door Naisi shouted back, ‘Neither thieves nor rievers are we, for the woman came to me for love and of her own wish; and with me and with my brothers she shall remain, though every champion of the Red Branch comes against us!’
But it was not long that they could hold the Hostel, for someone shouted, ‘Burn them out, then, we have the firebrands!’ And the shouting rose to a roar, and the warriors thrust their blazing branches under the thatch. And Deirdre cried out at the sight of the red flame running among the rafters, and the hall began to fill with smoke.
Then Naisi said, ‘It is time to unbar the door, for it is better to die by the cold blade than the choking reek of fire!’
So they heaved up the bar and flung wide the door, and leapt to meet the King’s warriors who were ready for them like terriers at the mouth of a rat hole. A great fight there was, about the threshold of the Red Branch Guest House, and many of the warriors of Ulster fell before the blades of the sons of Usna and the sons of Fergus Mac Roy. And in the fighting Illan the Fair got his death, but to Buinne the Red a worse thing befell, for the King contrived to have him surrounded and brought living out of the fight, and bought him with the promise of much land.
Then with the Red Branch Hostel roaring up in flames behind them, Naisi and his brothers linked their three shields together and set Deirdre in the midst of them, and so made a great charge to break through the press of Conor’s warriors. And spent and wounded as they were they might yet have won clear, but that Conor Mac Nessa, seeing how it was, bade certain of his Druids to make a strong magic against them, and the Druids made the seeming of a dark wild sea that rose and rose around the island of linked shields, so that the sons of Usna were fighting against the waves of it more than the warriors of the King’s Guard. And Naisi, feeling the cold buffeting of the sea rise higher about him and seeing the white hissing break of the waves against their linked shields, caught Deirdre up on to his shoulder to save her from the sea. And they were choking and half drowned, while all the while, to all men save themselves, the King’s forecourt was dry as summer drought in the red glare of the burning Hostel.
So at last their strength failed them and the Red Branch Warriors closed about them and struck the swords from their hands, and took and bound them and dragged them before King Conor where he stood looking on.
Then Conor Mac Nessa called for man after man to come forward and slay him the three, but it seemed that none of them heard him, neither Conall of the Victories nor Cethern Son of Findtan, nor Dubthach the Beetle of Ulster, nor Cuchulain himself, who was but that moment come upon the scene, until at last Owen Prince of Ferney stepped forward and took up Naisi’s own sword from the ground where it lay.
‘Let you strike the heads from all three of us at one blow,’ said Naisi then. ‘The blade has skill enough for that; and so we shall all be away on the same breath.’ And as they stood there side by side, and their arms bound behind them, the Prince of Ferney shored off their three proud heads at the one stroke. And all the Red Branch Warriors let out three heavy shouts above them. And Deirdre broke free of the men who held her, and she tore her bright hair and cast herself upon the three headless bodies and cried out to them as though they could still hear her. ‘Long will be the days without you, O sons of Usna, the days that were never wearisome in your company. The High King of Ulster, my first betrothed, I forsook for the love of Naisi, and sorrow is to me and those that loved me. Make keening for the heroes that were killed by treachery at their coming back to Ulster. The sons of Usna fell in the fight like three branches that were growing straight and strong; their birth was beautiful and their blossoming, and now they are cut down.
‘Oh young men, digging the new grave, do not make it narrow, leave space there for me that follow after, for I am Deirdre without gladness, and my life at its end!’
And as they would have dragged her away from Na
isi’s body, she snatched a little sharp knife from the belt of one of the men who held her, and with a last desolate cry, drove the blade home into her breast, and the life of her was gone from between their hands like a bird from its broken cage.
They buried Deirdre and Naisi not far apart, at the spot where in later times rose the great church of Armagh, and out of her grave and out of Naisi’s there grew two tall yew trees, whose tops, when they were full grown, met above the church roof, mingling their dark branches so that no man might part them more. And when the sea wind hushed through the boughs, the people said, ‘Listen, Deirdre and Naisi are singing together.’ And when in summer the small red berries burned like jewels among the furred darkness of the boughs, they said, ‘See, Deirdre and Naisi are decked for their wedding.’
10. The Hosting of Maeve
WHEN FERGUS MAC ROY reached Emain Macha after the feast of Baruch, and found one of his sons dead and the other worse than dead to him, and the sons of Usna betrayed to their deaths from out of the shelter of his safe conduct, he cursed Conor the King with all the power of rage and grief within him, with all the strength of an old loyalty turned to hate, swearing to be avenged on him with fire and sword. Then he gathered his weapons and bade his charioteer to harness up, and drove like the Lord of the Wild Hunt out of Ulster, to take a new service with Maeve of Connacht.
So by King Conor’s own act, the sorrow that he had tried to avert was begun indeed; for Fergus Mac Roy who had been among the greatest of the Red Branch Heroes was gone with vengeance in his heart, to join himself to Ulster’s enemies. And more than one, there were, that followed him, among them Dubthach the Beetle of Ulster, and Cormac Coilinglass, the King’s own son. Cuchulain did not go with them for he could not bring himself to take service with Ulster’s enemies, but he went away to his own place at Dūn Dealgan, and was no more seen nor heard of at Emain Macha for a long time.