IT was so early that not even a bird was yet awake, and the dull grey
light that came from the atmosphere enlarged and made indistinct all that
one looked at, and swathed all things in a cold and livid gloom.
As she trod cautiously through dim corridors Becfola was glad that, saving
the guards, no creature was astir, and that for some time yet she need
account to no person for her movements. She was glad also of a respite
which would enable her to settle into her home and draw about her the
composure which women feel when they are surrounded by the walls of their
houses, and can see about them the possessions which, by the fact of
ownership, have become almost a part of their personality. Sundered from
her belongings, no woman is tranquil, her heart is not truly at ease,
however her mind may function, so that under the broad sky or in the house
of another she is not the competent, precise individual which she becomes
when she sees again her household in order and her domestic requirements
at her hand.
Becfola pushed the door of the king’s sleeping chamber and entered
noiselessly. Then she sat quietly in a seat gazing on the recumbent
monarch, and prepared to consider how she should advance to him when he
awakened, and with what information she might stay his inquiries or
reproaches.
“I will reproach him,” she thought. “I will call him a bad husband and
astonish him, and he will forget everything but his own alarm and
indignation.”
But at that moment the king lifted his head from the pillow and looked
kindly at her. Her heart gave a great throb, and she prepared to speak at
once and in great volume before he could formulate any question. But the
king spoke first, and what he said so astonished her that the explanation
and reproach with which her tongue was thrilling fled from it at a stroke,
and she could only sit staring and bewildered and tongue-tied.
“Well, my dear heart,” said the king, “have you decided not to keep that
engagement?”
“I—I—!” Becfola stammered.
“It is truly not an hour for engagements,” Dermod insisted, “for not a
bird of the birds has left his tree; and,” he continued maliciously, “the
light is such that you could not see an engagement even if you met one.”
“I,” Becfola gasped. “I—-!”
“A Sunday journey,” he went on, “is a notorious bad journey. No good can
come from it. You can get your smocks and diadems to-morrow. But at this
hour a wise person leaves engagements to the bats and the staring owls and
the round-eyed creatures that prowl and sniff in the dark. Come back to
the warm bed, sweet woman, and set on your journey in the morning.”
Such a load of apprehension was lifted from Becfola’s heart that she
instantly did as she had been commanded, and such a bewilderment had yet
possession of her faculties that she could not think or utter a word on
any subject.
Yet the thought did come into her head as she stretched in the warm gloom
that Crimthann the son of Ae must be now attending her at Cluain da
chaillech, and she thought of that young man as of something wonderful and
very ridiculous, and the fact that he was waiting for her troubled her no
more than if a sheep had been waiting for her or a roadside bush.
She fell asleep.
