No More Learning

FERGUS.

Your house has been
The hole of the badger or the den of the fox;
But all that's finished, and your days will pass
From this day out where life is smooth on the tongue,
Because the grapes were trodden long ago.

NAISI.

If I was childish, and had faith in omens,
I'd rather not have lit on that old chessboard
At my home-coming.

FERGUS.

There's a tale about it--
It has been lying there these many years--
Some wild old sorrowful tale.

NAISI.

It is the board
Where Lugaidh Redstripe and that wife of his,
Who had a seamew's body half the year,
Played at the chess upon the night they died.

FERGUS.

I can remember now a tale of treachery,
A broken promise and a journey's end;
But it were best forgot.

NAISI.

If the tale is true,
When it was plain that they had been betrayed,
They moved the men, and waited for the end,
As it were bedtime, and had so quiet minds
They hardly winked their eyes when the sword flashed.

FERGUS.

She never could have played so, being a woman,
If she had not the cold sea's blood in her.

DEIRDRE.
I have heard that th' ever-living warn mankind
By changing clouds, and casual accidents,
Or what seem so.

FERGUS.

If there had been ill luck
In lighting on this chessboard of a sudden,
This flagon that stood on it when we came
Has made all right again, for it should mean
All wrongs forgiven, hospitality
For bitter memory, peace after war,
While that loaf there should add prosperity.
Deirdre will see the world, as it were, new-made,
If she'll but eat and drink.

NAISI.

The flagon's dry,
Full of old cobwebs, and the bread is mouldy,
Left by some traveller gone upon his way
These many weeks.

DEIRDRE.

No one to welcome us,
And a bare house upon the journey's end.
Is that the welcome that a king spreads out
For those that he would honour?

NAISI.

Hush! no more.
You are King Conchubar's guest, being in his house.
You speak as women do that sit alone,
Marking the ashes with a stick till they
Are in a dreamy terror. Being a queen,
You should have too calm thought to start at shadows.

FERGUS.