CHAPTER EIGHT
Hell Hath No fury

As the pitch of the women's screams outside the door of Bricriú's great banqueting hall increased, some of the Eamhain Macha men, convinced that the building was under attack, drew their short dress swords, leaping onto chairs and tables and craning their necks across the crush of straining warriors to see what was going on.

Laeg, quick as lightening rushed out of the main front door and made for the mews to recover Cúchulainn's shield from the chariot and threw it over to him.

King Conor, sweating and flushed, was on his feet shouting for order and appealing for a calm assessment of what was going on. Realising he was vainly trying to hold back a tidal wave of adrenaline, he watched helplessly as the seething mass of drunken people below him dissipated their energies in an orgy of fear.

He knew what he was up against, a conflagration of uncoordinated Ulster battle rage. With a hoarse cry of despair Conor let his hands fall limply by his sides.

He turned to glare accusingly at a relaxed and po-faced Bricriú, smugly detached in his hawk's mew, reclining languidly. Gráinne, leaning back on her husband's chest, blinked her green eyes languidly, like a sated cat, at the hapless King.

Down in the body of the hall, the three champions, now shoulder to shoulder, rivalries forgotten in the face of a possible common enemy, pushed their way to the door through the disorderly crush of warriors. Wherever the halted swell of bodies was too dense the three champions leaped on to tables, sometimes leaping from table to table, scattering and smashing tableware. Finally they were walking on the heads and shoulders of the press of men.

To the forefront of each of the warriors' minds was that they had been caught unawares by a concerted Fomorian reprisal for the recent slaughter of their compatriots. Moreover, the women of Ulster were in danger of being carried off. The assault party, in possession of accurate intelligence as to the evening's programme, only had to creep up to the perimeter of the garden and wait. It was an ideal opportunity to seize and carry off Gaelic women as they squatted, a flock of flightless birds, among the flowers, the unsuspecting guards standing at a discrete distance, out of sight and beyond earshot.

The three men, now almost at the exit to the garden, roughly shouldered their way through the crush of gaping men in the doorway, sending them surging this way and that in groaning, entangled knots, weapons in hand, in danger of seriously injuring or even killing each other. Outside the door Cúchulainn and the other two champions were confronted by the cause of the hold-up. It was not, Cúchulainn was relieved to note, a failure of courage that held things up, but a party of Bricriú's tall house guards blocking their path with a wall of shields, repeatedly surging forward, shoving the Eamhain Macha men back.

This seemingly hostile action served only to reinforce suspicion that Bricriú was in collusion with the raiders. The three warriors, thereby fired up by concern for the safety of their wives, placed their muscular arms about each other's shoulders and heads lowered, charged the guards. With a concerted roar of battle rage the King's champion's drove Bricriú's guards backwards with such violence that they fell to the ground with a confused, metallic clatter, a stricken wall of muscle, oak, bronze and iron.

Rid of the obstacle and taking courage from the superhuman action of Cúchulainn, Conal and Laoghaire, the rest of the Eamhain Macha warriors were surging into the garden and leaping over the fallen guards, swords at the ready to meet the expected horde of red-haired Fomorians. Suddenly the warriors froze in their excited sally. The war whoops ceased abruptly. Warriors still inside the hall were shouting for enlightenment as to what was going on in the garden. It was several seconds before information began to filter back through the ranks.

The three champions had somewhat more reason than the others to be standing there, gaping in disbelief at the spectacle that assailed them. To their horror they saw Fidelma, the wife of Laoghaire, Lendabar, wife of Conal and Emer, wife of Cúchulainn, locked together in unseemly combat, hair and clothing in disarray, screeching and shouting, fists flailing and feet kicking, their ladies-in-waiting, struggling to assist their mistresses. As they swayed to and fro, a number of Bricriú's stewards were trying, somewhat timorously, to intervene. They too were being kicked and punched and reviled and subjected to a wild chorus of vituperation from the enraged women.

Each of the three husbands, perplexed as to the cause of the fracas, tried to take hold of his wife and extricate her from the mêlée. Almost in unison the three mortified champions were shouting at the women to desist and give an account of themselves. The wives, pausing in their struggles, responded at first with an incoherent babble, shouting one another down with uncharacteristic vehemence, eyes blazing, teeth flashing fiercely, beads of sweat standing out on their foreheads.

One of Emer's maids, a tall, broad-shouldered amazon, a thunderous contralto, shouted above the din and across the heads of the three combatants in the doorway:

"Emer has been given to understand that she, the first of the wives of the three champions to re-enter the hall after the interval, is to be proclaimed the kingdom's foremost lady."

No sooner had she stopped speaking than a great roar went up from the servants of the other two wives as they bellowed challenges..

"Given to understand by whom?"

"Speak plainly, not in riddles!"

As far as Cúchulainn could make out each group was insisting that their mistress had been told to enter the hall first, that the honour of first lady was already hers, and he roared:

The amazon was shouting again.

"There was no public announcement, but Emer heard it from a reliable source."

"What reliable source?" another woman hotly demanded.

"But Lendabar was told confidentially, and reliably, that she was the most deserving candidate for the honour, and that she was to go into the hall first," one of Lendabar's maids countered stoutly.

Fidelma, drawing a mighty breath, her face contorted with emotion, raised her voice:

"Two reliable sources that contradict each other! And I say they are both lying! I was told that I was to be proclaimed first lady of Ulster."

"And I say, that I shall enter first because I am Emer wife of Cúchulainn, the greatest warrior in Ireland!"

"Cúchulainn? Slayer of dogs, a warrior?" Shouted Fidelma scornfully.

Emer shouted back into the face of her rival:

"He was but an infant at the time he slew the blacksmith's hound and took his new name which signifies .... "

Lendabar laughed scornfully.

"Which signified his new job, a job he inherited from a cur!"

Emer struck out wildly with her clenched fist.

"When Cúchulainn was six years old he could overcome an army of Laoghaires and Conals."

Inside on the gallery, where the shouting could be clearly heard, there were two dramatically different sets of reaction to the dispute. Bricriú and Gráinne covered their mouths with their napkins to hide their delight at the success of their plan while King Conor was distraught with embarrassment.

Farbeg was seething with rage, knowing that the disturbance had been orchestrated by none other than Bricriú, Ulster's high priest of mischief. Sencha was actually weeping as he saw Eamhain Macha's hard-won honour and reputation for courtly decorum evaporate before his eyes. Cúchulainn, remembering Farroch, his guardian spirit, breathed a plea for enlightenment and help.

"Farroch, I'm in need of your wise counsel and insight."

High above the alto-cumulus, Farroch, nodded; and closing his angelic eyes, he willed Cúchulainn to be plugged into the revealing conversation now taking place between Bricriú and Gráinne. In their glass capsule in the dining hall, the Chieftain of Dún Rodhraighe and his wife were beside themselves with ill-concealed glee. Gráinne, nudging him playfully, chortled in his ear:

"Bricriú, my love, I know this is very, very naughty of me, but you know, it was just this perverse skill of yours for setting the most docile of people at each other's throats that first drew me to you."

She nibbled lasciviously on his earlobe with her brilliant white teeth, as though deriving some depraved erotic charge from the conflict in the garden. Bricriú , retrieving his ear, fixed her with a supercilious leer.

"Perverse, my dear?" he laughed, You call my talents perverse? Why so?"

"Alas," she said, laying her head on her husband' s shoulder, "although I find your gift so titillating I regret that you use it only to amuse yourself and to score pettily over your, your, I was about to say your rivals, but you see everybody as your rival."

She pulled away from him and baring her perfect teeth in a mock snarl, added.

"I do believe your friends would also be your rivals, if you had any friends."

She laughed softly at her own quip.

Bricriú, nodded philosophically.

"It is true. Even you are not a friend in accordance with definition."

"In accordance with definition, of course," she mimicked, biting his ear a little harder, making him wince as he went on.

"But here's an interesting question for you, do you love me?"

Bricriú looked her squarely in the eye, head cocked to one side, awaiting her reply. She averted her eyes for a moment, considering the question, her long lashes drooping.

"I once heard Cathbhad, the oldest and wisest of the Druids, say that to love one's enemies is the highest ideal to which one can aspire. So yes, I do love you. Is it not a saving grace that at least one of us has one such high ideal?"

The long lashes lifted, revealing a sly, sidelong look, the beginnings of a smile at the corners of her sensuous mouth.

"Oh if only your talents were political but they are perverse!"

"Perverse, you say?"

Gráinne placed a long, manicured forefinger against her husband's chin, examining the cleft in the bony protuberance.

"If only you used those skills more discretely, more covertly, more selectively, you could quickly drive a clear, gold-paved highway between Dún Rodhraighe and Tara of the High Kings."

Bricriú threw back his head and laughed loudly and bitterly at the mention of Tara.

"You beautiful, mad cow! Truly you disappoint me. Tara! That backwater whose rough-hewn chunk of rock, is called a throne, Stone of Destiny, Lia Fáil, seat of fools, upon which their vacuous coronation ceremonies are performed!

Bricriú paused to mop his brow with a white kerchief and to take a pull of mead from his goblet.

"Don't insult me by citing Tara as my ultimate goal, Tara, whose so-called subjects are for ever at one another's throats without fear of intervention by any tribunal in defence of a good man's cause or a poor man's beef?"

He stopped and drew three deep breaths. Gráinne kissed his bony chin with exaggerated tenderness.

"But Bricky, you incorrigible prankster, you only devote your time and talent to causing havoc among such nice people, like tonight. Listen to the poor darlings rending one another out there."

Bricriú raised his shoulders in exasperation, and grasping her by the shoulders he placed his lips close to her ear and whispered through clenched teeth.

"Can't you see, dear Gráinne, I exploit people's ignorance, arrogance, avarice, self-interest, stupid pride. If by dividing such as these myopic, bellicose morons, I incite them to annihilate one another, would the world count it a profit or a loss? And if it amuses me then that's a bonus. A little amusement is a small price to ask for my services."

Gráinne gave a short, harsh laugh.

"And what, who, would you put in their places?"

Bricriú looked at his wife with a dangerous glint in his eye.

"I think you and I will fill the void quite nicely."

"We will?"

"Yes, my dear, you and I, my sights are set on nothing less than world dominance!"

He searched her face eagerly for signs of surprise or disbelief. Gráinne's green eyes danced with mockery as she took and held his gaze.

"Come now, clever husband, Bricriú, you've had too much to drink. If you are so supremely ambitious why are you this moment squandering your talents on Ulster? Or Tara?"

"I have not had too much to drink!"

He reached with slow deliberation for his goblet and took a long draught.

"In truth, my precious, I have not had nearly enough to drink."

Then, touching his nose against hers, he added:

"To build a tower to the clouds, my dear, first lay one brick."

He tickled her suddenly, making her squirm.

"Today, Ulster, the first brick. Tomorrow, Tara. Then Alba and Britain, the small beginnings; then Babylon, Greece, Egypt, the mysterious lands beyond the Himalayas and beyond the great western ocean, the world, I will be Emperor of the World. Then I can scorn the base degrees by which I did ascend."

"Scorn the ....?"

"The base degrees by which I did ascend. It's a quotation. Amtashtalee, brought it back from the future after meeting some pretentious scribbler, or so he says.

It's from a play about a king by some bard by the name of Weapon Waver, or Spear Shaker, I cannot clearly recall his name."

"Oh, Amtashtalee, that impostor!"

Why, my doubting little wife, Amtashtalee also brought back from the future the plans, specifications and formulae for sweet-throated pipes that are pumped with the elbow. He gave the plans to Homofeeb, that young, reclusive minstrel, who has actually built a set of these pipes. Is that not proof enough of Amtashtalee's travels backwards and forwards in time?"

Gráinne, entering into the spirit of the banter, and taking advantage of the commotion in the hall, began to laugh uproariously.

"If Amtashtalee makes a habit of visiting that slender, lisping, Homofeeb, he'll surely be bent forward in time!"

The lapse into levity, no doubt due to the wine, passed quickly. Gráinne composed herself, coughed nervously and looked into Bricriú's impassive face.

"To get back to your plan of conquest by dividing the world. To rule the world you will have to UNITE all the people, not divide them. When will you start learning those new, constructive skills, which are the very antithesis of your present naughty antics?"

"Ah my little vixen, I congratulate myself that I have not underestimated your perspicacity."

"A perspicacious vixen is but a canine hair's breadth removed from a cunning bitch!" She retorted, "but you were saying?"

"I was saying, the final task will be to reunite the people I have divided, to bring order out of my orchestrated chaos, under my banner, the banner of World Emperor!"

At that moment, Cúchulainn, his efforts concentrated in another direction, became disconnected from Farroch's thoughtline of Bricriú and Gráinne's shocking conversation. Gráinne was about to pour more scorn on her husband's outlandish scheme when she noticed a slight tremor that set the wine vessels trembling on the table. Her eyes widened in sudden fear as she gasped.

"Did, did you feel that?"

Bricriú placed his arms about her and studied the vaulted roof of the building.

He was sure the long chains of the chandeliers were swinging almost imperceptibly. A deep rumble like distant thunder seemed to pervade the entire building. As the sound grew in amplitude the floor began to tremble. The chandeliers began to swing gently, more perceptibly. Goblets and wine pitchers began to slide off the tables with a great chorus of crashes. The rumbling grew louder, lurching of the floor more violent.

The chandeliers swung through huge, erratic arcs so that some of the candles were extinguished.

Gráinne clung to Bricriú, his face pale as he rose unsteadily and stared around the hall helplessly searching for some clue as to the cause of this fearful phenomenon.

Has Bricriú been visited by vengeance of the Gods, and if so will King Conor share his fate? Log on every Sunday for further chapters.