LAVARCHAM.
— despairingly. — I’m late so with my warnings, for Fergus’d talk the moon over to take a new path in the sky. (With reproach.) You’ll not stop him this day, and isn’t it a strange story you were a plague and torment, since you were that height, to those did hang their lifetimes on your voice. (Overcome with trouble; gathering her cloak about her.) Don’t think bad of my crying. I’m not the like of many and I’d see a score of naked corpses and not heed them at all, but I’m destroyed seeing yourself in your hour of joy when the end is coming surely.
[Owen comes in quickly, rather ragged, bows to Deirdre.
OWEN.
— to Lavarcham. — Fergus’s men are calling you. You were seen on the path, and he and Naisi want you for their talk below.
LAVARCHAM.
— looking at him with dislike. — Yourself’s an ill-lucky thing to meet a morning is the like of this. Yet if you are a spy itself I’ll go and give my word that’s wanting surely.
[Goes out.
OWEN.
— to Deirdre. — So I’ve found you alone, and I after waiting three weeks getting ague and asthma in the chill of the bogs, till I saw Naisi caught with Fergus.
DEIRDRE.
I’ve heard news of Fergus; what brought you from Ulster?
OWEN.
— who has been searching, finds a loaf and sits down eating greedily, and cutting it with a large knife. — The full moon, I’m thinking, and it squeezing the crack in my skull. Was there ever a man crossed nine waves after a fool’s wife and he not away in his head?
DEIRDRE.
— absently. — It should be a long time since you left Emain, where there’s civility in speech with queens.
OWEN.
It’s a long while, surely. It’s three weeks I am losing my manners beside the Saxon bull-frogs at the head of the bog. Three weeks is a long space, and yet you’re seven years spancelled with Naisi and the pair.