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.