Читать книгу Deirdre - James Stephens - Страница 6

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Deirdre grew up in a place apart at Emania. She saw no people of any kind, except Lavarcham, the king’s “conversation-woman,” and her women servants; for always about the castle where she lived there was a guard of the oldest and ugliest swordsmen that were in Ulster. Their duty was to let nobody pass in or out of the castle grounds; for it was the king’s intention to outwit fate as he had outwitted all else that had moved in his path.

Thus she grew in gentleness and peace, hearing no voice less sweet than the voice of the birds that sang in the sunshine, or the friendly calling of the wind she played with; seeing nothing more uncomely than the gracious outline of far hills, the many-coloured sky that fled and was never gone, the creatures that lived unmolested in the trees about the castle, and the wild deer that grew tame in nearby brakes. All that she knew was friendly to her and naught was rough. All that she drew nigh to stood for her approach. Naught fled from her, and she did not flee from anything.

Watching her, as she stood or sat or went, the wise Lavarcham used to lose her senses, for all that was beautiful was here gathered into one form, as in one true ray of the sun is all that is lovely of the sun. The running wind, and the wild creatures of the wood; the folk from the Shí, the Bochanachs and Bananocks, and the aerial beings that are not seen, might have stayed to look at Deirdre, but had they stayed they could not have gone again, for they would have become eyes only, and they would have perished in beauty, gazing on it.

Lavarcham was a wise woman. She could not have occupied and continued to hold her position in Conachúr’s household had she not been wise. She was known as the king’s “conversation-woman,” and she could indicate an unpleasant truth as delicately as a poet can express the dimple in a lady’s chin. But her real occupation, masked by the courteous word, was that of household spy. She went to and fro in the vast palaces at Emania, and nothing passed there, whether among the nobles or the servants, that she was not privy to, or which the king was not thereafter acquainted with. She could adapt herself to any situation and to every society; and if her chatter with the kitchen-maids was jovial and in key, her conversation with a young princess or an old bard was not less balanced and elucidatory.

She had many things to teach a young girl, and she withheld no knowledge that could benefit the little one whom her heart had soon adopted as its own babe. The virtues as well as the arts were part of her experience, so that Deirdre grew in the love of chastity, of industry, and of joyfulness.

In this way and in these teachings the years went by, unnoticed as years. Day followed night, and night came after day in a timeless succession, each adding its unnoticeable little to her stature, its unseen tender curve to her limbs, its imperceptible deposit of memory to her mind.

But among the arts of which the tireless Lavarcham spoke there was one she taught and retaught to Deirdre, and that art was Conachúr.

Although she had never seen the king, yet the young girl knew him as a mother knows her baby. She could have recited his babyhood, his adolescence, and now his maturity. She knew, as only Lavarcham did, why he did such a certain thing, and by what progressions this stated consummation, marvelled at by others, had been arrived at. It was of infinite interest to Deirdre, but its inevitable effect was to stamp the unseen king with a seal of time, so that, although Lavarcham insisted he was only thirty-five years of age, the young girl’s mind regarded him as one who could have been father and grandfather to a hill.

She reported to Conachúr at proper intervals as to her ward, and he, if he had wished, might have checked the passing years by his memory of the stories Lavarcham told him of Deirdre learning to walk, and walking; of Deirdre learning to talk, and talking: her teeth were counted to him as she cut them, and when she bruised her knee slipping down a bank, or when she wept for the cold fledgling she found on the path, or when she refused to weep in a thunderstorm, he was acquainted with the facts, and nodded at them gravely as they were told.

She had been a round thing, all surprise and fluff, like a young duck: she became a lank anatomy, all leg and hair and stare, like a young colt: then she became a wild thing, all spring and peep and run, like a young fawn; and now she was what Lavarcham continued to report and dilate on.

But the king could not believe one half of the tale that Lavarcham told, for it seemed to him that such beauty as she reported was not credible, and he knew that women speak foolishly when they talk of beauty. He was, moreover, well satisfied with the queen who was with him then, Maeve, the lovely daughter of the High King.