Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [11]
In his present state, she could just see her father getting into a fight. And then? There would be no mercy shown to the old chief from the obscure little territory of Dubh Linn. She trembled to think of it. For a month she had tried to persuade him not to go. But to no avail. He was determined to go, and to take herself and her two young brothers with him.
“I’ve important business there,” he told her. But what that business might be, he would not say.
So she had been taken by surprise by what had happened the day before they were due to leave. He had gone fishing early with her brothers and returned in the middle of the morning.
Even in the distance, you couldn’t mistake Fergus. It was his walk. When he was out on the hills with his cattle or moving along the riverbank to go fishing, Fergus was unmistakable. His tall frame moved with an unhurried ease; his long, slow strides ate up the distance. He seldom talked when he was walking, and there was something in his manner, as he moved across the quiet landscape, which suggested that he regarded not only this region but the whole island as his personal estate.
He had come across a stretch of grassland, with a long stick in his right hand and his two sons following dutifully behind. His face, with its big moustache and long nose, was watchful and quietly thoughtful in repose—in which condition, Deirdre realised, it reminded her of a wise old salmon. But as he drew close, his face had broadened and creased into an engaging smile.
“Did you catch something, Father?” she asked.
But instead of answering her question, he had pleasantly remarked, “Well, Deirdre, we’re off tomorrow to find you a husband.”
For Goibniu the Smith, the strange business had begun one morning the month before. He couldn’t really account for what happened that day. But then the place, it was known, was crowded with spirits.
Of all the island’s many rivers, none was more sacred than the River Boyne. Flowing into the eastern sea a day’s journey to the north of Dubh Linn, its rich banks were under the control of the Ulster king. Slow-moving, stocked with stately salmon, the Boyne flowed softly through the most fertile soil in the whole island. But there was one place—a site on a low ridge overlooking the Boyne’s northern bank—where most men feared to go. The site of the ancient mounds.
It was a fine morning when Goibniu came round the side of the mound. He always went up there if he was passing through the area. Other men might be afraid of the place, but he wasn’t. To the west, in the distance, he could see the top of the royal Hill of Tara. He had stared down the slope to where the swans were gliding on the waters of the Boyne. A fellow with a sickle was walking along the track by the riverbank. He glanced up at Goibniu and gave a grudging nod which Goibniu returned with ironic politeness.
Not many people liked Goibniu. “Govnyoo” the name sounded. But whatever they felt, the smith didn’t care. Though not tall of stature, his restless eye and quick intelligence soon seemed to dominate any group he joined. His face was not pleasing. A chin that jutted out like a rock, pendulous lips, a beak of a nose that came down almost to meet them, protruding eyes, and a forehead that receded under thinning hair: these alone would have produced a face not easily forgotten. But in his youth he had lost one of his eyes in a fight, and as a result, one eye was permanently closed while the other seemed to loom out of his face in a fearsome squint. Some said that he had assumed that squinting expression even before he had lost the eye. It might have been so. In any case, people called him Balar behind his back, after the evil, one-eyed king of the Fomorians, a legendary