“Many a branch of the race of Conn is in the land of Banba of smooth grass.”
(Book of Lecan.)
The girl rose often and attended to the wants of her companions. Cormac’s eye fell on her and marked the difference between her and Ethne. The contrast was strong. The young Saxon wore a straight robe of sack-cloth, frayed here and there, and stained from labour in the field and at the fire-side; her feet were bare; she wore no ornaments; her hair, tangled and powdered with ashes, was badly plaited, tied with rushes and drawn round her neck. Her skin was red and rough, her movements awkward, her hands large and toil-worn. She was as broad and tall as a fully-developed woman, but she had the shapeless figure and raw limbs of a child, or an awkward boy.
Once when she stooped over Ethne, in filling her cup, the Celtic woman raised her hand and slapped her in the face.
“Ah, beast!” she cried. “Cub of a Saxon sire—I loathe thy very touch!”
When the meal was over, some water was required from the spring, and the girl ran to get it. The hound, who could not endure the Saxon out of his sight, followed her.
Ethne sneered as she glanced after the retreating figures.
“It will soon be time, Cormac of Fail,” she said, “for you to take the Saxon maid to wife. She will make a fitting bride for a king, in yon sack-cloth shift.”
Again she sneered—Cormac grew crimson.
“And thou can’st have none other. Remember that! One wife must suffice for a Christian. Ha, ha!”
Cormac pushed his platter from before him and rose.
“Ethne,” he said, “I cannot fulfil my father’s commands. I cannot wed the Saxon.”
He trembled from head to foot. He had left Ethne’s side and was gazing on the wall, where a golden crown, torques of gold, and a king’s sword were displayed, deeply stained with blood. They had been taken from his father’s body on the field of battle; Elgiva, the Saxon, had carried them away, and she had placed them on the wall of their dwelling.
The boy stooped forward and kissed the tokens, one by one. The tears streamed from his eyes.
Solemnly he knelt down and, clasping his hands together, looked upward as though in prayer.
“Father,” he cried, “forgive me, but I cannot fulfil thy commands—for marriage without love is no marriage—and I loathe the Saxon!”
The boy’s grief was touching. Ethne watched him with the ugly sneer lifting her lip and showing the fang beneath.
“Well done, boy!” she cried. “A good Pictish chieftain needs no Saxon among his wives.”
Both the speakers turned as a wooden pail was cast down on the ground. Elgiva stood before them.
“What work is this you are at now,” she cried. “Ethne of the Raven Hair?”
The girl’s broad chest, red from sun and wind, heaved under her sack-cloth. She frowned on both Ethne and Cormac.
“Why do you seek to turn the son against the father’s wishes?”
The dog, which had followed the girl, gave a low growl as he noticed her attitude, and pressed closer to her side. She threw her arm round the creature’s neck; his one eye, red as a coal, burned with hatred as he looked at Ethne.
“Child of a Saxon savage,” replied Ethne, haughtily, “do I render account to thee of my doings?”
The girl gave no heed to the taunt.
“Nay, but he shall wed me,” she cried, firmly, “and fulfil the commands of his father.”
Ethne burst into low laughter.
“Thou wilt have a rare bride, Cormac,” she cried. “She will mend thy trews like all true Saxon wives, and she will wear them, too!”
Cormac strode forward.
Every word the Saxon uttered angered him. He was full of shame and wounded vanity when he looked at her; she was so raw, ugly, and uncouth. Her eyes were still red from the smoke; her mouth, naturally large, was increased in size by half-healed scars.
Now, at Ethne’s mocking laughter, he fell into a fury.
“I will not marry thee,” he cried. “Great gaby! Ugly blear-eyed, red-legged girl!”
In his rage he lifted his hand and slapped her on the face. The old hound whimpered as though his master had struck him.
Elgiva was speechless with surprise. Cormac fell back to his old position beside Ethne.
Elgiva’s face smarted with pain; one of the half-healed wounds bled afresh. Cormac had struck her—just as in the days when they had been babes together! Moreover, he had said he would not marry her. Her eyes filled with tears; she did not care for the pain, or for Cormac’s unkindness to her—but the thought that he had turned so soon against his dead father’s wishes was anguish!
“It is your fault, Ethne,” she said. “You have persuaded him to say this. You are wicked and heartless! You did not love Griffith because he would not make you his wife. You hate me because, for my mother’s sake, Griffith warred upon the Saxons!”
She sat down on the floor and, burying her face in the hound’s neck, sobbed as though her heart would break. The animal licked her hair and shoulders. Cormac watched her uneasily. It was unlike Elgiva to give way to tears. The Saxon blood which flowed in her veins—loathed by herself as well as by her companions—had endowed her with a stoical calm in times of ordinary distress.
He began to feel ashamed of the blow he had given Elgiva. He had determined that he could not marry her, but the very fact that he was breaking his father’s commands made him more anxious to show kindness to one who had served that father with more than a daughter’s devotion.
He remembered how, on the battle-field, she had attempted to throw herself between him and his death-blow; and how she had waited on his dying moments under the swords of the enemy.
In the midst of her grief, a new and comforting idea came to Elgiva. She sat up suddenly, ceased sobbing, and looked inquiringly at Cormac.
“Perhaps,” she cried, “you have no mind to marry! You mean to follow the good Saint Kevin and become a monk!” If such were the case, Cormac’s treatment of her was explained. Had not the holy Kevin himself done more than Cormac when a girl had spoken to him of marriage? Had he not taken a great bunch of nettles and beaten her with them till she was sore? Elgiva’s warm heart filled with remorse at her unkind thoughts of Cormac. She knew the dead Griffith’s wishes too well to doubt that it would be more pleasing to him that Cormac should enter a monastery than that he should become her husband.
“To enter a monastery!” sneered Ethne. “To till the ground like a slave! To wear homespun and tend sick-beds! Bah! Cormac is a warrior, and the monks have not enough spirit to kill a slave!”
“Yet the monks drew our raft to shore at the risk of their lives—and restored us to life,” said Elgiva. She had risen in anger.
“But you do not love the monks any more than you love me,” she said.
“I hate ye all—Saxon virgin and toiling slaves!” returned Ethne. “Nor have I turned slave and ploughman after their example.”
The girl glanced down at her roughened hands and earth-stained dress.
“No,” she said, “you add to their work, instead of sharing it. Even for the saffron robes on your back you must give the good men trouble. You sent the poor monk, Patrick, many a weary mile with a heavy yew chest on his shoulders. And when the case was opened what was it you had sent him for? Nothing but silk and samite—gold torques and embroidered crisses!”
Cormac, meanwhile, had been gazing at Elgiva with a troubled face. He was thinking of his dying father on the battle-field, and of his anguish when their fight for his British kinswoman had been in vain.
Cormac went up to Elgiva and placed his hand roughly on her shoulder.
“Listen, girl,” he said. “I have told you I will not marry you, and it is true. But I tell you also that I will rescue your British mother, or die in the attempt.”
He turned to Ethne and embraced her.
“My Ethne! My spouse that will be,” he cried. “My madness is passed—I am thy warrior once more—thy warrior with wounds healed by thee. We will to battle again!”
“Ahoi!” she screamed, “Cormac of Fail—Cormac, the Black Horse. To warriors alone doth Ethne give her favours! Pict, I call thee and brother! Prince of Hibernia and twig from the tree of Tara! Cormac of Fail—sprung from the loins of gods and princesses!”
She parted her crowding locks and saluted him fiercely. She drew back and smiled at him, with the little tusks gleaming on either side of her mouth. Even with that ugly smile upon her lips the boy marvelled at her beauty—at her smooth white limbs, her blue-black hair, and her flashing purple eyes.
He fell back from the compass of her arms and drew his sword, flourishing it around his head.
“Pict do you call me!” he cried, in the same screaming voice. “Ay, Pict am I, and Pict art thou! And we will rally Pict and Scot around us! We will to Britain again and harass the Saxons, as in olden days we harassed the Britons! Scot am I and Scot art thou—and the Scots brought Lia Fail and the Ogham books to Hibernia!”
“Fire!” she returned, “and blood and plunder! Men we make white with fear. Our swords drink deep of blood of maids and babes. Ahoi—we will once more to Britain!”
She drew her lips over her savage fangs. Once more she pressed her hot, fierce mouth to the boy’s.—She also drew her sword and brandished it above her head.
“Blood!” she cried, “and fire and sacrifice! Come with me, boy, to the sacred heart of Hibernia and I will show thee warriors that will set the world on fire. Tell me, Cormac, wilt thou come?”
He was as fierce and hot as she, and he yelled out with bloodthirsty oaths that he would follow her to the world’s end.
Then—like all true Hibernians, in times of excitement, they fell to calling pedigrees.
“Hail, Cormac!” she cried, striking his shoulder with the flat of her sword, “Whelp of the lion, Tuathal!”
“Tuathal the Legitimate!” chanted Cormac, proudly. “Sib am I also to Cormac, son of Art, to Conn of the Hundred Battles, and Niall of the Nine Hostages!”
“Sib art thou also to me, Cormac of Fail!” screamed the woman. “Through the blood of an Ethne—Ethne the Terrible, princess and priestess! Mighty was she in life, treading in blood as a milk-maid in dew—and mighty was she in death, for white oxen drew wood and treasure to her pyre for nine days after her death. Myrrh and amber they brought—unguents and spices and gold. Beasts they slaughtered by the score, and all the earth was drenched with mead and blood.”
“Hail to our ancestress, Ethne!” called the boy, “wife of Oengus—Oengus the Christian, baptised by Saint Patrick!”
“Nay!” thundered Ethne, suddenly dropping the chanting tone in which they were speaking. “But the wife of Oengus—she of my race and my name, never lapsed into Christianity! Druidess she was, and druidess she remained—and in the battle in which she was slain her incantations struck awe into the hearts of all that heard them!”
Then again her voice grew high and shrill as a battle-cry.
“Blood and sacrifice!” she yelled “and the secrets told by fresh-slain men!”
Suddenly she made a thrust at Cormac with her sword, a mere feint—so dexterous that, though it drew blood, it was a mere scratch that might have been received from a sharp thorn. There was a light in her eyes, like that of a half-angry tigress playing with its whelp.
“Ha, cub!” she snarled, “thou hast been bred in the faith of a cur but if thou would’st have Ethne and Ethne’s aid thou must leave all and return with me to the ancient faith and to the Druids!”
The boy fell before her, as though he had received a mortal wound.
“I cannot understand,” he gasped. “Thou art a Christian, Ethne!”
She laughed and folded her arms.
“I am a Druidess! Learn that, ye two poor white-livered Christians.”
Her glittering eyes glanced from Cormac to Elgiva.
The distant chime of the monastery bells came softly to their ears; and closer at hand the chant of Saint Patrick’s hymn, the Feth Fiddha. The June sun shone warm through the chinks in the walls.
For a time Cormac was unable to speak. When he did so, his voice was hoarse and uncertain.
“It is a foul and horrible faith. Its rites are bloody and repulsive—there is human sacrifice—and the burning to death of men and women and little children! At its best it teaches neither love nor charity.”
She spat upon the ground.
“So much for your love and charity! I never heard such words till I lived amongst fools and Christians!”
“But thou art a Christian, Ethne!”
The woman again laughed impatiently.
“A Christian! ’Twas a slight thing that—to humour thy fond old father—when in return he gave me gold and lands!”
The boy’s eyes drooped proudly. He turned and left the hut, and the old hound slunk after him.
Two heavy hands seized Ethne’s shoulders—and the Saxon’s blue eyes flamed into the purple ones.
It was the age when primitive passions held sway—and this young girl, reared in the gentle faith of the Christians—now that her anger was roused, was every whit as fierce as Ethne.
Ethne seized her knife, but the Saxon wrenched it from her grasp and threw it to the farther end of the hut.
“Viper!” cried Elgiva. “Foul woman and false friend! Thou art un-chaste, un-loving! Thou hast stolen his heart, and now seek to defile him in thy Druid rites. He shall not sacrifice, I tell thee, he shall not sacrifice!”
Ethne was inarticulate with rage. The two women fought like animals. Ethne tore at the girl with her teeth, but Elgiva prevailed—and at length threw the Celt, bruised and bleeding to the ground.
Then she wept. Not from rage or anger; but from fear and the knowledge of her own weakness. For she knew with Cormac she was powerless.