Kitabı oku: «The Washer of the Ford: Legendary moralities and barbaric tales», sayfa 10

A bull lowed, where it stood among the sea-grass, stamping uneasily, and ever and again sniffing the air. Suddenly one heifer, then another, then all the kye, began a strange lowing. The dogs rose, with bristling felts, and crawled sidelong, snarling, with red eyes gleaming savagely.

Bethoc, the young third wife of Rumun, was awake, dreaming of a man out of Eirèann who had that day given her a strange pleasure with his harp and his dusky eyes. She knew that lowing. It was the langanaich an aghaidh am allamharach, the continued lowing against the stranger. She rose lightly, and unfastened the leather flap, and looked down from the grianan where she was. A man stood there in the shadow. She thought it was the harper. With a low sigh she leaned downward to kiss him, and to whisper a word in his ear.

Her long hair fell over her eyes and face and blinded her. She felt it grasped, and put out her hand. It was seized, and before she knew what was come upon her she was dragged prone upon the man.

Then, in a flash, she saw he had yellow hair, and was clad as a Norseman. She gasped. If the sea-rovers were come, it was death for all there. The man whispered something in a tongue that was strange to her. She understood better when he put his arm about her, and placed a hand upon her mouth.

Bethoc stood silent. Why did no one hear that lowing of the kine, that snarling of the dogs which had now grown into a loud continuous baying? The man by her side thought she was cowed, or had accepted the change of fate. He left her, and put his foot in a cleft. Then, sword under his chin, he began to climb stealthily.

He had thrown his spear upon the ground. Soundlessly Bethoc stepped forward, lifted it, and moved forward like a shadow.

A wild cry rang through the night. There was a gurgling and spurting sound as of dammed water adrip. Rumun sprang from his couch, and stared out of the aperture. Beneath he saw a man, speared through the back, and pinned to the soft wood. His hands claspt the frayed deer-skins, and his head lay upon his shoulder. He was laughing horribly. A bubbling of foam frothed continuously out of his mouth.

The next moment Rumun saw Bethoc. He had not time to call to her before a man slipped out of the shadow, and plunged a sword through her till the point dripped red drops upon the grass beyond where she stood. She gave no cry, but fell as a gannet falls. A black shadow darted across the gloom. A crash, a scream, and Rumun sank inert, with an arrow fixed midway in his head through the brows.

Then there was a fierce tumult everywhere. From the pastures the kye ran lowing and bellowing, in a wild stampede. The neighing of horses broke into screams. Here and there red flames burst forth, and leapt from hut to hut. Soon the whole rath was aflame. Round the dûn of Rumun a wall of swords flashed.

All had taken refuge in the dûn, all who had escaped the first slaying. If any leaped forth, it was upon a viking spear, or if the face of any was seen it was the targe for a swift-sure arrow.

A long penetrating wail went up. The Culdees, on the further loch, heard it, and ran from their cells. The loud laughter of the sea-rovers was more dreadful to them than the whirling flames and the wild screaming lament of the dying and the doomed.

None came forth alive out of that dûn, save three men, and seven women that were young. Two of the men were made to tell all that Olaus the White wanted to know. Then they were blinded, and put in a boat, and set in the tide-eddy that would take them to where the Culdees were. And, for the Culdees, they had a message from Olaus.

Of the seven women none was so fair that Morna had any heed. But seven men had them as spoil. Their wild keening had died away into a silence of blank despair long before the dawn. When the light came, they were huddled in a white group near the ashes of their homes. Everywhere the dead sprawled.

At sunrise the vikings held an ale-feast. When Olaus the White had drunken and eaten, he left his men and went down to the shore to look upon the fortified place where Maoliosa the Culdee and his white-robes lived. As he fared thither through what had been Bail’-tiorail there was not a male left alive save the one prisoner who had been kept, Aongas the Bow-maker as he was called: none save Aongas, and a strayed child among the salt grasses near the shore, a little boy, naked and with blue eyes and laughing sunny smile.

THE FLIGHT OF THE CULDEES

ON the wane of noon, on the day following the ruin of Bail’-tiorail, sails were descried far east of Skipness.

Olaus called his men together. The boats coming before the wind were doubtless his own galleys which he had lost sight of when the south-gale had blown them against Skye: but no man can know when and how the gods may smile grimly, and let the swords that whirl be broken or the spears that are flat become a hedge of death.

An hour later, a startled word went from viking to viking. The galleys in the offing were the fleet of Sweno the Hammerer. Why had he come so far southward, and why were oars so swift and with the stained sails distended before the wind?

They were soon to know.

Sweno himself was the first to land. A man he was, broad and burly, with a sword-slash across his face that brought his brows together in a frown which made a perpetual dusk above his savage blood-shot eyes.

In a few words he told how he had met a galley, with only half its crew, and of these many who were wounded. It was the last of the fleet of Haco the Laugher. A fleet of fifteen war-birlinns had set out from the Long Island, and had given battle. Haco had gone into the strife laughing loud as was his wont, and he and all his men had the berserk rage, and fought with joy and foam at the mouth. Never had the Sword sang a sweeter song.

“Well,” said Olaus the White, grimly, “well: how did the Raven fly?”

“When Haco laughed for the last time, with waving sword out of the death wherein he sank, there was only one galley left. Of all that company of vikings there were no more than nine to tell the tale. These nine we took out of their boat, which was below waves soon. Haco and his men are all fighting the sea-shadows by now.”

A loud snarling went from man to man. This became a wild cry of rage. Then savage shouts filled the air. Swords were lifted up against the sky, and the fierce glitter of the blue eyes and the bristling of the tawny beards were fair to see, thought the captive women, though their hearts beat against their ribs like eaglets against the bars of a cage.

Sweno the Hammerer frowned a deep frown when he heard that Olaus was there with only the Svart-Alf out of the galleys which had gone the southward way.

“If the islanders come upon us now with their birlinns we shall have to make a running fight,” he said.

Olaus laughed.

“Aye, but the running shall be after the birlinns, Sweno.”

“I hear that there are fifty and nine men, of these Culdees yonder, under the sword-priest Maoliosa?”

“It is a true word. But to-night, after the moon is up, there shall be none.”

At that, all who heard laughed, and were less heavy in their hearts because of the slaying and drowning of Haco the Laugher and all his crew.

“Where is the woman Brenda that you took?” Olaus asked, as he stared at Sweno’s boat and saw no woman there.

“She is in the sea.”

Olaus the White looked. It was his eyes that asked.

“I flung her into the sea because she laughed when she heard of how the birlinns that were under Somhairle the Renegade drave in upon our ships and how Haco laughed no more, and the sea was red with Lochlin blood.”

“She was a woman, Sweno – and none more fair in the isles, after Morna that is mine.”

“Woman or no woman I flung her into the sea. The Gael call us Gall: then I will let no Gael laugh at the Gall. It is enough. She is drowned. There are always women: one here, one there – it is but a wave blown this way or that.”

At this moment a viking came running across the ruined town with tidings. Maoliosa and his Culdees were crowding into a great birlinn. Perhaps they were coming to give battle: mayhap they were for sailing away from that place.

Olaus and Sweno stared across the fjord. At first they knew not what to think. If Maoliosa thought of battle he would scarce choose that hour and place. Or was it that he knew the Gael were coming in force, and that the vikings were caught in a trap?

At last it was clear. Sweno gave a great laugh.

“By the blood of Odin,” he cried, “they come to sue for peace!”

Slowly across the loch the birlinn, filled with white-robed Culdees, drew near. At the prow stood a tall old man, with streaming hair and beard, white as sea-foam. In his right hand he grasped a great Cross, whereon was Christ crucified.

The vikings drew close one to the other.

“Hail them in their own tongue, Sweno,” said Olaus.

The Hammerer moved to the water-edge, as the birlinn stopped, a short arrow-flight away.

“Ho, there, priests of the Christ-faith!”

“What would you, viking?” It was Maoliosa himself that spoke.

“Why do you come here among us, you that are Maoliosa?”

“To win you and yours to God, pagan.”

“Is it madness that is upon you, old man? We have swords and spears here, if we lack hymns and prayers.”

All this time Olaus kept a wary watch inland and seaward, for he feared that Maoliosa came because of an ambush.

Truly the old monk was mad. He had told his Culdees that God would prevail, and that the pagans would melt away before the Cross.

The ebb-tide was running swift. Even while Sweno spoke, the birlinn touched a low sea-hidden ledge of rock.

A cry of consternation went up from the white-robes. Loud laughter came from the vikings.

“Arrows!” cried Olaus.

With that three score men took their bows. There was a hail of death-shafts. Many fell into the water, but some were in the brains and hearts of the Culdees.

Maoliosa himself stood in death, transfixed to the mast.

With a wild cry the monks swept their oars backward. Then they leaped to their feet and changed their place, and rowed for life or death.

The summer-sailors sprang into their galley. Sweno the Hammerer was at the bow. The foam curled and hissed.

The birlinn grided upon the opposite shore at the selfsame moment when Sweno brought down his battle-axe upon the monk who steered. The man was cleft to the shoulder. Sweno swayed with the blow, stumbled, and fell headlong into the sea. A Culdee thrust at him with an oar, and pinned him among the sea-tangle. Thus died Sweno the Hammerer.

Then all the white-robes leaped upon the shore. Yet Olaus was quicker than they. With a score of vikings he raced to the Church of the Cells, and gained the sanctuary. The monks uttered a cry of despair, and, turning, fled across the moor. Olaus counted them. There were now forty in all.

“Let forty men follow,” he cried.

Like white birds, the monks fled this way and that. Olaus and those who watched laughed at them as they stumbled because of their robes. One by one fell, sword-cleft or spear-thrust. The moorland was red.

At the last there were less than a score – twelve only – ten!

“Bring them back!” Olaus shouted.

When the ten fugitives were captured and brought back, Olaus took the crucifix that Maoliosa had raised, and held it before each in turn. “Smite,” he said to the first monk. But the man would not. “Smite!” he said to the second: but he would not. And so it was to the tenth.

“Good,” said Olaus the White: “they shall witness to their god.” With that he bade his vikings break up the birlinn, and drive the planks into the ground, and shore them up with logs.

When this was done he crucified each Culdee. With nails and with ropes he did unto each what their god had suffered. Then all were left there, by the water-side.

That night, when Olaus the White and the laughing Morna left the great bonfire where the vikings sang and drank horn after horn of strong ale, they stood and looked across the loch. In the moonlight, upon the dim verge of the further shore, they could discern ten crosses. On each was a motionless white splatch.

MIRCATH

The Mire Chath was the name given to the war-frenzy that often preceded and accompanied battle

WHEN Haco the Laugher saw the islanders coming out of the west in their birlinns, he called to his vikings: “Now of a truth we shall hear the Song of the Sword!”

The ten galleys of the Summer-Sailors spread out into two lines of five boats, each boat an arrow-flight from those on either side.

The birlinns came on against the noon. In the sun-dazzle they loomed black as a shoal of pollack. There were fifteen in all, and from the largest, midway among them, flew a banner. On this banner was a disc of gold.

“It is the Banner of the Sunbeam,” shouted Olaf the Red, who with Torquil the One-Armed was hero-man to Haco. “I know it well. The Gael who fight under that are warriors indeed.”

“Is there a saga-man here?” cried Haco. At that a great shout went up from the vikings: “Harald the Smith!”

A man rose among the bow-men in Olaf’s boat. It was Harald. He took a small square harp, and he struck the strings. This was the song he sang:

 
Let loose the hounds of war,
The whirling swords!
Send them leaping afar,
Red in their thirst for war;
Odin laughs in his car
At the screaming of the swords!
 
 
Far let the white-ones fly,
The whirling swords!
Afar off the ravens spy
Death-shadows cloud the sky.
Let the wolves of the Gael die
’Neath the screaming swords!
 
 
The Shining Ones yonder
High in Valhalla
Shout now, with thunder.
Drive the Gaels under,
Cleave them asunder —
Swords of Valhalla!
 

A shiver passed over every viking. Strong men shook as a child when lightning plays. Then the trembling passed. The mircath, the war-frenzy, came on them. Loud laughter, went from boat to boat. Many tossed the great oars, and swung them down upon the sea, splashing the sun-dazzle into a yeast of foam. Others sprang up and whirled their javelins on high, catching them with bloody mouths: others made sword-play, and stammered thick words through a surf of froth upon their lips. Olaf the Red towered high on the steering-plank of the Calling Raven, swirling round and round a mighty battle-axe: on the Sea-Wolf, Torquil One-Arm shaded his eyes, and screamed hoarsely wild words that no one knew the meaning of. Only Haco was still for a time. Then he, too, knew the mircath: and he stood up in the Red-Dragon and laughed loud and long. And when Haco the Laugher laughed, there was ever blood and to spare.

The birlinns of the islanders drave on apace. They swayed out into a curve, a black crescent there in the gold-sprent blue meads of the sea. From the great birlinn that carried the Sunbeam came a chanting voice:

 
O ’tis a good song the sea makes when blood is on the wave,
And a good song the wave makes when its crest o’ foam is red!
For the rovers out of Lochlin the sea is a good grave,
And the bards will sing to-night to the sea-moan of the dead!
Yo-ho-a-h’eily-a-yo, eily, ayah, a yo!
Sword and Spear and Battle-axe sing the Song of Woe.
Ayah, eily, a yo!
Eily, ayah, a yo!
 

Then there was a swirling and dashing of foam. Clouds of spray filled the air from the thresh of the oars.

No man knew aught of the last moments ere the birlinns bore down upon the viking-galleys. Crash and roar and scream: and a wild surging: the slashing of swords, the whistle of arrows, the fierce hiss of whirled spears, the rending crash of battle-axe and splintering of the javelins, wild cries, oaths, screams, shouts of victors and yells of the dying, shrill taunts from the spillers of life and savage choking cries from those drowning in the bloody yeast, that bubbled and foamed in the maelstrom where the war-boats swung and reeled this way and that – and over all the loud death-music of Haco the Laugher.

Olaf the Red went into the sea, red indeed, for the blood streamed from head and shoulders and fell about him as a scarlet robe. Torquil One-Arm fought, blind and arrow-sprent, till a spear went through his neck, and he sank among the dead. Louder and louder grew the fierce shouts of the Gael: fewer the savage screaming cries of the vikings. Thus it was till two galleys only held living men. The Calling Raven turned and fled, with the nine men who were not wounded to the death. But on the Red Dragon Haco the Laugher still laughed. Seven men were about him. These fought in silence.

Then Toscar mac Aonghas that was leader of the Gael took his bow. None was arrow-better than Toscar of the Nine Battles. He laid down his sword and took his bow, and an arrow went through the right eye of Haco the Laugher. He laughed no more. The seven died in silence. Swaran Swift-foot was the last. When he fell he wiped away the blood that streamed over his face.

“Skoal!” he cried to the hero of the Gael, and with that he whirled his battle-axe at Toscar mac Aonghas: and the soul of Toscar met his, in the dark mist, and upon the ears of both fell at one and the same time the glad laughter of the gods in Valhalla.

THE LAUGHTER OF SCATHACH THE QUEEN

Scathach (pronounced Scá-ya or Ský-ya) was an Amazonian queen of the Isle of Skye, and is supposed to have given her name to that island

IN the year when Cuchullin left the Isle of Skye, where Scathach the warrior-Queen ruled with the shadow of death in the palm of her sword-hand, there was sorrow because of his beauty. He had fared back to Eiré, at the summons of Concobar mac Nessa, Ard-Righ of Ulster. For the Clan of the Red Branch was wading in blood, and there were seers who beheld that bitter tide rising and spreading.

Cuchullin was only a youth in years: but he had come to Skye a boy, and he had left it a man. None fairer had ever been seen of Scathach or of any woman. He was tall and lithe as a young pine: his skin was as white as a woman’s breast: his eyes were of a fierce bright blue, with a white light in them as of the sun. When bent, and with arrow half-way drawn, he stood on the heather, listening against the belling of the deer; or when he leaned against a tree, dreaming not of eagle-chase or wolf-hunt, but of the woman whom he had never met; or when, by the dûn, he played at sword-whirl or spear-thrust, or raced the war-chariot across the machar – then, and ever, there were eyes upon his beauty and there were some who held him to be Angus Ogue himself. For there was a light about him, such as the hills have in the sun-glow an hour before set. His hair was the hair of Angus and of the fair gods: earth-brown shot with gold next his head, ruddy as flame midway, and, where it sprayed into a golden mist of fire, yellow as windy sunshine.

But Cuchullin loved no woman upon Skye, and none dared openly to love Cuchullin, for Scathach’s heart yearned for him, and to cross the Queen was to put the shroud upon oneself. Scathach kept an open face for the son of Lerg. There was no dark frown above the storm in her eyes when she looked at his sunbright face. Gladly she slew a woman because Cuchullin had lightly reproved the maid for some idle thing: and once, when the youth had looked in grave silence at three viking-captives whom she had spared because of their comely manhood, she put her sword through the heart of each, and sent him the blade, dripping red, as the flower of love.

But Cuchullin was a dreamer, and he loved what he dreamed of, and that woman was not Scathach, nor any of her warrior-women who made the Isle of Mist a place of terror for those cast upon the wild shores, or stranded there in the ebb of inglorious battle.

Scathach brooded deep upon her vain desire. Once, in a windless shadowy gloaming, she asked him if he loved any woman.

“Yes,” he said, “Etáin.”

Her breath came quick and hard. It was for pleasure to her then to think of Cuchullin lying white at her feet, with the red blood spilling from the whiteness of his breast. But she bit her underlip, and said quietly:

“Who is Etáin?”

“She is the wife of Mídir.”

And with that the youth turned and moved haughtily away. She did not know that the Etáin of whom Cuchullin dreamed was no woman that he had seen in Eiré, but the wife of Mídir the King of Faerie, who was so passing fair that Mac Greine, the beautiful god, had made for her a grianan all of shining glass, where still she lives in a dream, and in that sun-bower still is fed at dawn upon the bloom of flowers and at dusk upon their fragrance. O ogham mhic Gréine, tha e boidheach,¹⁵ she sighs for ever in her sleep: and that sigh is in all sighs of love for ever and ever.

Scathach watched him till he was lost behind the flare of the camp-fires of the rath. For long she stood there, brooding deep; till the sickle of the new moon, which had been like a blown feather over the sun as it sank, stood out in silvershine against the blue-black sky, now like a wake in the sea because of the star-dazzle that was there. And what the queen brooded upon was this: whether to send emissaries to Eirèann, under bond to seek in that land till they found Mídir and Etáin, and to slay Mídir and bring to her the corpse, for a gift from her to lay before Cuchullin: or to bring Etáin to Skye, where the Queen might see her lose her beauty and wane into death. Neither way might win the heart of Cuchullin. The dark tarn of the woman’s mind grew blacker with the shadow of that thought.

Slowly she moved dûn-ward through the night. “As the moon sometimes is seen rising out of the east,” she muttered, “and sometimes, as now, is first seen in the west, so is the heart of love. And if I go west, lo the moon may rise along the sunway: and if I go east, lo the moon may be a white light over the setting sun. And who that knoweth the heart of man or woman can tell when the moon of love is to appear full-orbed in the east or sickle-wise in the west?”

It was on the day following that tidings came out of Eirèann. An Ultonian brought a sword to Cuchullin from Concobar the Ard-righ.

“The sword has ill upon it, and will die, unless you save it, Cuculain son of Lerg,” said the man.

“And what is that ill, Ultonian?” asked the youth.

“It is thirst.”

Then Cuchullin understood.

On the night of his going none looked at Scathach. She had a flame in her eyes.

At moonrise, she came back into the rath. No one, meeting her, looked in her face. Death lay there, like the levin behind a cloud. But Maev her chief captain sought her, for she had glad news.

“I would slay you for that glad news, Maev,” said the Dark Queen to the warrior-woman, “for there is no glad news unless it be that Cuchullin is come again: only, I spare, for you saved my life that day the summer-sailors burned my rath in the south.”

Nevertheless, Scathach had gladness because of the tidings. Three viking-galleys had been driven into Loch Scavaig, and been dashed to death there by the whirling wind and the narrow furious seas. Of the ninety men who had sailed in them, only a score had reached the rocks: and these were now lying bound at the dûn, awaiting death.

“Call out my warriors,” said Scathach, “and bid all meet at the oak near the Ancient Stones. And bring thither the twenty men that lie bound in the dûn.”

There was a scattering of fire and a clashing of swords and spears, when the word went from Maev. Soon all were at the Stones beneath the great oak.

“Cut the bonds from the feet of the sea-rovers, and let them stand.” Thus commanded the Queen.

The tall fair men out of Lochlin stood, with their hands bound behind them. In their eyes burned wrath and shame, because that they were the sport of women. A bitter death theirs, with no sword-song for music. “Take each by his long yellow hair,” said Scathach, “and tie the hair of each to a down-caught bough of the oak.”

In silence this thing was done. A shadow was in the paleness of each viking-face.

“Let the boughs go,” said Scathach.

The five score warrior-women who held the great boughs downward, sprang back. Up swept the branches, and from each swung a living man, swaying in the wind by his long yellow hair.

Great men they were, strong warriors: but stronger was the yellow hair of each, and stronger than the hair the bough wherefrom each swung and stronger than the boughs the wind that swayed them idly like drooping fruit, with the stars silvering their hair and the torch-flares reddening the white soles of their dancing feet.

Then Scathach the Queen laughed loud and long. There was no other sound at all there, for none ever uttered sound when Scathach laughed that laugh, for then her madness was upon her.

But at the last Maev strode forward, and struck a small clarsach that she carried, and to the wild notes of it sang the death-song of the vikings.

 
O arone a-ree, eily arone, arone!
’Tis a good thing to be sailing across the sea!
How the women smile and the children are laughing glad
When the galleys go out into the blue sea – arone!
O eily arone, arone!
 
 
But the children may laugh less when the wolves come,
And the women may smile less in the winter – cold —
For the Summer-sailors will not come again, arone!
O arone a-ree, eily arone, arone!
 
 
I am thinking they will not sail back again, O no!
The yellow-haired men that came sailing across the sea:
For ’tis wild apples they would be, and swing on green branches,
And sway in the wind for the corbies to preen their eyne,
O eily arone, eily a-ree!
 
 
And it is pleasure for Scathach the Queen to see this:
To see the good fruit that grows upon the Tree of the Stones.
Long, speckled fruit it is, wind-swayed by its yellow roots,
And like men they are with their feet dancing in the void air!
O, O, arone, a-ree, eily arone!
 

When she ceased, all there swung swords and spears, and flung flaring torches into the night, and cried out:

 
O, arone a-ree, eily arone, arone,
O, O, arone, a-ree, eily arone!
 

Scathach laughed no more. She was weary now. Of what avail any joy of death against the pain she had in her heart, the pain that was called Cuchullin?

Soon all was dark in the rath. Flame after flame died out. Then there was but one red glare in the night, the watch-fire by the dûn. Deep peace was upon all. Not a heifer lowed, not a dog bayed against the moon. The wind fell into a breath, scarce enough to lift the fragrance from flower to flower. Upon the branches of a great oak swung motionless a strange fruit, limp and gray as the hemlock that hangs from ancient pines.