CHAPTER 5
ULSTER RISES

It’s strange, isn’t it, how a thing can be good and bad at the same time? Our stay at Emain Macha was like that.

The place itself was so different from what I expected, I couldn’t help but be disappointed. Not that my parents had exaggerated— it was all there, just as they had described: the boys’ long playing field, the Speckled House full of war trophies and weapons, and of course Conchobor’s great house itself. My mother and I stayed there, in the large richly furnished room that was always kept free for Cuchulainn and Emer. I walked right around the outside of the Royal House one morning, numbering one finger for every step, trying to see how many times over I would count all my fingers before I closed the circle. I forget now how many it was—enough for me to realize that our own home of Dun Dealgan was like a farmer’s cottage compared to the king’s house. It took five circles of huge posts inside the walls to support the weight of the roof! And while we had a partial second story—a ring of small storage areas tucked under the eaves—the Royal House at Emain Macha had a full ceiling, with as much space above as below. And beautiful! Everywhere I looked there was carving and tapestry, the shine of beaten bronze and copper, rich fabrics and polished wood.

What was missing were the champions. The feasts and feats, the singing and storytelling. There was only the bustle of servants tending to King Conchobor, and long worried faces, and Cathbad sweeping around giving orders, and my mother...

My mother was driven by an invisible lash, night and day. She seemed never to rest, even when she was still—and she was so rarely still. I cannot say she neglected me, yet I could tell she did not see me. Her eyes were faraway, with my father. Cathbad worked as hard as she did, and without him perhaps all her efforts would have been in vain. He took a handful of his apprentices to the kitchens and set them to brewing huge batches of medicines, while my mother hovered at the king’s bedside, urging him whenever he seemed at all lucid to send messengers to all his chieftains’ men, summoning them to assemble for battle. But I heard her tell Cathbad afterward, almost beside herself with frustration, that he seemed unable to follow the thread of her account.

“He roused himself once and told me to summon Cuchulainn, for the love of all that’s holy!” And she gave a harsh caw of a laugh that brought the tears to my eyes and made my heart twist.

The next day, Cathbad sent two of his druids and all the apprentices—not the noble children he tutored in history and lore but some twenty destined for the druid’s feathered cape—back to Celthair’s dun. They led wagons filled with jugs and padded with blankets, and others piled with their own provisions, and each was instructed to take one man away from the squalor of the house and tend to him. I learned later that one of Cathbad’s medicines was nothing but a tea of slippery elm and raspberry leaf, a simple remedy that any country housewife might brew up for a child with the squiddles. The other, though, a chalky sludge with the rank smell of marsh-mud—that was a mystery. All I knew was that it had taken the combined might of Cathbad and Berach both to force a half-cup of the foul mixture into King Conchobor when he hardly had strength to lift his head.

I had watched them load up the wagons that morning, careful to keep out of the way but still edging as close as I could. I was lonely, wanting my own home and my mother as she used to be, and then feeling guilty for such selfishness. It was comforting to be near these serious young men and their orderly preparations. Strangely enough, it was even comforting to be near Cathbad—my fear of him must have floated away on the shores of the River Quoile. He caught my eye once and nodded at me gravely as if I were a grown-up. I can’t find the words to describe how that made me feel, but I remember it made me sit up straighter and lift my chin, wanting to be the person he had greeted.

We watched the wagons rumble down the road, and then Cathbad turned to me. “How are you faring, Luaine, in all this turmoil?”

“Fine, sir,” I answered, but then I looked quickly at the ground, afraid his Druid’s Sight would recognize my lie.

He let me wriggle in it a while, and then he said, “The men of Ulster will rise, Luaine, and ride to Cuchulainn’s side, and when that is done your mother will come back to you.”

I nodded, still examining my feet, but his gnarled finger dipped under my chin and brought my eyes up to his. They were black and penetrating, impossible to escape, but I found I did not wish to. Those dark eyes bored into me; then he nodded slowly at whatever he read there. “A lonely long wait all the same for you, isn’t it?” And not waiting for my reply, he asked, “Tell me, do you like animals?”

I had barely drawn breath to answer when he forestalled me with a smile. “I thought so. Well then, I have a friend for you. A little company for your stay here.”

If Cathbad had done nothing more for me—and he has done much—I would be in his debt still for this one thing. Little enough has come with me from my old life, but Fintan perches on my shoulder still.

I laughed when I learned his name.

“Fintan? It’s a lovely name, but for a raven?” White fire, for a bird as black as pitch. “Is it a riddle?”

“In a way.” Cathbad’s old eyes crinkled in amusement. “A secret, rather.” He smoothed down the glossy feathers, scratched the shaggy ruff under the bird’s heavy bill and spread out its left wing. I saw it then: a single white feather, a secondary that lay hidden behind its neighbors until the full stretch exposed it to view. Striking, the way each color seemed to intensify from the contrast against the other, the black dense and bottomless, the white leaping out against it brighter than snow or sea foam or the white gulls themselves. It drew my eyes and swelled in my vision until I could see nothing else.

“Come on, then. Come and meet him.”

I started and looked up to find Cathbad studying me. He nodded once, as if in answer to a question I had not asked. “He is no ordinary raven, but you need not fear him. Indeed I believe you will get on very well together.”

His plumage was soft and glossy, yet bristly stiff if you ruffled it the wrong way. Fintan allowed me to stroke him a few times, and then he tilted his head and fixed me with one brilliant black eye. He became agitated, clacking his beak and tossing his head up and down like a nervous horse, so that I stepped back, alarmed, and asked Cathbad what was wrong. He just smiled and told me to be still.

Suddenly, with a great flurry of flapping wings, Fintan launched himself from Cathbad’s arm and landed on my shoulder. I staggered a little from the sudden weight—a full-grown raven is no small burden—and gasped at the hard clutch of his talons. But I held my ground, and as he sidestepped over to press against my ear I felt I might burst from the delight of it.

With an ear-splitting squawk, Fintan lifted his tail and let loose a white stream down my tunic. Cathbad laughed. “A sure sign that he likes you.”

The door banged open, and in the time it took Cathbad to whirl about, the kindly old man vanished. The very air about him crackled with cold outrage, and I saw that I had not been wrong to fear him. He was chief druid, and not even the king himself could barge headlong into his house without asking leave.

Apparently my mother could. She stood wild-eyed in the doorway, and Cathbad’s rage evaporated.

“What is it, Emer?”

Something terrible, that I knew. For days she had been wound like a spring, hounded with an overriding purpose. Now she looked beaten, sick with some grief that bled away her strength.

“The boys have gone.”

I did not know an old one could move so fast. His angry curse rang still in my ears, but Cathbad was already striding across the compound, pulling my mother along by the elbow.

Fintan and I were forgotten, but we could piece together well enough what had happened. The youth of Emain Macha, spurred on by my mother’s urgency or their own dreams of glory, had left their games and taken up arms, riding to join my father’s stand against Connaught.

I pictured them sneaking off at dawn, high-spirited and eager to prove themselves, and I wanted desperately to believe it would be as they imagined. But my mother’s face had told another tale, and so did the black fist that clutched my heart. No troop of boys, however courageous and full of promise, could match an army of seasoned soldiers.

“They will none of them return,” I whispered, and Fintan sat silent on my thin shoulder as I hid my face in my hands and cried for them all.

The boys were beyond recall, but their departure spurred Cathbad into decisive action. He sent out the summons himself, in the king’s own name. It made only a day’s difference, for by the next morning the king was lucid, able to order in the troops himself. That one day did not save the boys, but it may have saved my father.

Emer was giddy with relief as she told me. “Oh, the king was well enough to be red with indignation when he heard what Cathbad had done. But he soon saw the sense of it, and there is no doubt he is on the mend. I spooned the gruel into him myself, and it has all stayed where it belongs.” And then, as she had not done since we left Dun Dealgan, she scooped me up in her arms and swung me around in an extravagant hug. “It won’t be long now, dove.”

Nor was it. Only that afternoon men started trickling in from Celthair’s dun, pale and bandy-legged but determined. By the time they were fit to fight, their forces were camped all around Emain Macha. No longer would my father stand alone.