But hardly had they started than King Conor set to work with cunning craft to lure the sons of Usna to their doom. He sent for Borrach, son of Annte, who had built a mighty fortress by the sea, and said to him, “Did I not hear, O Borrach, that thou hadst prepared a feast for me?” “It is even so, O King, and I await thy coming to partake of the banquet I have prepared.” And Conor said, “I may not come at this time to thy feast; the duties of the kingdom keep me here at Emain. But I would not decline thy hospitality. Fergus, the son of Roy, stands close to me in place and power; a feast bestowed on him I hold as though it were bestowed on me. In less than a week’s time comes Fergus back from Alba, bringing the sons of Usna to their home. Bid Fergus to thy feast, and I will hold the honour paid to him as paid to me.”
For wily Conor knew that if his royal command was laid on Fergus to accept the banquet in his stead, Fergus dare not refuse; and by this means he sought to separate the sons of Usna from their friend, and get them fast into his own power at Emain, while Fergus waited yet at Borrach’s house, partaking of his hospitality. “Thus,” thought the King, “I have the sons of Usna in my grasp, and dire the vengeance I will wreak on them, the men who stole my wife.”
[CHAPTER XXVI]
The Sorrowful Death of Usna’s Sons
At the head of fair Loch Etive the sons of Usna had built for themselves three spacious hunting-seats among the pine-trees at the foot of the cliffs that ran landward to deep Glen Etive. The wild deer could be shot from the window, and the salmon taken out of the stream from the door of their dwelling. There they passed the spring and summer months, Usna’s sons of the white steeds and the brown deer-hounds, whose breasts were broader than the wooden leaves of the door. Above the hunting-lodge, on the grassy slope that is at the foot of the cascade, they built a sunny summer home for Deirdre, and they called it the ‘Grianan,’ or sunny bower of Deirdre. It was thatched on the outside with the long-stalked fern of the dells and the red clay of the pools, and lined within with the pine of the mountains and the downy feathers of the wild birds; and round it was the apple-garden of Clan Usna, with the apple-tree of Deirdre in its midst and the apple-trees of Naisi and Ainle and Arden encircling it.
And Deirdre loved her life, for she was free as the brown partridge flying over the mountains, or as the vessels with ruddy sails swinging upon the loch.
But in the winter they moved down to the broad sheltered pasture-lands that lay on the western side of the loch near the island that was in olden days called Eilean Chlann Uisne or the Island of the Children of Usna, but is called Eilean nan Ron or the Isle of the Seals to-day; and there they built a mighty fortress for Deirdre and the sons of Usna which men still call the Caisteal Nighean Righ Eirinn or the Castle of the Daughter of the King of Ireland, and thence they made wars and conquered a great part of Western Alba and became powerful princes.
One sultry evening in the late autumn, Deirdre and Naisi were resting before the door of her sunny bower after a day spent by the brothers in the chase. Below, their followers were cutting up the deer, and as they brought in the bags of heavy game, and faggots for the hearth, the voice of Ainle singing an evening melody resounded through the wood. Like the sound of the wave the voice of Ainle, and the rich bass of Arden answered him, as together the two brothers came out from the shadow of the trees, gathering to the trysting-place of the evening meal.
Between Naisi and Deirdre a draught-board was set, but Deirdre was winning, for a mood of oppression lay upon Naisi and his thoughts were not in the game. For of late, at evening, his exile weighed upon him, and little good to him seemed his prosperity and his successes, since he did not see his own home in Ireland and his friends at the time of his rising in the morning or at the time of his lying down at night. For great as were his possessions in Alba, stronger in him than the love of his kindred in Alba was the love of his native land in Erin. He thought it strange, moreover, that of those three who in the old time loved him most, Fergus and Conall Cernach and Cuchulain, not one of them had all this time come to bring him to his own land again under his safeguard and protection.