The Mermaid Cave
Uaimh Na Maighdine Farraige
By Greg Patrick
“Let us go
forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and
have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true,
and the earth
is only a little dust under our feet."- (A Teller of Tales)”
― W.B. Yeats, The
Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore
North of Ireland 1316 a.d.
With the sigh of the ever-restless sea in the background Sir Cormac of Dunluce
composed songs for his muse far below the bannered ramparts paced by archers The Mermaid
Cave the dark heart of the Castle of Dunluce. Cormac's red albino eyes blinked open his hands
ceasing at the strings at his harp before sighing deeply and beginning anew.
In that sequestered haven he played with a conjuring hand, his words incantation
peopling the cave’s dark chamber with visions of a regal court
crowded with jesters, mummers, bannermen, courtiers, knights, damsels,
and troubadours. And at the centre of his conjured world was the very
essence of a Celtic bard’s inspiration Lady Aoife daughter of the Lord of Dunluce.
He envisioned her then a vision of beauty behind impossibly green eyes
and impossibly beyond his station. And every serenade he uttered for his muse in that dark sanctuary was
a rebel song and heresy so that he seemed a rebel angel at the harp.
He wrote and sang in solitude with distant eyes immersed in a world of chivalry and courtly
love. Yet that was not his world. Cormac was gifted or cursed with the bard's way with
Words and that cursed blessing betrayed him. Cormac found himself bullied by an
ambitious young chieftain Niall of Tyrone into writing song to woo Lady Aoife.
Lady Aoife beamed as she approached the chieftain on a night when rumours
of battle were on every man and woman’s lips in the lordly castle from scullery
maid to knight.
“I have another song for you “Niall smiled.
Cormac could bear it no longer and paid a scribe to write a confession to the lady
including details of the songs only the author would know and a lady in waiting to deliver
it to her on the morrow.
She spoke to Niall, yet she met Cormac’s eyes as he stood aloof
torches between them and their gaze lingered. Flames dancing with the wind
blocked him from her sight and when they shifted again, he vanished.
His breath steamed as he mouthed the words of the poem in the air.
Cormac was observed by two green eyes pacing the flagstones of the battlements as
sentries received urgent tidings.
His breath steamed in the chill air as he sighed deeply.
That night the lord of the keep hosted a feast for his fighting men. Cormac remained
brooding, silent, and aloof as the men at arms and knights boasted of the feat
of arms and the vanquishing defeat they would inflict on the enemy.
The old bard sang a tribute to Lady Aoife then bowed graciously to the drumming of
flagons on the oaken table. Cormac looked into the red depths of the hearth flames
his lips moving. His words were like incantation as flames swayed like charmed
serpents morphing into visions of battle and hunt before dissolving amorphously
into the smoldering embers. Cormac suddenly blinked and realised that the hall was
Silent. The assembly was listening spellbound to his song. He met Aoife’s eyes
before turning red and bowing out, stammering apologies. The court bar
cast him a scathing look.
Later the monks heard confessions one eve of battle blessed their weapons absolving
of the blood they would spill. Aoife suddenly appeared before him.
Cormac stood transfixed and painfully awkward before she spoke.
He doffed his helm.
"My Lady..."
His eyes betrayed his passion.
“Your songs...” Aoife began.
“Alas did not begin to do you justice...” Cormac replied.
He met her eyes without shame captivated by the way they cast their spell
intoxicatingly.
“I know he did not write the songs himself, but the words were so fair I imagined them
to have been composed by a bard of many summers of a lordly court”
“You flatter me your grace,” the Cormac replied.
“And you flatter yourself churl! “Niall snarled as he stood between them.
Cormac's hand began to hover at his sword hilt when both froze jarred by a shrill horn
sounding in alarm from the battlements.
“Men of Dunluce to arms!” a herald proclaimed.
“You flatter yourself if you would ever begin to think...” Niall began.
“Our lord has called us to arms! Squires attend to your knights we march with the last
light! “the herald declared.
The chieftain spat before stalking away while Cormac offered her a courtly bow in
parting before donning his helm as his squire girded on his honed and
varnished sword. Monks heard confessions one eve of battle blessed their weapons
absolving them for the blood they would shed with the swords and axes brought from
the castle arsenal. The horns of war sounded rallying the garrison. Cormac bowed low
to Lady Aoife as his squire hastened to him.
"My Lady,” Cormac whispered.
His eyes betrayed his passion as Aoife offered her sash as a lady's favour.
He lifted the perfumed fabric to his lips, inhaling its fragrance. He mounted his horse
and took up shield and pennoned lance. Children cast flower petals in their wake and
from the battlements as women keened and sang a lament.
Knights and men at arms reinforced by a company of kerns and
gallowglass massed by
the gate. Horns sounded shrilly and the portcullis groaned open before them into
the blood red twilight. The force marched from the castle gates blinking into the crimson
twilight.
The procession to war was outlined as they marched across the rope bridge spanning
the chasm from the cliffs to the castle overlooking the Celtic Sea against the vermillion
dusk like an inferno against the darkening sky.
As the company marched under the banner of the lord of Dunluce into the
night the men at arms sang bawdy tavern songs to bolster their spirits as they
advanced under glowering skies threatening rain. Then his rival sang crude verses
about Lady Aoife.
“Hold! Halt!” Cormac cried.
There was an expectant hush at the clang of a thrown gauntlet. Cormac and Niall
dismounted and began to draw swords. Suddenly a scout galloped into their midst.
“The enemy is nigh upon us! To arms!”
Rain fell then but first spears and arrows.
“Shields! Hold formation!” Cormac cried.
Yet their ranks were thrown into wild disarray as the enemy charged their flanks.
Redshank mercenaries erupted from the thick of trees with wild battle cries
slashing down men blinded by torrential rain with swords and daggers.
The men of Dunluce were hopelessly outnumbered by the enemy.
Niall’s horse snorted blood and reared and fell speared down by an onslaught
of attackers.
“I yield!” Niall pleaded desperately offering a ransom and to turn traitor to help then take
the castle. His blubbering ceased when a sword thrust into his face. The mercenary
raised Niall’s severed head as a grisly trophy.
“Fall back! Retreat!” a man at arms cried.
A herald sounded the retreat. The throaty bray of the horn echoed amid the trees
as the enemy cheered, raising their red swords triumphantly.
The enemy pursued relentlessly cutting stragglers down and spearing
the wounded, their battle cries mingling with the thunder.
Cormac’s story almost ended there slain and left to the wolves and ravens
with corpse stripped of armour yet he was quietly a master of swordplay
“Hold the retreat!” a herald begged.
Cormac answered the call and stepped forward to defy them till he was red to the
shoulder in blood if not for the rain till he too reeled back and fled from the onslaught.
The castle was beautiful and tragic to behold as the broken army fled in
anticipation of the inevitable siege. Meanwhile a black gyr falcon
glided unseen over the helms of the besiegers bearing urgent tidings.
Torches of the massing horde coloured the mist crimson in a hellscape.
The bridge shuddered as shook as the defenders retreated to the castle under
cover of a flight of arrows from the ramparts and crossbow bolts from murder
Holes. The enemy raised a crimson banner of no quarter.
“Havok! Havok!” the besiegers chanted brandishing their swords and axes
and pumping pikes mounted with the heads of their enemies in time
with the chant. Soon trebuchets would be drawn into range to obliterate
the castle walls. Doom seemed inevitable.
One of the broken army halted and pivoted drawing his sword ignoring urgent cries
before the drawbridge and portcullis groaned shut with grim finality. Cormac seemed
to glide rather than stride through the mist rising from the chasm before halting in the
centre of the bridge, drawing his sword in grim lone defiance. Below the tide rose, the
cold sea roared cauldrenously, waves smiting the jagged stone formations far below. The tides
receded rumbling across the dark fathoms of Celtic Sea unseen for the hovering shroud of
mist. The great lordly castle loomed brooding in the background.
The massed array of enemy warriors suddenly made way as a towering ogre of a man lumbered
through their ranks gripping a massive meat cleaver of a sword. Chainmail
jangled with each stride as the infamous “Butcher of Armagh” Sir
Fergus made his entrance. His tabard was red like a butcher's apron with the blood of
slaughtered men.
Fergus raised a flagon in a mocking toast to Sir Cormac before belching.
“Is this some insolent jest? This lackey is not fit to die by my sword.
Does this lowly hedge knight truly believe himself worthy to die by my sword?
The blade that laid great kings and their champions low. Yield and stand down,”
he bellowed brandishing a great executioner axe. The rusted notched blade was
discoloured from the blood of his past victims. Flies buzzed around it. Fergus flushed with mead
and arrogance closed on Sir Cormac.
“Hold! Stand down lads. Sieges are dull. I need a bit of fun. Watch me swat this puny fly
and on to sack the castle lads!” Fergus grinned.
The enemy horde answered with gusto a chorus of huzzahs and jeers at Cormac as he
drew into fighting stance that was jolted as the giant lumbered across the
planks. Cormac strode to meet him. Fergus flexed his muscular chain-mail-clad arms in
anticipation of casually hacking Cormac down before the eyes of the aghast
defenders.
Cormac stood impassive with arms akimbo before he drew the sword with a flourish
kissing the hilt. The bridge swayed in a blast of window like a disembodied kiss by
the shriveled lips of death himself. Cormac saw himself mirrored in his assailant's helm as
dark as an executioner's mask. Fergus boasted that he would ravish Aoife here before
allowing others to have their way with her. Cormac gripped his sword so tightly blood
may have oozed between his gauntleted fingers.
Sir Cormac looked on with distant haunted eyes tormented by a vision of the castle aflame.
The sea reflecting the inferno like a volcanic eruption. He heard cries of abused women
and anguished cries of slaughtered men as the castle walls were breached and overrun with fire
and sword. In that fiery abattoir Aoife lay with torn gown as Fergus stood over her.
Cormac remembered when his father gifted him the sword on his deathbed.
“This is a knight's sword it will take a knight to wield it “his father rasped.
Cormac saw himself mirrored in the varnished blade. His eyes flared with a sudden
intensity.
"I will make short work of him," Fergus crowed.
The giant expected to casually swat Cormac aside dismissively, yet his adversary
defied expectations parrying the axe strokes deftly and inflicting a slash
across his enemy’s torso like a mocking smile.
“Small as a midge and you sting like one. No matter. This ends now, “Fergus sneered.
Fergus raised the axe in two hands and brought it down obliterating his shield
emblazoned with the sigil of a red wolf rampant. Cormac shrugged off the supportive
hands of his anxious squire as he staggered back staunching bleeding with his fist
yet he felt Lady Aoife’s eyes on him and rallied.
Cormac put all his dormant rage at God and man jibes and jeers at his lowly birth.
Blades crossed sparkingly as the two opponents were silhouetted against the
splendour of the aurora borealis illuminating the sky in lavish flourishes of pastel
colour.
Fergus’ eyes betrayed a flicker of uncertainty as they met Cormac’s over cross
blades. What he anticipated to be a simple execution became a duel. He expected
to have dispatched Cormac with one blow sending him down with cleft skull
over the bridge before leading a charge on the walls.
Fergus did not heed any swordplay but as a brawler in a tavern. The cheers and jeers of
the besiegers ceased followed by an expectant hush as the crossing of blades resounded.
Then Fergus raised his brawny arms too high exposing a fatal gap in his armour to Cormac's
blade. Cormac promptly thrust a dagger between the grooves of the armour.
A collective gasp rose from the enemy horde as Fergus staggered back.
In the lull Cormac gave final orders to his squire. The boy gave him a terrified look.
“A squire obeys his knight,” Cormac urged.
Cormac insulted Fergus to keep the eyes of his opponent locked on him. Fergus was
so intent on his enemy to notice the squire frantically cutting the ropes suspending the
bridge. The bridge shuddered at the like a beheaded serpent’s coils. He could see Lady
Aoife on the battlements she blew a kiss to him that steamed in the chill air as he
turned he could feel her eyes on him. Fergus finally had the presence of mind to look up.
"Archers! Bring him down!" Fergus bellowed.
Before they could Cormac gripped his sword and slashed through the final ropes
in succession. Cormac caught the last strand of rope entwining it in his hand.
“I cannot bear thee,” the squire cried as he grasped Sir Cormac’s hand.
Cormac felt the hand of his adversary groping trying to dislodge or tear him loose.
The boy began to slide down with him.
“Let me go. You have to let me go boy... “
Cormac winked at his squire and pulled his hand free.
He met Aoife's eyes a final time. As he slid off the cliff, he stabbed Fergus
with his dirk and they fell together. Fergus shrieked in anticipation as they hurtled down
to the jagged rocks like the bared fangs of a sea monster. Below them the jagged
stones were exposed then submerged by intervals of the waves rushing in.
Cormac envisioned himself falling alone rush of wind arms splayed savouring the
sensation of falling. Moments before impact waves roared back in submerging the
stones just before they struck the water. The giant body of Fergus shielded Cormac
from most of the impact. Cormac knew that if he blacked out, he would die as he was
immersed in the cold rush of sea like a cauldrenous torrent. He floated, dazed and
stunned by the impact and swept like living debris by the tide.
Imminent to death memories came to haunt him like dark ghosts. He remembered when
he was bestowed with an accolade by his lord as an anointed knight of a red field of
terrible carnage. The feathers of ravens seemed to hail him in darkness like
tears of midnight. He remembered kissing a willing scullery maid against the wall closing his
eyes imagining it was Aoife...Aoife...His sigh exhaled bubbles as he sank deeper.
From submerged perspective Cormac looked up to see the undulant glow of the
aurora borealis. Moonbeams illuminated him, suspended floating listlessly.
He could hear an eerie song haunting the waves caressing and shuddering
his soul. Wavering shadows morphed into graceful womanly form. Bioluminescent
particles shimmered like constellations around him like a hoard of sunken gold.
He pulled himself free kicked to the surface. His muse and her ladies in
waiting singing in choir beckoning to him.
Cormac could see dark silhouettes in seductive revel as if merwomen tempting
him with their song and cold caresses to linger and sink deeper into the dark
fathoms.
Cormac looked transfixed into eye impossibly green like tidepools
of Celtic Sea. Red hair sweeping like a fire burning under the sea.
Suddenly saw gill slits on her pale throat betraying her true nature.
As if unmasked her face reverted to its natural form contorted with rage a frilled
scaled face baring serrated fangs. Clawed fingers from membraned webbed
Hands reached for him. Then he saw the sea floor littered by the skulls of mariners that the
syrens seduced with their eerie song. Their skeletal hands seemed to gesture to him.
Cormac awoke to the rush of sea tossing him like a plaything of
the gods ashore. Waves cast Cormac against the rocks gasping hoarsely and coughing
before being drawn back again thrice, and then finally gripping the rock and pulling
himself beyond the reach of the sea like a plaything of the gods.
Cormac pulled himself higher painfully over the jagged stones. The water rose
flowing over him, submerging him again. Waves slammed Cormac against
the rocks as he clenched his teeth to endure not wasting cries to cold aloof gods.
Then he saw it barely visible through the mist. The dark heart of Dunluce. The mermaid
cave. Its entrance was tantalisingly within reach. It seemed a threshold to the
Netherworld awaiting him. He grasped a familiar pillar of rock like a monolith, a
misshapen rock formation sculpted by the hands of time and tides over eons.
Cormac gasped vomiting sea water and coughing before laying dazed
bruised and panting. The waves sizzled between the rocks just behind him like the hiss
of a cat at a mouse hole after its quarry eluded its reach and claws. Cormac lay
listening to the sigh of the waves lapping at the rocks as the tide rose and fell. It hurt to
utter so much as a whisper let alone compose a song.
The gods felt distant as he was when his mother died of the plague alone.
He was kept back from being by her side and the cottage set aflame.
Masked men with a cart came to collect her and dump her in a mass grave
in a remote place.
"Why would God allow this father?"
The haggard priest only looked at him blankly as he was paid to give her a
blessing from afar.
With sudden recognition Cormac saw half the face of a fellow man at arms.
He nudged him and saw crabs scuttle away from the partly defleshed skull they
were scavenging ravenously. Crabs plucked out his eye in his claw before scuttling
away into the crevices. Emboldened by his vulnerability the crabs ventured closer to
him. If they swarmed him, it would be like being butchered by hundreds of little
daggers.
Sensing a supernatural presence, the crabs abruptly scuttled away and shrank back into
the crevices. Scavenging sea birds took flight as if restless shadows were granted
form and face. A regal apparition graced the darkness. A gowned figure materilaised in
frills and sumptuous black gossamer. The rock formation morphed into a throne and
there reposed the Morrigan flanked by great pale wolfhounds. Albino ravens perched on
her graceful shoulders.
“The Morrigan,” Cormac gasped.
“Well met Cormac son of Maeve of Antrim. It has been centuries as mortals measure
time since one of your blood called upon me,” the dark goddess began.
“The castle must not fall. I humbly offer myself as sacrifice,” Cormac groaned.
“I am no lowly scavenger a slab of carrion will not serve my divine craving
Rise for your enemy draws nigh. I am a goddess of war. I require you to slay your
enemy as an offering,” the dark goddess said.
As if conjuring the dead, the Morrigan beckoned in a forbidden tongue.
Impossibly the Fergus the giant opened his eyes as fishes began to nibble at his flesh.
He rose explosively from the chill water, lurching for his enemy grunting with pain and
Rage. Cormac scrambled to respond.
The cave echoed with harsh booming laughter as Fergus retrieved his axe.
The weapon struck sparks on the stone as Fergus struck at his elusive quarry.
Fergus gripped Cormac by the throat and raised him to the level of his eyes
As he looked into the soulless glare of the revenant Cormac gripped a rusted and
barnacled fragment of spear amid the flotsam and jetsam wrenching it from the skeletal
hand of a long-drowned mariner. He stabbed again and again. Blood slithered out
between the dark crevices forming red tidepools.
Like a cold-blooded thing still trying to slay its assailant in its thrashing death throes
Fergus crawled after him only for Cormac to rally on his last reserves of
strength to finally slay his adversary. Fergus shuddered and shrieked like a boar under
a butcher's knife abattoir.
Fergus tried to rise only to be completely enveloped in voracious crabs eating him alive.
Cormac’s last sight of his nemesis was a writhing pile of crabs rose to his feet lurching a few
steps enveloped in crabs before falling face forward at last on the stone slab like a
sacrificial offering. The screams ended when the crabs began to crawl into his throat and
clamping their claws on his tongue. In the silence Cormac could hear the crabs insatiably
gorging and sea birds hovering and harrying the grisly banquet trying to win a morsel.
The screams were replaced by the grisly sounds of the crabs voraciously gorging.
Screeching sea birds also joined in the feast plucking out the eyes as a delicacy.
“I accept your sacrifice...” the Morrigan smiled.
Meanwhile huzzahs rose from the castle’s battlements as a summoned relief army
caught the besiegers completely off-guard driving them off the cliffs at lancepoint
by knights astride warhorses reinforced by gallowglass mercenaries wielding claymores
and lochaber axes. Horns resounded with a throaty bray to signal victory.
Suddenly Cormac screamed at the nightmarish sight of his enemy rising
enveloped by crabs. Fergus grasped his nemesis again.
A sword flashed in the firelight swung in a shimmering arc severing the giant’s head.
The knight doffed their helm. Red hair cascaded out spilling like wine from a chalice.
“Aoife,” Cormac sighed.
Retainers of the Lord of Dunluce found him scowering the confines of
the sea cave by torchlight. One man gasped and drew his sword as the
torchlight illuminated Cormac’s pale face.
“Hold. Revenants don't breathe fool. Take him,” a man at arms commanded.
Men at arms draped Cormac’s arms over their shoulders and lifted him
on their shields to carry him inside the castle.
A Moorish doctor shipwrecked on their shores tended to his wounds.
Cormac’s eyes opened as he heard Aoife singing next to him. He closed his eyes and
reopened them. He was still wounded and broken on the rocks too weak to move as the
tide rose again. He shifted between two worlds not knowing where he truly was
a bard strummed his harp softly. She rose and kissed his forehead enfolding his cold
hands on the sword. The water rushed in with a roar.
“Your father would never approve...” Cormac groaned.
“If you were elevated to a lord or we could elope “
Cormac reopened his eyes.
“Where am I?”
Was he still floating in the sway of the tides or writhing throes of infected feverish sleep
Tended top by the lord's personal doctor a Moorish physician between dream and
death frail yet clutching to life with a fierce tenacity.
Cormac heard Aoife singing next to him. His lips moved soundlessly in duet. He closed
his eyes and reopened them. Was he still wounded and broken on the rocks too
weak to move as the tide rose again? He shifted between two worlds not knowing
where he truly was a bard strummed his harp softly. Aoife rose and kissed his forehead
enfolding his cold hands on the sword as the water rushed in with a roar.
Cormac envisioned himself dancing across a dreamscape of stars
With Aoife. He felt himself uplifted as he fought the fever his lips soundlessly singing a song to
his muse.
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