Irish Fairy Tales - James Stephens (to read list .txt) 📗

the chariot had drawn nigh to the ford by which they were standing, and, without pause, she swung her steeds into the shallows and came across the river in a tumult of foam and spray.

“Does she not drive well?” cried Crimthann admiringly.

“When you are older,” the king counselled him, “you will admire that which is truly admirable, for although the driving is good the lady is better.”

He continued with enthusiasm:

“She is in truth a wonder of the world and an endless delight to the eye.”

She was all that and more, and, as she took the horses through the river and lifted them up the bank, her flying hair and parted lips and all the young strength and grace of her body went into the king’s eye and could not easily come out again.

Nevertheless, it was upon his ward that the lady’s gaze rested, and if the king could scarcely look away from her, she could, but only with an equal effort, look away from Crimthann.

“Halt there!” cried the king.

“Who should I halt for?” the lady demanded, halting all the same, as is the manner of women, who rebel against command and yet receive it.

“Halt for Dermod!”

“There are Dermods and Dermods in this world,” she quoted.

“There is yet but one Ard-Rí,” the monarch answered.

She then descended from the chariot and made her reverence.

“I wish to know your name?” said he.

But at this demand the lady frowned and answered decidedly:

“I do not wish to tell it.”

“I wish to know also where you come from and to what place you are going?”

“I do not wish to tell any of these things.”

“Not to the king?”

“I do not wish to tell them to anyone.”

Crimthann was scandalised.

“Lady,” he pleaded, “you will surely not withhold information from the Ard-Rí?”

But the lady stared as royally on the High King as the High King did on her, and, whatever it was he saw in those lovely eyes, the king did not insist.

He drew Crimthann apart, for he withheld no instruction from that lad.

“My heart,” he said, “we must always try to act wisely, and we should only insist on receiving answers to questions in which we are personally concerned.”

Crimthann imbibed all the justice of that remark.

“Thus I do not really require to know this lady’s name, nor do I care from what direction she comes.”

“You do not?” Crimthann asked.

“No, but what I do wish to know is, Will she marry me?”

“By my hand that is a notable question,” his companion stammered.

“It is a question that must be answered,” the king cried triumphantly. “But,” he continued, “to learn what woman she is, or where she comes from, might bring us torment as well as information. Who knows in what adventures the past has engaged her!”

And he stared for a profound moment on disturbing, sinister horizons, and Crimthann meditated there with him.

“The past is hers,” he concluded, “but the future is ours, and we shall only demand that which is pertinent to the future.”

He returned to the lady.

“We wish you to be our wife,” he said.

And he gazed on her benevolently and firmly and carefully when he said that, so that her regard could not stray otherwhere. Yet, even as he looked, a tear did well into those lovely eyes, and behind her brow a thought moved of the beautiful boy who was looking at her from the king’s side.

But when the High King of Ireland asks us to marry him we do not refuse, for it is not a thing that we shall be asked to do every day in the week, and there is no woman in the world but would love to rule it in Tara.

No second tear crept on the lady’s lashes, and, with her hand in the king’s hand, they paced together towards the palace, while behind them, in melancholy mood, Crimthann mac Ae led the horses and the chariot.

II

They were married in a haste which equalled the king’s desire; and as he did not again ask her name, and as she did not volunteer to give it, and as she brought no dowry to her husband and received none from him, she was called Becfola, the Dowerless.

Time passed, and the king’s happiness was as great as his expectation of it had promised. But on the part of Becfola no similar tidings can be given.

There are those whose happiness lies in ambition and station, and to such a one the fact of being queen to the High King of Ireland is a satisfaction at which desire is sated. But the mind of Becfola was not of this temperate quality, and, lacking Crimthann, it seemed to her that she possessed nothing.

For to her mind he was the sunlight in the sun, the brightness in the moonbeam; he was the savour in fruit and the taste in honey; and when she looked from Crimthann to the king she could not but consider that the right man was in the wrong place. She thought that crowned only with his curls Crimthann mac Ae was more nobly diademed than are the masters of the world, and she told him so.

His terror on hearing this unexpected news was so great that he meditated immediate flight from Tara; but when a thing has been uttered once it is easier said the second time and on the third repetition it is patiently listened to.

After no great delay Crimthann mac Ae agreed and arranged that he and Becfola should fly from Tara, and it was part of their understanding that they should live happily ever after.

One morning, when not even a bird was astir, the king felt that his dear companion was rising. He looked with one eye at the light that stole greyly through the window, and recognised that it could not in justice be called light.

“There is not even a bird up,” he murmured.

And then to Becfola:

“What is the early rising for, dear heart?”

“An engagement I have,” she replied.

“This is not a time for engagements,” said the calm