Andrew Offutt: The Mists of Doom

The youthful lovers promised each the other that they’d tryst in Tara, somehow.

They looked into each other’s eyes, and each saw the sparkle of tears. Neither made mention. She rose and dressed. Coming first to kiss him another time, she left. Suddenly unhappy after this summer of joy, Cormac rose at once and commenced donning his clothing. It lacked but a few hours to dawn; with luck he could return to camp and gain some sleep ere dawn forced him up to be the captain who brooked no excuses, or tardiness or sloth from his men, and thus could show none himself.

After a brief interval, Cormac too left the inn. Through dark Carman he returned to camp, and he was deep in thoughts unbidden. Thus he did not see the man who’d waited so long and long with an incredible patience born of malice, and who had seen them both leave and recognized her and knew the truth, though they left not together. And the watching Bress mac Keth smiled.

Two days later the Champion of Leinster left in the entourage of the king.

Chapter Seventeen:

A Druid and A Priest

What a throng! And I thought Carman was a city full of people, and colourful! Cormac mac Art, an iota of that throng of happy sons and daughters of Eirrin, shook his head. None of the noisy fairgoers around him noticed the lone so-thoughtful young man who shook his head though none spoke to him, for all were too busy going about their private pursuits-or just being joyous. He grunted when he was jostled by a hurrying purveyor of marvelously-wrought gauds of glass beads and amber and the teeth of sea-dogs. The man grunted too, and continued his single-minded hurrying through the crowd that had come to Tara from every part of Eirrin. Cormac turned to look; the fellow was gone, one among thousands.

Officially, the Great Fair began on the morrow. In truth it had commenced days ago, as pilgrims began arriving afoot, on horseback and even oxback, in waggons and carts. Farmers and herders jostled fishermen and weapon-men and richly-attired nobles-who might well soon buy the needlework of some of those men’s wives, or the produce of their farms, or the delicate jewellery made of shellfish by the wives of those who took their living from river or ocean.

Three seeming maniacs sat before a noisy inn, torturing the air and the ears of many with their yowling, howling pipes.

Bright garments fluttered and jewellery of varying degrees of worth and workmanship cast scintillant flashes with the movements of the wearers, male and female alike. Hair, cut and trimmed and washed and arranged, long combed and coiffed, glossed in the golden sunlight of July’s final day. Bangles jangled and earrings tinkled. What seemed, to the youth from a Connachtish province, to be a thousand conversations were carried on all at once-some at the tops of the speakers’ voices. Girls were patted and stroked and even slapped on hip or behind, and most laughed and none took umbrage. Not at Fair-time!

To this high Hill of the Kings and the renowned field sprawled about it had come peasants who’d left their russets behind; citizens of every kingdom of the Emerald Isle, bearing fruits and vegetables, embroidery and leatherwork; poets and lyrists, pipers and tympanists from the farthest northern hamlets of Ailech and DalRiadia and the farthest southern townlet of Munster; from the land round about Loch Cuan up north and Loch Conn over in Connacht and the inlet of Cobh down in the south; from Tir Connaill they came, and Antrim and Cruachain and Killarney, Dinn Rig and ancient Muirthemne; the foothills and valleys presided over by Slieve Mis and Slieve Cuilinn, from Dundalk and Dun Laoghair and aye, even the Isles of Aran, and Cait, and of the Seven Hogs.

Full twenty acres Tara Hill covered, with smaller duns or hills rising on it, and seven walled raths, each like unto a town itself. Long and long ago in the mists of time agone had Ollam Fodla called here the kings of all the realms of Eirrin, in solemn council. Then had been born the tradition of the great council or parliament, the kings assembled in the Great Feis. Monarchs cared not to depart their lands so often as once each year; the Assembly of Kings became a triennial occurrence.

Now fully a half-score of centuries had Feis-mor been held each year on Tara Hill. And before it, in late summer, the Great Fair. The great trading and selling. The relation in verse and prose of the histories of the peoples of Eirrin, spoken aloud by respected poets and historians and story-tellers who went away able only to whisper. The Games; the races and combats to determine the new Champion of Eirrin. The hearing of plaints and the redressing of wrongs. The Tales of the Finn. Public announcements of the pledging of troths. Sword-sharp satires. And absolute law.

Thus did the poet have it:

The people of the Gaedhil did celebrate

In Tara, to be highly boasted of,

A fair without broken law or crime,

Without a deed of violence, without dishonour.

Whoever transgresses the law of the assembly

(Which of old was indelibly writ)

Cannot be spared for family connection,

But must die for his transgression.

Aye, and still that law at Fair-time prevailed. Men wore arms but used them not. He who broke the King’s Peace must die. Appeal did not exist; only so could the Fair exist.

Here, amid the crowd bordering the open square where brightly bedecked tumblers cavorted, switching their back-bound hair; where hopeful satirists tried out their creations on any who’d listen; here, Samaire had sent word, would she meet Partha. And here he was, waiting and watching, ignoring even the girl tumblers. And he was sore disappointed. The sun crept measurably across the sky, steadily westering, and there came no Samaire.

She could not escape her damned gaoler of a father, Cormac thought morosely. It had happened afore. This time was a greater disappointment, for they’d been weeks apart.

And then Ceann was there, and Cormac was both glad and sad, for he knew what message the minstrel-prince brought. And he was right: Samaire had been detained by their father. Naturally she could not tell him why she was so anxious to depart his company and shirk a princess’s duty. King Ulad merely needed her by him, or thought that he did. And Ceann in his Leinsterish plaide must be elsewhere too, and Cormac dolorously plowed through the throng in quest of a draught of soothing ale.

A hand fumbled at his, whilst he was locked in the crowd. Before he could draw away, in the press, he felt metal against his palm. He closed his fingers and raised the hand to look on what it contained. A moondisk. Instantly his body reacted. He knew that rune; Sualtim had scratched it there months agone.

Cormac turned his gaze on the message-bearer-a beggar.

“I want nothing of ye, young man. On Tara Hill rises the rath of one Murcael Uais, cousin to the High-king by marriage. Directly below Lord Murcael’s rath rises a grove of the oldest of trees. There, after the calling of the second watch of night, will be he who dares deface the back of a moondisk.”

Cormac looked again on the symbol of the night goddess, of ancient Danu. His heartbeat was rapid and his armpits prickled. Sualtim! With information at last-and just in time! Oh; he must ask weather the beggar was to return the pendant…

The man was gone. The crowd, flowing like a many-hued stream, had swallowed him up, torn brown cloak and all. And in truth that human stream eddied about Cormac, split to pass him on either side as though he was a great stone in a springtime brook, and people muttered rude crudities or curses on the big youthful weapon-man who blocked them.

Clutching the pendant, he allowed himself to be carried along by the flow.

Despite his impatience Cormac had forced himself to wait until after the second night-watch had been called. Then he had taken but a few steps when he was challenged by the handsomely got-up King’s Watch. At last, with mist swirling about his ankles like a wraithy grey phantom, he made his way to the yew-grove below the rath he had easily identified. And there he found Sualtim-and another.