Crimson Spear
All characters in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
CRIMSON SPEAR: THE BLOOD OF CÚ CHULAINN. Copyright © 1986, 1988, 1998 by Gregory Frost. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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ISBN: 978-0-7595-2326-5
Originally published in separate volumes as Táin and Remscela.
First eBook edition: April 2001
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Contents
Preface to CRIMSON SPEAR edition
TAIN
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part Two
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
REMSCELA
Interlude One
Chapter 1
Interlude Two
Chapter 2
Interlude Three
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Interlude Four
Chapter 5
Interlude Five, Part One
Chapter 6
Interlude Five, Part Two
Chapter 7
Interlude Six
Chapter 8
Interlude Seven
Chapter 9
Interlude Eight
Chapter 10
Colophone
Glossary
Dedication
Two dedications for these two books:
First to My Muse, always.
Second, to the warriors of AANA, who teach me—
Osu!
Preface to CRIMSON SPEAR edition.
Crimson Spear: The Blood of Cú Chulainn comprises two previously published novels, Tain and Remscela.
The two books derive from the Ulster Cycle of Celtic mythology, known also as the Táin Bó Cuailnge (tahn bo koo al’ nyah). It is the story of a cattle raid upon Ulster Province perpetrated by the royal couple of Connacht, its neighbor, and defense of the province by its semi-divine hero Cú Chulainn.
He is a hero in the most traditional, Joseph Campbellian sense—his mortal mother was whisked away by a god, and he is their product. And like any traditional hero, he has his Achilles Heel. In fact, perhaps because he’s Irish, he has more than his share of them.
The Tain is the single surviving example of Irish Celtic epic at the level of a Beowulf, or a Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Although there are other stories, such as the Book of Invasions, these are often apocryphal histories, and do not reflect the life of the Celtic peoples as does the Táin Bó Cuailnge. The story is set in Bronze Age Ireland. The gods are specific to the time and place. But how old are the stories themselves? This no one knows. No single intact version of it survives, and all representations of it have been knit together. What we have was copied down by scribes, no doubt from oral recitation. The monasteries became the repositories for the secular tales; and no doubt many more were lost to us, courtesy of the Vikings who had an annoying habit of eradicating every monastery they came across.
The earliest extant version exists in the Leabhar na hUidhre, the Book of the Dun Cow, produced in the early 12th century. It and other manuscripts make reference to materials dating from the 7th century, and the tales are themselves very much pre-Christian. Much of the material is fragmentary at best. For instance, one, called Version C, consists of just two pages. The interrelationship of the fragments has long been debated and will likely never be resolved since there is no “first draft” to compare them against.
When the actual events might have occurred has been estimated at between 100 and 500 B.C. There is, however, some evidence that the stories may be even older and not Irish in origin at all. Archaeological evidence, in particular the Gundestrup cauldron recovered from a peat bog in Denmark in 1891, suggest that elements within the tales, if not the tales themselves, were well known on the European continent. And anthropological studies into the elements of the tales have found many correlations with more ancient stories from India. Some speculate that the stories moved with the Indo-European migration across Europe and to the British Isles. Whether or not that is true is consideration for serious scholarship elsewhere.
In researching the surviving stories of Cú Chulainn and his adventures, I began with Thomas Kinsella’s excellent translation. Rather than attempt to copy or parrot something that is likely the best translation that will ever be, I tried to reflect, in this rendition, the comic, the mad and fantastic aspects of the stories. To recreate this atmosphere, I have thrown in contemporary references and assorted anachronisms as they seemed appropriate.
Two terms that occur repeatedly in this volume should be mentioned here. The first is geis (geisa, plural). This was an adjuration upon one’s honor. A geis could go either way: it could compel someone to perform a certain act or, more commonly, it might prohibit them from doing something. The weight it carried is nearly inestimable, and the geis, occurring many times in the Celtic tales, always represents a turning point, a key element, in the story. The person uttering the geis is inevitably someone magical, most often a Druid, which gives it religious significance as well. So strong was the belief in the power of it, that a person might die from their awareness of violating it. This suggests as well the power that words had to these people—much more than we recognize now.
The other term is the word Sídhe. The Sídhe were a magical race that had gone underground. It was imagined they lived in caves and hillsides, in fairy mounds, called síd, which can still be pointed out to travelers in Ireland. Their behavior toward mortals is often capricious; they play cruel tricks. They were known to steal people from their homes to their Many-Colored Land where time stood still.
There exist within the body of the Ulster Cycle stories that do not directly pertain to the raid—the subject of the first part of this edition, but which include many of the same characters, and these stories are sometimes referred to as the remscéla (rem shkae’ la), or pre-tales. In using that scholarly term for the title of the second half I took something of a liberty with it, using it as an expression of all the tales that are not specifically about the infamous cattle raid.
Some of them I found in sources such as Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Táin Bó Cúalnge, by Joseph Dunn (1914), which are themselves culled from many earlier sources—manuscripts ranging in date from the twelfth to the nineteenth century.
In researching the material, I found that certain stories, separated from the main body of the Táin, began to form a story of their own, that of a young hero who has seen the shining event of his life while still a teenager and now has nothing to look forward to, and who knows this. Following his stand against Connacht, Cú Chulainn sinks into a slow decline during the seven years that Ulster and Connacht remain at peace—a decline that eventually leads him into madness—into depression and hopelessness and guilt. He is a weapon of war at war with himself.
Where dominance is the thread running throug
h the first volume, the state of—and fall from—grace colors the latter one.
There are fragments, further stories, from the manuscripts that still remain unrevised: the death-tales of many of the characters; the story of how Conall Cernach got his crossed-eyes, by allowing blood from a magical severed head to drip on him, or of how all of his lovers subsequently became cross-eyed when they fell in love with him; and of Cú Chulainn’s little-known other wife, Ethne. These are all interesting and worthy tales, but they did not contribute to the substance of these stories and were left out. The serious student of Celtic lore will want to track them down.
Finally, a note on the text as regards the canonical hours represented in the Remscela volume. In the daily life of a monk, all events were ordered around the seven observed hours. As used herein they are as follows, with times approximate:
matins or lauds: first light
prime: sunrise
terce: third hour, midmorning
sext or meridies: noon
nones: mid-afternoon
vespers: sunset
compline: seventh and last, at nightfall.
I close the introduction then by reciting as an ancient bard might have done, the words most appropriate for beginning this tale:
“Once upon a time when there was no time . . .”
TAIN
PROLOGUE
1. In the Feast Hall
The boy stood halfway up the green hillside, glaring down on all he saw. His stiff body was as thin as a hazel sapling and his hair, combed straight back and fanning across his shoulders, was so bright it could have been dyed with saffron. His large contemptuous eyes echoed the sky’s blue, but were wet with stinging tears of resentment. His cheeks burned bright red where his foster-father had slapped and then backhanded him. A rusty taste of blood tainted his saliva. He looked for all the world like an enraged young god: like Lugh of the Long Arm, the Sun, crisping the Fomoiri with his anger.
Rough stone steps under his worn sandals led up to a round feast hall whose thatched roof was visible just beyond the crest of the hill. Below, the stones divided the hillside, their discontinuous line extending past a dozen rickety round huts down to the valley where the objects of his hatred—his foster-father and brother—waded waist-deep in sheep.
At sixteen, Senchan was just a year shy of acknowledged manhood—of release from the bond of fosterage—and he had no idea who he was or what he was meant to be. His training had been left to chance, his growth to undernourishment, his brain to rot. His whole life it seemed had been robbed from him.
When he was a year old, his blood-father had fobbed Senchan off on Selden Ranoura, the ill-tempered man whose handprints had tattooed Senchan’s face on this and so many other occasions that the sting never quite stopped. His blood-father was a minor king in a world where minor kings were as plentiful as pimples, as distinguished as acorns. Life had changed on the island since the time when kingship mattered; the past lay buried beneath the steady and importunate tread of Christian soles; they who came to Ireland last of all invaders, neighboring ages after all island cultures had been assimilated.
Gods and kingships alike were eradicated; goddesses were forged into saints, given new faces, new attributes. Still, some few aspects of the old society hung on tenaciously and forced the new order to adapt.
One such ancient custom was fosterage. It took two forms:
that of affection and that of payment. In Senchan’s case love never for a moment entered the bargain. In return for accepting the burden of his tutelage, Selden received four head of runny-eyed cattle given to explosive, toxic farting. Not much in the way of payment for fifteen years of tutelage. Selden had long ago ceased to exercise his responsibilities. He found instead that he preferred to train Senchan as a whipping boy.
With just one more long year to go, Senchan was determined to grit his teeth and withstand his torments silently, proudly. Few alternatives presented themselves. The old saying went that there were three ways to terminate a fosterage prematurely: Death, Crime, and Marriage. Senchan had no intention of dying. A criminal act he held beneath his dignity as the son of a king, however thin the royal blood running in his veins. And thus far he had yet to find anyone to wed. Selden’s daughters had more bristles on their numerous chins than all the boars in Meath. Till Senchan earned the rights of a man he must abide; then he would repay Selden for all the ignominies shoveled upon him, for the bruises and the welts. Until then, his silence must continue. But the anger, the rage rising like a sun inside him, needed a safe means of release. And so, periodically, he sneaked off to vent his anger in the empty feast hall—where, in fact, he was forbidden to go until the ceremonies of maturity took place … which added a certain sweetness to the act.
In the center of the feast hall stood an octagonal arrangement of copper and brass screens that reached nearly to the ceiling. Their hammered surfaces revealed triskeles the width of a hand, spirals and trumpets, and faces—some hideous, others impassive. Old gods, stripped of their worth. Of them all, Senchan knew the identity of just one—an antlered character squatting cross-legged on the panel facing the doorway. This was Ruad Rofessa, also called the Dagda, which meant “the good god,” although the Dagda had come to symbolize all forces satanic to the builders of monasteries. These screens were remnants of a pagan past, their value stamped out. Now they simply surrounded the central hearth to act as a chimney for peat smoke. Today, as Senchan stole inside, they had forsworn even this duty. The interior of the feast hall was clouded with smoke as thick as stirabout. Shields hung on the walls glimmered dimly like the eyes of nocturnal monsters.
Senchan always found this place eerie, but never more so than today. Often he had thought someone sat beside him in the dimness listening to his muttered curses, his promises of evisceration and castration for both fathers, all brothers. He long ago rescinded all ties to this family. His few friends understood his intolerable situation, but they could only pity him. A mother might have soothed his blistered soul, but Selden’s wife had died long before Senchan arrived, and the old bastard’s squalid whore sided with Selden in everything.
“I hate you all,” he hissed defiantly and plunged deeper into the dimness. The sound of it echoed around the empty hall as if the walls had sighed. “My spit should burn you. I could dig out your eyes with my fingers.” He went down on his knees and gouged the ground. “He has no worth. He measures his value in words tied to his tongue, so he can use them and reel them in again. Nothing but deceits and boasts. Why does he hate me? What choice did I have in where I went? He blames me! Oh, God, I hate him. His daughters I’ll make shave their hairy chins in the foamy blood bubbling on his lips, while I watch him die and laugh! For all the times, I’ll—I’ll …” Senchan’s fists pounded dents into the dirt. He pounded and pounded until his rage was spent, then lay there, a swollen-eyed rag totem in a linen tunic. Ultimately he knew he would perform none of these things, which knowledge served only to amplify his useless fury. Not that he was a coward, but he was likewise no fool, regardless of what Selden called him. To slay Selden would bring the entire settlement out after his blood. Unfortunately, among all the other skills neglected in his teaching was the handling of weapons, and how long could he last when he cannot even fend off a blow? One hour? Two? He cried to the earth. He was trapped within traps within traps.
There came a soft scraping sound.
Forgetting his misery, acting by instinct, Senchan rolled across the floor and dove beneath a congeries of furs. He wriggled in amongst itchy leather that smelled of vintage sweat. His head emerged just enough to peer out. He sniffed, dabbed dirty fingers under his eyes, inadvertent makeup. If they saw or heard what he said, he was doomed in any case—a violator as surely as if he had raped his own estranged mother. Selden would beat him to a cripple for being in here. But the feast hall looked empty. Possibly brighter than when he entered—could the smoke have thickened? He started to suggest to himself that it was just imagination that had made the
sound, when the room grew brighter still.
Like a birch tree stuffed through the chimney hole, a shaft of pure white light shot down into the area enclosed by the screens. Heart pounding, his mouth tasting like bloody brine, Senchan tried to account for it, but knew that no errant beam of light could do that. The scraping sound began again. The ground beneath him shuddered.
The screens were parting.
Where they divided, brilliant light burst forth in a knife-edged line across the floor and up the pile of furs. Senchan’s blue eyes sparkled with divine radiance What was happening? He could not guess: it was like some scoffed—at tale of fairies and will-o’-the-wisps unfolding before him. He burrowed back further into the furs. Just one eye remained exposed, a single sapphire in a fuzzy niche.
What that one eye beheld left him in no doubt that the last beating he’d suffered had rattled his brains.
Inside the parted screens, on top of the smoldering bricks of peat, squatted an enormous black cauldron. Rings as big around as his wrists hung from its lip, and triskeles and figures much like those on the screens decorated its bulbous sides. It was the immensity of this vat that had pushed apart the screens. The thing seemed to have grown up out of the fire, to have swelled into being all at once. Were that all, he could almost have accepted it. But perched on the rim, as if someone lay inside the vat luxuriating in a hot bath, were two bare feet, soles wet and as pink as baby flesh. And the toes wriggled.
The feet slid down, out of sight, splashed. A lifetime of moments passed. Then a head began to rise up where the feet had been, the light grown so bright that the color was bleached from hair and skin—it was a face of chiseled chalk, a face of rigid bone, of death. Its wide eyes did not scan the room, oh no. They stared straight into the heap of furs, right at him. The nose was bent, maybe scarred across the bridge. The beard-ringed mouth when it appeared was grinning. A finger popped up beside it, crooked and invited him to come on out, no good hiding from this apparition. The spectre also had a voice, one full of life, lust and humor. The voice said, “Senchan, Senchan—I spy Senchan,” a man sing-songing a child’s decree.