A look of disgust had passed over Ethne’s face when she entered the foul air of the great room. She sighed, more than ever, for the luxury and refinement of her Roman villa in Britain. She looked at the smouldering, central fire with its surrounding ashes and refuse of days long past; the earthen floor strewn with stale straw, gnawn bones, and spilt meal; the rough dressers laden with wooden platters, drinking horns, and vessels of yew and bronze; the gaping chests and cupboards which held meal, and clothes, and skins.
Yet there was a barbaric splendour in the great size of the circular room; in the horse-trappings and arms of the king upon the walls; in the row of suspended shields belonging to the warriors, slumbering around their chief.
Cormac was soon asleep stretched on a long leathern cushion covered by a sheep-skin. He was tired with his long day’s journey and glad to follow the example of the warriors around him.
He did not wake again until long after dawn—when he was roused by the noise and uproar about him. There was scarcely room to move, the hall was so filled with a medley of jesters, horse-boys, clowns, and bards.
A slave was busy at the fire baking oat-cake; trying, at the same time, to stir the soup-cauldron and keep the greedy hounds at his elbow in order. A bard, accompanying himself on a noisy timpan, was reciting a story; there was such a jangle of sounds that Cormac could scarcely hear his own voice or those of some jugglers at coarse conjuring tricks.
A piercing howl from one of the hounds suddenly silenced for the moment all other uproar. The distraught slave at the fire, wofully hindered in his work, had dealt an inquisitive beagle a sharp blow from a scalding ladle.
A general commotion at the hearth ensued.
The owner of the beagle had been lounging before the fire munching brook-lime and hazel-nuts; he now rose and seizing a besom of birch-twigs, dealt the slave a blow that laid him full length on the ground. In falling the slave was thrown against a couple of chess-players—upon whose play a party of idlers had been laying wagers; all of these turned savagely at the interruption of their pastime. The fall, also, disturbed some drunken revellers asleep on the floor; and they too started up with drawn swords. More than a score of dogs rushed forward and added their clamour to the uproar.
“And all this spoil-sport and foolery over a cursed hound!” cried one of the chess-players. “The cursed hound of a cursed bard!”
“Hound! Hound, sayest thou? And this to a bard—a Flaith, and son of a Flaith! Hound thyself—beguiled and doting tool of a king—and would thy tongue were slit for thy heresy towards us! Take thee, will I, by the apple of thy throat and cast thee forth!”