CHAPTER 6
THE QUEEN OF SORROW

On the night before Ulster’s forces rode to war, Conchobor held a feast for his champions. And though I had tried hard to be obedient and uncomplaining on this journey, now that my mother’s burden was lessened it is shameless I was in begging to attend.

“Please, Ma!” I was losing hope but couldn’t give it up. I clutched at her hand, dragging against her brisk stride, and promised earnestly, “I’ll be no trouble. I won’t say a word. And I’ll go straight to bed after!”

Shucking me off with an impatient flick, my mother opened her mouth for the last denial I would get without a slap to help it sink in—and shut it again. She looked down at me, eager and jittery as a hound before it is loosed, and dimpled into a smile.

“Why not then, after all? You’ve been no trouble at all so far, with little enough attention from me. And Lugh knows, there will be no carousing into the wee hours this time.”

I was a little disappointed by that. “Why won’t there be?”

“Conchobor will need men with clear heads in the morning. Besides, there is too much to do.”

That I could believe. Emain Macha had buzzed like a beehive all day with the preparations. I could hear it buzzing still, through the little slit of a window that was fashioned into the outer wall of our room: shouted instructions, hurried footfalls, the sibilance of blades on the whetstone, hammering from the smithies and the rumble of carts. There was no one sat idle that day.

I did not see her at first, so full were my eyes with everything else. Rows of bright banners hung from the ceiling rafters, which ran right across the vast hall to support the floor of the rooms above. Torches and candles fluttered with every movement, and my eyes were dazzled by the gold and copper and bright swatches of color on the guests.

My mother’s seat on the women’s side was near the king’s table, for Emer was first among Ulster’s women, as my father was first among the champions. The women’s side was not so crowded as the men’s, for not all the warriors’ wives had made the journey to Emain. My mother bent her head to me and pointed out the heroes I had heard my father speak of: Sencha, the spokesman and peacemaker of the men of Ulster; Conchobor’s sons Cuscraid and Finnchad; Laegaire and Conall Cearnach, both warriors of renown. I craned my neck, marking each, and asked, “Where is Fergus?”

My father had often spoken highly of Fergus, one of the men who had fostered him when he came to Emain Macha as a boy. So I was surprised to see my mother’s face harden.

“Do not speak of him here!” she cautioned, hissing the words between her teeth close in my ear. I nodded, bewildered, and fell silent.

My eyes must have drifted over the woman sitting at the king’s left hand several times before actually taking notice. So still and plainly dressed she was, that she seemed to blend into the wood of the walls. It was as if a pocket of mist surrounded her, a mist that dimmed the clash of color in the hall and muted the laughter and boasting as it drifted past her.

She is alone among all these people, I thought, and it was the first time I understood that this could be so.

But once my eye found her, all I could look at was the young woman at the king’s side. Her head was bent, so I could see only a white brow and the river of her hair, pale and smooth as corn silk, shining in the torchlight. Her pale arms were thin—too thin—but she made no move to eat. Indeed she made no move at all, but merely sat there, her eyes glued to the hands that rested in her lap.

“Ma.” I tugged at her sleeve, a little afraid to ask. When she had swallowed her meat and bent her ear to me, I whispered my question. “Who is the lady beside the king?”

My mother sighed, and I could tell she regretted bringing me. There were too many expressions on her face to sort out. I thought I could read pity, but she seemed angry too. I had to strain to hear her reply through the din:

“That is the king’s young queen, Deirdriu. I had not thought she would be here.”

All through the long meal my eyes kept returning to the silent woman. Just once I saw her raise her head—when a table overturned at the back of the hall, and the crash and clatter of it startled her from her reverie.

I caught my breath at the sight of her face. The beauty of it was a bright star in a black sky. Her eyes scanned the hall, and I saw the pain undisguised in them and the purple smudges underneath, but still she shone. I wondered if she was a woman of the Sidhe, a visitor from the enchanted land that lies below and beyond our own. The thought came to me unbidden: she is lovelier than my mother. Immediately I tried to take it back, but I couldn’t. My mother’s beauty glowed with life and strength, like the sun on a summer’s day. But Deirdriu had the fragile unearthly delicacy of the first blush of dawn or the first snowdrop of spring.

She dropped her head and the star winked out. But I could not forget what I had seen nor stop wondering what burden had left its dark mark on her eyes.

We rose at dawn to see the men off, and for the first time I understood what an army was. Men and horses, chariots and wagons, more than I had ever imagined, tossed and churned like a vast sea. An ocean of men, I thought, and indeed they did seem to float on the thick morning mist that steamed from the earth and hid the turf in a silvery drifting cloud. When the men clashed their weapons against their shields and shouted for Conchobor, the din seemed to shake the earth as well as the air, throbbing up through my legs and deafening my ears. On his word they thundered south across the plain, all in their companies, and it was not until the last tiny speck had vanished over the last hazy hill that my mother pulled her gaze back from the horizon. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand, but I could tell it was hard for her to turn away and walk back to the walls of Emain. Her heart had ridden out with Ulster’s champions to the Cooley Hills, and it was only I who kept her body from following.

“They call her Deirdriu of the Sorrows.”

On the slow walk back to the gates, Emer consented to speak of the queen.

“I would rather you had not known of her. But if we are to stay in Emain, doubtless you will hear talk.” We walked in silence for some time. I suppose my mother was searching for a way to tell the story that would not upset a young girl, but it couldn’t be done. And yet I knew if I waited long enough, she would continue, and so she did.

“There was a prophecy about Deirdriu, before she left her mother’s belly, that she would be beautiful beyond all others, and that she would bring death and jealous discord to Ulster,” my mother said. “So Conchobor, thinking perhaps to forestall any fighting over her, had her raised in an isolated place, out of sight of all men, to be his bride when she grew to womanhood. And in due time, she was brought to the king to be wed, barely out of her girlhood and innocent of the world.”

My mother sighed. “And then the prophecy came true.”

As soon as he laid eyes upon Deirdriu, the king was desperate with desire. But Deirdriu’s eyes, which had never seen a man her own age, rested upon the lovely face and limbs of the young warrior Naoise. She loved him deeply, and he her, and so they fled Emain Macha together, sailing finally to the shores of Alba where they lived together for some years.

Conchobor’s men bitterly resented the banishment of Naoise and his two brothers, who had gone with him, for they all three were loved and admired by all of Ulster. But Conchobor burned for Deirdriu. And so he sent Fergus as a messenger to Naoise, saying that he was forgiven and that he and his brothers—and Deirdriu too, of course—were welcome back in Ulster. And Fergus, unaware of the king’s treachery, gave his bond for their safety.

Perhaps you have guessed how this story ends. I did, but then I had Deirdriu’s pale, still face to help me. Conchobor set his men upon Naoise and his brothers and killed them, and the king took Deirdriu to his marriage bed. And that is why Fergus was not among the men of Ulster. Outraged at the king’s betrayal of his honor, he had left Emain Macha and ridden to Connaught, where he offered his service to Maeve and Ailill.

“But Deirdriu will give the king no pleasure,” concluded my mother. “She will not eat with him, or speak with him, or smile in his presence, or even look upon him. Her heart is with Naoise, you see, whatever the king wills.”

I pondered this in puzzled silence. I had been raised to revere the king. He was my father’s uncle, who had protected and favored him since his boyhood. Cuchulainn was loyal to Conchobor, that I knew—but here was my mother, trying to guard her words but without a doubt blaming Conchobor for Naoise’s death.

A terrible thought came to me.

“Ma, was—” I swallowed. “Was my father one of the men?” She knew which men I meant.

“Your father would have no part of it,” she replied. She knelt before me in the wet grass and held my shoulders, her green eyes steady on mine. “He would not raise his hand in treachery against his own comrades, not even for a King,” she said. “Remember that.”

I spoke with Deirdriu once. It’s a memory that haunts me to this day. Strange, isn’t it, that a quiet talk in an orchard would upset me more than what I saw later, but it did.

Cathbad had charged me with Fintan’s care while he was off with the armies and, most especially, for taking him out of his dark roundhouse into the light and air every day.

“What if he should fly off and not return?” I asked anxiously.

Cathbad was unconcerned. “If he flies off, it is for his own reasons, Luaine. Fintan stays or goes as he wishes. If I return and find him starved, though, that will be on your head!”

So I learned to crook out my elbow and offer my arm to the big bird, and he never refused but hopped up to my shoulder and dug in his strong toes. And because of Fin, I gained a little extra freedom.

I had been told to stay always within the embankments of Emain Macha. They were big enough for a little girl—it was a good long walk all around the walls, with more people and buildings inside than I had ever seen. But at Dun Dealgan we had looked out over a plain that sloped away from sight like a rolling green ocean, while on the other side the sea itself swept in and out of our bay in its ceaseless tides, and yellow gorse lit up the flanks of the Cooley Hills. Inside Emain it was all buildings and dirt paths; even the playing field’s turf was gouged brown and muddy from the boys’ games. It all pressed on me somehow.

When my mother first saw me with Fintan on my shoulder, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “Luaine, where did you find that dirty creature? It looks like the old crone of death herself looming over you.” When she heard it was Cathbad’s bird, though, her eyes went wide.

“He gave you his raven?” She eased herself slowly onto a bench, considering me as I stood puffed with pride, ignoring the pinch of Fin’s talons.

“Luaine.” I could see she chose her words deliberately. “A druid’s raven is very...valuable, and it is not for everyone to even touch it. You must take very good care to follow Cathbad’s instructions.”

I had my opening.

“Ma, I am to take him out for exercise every day, but I think he would rather be in the trees. Could I not go a little ways into the orchards by the north wall?”

The orchards of Emain—acres and acres of them—drifted right up to the embankment on the northeast side, a quiet glory of white and pink bloom.

Getting to them was harder than I had expected. Rather than take the long way round from the south gate, I had planned to just climb over the wall. I had done it often enough at home.

Here, though, the ditch was on the inside of the wall instead of the outside—which was strange, for how would it hamper an attacking enemy that way? It certainly hampered me, for I had to scramble down, pick my way across the mucky bottom and climb all the way up the other side—the height of the ditch plus the earthen bank, that was—before I even got to the wall. It was a hard climb, and I was glad of the broad walkway at the top of the embankment where I could rest a moment. I eyed the heavy posts of the wall, looking for the best climbing spot, while Fintan poked his beak into likely crannies where beetles or field mice might hide.

The wall itself was not so difficult, but what I saw when I hoisted my head over the top was daunting: a steep drop down, with no ledge to land on at the foot of the stakes. The fence had been built right at the outside edge of the earthworks, three times a man’s height from the top to the ground. I would have to walk back to the gate, after all.

“Does your mother know you are after jumping the wall?”

A girl’s voice it was, so I was not scared, though I gave a guilty start all the same. As I squinted into the trees, a willowy figure emerged from the orchard.

“Well?”

I nodded. Even the way she walked was beautiful, I thought. I could look at nothing but her.

“You are sure?” She was so close now I could see the deep, deep blue of her eyes—almost violet, they were—and the dark fringe of lashes so startling against the pale gold of her hair. She seemed amused, and I was glad to have given her even this whisper of happiness.

I smiled and found my voice. “Yes, Lady Deirdriu. I have leave to come to the orchard to exercise my friend Fintan, here.”

Deirdriu soon solved my problem. She bade me walk along the embankment until I was directly behind the smokehouse, and when I peeked over the wall, there she was on the far side, tucking up her skirts and climbing—surprisingly quickly—up the embankment. In a moment I had another surprise: a little door in the fence, cut into the posts and so well matched I hadn’t even marked it, popped open, and Deirdriu’s face peeked through.

“You’re just the right size for this,” she said. “The guards have to crawl through on their knees.” There were pieces of chain staked into the hill to make handholds, and Deirdriu guided me so I was able to slither from one to the next. Soon we were sitting under clouds of pear blossom.

For a long time she was quiet, and so was I. The busy noise of the settlement faded away, replaced by a lazy murmur of bees overhead. Shafts of sunlight poked here and there among the branches, turning the gray bark gold and revealing a thousand dancing motes of dust and pollen in their path. Like a dreamworld, I thought, or a held breath, so quiet it was. I watched as Deirdriu gathered little heaps of white petals into her hand and let them flutter through open fingers onto the dark cloth of her skirt.

“Lovely, aren’t they?”

I nodded. Her eyes were faraway, and I did not want to bring her back by speaking. One finger stroked the single velvet petal remaining in the palm of her hand.

“I wish I could have covered him with these petals. He was like that, you know, so lovely—gold and green, like the spring. It was he showed me the little door, when we first loved each other. We used to meet in this orchard.” Now the brilliant eyes rested on me, bruised violets in the dew. I thought I would weep at the sight of them, but I could not look away.

Her voice was low and sad and private. “I begged him not to come back here. Did I not dream how it would end? Three birds I saw, bearing drops of honey in their mouths, sweet as Conchobor’s honeyed lies. But it was drops of blood the birds bore away with them. And now my Naoise is gone, and I am alone with my tears.”

“I’m sorry for your grief,” I whispered. I had never said those words to anyone before, never tasted the ash of them in my mouth. Deirdriu seemed to really see me then, see how young I was.

“It’s sorry I am, little one,” she said. “I should not burden you with such talk.”

She had, though. It’s true that young as I was, I could already draw peoples’ stories from them, just by listening and waiting. But there was a strange recklessness to Deirdriu also, despite her quiet manner. She did not hide her heart, not even from a child, and her grief touched me like cold fingers in my belly. They scrabbled and stretched, and I knew suddenly that there was more, and worse, to come.

I scrambled to my feet under pretext of looking for Fintan, trying to thrust aside the bad, scared feeling that was growing in me. I know that feeling now, and it no longer frightens me, but I will never welcome it.

Whistling, searching the trees, I called for Fin. Please don’t have flown off, I thought. I need you. I thought of him, I suppose, as a kitten you could cuddle for comfort after scraping your knee. That’s another thing I know now: Fintan is no kitten.

He burst out of the leaves in an untidy flapping jumble, landing on a branch behind and above Deirdriu’s head. Making me see, he was.

She was backlit in the afternoon sun, her hair a golden halo around her. But her face—it was all darkness, a fractured black emptiness. The cold fingers clenched, and I saw blood spatter in the darkness, and I heard my own stricken cry.

“Lady! What is it that cloaks you in blackness?”

Her voice, floating out of the shadow, was calm and dreamy. “Conchobor says he will give me to the man who killed my Naoise if he does not get my welcome on his return. But Eoghan will never lie with me. This I have sworn.”

I turned tail and ran, ran from the black clutch of the icy fingers and the desolation that swept over me.