Warrior's Daughter (24 page)

His eyes drilled into me, though he spoke to Tlachta.

“Why do you stand between a man and his wife? This is the Queen of Ulster, and her duty lies in Emain Macha. Luaine will return with me.”

He bent all his heavy will into those words, and the armed honor guard ranged behind him was a persuasive reinforcement. I had no doubt he was willing to take me by force.

Tlachta’s face was an impassive blank, giving away nothing.

“You are mistaken, my king. This is Finscoth, one of my apprentices. She is nothing to do with you.”

Conchobor’s veneer of civility dropped away then, and he began to rail at Tlachta, the spittle spraying from his mouth with the force of his outrage, his cheeks mottling with it. She simply remained planted before me, immovable as a tree.

Even trees can be felled, I thought, and even as I became alarmed for my Mistress I felt Roisin beside me, wired with tension, breast heaving, and I realized she was near to flying at the King of Ulster in my defense.

With that the paralyzing fear drained away from me, replaced by a cold resolve. No one would be hurt here on my behalf, nor would I hide any longer behind the skirts of my friends and teachers. I felt my chin lift and with it my strength. My hands, clenched almost into fists at my sides, touched and then curled around two objects—the hilt of my sword, and the pouch containing Liban’s crystal that hung now at my side. A gift from my father. A gift from beyond. And I felt Emer’s gifts, woven so deeply into my own fabric that there was no need for any token. The meaning and power of each gift hung in my mind. In that moment, Conchobor’s bluster and Tlachta’s cool replies faded to nothing, and I stood in a bubble of silent clarity.

From that clear place, I stepped directly in front of the king.

The first time rage took hold of me, and I but a girl of twelve, it burned me with its heat. This time the anger was not fiery but freezing, cold as a dead man’s blood. And this time the voice that spoke was my own.

I felt such contempt for this man it repelled me to look upon him. Yet I did. I stood very close, turned just enough that he was forced to look full upon the ruin he had made. I locked my eyes upon his as if it were two blue spears of ice I was aiming. And he must have felt them, for he stepped back a pace, his threats and curses frozen in his throat.

And then I spoke, very quietly, making him listen. I dropped the words into his mind like heavy stones in a pond.

“King Conchobor knows who I am.”

I paused. Make him wait for it, I thought. My lips pulled into a smile that never reached my eyes—a smile that was very nearly an outright sneer.

“And I know what he is.”

I took his measure as the implications of my words made themselves felt. Ripples spreading across the pond. He had not known he was discovered, I was sure of it. He had thought his secret dead and buried with the two poets in their burning house. I addressed him directly now.

“I am no longer Luaine. I am no longer your wife. I have left that life behind, and it would be well for you to do the same.

“For there are more than a few in this land who know what was done to me, and by whom. Do you think the men of Ulster will follow you still, when they hear of the treachery and greed that led you to betray the daughter of your best champion, and she a girl of tender years and blameless honor? Do you think the high king, who was beloved by my father, will long suffer your presence?”

I let the rocks sink into the water of his mind and watched the turbulence of his thoughts. Let him fear he might drown, before tossing him the line.

“Luaine is dead, mourned and gone. You have your wife’s lands and herds. Do not seek for more. For however I am called, I will always be Cuchulainn’s daughter. And I swear on his good name that if I am killed, I will do you more harm from the grave than I ever would in life.”

I made my eyes frozen iron. I made the Truth of my words into a weight he could not shrug off. I held him. Old and powerful as he was, I held him.

And then I let him go.

The surge of power left me shaky and sick as it drained away. I kept my legs until the last of Conchobor’s men was gone from sight, and then they folded of their own accord to the ground.

Tlachta wrapped me in cloaks, found a fire still unquenched and sat with me while my strength slowly returned. As she tended me, she alternately scolded me for overextending myself so recklessly, and beamed with pride at what I had managed. Eventually, though, she became aware that Roisin glowered at her with a recklessness of her own.

“The sick feeling will pass,” Tlachta told me. “And I imagine it will pass all the sooner if I remove myself from between two long-parted friends.”

“You leave me in the best of hands,” I told her. “There is no one could look after me better, as she has already proven.” The glower transformed itself into a smile nearly as sunny as Geanann’s.

I went home with Roisin, and her house with Berach was as bright and brisk and comfortable as I had imagined. But I went to the judgments too and heard the cases, for my days of hiding were over. And if Conchobor was there also, it was no concern of mine.

I was free of him.

And though he was also free of me and grasped my lands in
his hand with none to gainsay him, yet I almost pitied him. I still do. For the days of his life run short, and when his time comes to pass through the veil into the next life, I know what awaits him there.

The Hound will have him. And the Hound will have no pity.

I have one last thing to tell you before we part ways. It concerns Geanann’s last visit to the isle.

It had been a year since I had seen him, and I felt awkward in his presence as I never had before. Living with women as I did, I thought little of my appearance and had barely noticed the changes that had steadily transformed my angular girl’s frame into a woman’s body. Now, though, as he sat so near to me, I was aware of the thrust of my breasts against my shift as if they had sprung out overnight, and I could not find a way to sit that did not seem to display them. And when he rolled back his sleeves to catch the cooling breeze, the sight of the golden hair glinting on the swell of his forearm was such a distraction to me I could hardly follow his words.

You will be laughing at me now, I am sure. A young woman taken with a man, and so cut off from her own heart she could not see the obvious!

But I could not let myself see. Not with a purple track carved down my face that ensured no man would ever be taken with me. I had not been long recovered from that wound when I determined that the only way to deal with such a thing was to keep a firm leash on my own heart and to be content with the love between friends.

And I managed it too. I tore my eyes from the strong hands, the bright smile, and concentrated on his words, and gradually
the self-consciousness left me and I was once again at ease. And we traded news of our lives like old friends: Geanann’s travels and adventures and his testing soon to come, my studies and my growing interest in the law.

And then I told him of the name Tlachta had given me on Samhain. I shook my head.

“I am getting used to it. I like that my name is linked to Fintan’s—it speaks to the bond between us. But really. White Blossom? It is a name for a woman of great beauty, not—”

“Then it is a name for you.”

Startled, I could not stop my eyes from finding his, and there was something in their gray depths that held me. As if in protest, my hand rose to cover the scar—but Geanann reached out and caught my wrist and pulled it down.

“Don’t. You need never hide that from me. What do you think I see when I look at that scar that I made myself, though it was the hardest thing I ever had to do? It’s a young girl’s courage I see, courage to shame a warrior. And Luaine—Finscoth—I see a woman’s beauty shining through it, so bright it nearly blinds me.”

He had never loosed his hold on my wrist, and he pulled gently on it now, leaning forward to take my head in his other hand. He put his lips just under my eye where the scar began and he slowly traced its length, over the swell of my cheekbone to the point of my jaw. And by the time he arrived at its end I was lost. He did not have to search for my lips—I could no more have kept them from him than stop my own breath. And for a long time there were no words between us, for it was a different language altogether we were speaking.

“It is so long I have been dreaming of that kiss.” His smile washed over me, and I basked shamelessly in it. It made me happy just to look at his face, and it was a wonder to me that his eyes lingered over my features with the same delight.

“How long?” I had had no idea.

“Oh, now... These things creep up on a person unawares. But I believe it may have been the day you jumped on your horse and galloped off without me, and your wound barely set.”

“Why did you wait to tell me, then? I was old enough.” Even as I said the words I knew they were untrue. I may have been old enough, but I had not been ready.

Geanann was shaking his head. “I wanted your love freely given,” he said. “You were so alone and so young. I was afraid you might feel I was demanding repayment. Worse, I was afraid you might feel compelled to give it.”

“But I am old enough now,” I said, and this time I didn’t get his light-up-the-world smile but a smoldering look that sparked a rising heat in my belly.

“Oh yes,” he said softly. “You are old enough now.”

He left the next morning, with a promise to return to me soon.

“We have much to talk about,” he said seriously, “but it is hard now to talk when you are by me.”

I smiled—a part of me still dazed to find myself trading lovers’ jokes—but I knew he was right. It was not so simple between us, not if I was to continue my training. And that, Geanann had made clear, he would not interrupt. “You have only started to discover your gifts,” he said, “and while, if the gods are with me,
I will be resplendent in feathers the next time you see me, I am not qualified to take an apprentice. Even if I were, I could not match the richness of learning you have here.”

But I didn’t fret over it. I was learning to trust my path. If we were meant to be together, a way would reveal itself.

At the causeway, Geanann held me tight and kissed me one last time. I threaded my arms around his neck and let the world fall away. And then I watched him ride onto the mainland and disappear down the road.

I could hear the whispers and giggles behind me. There are some thirty women on the isle, druidesses, apprentices and servants, and by the time I returned to my studies there would not be one who had not heard about me and Geanann. I didn’t mind. One of Roisin’s down-to-earth homilies came to mind: A man who proclaims his love before witnesses is a man who will stand by his word. It would be long before we could marry, but we would pledge to each other at Beltane all the same.

So much of life is a mystery, hidden even from the wisest. I had not looked for love, but it found me all the same. And it made me think again on Emer and Cuchulainn, and on the love that was between them.

I understand my mother’s choice better now. Her life with Cuchulainn had blazed like a bright flame. It must have seemed to her that what remained after his death was a spark so faint and feeble it was not worth the tending. Better to go out together. And yet...our lives are a gift from the gods. As long as the light still glows within us, no matter how faint, should we be so quick to stamp it out?

It takes courage to die in battle, or to take one’s own life as my
mother did. But it takes courage to live as well: to face the long black nights of grief, to rise from the ashes and begin again. To trust that like the warmth of spring or the light from the Samhain fire, happiness may yet return.

I have so much to learn. But some things I have learned, not least about who I am. As I turned back from the causeway and returned to the island that has become my home, a triad came to me. The words sounded in my head like a heartbeat, and I knew them to be true. They are three petals on the white blossom I am cultivating within me. I wake to the knowledge of them every day:

My name is Finscoth.

I follow the druid’s path.

I am loved.

Like most writers who have tried to turn a legend into a modern novel, I have taken liberties with my source material. This is not, as I heard one writer accused of, an arrogant attempt to make the myth into what I think it should have been, but rather to adapt it as the backdrop for a coherent, emotionally engaging story for a modern reader.

So, true confession time for some of my worst sins:

First, my heroine. The best-known sagas don’t mention any daughter of Cuchulainn and Emer, though I did come across one reference to Finscoth, who is listed as Cuchulainn’s daughter in
Names from Myths and Legends
prepared by Bruce L. Jones. However, no other heroes’ young children are named in the sagas either—I assume because they were not germane to the action, not because they did not exist. So it’s a fair bet that Cuchulainn and Emer could have had a child, and since Cuchulainn’s son by Aoife is referred to as his “only” son, any other offspring would have been female.

Luaine, who was betrothed or married to Conchobor and then beset by Aithirne and his sons, is said in various versions to be the daughter of a chieftain of the Sidhe, or of a low-profile fellow named Domanchenn. And she dies from the satirists’ attack. I have made her Cuchulainn’s daughter, rescued her and invented a reason for her true identity to have been suppressed.

The story of Cuchulainn’s many wounds in the battle for the bull of Cooley, and his strange sleep and subsequent visit with the Otherworld woman, Fand, are based on two separate incidents which I have blended into one.

The food-poisoning disaster at Dun Lethglaise I have made up, but it is inspired by an existing story of Cuchulainn’s anger at not
being told of a feast (held by one Conall mac Gleo Ghlais), and a remark by Maeve, who insists her invasion will go well since not only are the Ulstermen stricken by the pangs of Macha, but one-third of them are up with Celthair in Dun Lethglaise. The pangs of Macha were a curse dating even farther back in history than Cuchulainn’s day, consigning the men of Ulster to the pains of a woman in labor at the time they were most beset by enemies.