Deirdre of the Sorrows | Page 9

not raise your voice against
me, Lavarcham, if you have will itself to guard Naisi.
LAVARCHAM -- breaking out in anger. -- Naisi is it? I didn't care if
the crows were stripping his thigh-bones at the dawn of day. It's to stop
your own despair and wailing, and you waking up in a cold bed,
without the man you have your heart on, I am raging now. (Starting up
with temper.) Yet there is more men than Naisi in it; and maybe I was a
big fool thinking his dangers, and this day, would fill you up with
dread.
DEIRDRE -- sharply. -- Let you end; such talking is a fool's only,
when it's well you know if a thing harmed Naisi it isn't I would live
after him. (With distress.) It's well you know it's this day I'm dreading
seven years, and I fine nights watching the heifers walking to the
haggard with long shadows on the grass; (with emotion) or the time I've
been stretched in the sunshine, when I've heard Ainnle and Ardan
stepping lightly, and they saying: Was there ever the like of Deirdre for
a happy and sleepy queen?
LAVARCHAM -- not fully pacified. -- And yet you'll go, and welcome
is it, if Naisi chooses?
DEIRDRE. I've dread going or staying, Lavarcham. It's lonesome this
place, having happiness like ours, till I'm asking each day will this day

match yesterday, and will tomorrow take a good place beside the same
day in the year that's gone, and wondering all times is it a game worth
playing, living on until you're dried and old, and our joy is gone for
ever.
LAVARCHAM. If it's that ails you, I tell you there's little hurt getting
old, though young girls and poets do be storming at the shapes of age.
(Passionately.) There's little hurt getting old, saving when you're
looking back, the way I'm looking this day, and seeing the young you
have a love for breaking up their hearts with folly. (Going to Deirdre.)
Take my word and stop Naisi, and the day'll come you'll have more joy
having the senses of an old woman and you with your little grandsons
shrieking round you, than I'd have this night putting on the red mouth
and the white arms you have, to go walking lonesome byways with a
gamey king.
DEIRDRE. It's little joy of a young woman, or an old woman, I'll have
from this day, surely. But what use is in our talking when there's Naisi
on the foreshore, and Fergus with him?
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.
DEIRDRE -- beginning to fold up her silks and jewels. -- Three weeks
of your days might be long, surely, yet seven years are a short space for
the like of