Chapter 9

Óenach

In the morning we pushed on, rejoining the slíghe to find it lined with tents and campfires. We passed an ancient hostel by the roadside which was surrounded with makeshift camps and wagons. A monk was giving Mass beneath a huge oak tree, dotted with sparse, clinging leaves, and we stopped on the outskirts of the congregation. A way was made for the Tiarna and Gormflaith, who went forward to receive the blessed bread, passing through the dun-coloured crowd in their aristocratic red cloaks. The priest’s voice raised in sermon.

‘Forget not the ills visited upon the Ostmen of Duiblinn for their sins—chief among them, their blind and stubborn insistence on perpetuating that ungodly practice of slavery’. My face glowed red with shame and anger as I burrowed into the crowd, not wanting to meet Erc’s eye or feel his elbow dig into my ribs with amusement.

‘God’s vengeance’, the monk went on, ‘has taken the form of the Sasanaigh, the grim-faced soldiers from over the sea, clad in iron rings and riding powerful horses. None shall be safe while the sinful walk tall in the guise of the righteous’. The Tiarna pulled his cloak over his head, walking away from these words, and I could see that his restless mind was seeking ways to turn these fears and grim-faced soldiers to his favour.

The crowds on the slíghe thickened as we approached the appointed place, and going was slow. The road closed in on either side, rising through a narrow pass, and even the cows had nowhere to go and were constrained to amble along with the current. The slíghe rose up then and ran between the top of two grassy hills, and as we crested, we caught our first glimpse of the land beyond, sloping away gently downwards towards the Dubh Lough before rising again on the far side up to the eaves of a dense oak wood.

Everywhere that we looked, there were crowds of people, spilling down the slopes towards a flat central disc of green beside the shore of the lough. As we descended, I saw people setting up camps and stalls where they could, uniting in their túatha and kin groups. Temporary corrals held cattle herds, sheep, pigs and horses around the outskirts of the camps. Tents covered the slopes, set as close as the teeth of a comb, and in the still air, smoke rose upwards in trailing columns from a hundred fires, and it was as if the low sky rested upon these spindles. The large oval sward of level ground at the edge of the lake was bare of people, and this was the heart of the óenach, the space where the horse racing and the ball games and the contests of strength and skill would take place, and at the edge of this greensward on a low outcrop of rock, the dais of Ua Ruairc had been erected with wooden poles constructed above, carrying a roof of fabric bowed like a full udder. It was from this platform that Tigernán Ua Ruairc would address the gathering, read out his laws and decrees, bestow gifts upon his supporters and officiate ceremonies invested with such strange antiquity that their meaning was obscured to all but the highest ollamh. And this, ultimately, was the purpose of the óenach—to dispense the king’s rule and to renew vows of fidelity with the multitudes drawn by the goods to be had and to compete in the contests of strength and speed, of horsemanship and immána.

Looking out over the massed field of people—lords, ladies, lawmen, artisans, hostages and slaves—I perceived every one of them caught up in the net of the politics of that part of the world. Obsessed, one and all, by their place within that mesh and how it might be bettered by the swing of an axe or the wedding of a daughter or the taking of a hostage or the blinding of a brother.

In the press of people, we approached a row of large stones and, beyond, the boundary post draped with bushels of barley and hung with harvest knots of all different shapes. A young fíle stood on a boulder, his arm crooked around the post, and as we struggled along in the vast crowd crossing into óenach land, we passed slowly, receiving all of his gesturing cant.

‘Well travelled and well met to the óenach of Ua Ruairc, where one hundred thousand welcomes are laid at your feet. Come and find your place among the three busiest markets in the land—the market of food, the market of livestock, the great market of the Greek foreigners filled with gold and fine raiment. Find your place on the slope of the horses, the slope of the cooking pots or the slope of the women, met for embroidery where no man of the host of the noisy Gaedil may harass them. Come hear the trumpets, the harps, the hollow-throated horns, hear the pipers, timpanists, the unwearied poets and meek musicians. Come hear the tales of Finn and the Fianna, a matter inexhaustible, of sacks, forays, wooings and keen riddles. Disport yourselves, noble men, in the truthful teachings of Fithal, in the dark lays of the Dindsenchas. And you of the lower sort, fear not. For you, pipes, fiddles, gleemen, bone players and bagpipers await. A crowd hideous, noisy, profane full of shriekers and shouters waits for thee’.

The crowd laughed and called out in passing or threw sods and scraw plucked from the earth as the file cavorted across the boulders.

‘And here arrives a great lord’, he cried, seeing our company, ‘whose fine raiment, noble bearing and radiant wife announce his name to us all, who have heard of his great deeds—surely from the house of Máel Sechlainn he comes, Mánus of the bright cheek and quick mind’. All looked towards the Tiarna, who smiled thinly, and I could read uncertainty behind his eyes. A foreboding crept into the air as we passed, entering the óenach land. I felt it too. The fíle’s heaped praise tinged with something barely perceived, yet there all the same like the faint taste of shit in a clear running stream. Scorn. We pushed onwards with the fíle’s fading words following us doggedly.

‘The King, noble and honoured, pays for each art its proper fee. Tales of death and slaughter, strains of music; his royal pedigree, a blessing throughout Míde. His battle stark, his valour terrible’.

The horse-boys had been looking out for us from the grassy slopes, watching our approach and running to tell Tuar. He met us close to the boundary and led us through the crowds to a place, close to the eaves of the wood beside a small stream where several tents had been set up and a stockade made for the beasts. Already a fire shimmered before the tents with a tripod of irons carrying a cauldron of broth over the coals. The Tiarna’s men had gotten a barrel of Frankish wine and two barrels of honeyed ale from the markets, and the servants came forward with horns brimming with drink.

Conn came forward, too, taller seeming, a light on his face. He embraced his parents, and all three sat on the sun-warmed grass by the entrance to the tent and drank wine as we drove the cattle into the stockade and unloaded the carts. He called Tuar to his side then and asked for information. What lords were here and where camped. What news and what conflicts and what were the odds and favourites in the contests to come. Had Ua Ruairc arrived and had any addresses been made. He spoke quietly then in Tuar’s ear, and the ollamh called Conn to his side and they stalked away downslope, disappearing between the tents. The Tiarna lay back in the grass, stretching the full length of his body, as we all waited nervously for what would follow. He called for food and was brought a steaming bowl from the cauldron. We all sought food then, whatever we could find. I looked for Ness, finding her eye as she stood by with the lady’s bag. I brought her an apple from the cart and we shared an oat biscuit, sitting in silence, eating, surreptitiously watching the Tiarna, fingering the kelt at his neck, his lips mumbling unspoken words as the weight of the moment hung heavier with each beat of the heart. Conn came back eventually, standing gravely before his father, communicating his message with a single nod. The Tiarna stood and, looking to the sky, breathed in deeply before calling Donchad and Erc forward.

‘Ready the cows. We will make our submission to Ua Ruairc’, he said—the heaviness in his voice clear to all who heard.

Donchad, Erc and the other household men went ahead, clearing the way for the Tiarna. We came behind, harried with keeping the cows together along the tight tracks between camps. All of the household was needed for this, and even Mór and Ness paced along with switches, keeping the beasts calm with coos and touches of their palms on broad, knobbed backs. And as we descended, the slope drew the beasts onwards, some trotting on, unnerved by the smoke and noise. Women scolded our trespass as bullocks went astray, and it felt before long that the whole camp was against us. The sense of foreboding grew with each step downhill, and the greensward came into view, empty and waiting and ringed with masses of people, eating, trading and drinking around its fringes.

We stopped at the edge, looking across the grassy expanse. At the far end, figures moved on the dais, and we could clearly see the shapes of people, though their faces were too far off to discern. Two came forward, stepping from the dais and walking towards us. Their gait announced them before their faces resolved themselves with certainty. Tuar and, by his side, Milesius came on with his sturdy staff. I smiled at this, taking some comfort from the monk’s presence. Tuar came in full dignity holding the slender white rod of his office.

They stopped before us, officious and distant, the ollamh and the cleric. Milesius did not meet my eye, nor did he show any sign of affection or kinship with the Tiarna. Tuar raised the white rod several hands’ breadths from the ground and spoke in precise tones.

‘A thiarna, you will approach the dais with your company, state your name, declare loudly that you come with peaceful intent and make your presentation to the Rí. In your address you will acknowledge him as King of Bréifne, Conmaicne and lord over Míde. He, in turn, will acknowledge your submission, and the monk will bring forward the great relic Domnach Airgid, upon which you will swear your vow’.

The Tiarna nodded and Tuar turned, leading the party onwards. The Tiarna walked ahead, Gormflaith and Conn at his right hand and his men fanned out to each side. We closed the distance slowly, the shapes on the dais becoming clearer. As we progressed, I became aware of a silence descending, spreading outwards from the sward. Even the cows quietened, comforted by the open space and the lush grass underfoot. Ahead of us, Ua Ruairc sat in majesty on a wooden chair surrounded by ollaimh, lawmen and warriors, his sons, grandsons, foster sons all. Ua Ruairc among them as if within a spear-bristling fort, and as we drew closer, the king’s aged, ruined aspect resolved itself, its horror becoming clearer with each step forward. His face carried deep ravines, the scarred flesh puckered and dulled with time, his left eye long since gored from its socket. And all who beheld him dwelt upon the stories of the men who, on a moonless night, had slid from the shadows to end Ua Ruairc’s reign, who had stabbed again and again at the old king’s head until, standing back from the fallen hump breathing wetly at their feet, they had watched him rise, implacable from the bloodied ground, axe in hand.

He sat forward now in the chair, immobile, the mass of his shoulders looming, giving the impression of an eternal crag facing the sea. His good eye alone roved, restless and bright within that terrible face with its bulged, badly knitted lips, its cheeks and chin crazed with torn, white furrows upon which no beard grew.

We approached, and it was as if we neared an abyss. The mounting silence like a weight on my shoulders. Though I burned to look back and find Ness, I dared not draw attention. Milesius climbed the dais, bending to speak into his kinsman’s ear before taking his place behind the chair, and Tuar stepped forward to announce the Tiarna.

A small commotion from the crowd stalled the words on his lips. A figure pushed forward violently through the congregation gathered at the edge of the sward and wheeled clumsily into the space between our party and the dais. A staff in his hand, black feathers in his hair, and I recognised, in the flash of his face before he turned towards Ua Ruairc, the file I had watched with Lochru, skulking along our borders. The file Donchad had followed. The file in the pay of Ua Ragallaig.

Several of the warriors jumped down from the dais, coming around him, and he cried out in an awful voice, like the croaking of a hundred startled herons. He threw his satchel over his shoulder, his brat flinging back as his arm came up, lifting one leg and closing one eye in the sign of a curse. The warriors faltered and he began, speaking the most terrible words with a throaty welling of invective.

‘Is it Ua Ruairc the cuckold I see before me? Playing king over a land that will not bear him?’

The shock of his speech ran through the assembly, a shuddering horror, and though the expression on the King’s face did not change, his whole body tensed into a rictus of anger.

‘Is it Ua Ruairc, the stingy, grudging lord? The stinking gummed, half-blind oaf? The withered leper? The shameless, misshapen monster? See what befalls when a king is blemished!’

A stupefied silence reigned among those surrounding the sward, while farther off, beyond the massed crowd, sounds of oblivious commerce, music, shouting and laughter travelled lightly on a breeze.

‘Is it Ua Ruairc whose deformity brings blight and hardship to his people? The wicked, incompetent, feeble boor? A man divested of his wife by the Mac Murchada pretender? Is it Ua Ruairc, lapdog to Connacht, an old, infirm, impotent lecher who calls this assembly? Woe to he who would follow this worm. Death to he who would call him king’.

The fíle, his satire delivered, slumped forward on his staff, the outpouring of bile dragging with it all of his force. All eyes turned to Ua Ruairc, who sat still, absorbing the poison of the file’s words, his chewing mouth eating the malicious spellwork with a power of his own. Hatred. Spite. Eternal things burning at his core. Sustaining his old body with unholy light.

He stood slowly, revealing his height, his gnarled strength evident in his grip as it reached behind for the long haft of his axe.

‘And who’, he roared, ‘has sponsored this outrage? What villainous, pus-addled scab has sent this pitiful cretin before me, gasping malformed words into the gale?’

‘One who sees you for what you are—rí of ordure, doom to his people’. Ua Ruairc’s men closed in on each side, axes and swords ringing clear and pressing into the meagre frame of the file. ‘Will you now go further in your transgressions’, the file said, ‘and break the géis, drawing blood at an óenach?’

Ua Ruairc turned from the file, addressing the crowd.

‘Behold. A starving beggar of little skill sent against me with feeble words. Sent on the promise of reward. Is this the depth of my enemies’ desperation?’ And, turning with a savage swiftness, he spat a full gobbet of phlegm at the file, who raised his hand against it. ‘Flee. Flee now, you stunted crook. I will break no géis for the likes of you’.

The file said no more but pitched on a bad leg and tramped from the sward, his face twisted, fearful, with drops of sweat clear on his brow. The crowd fell back before him, and he passed—a sickle through the corn.

The silence extended out, engulfing all, as Ua Ruairc sat, resuming his posture, his eye fixed now, frozen and unseeing, his jaw set, his brow thunderous. Finally, with a motion of his hand, he called Milesius forward, and they exchanged low words. Looking back to our party, the Rí raised his hand slowly and beckoned Tuar onwards. The ollamh, with faltering voice, lifted the white rod and intoned.

‘Mánus Mac Murchad Ua Máel Sechlainn’.

The Tiarna stepped forward, his chin resolutely high, as Ua Ruairc lowered darkly. He bowed his head, inclining his body forward, and those of us behind him perceived the slightest of trembles along his calves. The Tiarna raised his voice then as much as he dared into the charged air, enumerating Ua Ruairc’s many titles.

‘Rí, I come before you to make pledges—to come under the protection of your house. I pledge the service of my lands and subjects, of my grain-fields and my herds, of my milking parlours and butter churns, of my mills and kilns. I bring you these cows, taken from Áed Buidhe, a man loyal to your enemies. I also bring you this cross which has been in my family from the time of Flann Sinna and with which I part with very sombrely’.

‘Bring it forward’, Ua Ruairc said, his voice as ragged as his face, though with an imperative force, his words tempered with hot iron. As the Tiarna approached the dais with the cross cupped in his joined hands, Ua Ruairc reached down and, bypassing the cross, reached for the kelt hanging at the Tiarna’s throat. Ua Ruairc’s hands like the exposed roots of an ancient tree closed upon the stone, lifting it silently from the Tiarna’s neck. He sat looking into its black, burnished depths as the Tiarna stood, his proffered hands outstretched, the cross spurned. ‘You are very generous, Mánus. This I will gladly have. I can feel the magic within its grain’.

The Tiarna’s hands closed, coming slowly downwards. His head lowering in shame. ‘Very generous’, Ua Ruairc continued. ‘You are very generous with my own cows, Mánus. For you know I claim lordship over Áed Buidhe and all that he owns. Áed himself came before me this morning carrying a suit against you. Looking for distraint and seizure of your herds. Looking for a payment of fine’.

Behind Ua Ruairc’s chair, Milesius’ eyes flashed, first to the Tiarna, then to Tuar. The Tiarna spoke low and quick, hissing his words to Ua Ruairc alone, though we were close enough to hear.

‘But, Áed is an agent of your enemies, he holds Ua Ragallaig in his heart. In moving against him, I sought to show you friendship’. Tigernán Ua Ruairc sat back slowly, his hands running over the smoothness of the kelt. He spoke loudly for all to hear.

‘I am not sure if you are friend to me or foe. What is more, I do not think that you yourself know yet. What is clear to me is that you arrive here offering me my own cows, driving them over the playing ground, and at your head, a pox-ridden file who slanders me with illegal satire’.

A low, tentative murmur of laughter passed through the crowd. ‘How can I be sure that the ancient renown of your household’s name—those once great Máel Sechlainn kings of Míde—does not weigh heavily around your poor neck?’

‘Not so. That file, you must know, has come straight from Ua Ragallaig, who intrigues with the foreigners’.

Ua Ruairc reared up, half standing in his seat, and the suddenness and violence of his movements sent the Tiarna stumbling backwards.

‘Do not speak to me of foreigners’, he shouted. And then, quieter, but with no less menace, he said, ‘It seems, poor Mánus, that you are very well informed on Ua Ragallaig, that bitch’s runt, that exile of no repute, and on those that he conspires with. How should I read that?’ He sat forward again, his eye burning, the Tiarna shaking his head in denial, mute under the weight of that stare.

The moment was broken by a fit of deep, shaking coughs which reverberated through the old king’s chest, and he sat back, his face pinched with pain. When the coughing subsided, Ua Ruairc spoke in tones approaching tenderness.

‘I have decided to trust you, poor Mánus. And to seal the bond between our houses, I will take your son into my house’. Gormflaith stiffened by her son’s side, her hand reaching out instinctively to grip at his léine. ‘Is this the boy?’ Ua Ruairc continued, gesturing to Conn. Mánus turned from the dais, looking back to his son. His face stricken and helpless, his head still shaking. Gormflaith tensed, her other hand rising now, the fingers clenching a fistful of Conn’s brat. Tuar, seeing the shape of disaster looming, sensing things that would be said and never undone, moved quickly to her side, speaking low words as his hands subtly worried her fingers free. Tuar laid his hand on Conn’s shoulder as the boy looked to his mother, childish fear in his eyes, and led him forward towards the dais. I heard the mangled sound of a scream, swallowed, confined to Gormlaith’s throat, her mouth clamped mercilessly shut.

‘Bring forward the book’, Ua Ruairc said, and Milesius went to an elaborate wooden box shaped like a small church. He opened a clasp, the side of the box falling open, and he lifted out that most venerated of things, the Domnach Airgid that all have heard its name. The book that once belonged to St Patricius, encased within a silver reliquary of unsurpassed beauty. Milesius raised the thing high, the lively flash of light from its surface cutting the dullness of the day. He stepped from the dais and held the book flat before the Tiarna, who lifted his hand slowly and placed it on the silvered surface. As he recited the long oaths and pledges with the air of one waking from a nightmare to find himself in a burning bed, Tuar led Conn to Ua Ruairc’s side.

When all was done, Ua Ruairc stood, his hand closed around Conn’s arm, and he proclaimed, ‘A fine lad. A sturdy warrior’. He lifted his axe from where it leaned beside his chair. He pressed its haft into Conn’s hand. ‘You will be welcome in my household, boy, and we will foster you to such manhood that you will be an immovable pillar within the rich plain of Míde upon which we will build our palace’. Conn trembled, unsure whether to respond. ‘And your first service to me, boy, will be to follow that false satirist from this place, burst his skull and bring me the tongue that has offended. You, and you alone, boy, to do this deed’.

Conn looked to the Tiarna, the terror of breaking a géis curdling his features. ‘Do not look to him, boy’, Ua Ruairc roared in sudden fury. ‘I am your father now, your athair altrama. Hear me and obey’. Conn, startled by the Rí’s sudden fury, jumped from the dais and loped away in pursuit of the file, the giant axe awkwardly over his shoulder. I looked instantly to the Tiarna. Mánus Máel Sechlainn looked to his retinue from before the dais, quickly scanning the faces, and when he found mine, his eyes slid sidewards meaningfully. I slipped back between the cows and, passing through them, bent low, entering the crowd and following in Conn’s wake.

I was not alone. As I followed, others came also, young men and women coming behind as Conn stalked on ahead, the long axe over his shoulders making him appear boyish. A tremor of excitement ran through them as they jostled each other, speaking Conn’s name, some reciting his lineage—placing him within the order of things. Though none dared to call out, to jeer, to whoop. The shock of the file’s satire, the wrongness of it, a sick pall in the air. I kept ahead of them, some distance from Conn as he stalked past the boundary marker, his heel striking determination. His hand clenching and unclenching on the haft of the axe, the roll of his shoulders, all gestures to fight the fear.

Steps came smoothly up behind me. Fingers, quick and cool, pressed my neck, splaying upwards into my hair, and I turned in anger, ready to strike the waif who would sport with me and the sharp words died on my lips when I saw her, smiling, her hair, gathered behind, making her face seem longer. I shrank from the hungry light in her eyes as she ran forward, her trailing hand, catching mine, pulling me onwards, and as the slíghe rose towards the pass between the hills, the file’s labouring back appeared in the distance.

Conn crouched and, leaving the road, jogged lightly into the wild grass of the esker ridge, and we saw that he thought to cut across a bend in the slíghe and take the file by surprise. Ness pulled me forward, and we ran to catch up.

‘He must not talk’, she said to me, and I caught her meaning, hissing low. Conn turned and we pointed towards the file, covering our mouths with a hand. Conn nodded and padded on. He dropped to his belly and crawled forward in the high grass to the edge of the slíghe and waited for the file to make his slow way around the bend. The crowd approached nearer to us, and we warded them off with gestures. The file came into view, the top of his head visible over the swaying grass, forehead glistening with exertion. When he drew level, Conn jumped down without a word, his arms grappling around the file’s shoulders as his hands tried to clamp the churl’s mouth closed. He was unsuccessful, and an excrement of malediction burst from the file’s lips.

Conn shrank back from the words, falling against the bank of the road.

‘I am protected here by the laws of this land. Who would break the géis that is upon my coming and going?’ The file’s voice was raw, commanding, and for a moment, Conn did not move. The file closed one eye and raised a hand tensed into a long claw. At this, Conn sprang forward and knocked the file to his knees. He brought the butt of the axe down with tremendous strength onto the crown of the file’s head. The old man’s eyes rolled back, and he fell forward, making no attempt to raise his hands, to soften his fall. He hit the ground like a pitched log, scraping on the stony slope, and his eyes disappeared to their whites, his body shaking like a sick lamb. Conn hammered him again, this time on the temple, and a big purple bulge came up through his hair, the way a pig’s tripe spills out under the butcher’s knife. He stopped moving then. Conn looked to us as a dread quiet descended—the small crowd coming up around us.

‘Dig a hole’, Ness said.

‘Dig a hole for this villain?’ I said, looking at the thin soils of the hillside.

‘Dig now, dig fast’, she barked, ‘before his soul escapes his body, or you will never again have peace’.

These words awoke Conn, who had been standing, staring down at the body. He walked a short way from the slíghe, and I joined him. With axe and knife, we started to scrape into the slope, through the wild grass and through the stony yellow clay. We threw the weapons aside then and found slabs of shale to gouge out the hole deeper, and behind us Ness busied herself with the corpse, doing we knew not what, but her scian was unsheathed and bloodied when we finally looked up from our travails—the hole sloping and as deep only as our knees. We heaved the body towards the pit and the crowd backed away, not wanting to come too near.

We threw him down on the lip of the hole, the bulge on his scalp bursting and thick sloe-black liquid oozing lazily from it—no beating heart to drive it outward. And we were calmed somewhat by that. Ness came up with a stone then, a fist-sized river cobble. She opened the mouth and put her hand in—four fingers gripping the lower teeth—and she wrenched down and jammed the cobble inside, the jaw springing back shut fast to the stone.

‘Lay him on his face’, she said, ‘and should he wake, he will dig, thinking he digs towards the light, all the while clawing deeper into the hill’.

We rolled him in, and all three of us began dragging the scattered earth back in over the body, quicker and quicker in a frenzy, in fear of the corpse rising, of heaping dread curses on us, despite all we had done to break his power.

We pushed through the gabbling crowd, which opened to let us pass. Among them I caught sight of Fiacra, who shrank away from us, fear etched on his face. On the way back down the hill, Ness produced a dripping hank of flesh from her pouch, ragged at one end. The file’s tongue.

‘He will craft no further ills with this muscle’, she said, passing it to Conn. And we had a light inside us, though we had broken a géis, the worst kind of taboo.

When we returned to the óenach, the evening fires had been lit, and there was much drinking and feasting beginning. Conn presented Ua Ruairc with the tongue and was lauded loudly by the Rí’s party. Ua Ruairc cast the tongue on the fire, enfolding Conn in an embrace, leading him away towards the ale barrel, pressing a horn into his hand. Ness went with the women to the slope where men were not permitted. I watched her go, a tugging feeling in my chest, and stood awkwardly on the fringe of the firelight, no place within or without. I watched Conn then, caught up in the frothy tumult on the dais, danger all around him, before my eyes strayed back to watch the tongue curl and spit in the flames.

‘The bad cess leaving it’, a voice at my shoulder said. I turned to see the Tiarna, his fine red brat tight about his shoulders and drawn low over his forehead. Sombre amidst the revelry.

We continued to stare at the tongue, no more now than a blackened gall. ‘Take a drink’, he said after a long time, and I took his proffered horn, my fingers playing absently over the silver hound’s head decorating its tip. I went to the barrel and dipped the vessel into the sharp wine, and I drank it in one from brim to bottom.

‘Come’, he said, and we made our way up the slope towards our camp. We sat down on a stone beside the fire and listened to the sounds of the place, distant songs rising up, shouts and laughter and harp music from the camps all around. The rip and tear of a dog fight. Large fires dotting the hillside below. The trickle of the stream chanting close by. The hum of the treetops in the wind. We sat through it all, in silence, the Tiarna’s mind quietly working, until his retinue slept, full of wine and sated with fair-day women.

No revellers came up the hill, and I busied myself with gathering firewood and feeding the flames. For a long time the Tiarna was silent, staring at the burning sticks or humming gently to himself. He finally called me to him when the breeze had died down and his musings had reached an end.

‘Most men’, he said, ‘accept the order of things. They accept the wisdom of God’s will that I be lord and you be slave. They do not consider that tomorrow may bring a change that reverses our roles’.

My throat restricted and a kind of fearful shudder passed over the span of my shoulder. His eye had stared into my soul. Had seen the yearning. The prayers and incantations I had offered, cast widely like seeds in a field. Offerings to God, to Patricius, to Lasair, to Féichín, to sídhe, to idol and to devil. I feared he had perceived it all. A vision in the flames. His way of sucking his thumb for wisdom. Father and I riding tall horses among the host of the Engleis. But as he continued, I understood it was himself he spoke of.

‘I have meditated on that since you and your father came to me’, he said, his eyes still anchored to the flame. His voice low with that truthful weariness of the deep night.

‘For despite his imperfect speech, he had the bearing of one with a touch of nobility. It forced me to consider how I would fare in his position. If I would be possessed of the strength to remain noble even though flung down in the mud’.

I did not know what to say, so I stayed quiet, and he spoke no more, feeling perhaps that change was inevitable now. Terrible change—a violent wave. And I prayed to Lasair and Féichín, I prayed that after the wave had crashed upon us, that after it had passed into a seething murmur, I might rise in its wake. I might find her on the other side. She might come to me, her heart open. Her eyes warm.