Chapter 1 Nothing Good …

Chapter 1 Nothing Good …

In which Cúan Cullen discovers the Warrior’s Hurl and has a vision of the Witch Queen Maedhbh.


Cúan Cullen slapped angrily at the myriad of flies buzzing around his head. He was a fifteen year old youth built with a slim and sinewy frame.He was tanned from working outdoors, with green eyes glinting beneath a mop of untameable brown hair which stuck out in surprising shapes.


Not for the first time he wished for his trusty hurl to swipe at the irksome but persistent insects drawn in their thousands to feast on his fresh young blood.Their vicious little mandibles bit through his sweat to the skin as if they were sent from some profound hatred of human beings embedded beneath the bog.


It was all grandad Manus’ fault! Daideo Manus had insisted on this trip to the Kildare bog “to foot the turf as our ancestors have done for thousands of years.” “Why?” muttered Cúan to himself, “ Nothing good ever came out of a bog.“


Cúan’s father Dermot smiled up at him from the trench. The detective sergeant from the Organised Crime Division in Dublin Castle was dressed uncharacteristically in an open necked green and navy check shirt and was wearing bottle green corduroys tucked into the tops of green rubber wellingtons. He looked fit and strong, flashing a confident grin and he seemed at ease on the bog with no criminals to worry him. He didn’t often get the time to spend with his father these days or with his son for that matter. Yet here they were, three generations of Cullens gathering the turf in, together.


Grandad Manus was footing the turf with his trusty loy.The old man had a shock of white hair cut short in military style. He wore wellingtons too but they were black. He also wore dark cotton trousers supported by red and white striped braces over a clean white cotton short sleeve shirt. Daideo Manus was the first person Cúan had ever seen with a tattoo and Cúan peered at it now, the crossed rifles indicating the owner had once been in the irish infantry.


Dermot was gathering the cut sods and tossing them up to where Cúan would pack them in bags for drying in Manus’ turf bank back at the cottage. He had already filled many of the dried sods in big plastic fertiliser bags and lifted them into the aluminium trailer drawn behind Dermot’s big black Range Rover parked nearby. It struck Cúan as being highly unfair that his mother Gráinne and sister Aoibheann had been excused from this boring and difficult physical work. They had laughed at the idea and talked of their shopping trip. The Mac counter and Bare Minerals were mentioned but Cúan suspected that it wasn’t McDonalds for a burger and drink that they were looking forward to so much. Aoibhean was only a year or two older than him but she might as well be a different species!


“Dad?” His father paused and studied him. “Dad, could we take a break please?” Dermot Cullen stretched upright and then glanced over at his father who had just taken his right boot off the lug of the loy.

He thought “by God does Manus know how to work hard!” Dermot knew how proud his father was and would never want to show any weakness. Dermot needed to let retired Company Sergeant Manus Cullen of the 62nd Infantry Battalion of the Eastern Command feel as if he were in charge.He asked, “What do you say Dad?”


Manus turned around stone faced. His ice cold blue eyes swept over Dermot and Cúan like some scanner or military radar reading every little detail: their posture, their expressions and especially their attitude. A long second elongated and finally elapsed.

Cúan felt guilty of desertion or treason or at least of having let his father down but he set his jaw defiantly and stared back impudently into the old man’s searching eyes.


Manus’ mouth turned up a smidgeon on the left hand side and he spoke softly for the first time. “Why not? After all, the trailer is already full. Why don't you drive it back up to the barn and empty it Dermot. My grandson and I can have a chat about how he’s getting on above in Dublin?”


‘I wonder what Daideo really wants?’, thought Cúan as he watched Dermot’s car slowly circle before driving off in a swirl of dust to the raucous oar of the powerful engine. His grandfather never did anything without having thought long and hard about it first. Cúan swung his navy tracksuit bottoms with their signature stripes over the edge of the steep bank and sat. He watched closely as his grandfather climbed up and slowly sat down beside him. There was no hesitation or sighing, no indication of age or infirmity. The old man was “four score years” as he liked to say himself but even at eighty years of age he moved as smoothly and gracefully as a thirty year old. His white crewcut, “the Cullen Thatch” showed no sign of thinning and his short white beard framed the high cheekbones surmounted by those constant searchlight eyes.


Out of some inner pocket he produced an old leather pouch. Pulling open the drawstrings he removed a polished walnut pipe with a black plastic stem. Next from the pouch came the trusty tin of loose cut tobacco which filled the bowl of the pipe. He damped it down and lit it ceremoniously with a matchbox magicked from the same pouch. Cúan watched his grandfather make the tobacco glow red as he inhaled the smoke before exhaling the cool, blue, aromatic fumes with a contented sigh. Then he just puffed away looking at but not quite seeing the horizon in that reflective unfocused way that Cúan once called his doze-zone. When he finally spoke his voice seemed to come from long ago and far away.


“There’s nothing sweeter than to be out in the open air, with the turf for the winter saved and nothing to do but rest.” Cúan did not know how to respond. For one thing his grandfather had been a widower for ten years and was living alone. For another, even though he seemed to be in good health, Cúan suspected he must be lonely now, especially with them moving to Dublin.


Cúan thought that all the talk about “rest” seemed ominous. Was his grandfather going to talk about dying? Here he was stuck out on the bog where there wasn’t a single bar of phone signal or wifi, listening to his grandad go on about how great it all was. “Oh yeah,” he replied sarcastically, “sure ‘tis sick.”


Manus winced. “Sick?” He stared at Cúan “ How in the name of Crom is it sick?” “It just means that it’s great, fantastic, brilliant, like… sick!” His grandad shook his head, “you're sick, Cúan.” “Who’s Crom?”, asked Cúan. “Never you mind. I know you don't mean it Cúan. You’re probably thinking about your mobile and being stuck out here with me. I remember ,when I was about your age, being out here on the bog with my grandad Oisín and wishing I were somewhere else. I thought I knew everything then. I used to carry all my worries and difficulties inside myself. It was here on this very bog that I learnt a great lesson, how to ask for help. That is what families are for.” Manus narrowed his eyes as a silence descended. A bumble bee idled by zig-zagging in search of yellow gorse and a lonesome snipe called in the distance.


Cúan smiled over at the old man “I heard about this. Wasn't that the day you fell into the boghole and your grandad Oisin pulled you out and saved you from drowning?” “Indeed it was the same day,” answered Manus, ”but Cúan, how good are you at keeping a secret; a secret I haven't told a soul in nearly seventy years?” His grandfather stared at him. “I can keep a secret, if I have to.” responded Cúan while inside he felt anxious. What was the old man up to? ``I’ve never told anyone this, not your father nor my own father, not even your late grandmother,” whispered Manus ashamedly, “I never fell in that boghole, I was pushed in by my grandfather!”


It was as if Nature held her breath. “And he was absolutely right to do it!” Cúan suddenly became very aware that he was alone on the bog with Manus, with no witnesses except for the wild animals that might end up eating his drowned body. His grandfather smiled.

“No, don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you Cúan. My grandfather just wanted to break my stubborn streak and get me to ask for help. I never quite trusted him after that but in later years I learned that he was right. I found it hard to give up the notion that I had to do everything myself. I suppose that’s why I joined the army, to be part of a band of brothers I could rely upon. I wanted to tell you the story so that when the time comes that you need help, and I’m sure that day will come, I’ll be here for you no matter what.


In the distance Cúan spotted a hawk of some sort hovering over some ditch in the distance. This was one steady dot with outstretched wings against a clear blue background. It was watching and waiting in mid-air, waiting until the moment it must drop upon its prey. The pesticides destroying the natural food chain were absent on the bog and more wildlife thrived here. It was one of the things Cúan loved about the countryside.He wondered now what it was watching.


“Ah no Daideo, I’m grand altogether. Sure there’s no big final exam in Transition year and anyhow I‘m one of the best in my classes. The only thing bothering me is getting into St. Daniel’s Senior hurling panel and playing for Fenians. I’m trying out for the club side soon and the Fenian’s Coach picks the school side as well because he’s a teacher there too.” Manus sucked on his pipe and exhaled “Well that’s good to know, Cúan. Let me know how you get on. You know I played hurling for the Coill Dubh Blackwoods club here when I was your age? “ Cúan was genuinely surprised. “Really, did you win anything?” The old man took another long drag on the tobacco, making Cúan wait for the answer. “Well no, but that was because I was woeful.” Manus smiled happily, sucked deeply on his pipe again and went back to his daydreaming. Across the bog the hawk dipped closer to the ground.


Cúan jumped down from the bank, mumbled something about being back soon and set off in the direction of where he had last seen the bird. His curiosity was aroused and he wanted to see what the hawk would do as he approached. A deep cleft lay before him; so deep that he dropped down into some shadow onto the moist brown peat and was lost to view. Stretching before him was a great wide expanse of bog crisscrossed with big holes of brackish brown water of uncertain depths. Industrial harvesting methods had stripped back the bog to its bones taking stored carbon from thousands of years out to be burned as briquettes for the fire.


The hawk hovered in the air about twenty metres away when suddenly it plummeted down with a surprising splash into one of the bigger bog pools. A high pitched screeching and splashing arose as the bird thrashed about in the water. Rushing up to the pool Cúan saw the frantic bird, stare at him with a wild yellow eye. He removed his top and wrapped it around his hand for protection. Carefully he lay on the bog and reached beneath the struggling bird.


The hawk bit his hand fiercely through the thin synthetic fabric drawing blood as he grasped it beneath its breast and raised it from the water. It flapped its long feathered wings ,tearing at his right forearm with its sharp talons before lifting off and taking to the sky again with a long angry screech of injured pride. ‘You’re welcome’, thought Cúan splashing some bogwater over his arm to clean the scratches. That was when he saw it.


At first it appeared to be a brown blur ,as the water stilled he saw some kind of wooden stick embedded in the soft peat about three feet below the surface. He reached his cut arm below the chilly water to grasp it and on contact the stick felt smooth and tapered with a v cut ending like some type of implement. As his right hand closed around the handle he was able to grip it and draw it out of the water. It took form as he drew it into the air and he recognised its cam shape from which the word Camán gets its name. “It’s an ancient hurley” he said to himself out loud in a surprised tone.It was an ancient Irish ash hurley engraved with many runes all over its surface. As Cúan watched the ogham the strangest things began to happen. As he stared at it ancient Ogham writing appeared to move up from the boss of the hurley into the grip where he was holding it.


As it did the landscape blurred and thousands of suns rushed eastwards across the sky. A forest sprung up around him and he himself stretched and broadened into a young man. He appeared to be standing in a tall ash and oak forest before a wide lake at midnight lit by a full moon. He was surrounded by many warriors clad in leather and wild animal skins. He recognised deer, boar, wolf and bearskins. They were heavily armed with long throwing spears, wooden shields and ornate iron swords hung at their sides. Some carried heavy war hammers or axes.


At his side sat an enormous grey wolfhound with sad bloodshot eyes and he could almost feel the warmth and smell the great hound’s coat. He held aloft his great war spear inset with a green emerald. “It is finished,” he shouted out in ringing tones, “the Ancients have spoken and she has been defeated. Murtheimne has been saved and She has been banished. The war is over and the weapon must return from whence it came.” With that he threw his great war spear out in a high arc over the lake. It glittered ominously in the moonlight and then sliced down through the surface with barely a ripple. He felt a great sense of relief.


Then up from the water came a pale transparent shining Queen. Immediately a cold fear gripped his guts. At his side the wolfhound growled low and menacingly as its hackles rose. The Queen walked to the middle of the lake facing them. She stared at him haughtily and Cúan felt she could see into his very soul. She was thin and beautiful with her pale skin glistening in the moonlight. Oddly she was not reflected in the water. She had high cheekbones and stood about two metres in height with long blonde hair in a woven plait that lay over one shoulder and was bound with a gold ribbon down to her waist. Her eyes were grey and cold like ash from a burnt out fire.


She wore a white woollen robe down to her knees but her upper body was covered in bright silver chainmail. Her arms bore silver braces and were covered in blue and black tattoos of snakes and crows which turned their eyes moving on her skin to watch him. A hush fell over the warriors as she unsheathed a spectral sword and pointed it at him. It was long and silver etched with ornate engravings and containing a blood-red ruby set in its hilt.


“ I curse you Cúchulainn, Hound of Ulster.

I curse your Sons and Daughters until your line or mine is driven from this land.”


Then without breaking eye contact she slipped beneath the lake’s surface and was gone. Then for Cúan everything darkened and he fainted dead away.