The Coming of Cuculain Part 9

He was now a man's full height, but his face was a boy's face, and his strength and agility amazed all who observed him in his exercises.

"Has thou heard what Cathvah has predicted concerning the youth who is knighted on that day?" said the King.

"Yes," answered the lad.

"That he will be famous and short-lived and unhappy?"

"Truly," he replied.

"And doth thy purpose still hold?"

"Yes," he answered, "but whether it be mine I cannot tell."

Concobar, though unwilling, yielded to that request.

Loegairey, the Victorious, son of Conud, son of Iliach, the second best knight of the Red Branch and the most devoted to poetry of them all came that night into the hall while the rest slumbered. The candles were flickering in their sockets. Darkness invested the rest of the vast hollow-sounding chamber, but there was light around the throne and couch of the King, owing to the splendour of the pillars and of the canopy s.h.i.+ning with bronze, white and red, and silver and gold, and glittering with carbuncles and diamonds, and owing to the light which always surrounded the King and encircled his regal head like a luminous cloud, seen by many. He was looking straight out before him with bright eyes, considering and consulting for the Red Branch while they slept. Two great men having their swords drawn in their hands, stood behind him, on the right and on the left, like statues, motionless and silent.

Loegairey drew nigh to the King. Distraction and amazement were in his face. His dense and l.u.s.trous hair was dishevelled and in agitation round his neck and huge shoulders. He held in his hand two long spears with rings of walrus tooth where the timber met the shank of the flas.h.i.+ng blades; they trembled in his hand. His lips were dry, his voice very low.

"There are horses in the stable of Macha," he said.

"I know it," answered the King.

Concobar called for water, and when he had washed his hands and his face, he took from its place the chess-board of the realm, arranged the men, and observed their movements and combinations. He closed the board and put the men in their net of bronze wire, and restored all to their place.

"Great things will happen on the morrow, O grandson of Iliach," he said.

"Take candles and go before me to the boys' dormitory."

They went to the boys' dormitory and to the couch of Cuculain. Cuculain and Laeg were asleep together there. Their faces towards each other and their hair mingled together. Cuculain's face was very tranquil, and his breathing inaudible, like an infant's.

"O sweet and serene face," murmured the King, "I see great clouds of sorrow coming upon you."

They returned to the hall.

"Go now to thy rest and thy slumber, O Loegairey," said the King. "When the curse of Macha descends upon us I know one who will withstand it."

"Surely it is not that stripling?" said Loegairey. But the King made no answer.

On the morrow there was a great hosting of the Red Branch on the plain of the a.s.semblies. It was May-Day morning and the sun shone brightly, but at first through radiant showers. The trees were putting forth young buds; the wet gra.s.s sparkled. All the martial pomp and glory of the Ultonians were exhibited that day. Their chariots and war-horses ringed the plain. All the horses' heads were turned towards the centre where were Concobar Mac Nessa and the chiefs of the Red Branch. The plain flashed with gold, bronze, and steel, and glowed with the bright mantles of the innumerable heroes, crimson and scarlet, blue, green, or purple.

The huge brooches on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s of gold and silver or gold-like bronze, were like resplendent wheels. Their long hair, yellow for the most part, was bound with ornaments of gold. Great, truly, were those men, their like has not come since upon the earth. They were the heroes and demiG.o.ds of the heroic age of Erin, champions who feared nought beneath the sun, mightiest among the mighty, huge, proud, and unconquerable, and loyal and affectionate beyond all others; all of the blood of Ir, [Footnote: On account of their descent from Ir, son of Milesius, the Red Branch were also called the Irians.] son of Milesius, the Clanna Rury of great renown, rejoicing in their valour, their splendour, their fame and their peerless king. Concobar had no crown. A plain circle of beaten gold girt his broad temples. In the naked glory of his regal manhood he stood there before them all, but even so a stranger would have swiftly discovered the captain of the Red Branch, such was his stature, his bearing, such his slowly-turning, steady-gazing eyes and the majesty of his bearded countenance. His countenance was long, broad above and narrow below, his nose eminent, his beard bipart.i.te, curling and auburn in hue, his form without any blemish or imperfection.

Cuculain came forth from the palace. He wore that day a short mantle of pale-red silk bordered with white thread and fastened on the breast with a small brooch like a wheel of silver. The hues upon that silk were never the same. His tunic of fine linen was girt at the waist with a leathern zone, stained to the resemblance of the wild-briar rose. It descended to but did not pa.s.s his beautiful knees, falling into many plaits. The tunic was cut low at the neck, exposing his throat and the knot in the throat and the cup-shaped indentation above the breast. On his feet were comely shoes sparkling with bronze plates. They took the colour of everything which they approached. His hair fell in many curls over the pale-red mantle, without adornment or confinement. It was the colour of the flower which is named after the dearest Disciple, but which was called sovarchey by the Gael. A tinge of red ran through the gold. As to his eyes, no two men or women could agree concerning their colour, for some said they were blue, and some grey, and others hazel; and there were those who said that they were blacker than the blackest night that was ever known. Yet again, there were those who said that they were of all colours named and nameless. They were soft and liquid splendours, unfathomable lakes of light above his full and ruddy cheeks, and beneath his curved and most tranquil brows. In form he was symmetrical, straight and pliant as a young fir tree when the sweet spring sap fills its veins. So he came to that a.s.sembly, in the glory of youth, beauty, strength, valour, and beautiful shame-fastness, yet proud in his humility and glittering like the morning star. Choice youths, his comrades, attended him. The kings held their breaths when he drew nigh, moving white knee after white knee over the green and sparkling gra.s.s.

When the other rites had been performed and the due sacrifices and libations made, and after Cuculain had put his right hand into the right hand of the King and become his man, Concobar gave him a s.h.i.+eld, two spears and a sword, weapons of great price and of thrice proved excellence--a strong man's equipment. Cuculain struck the spears together at right angles and broke them. He clashed the sword flat-wise on the s.h.i.+eld. The sword leaped into small pieces and the s.h.i.+eld was bent inwards and torn.

"These are not good weapons, my King," said the boy. Then the King gave him others, larger and stronger and worthy of his best champions. These, too, the boy broke into pieces in like manner.

"Son of Nessa, these are still worse," he said, "nor is it well done, O Captain of the Red Branch, to make me a laughing-stock in the presence of this great hosting of the Ultonians."

Concobar Mac Nessa exulted exceedingly when he beheld the amazing strength and the waywardness of the boy, and beneath delicate brows his eyes glittered like glittering swords as he glanced proudly round on the crowd of martial men that surrounded him. Amongst them all he seemed himself a bright torch of valour and war, more pure and clear than polished steel. He then beckoned to one of his knights, who hastened away and returned bringing Concobar's own s.h.i.+eld and spears and sword out of the Tec Brac, where they were kept, an equipment in reserve. And Cuculain shook them and bent them and clashed them together, but they held firm.

"These are good arms, O son of Nessa," said Cuculain.

"Choose now thy charioteer," said the King, "for I will give thee also war-horses and a chariot."

He caused to pa.s.s before Cuculain all the boys who in many and severe tests had proved their proficiency in charioteering, in the management and tending of steeds, in the care of weapons and steed-harness, and all that related to charioteering science. Amongst them was Laeg, with a pale face and dejected, his eyes red and his cheeks stained from much weeping. Cuculain laughed when he saw him, and called him forth from the rest, naming him by his name with a loud, clear voice, heard to the utmost limit of the great host.

"There was fear upon thee," said Cuculain.

"There is fear upon thyself," answered Laeg. "It was in thy mind that I would refuse."

"Nay, there is no such fear upon me," said Cuculain.

"Then there is fear upon me," said Laeg. "A charioteer needs a champion who is stout and a valiant and faithful. Yea, truly there is fear upon me," answered Laeg.

"Verily, dear comrade and bed-fellow," answered Cuculain, "it is through me that thou shalt get thy death-wound, and I say not this as a vaunt, but as a prophecy."

And that prophecy was fulfilled, for the spear that slew Laeg went through his master.

After that Laeg stood by Cuculain's side and held his peace, but his face shone with excess of joy and pride. He wore a light graceful frock of deerskin, joined in the front with a twine of bronze wire, and a short, dark-red cape, secured by a pin of gold with a ring to it. A band of gold thread confined his auburn hair, rising into a peak behind his head. In his hands he held a goad of polished red-yew, furnished with a crooked hand-grip of gold, and pointed with s.h.i.+ning bronze, and where the bronze met the timber there was a circlet of diamond of the diamonds of Banba. He had also a short-handled scourge with a haft of walrus tooth, and the rope, cord, and lash of that scourge were made of delicate and delicately-twisted thread of copper. This equipment was the equipment of a proved charioteer; the apprentices wore only grey capes with white fringes, fastened by loops of red cord.

Laeg was one of three brothers, all famous charioteers. Id and Sheeling were the others. They were all three sons of the King of Gabra, whose bright dun arose upon a green and sloping hill over against Tara towards the rising of the sun. Thence sprang the beautiful stream of the Nemnich, rich in lilies and reeds and bulrushes, which to-day men call the Nanny Water. Laeg was grey-eyed and freckled.

Then there were led forward by two strong knights a pair of great and spirited horses and a splendid war-car. The King said, "They are thine, dear nephew. Well I know that neither thou, nor Laeg, will be a dishonour to this war equipage."

Cuculain sprang into the car, and standing with legs apart, he stamped from side to side and shook the car mightily, till the axle brake, and the car itself was broken in pieces.

"It is not a good chariot," said the lad.

Another was led forward, and he broke it in like manner.

"Give me a sound chariot, High Lord of the Clanna Rury, or give me none," he said. "No prudent warrior would fight from such brittle foothold."

He brake in succession nine war chariots, the greatest and strongest in Emain. When he broke the ninth the horses of Macha neighed from their stable. Great fear fell upon the host when they heard that unusual noise and the reverberation of it in the woods and hills.

"Let those horses be harnessed to the Chariot of Macha," cried Concobar, "and let Laeg, son of the King of Gabra, drive them hither, for those are the horses and that the chariot which shall be given this day to Cuculain."

Then, son of Sualtam, how in thy guileless breast thy heart leaped, when thou heardest the thundering of the great war-car and the wild neighing of the immortal steeds, as they broke from the dark stable into the clear-s.h.i.+ning light of day, and heard behind them the ancient roaring of the brazen wheels as in the days when they bore forth Macha and her martial groom against the giants of old, and mightily established in Eiriu the Red Branch of the Ultonians! Soon they rushed to view from the rear of Emain, speeding forth impetuously out of the hollow-sounding ways of the city and the echoing palaces into the open, and behind them in the great car green and gold, above the many-twinkling wheels, the charioteer, with floating mantle, girt round the temples with the gold fillet of his office, leaning backwards and sideways as he laboured to restrain their fury unrestrainable; a grey long-maned steed, whale-bellied, broad-chested, with mane like flying foam, under one silver yoke, and a black l.u.s.trous, tufty-maned steed under the other, such steeds as in power, size, and beauty the earth never produced before and never will produce again.

Like a hawk swooping along the face of a cliff when the wind is high, or like the rush of March wind over the smooth plain, or like the fleetness of the stag roused from his lair by the hounds and covering his first field, was the rush of those steeds when they had broken through the restraint of the charioteer, as though they galloped over fiery flags, so that the earth shook and trembled with the velocity of their motion, and all the time the great car brayed and shrieked as the wheels of solid and glittering bronze went round, and strange cries and exclamations were heard, for they were demons that had their abode in that car.

The charioteer restrained the steeds before the a.s.sembly, but nay-the-less a deep purr, like the purr of a tiger, proceeded from the axle. Then the whole a.s.sembly lifted up their voices and shouted for Cuculain, and he himself, Cuculain, the son of Sualtam, sprang into his chariot, all armed, with a cry as of a warrior springing into his chariot in the battle, and he stood erect and brandished his spears, and the war sprites of the Gael shouted along with him, for the Bocanahs and Bananahs and the Geniti Glindi, the wild people of the glens, and the demons of the air, roared around him, when first the great warrior of the Gael, his battle-arms in his hands, stood equipped for war in his chariot before all the warriors of his tribe, the kings of the Clanna Rury and the people of Emain Macha. Then, too, there sounded from the Tec Brac the boom of s.h.i.+elds, and the clas.h.i.+ng of swords and the cries and shouting of the Tuatha De Danan, who dwelt there perpetually; and Lu the Long-Handed, the slayer of Balor, the destroyer of the Fomoroh, the immortal, the invisible, the maker and decorator of the Firmament, whose hound was the sun and whose son the viewless wind, thundered from heaven and bent his sling five-hued against the clouds; and the son of the illimitable Lir [Footnote: Mananan mac Lir, the sea-G.o.d.] in his mantle blue and green, foam-fringed pa.s.sed through the a.s.sembly with a roar of far-off innumerable waters, and the Mor Reega stood in the midst with a foot on either side of the plain, and shouted with the shout of a host, so that the Ultonians fell down like reaped gra.s.s with their faces to the earth, on account of the presence of the Mor Reega, and on account of the omens and great signs.

Cuculain bade Laeg let the steeds go. They went like a storm and three times encircled Emain Macha. It was the custom of the Ultonians to march thrice round Emain ere they went forth to war.

Then said Cuculain--"Whither leads the great road yonder?"

"To Ath-na-Forairey and the borders of the Crave Rue."