The Hound of Ulster by Rosemary Sutcliff Page B

spoken, nothing was left of Curoi at all, only the foredoor of the hall crashed shut as though a great wind had blown it to.
    For the time that a man might take to draw seven breaths, no one spoke or moved in the hall of Conor the King. And then men began to leave their places and crowd round Cuchulain where he still stood beside the hearth.
    Laery came with the rest, and Conall of the Victories to set his arm about Cuchulain’s shoulders.
    â€˜Why did you speak evil words of me to such as Bricrieu Poison Tongue?’ Cuchulain said.
    And in the same instant Conall said, ‘Why did you speak poison of me to Bricrieu the Gadfly? I would not have spoken so of
you
.’
    And Laery grumbled in his russet beard, ‘Young cubs, you are, to say scornful things of me to that bird of ill omen, Bricrieu! But I am older, and should have had some wisdom.’
    And they looked from one to another in sudden understanding. ‘Bricrieu! Of course!’ and then began to laugh, and the laughter spread all up and down the hall and broke in waves of mirth against the rafters.
    And from that time forward, Cuchulain was acknowledged by all men to be Champion of all the Heroes of Ireland.

9. Deirdre and the Sons of Usna
    NOW WHEN CUCHULAIN and Emer had been together a few years in the sunny house that he had built at D Å« n Dealgan, a great sorrow and the shadow of a great threat fell upon Ulster. But the beginning of that wild story was long before, in the year that Cuchulain first went to the Boys’ House.
    In that year a certain Ulster chieftain called Felim made a great feast for the King and the Red Branch Warriors. And when the feasting was at its height, and the Greek wine was going round and the harp song shimmering through the hall, word was brought to Felim from the women’s quarters that his wife had borne him a daughter.
    The warriors sprang to their feet to drink health and happiness upon the bairn, and then the King, half laughing, bade Cathbad, who was with him, to foretell the babe’s fortune and make it a bright one. Cathbad went to the door of the hall and stood for a long while gazing up at the summer stars that were big and pollen-soft in the sky, and when he came back into the torchlight there was shadow in his face, and for a while he would not answer when they asked him the meaning of it. But at last he said, ‘Call her Deirdre, for that name has the sound of sorrow, and sorrow will come by her to all Ulster. Bright-haired she will be, a flame of beauty; warriors will go into exile for her sake, and many shall fight and die because of her, yet in the end she shall lie in a little grave apart by herself, and better it would be that she had never been born.’
    Then the warriors would have had the babe killed there and then, and even Felim, standing grey-faced among them, hadnothing to say against it; but Conor Mac Nessa, his own Queen having died a while since in bearing Follaman their youngest son, had another thought and he said, ‘Ach now, there shall be no slaying, for clearly this fate that Cathbad reads in the stars can only mean that some chieftain of another province or even maybe of the Islands or the Pict Lands over the water will take her for his wife and for some cause that has to do with her, will make war on us. Therefore, she shall grow up in some place where no man may set eyes on her, and when she is of age to marry, then I myself will take her for Queen. In that way the doom will be averted, for no harm can come to Ulster through her marriage to me.’
    So Conor Mac Nessa took charge of the child, and gave her to Levarcham his old nurse who was one of the wisest women in all Emain Macha. And in a hidden glen of Slieve Gallion he had a little house built, with a roof of green sods so that above ground it would look no more than one of the little green hillocks of the Sidhe, and a turf wall ringing it round, and a garden with apple trees for shade and fruit and