The Fire in the Oaks: A Novel of St Patrick's Confession
Page 5
This is the first he has seen of the sea for six years. He sits on the beach and watches the water. When he is finished, the sun begins its descent. He looks up the beach and then down the beach. After a moment, the setting sun on his right, he begins to walk. Eventually he comes to a group of rocks too immense to go around; these he climbs. At the top of the rocks he rests for a while to recapture his strength, and then he climbs back down. One morning, early in his walking, he is stopped by a cliff and it takes almost the whole day before he reaches the bottom, sinking in exhaustion until the next morning. At dawn he starts walking again.
He does this for several days and soon his feet are cracked and bleeding even through his calluses, and his legs and back ache from the days of travel. Only when he is on the verge of collapse does he see the clamor of a coastal town in the distance. He follows the smoke of the fires and the noise that penetrates the air and soon he arrives at the edge of the town. Some look at him and he thinks maybe there will be questions about his bedraggled appearance, but those who see him either don’t notice or don’t care. Perhaps they mistake him for some sort of wodewose, one of Orcus’ silvestres, the barbaric woodland men of myth he has heard in stories around the fire at night.
His food is gone and he has no money. He curses himself for not having found something of value to take with him. He knows he can’t stay. Not without money. Not if anyone is still alive back at the dún. He makes his way through the streets with only one goal in mind and though the streets are irregular and busy, eventually he finds the docks. There is no complexity to his plan. He approaches the first ship he sees. Near the ship a man is loading some sort of cargo; he is the sort of man whose body’s youth has left but evidence remains in stubborn muscles refusing to give way to the softness of age.
Where are you going? he asks.
Who are you? the man asks in return.
I’m Padraig, he says, grateful he speaks the language.
I know the meaning behind your name, and you don’t look so noble. Why do you care where I’m going?
Because I want to go, too.
Without knowing where?
Padraig only nods.
The man thinks a moment. How much do you have to pay me with? he asks.
I’ve nothing. But if you let me I’ll find a way to pay you or maybe I can work for you for a time.
If you’ve nothing for me then I’ve nothing for you, the man says.
Please, if there’s any arrangement we could come to.
There isn’t. I have men. I have more than enough to sail. What I need none of are grimy beggars trying to abuse my hospitality. Now go.
Padraig leaves. He knows that somewhere he could probably find someone he could do some work for and maybe gather enough to be able to afford to leave. He knows too that if he takes such a long view of things he is doomed. He has no other option than to continue on.
The next boat is not even so friendly as the first and he doesn’t even begin his plea. The sailors barely glance in his direction before they start raining abuse on him. Some are content enough with insults but others begin throwing things at him and one particularly enthusiastic sailor kicks at him as he tries to get away, laughing to his friends the whole time until he tires and lets Padraig run off to safety.
The third ship moored at the docks is empty, and though he is sorely tempted he continues onward. At the fourth he is treated more politely than he had been before but still he is refused passage, though it seems to be with much sincerity and sympathy that he is turned away. He approaches the fifth and as he does is dismayed to note that there are only two more opportunities left to him before he must wait for either money or the arrival of more sympathetic crews.
At the fifth ship he finds a man he assumes is the captain preparing with his crew, a lean and well-used looking man with greying hair and expressionless eyes that watch him as he approaches.
Where are you going? Padraig asks.
And who are you?
Padraig. I’m not from here. I’m looking for passage.
Passage to where? the man asks.
What’s your name?
Galchobhar. Passage where?
Anywhere.
We’re going to Gaul.
Gaul?
You said you wanted passage anywhere, Galchobhar says. He spits.
I do.
We are going to Gaul.
May I go?
How will you pay?
I’ve nothing to pay you with but my time.
What’s your trade?
I’ve worked as a shepherd, Padraig says. Galchobhar laughs, a brutal noise more like a bark.
This is not shepherd’s work. I’m not sure we can do anything with you.
I’ve worked as a shepherd, but I’ve also labored. I assume you’ll not need me to navigate. I can tie, I can carry, I can clean. Anything you’d actually need a man like me for I could do and will do without asking twice, Padraig says. There could be trouble later, he knows, but he must find a ship.
You are in luck, Padraig the shepherd. We’re missing two men. They went down the coast to a different town and are dead for all we know. You could help pick up some of the slack. We’re leaving for Gaul today.
And I can come?
If you work and you work as you have said. Working when asked and working without questioning. If you’ll do as you have said then you can come with us to Gaul, though how Gaul is better than here I can’t say. If you don’t work, Galchobhar begins. Well, if you don’t work, what’s another drowned man among all the sea has claimed?
Padraig accepts and is put to work loading the ship with its cargo, which seems to be mostly provisions for the crew itself, along with necessities for repairs at sea, and some tradable items which could either be used in commerce or in an emergency. He and the other men work hard and it is not long before the vessel is prepared to launch. The winds are favorable and so they are able to depart without even the assistance of oars once they are out in the sea.
The work at sea is not far from what Padraig expected. He scrubs, he ties, he fetches, he mends, he scoops, he runs. The other men seem to take him as a native fallen on hard times, rather than a slave escaped from a ruined master, and he thinks this is probably for the best. Even though they are gruff with him, it is the best treatment he has had in all his time in their land. He is spoken to as an equal, if not in stature, then in worth, and this is a unique experience for him after the last six years.
They travel for several days. The sea is calm, the weather is clear. But the sky becomes a wall of darkness in the distance. The smell of it is in the air and the sailors no longer talk. They perform their labors more steadily, more determinedly, and always one eye, if not both, is on the looming horizon. Thunder crackles in the distance and now it is here and there is no saving themselves.
Clouds gather overhead and the wind picks up and the sea becomes more violent. What is left of clear sky on the horizon is blocked from view and the ship begins to shudder under the impact of the rising waves.
Galchobhar shouts to his men as the sea pitches around them. Padraig looks at the tall waves and the sky-cracking lightning that bursts out so frequently that the storm is illuminated as if it didn’t blot the sun. The wind at his back threatens to lift him from the deck. Ropes flail like a dying gorgon around him and still he stands stoneyfaced. He watches the horizon as it pitches at the edge of his vision. A man falls into the sea to his right and screams, though no one seems to hear. Sometimes the waves and the water on the deck of the ship are indistinguishable. Padraig spits.
A monster of a wave catches their vessel and the entire craft is turned almost vertically in the water with Padraig on the downward-facing side. He looks in the gaping maw of the wave before the gravity pulls out from under him and the ship takes its dive.
He forms in his throat a noise
too proud to be a scream, too primal to be a shout. It struggles against the yawning Charybdis in front of him and then his mouth and his nose are full of water and there is no down or up and his head snaps back and there is darkness.
Five
Shapes drift in and out of the mist, and he is in his grave. Those who care are shades, and they too are there. His world is reduced to the grey. There is no light, just the flickering half-sparks of some taunting source only ever at his periphery, half-formed and half-remembered before it too collapses back to its origin and he is alone.
The fog enveloping him grows heavier and heavier. It drags his every step and he knows that whatever this place is, it has him and it is a grip not easily broken. Soon he feels like Atlas smothered in place and then the moistness, once soft and seductive, turns coarse and it worms its way into him. His eyes and ears and skin are rubbed by it, and his mouth is full of grit so that he cannot breathe. He gasps.
He opens his eyes. He is on a beach. The sky is blue. The water is cold on his legs, which are still submerged. He coughs. He coughs again and looks around him. The broken remains of the ship lay not far from him, still in the shallow water. It is run aground and under its own weight it cannot drift. Instead the insistent waves knock it here and there and it seems to settle into one spot or another, broken timber hanging off lazily and drying in the sunlight.
In various positions of awakening, unconsciousness, or death, the crew of the ship are dispersed along the beach like thrown seed. He stands up. His right leg gives out from under him and his head strikes the beach.
When he looks down at his leg, there is no blood, but something dark forming under the surface. He moves it to one side. Extends it. Moves to the other side. Confident it is not broken, he tries again. Slower this time. Slower. He raises himself up and the leg threatens but it will hold and he takes its complaint.
He sees what he thinks is Galchobhar some distance off and hobbles in that direction. When he reaches him, the captain is picking a sliver of wood as long as his hand out of his leg. Blood starts to pump out of the open wound in rhythm with his heartbeat. He clutches at himself and groans as he sticks the leg into the water and lets the ocean wash into the wound and clean the blood away. Once he can bear it, he tears some cloth from his garments and sticks this into the water until it too is soaked. He takes his leg from the water and wraps the rag tightly around the wound. Only then does he notice Padraig.
You’re alive then, he says.
What happened? Padraig asks.
The storm moved us closer to land than we’d thought, Galchobhar says. Just when we thought we’d limped out of it, after you’d been knocked down by the water while standing at the bow like an idiot, we capsized. I think we just happened to be close enough that the momentum pushed us to shore.
Where are we?
Gaul, maybe. It’s the only land we should have been close to.
So we made it.
Don’t be stupid. We were going to Calad. In Gaul. Not Gaul itself. Not Gaul for its own sake. Calad. I’ve no idea where we are now. We could be north of Calad, we could be south of Calad. But we aren’t where we need to be.
We’ll find it.
No ship and a maimed crew. We’ll do fine, I’m sure.
They spend the rest of the day gathering up the survivors. They carry three men from the beach until there is soil instead of sand, and they bury them there and no one speaks for a while. Two others leave no sign and they dig graves for them, too, but they are shallow and they mark all five of them with rocks. By that time it is night and they sit on the beach with no means of starting a fire and no food. There are several among them less damaged by the wreck than the others, and they swim out to the ship despite the cold, black water. To Padraig’s surprise all of them return, but there is nothing in their hands.
We should follow the coast, one says. We’ll come across Calad or some other port. If we follow the coast we’ll find our way.
But which way? another says. It could be miles before we get anywhere if we go the wrong way.
We’ll go inland, Galchobhar says.
Why inland?
These coasts twist and turn like a knot. We’d find a port sooner or later, I agree, but before we did we’d walk double, triple the distance we would have walked if we had just started inland in the first place.
There is some discussion after that, but the night grows colder and the only recourse is to sleep and hope for the tomorrow. Galchobhar is their captain and he has spoken. Any more talk is an exercise in futility.
They set out in the morning, joints aching and limbs numbed by the overnight chill. Their course seems to have little guidance- move away from the sea, push as far as possible. The orders are vague but they’ve little else to do but forge on ahead through the new land.
On the first day they set out and there is still optimism in the group. They sing songs as though they are still aboard the ship and they tell jokes and they do their best to forage, though there isn’t much edible and there are many of them. The second day follows closely to the first, but the songs are a bit more hollow, the jokes are stale, and the foraging is worse. It doesn’t help that they spend each night without a fire. Though the day is passable, the night returns and it is unforgiving. All the time they march there is no trace of even another stranded soul, much less a village or a town or even some abandoned hut standing testament to there having ever been at any point a human presence in the area.
On the fourth day, the songs stop in the early morning. Their throats are too sore for singing and even once they are rested the songs no longer come to their lips. They forage but there is not enough to sustain them. Maybe enough to sustain one man, but not so many and not without the ability to hunt. One of them tries to make a trap but he is a sailor and the plan is soon abandoned. As they huddle together that night, Padraig prays and though he does so in a whisper they hear him in their proximity.
What are you doing? Galchobhar asks.
Praying.
To whom?
To God.
Which god?
The one God.
The god of Rome?
The God of all.
The god of Rome, then. To the Romans.
If you say so.
It’ll do no good.
If you say so.
I’ve heard of many gods in my time, Galchobhar says. None will put food on your table.
If I only prayed for food that would worry me.
What do you pray for, then?
Padraig doesn’t respond. He looks to the sky with half-opened eyes and soon all of them are asleep.
After a week they are starving. Their bodies are worn and never cease to ache, both from hunger and from the nights which offer no respite to the days. Two of the men find the corpse of a fox, half-rotted and filled with squirming, bloated maggots. Blank eye sockets sit in a head like a shrunken, molded peach. They eat it, hiding it from the others, taking it as their own secret feast. One dies the next day. The other dies two days later. No one dares go near any more animal corpses.
They are reduced to eating bark, to eating grass, to eating different plants and insects, the few that remain. Anything they are able to find. Some of them become sick from what they eat and this weakens them further but they cannot stop. They forage so much and eat so little that most of their time is consumed by the process and they make little actual progress into the land they are supposed to be exploring.
Padraig sees the changes in the other men and knows he too must look like them. Skin stretched against their faces, a wildness in their eyes, a lethargy in their movements. It is in the end of the second week that he hears one of the mutter to himself about the ill fortune of having left behind the two dead men. He prays by himself at night and during the day as he forages. He chisels a piece of stone he finds into a shard so sharp it takes the hair
off the back of his hand when he tries it.
After four weeks they are almost too weak to even continue. On the twenty-eighth day in the wilderness without a sight of another person they decide they will no longer march. They sit talking about their families, their homes, their plans should they survive. They know the meagre food will not last them. Not all of them. In their frustration they grow bitter with one another and there are arguments. Padraig tries to stay at a distance from the others and avoid their squabbles. Eventually, though, some of the more ill-tempered among them notice the stranger is sitting away from them.
He brought this trouble on us, one of them says. The storm is because of him. The lack of food is his fault. We had no problems before him. Who even is he? What do we know about him? He speaks like one of us but he doesn’t feel like one of us to me.
It’s true, another says. All of our misfortune started when our captain took on this wretch. He even thinks he is better than us, sitting away and watching us starve. He doesn’t even look that hungry. He’s probably been keeping food from us the whole time.
Padraig feels the stone in his hand. The lot of them are starting to make their way to him, encircling him so he cannot escape. They seem ready to pounce and he feels the edge of the stone in his hand and at the first move he will bring it to bear, but he is sure it will be the end of him until Galchobhar steps into the circle and his men stand down.
I didn’t do anything, Padraig says.
But you can see what the problem is for these men, Galchobhar says. There were no problems before you. We never wrecked. We were never stranded. We never starved. But now we are here with you and that’s all that has changed.
Still, it is not my fault. Have patience.
Patience? Look around you. What patience do you see here? We’re dying. With what strength we have left we could kill you. We could rid ourselves of our curse. If nothing else we might have something to eat.