Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7)

by James L. Nelson

  Instead, he kept his eyes mostly ahead, but also looked through the gaps between the horses at the fields over which they were walking and the walls of the monastery beyond. They had attracted something of a crowd; the men and women who had been working the fields had stopped working and were staring silently at the parade, as if the Northmen were wild animals captured and put on display.

  The walls of the monastery were lined with people as well, but not soldiers, as far as Thorgrim could tell. He saw the long dark robes of the Christ men, and he saw tunics and brats. He did not see mail or leather armor or weapons, though he knew his eyesight was not what it once was.

  How many men-at-arms do they have? he wondered, and then reminded himself that such things were not his concern. He was not there to fight.

  The horseman leading their little procession stopped and everyone else stopped as well and the big wooden gate in the earthen wall swung open with a protesting sound. There were more men-at-arms beyond the gate, ten perhaps. These were on foot and also armed with spears which were leveled at Thorgrim and his band. Thorgrim smiled.

  “They act as if we’re a great heathen army swarming out of the north,” he said to Failend. “But there are just six of us and we rowed here in a boat.”

  “You’re still a frightening sight,” Failend said. “And if there’s one thing we Irish have learned, it’s that you Northmen seem to spring from the ground like worms after a rain.”

  They walked on, passing through the gates, and Thorgrim looked around with great curiosity. He had raided many monasteries in his youth, but since his return to Ireland he’d been in only one, and that was Glendalough. It had been nighttime then, and he had been intent on looting the church, so he had seen little of the place.

  But he had seen enough to know that Ferns was by far the more substantial of the two. He could see round buildings with conical thatched roofs and stone buildings, square-built and impressive in their seeming permanence. In the center of it all was the church they had seen from the river, the largest that Thorgrim had seen in that country. He could not help but imagine the riches that were hidden behind these walls.

  The horsemen stopped as another man approached wearing the sort of robe that Thorgrim knew the Christ men wore, and the foot soldiers parted to make way for him. He was a tall man, and he had some bulk to him, and the way he carried the weight suggested it was not composed of fat.

  But it was his face that drew Thorgrim’s attention. One side was just a face, the ordinary face of a dark-haired Irishman who had seen thirty or forty years of hard use. But the other side of his face was a mask of taut scar tissue, his eye closed over, a part of his beard gone where the flesh had been cut away and what had healed over would never grow whiskers again.

  It was a battle wound, that was clear. Thorgrim had seen battle wounds enough to recognize it. But he had rarely seen one so severe, because most who received such a wound did not live long enough to see it heal.

  The man spoke, and his one remaining eye moved from Thorgrim to the men behind him, and Thorgrim could see that he was calculating strengths and weaknesses just as he himself had been doing. The same reflex action.

  You may be a Churchman, Thorgrim thought, but you were not always a Churchman.

  “He says he is Brother Bécc, servant to the abbot here, who is called Abbot Columb,” Failend said. “He says the abbot is a very wise and holy man and it is a great honor that he has agreed to speak with you, and you must treat him with respect.”

  Thorgrim nodded. “An honor, indeed,” he said. “Tell this fellow we’ll try not to plunder this place while we’re here.”

  Failend gave Thorgrim a look tinged with exasperation. She turned back to the monk and spoke and Thorgrim was pretty sure she did not accurately translate his words.

  Whatever she said, it was the right thing to say. Brother Bécc nodded, turned on his heel and walked off, and Thorgrim followed and Failend and the men followed him and the foot soldiers followed them all. They walked across the wide stretch of trampled ground that circled the big church, the hoof prints and the tracks of carts’ wheels that had been left when the ground was soft with rain now frozen in place. Thorgrim could see women in their long black robes peeking out through the doors of dark buildings.

  On the west side of the big church sat a small stone building, a smaller version of the church itself, smaller even than Thorgrim’s hall had been at Vík-ló. It was separated from the larger building by a narrow road, thirty feet across. The monk, Brother Bécc, knocked on a door of the smaller building and a voice called out from within and Brother Bécc opened it and stepped through.

  The monk was all but lost in the gloom of the stone building, but Thorgrim saw him waving Failend and himself and the others in. The foot soldiers formed lines on either side. Thorgrim and Failend stepped forward, through the door, into the cool, open space within.

  The man Thorgrim took to be the abbot, Colus or Calum or some such—he could never fix those Irish names in his head—was seated at a table at the back of the room. He was an old man, as abbots were wont to be, and as Thorgrim’s eyes adjusted he could see more and more of the man. Slightly hunched, his cheeks showing loose jowls, his hair thin. But his eyes were sharp, and he struck Thorgrim as the sort who was either very dim or very quick-witted, the sort who would make it difficult to determine which.

  Behind the abbot sat another man, also dressed in a monk’s garb, a scroll of paper laid out before him, a quill in his hand. Thorgrim had seen this before. It was of a kind with the runes that the Northmen used, a way of marking symbols on parchment, writing words. The Northmen did it in a very limited way—a stone erected in honor of a family member or some such.

  But these Irish seemed to use their writing for much more than that. Some magic, Thorgrim guessed. He had seen great bundles of these pages in the Christ men’s churches, wrapped with leather covers and adorned with gold and jewels, so he knew they put great store in them. Which suggested to him they must have some magical properties.

  The abbot ran weary eyes over Failend and the men and then gestured to a couple of benches against the wall. Failend took a seat and Thorgrim sat beside her and Thorgrim’s men stood with arms folded nearby.

  The abbot spoke.

  “He welcomes you and asks if you are part of the heathen army that was said to have come ashore near the monastery at Beggerin,” Failend said.

  “Tell him, yes, I command the great army that has landed there,” Thorgrim said. “But tell him we are not here to do harm. Tell him we have done no harm to Beggerin and we mean no harm to Ferns.”

  Failed translated. Thorgrim saw a flicker of a smile on the abbot’s lips, as if he found such an assurance amusing, no more. Then the old man replied.

  “He says, if you mean no harm, why have you come?”

  Now it was Thorgrim’s turn to smile a bit at the abbot’s sly insult. What else could a Northman do, other than bring harm to others?

  Before answering, Thorgrim reached into the leather bag that hung at his side and pulled out a tattered patch of cloth, a remnant of Sea Hammer’s shredded sail. He handed it to the abbot and said, “We have been told the people here are great spinners and weavers. We need cloth such as this. As wide and long as you can make it. We’ve come to ask if you can weave it for us.”

  The abbot took the cloth and examined it, felt its thickness, turned it over. His face showed not the slightest expression, as if he had no notion of what it was he was looking at. He set the scrap on the table and looked into Thorgrim’s eyes as he spoke.

  “He says, ‘Why would we help heathens, who are the great enemies of the Irish and the true God?’”

  An excellent question, Thorgrim thought. An obvious question. And because it was obvious, Thorgrim had already crafted an answer.

  “Tell him there are two reasons,” Thorgrim said. “Tell him we need the cloth for sails for our ships. It is my intention…and I will swear an oath to it…that I want only to leave I
reland. If he helps us make our sails, he helps rid Ireland of all the heathens I have under my command.”

  Failend translated the words. The abbot nodded slowly.

  “And the other reason,” Thorgrim said, “is that I will pay him for his work.” He reached into the bag again and pulled out a little silver casket, a lovely piece of work that had been Failend’s, and had been stolen by Louis the Frank, and then returned courtesy of Brunhard the slaver. Failend had happily offered it to Thorgrim for this purpose.

  Thorgrim leaned over and set the casket down on the table, set it down with enough force to make it clear it was not empty. The abbot’s eyes flickered over at the silver box and back again. And still his expression did not change. But once again he spoke.

  Thorgrim leaned forward, watched the man’s face, listened to the tone of his voice. There was a weariness and a sense of hopelessness, but if it was genuine or not, Thorgrim could not tell. When the abbot was done, Failend spoke.

  “Abbot Columb says that you are reasonable and your arguments are good. He says that they do weave cloth here, the finest in Ireland, and could make what you need. He says he would be happy to help any heathen leave Ireland. But he says it is pointless for them to even start weaving cloth for you.”

  Thorgrim waited to hear more, but Failend apparently had translated all that the abbot had to say.

  “Why?” Thorgrim asked. “Why would it be pointless?”

  Failend asked Abbot Columb, and he replied.

  “Because Ferns, apparently, is threatened with attack,” Failend explained. “One of the rí tuath whose lands border Ferns has decided that he is owed a portion of the wealth that is held at the monastery. He will arrive any day and he will sack Ferns and it’s likely he will leave nothing behind. That is what the abbot says.”

  “I see,” said Thorgrim, and he was just turning this information over in his head when the abbot spoke again. Thorgrim looked up. The old man was sitting straighter now, and he had the expression of a man who had just hit on an ingenious solution to a problem.

  “The abbot says he might have thought of something that could be of benefit to us both,” Failend said.

  There was some further discussion before the heathens took their leave, but it was mostly between Brother Bécc and the heathen leader, the one called Thorgrim. Abbot Columb paid it little attention. Plans were agreed to, a sense of urgency imparted, timeframes for the production of cloth and the payment for the same.

  And all the while the old abbot could only wonder if he was doing the right thing, or if he was making some grave error.

  Finally the two parties had said all they needed to say, for the time being. Thorgrim and the girl stood to take their leave. Abbot Columb did not rise. He simply nodded to Thorgrim and to the girl and then Brother Bécc escorted them from the small stone building, the residence of Abbot Columb and all the abbots of Ferns before him, stretching back a hundred years at least.

  Columb wondered about the girl. Not Norse, but Irish, and the obvious deference she showed to an abbot of the Church suggested she was a Christian as well. She seemed to speak the Northmen’s language well enough, but her Irish was not that of a woman who was lowborn. A slave, perhaps? That made the most sense, but she did not act like this Thorgrim’s slave. Columb suspected that whatever her relationship was to the Northmen, it was putting her soul in mortal peril.

  The old abbot sighed. So many souls, so much peril, he thought.

  The door to his small home opened and Brother Bécc, having seen the Northmen on their way, stepped back in. Columb turned to the young priest who was still furiously writing on his parchment.

  “Niall, leave us,” he said. The young man nodded, set his pen in the inkstand and retreated out the door, closing it behind him. Bécc sat on the bench that Thorgrim had occupied moments before.

  “You think it’s a sin, doing business with these heathens?” Columb said, more a statement than a question.

  Bécc shrugged. “I am not the man to tell you what is and is not a sin,” he replied. “But can you uphold your end of the business? Can the weavers here make the cloth the heathens want?”

  Columb waved a dismissive hand. “They already have,” he said. “We send our cloth to markets all over, you know. They have been at work all winter. There’s already cloth enough for what the heathens want.”

  “I understand,” Bécc said, a flicker of a smile on his face, a suggestion that he understood more than the simple question of weaving.

  “Some say the heathens are God’s punishment on us,” Columb said. “For our sinful ways. Do you agree?”

  Bécc shook his head. “If they were God’s punishment, then there would be nothing that we could do, save for praying for His mercy,” he said. “But in truth we can fight them. We can push them back. No, the heathens are the work of the devil, not God. And we can fight the devil. We must fight the devil.”

  Columb nodded. Bécc’s moral vision was clear and uncomplicated, and Columb envied the man that. But Bécc did not have a monastery and all its people and holy treasures to protect.

  “And yet, here I am making a bargain with the devil,” Columb said.

  “You are a holy man, Abbot,” Bécc said, and there was no irony in his voice, because there was no irony in his heart. A righteous fury, certainly, a bottomless loathing of the heathens, but no irony. “I think you see a means to use the devil’s tools against him, and that’s good. But it’s dangerous. The devil is a crafty one.”

  Columb nodded. “That he is. And honestly, Brother, I don’t know if I am being clever as well, or if I’m a fool. I suppose we can only see what happens. But I believe I’m not wrong in thinking Airtre is the greater danger to Ferns than these heathens.”

  “You are not wrong,” Bécc said. “My men followed him as he made a tour of his lands. They expected when he was done he would release the men he had called to arms, let them go back to their farms, but he did not. He returned to Rath Knock and still he didn’t release his men. Instead he marched them to the sea. Why, I don’t know. My men couldn’t get close enough to find out what was of interest there. But now he’s on the move again, coming this way. And he’s gathering more men to him, under arms.”

  Columb stared off into a gloomy corner of the room and let his mind wrestle with all this. Airtre would certainly know about this army of heathens that had landed at the mouth of the Slaney. He would understand that Faílbe mac Dúnlaing, who had come to the aid of Ferns before, would not leave his own lands with such a threat at the door.

  Airtre would probably guess that the heathens were coming to sack the monastery. He was likely hoping to beat them to it.

  What he could not possibly guess was that this Thorgrim had not come to loot Ferns, he had come to bargain for cloth. Airtre certainly would not guess that part of the bargain Columb had made with him was that he and his heathen army would help defend Ferns against Airtre’s attack.

  “So, Brother,” Columb said at last. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Bécc made a grunting sound. “I’m no saint, nor am I a child,” he said. “I know the sort of bargains one must make. And I think you’ve made a good one, using Satan’s tools to defend a holy place against an evil man. Clever. Airtre’s men and the heathens will kill one another; then me and my men can stamp out what’s left. And then we may live in peace. For a while, anyway.”

  Chapter Ten

  A defense of songs full goodly

  He freely gave me, neighbor

  Of sea-scales : I praise gladly

  Njord's Daughter's golden gem-child.

  Prose Edda

  It was late in the day, the sun nearly down, the evening warm and lovely, when Thorgrim and Failend and the others were escorted through the big gates of Ferns. They were still surrounded by spearmen, though the Irish seemed not quite as tense now as they had been earlier. Still, it was not until the gates had been closed behind them that their weapons were returned.

  They were grat
eful as they strapped the belts around their waists and adjusted the familiar weight of their swords, grateful to the gods who let them get out of that place safe and spared them some ignominious death at the hand of the guards or the spells of the Christ priests. Thorgrim drew Iron-tooth, looked along the length of its blade in the late day light. Flawless still, no harm had come to the weapon. He almost felt like apologizing to the steel for letting an Irishman take possession of it, if only for a short while.

  “That chief man, or whatever they call those men who rule these places, he seemed quite ready to cooperate,” Hall said as he settled his sword on his hip.

  “He did,” Thorgrim said. “These Irish might hate us, but they’re happy to bargain with us as well.”

  Failend made a skeptical sound, but Thorgrim did not know if she was skeptical of his optimism or the abbot’s apparent cooperation.

  “Very well, Failend, what did you think?” Thorgrim asked. They were walking now, making their way across the field from where they had come, back to where Thorgrim hoped the curach was still floating tied to the bank.

  “I think that Abbot Columb is a crafty one,” she said. “And it’s hard to know what’s in his heart. I think he’ll be true to his word. Though he will not be pleased when he finds your army is not quite the mighty force you suggested it was.”

  “It’s not a weak force, either,” Thorgrim said. “Around ninety warriors. Trained men. Men who have done more than their share of fighting. I would be willing to bet Hall and Bjorn alone would be good for killing a dozen Irish.”

  “Hmm,” Failend said. She was an Irishwoman, now in the company of Northmen and she was torn in her loyalties. Thorgrim knew that. He would have thought less of her if she had been willing to turn her back on her own people with never a thought.

  The curach, thankfully, was still where they had left it, but the day was too far gone for them to make much progress down the river. They rowed a mile or two, the going easier now with the current carrying them along, and then they found a section of river hidden by stands of trees and tied to the bank and slept as best they could in the bottom of the boat.