King Diarmuid
In the sunlit days while Rome yet trembled on a single hill, there was a great battle fought in Munster of the Music, great, as befitted a hosting of Kings — fierce as a strife of brothers. On that high plateau looped by the curves of the winding Lee, sentinelled by Ardrum, it had raged from noon to noon of two summer days with varying fortune, the fray now toppling over the great ridge of Curragh Beg, now raving along Farren height, even to Rossbeg, amid whose foot-hills it sank hoarsely to rest, the spent combatants giving tardy ear to the mighty Druid of Rostellan who had hastened from his woods to stay the hideous fight, and not unwillingly they heard his decree which ran thus — Thomond’s king, Diarmuid, should without bite or sup march northward across the fords of the Lee to Lisnaraha, while the men of Desmond should fall back beyond the Bride to Lisheens and the hills above at the dawning of the day, ere award of dispute be made.
Although he had kept the Gap of Danger through all the hot hours of conflict, cin Diarmuid did not sleep well, and towards daybreak turned on his side with such a sigh and such a clatter of armour that Conor of the Women, his foster-brother, woke languidly yawning, and asked how he fared. “Badly,” replied the king, “I have scarce closed an eye.” “Art thou wounded?” Diarmuid shook his head. “Hast thou not glory enough,” pursued the other, “outside are many men sleeping very quietly, and yet their heads rest not on the breasts of Victory?”
The king sighed. “The breasts of a mortal woman come between me and forgetfulness,” he replied, patting the muzzle of Scathach, his old wolf-hound, as waking at his feet she lifted herself to lick his hand. “What is the favour of her?” said Conor of the Women. “She is tall, with a roundness on every limb of her that drives gauntness afar, and a broadness and a depth about her that would make another clumsy. Her hair is the very gold of the sun, her colour, new milk with on it the hue of apple-blossom, and under it the purple of royal veins. Her face, a cara, is Tir-na-n-Oge!”
“Truly, thou hast won such a woman as I would possess,” murmured Conor, after a pause. “Thou wilt find harpers enough at Lisnaraha to woo her thither — and if not her, another as fair. Where have ye met?” “Never once in this life,” replied the king, “but her face came before me while the Druid was speaking, and since it has burned in my thought.”
Conor of the Women smiled, drawing his cloak about him. “The Lee willcool that vision,” he said, “phantom women love not fresh water.” And again he slept.
The king, propped upon an elbow, lay watching the camp fires dwindle in the dusk of dawn; amid the oak groves by the river a thrush was singing of the glory yet to be. Caressing the ears of Scathach, Diarmuid lay and listened, the music soothing him as the perfume of woodbine cools the brow of an August night, but sleep came not: so, rising heedfully, he donned his helmet rich with battle dinted gold, and went apart from the sleeping camp. The valleys of Bride and Lee slept too beneath grey shadows, but eastward the fire tower near Corca Luige showed sharp, and the white dun on the bold height men now call Frankfield made a spot of light; westward, the mountain peaks were rosy. A zephyr quivered amid the heron feathers on his crest. Too young to sing about the tree tops or whisper in the reeds, it had shrunk from the brave stretches of Farren, affrighted by the grim war-plumes that fluttered at its touch above stern brows locked against the tender fingers of the Dawn. As the light grew there was a pale glinting over the misty field of fight, and here a helm, there an axe blade gleamed among the wreathed slain. King Diarmuid sought a rocky mound guarded by pines, the ruggedness of it softened by the prattling of a rill that brightened the tint of its mosses, like a child dancing beside an old man soured by the evil of life.
Vague thoughts drifted through the king’s mind as he stood beneath the changing sky, dreams of the Tuatha De Danann from whom he sprang, dim revisitings of things heard beyond the golden veil of infancy, and the face of the dream-woman wove itself into those visions, and from amid the warp and woof of them the haunting eyes spoke invitation.
From out the white sea floating above the pleasant plains and scaling the valley sides something black and hooped slowly disentangled itself, painfully crawling towards Diarmuid — something very old, very feeble, that once had been a woman. As she laboured up, the sobbing of her spent breath brought a flush to Diarmuid’s cheek, and he descended to assist her. When the mound was gained she leaned for a space, gasping, against a pine stem, and then, lifting her seamed face, whispered “Hail, O King, I crown thee with victory and honour.”
Diarmuid bowed gravely. She was silent some moments, groping and gasping, then, putting the white thin strands of hair from her enrhumed eyes, she looked upward with the pathos of childhood. “Art thou not Diarmuid of Thomond,” she asked, “whose glory it is never to refuse a woman aught?” “It is as thou sayest, mother,” he replied.
“Gaze upon me, and listen in pity,” she murmured. “I was a woman of the Tuatha De Danann, my mother a princess of the far land of Phoenicia, but suddenly stricken from the bloom of great beauty to what I am. After Cuchulain had vanquished the Power on Slieve Mis, Blathnaid asked my help to woo him to the dun of the man who won her from him. I gave it, but on the day the Finneglas ran white, power and place were reft from me in punishment, and, O King, in one half-hour my beauty, for I was lovelier than the dawn.”
She spoke with convulsive intakings of breath, telling of her beauty simply, as old women do, praising what is gone as we praise the dead whose living worth never wrung a syllable from our jealous tongues. Diarmuid fixed his grey eyes upon her, compassion stirring in his mighty heart. The woman caught by a paroxysm of coughing, sank down.
From the great tent of the Captains Conor came forth, stretching tired arms and yawning, Scathach at his heels, stretching and yawning too. Seeing the king he waved his hand. “Wilt to the river, O Diarmuid,” he cried, “we may not break fast till Lisnaraha be won, but a bath will make marching merrier?”
“I am occupied,” replied the king.
Conor’s negligent eye fell upon the heap huddled beside the grey stones, and he laughed carelessly. “Weaving charms for the golden-haired woman?” he said gaily. “Or, maybe, ’tis thus thy dream comes true. Let not such sweet converse, I pray thee, stay the marching beyond the appointed hour!” And humming a tune those hills know well, he turned away, Scathach in his jingling wake.
Diarmuid gazed down upon the woman, she had covered her head with the hem of her tattered cloak, and as she now drew it away there was colour fighting through the myriad wrinkles on her parchment cheek. “Hard has been thy lot,” said the king. “Hard it would have been out of Eire,” she replied, “but here, I never knew scorn nor scathe.”
The king smiled proudly. “And what may I do? I am a stranger here, and we march on the instant.”
“Truly a great thing — great to madness,” she answered. “It was adjudged by Bride, in pity, that if I who had helped to betray a great man could find a greater to take my woe upon him, in strictest silence, for one hour’s quarter, or until the sun paints the pine shadow above yonder monadans, I might win back for natural space youth and beauty, and after them, the preciousness of death. Often have I sought such a one, but ever failed — wilt thou fail me?”
“And then?” demanded Diarmuid, striving to probe what truth might lie behind the viscid gleam where eyes had been.
“I know not,” she replied, “and the risk hath affrighted many.” Then bending forward with a crackling of joints, she fell at his knees. “Oh if ever woman pillowed thy head on her bosom, adventure for me,” she whispered, “the burden of the years is crushing, and the long pain of the mind that cannot grow old!”
“Many women have I known,” replied Diarmuid, “for one only would I adventure such a thing.” And he spoke of the dream-woman who had troubled him. A whimpering, pitiful beyond the power of words to express, interrupted him. The woman was sobbing, her white hair about the insteps of the feet that never went backward from danger. The man drew his sword, and swore to silence. “Lady, I will adventure!” he said.
As the blade shot back there came a mighty rustling in the pine tops that stirred not. “Water,” whispered a dry voice, “sprinkle me!” Diarmuid gathered some from the runlet and lightly tossed it over the head where now there was a faint glow of gold. Ona sudden he grew weary, and leaned perforce against the pine stem. A dimness filmed his vision, bells rang in his ears and the chanting of thin voices—
Diarmuid of Thomond, of woman the tool—
One morn a hero, the next but a fool,
He raised his drooping head, looking round haughtily, but said no word, although he had begun to ache at every joint. Brushing a hand across his eyes, he saw for a moment distinctly the amber of the dawn and a woman against it, her face turned eastward. At first he marvelled only at the gold-shot splendour of her crimson mantle and the silvery whiteness of her robe, its deep-bordered hem splashed by violet fancies; then, as she turned slowly her ecstatic face westward, he recognised the woman of his dreams.
Slowly she lifted the dazzling perfection of her snowy arms and touched tentatively, then with greedy fingers, the great masses of golden hair that brightened the sunrisé, and, laughing delightedly, wound the coils over her blue-veined wrists in a luxury of possession.
The sharpness of vision dulled again, the soundless bells tinkled, the voices sang—
High in his place great Conor shall rule,
And women shall tell of Diarmuid the Fool.
After a while the woman turned towards him, her red lips parted. A footstep whispered in the grass; it stopped, drowned by the sudden jangle of harness and scabbard. She was now looking past Diarmuid — smiling. The king heard Conor’s voice in respectful greeting, and saw the warrior bend over her little hand. Never had Munster beheld a pair more evenly matched in eye and port. The king looked down upon himself and hardly repressed a cry. It was not the body of Diarmuid without blemish, but a shrivelled casing of shrunken bones sharp-showing through mouldering rags. Green brass bound yet the rotted leather at his waist, and the weight of a sword blade rusted to its sheath, dragged heavily at his left side. A weight too was pressing on the crown of his head, and the red rusted rim of his helmet was sinking over the half extinguished light of his sunken eyes. There was moisture running down the channels from those eyes, and moisture at the corners of his mouth. He strove feebly to wipe it away, but soon it recommenced, and he realized that he was very old. Dimly he could see the woman and Conor in conversation, she did not glance at him again. Conor was blind save for the enchanting face smiling upon him.
“And so thou didst come to behold the victor of the fight? It is my sorrow and my pleasure, lady, to ask thee to content thyself with only his poor foster-brother. Perchance he is ordering the marching, or maybe, beguiling the time in converse with a most adorable dame.” And with the hair-brained insolence of youth, he laughingly described the woman who had accosted the king. “Tis wonder thou didst not mark them,” he went on — “yonder, where that old man is blinking in the sun. Hark ye, friend, didst see King Diarmuid and an old hag here?”
Diarmuid strove to leave the pine and approach them, but his head reeled. Through Conor’s words came the steady tramp of marching feet and before his glazing eves the passing of spear heads. His men were filing on to the fords. A mocking breeze blew out of the East and carried in their train the mouldering fragments of his plume that had lightened on the crest of battle twelve little hours before. A hoarse chant swelled up from a thousand throats, the triumph song of Diarmuid which the harpers had composed over night, and the victors sang on the edge of the day.
He strove to stand erect as the faces he knew swept past — would he ever march with them again? Would he ever again know the mad joy of onset, the delirium of fame, or sweeter than all, the homage of woman’s eyes! He stretched out a shrivelled hand over whose knuckles the bracelets fell clattering, and opened his mouth to cry “It is I — Diarmuid, the King!” but the memory of his oath fell upon his tongue, and broken by the struggle, he sank to the kindly earth, his forehead bowed upon his cold knees as the last rank went by.
A soft muzzle was thrust against his face, the muzzle of Scathach who, following Conor from the river, had run beside the lines, seeking the king, and then casting back, found him. Diarmuid looked up, patting, the rough head with heavy hand, the shadow of the pine had fallen on the red berries.
With the neighing of steeds and a clattering of brass, Conor’s chariot glitte red near. He was entreating the woman to mount. She looked back on the poor wasted face weeping at mouth, and at eyes almost hidden by the rim of the rusted helm where only the untarnishable gold shone pure. There was pity, loathing, anguish in her lovely eyes, but, having taken a few steps, she paused, writhing, convulsed by the revulsion of woman’s flesh. Conor’s shadow mingled with hers. “Tis but some man-at-arms, beggared and old, watching to plunder the dead,” he whispered, “No fit sight for thee.”
She bent her golden head, and silently moved on to where the hound’s tongue was tenderly licking the ashen cheek. Conor interposed. She held her way, pressing recklessly on into his arms, and before he was aware of it, he kissed her, intoxicated by the flower and perfume of her loveliness. She pushed him aside one proud moment, and as he sank on his knee, burst into a passion of weeping.
For one instant a blazing hate flamed through Diarmuid, flamed from shrivelled feet to palsied head, then, an infinite comprehension, a noble pity quenched it ——— And then the gods were kind.
Some peasants burying the dead chanced upon a hand- ful of bones not worth spading back to earth, guarded by a wolf-hound showing toothless gums in futile defence. They did not harm her, but took the helmet at whose splendour they wondered, slowly rubbing it back to brightness, and telling each other that it was fit for a great man, yea, for King Diarmuid himself.
Originally Published in DANA, an Irish Magazine of Independent Thought, No. 4, 1904