“I know who you are, and your secret is safe with me,” I would whisper when I knew that no one was listening.
My back caused me pain, and when the rain brought dampness to the air, I sometimes found it hard to straighten. My eyesight was growing dimmer, though I could always make out the white of the swans between the reeds, and although it was hard to chew with half as many teeth, my mouth was still supple enough to smile. I felt that I had lived well. When I looked at the misfortunes of some of my neighbours, of Aifric, who had lost three sons to winter, and even my childhood friend Hilde, who had died young on the birthing bed, I felt myself fortunate, and I truly believed those swans were my blessing.
I knew that my time was growing short. I was afraid, but I was tired, also. For every fear that crept in me, I thought of Goose, or of a friend, and the knowledge that I would not be the first to cross, nor the last, brought me comfort. Wherever they had gone, I would follow.
My life had been a good life. I had lived it fully. And I knew that when the time came that I could no longer rise from my bed, my family would surround me and care for me as I had cared for Uaine.
I was grateful for all that I had.
Fionnuala
The night Aednat died, we knew before any other, for she did not come before dawn to feed us. As the sun rose pale across the Long Hound, we knew she would not come again.
I took that silent time to reflect. As an old woman, I had loved her as much as when she were a girl. More so, for her wisdom and her stories comforted us. To hear her familiar tales, and those names we had known all our lives, repeated and remembered, brought us peace.
Yet there had been a time when I wished never to look upon Aednat again. A time when I would sail the coast to lose myself in solitude so that I would not have to witness her growth into womanhood, and her joy at becoming a mother.
I wondered then whether my feelings had once been Aoife’s. That thought troubled me deeply. If Aoife had felt the same resentment I felt towards Aednat, then I realised I could understand her. Aednat had never done anything to me, yet I had watched her receive all that I wanted, knowing I would never possess it. I had watched the girl fall in love, be loved, bear children. Then I had watched her grow old. When Uaine died and I heard her wails of grief, that is when I stopped envying her. My jealousy froze in an instant, melting to pity. As strands of grey appeared in her hair, and her steps, which had always been carefree, grew closer together and slowed, that is when I felt ashamed.
It had not been Aednat that I had envied. It had been a moment in her life, nothing more. For the first time since the Lake of the Oaks, I came to see my curse as a blessing. For as long as it held, I would never lose those closest to me. I would wake each day in good health, I would sleep each night with my brothers beneath my wings. I would never know age nor fear death. How I longed then to pass some of my curse on to her. How I wished I could straighten her crooked spine and tell her that she might live forever.
That night the village gathered around Aednat’s hut. They wept and sang, passing around wine in the faded drinking horn she had inherited after Kyna’s death. All night the lamps burned bright for her. As the coldest hour approached, I could not contain my own grief any longer. I threw back my head and began to sing as we used to sing on Loch Dairbhreach. At first my brothers looked afraid, then they joined their voices to mine and we began a lament that would last until dawn. The villagers, who stared at us in disbelief, soon found their eyes growing heavy. They lay down, one by one, upon the bank and fell into a dreamless sleep.
Next morning, when they awoke, the old climbed to their feet, once again sprightly, and those that had been ailing now glowed with health. Everyone, from the youngest boy to the oldest woman, wiped away their tears and smiled at one another, grateful for the glorious sunrise and for having known such a true friend as Aednat. My brothers and I were long gone, for we knew that revealing ourselves had been dangerous, and we did not want to be captured. We floated further towards the sea and spent many years exploring the west coast, sheltering from the fierce winds in caves beneath great cliffs, following in the wake of trading ships as they carried untold riches up and down the headland.
Some nights we swam out as far as we dared into the ocean, calling out to our brother Manannán and his wife, yet they never answered. We flew further west, searching for the magical islands of the Thatha Dé Danann, searching for those fabled places, and even Tír na nÓg itself. Yet our hearts always began to hurt before we reached the horizon.
We ate well along the coast. Fishing boats threw us their scraps. Old women who sat mending nets by the harbours occasionally offered a mouthful of bread.
We saw all kinds of people come and go from the boats. Some dressed in fine fabrics, others as sea-weathered as ourselves, covered in open sores and dragging dull blades behind them. With people came news, and none could gossip as well as the fisherwives. Whilst we fed, we often caught juicy titbits fresh off those boats.
Many of the men had recently returned from a great battle in the North. It was said that three powerful Milesian princes of the blood of Érimón had united nine kingdoms and marched north to fell the ancient throne of Ulaid. Once they had defeated the Northern King, they burned down his mighty fort of Eamhain Mhacha and laid waste to his lands. They united the kingdoms and called their new realm Airgíalla, their chiefs the Hostages of Gold, for it was said that should any of the new kings of Airgíalla be forcibly taken by the High King of Éire, they were to be shackled only in chains of precious metal.
Many of the wounded who hauled themselves from the boats were returning from battle. Among them were dark-haired, dark-eyed warriors we swore were of Blind Sile’s Nagnatae. Yet when they opened their mouths to speak, a thick accent tumbled forth which we did not recognise. So many of the words and the ways of our people had changed, and we struggled to understand each conversation.
The battle was considered a victory for the men of the West Coast, and many nights we witnessed scenes along the harbour which would make a maid blush. Oarsmen and warriors staggering across the rocks with a drinking horn in one hand and a woman in the other, seeking a shaded spot to lie down together. Many of the younger men who couldn’t hold their drink would lean over the walls and empty their stomachs into the ocean, whilst angry brewers’ wives chased customers with broken broom handles and beat them when they could not pay.
It was a land we had never seen before. The talk the fisherwives gave so freely, and the goods we watched unloaded from the ships, made us feel as though the boundaries of our world were ever-expanding. It was becoming broader, stretching far beyond Alba and the land of the Brithons, even further still, beyond Rome. Yet it was also stretching another way, through time itself. The tribes of our people were gone. New tribes ruled, bloodier than before, determined to hold greater ground. I wondered whether one day there might emerge a single king to unite all the people of the world as one tribe, with one language and one god.
Life was all around us and we were dragged along in its wake. Our old world suddenly felt very distant. At times I found myself speaking in the new accent of these strange people, using their words as though I had been born to them. I heard my brothers do the same, and became afraid that we might lose our memories; simply wake one morning not knowing who we were.
TIME
The temples of the old religions lie abandoned, motes of dust floating where spirits once lived. Those that still stand are consecrated to a new god, a higher power. Wulfila brings the word of Christ to the savage Goths, as Moses the Black, the Robber Saint, casts off his sins to embrace the light.
The Roman Empire, a tarnished gem of its former, sparkling glory, follows Constantine to Constantinople, its new capital, towering above ancient Byzantium as the new world towers above the old, there by the River Danube, where the ancients were born.
Old Rome falls to Nepotianus the Usurper and his band of gladiators. No longer fighting lions, they slaughter civilians and proclaim t
hemselves emperors of a new era. A madness besets the city, staring out from the surprised eyes of Nepotianus as his head is mounted upon a spike by loyal General Marcellinus a month later. The iron fist that closed across Europe slowly loosens its grip. The Alans, the Heruls, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths fall to a new foe: the Huns. They swarm from the east in their thousands, amber-jeweled saddles glistening in the sun. As if in answer, the very earth itself cries out in terror as Crete, Alexandria, Palestine and Greece feel the shudder beneath their feet and watch mighty waves swallow them. Corsica rages an inferno which engulfs its people in black smoke they cannot breathe, whilst Persia’s belly is gripped by famine.
The Kingdom of Airgíalla grows in strength, each year the brothers pay homage to the High King of Ireland, sending nine hostages bound in gold chains. Niall of the Nine Hostages accepts these men as his due, and believes the prophetess when she tells him that twenty-six of his descendants will grow to be High King in his wake. Two generations later, Diarmait mac Cerbaill stands against Columba and dies the last King of Ireland to hold the old ways. The blood of the Druids of Mona has finally been overcome by saltwater, and Jesus of Nazareth storms their shores.
Fate likes to laugh. The bastion of Christendom, seat of Saint Peter’s, bends to the heathen Alaric I. "The City which had taken the whole world was itself taken,” writes Jerome of Illyri, as Rome falls for the first time in eight-hundred years. Slaves throw open the gates and loot in their liberation for three full days. The decline of an empire is sealed.
The Emperor’s daughter is carried away, captive. After Alaric succumbs to fever, she is transported to Gaul. Seduced by gifts of gold, she weds Ataulf, King of the Visigoths, whose tribe had reduced her home to ruin.
Astronomy and mathematics flourish in Sanskrit. By the side of the glorious Ganges, a building rises from the clay of Nalanda. People come from across the continent to study the ways of Siddhartha Gautama, The Awakened One, a man who teaches that life is suffering. As the Wheel of Samsara turns, generations start to understand the wisdom of his words.
Far from preaching love, Mavia, warrior-queen of the Bedouin Saracens, finds herself heartened by Alaric of the Visigoths, slaughtering the forces of Rome in Syria. In Thessalonica, Emperor Theodosius, deaf to pleas for mercy, murders seven thousand of his people for protesting the arrest of a charioteer. Writhing in fear and despair, wounded Rome turns on itself like a snake biting its own tail. For each injury sustained, it inflicts an internal harm.
Having escaped capture by pirates, Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland, wins the hearts and minds of the Éile to Christ. He climbs to the highest of their strongholds and casts out the demon within. The Éile had not known there was a demon in their midst, a shaitan of the ancient east. Yet when thunder claps and lightning strikes, the devil breaks its tooth upon the mountain and a great gash appears. That place is named Devil’s Bit and the broken tooth falls to earth as the Rock of Cashel. The High Kings of Ireland climb down from Tara as heathens, and seat themselves upon the rock to receive sacrament.
Far in the Polynesian South Pacific, Hotu Matu'a has a dream. He sees an island with “eyes like the sky,” a place of great riches. When he tells his dream to his king, he is ordered to take two boats and follow the spirit of slumber to find its end. Arriving at the Naval of the World, he discovers giant statues built in the time of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Huge heads which face the sea and the sky, their features emotionless as mountains.
Chrysanthemums bloom in the gardens of Japan, whilst in China the ‘civil and understanding’ Empress Feng of the Xianbei dynasty guards her son’s throne jealously, assassinating her rival, Emperor Xianwen.
Hypatia distinguishes herself as a scientist and mathematician in Alexandria. A peaceful student of Plato, and a prominent scholar, she is dragged through the streets, stripped naked before Christ, and flayed with oyster shells. “Oh,” cries Scholasticus, "surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres." Yet massacre, they do.
Because she is unwilling to marry his choice of husband, the Roman Emperor Valentinian III sends his eldest sister to a convent in Constantinople. Furious, Honoria smuggles a letter beyond its walls. Within her letter is a ring, a proposition for Attila the Hun. She would rather give her body to a barbarian than bend the knee. Attila does not disappoint, rallying his army to take her by force, he anticipates half the Western Roman Empire as her dowry.
The goddess Aphrodite watches as her temples are turn to rubble and her libraries burn. Her capital is renamed The City of Crosses, her time has finally come.
The old gods and the ancient ones bow their heads and retreat. A new age devours them all.
The White Huns continue their meteoric rise in Central Asia, whilst in the wake of the Romans, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invade Britain forming the Heptarchy Kingdoms. Irish raiders harry the coast of Wales, plundering towns and capturing slaves, taking for their own Llyn, Arllechwedd, Arfon and the once-sacred Isle of Mona. Remnants of the Roman army strip Britain bare of its riches and bury them beneath the fields of Gaul as they flee.
In a desperate attempt to save his son from leprosy, King Charaic of the Suevi promises to convert to Christianity in return for a cure. Whilst the Kingdom of Ossory rises to dominance in Ireland, Columba, Patrick and their followers carve up the country into diocese, drawing lines through the ancient chiefdoms of Celtic tribes.
Late antiquity draws to a close, and the dawn of the medieval age approaches the horizon.
Part IV
Aibric
“Anna, Anna stop it,” I mumbled, “stop tickling…”
My eyes opened a fraction, bright light blinding me. I screwed them shut, then peered a second time.
A single marigold bloomed beneath my nose, its petals brushing lightly, causing me to sneeze. The minute I did, a blacksmith’s hammer smashed against the back of my head and I thought that I would die. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I whimpered, pushing my face down into the water in the hopes the ondines might drown me.
John Owain’s dark mead was the strongest known to man. “One cup of this and you’ll forget your mother’s face,” he had warned. Three cups and I’d forgotten my own. That beautiful flower stared up at me from below, where I’d fallen flat out on the rocks. An inch further and I would have slept in the water and never woken again. This thought sobered me.
A thick, heady perfume filled my snout, causing me to sneeze again. It smelled of Anna, and I strained my neck to look up. Beyond the marigold, I saw a lily large as my hand, and beyond that a small bundle of meadow flowers tied with twine. My red-raw eyes slowly came into focus and I realised that the sea was awash with flowers.
“Mister, hey mister!” A child’s voice exploded in my ear. I reached out a hand for his neck. Ale made me slow, and the child bounced over my broken body to kneel at my other ear. “Mister, buy a bunch?” He thrust a fistful of wilted posies against my face and I sneezed a third time. “You’ve damaged ‘em now!” he said. “You should pay for that. Can’t sell posies what’s got snot all over ‘em.”
“Rinse them in the water and get out of my face,” I growled, struggling to sit up. As the kid turned away my arm shot out, startling him. “What’s going on, anyway? Why would I have need of flowers?”
“Brendan’s back to shore.”
“Brendan the Navigator?”
“Aye, him. All who can stand are down by the harbour. Some of ‘em are throwing flowers, others are throwing coin and fine scarves. It’s a waste if you ask me. Tonight, once they’ve gone home, I’m going to—”
“Collect up the coin and make yourself a saintly sum?”
“Aye. How’d you—”
“Did the same when I was your age.”
The young lad grinned and hopped off across the rocks.
Scooping a couple of handfuls of saltwater over my head, I stood unsteadily for a moment and considered whether I needed to retch. A light sea breeze filled my lungs and the sickness pas
sed.
Back at Owain’s place, I found Anna where she always was, sprawled on a straw bed in the back room next to the stables. She looked like an angel sleeping, those rose-red cheeks and her lips half-parted as though whispering my name.
“Anna,” I said, sitting beside her and running my hand up beneath her skirts to that sweet, warm spot. “Anna—”
“Not now, Aibric,” she murmured, rolling onto her side. “I’ve got to sleep sometime.”
“Look, Anna, I don’t need that, but you’ve got to help me.”
“Help yourself.”
I took her shoulder and rocked her gently.
“Look, Anna, please. There’s a chance dropping anchor today and I can’t miss it.”
“What do you need?”
“Clean clothes. I need to borrow some of John’s old stuff.”
“Did you piss yourself again?”
“May as well of done, I smell as bad.”
She sighed and lifted her head on one hand, staring back over her shoulder to appraise me. “God almighty, look at you. Where’d you sleep last night?”
“On the rocks.”
“You might have taken a dip whilst you were there.”
“Look, will you help me or not?”
“Aye, I’ll help you. Just give me five more—”
“I need it now,” I said, rolling her back towards me as her head hit the pillow. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent.”
“Christ. Everything with you is urgent. You should take your time once in a while.”
That stung.
Whilst she went in search of her husband’s clothes, I used the clay bowl by her bed to scrub myself down with hay and water. There was a sprig of fresh rosemary and I crushed it beneath my arms and groin.
“Here you go,” she said, throwing down a tunic and a fresh pair of trousers. They were austere grey, but good quality, with a black patterned detail about the hem. “What do you want me to do with these?” she asked, prodding my pile of rags with her toe.
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