Brigit gasped as she stood, despite the wrappings. Pain shot through her feet and radiated up her legs. She had seen peasant women going barefoot all the year round, and they never seemed to have any more discomfort than if they had been wearing thick and supple deer hide shoes. But as princess of Tara, that was not a hardship she had ever endured, and her feet were in no way acclimated to the abuse to which they were now subject.
She took a tentative step forward, then another, her hand keeping a firm grasp on Finnian’s arm. She was ashamed of having shown weakness, and now she kept her face expressionless, her teeth clenched, as she forced herself into an ever more determined walk.
“Here, take this, it will help a bit,” Finnian said and handed her a walking stick, an oak sapling an inch thick. He had one for himself as well, though when he had cut them and from where she had no idea. She took it gratefully and thanked him.
They crossed over the grassy field they had crossed the night before and once again took to the road, once again heading south. “We’d best disguise ourselves,” Finnian said and pulled the cowl of his robe up over his head. Brigit did the same. She knew the priest would not normally walk around like that, but to keep her identity hidden she would have to, and it would seem odd if only one of them had their head covered.
They walked on in silence, leaving the stand of oaks behind them. Brigit focused on her feet, tried to walk as if each step was not a knife-edge of agony, and soon the pain dulled and her feigned strength became real strength. And then she realized that Finnian still had made no comment about her desire to go to Dubh-linn.
As that realization came to her, so too did panic at what Finnian might be thinking. Will he refuse to go? she wondered. That would seem a perfectly reasonable response, maybe the most reasonable. She doubted that he would be afraid of the Vikings’ lair, but certainly it was no place for a man of God, among those heathens, heathens who came across the water to murder the Irish people and loot the churches.
Or maybe Finnian would decide that it was no place for her. And again, he would not be wrong.
What if he does refuse to go? Could I go without him? Bold as she was, the thought of walking the roads of Ireland, alone in the lawless countryside, of sleeping out at night by herself, filled her with terror.
They continued on, the birds growing louder, a slight breeze beginning to move the branches of the trees that stood like little islands in the seas of emerald grass, and Brigit thought she might scream if Finnian did not say something soon. She was working up the courage to ask him directly when he spoke at last.
“Dubh-linn is it? And why Dubh-linn?”
For one who had been waiting for the question for the better part of an hour, Brigit was oddly unprepared to answer. “I don’t know where else to go, Father,” she said, the words not carrying the tone she had intended to convey. “I have nowhere else, nowhere that Morrigan could not get at me….”
They walked on a few more paces, Brigit hoping that this was explanation enough, knowing it was not. “I have friends there, in Dubh-linn,” she continued. “I know that sounds odd. Morrigan…she had some of the fin gall taken hostage. To get at the Crown of the Three Kingdoms. You know of the Crown?”
“I know of it.”
“The fin gall stole it. Morrigan took some of the fin gall hostage, as I said. Some of the hostages were killed….” She nearly added by my father, which was the case, but she stopped herself. “One of them, a young man named Harald…I helped him. He was hurt, I healed him. Made sure no harm came to him. He was grateful, and his father, and grandfather, I think they are important men among the fin gall. They will help me.”
They walked on, Brigit hoping this would suffice. There was much, so very much, that she was leaving out of that story, the foremost being the fact that Harald’s child was at that moment growing inside her.
It was a few moments later that Finnian spoke again. “Help you do what, girl?” he asked.
“I don’t know…. Keep me safe, I suppose. Help me.” She was trying to sound vague, as if she had given it no thought.
“I see. But I’ll tell you true, when I think of ‘safe,’ I do not think of Dubh-linn.”
“The fin gall are brutes and heathens, I know. But the Irish are not so much better. More Irish are robbed and killed at the hands of their own countrymen than by the fin gall, I suspect.”
Father Finnian gave a grunt that might have been in part a laugh. “The fin gall are not the only vicious beasts on two legs, I’ll grant you that,” he said.
They trudged on, and Finnian said nothing else and Brigit found her fear turning to annoyance. For the love of our Dear Lord, she thought, do you need to think every word through for half the day?
“Well, Father,” she said at last, no longer willing to wait for Finnian to speak, “will you help me? Will you take me to Dubh-linn?”
“I’ll walk with you, but it’s the Lord God will see you there. Or not. It’s His will.”
“But you will…take me there? To Dubh-linn?”
At that Father Finnian stopped, the first pause in their progress that morning, and turned to her. “Brigit, I don’t know what plan you have, and I strongly suspect I don’t want to know. But yes, I will take you to Dubh-linn, if it is God’s will that you go.”
“And how are we to know if it is God’s will?” she asked. She could hear the thin edge of anger in her voice, and hoped that Finnian could not.
“He’ll tell us. In his way. These fellows coming here, they may well be His instruments in this.”
Brigit looked north, along the road they had already traveled. Three men were approaching, a few hundred yards away, but walking fast, faster than Brigit and Finnian, as if purposely trying to catch up with them. They had no cart, no animals, nothing to suggest they were just farmers on their way to market or someplace equally harmless. Even from that distance Brigit could see something vaguely menacing about them. She sucked in her breath.
“Who are they?” she asked. “What are they about?”
“Now, that I could not tell you,” Finnian said calmly. “I’m not one of your mystics, one of these druids of the old faith.”
“What will we do?”
“We’ll keep walking, just like we were.” Finnian turned and continued on, his pace unchanged from a moment before.
“Walk?” Brigit ran a few steps to catch up, then fell in with him. “Shouldn’t we run? Hide? Something?”
“No,” Finnian said. “We’ll just walk in faith, and see what God has in mind for us.”
They walked on, Brigit matching Finnian’s pace, which had not altered; the same swing and thump of his walking stick, the steady and silent footfalls. It was only with great effort that she did not break into a run, or turn and look at the men behind them. Once she did give in to that impulse, or nearly did, started to turn her head, but Finnian said, “Don’t look back, girl,” before she had moved her neck even a quarter turn.
The minutes seemed to drag. Brigit had little sense for how long they had walked before she could hear the men coming up behind them, hear their feet shuffling in the drying dirt of the road, hear the soft sounds of the various things hanging from belts or from around their shoulders thumping against them.
In truth, with the breeze light and out of the north, she smelled them even before she heard them. They smelled of fish and wood smoke and old beer and unwashed skin. She felt her stomach turn and clench with fear at the thought of what they might do. A monk’s robe, she realized, was a thin suit of armor, a walking stick a poor weapon.
They could not have been more than ten feet behind, Brigit guessed, when one of them finally spoke. “Hold up there, you!” he said, his voice low and ugly. Finnian stopped and Brigit stopped and they turned to face the men.
Three of them. With a few steps they closed with Finnian and Brigit. One stood square in the road while the other two took positions on either flank.
Finnian reached up and pulled the hood off his head, but
Brigit guessed that he did not mean for her to do so, so she did not. Instead, from within the cowl, she considered the man in front of her. Squat and broad, with a week’s worth of beard and a mop of greasy hair. He wore a filthy and patched tunic and a tattering of cloth over his shoulders that might have once been a blanket or cape or some such. His belt was a rope around his waist but there was a substantial knife hanging from it, a knife he now drew slowly, extracting every bit of menace he could from the action. He stared hard at Finnian. One eye was milky and blind, and it made the man’s look even more terrifying.
Brigit felt her stomach twist again. She renewed her sweaty grip on her walking stick. This was it. In the next moments they would kill Finnian, and then they would have to kill her too because she would not let them have their way with her, not as long as the blood of Máel Sechnaill mac Ruanaid ran through her.
Then Finnian spoke. “Good day, friend,” he said. There was no fear in his voice, nor was his tone either threatening or obsequious. He just spoke the words, and his manner was such that a listener might well believe the one-eyed fellow was genuinely an old friend of his.
The man looked at the priest, cocked his head as if trying to divine some deeper meaning. “Where you going?” he growled.
For a long moment Finnian did not answer, that same habit that was starting to irritate Brigit. It was apparently starting to irritate the man with the knife as well, but before he could say anything, Finnian said, “We go with God. And you?”
At that the man on Brigit’s right hand snorted and gave a chuckle. “Go with God? Cronan, do we go with God?”
“Shut up,” the knife wielder, named Cronan, apparently, spat at his companion. He continued to hold Finnian with the gaze of his one, sighted eye. “I asked you a question.”
“And I answered it. And if you ask another, I will answer that as well.”
Brigit felt a sense of ease sweep over her, as if a protective blanket had been laid around them, and she was not sure why. It was a sensation that seemed to radiate from Finnian. She recalled how, in Harald’s company, three men had been confronted by in a situation much like this. Harald had killed them all and seemed not to have much trouble doing it. But she had not felt then the kind of comfort she felt now.
Will Finnian do that as well? she wondered. There seemed to be no fear in the man, as if he could rid them of these pests at any time. He had his walking stick, a useful weapon in the right hands. Does Finnian have the skill to fight them? Will he kill them all?
Now it was the one eyed man who stood silent, and increasingly uncomfortable, unsure how to respond. He shifted from foot to foot, and then seemed to notice Brigit for the first time.
“Here, are you too good to be seen by the likes of us?” he asked, sounding almost relieved to have something to say. His left hand shot out, reaching for Brigit’s cowl, but Finnian’s hand was faster still, whipping out and grabbing the man’s forearm. There seemed to be no force applied, as if Finnian was just resting his hand on Cronan’s arm, but Cronan’s motion was completely arrested.
“Don’t do that,” Finnian said.
Cronan shifted his one-eyed gaze back to Finnian, and now his look was anger and outrage. “Whore’s son priest,” he growled and swung the knife toward Finnian’s gut, but the priest caught that arm as well and held them both.
“Don’t do that, either,” he said. Like the pace of his walking, the tone of his voice had not altered a bit, not once since they had woken up that morning, as far as Brigit could tell.
For a long moment the two men stood there. Brigit wanted to scream, wanted to turn and see what the other two were going to do, wanted to hit Cronan with her walking stick, but instead she followed Finnian’s lead and remained still. And then Finnian let go of Cronan’s arms, just let them go, and dropped his own arms to his side and said, “My apologies for laying hands on you, Cronan.”
Cronan grunted and again shifted foot to foot, looked down, looked at his companions, looked at the horizon. Finally he turned back and met Finnian’s eyes, which had not left his face, not once. They stood there, silent, face to face. They did not speak. From somewhere far off came the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker, and nearby the buzz of bees hard at work in the sunshine. And the two men remained silent. Half a minute. A minute.
“Well,” Cronan said at last, slipping the big knife back into its sheath, “we’ll be on, then.”
He moved past Finnian, past Brigit. He seemed to move grudgingly, but with resignation. “Come on,” he growled at his companions.
“Just a moment, friend,” Finnian said and stopped them in their tracks. Don’t stop them when they are leaving! Brigit wanted to scream, but still she remained silent. “Have you anything to eat,” Finnian asked. “Anything you might share with fellow travelers?”
The three men glanced at one another, their uncertainty palpable. And then Cronan gave one of the others a quick nod. The man reached into a sack that hung at his side and withdrew a small loaf of coarse brown bread. Finnian took it gently from his hands.
“God bless you, friends,” he said. He made the sign of the cross in the air and murmured “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and to Brigit’s utter astonishment the three men bowed their heads – just a bit, but clearly a bow – and accepted the blessing without comment. They even looked relieved, like boys who are forgiven for the mischief they’ve caused. Then they turned quickly and once more headed off down the road, as if they were trying to get away, moving faster, it seemed to Brigit, than they had when they had been trying to catch up.
For some time she and Father Finnian watched them as they receded in the distance.
“Well, then,” Finnian said at last. He broke the bread and handed the larger piece to Brigit. “There’s your answer, my dear.”
“My answer?”
“It seems that the good Lord means for you to reach Dubh-linn.”
Chapter Eighteen
Let us go our ways silently;
though the cove-stallion’s rider
be fallen, trouble is astir.
Gisli Sursson’s Saga
It was well past midnight by the time Thorgrim Night Wolf was able to extricate himself and Harald Thorgrimson and Starri Deathless from the mead hall. They seemed little inclined to go, and it was only after Harald noticed the spreading wet patch of blood on the dark cloth of Thorgrim’s tunic that they insisted on leaving. By then, Ornolf the Restless had found a thrall with whom he could satisfy his basest desires, but before he had even lured her off to a dark corner he had passed out in a great fleshy heap on the floor.
Harald and Starri helped Thorgrim to his feet and even attempted to support him with his arms over their shoulders, but Thorgrim, feeling more old and feeble than he cared to admit, would not submit to that indignity, and insisted on walking unaided. Instead, his two companions took up positions on either side of him, as if ready to catch him if he collapsed, and that served to only further annoy him.
They made their way down the plank road, the night dark and quiet, with only the muffled sounds of dying revelry coming from the mead hall. They found Jokul’s blacksmith shop, thatch-roofed, timber-framed, tucked among the other clustered buildings. It stood out, bigger than most, with more space surrounding it, a larger patch of open ground enclosed by a wattle fence, a roofed-over workspace where Jokul could follow his trade out of doors when the weather cooperated, and not fill the house with smoke and the smell of hot steel.
The moon overhead cast blue shadows in the yard. They stepped through the gate and stumbled down the path that ran along the house. The surface was smooth and dry, made of split logs. When they had first arrived, the path had been had been made up of whole logs, treacherous and uneven, until Harald had dislodged each one, split it and set it down again with the flat side up to make a much more agreeable walking surface. Since splitting the logs had doubled their number, he had also built a path to the outdoor work area and a slightly raised platform at t
he forge so that even when the ground was an impenetrable mire of mud Jokul could work with feet relatively unencumbered.
That old dog will be glad to see Harald back, Thorgrim thought as he stumbled toward the door. In the corner of the yard he could see the small altar he had erected with a battered iron statue of Thor at its center, a statue he had carried many years, over many, many miles. He had first set the altar up indoors, but Almaith had insisted that there be no worship of what she called false gods in her home, so he had moved it out of doors. He would have to sacrifice to Thor for returning him safe and mostly intact.
Harald opened the latch as softly as he could and pushed the wooden door open. They stepped down, the floor of the house being dug down about a foot below the level of the street. They were greeted by smells that had become familiar in their time in Dubh-linn, the lingering smell of roast mutton and the peculiar sharp smell that Jokul’s blacksmithing produced. They could hear Jokul’s snoring, loud and bestial, coming from the far room.
Almaith materialized out of the dark, the linen leine that draped over her body ghost-like, her dark hair swept back. “Ah, Thorgrim! Harald!” she said, soft-voiced but enthusiastic. “There’s been much high talk of your return, and I had hoped you would not shun us for another home!”
“No, never, if you’ll have us,” Thorgrim said, his voice thick with exhaustion and pain.
“Have you? To be sure, you’re always welcome here. I made up beds for you, on hearing you were back.” She steered them gently toward the open room at the far end of the house, the end opposite of where Jokul could be heard in his hibernation. A small peat fire was burning in the hearth on the floor, and against either wall there was a pile of blankets and furs.
“This is my friend, Starri Deathless,” Thorgrim said, nodding toward Starri, who hung back in the shadows. “Might he sleep here as well?”
“Certainly, certainly,” Almaith said. She spoke the Norse language almost to perfection, but she still carried the lilt of the Irish in her voice, and Thorgrim loved the sound. “I’ll make up another bed directly.”
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