The Laughter of Peterkin: A retelling of old tales of the Celtic Wonderworld

by William Sharp

Darthool saw no one but her nurse, and the tutor whom the king had sent to teach her all that could be taught, and not only in learning, but in courtesy and nobility; and Lavarcam, who alone went to and fro. From the time that Darthool passed out of her first girlhood the king saw little of her, but twice in each year—at the Festival of the Sun in the time of the greening, and at the Festival of end Summer at the fall of the leaf; and this because of a warning that had been given him by Cathba the ancient Druid.

How can the beauty of so fair and sweet a woman be revealed? Her loveliness was even as Cathba had foretold. It was a surpassing loveliness, and the three women who saw her often marvelled at it, and wondered no more that Darthool should be kept apart, for of a surety she would be a torch to put flame into the hearts of men, and to set great duns and raths and towered capitals and warring nations ablaze. The poets have sung of her, and no man has sung but out of his deep desire. Her great sad eyes, so full of dream, were blue as are the hill-tarns at noon, and often dusky as they when passing clouds put purple into their depths; and like a golden web her hair was, sprayed out with shining light, wonderful, glorious; and her rowan-red lips were indeed that strange crimson fruit which Cathba had foreseen—rowan-red against the cream-white softness of her skin. Cream-white her body was, and her neck like a tower of ivory; slim and graceful was she as a fawn, and fleet of foot as the wild roes on the hills, and when she moved in the sunlight or the shadow she was so beautiful that tears came at times to the eyes of the women in that lonely place. Yet even more wonderful was her voice—low and sweet and with music in it, like the whisper of the wind among the reeds, or the ripple of green leaves, or the murmuring of a brook.

But now and from this time forth Concobar did not see her. For a year and a day after she attained womanhood, Cathba had warned the king it would mean death to him if he saw her. Nevertheless, he often heard of Darthool from Lavarcam, who in her going to and fro had ever one thing to say—that never had there been any woman so beautiful.

The rumour of this great loveliness spread from lip to lip. Yet no man ventured to seek out the hidden place where Darthool dwelled, for to all it was known that Concobar kept her there against the time when he would make her his queen, and all feared the long arm and the heavy hand of Concobar Mac Nessa. None might even question the king.

It was in this year that the shadows of the feet of Fate came into that place.

One day when Lavarcam told the king that Darthool grew fairer and fairer, so that even the wild creatures of the forest rejoiced in her, he all but yielded to his desire. Nevertheless, fearing the prophetic voice, he refrained, but cried: “When the snow time has passed, and the first greening is over, and the wild rose runs like a flame throughout the land, then will I go to Darthool.”

But before the greening was lost in the tides of summer, and before the wild rose had begun to run like a windy flame throughout the land, Concobar had learned that Destiny waits on no man.

One dawn the first snows came over the hills of the north and fell upon the forest. At the rising of the sun they ceased, but every branch was a white plume, and every glade was smooth and white as was the breast of Darthool herself. There was no wind in the deep blue sky, but the air was sharp and sweet because of the frost. For joy Darthool clapped her hands, as she stood upon the wall of the lios.

Then, glancing downward, she beheld the woman who was her attendant standing beside a calf that had been slain for the provisioning of those within the fort. The red blood streamed over the snow, and was as the crimson cloak of an Ultonian chief there, till the red grew mottled as it sank through the frozen whiteness.

Darthool’s eyes ever saddened at the sight of blood, but after a brief while she knew that there was no harm in that shedding, and that no omen of further bloodspilling lay therein. While she was still looking thereon, a great raven, glossy black and burnished in the sun rays, came gliding swift across the snow, and alit by the slain calf, and drank of the warm bright blood.