And why not, he mused in his confusion, for I was he, once…
He but smiled. He’d say naught. Now he knew her name, and accepted that she’d dissembled for no reason to do with him. As for himself… he, must maintain the lie of his name, even to her darling self. Feeling guilt and that strong urge to tell his real name, he tugged his lower lip in under his teeth and studied the floor.
“There… there is another lie ye’ve had of me, Partha. I have no sixteen years on me; it’s Ceann who’s sixteen, and he older than I.”
At that he looked up, suddenly smiling happily. “Ah-and will you be keeping my secret-” he paused over the name-“Samaire?”
“Aha!”
“Will you now?”
Her bantering expression vanished. “For ever, Partha.”
“My age is not sixteen, either. It’s big I am for my years-”
“Oh.”
He grinned. “-and I feared I’d not gain weaponish employment or respect, an I spoke true of being but fourteen.”
She clapped her hands and her smile was like her name, for “samair” was the word for “break of day.” “Ah! As if ye needed worry about respect… but… why it’s little more than a darling young boy ye be…”
His dark brows lowered and his eyes went serious and not happy; that he accepted not well, she saw, and she spoke swiftly while she moved to him.
“And I little more than a girl…”
“A dairlin young girl, aye…”
“Your dairlin girl, Partha, drettel…”
Their arms went around each other, and he had to bend well down to join his lips to hers, and then they were holding each other more tightly, and their mouths moved, pressing, and their hands…
…and he woke hours later beside her, and smiled, and touched her beside him, asleep, and he smiled the wider. Then he saw, even through the heavy drape at the window, that the sky was going light. He knew it was close onto cock’s crow.
Lugh’s arms and blood of the gods, he thought (for he was training himself to warlike oaths) to be caught here thus would be sorest trouble for her and death for me, sure!
Very slowly, sneakily like unto a thief, he eased himself from the bed. He dressed without waking her, and was able to make his way through the deserted assembly-house. Then through the just-waking city he strode, humming as he went, and smiling upon those who stared or scolded, and he realized: I love her!
Aye, and he did.
And she loved him.
And the days passed, in Leinster, and the weeks. The hero of the Plain of Sorrow was offered a post as second in command in another Fifty, and he asked to remain with Forgall though Forgall had a second, who was Bress. And so he stayed with those men, without rank in a Fifty whose members now called it Tara-Baiter.
Six days Partha spent on special duty, at the palace. Each evening the winsome, spear-slim Devorgill came to him on behalf of her youthful mistress Samaire, and each evening the Hero of Sorrow’s Plain said no and was adamant, for duty was duty and honour was honour, and he’d not creep like a thief for love in the House of the King. On the seventh day, as on that day before the first of the six, he met a girl named Aine in a wood at the west end of the pasture of one Bresal An-gair, and they endeavoured to make up for those missed times together. The more fool he for not coming to her in her room, she told him; the more man he, he thought.
The Blueshirts were not idle, but only at training. Now there were stories of Pictish incursions from the far side Lock Derg over to the west. The Cruithne seemed more and more bold in raiding into the north tip of Munster, that strip of Munsterish land separated Leinster from the western land south of Connacht. There Picts were settled still, and entrenched the way that Munster’s king left them alone. Along that western border of Leinster, snuggled to Munster’s “chimney,” lay little Osraige or Osry, in a thin line forming a tiny realm. Were its king to cry for aid, Ulad’s men would march. Already a few companies had been sent there, to crowd the border outposts lest the Picts come in force.
And so the Blueshirts waited, and talked of Cruithne, and kept limber with their daily training.
And the days passed, in Leinster, and the nights. On some of those nights Cormac and Samaire trysted, and, even more seldom and with greater care, during some days.
Even Cormac’s new stature and the golden torc conferred on him by King Ulad did not dissuade Bress from his weening dislike. He called his chosen enemy “Partha n’Allmurach”: the Foreigner. Nor was Bress deterred from his strong pressing of the youth. The Long-arm seemed bent on goading Cormac into drawing steel on a superior, thus to be disgraced-and perhaps slain into the bargain. Clinging to his sense of honour with difficulty, Cormac would not be so provoked. He was the better for it, in the minds of his fellows. The supposed Ulsterman was well-liked, and respected as well; Bress’s fixation cost him much respect and, as it later fell out, considerably more.
The malevolent, watchful eye of Bress mac Keth made the meetings of Cormac and Samaire more and more difficult, and thus perilous.
Now Behltain was on Eirrin; Cetsamhain that those of the New Faith called after some Gallish person or legend: Walpurga’s night. The eve of May Day; the season’s beginning and its observance more ancient among Celtic peoples than any could know.
On that happy occasion of the beginning of growth that would culminate six months later with Samhain, the end of harvest, Partha mac Othna shared words, and kisses, and much more with Aine ingin Fol, merchant of Ailenn, and they snuggled and murmured their love.
A forbidden love, they both knew. A hopeless love, he was sure. That she would not admit; Samaire held ever hope that the morrow would see to the morrow, as the old women of Eirrin were wont to say. Even her brother Ceann was more sympathetic to the clandestine lovers now, though he disapproved. Third in line or no, Ceann mac Ulaid was aware of being royalty and of the impossibility of anything good’s coming of the liaisons of his sister and the foreign weapon-man. Ceann and Devorgill-with whom indeed Ceann was known to have disported himself, but he was after all male and even in Eirrin that was different. Different-he and Devorgill were the only two who knew about the adolescent lovers. So all hoped, at any rate.
Samaire owned that Ceann kept silent because she knew about his dalliances with the very, very young wife of the old, old Condla, once called Airechta, or King’s Champion-and now called Condla Taeb-trom: Big-belly. Cormac disagreed with her, feeling that Ceann was manly, and loved his sister, and was imbued with sympathy and empathy. And Samaire told him he was both naif and over trusting.
Better had we never met, mac Art thought too often during that idyll. But it was impossible to be so dismal in her company, and her body white as the privet’s dainty blossom. Nor, in youth and in love, could he exert strength sufficient to part from her for good and all.
“A pity it is to give love to a man, and he to take no heed of it,” she said, reaching for a cup of mead that should have held hazel-nuts that night before May dawned. “It is better to be turned away, if one is not loved as one loves.”
“You are loved as you love, and more, dairlin girl.”
“Impossible that it be more, mo chroi… but don’t be tellin’ me: show me!”
And he did.
And later she told him, tracing Oghamish on his bare chest with her finger, “The colour of the glossiest raven is on his hair, and his skin like the finest new copper or a fawn’s coat, his cheek like the blood of the speckled red calf, and his swiftness and his leap are like the salmon of the stream it fights and conquers, or the fleet deer of the grey mountain… and, sure the head and shoulders of Partha Othna’s son are above all the other men of Leinster.”