Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [27]
Then she heard the foolish slave, calling her.
Conall was in his chariot. Two swift horses were harnessed to the central shaft. On his arm, he wore a heavy bronze armlet. Befitting his rank, his chariot contained his spear, his shield, and his shining sword. It was driven by his charioteer. Over the sea, he noticed, there was a rainbow.
What was he doing? Even as the chariot came in sight of Dubh Linn and the ford, Conall had not been sure. He was about to conclude that it was all Finbarr’s fault, but had checked himself. It wasn’t Finbarr’s fault. It was the girl’s golden hair, and her wonderful eyes. And something else. He didn’t know what it was.
Conall had never been in love. He wasn’t without any experience of women. The members of the High King’s retinue had seen to that. But none of the young women he had met so far had really interested him. He had felt attractions, of course. But whenever he talked to a young woman for any length of time, he always felt as if some invisible barrier had come between them. The women themselves did not always realise this; if the High King’s handsome nephew sometimes seemed thoughtful or a little melancholy, they found it attractive. And he wished it were otherwise. It saddened him that he could not share his thoughts and that theirs, in turn, always seemed so predictable.
“You ask for too much,” Finbarr had told him frankly. “You cannot expect a young woman to be as deep and wise as a druid.”
But it was more than that. Ever since his early childhood, when he had sat alone by the lakes or watched the red sun go down, he had been overcome by a sense of inner communion, a feeling that the gods had reserved him for some special purpose. Sometimes it filled him with ineffable joy; at other times it seemed like a burden. At first he had assumed that everyone felt the same way, and had been quite surprised to discover that they did not. He had no wish to place himself apart. But as the years went by, these sensations had not passed away but had grown. And so it was that, whether he wished it or not, when he gazed into the eyes of some well-meaning girl, he was troubled by an uncomfortable inner voice that said she was a distraction, taking him away from the path of his destiny.
So why was this girl with the strange green eyes any different? Was she just a bigger distraction? He did not think she was different in kind from the other women he had met. Yet somehow the warning voice that usually troubled him, if it had been speaking, had not spoken loudly enough to be heard. He was drawn to her. He wanted to know more. It would have seemed strange indeed to Finbarr that he should have hesitated so long before he had summoned his charioteer, harnessed a pair of his swiftest horses to his light chariot, and, without saying where he was going, set off towards the Ford of Hurdles and the dark pool of Dubh Linn.
And now he found her alone, with only some of the farmhands for company. Her father and brothers had gone out hunting. He saw at once that the farmstead of Fergus was quite a modest one, and that seemed to make his visit easier. If he had called upon an important chief, the news would have travelled all over the island in no time. As it was, he crossed the hurdles, noted privately that they needed repairing, and came quite naturally to the rath of Fergus to ask for refreshment before he continued on his way.
She met him at the entrance. After greeting him politely and apologising for her father’s absence, she led him inside and offered him the usual hospitality for a traveller. When the ale was brought, she served him herself. She recalled their meeting at Lughnasa calmly and politely; yet it seemed to him that there was a quiet, laughing look in her eyes. He had forgotten that she was so delightful. And he was just wondering for how long he should prolong his stay when she asked him whether, after crossing the ford, he had looked at the dark pool that gave the place