THE UNRAVELLING

THE UNRAVELLING

It was almost nightfall before the girl appeared in the cave. Granted, she’d mostly had her eye on other things all day, but it still seemed to take the child an inordinately long time to get there. But here she stood; tired, dirty and pale, with a slight greenish tinge which was an instant give-away to any female eye. Ana knew immediately how this was going to go.

She sighed and sent the girl to wash herself in the well, then called Macha in from the stable: “It’s your turn,” she said firmly to her sister. “Besides, you’re better at this type of thing than I am. “

“What ‘thing’?” said Macha suspiciously.

“You know … this” said Ana, laying her hand on her sister’s belly. “Though I am not sure she knows yet. Says her name’s Eithne.” Ana shrugged. “I’ve sent her out to the well.”

“Where’s Ba?” asked Macha, hanging up the grey’s tack.

“Gone down to see Mathair and the girls. She should be back soon.”

They both paused at the sound of a squeal and bird’s wings.

“Oh, they’ve met.”

Eithne was very young, but clearly wore the trappings of a wealthy marriage. She was also plainly terrified.

“Where is your husband, girl?” asked Ana, pushing a stool towards her as she clung to the wall. “Sit. Before you fall.”

“Lady,” the girl could not meet her eyes, “He has gone to Bres, to speak of battle.”

Ana nodded. “And his name?”

Eithne’s voice was almost inaudible “Elcmar, Lady.”

“And where does your household think YOU are?”

“Fetching a cow.”

The girl raised her head. “I came to ask for your help.”

“Clearly”, said an acerbic third voice, as a hand came out of the shadows to take the eye from Ana’s hand. “Even we can see that. And I suppose the spark in your belly has something to do with it?”

The girl stared at the floor.

“Cows wander and bellies fill and empty with monotonous regularity,” said Macha. “You are not the first and you won’t be the last. What is his name?”

A look of blind panic settled on Eithne’s face and she opened and closed her mouth mutely. The sisters were silent for a moment, then the third voice sighed:

“Macha, see what you can do here. I have no patience for this, family business or no. I’m away to Mag Tuired, where I shall give our arrogant nephew your best regards.”

She shot a glance at Eithne as the girl stirred.

“Yes girl, I go to the battlefield. You might want to consider that before you stir the pot any further.”

She gave Macha the sight and pushed passed Eithne in a blur of black feathers. The girl looked like she was going to throw up.

Macha and Anand looked at her while the loom’s thump measured out the silence. She huddled on the stool with her arms folded tightly over her belly, enduring the inspection. Macha dropped the question into the patter and crackle of the firelight:

“Should you be petitioning me, or my sister?”

Eithne’s involuntary glance at Ana said it all.

Macha’s hand brushed her sister’s, “All yours, I’m afraid. Shall I stay?”

Anand sat up straight. “One of these days I am going to cut that prick’s threads and tie him to a stake by his entrails! I suppose he badgered you until you let him into your bed? I suppose he told you that you were the most beautiful jewel in the sky; that rivers flow from the mountains to be near you; that birds learn their song from your voice. Oh, and that ploughing you will bring about a season of plenty and rejoicing in the land?” She snorted.

The girl had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Well, as my sister so accurately observed, you are not the first. But you may be the last.”

Anand looked furious, but as she put her hands to her face and smoothed the skin, Eithne suddenly realised that the woman’s rage also masked fear and hurt. She felt a stab of guilt that threatened to leave her breathless, and could no longer hold back the tears:

“Lady, I am so sorry. I am complicit in this. I didn’t think. I did not occur to me … Lady, I did not mean to cause you pain.”

 Anand listened to her sobs. Macha could feel her sister’s anger, and also her surprise. This was not how this conversation usually went.

“And what is Dagda’s Plan? Because my husband always has a plan …”

Eithne sat up straighter. Suddenly, they were on common ground. Suddenly, she understood. This was a conversation between women faced with an age-old conundrum; how to keep the alliances intact while mopping up the blood. Fomenting war was one thing. Losing everything, because you turned your back on a stronger enemy in order to do it, was an entirely different matter. As always, women would suckle the fruits of smaller infidelities in order to raise an army.

“Lady Anand, he has sent Elcmar away so that he does not know. And in order to keep it that way, he proposes an endless day for him to travel in; feeling neither hunger nor thirst. A day that lasts a nine-month. That I might grow and bear this child and he be none the wiser.”

“Hmmm. Clever; I give him that. But what has he sent you here to do, that he dare not do himself?”

“Lady, it’s the threads. On the loom.”

Macha and Anand turned to the great loom that took up one wall of the cave. Even half hidden in shadow, the threads were quite clear, winding and twisting over one another; bright, light, dark and blood red, so much red. The abstract patterns of the fates of gods and men.

“He wants you to unweave them back to this evening; and to leave them untouched until I am delivered.”

“He wants WHAT?”

Macha was speechless, but Anand lost control. She towered above them, roaring and beating at the cave roof with adamantine claws, vast wings knocking harnesses, cooking utensils, baskets, Macha and Eithne to the floor. She screamed her battle cry and bits of roof crashed to the floor. Bear to pooka to wolf to merrow, kelpie, eel and finally a panting black crow that perched, exhausted, on her sister’s shoulder. Macha soothed her feathers and placed her gently on her stool. Ana sat rocking back and forth, taking deep breaths and chanting. Macha put her arm around her.

 “Perhaps save the incantations until you see the bugger on the battlefield?” she suggested gently.

Anand stood up.

“If I do this for you,” she said, standing over Eithne’s huddled form, “You will foster the child at a place of my choosing. And you will pay me my due when I demand it of you.”

Eithne closed her eyes. She had a fair idea of what she was letting herself in for, but she also knew that there was only one way of ending this.

“Yes, Lady.

Aengus’ nurse used to like to tell him the story of how, at the moment of his birth, the sun, contrary to habit, rose in the West and travelled across the sky all day to settle in the East. Aengus never really believed it, however. Old women are full of stories.