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  THE WARRIOR’S DAUGHTER

  HOLLY BENNETT

  Copyright © 2007 Holly Bennett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now

  known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Bennett, Holly, 1957-

  The warrior’s daughter / written by Holly Bennett.

  ISBN 978-1-55143-607-4

  I. Title.

  PS8603.E62W37 2007 jC813’.6 C2006-906671-X

  Summary: The daughter of Ulster’s mightiest warrior must

  find her own path through grief, pain and wonder.

  First published in the United States 2007

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2006938221

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its pub-

  lishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of

  Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and

  the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia

  through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover artwork, cover design, interior map: Cathy Maclean

  Typesetting: Christine Toller

  Author photo: Wayne Eardley

  The author is grateful for the support of the Canada Council

  for the Arts which enabled the research for this book.

  In Canada: In the United States:

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  010 09 08 07 • 5 4 3 2 1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My special thanks are due first and foremost to storyteller, author, scholar and “legendary tour guide,” Richard Marsh of Dublin, for showing me the locations where this story takes place, suggesting useful research sources, clarifying areas of confusion, proofreading my manuscript for technical errors and being an all-around goldmine of information. Any remaining errors are, of course, mine and not his.

  Thanks also to:

  Joanne Findon, Associate Professor of English Literature at Trent University and Ulster Cycle scholar, for advising me on the pronunciation and phonetic spelling of old Irish names;

  Lady Augusta Gregory, for seeing the beauty and value of these ancient stories and first bringing them to the English-speaking public;

  My editor, Sarah Harvey, for helping me find the right balance of modern and traditional narrative and holding my hand through the hard parts;

  Cover illustrator, Cathy Maclean, for the three gorgeous covers she has designed for my stories;

  My agent, Lynn Bennett;

  And finally, thanks to my family for their whole-hearted support and above all to my husband, John, who bravely drove me all over Ireland in a standard-transmission car.

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  A Note on Names

  Map

  Prologue

  PART 1

  Chapter 1 The Warrior’s Wrath

  Chapter 2 Hound of the Forge

  Chapter 3 The Lone Defender

  Chapter 4 The Weakness of Ulster

  Chapter 5 Ulster Rises

  Chapter 6 The Queen of Sorrow

  Chapter 7 Caught Between Worlds

  Chapter 8 The Woman of the Sidhe

  Chapter 9 Dun Dealgan

  Chapter 10 The Making of a Maiden

  Chapter 11 The Stranger on the Strand

  Chapter 12 The Champion Falls

  Chapter 13 Emer’s Grief

  PART II

  Chapter 14 Lost on the Wind

  Chapter 15 The Poet’s Curse

  Chapter 16 The Dance of Death

  Chapter 17 Cathbad’s Son

  Chapter 18 Friends and Helpers

  Chapter 19 The Hidden Road

  Chapter 20 Treasures Found

  Chapter 21 The Isle of Women

  Chapter 22 Samhain on the Island

  Chapter 23 The White Blossom

  Chapter 24 The Hill of Tlachta

  Chapter 25 Cuchulainn’s Daughter

  Epilogue

  Fiction and Myth

  Who’s Who—And How To Say It

  PREFACE

  When I first stumbled across the ancient Irish sagas of Cuchulainn and his wife Emer, I fell instantly in love. Never had I read a traditional tale so full of emotional resonance, or peopled with such wonderful characters. And presumptuous though I knew it was to attempt an interpretation of another culture’s myth, Cuchulainn and Emer preyed on my mind until it was useless to resist. Bolstering my nerve with the thought of my Irish great-grandparents, I plunged in.

  These stories, dating from about the time of Christ, were first written down in Medieval Irish script in various versions and fragments starting from about the eighth century AD. Without the scholarship and dedication of the people who pieced them together and translated them into a coherent English narrative, they would have been forever beyond my reach. My heartfelt thanks, then, go to the two translators I relied on most heavily: Lady Augusta Gregory, who wrote her Cuchulain of Muirthemne in 1902, and Thomas Kinsella, who published The Táin in 1969.

  Although Lady Gregory omitted some passages she thought her squeamish Victorian audience “would not be interested in,” and has been accused of being over-flowery, her translation has a charming idiomatic voice that brought the characters of the Tain alive to me. I have borrowed her words for the dialogue in several places, and I hope she would take this as I intend it: as a tribute to the beauty of her speech and a way of bringing some feel of the “original” to the modern reader. Kinsella’s more spare and muscular narrative has a classic epic tone and was a constant reminder to me that the Iron Age Celts (1000 BC–43 AD) did not inhabit the dreamy landscape of medieval chivalry that is familiar to most readers, but a tougher and lustier place altogether.

  The characters in the Cattle Raid of Cooley—the Táin Bó Cuailnge—hurl themselves through life at a kind of fever pitch: no challenge unmet, no love denied, no risk too daunting, no oath refused. And then, having embraced their lives with such blazing passion, they give them up with the same reckless abandon, to the spear or the sword, to broken hearts or unbearable shame, even to the humiliation of a satirist’s caustic tongue. They must have been short enough, those lives, and perhaps the final blaze of glory was after all a better way to end than the slow, painful onslaught of disease that was the likely alternative.

  I loved these people, with their pride and their courage, their determination to burn bright rather than burn long. I hope you like them too.

  A NOTE ON NAMES

  What to do with all these Irish names? Too beautiful to replace with English versions, they are nevertheless a daunting mouthful for an Anglo reader and nearly impossible to pronounce correctly without coaching. I’ve settled on this solution: I’ve kept most names as I found them (usually the simplest of the available variants), and provided a pronunciation guide (Who’s Who—and How to Say It, p. 224) that is no more than a rough approximation. But you know what? It’s a story, and whatever pronunciation you hear in your own head will do just fine. Loo-ayn does not, to my ear, sound as pretty as Loo-in-ya, but my heroine, Luaine, will answer to either one.

  In a couple of cases, I’ve replaced an Irish place name with a simpler spelling currently in use. If you go to Ireland today, you can visit the Cooley Hills, so I saw no need to puzzle t
he reader with “Cuailnge.”

  And finally, I have omitted the fadas, or accents, from all Irish words, since they are no help to a North American reader.

  I am a raven that has no home; I am a boat going from wave to wave; I am a ship that has lost its rudder; I am the apple left on the tree; it is little I thought of falling from it; grief and sorrow will be with me from this time.

  —Lady Augusta Gregory, Cuchulain of Muirthemne

  PROLOGUE

  It’s true my father was a mighty man altogether.

  Not all the stories they tell about him are true, of course, or not entirely. We are, after all, a people who love a good tale even better than a good fight, and I do not blame the bards for adding their own improvements to the history of the great Cuchulainn. Indeed, I am grateful, for in even the most fantastic details I find a true memory of the living man.

  There are no stories about me, however—nor will there be, if Cathbad has his way. When those who knew me pass from this earth, the memory of my name will pass with them. Doubtless he is correct; Cathbad is counted wise among the druids, though like any man he has his own reasons for his advice.

  And so I seek obscurity, at least for my old name. But there is enough of my father in me—and my mother too, for Emer was hardly one to shrink into the shadows!—to want my own story told, at least one time.

  Will you listen and keep silent? It is my life I am trusting you with.

  My name was Luaine.

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  THE WARRIOR’S WRATH

  The old white horse, usually so slow and patient, was frisky as a colt that day, and I was having a hard time to make him mind. Perhaps it was the rich breath of spring gone to his head; if truth be told, my own attention wandered away on the breeze more than once.

  I was kicking him up from a trot to a canter when a sudden jolt catapulted me forward and my view was suddenly of muddy ground rather than blue sky and wattle fencing. Clutching with hands and knees, I managed to hang on to his neck—just. Completely unconcerned with the small person clinging upside down to his mane, the evil old nag cropped contentedly at the clump of vetch that had caught his eye.

  Snorting with laughter, the stable master loped over to rescue me.

  “Can you regain your seat, young miss, or will you and your horse be parting company?”

  “Get me down, Niall!” It was a long way to the ground and an ugly landing at the end.

  “That I will not. But I will show you how to get yourself down should this ever happen again. Though you would do better to keep control of your steed in the first place.”

  Strong hands supported me, guiding my head down beside the horse’s neck and drawing my feet up and over in a somersault. To my surprise, I landed with a bump and a stagger but on my feet.

  “Luaine!”

  It was my mother, striding toward the paddock with my nurse fluttering behind. There was a controlled urgency to her voice that made it clear this was no time for protests or games. I looked to Niall.

  “Go on, then,” he said as he boosted me over the fence. “I’ll take care of this old bugger.”

  My mother hurried to meet me. “Come along, Luaine, you can’t stay out here.” She held out her slim hand and pulled me up the steep path that led to our gate.

  We were nearly across the yard before I managed to ask, “What is wrong, Ma?”

  “I’ve just had word your father returns, and with the battle-frenzy still upon him. He scarce knows friend from foe while the red wrath drives him. It’s inside and out of sight with you, now. I will come when it is safe for you to see him.”

  “Mistress,” my nurse quavered, “should you not hide yourself here as well? Will you not be in danger also?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” My mother stopped and turned to Tullia in genuine indignation. “I will greet my husband as is my duty and my privilege. He is no danger to me.” She said this in utter confidence, and I understood suddenly that not only was she unafraid, she was glad of the challenge. There was honor and pride for her, in knowing how to gentle my father back to himself. “Tullia, you had best stay here with Luaine. My lord would not wish to strike off your head unawares.”

  Poor Tullia blanched at the reproof and drew me hastily into my mother’s workroom. Tucked beside our main hall, the room was dominated by her great loom and cluttered with bags of fleece and bright skeins of wool. It was a room for women’s arts and my father never went there.

  As we sat silently in the room’s darkest nook, I thought of the wild descriptions I had heard of my father in battle. How my eyes shone with excitement, and my mother’s with pride, when he recounted his victories! All mighty warriors know the frenzy—the battle madness that gives them strength and reckless ferocity—but my father’s, to hear tell, was truly terrifying. I shuddered as I tried to picture it: the fire flashing from his bared teeth, the spout of smoking blood rising out of his skull, the one eye sucked deep in his head while the other hung down over his cheek. A nightmare come to life.

  Even at seven, I knew some of what was told was plain nonsense. How could a man be after fighting with his legs and feet turned backward in his skin? But the thought stole over me, when I heard the thunder of hoofbeats and the rumble of chariot wheels that heralded his arrival, to see for myself.

  I bolted away from Tullia and scrambled up the ladder to the loft that ran right around the big circle of our house. Hurrying past the tidy storage areas for grain and herbs, sausages and hams, bedding and extra sleeping pallets, I made for the spot just above the door. Then I pulled out the small work knife I carried at my waist and began hacking at the roof thatch, not minding the damage I was causing or the scratches I suffered as I thrust my thin arms into the bundled reeds. It was dauntingly hard work—thatch, I discovered, is a lot tougher than you might think—and hot up there under the eaves. By the time I finally had a peephole carved out I was afraid it might be too late. But I crouched and put my eye to it nonetheless, and I caught my breath at the view that spread out below me: a long sweep of thatch and then the crescent of our yard, edged with the strong fence and heavy front gate, and beyond that the plain of Muirthemne, green on green on green to the very end of my sight.

  Up until that day I had never been afraid of my father. I saw but little of him for he was often away, but he was always kindly and fair-spoken to me. And then of course, he was so handsome. Women adored him, and I suppose I was no exception. He had a smile on him that poured over you so that you had to smile back, just for the joy of seeing it. When he looked at you—really looked at you—with approval or affection, you wanted to swim forever in the dazzling blue light of his eyes.

  He was young and boyish still, full of tricks and playfulness. And if he had sometimes forgotten his strength and caused hurt to his playmates as a boy on the field of Emain Macha, he never did so with me. He would throw me high into the air—not some little toss, it’s looking down on the thatch of the roof I was—and catch me as gently as if I were landing on a feather pillow. He would take me up on his great gray horse and we would race across the plain till the world streamed by me in a blur, and never did it occur to me that I might fall. For my father himself had tamed that horse, which nobody else could approach, and ridden him without once losing his seat while The Gray bucked and fought over all the provinces of Ireland. It must have alarmed my mother when he began to play with me so, but no doubt she soon saw that he kept care for me, for she did not speak against it.

  She liked it better when he entertained us with his feats and tricks, for then she could relax her mother’s watchfulness. “Fetch the apples,” he would say with a wink, and I would run to the pantry and struggle to drag out the big basket of them, determined I would need no help. He would start to juggle, a few at first, then more and more until the air was thick with apples. And I would squirm and giggle in anticipation, for suddenly his sword would be out, and the apples falling in halves around us in a great pile, with none ever landing
in one piece.

  When we had done laughing and clapping, my mother would call for a servant girl. “Take these in to the cook. It’s honeyed apples for everyone tonight!”

  I could have clung to that happy image of my father, and part of me did want to run back to my nurse’s arms and stay a baby. But the stronger part of me needed to know. And so I ignored Tullia’s fearful call, and I watched.

  My mother stood entirely alone, a straight still figure. I thought she must be the most beautiful woman on earth, with her hair that gleamed bronze in the sunlight and the smooth white skin of her arms. Gold caught the light at her neck—the rich red gold, it was, that looked so fine with her hair.

  Cuchulainn’s chariot thundered over the plain with a din that made me cover my ears—oh, it was a brave sight, though, with the two great horses racing before it and the silver knives bristling from its wheels! Then it was my father, vaulting over the side before the horses could stop and striding up to the open gate where my mother waited. She bowed her head very deeply and did not move.

  I was relieved to see his eyes both where they belonged. But on my soul, they were not the eyes I knew. Wild and bloodshot, they squinted at my mother as if he could barely see. With the gold gleaming on him and the stain of blood streaked over his body, his clothes rent as though he had burst out of them, he was the most fearsome thing I had seen in my short years. The face on him was dark with rage; his muscles rippled and clenched; the breath heaved out of his chest with a noise more like to a beast than a man. Indeed he seemed scarce able to speak as he wrestled to subdue the frenzy that rode him.

  His sword was still unsheathed in his hand as he towered over my mother.

  He will kill her, I remember thinking. He will give in to the pull of the sword. My heart knocked about in my chest like a weasel in a trap.

  “Welcome, Cuchulainn, Lord of Muirthemne and Champion of Ulster.” My mother had very slowly raised her head and spoke now clear and calm. She did not flinch in any way from his wildness but met his eye head on. “Welcome to your home. I am your own wife, Emer, and it’s glad I am to rejoice in your victory.”