Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [32]
“You cannot refuse to go.”
Conall brooded silently awhile.
“Perhaps I can,” he murmured.
It would be best, the druid thought, not to tell the High King about that.
Winter had nearly passed, and still he had not come. Some days, Fergus thought, Deirdre looked paler than the moon. Even her brothers noticed she was moody. It was a bad day, her father thought, that I ever took her to the Lughnasa at Carmun. A sad thing, he saw it now, that she had met Conall.
At first he had supposed Conall would come again. Deirdre was no fool; he did not think she had mistaken the young man’s interest. Conall cared for her. But time went by and there was no sign of him. The chief even made discreet enquiries about the young prince. He had discovered, and gently warned his daughter about, the druids’ geissi that governed Conall’s life. “Men who are marked by the fates like that,” he cautioned her, “do not always have easy and untroubled lives.” But it was clear that such warnings meant nothing to her.
So why hadn’t he appeared? There could be many reasons. But as he saw his daughter silently pining, one thought came into his mind again and again, and each time it came, it grew insidiously. For whose fault was it that Conall did not come? It was not the prince’s, nor Deirdre’s. The fault was his own. Why should a prince like Conall marry the daughter of Fergus? There was no reason at all. If he were a great chief, if he had riches—it might be another matter. But he had none of these.
Other men on the island, of no greater ancestry than he, had joined in the great raids across the sea or gone off fighting, winning riches and renown. But what had he done? Stayed at Dubh Linn, watched over the ford, entertained travellers at his house.
That had been part of the trouble. When travellers came to the house of Fergus, they were well entertained. Fergus would think nothing of slaughtering a pig, or even a heifer, to provide a lavish meal for a guest. The old bard, who would recite to him most evenings, was always generously paid. The families from the outlying farmsteads, who called him their chief, would always find food and welcome at his house; and if they were behind with the modest tribute of cattle or hides that they owed him, these debts were often forgiven. It was the simple repetition of these modest displays of status, so essential to his dignity as he saw it, that had led Fergus in recent years to contract a number of debts which he kept hidden from his family. He had managed to get by, because the cattle had always saved him. He had an inborn talent as a cattleman and he thanked the gods for it. But his hidden embarrassment gnawed at him, especially since his wife’s death, and now the realisation of his failure in life came to torture him.
Yet what am I? he thought. What can men say of me? There goes a man that’s proud of his daughter. There’s a girl who’ll bring her father a good price. And what have I ever done, that she should be proud of me? Little enough. That was the truth of it. And now there was his daughter in love with a man who wouldn’t marry her because of her father.
She never spoke of it. She went about her daily tasks as usual. Sometimes, before midwinter, he had seen her staring across the cold waters by the ford. Once she had walked over to the headland to look at the little island she loved so much. But by winter’s end, she no longer looked at anything but what was to hand, unless it was to stare, dully, at the cold, hard ground.
“You’re paler than a snowdrop,” he said to her one day.
“Snowdrops wilt. I shall not,” she answered. “Were you afraid,” she suddenly asked with grim humour, “I should fade away before my wedding day?” And when he shook his head: “You’d best be taking me up to my husband in Ulster.”
“No,” he said gently. “Not yet.”
“Conall is not coming.” She sounded resigned. “I should be grateful for the good man you found me.”
You should be grateful for nothing, he thought. But aloud he said, “There’s time enough yet.”
Then