Maybe they were wise creatures and could tell him what he wanted to know.
He thought he heard them whispering together. Then one little shadow with trailing legs went slowly from tree to tree. The King of Ireland"s Son thought he would catch and hold a shadow and make it tell him where he should go to find the dominion of the King of the Land of Mist.
He went after one shadow and another and waited beside a tree for one to come. Often he thought he saw the small old man with the beard and the little creature with trailing legs. And then he began to see other shadows--men with the heads of rooks and men with queer heavy swords upon their shoulders. He followed them on and on through the wood and he heard their whispering becoming louder and louder, and then he thought that as he went on the shadows, instead of slipping before him, began to turn back and go past and surround him. Then he heard a voice just under the ground at his feet say, "Shout--shout out your own name, Son of King Connal!" Then the King"s Son shouted out his own name and the whispers ceased in the wood and the shadows went backward and forward no more.
He went on and came to a stream within the wood and he went against its flow all night as well as all day, hoping to meet some living thing that would tell him how he might come to the dominion of the King of the Land of Mist. In the forenoon of another day he came to where the wood grew thin and then he went past the last trees.
He saw a horse grazing: he ran up to it and found that it was the Slight Red Steed that had carried Fedelma and himself from the house of the Enchanter. Then as he laid hold of the steed a hound ran up to him and a hawk flew down and he saw that they were the hawk and the hound that used to be with him when he rode abroad from his father"s Castle.
He mounted and seeing his hound at his heel and his hawk circling above he felt a longing to go back to his father"s Castle which he knew to be near and where he might find out where the King of the Land of Mist had his dominion.
So the King of Ireland"s Son rode back to his father"s Castle--
His hound at his heel, His hawk on his wrist.
WHEN THE KING OF THE CATS CAME TO KING CONNAL"S DOMINION
I
The King of Ireland"s Son was home again, but as he kept asking about a King and a Kingdom no one had ever heard of, people thought he had lost his wits in his search for the Enchanter of the Black Back-Lands. He rode abroad every day to ask strangers if they knew where the King of the Land of Mist had his dominion and he came back to his father"s every night in the hope that one would be at the Castle who could tell him where the place that he sought was. Maravaun wanted to relate to him fables from "The Breastplate of Instruction" but the King"s Son did not hear a word that Maravaun said. After a while he listened to the things that Art, the King"s Steward, related to him, for it was Art who had shown the King"s Son the leaden ring that was on his finger. He took it off, remembering the betrothal ring that the Little Sage had made, and then he saw that it was not his, but Fedelma"s ring that he wore. Then he felt as if Fedelma had sent a message to him, and he was less wild in his thoughts.
Afterwards, in the evenings, when he came back from his ridings, he would cross the meadows with Art, the King"s Steward, or would stand with him while the herdsmen drove the cattle into the byres. Then he would listen to what Art related to him. And one evening he heard Art say, "The most remarkable event that happened was the coming into this land of the King of the Cats."
"I will listen to what you tell me about it," said the King"s Son.
"Then," said Art, the King"s Steward, "to your father"s Son in all truth be it told"--
The King of the Cats stood up. He was a grand creature. His body was brown and striped across as if one had burned on wood with a hot poker.
Like all the race of the Royal Cats of the Isle of Man he was without a tail. But he had extraordinarily fine whiskers. They went each side of his face to the length of a dinner-dish. He had such eyes that when he turned one of them upward the bird that was flying across dropped from the sky. And when he turned the other one down he could make a hole in the floor.
He lived in the Isle of Man. Once he had been King of the Cats of Ireland and Britain, of Norway and Denmark, and the whole Northern and Western World. But after the Nors.e.m.e.n won in the wars the Cats of Norway and Britain swore by Thor and Odin that they would give him no more allegiance. So for a hundred years and a day he had got allegiance only from the Cats of the Western World; that is, from Ireland and the Islands beyond.
The tribute he received was still worth having. In May he was sent a boatful of herring. In August he was let have two boatfuls of mackerel.
In November he was given five barrels of preserved mice. At other seasons he had for his tribute one out of every hundred birds that flew across the Island on their way to Ireland--tomt.i.ts, pee-wits, linnets, siskins, starlings, martins, wrens and tender young barn owls. He was also sent the following as marks of allegiance and respect: a salmon, to show his dominion over the rivers; the skin of a marten to show his dominion in the woods; a live cricket to show his dominion in the houses of men; the horn of a cow, to show his right to a portion of the milk produced in the Western World.
But the tribute from the Western World became smaller and smaller. One year the boat did not come with the herring. Mackerel was sent to him afterwards but he knew it was sent to him because so much was being taken out of the sea that the farmer-men were plowing their mackerel-catches into the land to make their crops grow. Then a year came when he got neither the salmon nor the marten skin, neither the live cricket nor the cow"s horn. Then he got righteously and royally indignant. He stood up on his four paws on the floor of his palace, and declared to his wife that he himself was going to Ireland to know what prevented the sending of his lawful tribute to him. He called for his Prime Minister then and said, "Prepare for Us our Speech from the Throne."
The Prime Minister went to the Parliament House and wrote down "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez!" But he could not remember any more of the ancient language in which the speeches from the Throne were always written. He went home and hanged himself with a measure of tape and his wife buried the body under the hearth-stone.
"Speech or no speech," said the King of the Cats, "I"m going to pay a royal visit to my subjects in Ireland."
He went to the top of the cliff and he made a spring. He landed on the deck of a ship that was bringing the King of Norway"s daughter to be married to the King of Scotland"s son. The ship nearly sank with the crash of his body on it. He ran up the sails and placed himself on the mast of the ship. There he gathered his feet together and made another spring. This time he landed on a boat that was bringing oak-timber to build a King"s Palace in London. He stood where the timber was highest and made another spring. This time he landed on the Giant"s Causeway that runs from Ireland out into the sea. He picked his steps from boulder to boulder, and then walked royally and resolutely on the ground of Ireland. A man was riding on horseback with a woman seated on the saddle behind him. The King of the Cats waited until they came up.
"My good man," said he very grandly, "when you go back to your house, tell the ash-covered cat in the corner that the King of the Cats has come to Ireland to see him."
His manner was so grand that the man took off his hat and the woman made a courtesy. Then the King of the Cats sprang into the branch of a tree of the forest and slept till it was past the mid-day heat.
I nearly forgot to tell you that as he slept on the branch his whiskers stood around his face the breadth of a dinner-dish either way.
II
The next day the King"s Son rode abroad and where he went that day he saw no man nor woman nor living creature in the land around. But coming back he saw a falcon sailing in the air above. He rode on and the falcon sailed above, never rising high in the air, and never swooping down.
The King"s Son fitted an arrow to his bow and shot at the falcon.
Immediately it rose in the air and flew swiftly away, but a feather from it fell before him. The King"s Son picked the feather up. It was a blue feather. Then the King"s Son thought of Fedelma"s falcon--of the bird that flew above them when they rode across the Meadows of Brightness.
It might be Fedelma"s falcon, the one he had shot at, and it might have come to show him the way to the Land of Mist. But the falcon was not to be seen now.
He did not go amongst the strangers in his father"s Castle that evening; but he stood with Art who was watching the herdsmen drive the cattle into the byres. And Art after a while said, "I will tell you more about the coming of the King of the Cats into King Connal"s Dominion. And as before I say
"To your father"s Son in all truth be it told "--
The King of the Cats waited on the branch of the tree until the moon was in the sky like a roast duck on a dish of gold, and still neither retainer, va.s.sal nor subject came to do him service. He was vexed, I tell you, at the want of respect shown him.
This was the reason why none of his subjects came to him for such a long time: The man and woman he had spoken to went into their house and did not say a word about the King of the Cats until they had eaten their supper. Then when the man had smoked his second pipe, he said to the woman: "That was a wonderful thing that happened to us to-day. A cat to walk up to two Christians and say to them, "Tell the ashy pet in your chimney corner at home that the King of the Cats has come to see him.""
No sooner were the words said than the lean, gray, ash-covered cat that lay on the hearthstone sprang on the back of the man"s chair.
"I will say this," said the man; "it"s a bad time when two Christians like ourselves are stopped on their way back from the market and ordered--ordered, no less--to give a message to one"s own cat lying on one"s own hearthstone."
"By my fur and daws, you"re a long time coming to his message," said the cat on the back of the chair; "what was it, anyway?"
"The King of the Cats has come to Ireland to see you," said the man, very much surprised.
"It"s a wonder you told it at all," said the cat, going to the door.
"And where did you see His Majesty?"
"You shouldn"t have spoken," said the man"s wife.
"And how did I know a cat could understand?" said the man.
"When you have done talking amongst yourselves," said the cat, "would you tell me where you met His Majesty?"
"Nothing will I tell you," said the man, "until I hear your own name from you."
"My name," said the cat, "is Quick-to-Grab, and well you should know it."
"Not a word will we tell you," said the woman, "until we hear what the King of the Cats is doing in Ireland. Is he bringing wars and rebellions into the country?"
"Wars and rebellions,--no, ma"am," said Quick-to-Grab, "but deliverance from oppression. Why are the cats of the country lean and lazy and covered with ashes? It is because the cat that goes outside the house in the sunlight, to hunt or to play, is made to suffer with the loss of an eye."