They had grown up together. Even during the awkward years of adolescence, there had never been a day when they hadn’t been friends. There had been times when they had seen less of each other, but she had never been far away. If he was in Dyflin, it was natural that he should call in at her father’s house. She was family. The lively girl he had known as a child had never entirely disappeared. If they were walking together, she would suddenly point to the clouds and see the strangest comic shapes in them. Once, standing on the southern headland of the bay, she had insisted that she had just seen the old sea god Manannan mac Lir out in the waves; and for half an afternoon she had periodically cried, “There he is!” Caught off his guard, he had several times looked out, while she collapsed into peals of laughter.
But on one occasion, she had gone too far. They had been walking along the estuary’s northern strand and they had wandered far out onto the sands which at low tide stretched for hundreds of paces into the bay. When the tide had started to come in, he had told her they must turn back, but she had refused. Impatiently he had started back, and with equal obstinacy, she had remained where she was. But even he had not foreseen the swiftness and strength of the tide that day. The sea had come in with the speed of a running horse. From the shore, he had seen her standing defiantly on a sandbar, laughing at first as the incoming water swirled round her, then trying to wade her way back and finding that the waters were already deeper than she thought. Suddenly he, too, realised that the water was moving with a powerful current; the surface was frothing with choppy little waves. He saw her lose her balance; her arms were thrown up; and he had run forward through the shallows and dived into the flowing current. It had been fortunate that he was a strong swimmer. The current had almost swept him along, too. But he had managed to reach her and, swimming for both of them, with her slender body pressed against him, bring her back to the shore, bedraggled and very pale. She had sat there, coughing and shivering for some time, while he put his arms round her to warm her and helped her get dry. Finally, she had got up and then, to his astonishment, she had laughed. “You saved me,” she cried. And when they got back, she told everyone delightedly, “Osgar saved my life!” She was a strange girl. But after that day he had always felt a warm sense of protectiveness towards her that pleased him.
Apart from small adventures like this, he could not say that his own life during the years from childhood to manhood had been particularly eventful. Once, the Irish king had come to demand tribute from the Norsemen of Dyflin and had camped outside the walls until he got it; but though there had been a brief skirmish, this had been exciting rather than frightening. Osgar’s life had not been so very different from the lives of all the other boys he knew. But he had developed one passion. It had started as a child. He would amuse the adults by returning from his walks along the shore with bags of shells he had picked up. At first it was just a childish game, picking up strangely shaped or brightly coloured shells that had pleased him. Then he had begun to sort his shells into a collection, until he had an example of every one of the different sea creatures whose shells could be found in the area. If any strange or unusual shell appeared on the beach, he would know it at once. As time went on, however, looking over these childish treasures, he began to be fascinated by the shape and structure that each exhibited. He would examine their lines minutely, observing the simplicity and purity of the basic forms within them, admiring the elegance and complexity with which each shell achieved its necessary and harmonious whole. Their colours fascinated him, too. Sometimes, hardly knowing that time was passing, he would gaze at his shell collection, completely absorbed, for hours. In due course, he added other kinds of objects: pressed leaves, strange stones, complex knotted branches from fallen trees. He brought them all home and studied them. It was a solitary activity, only because he never found anyone else to share his enthusiasm, though his uncle, in a kindly way, was always amused to see what strange thing he had found. Even Caoilinn, when he periodically showed her the collection, would glance around at the treasure trove with a quick nod, but would soon get bored.
Occasionally he would also pay a visit to one of the churches in Dyflin. Here there was a Psalter, not especially fine, but with some handsome illuminations; and the priests there, knowing he was the nephew of the abbot of the little monastery on the slope, would allow him to turn its pages and stare at them by the hour. He had waited a long time before he brought Caoilinn to see the Psalter, thinking that she might be too young to appreciate such a thing. But finally, when she was sixteen, he had brought her there and reverently turned the pages for her. One, in particular, in greens and golds, he thought was fine.
“Do you see,” he showed her, “how it glimmers? It’s as if you could step right into the page; and once you are there, you encounter …” he searched for words for a moment, “a great silence.” He had gazed at her, hoping she felt the same thing. But though she smiled briefly, he detected a faint frown of impatience as well.
After what she felt was a proper pause, she said, “Let’s go outside.”
The transformation that had taken place in Caoilinn had been remarkable. The thin little girl he had known and loved had all but disappeared, and in her place there was now a dark-haired young woman with a well-rounded figure. Subtler changes had also occurred. It was to be expected that her interests would change. She would speak of domestic matters now, or show delight at the fine cloth at a merchant’s stall—things which he did not especially care for himself but which he knew were the matters that women liked to discuss. But there was something else about her now, something in her eyes, something about her whole person that was different, and which he found exciting and even a little mysterious. It had been last year, at Lughnasa, that he had finally recognised it.
There had been dancing on the night of the old festival. Most of the young people in Dyflin, Irish or not, had taken part. Osgar was a good dancer himself. He had watched with pleasure as some of the older women danced in a stately manner. But when Caoilinn had got up to join the dance, he had been astonished. He knew she would be lively and graceful; but now he found himself confronted with a new Caoilinn, a vigorous young woman who moved her body this way and that, with a warm and confident allure. Her face was slightly flushed, her eyes gleaming, her mouth open in a laughing smile in which he thought he detected a hint of rich sensuality. She was dancing among the young men. She danced no more than the steps they danced, yet as Osgar watched their faces, it seemed as if she had touched each one of them, giving them a little part of her warmth; and for a while he hung back from the dance, feeling almost shy. Was his cousin behaving in a way that was almost too full-blooded, too earthy for his taste?
But then she had beckoned to him, and he had joined in. And suddenly he was in front of her, aware of the closeness of her body; the warmth and the scent of her flesh were intoxicating. She smiled to see him dance so well. At the end he had bent to kiss her on the cheek, but she, instead, had kissed him chastely but softly on the mouth and, just for a moment, she looked straight into his eyes and he saw the green-eyed Caoilinn he had loved all his life. Then she laughed and turned away.
The next day, he went for a long walk along the seashore, alone.
It was Caoilinn who had brought up the question of their marriage. He had been out walking one spring Sunday with her whole family. They had gone down to Hoggen Green by the old Thingmount, and he and Caoilinn had been standing a little apart when she had turned to him.
“Do you remember how we used to get married down here?”
“I do.”
“Do you still have the ring?” The little antler ring.
“Yes.”
She was silent for a moment.
“It wouldn’t fit on my finger now,” she said with a quiet laugh. “But when I get married—whoever will marry me—I’d like to put it on my little finger.” She smiled up at him. “Will you promise to give it to me for my marriage?”
He gazed at her affectionately. “I p
romise,” he said.
He had understood. Assertive though she was, she couldn’t go further and keep her dignity. She had dropped the hint. It would be up to him to make the next move after that.
And now here was her father, looking at him expectantly.
“We shall be seeking a husband,” he repeated.
“Ah,” said Osgar. There was a pause.
“I could have found her a husband before,” her father pointed out. “There would be no shortage of offers.” This was undoubtedly true. “But I had an idea,” he pressed on, “that she might be waiting for you.” He stopped and smiled encouragingly at Osgar.
“We have been getting married ever since we were little children,” Osgar said with a smile.
“So you have. Indeed you have,” said her father, and waited for Osgar to continue. But nothing happened. “Young men,” he continued patiently, “often have difficulty when it comes to committing to marriage. They are afraid. It seems like a trap. And this is only natural. But there are compensations. And with Caoilinn …” He trailed off, allowing Osgar to imagine for himself the delights of being married to his daughter.
“Oh, indeed,” said Osgar.
“But if they do not offer when the time is right,” he gave Osgar a warning glance, “they may lose the girl they love to someone else.”
Lose Caoilinn to another? It was a terrible thought.
“I shall come and speak with Caoilinn,” Osgar promised, “very soon.”
Why should he have hesitated, he asked himself when her father had gone? Wasn’t this what he had always wanted? What could be better than living with Caoilinn at the family’s little monastery, enjoying the things of the spirit and of the flesh, for the rest of his life? It was a delightful prospect.
So what was missing? What was wrong with it? He scarcely knew himself. All he did know was that he had been feeling a strange disquiet in recent months. Ever since the incident.
The disquieting incident had occurred at the turn of the year. He had been riding back across the Plain of Bird Flocks after delivering a message from his uncle to a small religious house in that area. As it was a fine day, one of his uncle’s sons had decided to ride out with him, accompanied by one of the slaves. There were several Viking farmsteads in that part of Fingal, with large open fields, and they had passed one of them and gone into a small wood when, suddenly, half a dozen men had jumped out onto the track.
Osgar had just time to think. Robberies were not unknown in the area, and travellers usually went armed. His cousin had a sword with him, but Osgar was only carrying a hunting knife. The robbers would be after their valuables if they had any; then they’d take their horses. Whether they meant to kill them he couldn’t guess, but it certainly wasn’t worth waiting to find out. He saw his cousin slash at two of the men with his sword and wound them. Two more were coming at him. The slave had already been dragged from his horse. One of the men was standing over him with a club. He raised it.
Osgar never really knew what happened. He seemed to be flying through the air. His hunting knife was out of its sheath and in his hand. He landed on top of the man with the club. They crashed to the ground, struggled, and a moment later Osgar’s knife was through the robber’s ribs and the fellow was coughing blood. Meanwhile, the rest of the robbers had decided not to risk the fight any longer and were running away through the trees. Osgar turned to the man he had stabbed. The robber had gone grey. A few moments later, he started to tremble, then he shuddered and became still. He was dead. Osgar stared at him.
They rode back to the farmstead they had just passed, where the big, red-haired owner called his men together at once to organise a hunt for the robbers. “It’s a pity my son, Harold, isn’t here,” he remarked, and Osgar realised that this must be the big Norwegian he had once seen at the Thingmount years ago. When Osgar explained who he was, the big Viking was delighted. “I’m honoured to meet one of the Ui Fergusa,” he said cheerfully. “You did well today. You can be proud of yourself.” When they got back to the monastery late that evening and told their tale, his uncle congratulated him, too. By the next morning, the story was all round Dyflin and meeting Caoilinn, she had come up and squeezed his hand. “Our hero,” she had said, with a proud smile.
There was only one problem. He didn’t feel like a hero at all. In fact, he had never felt worse in his life. Nor, as the days went by, did he feel any better.
He had killed a man. He wasn’t guilty of any crime. He had done what he had to do. Yet for some reason the dead man’s face with its staring eyes seemed to haunt him. It came to him in his dreams, but also when he was awake—pale, horrible, and strangely insistent. He assumed that after a while it would go away, but it hadn’t; and soon he found himself imagining the rotting body as well. But the worst thing was not so much the memory as the nagging thoughts that accompanied it.
Revulsion. Absurd though it was, he experienced all the horror and disgust he would have felt if he’d committed murder. He never wanted to do such a thing again. He vowed to himself that he would not. But in such a violent world, how could you be sure of keeping such a vow? And with the revulsion came another disturbing thought.
He had been a hair’s breadth away from death. What if he had died? What would his life have been? A few meaningless years, ended by a stupid brawl. It had nearly happened then; it could happen tomorrow. For the first time, he was afflicted by a terrible, urgent sense of his own mortality. Surely his life must have some purpose; surely he should be serving some cause. When he thought of the passion he experienced when he was studying the natural forms or the illustrations that he loved, the daily, humdrum life he was leading at Dyflin seemed to be lacking an essential ingredient. He yearned for something more, something lasting, that could not be so pointlessly snatched away. He didn’t quite know what it was; but his sense of unease had continued to grow, as if a voice deep inside him were whispering, “This is not your true life. This is not your destiny. This is not where you belong.” He had heard it, again and again, but he hadn’t known what to do.
And now, suddenly, this business with Caoilinn seemed to be bringing matters to a head. He wasn’t sure why, but an instinct told him that his decision about their marriage was going to decide everything else, too. If he married now, he was going to settle down with her at Dyflin, have children, and live there for the rest of his days. An honourable life of domestic bliss. It was an attractive option. It was what he had always wanted. Wasn’t it?
The two monks came by the little monastery the week after his interview with Caoilinn’s father. They had been staying in Dyflin for a few days and were returning southwards to their monastery at Glendalough.
Osgar had only been to the great lakeside monastery in the Wicklow Mountains once. The abbot of Glendalough had the right to visit and inspect their own little monastery, and when he was a boy of eight, his uncle had taken him there; but it had rained for the entire time, Osgar had been bored, and perhaps because of this depressing memory, he had never made the effort to journey down there again. Now, however, feeling the need for a change of scene while he made up his mind about the question of Caoilinn, he asked if he might accompany them to visit the place, to which they readily agreed; and so, telling his uncle that he would be back in a few days, he set off in their company.
The journey was delightful. They had chosen the lower road that led southwards along the slopes of the great volcanic hills below the Liffey estuary, with wonderful views eastwards over the coastal plain. They went about twenty miles before resting for the night and then continued the climb that led to the high ground. It was mid-morning when, pausing by a turn in the mountain track, one of the monks beckoned to him and pointed.
There was still a morning mist over the floor of the narrow mountain valley, and the wooded sides which rose steeply from the waters appeared to be floating in the clouds. The two small lakes were invisible under the mist, but the treetops around them, drenched in dew, emerged into the morning air. From wh
ere he stood, Osgar could also see the roofs of several of the stone buildings: the main chapel, which they called the abbey, with its little turret; some smaller churches, the high arch of the gatehouse; and a few small chapels. And dominating them all, rising a hundred feet into the air, stood the solitary guardian of the valley, the round tower.
So this was Glendalough—the valley of the two lakes—the loveliest monastery in all Ireland.
The secluded position of Glendalough was not unusual. Irish monasteries were sometimes founded on former pagan holy places; but, as in other parts of Christendom, they were often set up on lands that had not been much used before—marshy riverbanks, borderlands, and isolated mountain places. It had been founded, about a century after the mission of Saint Patrick, by a hermit.
The tradition of the Church in Ireland, ever since the days of Saint Patrick, had been a kindly and peaceable one. Saints there had been, and scholars too numerous to mention, but few if any martyrs. There had also been hermits. There were many hermits in the Celtic Church. The practice had come to the island, through Gaul, from the early Christian anchorites, as these solitary desert dwellers were called, of Egypt. And as there had never been much need for Christian martyrs in Ireland, it was natural, perhaps, that the role of a mountain or woodland recluse should have appealed to men, heirs to the druids of older times, who wanted to make a radical commitment to their religious faith.
Like many holy men, Kevin the hermit monk had attracted followers; and so it was that the mountain refuge had been arranged in two parts. Beside the upper lake, which lay deeper in the narrow valley, was the hermit’s cell, overlooked by a tiny cave in the steep hillside, known as Kevin’s Bed. A short walk down the valley, past the lower lake and where the stream from the lakes was joined by another, lay the main monastic community with its various buildings stoutly constructed, nowadays, of stone.
The Princes of Ireland Page 25