When Conchobar held out his hand in a sign of peace, they accepted and readied themselves to return to Éire. Yet Deirdre had drunk from the cup of youth, and the years had not marred her beauty. When the king learned of this, his lust rose again for the girl he had never bedded. He slaughtered her lover and his men and took her for his own.
Rather than lie with her lover’s murderer, Deirdre threw herself from the king’s carriage and opened her head on a rock.
The story was one we knew well, yet Aibric’s voice made it strange to our ears. At times his words flowed like water over smooth pebbles, at others it sounded like the lowing of cattle on the hillsides at eventide, scarring our hearts with its rhythmic refrain. All of our fears, all of our sadness and joy was drawn like poison. For so long we had ceased to feel, for feeling served us little. Yet in hearing Aibric sing, we remembered so vividly that which we had forgotten. We wept until our own song drowned his, and when the last string was plucked, he put his instrument aside and opened his ears to us.
That night, we enfolded him in our wings. When the sun rose and the birds returned to their lowland lake, we asked that he might tell our story.
Sister Cecilia
When I wed myself to Christ, I gave up my right to motherhood. All men became my children and I tended to them as best I could. As I grew older and became Abbess of our river sanctuary, my sisters became daughters to me. I watched as some of them struggled with a life of celibacy. Any who have watched animals in spring understand the natural urge to couple. Some in my charge forsook their vows, disappearing in the night with young men from the coast. Others, like myself, held their word with less conflict. For my part, I had never found a man I loved more than Christ, and the women I had known throughout my life had shown me strength beyond any man, with the exception, perhaps, of my dear friend Brendan.
It was late in my life that I had a child of my own, and the circumstances of his birth caused me much pain. There was a young nun under my care. She had taken the name of Sister Agatha, though her given name had been Orla, the sixth daughter of a fisherman and one too many mouths to feed. I had enough women in my fold to know when they came willing, and when, like her, there was reluctance. There was an obstinacy about her I little cared for, yet she sang sweetly and had a gift for illuminating scripture that was unrivalled among her peers.
My suspicions were first roused when the initials of her manuscripts started to repeat the face of a man I thought I knew. Some months before, a group of monks had come to our convent seeking shelter on their journey. One of these men, by the name of Thomas, had been quite handsome in his way, and spoke with an educated tone of his travels in Alba.
Thereafter, each time a passage began with T, Orla would paint his face between the flicks and curls of that letter. I was concerned that she harboured fondness for this man, more than was appropriate for a sister of the church.
One evening, I called her to my quarters and asked quite pointedly about the circumstances of their friendship. The next morning, she was gone. I took this loss hard. She had not been the first deserter, and would not be the last, yet I questioned my judgement on the matter. Had I frightened the girl? Had I spoken harshly when I should have been kind and understanding? Had I left her with no choice but to leave? It caused me many sleepless nights wondering whether my own actions might have resulted in a different outcome.
Some moons after she left, Orla returned in the depths of night. I was woken softly by one of my sisters and taken to the kitchen. She sat by the fire, wrapped in a thick blanket, her face pale as milk.
When I drew back the blanket, I saw the swell of her belly.
That night was one of the longest of my life. Orla gave birth to a son, there on the floor by the fire. Three of us attended her, boiling water and ripping strips of cloth from old garments to soak up the blood.
It was almost dawn by the time the child was born. I took it in my arms and wiped the mucus from its mouth with the corner of my shawl. When I returned from washing it, I found my two helpers knelt by Orla’s body, the sweat-soaked blanket piled beneath her head, her eyes staring up to the roof, wide and weeping. She looked as though she had walked through the fires of hell.
“It is too late,” Sister Symphorosa said. “She has passed.”
At this, the babe opened its mouth and began to bawl. Afraid that he might wake half the convent, I instructed them to put Orla’s body on a cart and take it into town.
“Tell Brother Michael that she was a local child who got into trouble. Tell them the baby is born healthy and we will see that it is raised well.”
I felt ashamed that I had disowned Orla in death, yet part of me was also relieved for her. Should she have lived, the punishment for her sin would have been severe. Not only had she forsaken her vows, she had lain with a holy brother and born him a child. Her life would not have been worth living. There would have been no sanctuary granted. My own feelings aside, I had to make an example of her so as to dissuade others who might stray from our path. I was also ashamed to admit that I had failed in my counsel. What would the townspeople think if they knew that one of our holy sisters had fallen so far beneath my watch?
We named the child Mochaomhog, and it was known by all who were not at his birth that he had been abandoned at our gates.
The boy grew strong and healthy within the confines of our walls. I thought for a long time to send him away to the town, to be raised in a foster home, but somehow I always found an excuse to delay. There was talk of troubles and wars, at times there were shortages of food in the town. I could not guarantee his protection there, and I felt that, having disowned his mother in death, I owed him my allegiance in life. Our dear Lord would not have made an innocent suffer for the sins of the mother.
He was a good boy, though there was a wildness about him. For all my chiding, his table manners were appalling. He would swig from the milk pitcher and wolf down food with both hands as though half-starved. When he was old enough, he fell in with the woodsmen and helped them trap game for our table. What he brought to us was a blessing, though I knew it could not last forever.
In the boy’s seventh year, Brendan came to visit us. I had written to him often of Mochaomhog, for he reminded me of my childhood friend with his wide-eyed curiosity of the world. I knew that those walls which had protected him since birth would soon come to resemble his prison. He was half-grown towards manhood, and we women were not the company he craved.
From the first moment Mochaomhog set eyes on Brendan, he loved him as a father. The two of them seemed inseparable, able to speak without words. They understood one another with merely a look. Some divine communion I almost envied.
“You have done well,” Brendan told me one evening, sharing a cup of wine in my private reading room. “The boy is healthy and he has an enquiring mind.”
“Look at me,” I said, fingering the edge of my veil. “There is a reason I wear this dress, Brother, as you well know.”
Brendan laughed and reached across the table to place his warm hand on mine. “Cecilia, you are the most devout of all mothers. Jesus himself would have been lucky.”
“He is not a babe any longer.”
“No. That, he is not. What would you ask of me?”
“You know full well.”
He sighed and sat back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, they rested on me with a smile.
“I will care for him as though he were our own son,” he told me.
“As you cared for those swans?”
“Ah, you remember that?” He sounded surprised.
“It’s not every night that I find talking beasts in my woods.”
He laughed again.
In truth, those swans had haunted my dreams. Some nights I thought myself to be walking by the river, and there I would come to see four children playing in the shallows, lit by the moon. They laughed and splashed with abandon, until they saw me. Then they turned into swans and flew away.
“Where will you take him?” I asked.
“Not to Mag Mell, if that’s what you’re worried about. Would that I could find the place again, but I fear my sailing days are drawing to a close.” He lifted his hands to show his callouses. “Perhaps to Alba, to the great churches there, then down to England, to Canterbury and York.”
“It would do the boy good to have an education. He can read and write fair enough for his age, but his attention wanders. Drive the rebellion out of him and make him a saint.”
“My sweet sister, I thought you knew? The greatest saints were rebels.”
Aibric
Oh, don’t you know the baker’s wife?
The baker’s wife down Corrindon Way?
Yes, I know the baker’s wife, and I know the things they say.
How do you know the baker’s wife
The baker’s wife down Corrindon Way?
I’ll tell how I know the baker’s wife
She ate my curds and whey!
Then it’s true you know the baker’s wife
And you know the things they say
For I know she likes the salty stuff
When she eats her curds and whey.
The room roared with laughter as I slugged down a cup of rose wine. Colours danced before me, greens and browns, black and silver. The heat from the crowd brought sweat to my upper lip which I wiped away with my sleeve.
“Very good, you’re a talented man, but you seem to forget where you are. Does this look like a brothel to you?” I blinked and rubbed my eyes, uncertain for a moment. “My lady love will be here shortly and I assure you, she has far less appreciation of bawdy lyrics than myself. Perhaps something a little more sonorous?”
I nodded as though still capable of rational thought. It had been almost fifteen years since I left Inis Gluaire. I had made two vows, one of silence and the other of sobriety.
“Our lives draw to a close,” the children had told me, that last sunrise before I boarded the boat to the mainland. “Once we are dead, it is your duty to tell the world of our lives. Tell them all we have told you. Tell them of our father and of Aoife, tell them of Sorcha and her shadows, of Caílte and his love for Aodh. Tell them of the twins and of our brother beneath the waves. Make them live again through your song. Grant us eternal life, that our people may never be forgotten.”
I promised them I would wait. They had finally found peace on that island, and I had no wish to ignite the imagination of those who might cause them harm. The second vow had been less easy to keep. One night back in Anna’s bed and I was pissed as a fart. I felt as Brendan must have felt after Mag Mell. I felt as though I had been away to a sacred land where the animals spoke and birds held rule. Civilisation seemed a bitter disappointment after that. I needed something to blunt the edge.
“I do know one song she might like,” I said, switching my chrotta for a cláirseach.
A hush spread through the court and for one brief moment I thought my audience showed their reverence for me. Until I made out the soft shape of Brigid of Carlow, making her way through the crowd to the carved seat beside her intended, Ainmuire mac Sétnai, the High King of Ireland.
“Well,” the king spoke. “Now would be as good a time as any.”
I swear to my dying day, the song on the tip of my tongue was that of Deirdre of the Sorrows. Her red hair flowed before my eyes and I forgot every word. I felt the court waiting on me and only one song remained.
In the court of Bodb the Red, in the days of the Tuatha Dé Danann, three daughters of the sunlight came, daughters of Olliel of Aran…
By the time my tale was told, the candles had burned down, been replaced, and burned down again. Men held their lovers in their arms and wept. I opened my eyes as the final chord faded and it felt as though time itself had stopped. The moon sat sentinel in the sky and the hounds in the yard held their breath, their heads resting upon their paws as though awaiting the return of an unseen master.
Slowly, the king rose to his feet and placed one hand against the other. His betrothed joined him, and soon the sound of clapping washed over me like rain.
“An astonishing tale,” Ainmuire said. “You could stop a war with such a thing. Now, perhaps a return to your earlier work, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Through habit, my fingers found the strings and I began a light-hearted ditty about a country girl and her merman lover. The words came to my tongue and trickled through my lips, but my heart was hardly beating.
As soon as I could, I passed my instrument to the bard beside me and took my leave. Walking along the walls, I stopped to stare out at the darkness. I had heard it said the ancient seanchaidhthe told their stories from a sacred place, a place where only the dark juices of the quicken tree could take you. Yet I believed that night I had stumbled upon their secret door and unlocked the depths of my soul. All of my life I had sought out that place where story transcends mortality, where the blood of all our histories merges to form the origin of our existence. In finding it, I felt at peace. I felt as though I was story itself; knowing and known by all men.
“Tell me,” a voice came soft through the dark. “You say the children rested upon the Lake of Birds. You say they found comfort there. Are they there still?”
Brigid made a beautiful queen. Her hair was auburn as autumn leaves and her high cheeks bloomed with health. As she leant against the wall beside me, looking up to the stars, a little of their light reflected back in her eyes.
“Yes,” I replied, despite myself. “They live there still, and will outlive us all.”
Mochaomhog
My muscles ached as I heaved on the rope to pull my boat ashore. Its smooth underside scraped against the sand in protest and the oars rattled against the seat. I had come by way of Inishkeeragh to deliver letters to Brother Bartholomew, then inward and around the treacherous coast of Carricknaronty to Inis Gluaire.
Once the boat was securely pegged, I lay down on my back to rest. The clouds above rode high and white, the plentiful sky between them a softer blue than the sea. Perhaps this was paradise after all?
It was a short walk over flat land to get to Brendan’s church, a squat thing of grey stone with a rusted bell on a rickety wooden stand beside the door. Not far from it, I found a freshwater well with a wooden pail. I lowered it down on a rope and sluiced the salt from my hair, then set about transporting my cargo to the storage pit behind the house: fresh apples, flour, salted meat and wine for the altar. I released a couple of chickens that Bartholomew had been good enough to grant me, and laid out the fishing net on the bell frame that it might not tangle before I had a chance to use it.
Inside, the room was bare but comfortable. There was a straw mattress and a driftwood table to the far end with a cup and cross upon it. I smiled, for the place reminded me of Brendan, both in its simplicity and its resolve to stand in such a remote place, defiant of the elements.
“We have travelled together, you and me, for some thirteen years now,” he had told me. “We have seen much and talked of much. It is time you took stock of yourself, Mochaomhog. Time you removed yourself from the bawdy company of sailors and returned your mind to God.”
I could hardly disagree. They had been years full of adventure. I hadn’t once looked back since leaving the confines of Cecilia’s convent, for there had always been so much to look ahead to. Neither had it been a life completely removed from God. I had spent much of my time at Beannchar, studying the scriptures an
d discussing them with Comgall, the austere Warrior Abbot, and Íte of Killeedy, who liked me so much I thought she might never let me leave once she started instruction. Wine and bread and cheese and talk drifted across the tables until the early hours.
Brendan was an old man now, though neither his gait nor his wits would let you believe it. Each year he clung harder to the shore, sitting beside his fire with his dog Plato, feeding him scraps and recounting the great journeys of his youth. High chiefs and men of God travelled all the way from Brittany to hear him speak.
I rowed in his wake all my young life, yet I knew on the near horizon I would have to row alone. Though it hurt my heart to think of a world without Brendan in it, I knew that God had a plan for all of us, and that I had been more fortunate than most in having, from an early age, such a steady hand to guide my course. Thus it was I came to find myself on Inis Gluaire, with a bag of apples and a pair of flustered hens.
“You’ll like it there,” my guardian had told me. “It was my sanctuary between voyages. A calm spot in the ocean. The sands are white as sunbeams, and in the evening a lake of birds appear to dig for worms. The fishing’s good, there’s fresh water and a fresh breeze. Oh, and a couple of swans, if I recall. They’ll keep you company.”
“I’m sure I’ll go quite mad enough in the silence,” I laughed. “Three moons from now you’ll find me talking to those swans.”
“Oh, I’m quite sure of it,” Brendan replied, a twinkle in his eye.
*
My first night on the island, I hardly slept. My muscles ached from rowing and the quiet kept me awake. Even on land I felt the floor was rocking, as though the island itself were my ship. Yet the waves broke against the machair not the prow, and my crew were not there snoring in my ear. I was still awake by sunrise, when herringbone clouds shone pink and gold, bright enough to blind.
The Children of Lir Page 32