He wended on to his little house of stout wood and roof of wattle and thatch with its dangling, dripping tie-stones, and when his wife Faencha did chiding on him for his tardiness, he was sharp with her. In a morose silence he ate his porkish supper and drank ale that was little more than barleywater whilst she overbusied her good self with her embroidery.
The man in the druidic robe meanwhile approached the wall that had been raised about the splendid house of the High-king; of oak was the wall, and over half a foot in thickness.
There he came upon two men in bronze-decorated helmets and close-pulled cloaks of scarlet wool. Their bare, fog-wet hands were fisted about the hafts of long spears, each banded twice with bronze. Nor said they aught, but only stared. The newcomer’s flowing sleeve whispered with the extending of his arm. They gazed on his fist, and at the signet there, and they nodded. The gate was opened respectfully for the faceless man, who passed through without the speaking of a word.
“Good it is to see a druid abroad and wearing a ring of the High-king himself, Cairthide,” one of the sentries muttered, whilst they closed the gate, “and his wife and so many others believers in the New God.”
“Good it is to be knowing a druid’s about at all, on such a night as this!” Cairthide said. His sigh emerged tremulously for he shivered. “A good night for hearth and ale-and locked door!”
His companion coughed and sniffed.
Through the grounds of the High-king strode the hooded man who seemed to have no legs. Outbuildings for storage and creaming and smithing and the housing of animals had been scattered randomly, so that it was no straight course he took. The fog was both thinner and lower to the wet wet earth as he approached the rising rig-thig, as though the high son of Laegaire was immune, respected even by the powers of earth and water and the sky that had come down this night to blanket the earth.
At the very walls of the High-king’s manse, the walker in the fog was again challenged by two men. Helmeted they were, and mailed, armed with swords and bucklers with brazen decor, and long spears and each man draped in a cloak of dark red woollen. These stalwarts took note of the newcomer’s long walking-staff, that might have been a cudgel but for his druid’s robe.
The robe-swathed man said no word, but again showed them his fist on which flashed a ring of gold and enamel and carbuncle.
“Enter then, Lord Druid,” one sentry said, opening the great door.
“And come ye in from such a surly night, Lord Druid,” the other said, with a smile, though he did not forget the respectful inclining of his head in its shining round helm.
Robes of dark green rustled like fallen leaves; leather heels fell softly; the holly stick tapped once and then was lifted clear of the floor. Otherwise in silence, the visitor passed them by. From the wall he took a candle, which he waved a bit that it might flare the better while he paced through the dark defense-hall. On his way to the chamber he sought in that high house he saw only a woman abroad. She was not the wife of the High-king, and made a little obeisance as the cowled robe passed. It gave no sign of acknowledgement.
A tawny-haired man in clean green leggings and blue smock of wool sat before the door the visitor approached. The door seemed to crawl with carven knotwork and fantastickal animals, lit and as if animated by the torch burning in a cresset of bronze to either side.
“The lord High-king is receiving no visitors, Druid.”
Once again the cowled man displayed his ring, and in silence. The other gazed upon it, blinking.
For the first time, a voice emerged from the hood. In the middle range it was, and a bit strained as though its owner had need to cough. The voice betrayed too a certain shortness of breath, for Tara Hill was no brief or easy climb.
“It is disrespectful ye be, boy, and not minded to hide it. That will come as ye gain in wisdom. Be ye follower of Iosa Chriost?”
“Aye, Lord Druid,” the green-legged man said quietly, and belligerence was absent from his voice and manner. More, he had risen and taken a step aside. He stared at the darkness between the edges of the cowl, but the light of three glims showed him only the tip of a nose. The visitor did have a face, then.
“Well-open it!”
With apologetic face and attitude, the tawnyhaired man rapped twice, paused while he counted mentally to twice ten as his most noble lord had decreed, and opened the door. It swung inward. The young man turned back just in time to wrap his fingers automatically about the candle the visitor had thrust at him.
With a whisper of his robes, the walker in the fog passed into a room alight with no less than four candles; servingmaids would certainly be at the collecting of that wax, later! He paused as if to make certain the door closed securely behind himself; it did. He was in a broad room of red yew, speckled with copper rivets and with floor-to-ceiling hangings on two walls, warmly dark and richly woven and broidered with scrollwork and fanciful animals and twining flowers.
In a carven chair behind a table set near the dancing hearth-fire a man sat, and he lifted his russet-haired head to gaze upon his visitor. High was this man’s forehead, for his hair was thinning atop even as at the temple grey usurped the rusty red, and had departed to the breadth of two fingers beyond the hairline of his youth. Jowly his face, though he was paunchy, not fat. Fog-grey eyes fixed their stare on the intruder upon his guarded, fire-warmed solitude, the seated man alone in the loosegirt robe of silver-trimmed darkest blue, collared with beaver. On his chest a broad necktorc seemed to have grown, become a carcanet studded with jewels and traced with a design of honeysuckle vine picked out in red gold. The overgrown muin-torch depended even onto his pectorals. His ten fingers bore five rings, and one of gold and coral center-set with a large carbuncle; was the mate of the ring on the guest’s finger.
The latter threw back his cowl with both hands, staff under his arm; the man by the fire smiled. His deep blue robe was split at each elbow and edged there with beaver fur; from those slashes emerged his arms in sleeves of white.
“A fine disguise, Milchu. Come, warm yourself. Indech!”
The seated man called out the last word, whereupon his visitor instantly restored his hood. Behind the door opened; the seated man looked past his guest.
“Mulled ale-no, mulled wine, Indech. And knock first!”
“At once, lord King.”
The door closed solidly. The robed man called Milchu moved to the fire.
“It’s no talking we’ll do till the wine’s after being brought, Milchu,” the king said. “Add a few oak knots if ye’re of a mind to. But it’s not for patience I’m known. Ye bring much information?”
“Much information, High-” Milchu broke off in a cough-“king of Eirrin.”
“Bodes it ill or else for Lugaid mac Laegair?”
Clearing his throat repeatedly, Milchu tossed several chunky oaktree knots onto the fire. “When the wine comes, Lugaid mac Laegair.” His voice was strained; he coughed again.
“No night for being abroad, robed or no,” High-king Lugaid said.
And they were silent, the High-king fretting restlessly with the handle of a tall mug on the table before him. Moulded as a fanciful beast was that long thin handle, though the bear thus represented was necessarily long and thin of body, and its ears rose unnaturally long and pointed: The bronze tankard was inlaid about the base with two rows of rectangles in green and red enamel; superbly carven coral formed a knotwork design betwixt the rows of rectangles. Lugaid’s ringed fingers seemed to wrestle with the bronze bear.
Come the knock they awaited; High-king Lugaid son of High-king Laegair loudly called “Enter” rather than wait those thirty or so heartbeats he had mandated as wait between knock and entry.