The next day, Cadla found another excuse to invite Aífe to court. “The apple trees are blooming, and I want you to see them. It is a rare sight when they are all in full flower!” He imagined her sitting under the blossoming trees, he bending to her, her head tilting up, stealing a soft kiss. He imagined her sun-warmed body, his breath on her skin, the nearness of her breasts.

“I must dye cloth for Gaine,” Aífe said in response.

“Let the slaves do that. Don’t stain your hands!”

“There is other work I need to do as well in the nemed garden.”

“Let the other Druid dirty themselves. You are not meant for such labor.”

“I have to help Gaine, she is unwell.”

“The others can see to Gaine’s welfare. You need not trouble yourself.”

Aífe fell silent. She could think of no more excuses. Cadla took her silence for assent and issued orders for an outdoor feast. Aífe knew that a retinue of warrior guards and slaves would witness their activities under the trees.

Food was ordered and a woolen blanket spread on the grass with colorful pillows thrown down to recline upon. Cadla poured a cup of honey-sweetened fion and presented it to Aífe, who drank a few sips and smiled shyly. Encouraged, he leaned closer, breathing in the scent of her hair, of her skin. Aífe tilted her head slightly toward him and asked, “Do your duties allow you many hours like this?”

“Nothing in my life has allowed me even a moment like this.” Cadla hooked one of her curls with his finger and let the light play on it.

She brought her shoulder up and turned a little toward him. It was a gesture of demure acceptance. Cadla’s breath stopped in his chest. He bent to her. She raised her shoulder a fraction more and leaned forward so that her silken shawl slipped off of her shoulder, baring her neck and arm in the sunlight.

Cadla was intoxicated. Bending to kiss the exposed shoulder, his lips brushed her honeyed skin.

Aífe’s body jerked and a strangled scream escaped. She jumped to her feet. The warriors, posted at a polite distance, made a hesitant step forward. The slaves dropped their platters.

“What is it?” asked Cadla. “Are you hurt?”

“You have no right!” Aífe cried. “You, a leader, should know!”

“No right?” Cadla’s face flushed red. “I have all the rights!”

“Is a leader above the law?”

“What are you saying? What injury have I caused?” Cadla was in dismay. His face was now pale, and his fists were clenched. He was angry, stung, and bewildered.

Aífe gathered her loose clothes around her and ran to the nemed. Cadla, confused beyond speech, left the orchard, giving no orders to the soldiers or slaves who stood shifting from one foot to the other in uncertainty.

Later that afternoon, Gaine, Nuin, and the other Druid escorted Aífe to the Great Hall of the Ard-Ri. The Druid were dressed in their most formal robes, wearing six-colored cloaks and torcs to announce that this was a serious official matter. Their expressions were somber. Ethne and Ruadh stood in the shadows at the back of the hall with hoods low over their faces, as neophytes too lowly to approach the king would do.

Cadla sat on his carved wooden throne at the end of the hall. The Druid walked to him and stood in a line facing the dais. Gaine stepped forward and shook her chain with the golden bells in the ancient manner. Despite his Cristaide pretensions and his anger, Cadla was moved as she intoned the time-honored words to open the assembly: “In the name of the three worlds of the ancestors, nature spirits, and gods, I declare this assembly open.”

She banged the floor with her staff three times and formally petitioned the king for justice. “You, Cadla, have done Aífe great wrong. You violated her person in a crude and unforgivable manner. For the laws state ‘If a woman makes an assignation with a man to come to her in a bed or behind a bush, the man is not considered guilty even if she screams. If she has not agreed to a meeting, however, he is guilty as soon as she screams.’”

“But she came willingly! All the court heard her,” Cadla said.

Aífe filled her mind with courage, thinking of all she might lose—all her sun-turnings of study at the Forest School wasted. Never to learn the higher mysteries of filidecht if she were tied to the Ard-Ri. She could not bear it. Finally she found the words.

“I did nothing willingly. Four times you insisted that I join you under the apple trees. I did not want to go with you. I told you four times I would not, but you would not listen. You are the Ard-Ri; I followed your order. In the orchard, you kissed me. Never did I say my permission. Thus you have broken the law.”

There was no sound in the room. Cadla stared at Aífe as if for the first time. She had never wanted him, never returned his desire. His old man’s heart went cold as he saw that she had joined him at table and on outings only because he had asked her, because he had insisted. She had never responded in kind, had never asked to see him. He saw her dislike and was mortified. He was a fool.

“I have mistaken your beauty for refinement. I was willing to give you the highest honor I can bestow, to make you my rígain. I will not force an unwilling, ignorant girl.”

“My only desire is to leave this rath and finish my Druid studies,” Aífe replied, head high, eyes clear and calm.

Cadla was angry, humiliated, embarrassed. With so many witnesses, there was nothing he could say. As a Drui member of the Nemed class, she was his equal, and he had no right to force himself upon her. The ancient tribal law had been invoked, and he was honor-bound to respect it. Yet his pride fought for him.

“Get out of my sight!” he said, rising and turning his back to the gathering of Druid and Gaine. It was an act of disrespect, but the Druid knew it was a small gesture meant only to end his humiliation.

Cadla retired to his private chamber, and the Druid went back to the nemed, where Gaine pronounced judgment. “Even a king must bow to the ancient laws and customs. As the poets advise:

Give two-thirds of your gentleness to women

And to the attendants who serve you,

And to the poets who make the songs …2

“Cadla in his confusion has tried to be just. And that is an end to this foolishness.”