[5] The word Maeve or Mab seems to mean “Intoxication.”
CHAPTER VI
Maeve had her own bodyguard of soldiers, close on one thousand men, who had come with her from Connacht, and from whom she refused to be parted. She was herself their captain, and each man of them was devoted to her. They were mostly her own countrymen, and she drilled and exercised and was good to them with untiring patience and skill. She was the mother of the force, but a wag called her the wife of the regiment. These thousand men were in Conachúr’s mind as he arranged his visit to Leinster. He had often thought he must disband this force and replace it by his own men, or that he must win its allegiance and destroy it, so he also had been especially kind to the strange soldiers.
Now, on the eve of his journey, he thought it would be a good thing to bring them with him to Leinster; thus, as he explained to Maeve, giving them entertainment and exercise, while at the same time doing honour to his queen and her native province. But the proposition raised such a dreadful ire in the queen, she trod the chamber in such dudgeon and was so free in her speech, that Conachúr hastily and good-humouredly withdrew the suggestion; and bade her bear the soldiers’ discontent when they learned who stood between them and one of the pleasantest marches that a soldier could have.
Indeed, an argument with Maeve was not to be lightly undertaken. It was likely to last a long time, in the first place; and in the second, she had so precipitate a manner of speech and so copious a command of words that the listener’s mind quickly began to feel as if it were in a whirlpool, his head would fly round and round, and he must run away lest his brains burst out from his ears and he die giddily.
No one but Conachúr could hearken to Maeve’s speech on such occasions, and he only did it when he particularly wanted to. For, at times, that which would drive another man mad had a strangely soothing effect on him, and he could sit under that shrill tornado as peacefully as a daisy sits in the sunshine. At times, as one forces a restive horse much farther than it desires to go, he would impel into the brief tail-end of her sentence a philosophic and peaceful interjection which acted on her as the spur on the horse, so that he would drive her beyond the very bounds of utterance, and she would at last, from sheer tongue-weariness, topple from the peaks of speech into a silence so profound that nothing, it seemed, could ever draw her thence again; and then Conachúr would talk to her soothingly, reasonably, unforgivably, and it was Maeve would run.
But this time Conachúr fled: he was in no mood and had not the time for argument; he knew she would not yield, and he was so angry and hurried that he could not be the patient, humorous, and watchful comrade he had intended to be.
When he spoke of this matter to Lavarcham he did not speak with good humour, but he did not empty his mind even to the conversation-woman. It was not necessary.
“When I return from Leinster ...!” said he.
But the wise woman nodded only a half-hearted agreement, for she thought that, although it might only take two days to bury a thousand men, it would take a long time to bury those who would march to avenge them.