CHAPTER V

Her immediate intention was to get away from Ulster and so to order her conduct in the meantime that the king, who suspected everything and foresaw all, would have no suspicion of this: therefore, if she cogitated her plans she kept them in her own mind. She would have no confidant until the action was decided and the hour for it had struck.

And in this matter she had much to think of. But she patiently resolved these complexities, so that each went at last into its place in her plan, and she had the leisure to review and revise it until she could be certain that nothing was forgotten and that a perfect piece of machinery had been created. The machine was not visible, but it would appear as at a wave of her hand, and it would begin to move at the hour of its [Pg 29] birth. It was not by chance that this lady was called by a masculine name,[5] for she had patience and tenacity and a clear, cool head.

[Pg 29]

Had it been merely a question of getting comfortably away there would have been nothing in the prospect to exercise the queen. She would have mounted her chariot, and, whether her husband was looking or not looking, she would have driven wherever she wished to go: she would have driven over him if he had stood in her way, and through his army if that had been unavoidable. The difficulty was that she did not intend to leave with Conachúr the possessions she had brought to Ulster and those that she had since acquired, for the High King had endowed his daughter in a manner befitting his condition and the rank she was to occupy; and, as a wife’s possessions were secured to her by the law of the land, she did not intend to leave Conachúr richer than he had a right to be.

It was the transport of this vast baggage which exercised the queen.

She owned flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, droves of horses and pigs. These naturally had multiplied during her residence at [Pg 30] Emain. She had vessels of gold and silver, of findriny and bronze. She had rings and bracelets; shoulder torques as big as plates, and breast brooches that were twice as big. She had pleasure chariots and war chariots; she had rich fabrics of linen embroidered with gold and silver thread; many-coloured, silken shawls with deep fringes of gold or with tassels and bobberies of silver. She had head-dresses of every material and metal. Bronze spears, each with an hundred loose rings of gold that clashed musically up and down the handle, and on each of the rings there chimed a little silver bell. 

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