CHAPTER VIII.
ETHNE AGAIN AS LEADER.
Just at dawn he left them—after the human sacrifice had taken place.
He had not realised that the wild and terrible night would end in such a sacrifice. And it was only when it happened that the full horror of the festival burst upon him. Then—just as suddenly as he had entered upon the scene—he turned and left it.
He went forward blindly. Stumbling, sometimes, over the prostrate bodies of bacchantes—stupid with mead, half-dead from excess. The day had fully dawned, the fires were waning, the air was full of smoke.
Once he hurried forward surrounded by a bellowing herd of cattle; and once he narrowly escaped being gored to death by a maddened bull. The forests through which he passed swarmed with the sheep and oxen of Rath and Dun—herding with the forest swine, and deer, and bears. Weird creatures, whom he could scarcely term men, fled at his approach; they had been startled from their forest-lairs and were now returning—shaggy-haired, blink-eyed, stained with woad, and clad in skins of sheep and bear.
Once only he stopped in his wild flight; when he found a stag wounded fatally in an encounter with a fellow stag; he stayed to plunge his sword to its heart and end its sufferings. In doing so he shed tears to think of the sufferings and terror of the animals in the night just past.
His speed was terrific as he ran through marsh and forest, tearing his way through bracken and knee-holly. He fled as though pursued; and it was himself he fled from—his own flesh and mind degraded by the dread rites in which he had shared.
He threw himself upon a runaway horse and went on, and on, and on—with ever the scene of blood and fire before him.
A little child with a face like the morning, passed by, singing as it went, carrying flowers mixed with hawthorn leaves. All around lay cultivated fields, gardens, and rows of bee-hives; beasts were basking in the sun.
Such was the scene upon which Cormac opened his eyes. How long he had slept he did not know, but he found himself lying on a mass of dry moss beneath an oak tree. Someone had covered his half-naked body with a sheep-skin and he lay warm and comfortable. For a moment he thought he was back with S. Kevin’s monks and that the Beltane festival was a bad dream. Then full remembrance came, and he cowered down in the moss and covered his face with his hands. He, a Christian, had entered into the foul and bloody rites of the Druids.
To his ears came the soft chime of six-sided bells. After a time he sat up and looked about him. He was surprised to see the quantity of hawthorn that abounded everywhere. Every child that passed carried branches of it; there were fields of young hawthorn tenderly cared for by labourers; among the larger trees wood-men were busy cutting it and piling it in heaps—and others were busy carrying away the waiting piles upon their shoulders.
Cormac rose to his feet as he realised where he was. He knew he could not be far from the cell of his cousin, the Princess Brigit—the sweet girl-saint of Kildare; who was so full of the spirit of love and propitiation of early Christianity that she thought it no sin to keep one of the Druid’s sacred fires burning—consecrating it anew to the Christian Faith and hoping to win the Druids over likewise. The great fire was fed entirely on the hawthorn wood; in using such fuel Saint Brigit felt she gave a truly sacred and symbolic character to the fire, for she believed that Our Lord’s Crown of Thorns was made of hawthorn.
In all the land around him lay the feeling of home and peace for which Cormac’s smarting spirit longed—but he could not stay. In this sweet spot he felt himself unclean.
A kindly wood-cutter offered him some food, which he gratefully accepted. Then he turned westward and went on once more till he had left Kildare far behind him, and the wild plain spread itself before his eyes.
Around him waved the long grass, and he stretched himself at full length upon it, plucking it in handfuls; heaping it on his face; as though there were something cleansing in its cool touch—hot and sick still at the memory of his Baal madness.
He realised, too late, that the sun-god of the Druids was Baal. A flood of light was poured on some of Ethne’s wild assertions—that the Druids held the ancient faith from which the Hebrew prophets had led the Jews away. Ay, it was Baal, the Druids worshipped—at the temple of the sun in the Slieve Bloom mountains—at the place of sacred fire near Tara—everywhere, Baal. And in their worship the very depths of iniquity were reached; bloodshed and license went hand in hand.
He writhed anew at the thought of his shares in the festival. He could not rid himself of the memory of those twisting serpent dances, leading to scenes of bloodshed, excess, and fire.
As he lay in grief and shame upon the grass, a few hot tears dropped from his closed eyelid. Suddenly some strong instinct caused him to sit up and open his eyes. Before him was Ethne of the Raven Hair.
She had ridden noiselessly over the plain towards him, and had reined in her horse at a little distance; she sat motionless on her saddle looking at him with a smile of scorn on her face.
“You ran away!” she said.
She was again dressed in spotless saffron coloured robes, her long hair flowing, smooth and glossy, under her veil, the golden crescent glistening on her forehead; her adornments were richer than usual—besides her golden torques she wore emeralds and British pearls on the clasps of her robes; her fingers were almost covered with rings. She was mounted on the same white stallion on which she had made her journey to the plains; here and there he showed blood-stains, and some yellow patches where the flames had caught and singed him.
“And you have lost your horse,” she continued. “I cannot find him anywhere.”
The boy made no answer. He looked at her as he might have looked at an evil spirit.
Now that he faced her for the first time since the dreadful festival, he could not have said whether he hated her or not—all he knew was that his feelings towards her had changed. He could not forget the last dreadful scene in which he had seen her amongst the foremost of those who had offered the human sacrifice. When he had seen her lift her gory knife, uttering fierce incantations meanwhile, he had fled.
“What a fool you were, Cormac,” said Ethne, “to leave just before we divined.”
“Let me forget!” cried Cormac, striking his brow, as though in agony. “Let me forget—I will forget!”
The Druidess looked at him in amazement. His emotion was a further instance of the work of this strange faith, Christianity.
“Unclean!” he cried, and again with the same frenzy, “Unclean, unclean! Oh, Ethne, your religion is cruel—monstrous—devilish!”
“Cruel—monstrous—devilish?” she said, repeating his words slowly. “Why not? All we want is the secrets of the gods—the secrets that concern us.” She was speaking quietly and patiently, because she had found she could only manage him by patience. “Why should we not kill if it will help us to read the future? Is not Death the portal to the Beyond, and if you would have its secrets you must enter by the only door open. We believe that when Death has just descended upon a human being his heart and lungs and inward parts unfold the future to us! And ’tis better if every passion be excited first!”
Cormac shuddered.
He felt he must leave Ethne; never look again upon her face—he would return to the Christians. And then the dreadful thought came that he himself had offered unto Baal—he was unclean! He wished to leave Ethne, yet she still attracted him and there was a new and horrible tie between them.
Then weakly he began to excuse her to himself. If she believed, as she said, did it not make her crimes the less? Why should he think of fleeing from her presence—was he not worse than she? He, who called himself a Christian!
She had dismounted and had thrown her bridle over her arm. Almost unconsciously they moved forward on the marshy bridle-path before them.
“We have sinned,” said Cormac. “But my sin is greater than yours.”
The Druidess looked at him with the same expression of scorn and wonder that she had shown before. After a time she said:
“Some day—not now—I will tell you the message that the diviners unfolded to me.”
Cormac only answered by a gesture of horror.
“We have all our work to begin over again,” said Ethne. “You have lost your horse—and by your foolish flight you have scattered the warriors we had gathered about us! You are clad in sheepskin like a serf, or a Christian hermit!”
Cormac stood still.
“Ethne,” he cried, “I cannot go on—I cannot, and I will not, continue this unholy work!”
“What a craven thing you are!” cried Ethne. She was glad to see a flush of anger on the boy’s face. “And what of your promises to me—the Christians are always boasting that they keep their promises—have I not done my part, were you forced into anything against your will?”
“I do not blame you,” Cormac said proudly. “The fault was mine—but I will not continue.”
“I do not know what you mean by repeating you will not continue—you will not continue. I promised to rally warriors around you, so that you might rescue Elgiva’s mother—and I will do it. I promise you, if you wish it, that you shall not be led into any more of our festivals—since you cannot resist the joy of them!”
“Have no fear of my entering upon them again,” said Cormac.
“I hoped to make a man of you!” exclaimed Ethne.
“Then give me man’s work to do!” cried Cormac, fiercely, “and not the work of fiends and beasts. Give me warriors to lead into battle, and let me die at their head if need be!”
“You shall have them!” cried Ethne, with sparkling eyes.
“When?” he asked.
“When we go North—an army awaits us there. We will start to-morrow.”
For a time he wavered; then consented to go with her.