Chapter 6

Immána

Conn sought me out the next morning, his gaming stick in hand and a determination in his regard which spoke danger. He smiled coldly when he saw my face, inset with a blackened eye. Father watched me go with his mouth a grim line on his silent face. We went to the long meadow by the river, Conn stalking ahead, the roll of his shoulders communicating his displeasure. Fiacra was there when we arrived, and the kennel master’s sons and some noble youths of the household—Conn’s cousins and younger brothers. All had their sticks for immána.

Fiacra drove the tightly woven ball of horsehair out long across the grass, and we contested it between us, taking a line, slamming shoulder to shoulder. The blows were hard and Conn’s strikes went wild, cracking off my thighs and ankles. Fiacra read this as permission and scourged me with his stick at every opportunity, hissing out curses beneath his breath.

‘Unholy lump. Wicked leavings. Devil stool’.

I had more strength in my frame and could take the hardest knocks—the pain entering into a different part of me, a straw-filled part where agonies are absorbed, a part unique to the slave. Conn was fastest and had the finest flourish with the ball at the end of his stick, sending it this way and that with complex turns of his wrist and clenching of fingers on the haft. More than once, I was sent tumbling into the tussocks of grass.

‘Up ollamh’, he said striking the ground hard by my head, his stick biting deep into the black soil. ‘Up, Sméar, and show your worth’.

As the sun rose, a warmth crept into the day despite the lateness of the month, shining through brittle leaves. We stripped to our waists and played on until our faces were flushed, bodies slick and the strength gone out of our arms.

Fiacra came up with the donkey then, and they had some sport on it. I held back, unwilling to give him more opportunity to bait me. I watched from beneath a blackthorn tree as they climbed on in turn, gripping the coarse hair in fistfuls as others lashed the poor beast along the flanks with briars as it kicked and bucked, sending bodies careening into the grass. They went on at it until hoarse from laughing and too bruised to do more. The donkey forgot its troubles just as soon, nosing in the dock leaves nearby.

After this we stripped and swam in the river, dipping our heads into its cool waters, its placid bulk seeking to carry us away downstream. Away towards the great river Bóinne and on to the sea, and as ever, I felt compelled to let it take me, to ferry me past the Tiarna’s house, onwards over territories increasingly distant. Beyond our túath towards the monastery at Baile Átha Troim, along the way to Sláine of the Gaelienga and then to enter that strange land of Aengus Óg and the Brú na Bóinne, where the great mounds of the sídhe stand guard on the banks, and beyond again past the Bridge of the Ford to the sea. The sea that neither I nor Conn had set our eyes upon. Father described it as an immense heaving body of deep green which no man could fathom the bottom of. A body of water so large that it took four full days to cross if the wind was onside. We spoke often of sailing on it, over the depths hiding untold serpents, leviathans and strange fish with the faces of men. Back to Chester Shire, to a free life and the land he owned there.

I lay back in the water, feeling the river’s pull, lost in these dreams with my toe hooked into a willow root. I lay still so that sprat swam beneath me, breaking the water at times, safe in my shadow from stalking herons. Conn stood among the reeds in the nearby shallows. He cupped water in his hands and liberated it over his face and shoulders, and I watched it rilling down his long body. And if it were another day, I may have judged it right to shout out with a taunt, to call him in to the deeper water and name him coward with a smile on my lips. But today was not a day for levity with him. I had intruded into his world. I had seen him on the floor at children’s games as I stood in the sphere of the Tiarna, trading words of weight and provocation as he watched in bitter awe from the shadows. My shins and shoulders bore the swelling welts of his displeasure, and it was for me now to play contrite.

I unhooked my toe and swam in to the edge, setting my back to the land, looking over the water. He came close and sat on the bank, his legs sliding into the water beside me. His thigh rested against my shoulder in an act of familiarity.

‘A thiarna’, I said, unable to banish the sullenness from my voice as I kneaded my bruised knuckles. He ignored my formality and came finally to the point he had been making all morning with his stick.

‘You should have come to me with word of that poet. I would have brought it to Father and we both would have benefitted’. I remained silent, and he spoke some more.

‘You believe yourself to be intelligent. But your thoughts are there to be read in your every move. Every veiled look, every feeble scheme and sleight of hand. It is tolerated because of your father and his favour with the Tiarna. Not, as you may imagine, because you have earned some respect here, or because the monk is protecting you. That monk will do nothing, Alberagh, no finger will he lift to better your station, and if you run away to a life in a monastery, your lot will change little from what it is now—less ball, perhaps, and more prayer’.

He draped his arm over my bare shoulder. I had begun to shiver, the cold settling in.

‘I am your route to a better standing in this life, not my father. He will treat you as a curiosity and he will laugh about his pet Sasanach who speaks tongues and shovels shit’.

His hand searched out my chin and directed my head up to his. He spoke softly, ‘I and I alone am your way forward’. He let my face drop, and I climbed out onto the grass, pulling my ragged brat over my body.

‘I am to be fostered’, he said to my back, and that news fell like a stone into a pool. We had both begun to believe that he would not be sent away. It is their most ancient custom that a lord will foster his son to another to promote peace and alliance. Though not always, it was usual for the fosterling to be six or seven. Conn had grown old.

‘I am to go to Tigernán Ua Ruairc’, and even as he spoke the name, I began to seek out the route of the Tiarna’s thinking—the grain of his strategy. Where would alliance with Ua Ruairc bring advantage, and against whom?

‘When do you go?’ I asked, and he rolled into the grass beside me, pulling part of my brat over his chest so that we both lay there gazing at the white sky, naked beneath the thin weave of my garment.

‘Soon’, he said. ‘I will need you to represent my interests here and keep watch over my young brothers and those cousins who would make a place for themselves in the nest that I must leave’.

He spoke to me as confidant, as lieutenant, and I weighed the moment.

‘And you would offer me what exactly, Conn, for my loyalty?’

He laughed to the sky and reached his arm and slid it beneath me so that my head settled on the crook of his elbow. He drew me across to him, his arm clenching so that I was pinned to his breast, his muscles tightening on my neck.

‘Have you had dreams, Alberagh? Dreams of women? Dreams of being a bull in a field of cows? Have you woken in the night with a pain and a hunger that is like a fire all over?’

‘I have not’, I said, although I knew well of what he was speaking. He squeezed tighter, until I could barely breathe, and he whispered into my ear.

‘Liar’. I felt blood pounding in my head, and white points of light appeared around the edge of my vision. And then he laughed and relaxed his grip.

‘Always asking for more, Sméar’, he said. ‘Not enough that I show you this favour’.

‘One who is unfree must be bold. Or be broken’, I said to him, my head on his breast.

‘Be my man here’, he said, ‘and when I return and take up my father’s house, you will be a free man, a man of my household. We will keep counsel and expand our power and capture cattle and take hostages from north, east and west. We will spend evenings at fidchell and other games of the mind, surrounded by food and drink and good hounds and a fire stacked high’.

As he spoke, his free arm came down along my side, down my thigh, and he turned his body to me completely, still gripping my neck so that my face was buried in the cold and firm flesh of his chest. We lay that way for a time, hidden in the riverside grass as Fiacra hunted for frogs beneath the undercut banks in the slow backwaters of the river and the others, farther upstream, competed, pitching stones as far as they could into the water.

We must have dozed for a time, for we were roused suddenly with Fiacra shouting from the top of the field.

‘Lochru is coming’.

When we saw him arrive, riding hard on an old gearrán, we knew that the moment had come. We stood up and threw on our shirts, jumping and whooping as we ran through the meadow towards him, the others following close behind. He was breathless when we reached him, his face lit with vigour.

‘Now crows will drink a cruel milk’, he proclaimed, the mad smile raging on one side of his face only. ‘The cattle calm upon the plain. Áed Buidhe has brought his cows down from the summer pastures and they are gathered in his meadows’. Fiacra and the others crowded around with their hands on our shoulders, jumping and shouting out wordless exclamations of excitement. It was the first raid any of us had been old enough to participate in.

‘The master has called the táin’, Lochru said to them, bubbling with the news. ‘We leave within the hour and will travel across friendly territory for the remainder of the daylight, passing into the lands of our enemies by dusk. We will cross their lands in darkness and lay our ambush for the first light of the morning. Speed now on your young legs, back to his house, and help with the preparations. A thiarna, you go ahead’.

He slid off the horse, cupping its chin in his hand, as I bent to make a cradle for Conn’s foot. He jumped up, grabbing the beast’s mane, and pointed him towards the household, the tired run of the horse somewhat comical as he strained forward on its back, full of visions of glory.

When we reached the compound, all of the Tiarna’s household men and fosterlings were there in great tumult, singing scraps of songs and shouting emboldening words from heroic verses and calling out things like ‘Where is mighty Finn?’ to which others would call out ‘He is ready to lead’, pointing all at once to the Tiarna on his horse, where he sat in his quilted jacket, and ‘Where is mighty Coillte, whose speed is without peer?’ and they would point to another warrior similarly arrayed. And so, the mood was set.

We ran in to help where we could, loading the packhorses and feeding the mounts horse bread for the journey as the pageant continued.

‘And where is Oisín, the son, strong gifted warrior out to prove his arm?’ They all roared ‘Here he is’ as Conn emerged from the house, an outsized quilted coat bolted to him with a leather vest, his shoulders thrown back and an axe in his grip. They went on like this as the warriors tied their gear to the woven matting that served them for saddles. And the roaring and shouting continued with a crowd coming in through the open gates. The labourers and the women and small children running around like hares with excitement. Donchad shouted above the noise, ‘And this the axe to give Áed Buidhe a shave!’

Erc, not to be outdone, roared louder, ‘Here the spear to give him a new navel’, and other voices took up the boasting.

‘Look on the scian that will bring back a head’.

‘And here is the horse that will drive the herd’.

It was difficult for me to know if this was a spontaneous outcry or if some ancient rite was being observed. I watched to see if their calls followed an order of rank or position, but after a time I was caught up with the tasks at hand, helping charge the horses and lash javelins into braces. And suddenly it was over and the Tiarna was leading his men out the gate, the kelt hanging at his neck, Tuar by his right side, followed by the cheering crowd.

I walked along at first with the rest of the children and the straggling crowd, afraid that the Tiarna would forget his promise. And then Donchad grabbed me up by the brat and I climbed up onto the rear of his horse, pressing myself against his back and gripping his garment.

‘Take a seat, lad, there will be time for walking yet’, he said, and I could see that Fiacra and a number of the other youths were being similarly caught up, riding with Erc and other men of the household, looking around in awe. I suddenly felt ill prepared, with no spear or weapon of my own and nothing between me and the blades of an enemy except a threadbare cloak.

The songs and shouting continued as we passed the nearby farmsteads of the Tiarna’s brother and cousins and brother’s widow and men filed out slowly on their best horses, shouting greetings and boasts until we were a host of three dozen horse, though many rode double. These were the freemen and lower nobles, the pride of the túath, with the Tiarna at the head, his eyes steel grey and hungry.

Before the crossing of the deep ditches that marked the northern limit of the túath, we descended into a dell fringed with venerable overhanging oak and ash, the floor a carpet of spent husks. In the centre of the dell, a solitary hawthorn bush stood fluttering with scraps of fabric tied to its branches, and beneath, a spring of cool water pooled in a deep well before trickling away through a narrow cleft. The Tiarna dismounted and, muttering a prayer, tore a strip from the hem of his garment and tied it to the bush. He dipped his palm into the well and drank. He stooped to a large flat stone that had two deep depressions within it. These marked the spot where St Lasair had knelt when she had first come to this land to teach the heathens of God. With the weight of His message, her knees had sunk into the solid rock. The Tiarna dipped his fingers into the depression and blessed himself. He raised his voice so that all could hear.

‘Bless us, Lasair of the ewe. Lasair, daughter of ready Ronin, bless us, holy woman, great and noble, and bless our purpose’. The men crowded the bush, tying strips and repeating the Tiarna’s actions until the dell hummed with half-uttered prayer. I came forward among the last and bent, pressing low into the bush to find a place to tie my scrap of brat. From a projecting thorn, a narrow slip of embroidered cuff fluttered in front of me, its weave so tiny and precise, its design so lavish, that, God forgive me, I reached out and snapped the twig upon which it hung, palming it as I emerged from the tangle of thorn. I secured the piece of fabric behind my belt. I drank from the well, dipped my fingers in the pool and prayed my own prayer.

‘Do not be displeased, Lasair, I beg. But rather guide my steps so that I may honour you in my actions. I take this prayer from your tree to ward against the hand of the sídhe’.

When all had done, we mounted the horses and continued through the gap in the ditches, onwards to the fording place, leaving our túath behind. The calls and singing had stopped, replaced with a restrained anticipation, and as we passed from a place of safety into the world beyond, the bright clatter of hooves off the river cobbles sounded on the air like the music of a many-stringed harp.