Erinsong

by Mia Marlowe

  “Unless they’re all dead,” he finished for her. Firm hands on her shoulders, he turned her from the bleak vision. “There’s nothing for you here. Let’s go home, Brenna.”

  “No, someone may yet be alive and need our help.”

  Jorand manned the sculls while Brenna leaned against the steering oar to bring the prow to the beachhead.

  Someone must have been spared. Otherwise, she’d never know what had become of her sister’s bairn. That little ghost would dog her dreams for the rest of her life.

  Please, God, let there be someone.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Only the library was still ablaze, but smoke curled from the remains of a dozen buildings. Save for the pop and sizzle of flames devouring the literary wealth of the abbey, there was no other sound as Brenna and Jorand trudged through the abbey’s broken arch. Even the birds seemed to have forgotten how to sing.

  “Here,” Jorand said as he draped a wet cloth over her nose and mouth and tied it behind her head. “This will help.”

  It did seem to block out smells and most of the smoke, but Brenna’s eyes still stung.

  The wooden structure that was home to the nuns and novices, the veritable rabbit warren of cells in which her sister had given birth, was a mass of charred rubble. On the far side of the tower, a smoldering pile caught her eye. When she recognized a set of blackened stubs as the remains of a human rib cage, she jerked her gaze away, hand to her heart.

  A scream clawed at the back of her throat, but she choked it down. She had to maintain an illusion of calm. If she collapsed in a keening heap, Jorand would certainly carry her back to the vessel and she’d never know the fate of Sinead’s child. Surely the babe had been fostered out, not hidden away in some secluded cell on the abbey grounds. Surely they wouldn’t have been able to keep it from her if the child had been secreted there. Brenna prayed it was so.

  Her ears pricked to a sound. It was faint, but regular, a rasping singsong.

  “Do ye hear that?” she asked.

  “It’s coming from over there.” Jorand pointed toward the graveyard, a small piece of consecrated ground dotted with standing stones.

  Brenna lifted her skirt and broke into a trot. The sound was clearer now. Definitely a human voice, but one so marred with grief and smoke, she couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. A broken string of words floated to her ears.

  “O God of all spirits and all flesh,” the voice droned, “... trampled down death and ... the devil, and given life to Thy world...”

  Brenna recognized part of the Matins for Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, an office for the dead. But matins were for the morning. The sun was sinking in the western sky. If worship was called for, vespers would be more appropriate to the approaching twilight.

  “Lord, give rest to the souls of Thy servants,” the voice croaked in a sad parody of chanting. “... in a place of light, in a place of verdure... whence all sickness, sorrow and sighing have fled awa—” The worshipper broke into ragged sobs. “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

  Brenna rounded the tallest of the standing Celtic crosses and found the abbot, Father Ambrose, sprawled in a miserable lump, eyes covered by soot-begrimed hands. She knelt beside him.

  “Father,” she said softly.

  He peered at her from between grubby fingers, nails all broken and torn. The abbot struggled to sit up, a questioning look of both recognition and disbelief on his pudgy, sallow features. When Jorand came into view, the priest cowered back, shielding his head with his hands.

  “Deliver us, O Lord, from the terror of the Northmen. In nomine Patri, et Fili, et Spiritu Sancto,” he chanted with vehemence.

  “Don’t fret yourself, Father,” Brenna said quickly. “This is Jorand. Ye’ve naught to fear from him.”

  “No more Finn-Gall demons, for Christ’s pity,” Ambrose nearly shrieked, crossing himself repeatedly.

  Jorand let his arms dangle unthreateningly at his sides in an effort to look less imposing. Brenna decided he was less than successful. With his height, coloring and strong Norse features, there was no disguising what he was. Even in a passive state, her husband had the look of a formidable warrior. She sent him an invisible plea for some privacy and he blessedly took the hint.

  “I’ll be nearby if you need me,” he promised, and strode away, stopping within earshot.

  “Father,” she said, taking one of the abbot’s shaking hands in hers. His eyes rolled wildly and there was no glint of recognition in them now. She was sure it was because she’d been in the company of a Northman. “ ‘Tis only me. Brenna of Donegal. Do ye mind me now?”

  A faint light came into his rheumy eyes. “Oh, child, ye have chosen an ill day to return to the House of God.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “They fell upon us just after nones two days ago.”

  “Northmen?”

  “Aye, the thieving hell-spawn,” he said with force, clearly feeling braver now that her Northman was out of sight. “Of course, we barred the gate at once but they battered it down. We had no way to fight them. We are a peaceful community of scholars and saints.” He sniffled into his dirty sleeve. “What did we do to deserve this?”

  The same question had niggled at her for months following her sister’s rape. Jorand’s comforting words came back to her.

  “ ‘Tis not a question of deserving. Only bad luck placed ye in the path of evil,” she said. “There will always be those who are determined to harm others.”

  “But how could God have allowed this to happen?” he bleated.

  Brenna was amazed she should be giving lessons in faith to one who had been her spiritual guide. “The Almighty gifted us with the right to choose. Just because some choose evil in the world, it doesn’t make God any less good.” She stroked the back of his hand in an effort to soothe him. “That’s what ye always tried to teach me.”

  “Did I?” His gaze darted about in a confused manner. “I think ‘tis a long time since I taught ye anything. Why have ye come back? Has God given ye a true vocation at last?”

  “No, Father. I’m a married lady now.”

  “Ah, well, that’s grand then, isn’t it?” His eyes fastened on hers with a more lucid gaze. “So God has been pleased to work everything for your good. Who is the blessed fellow He chose for your husband?”

  “Ye just met him,” she said. “Jorand the Northman. He’s helped me see that not all Northmen are evil, any more than all Irishmen are saints.” Her gaze swept over the desecrated abbey. “Though ye certainly encountered some wicked Ostmen here. Was anyone else saved alive?”

  His round face sagged. “Only Murtaugh.”

  Brenna sank down beside him and wept for the loss of the nuns and monks who had been her friends.

  “I suppose ye wonder how I was spared. ‘Twas not for mercy’s sake, I assure ye.” He hid his eyes again as fresh spasms of grief washed over him. “They made me watch.”

  Brenna bit her bottom lip and patted his forearm in comfort. She’d never have dared be so informal with the abbot when she was a novice here, but suffering was a great leveler. It erased all difference in rank between them. They were just two victims of Norse terror, but the tables had turned. Now it was Brenna’s turn to console and help him heal if she could.

  The abbot dropped his hands and stared into the endless sky. “The ones they didn’t kill in the first rush of the raid, they slaughtered later for sport. Mother Superior, they stripped and paraded around the chapel. Then they disemboweled her.” His voice was flat, as though if he thought about the words and their terrible meaning, he’d be unable to go on speaking. “The novices ... ye of all people should know what happened to them.”

  Brenna nodded grimly.

  “I thought the heathen might carry them off as slaves. ‘Tis often the case,” he said. “But after they’d been defiled, the Norse devils cut their throats. Like spring lambs in an abattoir.”

  “What of the monks?” she asked.

>   “They were hanged alive from the top of the tower and then set ablaze.” Father Ambrose clamped his hands over his ears, to keep out the remembered screams, no doubt. He shook his head slowly.

  “ ‘Twas was my fault, all my fault.”

  The abbot slumped down on the grass and passed into delirium, babbling incoherently and beating his chest.

  Brenna stood and motioned for Jorand to come. When the big Northman came into view, Father Ambrose gasped twice and lapsed into unconsciousness.

  “We can’t leave him here,” Brenna said. “Can ye carry him?”

  “Ja.” He bent and slung the inert body over his shoulder as dispassionately as if the abbot were a sack of millet. “Where do you want him?”

  “The sexton’s cottage.” Brenna strode away, leading Jorand back through the compound and out the battered gate. “Father Ambrose is in no shape for questions. Maybe Murtaugh will have the answers I seek.”

  Murtaugh lived alone in a tiny house snugged up against the abbey’s stone walls. It was Brenna’s firm belief that the wiry old man had cared for the grounds and the garden of Clonmacnoise since the Flood. If Murtaugh had a second name, no one had ever heard it. He was not a member of the religious order and was known to pepper his speech with outrageous blasphemies, but abbots came and went at Clonmacnoise while Murtaugh stayed on. He was as much a fixture in the abbey as the relics in the now desecrated library.

  Behind the compound, Brenna saw the stone walls of his cottage still standing. Even the thatched roof remained intact. Murtaugh was seated on a stump near the open doorway calmly stirring a pot suspended over a small cooking fire.

  Since they were upwind from the smoke, Brenna pulled the damp kerchief from her face so the old man might recognize her. A bobbing nod and loud harrumph told her he did.

  “Is Himself dead?” Murtaugh asked loudly.

  “No, only fainted,” Brenna answered in an equally loud tone. The sexton often pretended to be deaf as a rock, though Brenna knew better. “Can we lay him inside?”

  “Suit yerself,” he said with a shrug and returned to his work.

  Brenna led Jorand into the interior of the cottage. She had come here often to sip tea with the ancient gardener and glean what she could of plant lore from him. He did not part with his knowledge willingly. She had to bully and cajole him into sharing his wisdom with her on more than one occasion.

  The cottage was still bursting with seedlings and oddments, the walls lined with shelves to hold all the old man’s vining projects. But the packed earthen floor was swept clean of debris. There was a simple table with two stools, a chest for storage, and a fresh pallet in one corner. Jorand deposited the abbot there and followed Brenna back out. They rejoined Murtaugh by his fire.

  “Always told Himself ye’d be back one day,” Murtaugh said as he squinted up at Brenna. Then his still sharp eyes took Jorand’s measure. “But God’s feet, I never thought to see ye with a twice-cursed Ostman in tow.”

  “This is Jorand. He’s me husband if ye don’t mind, so ye’ll kindly be keeping a civil tongue in that old head of yours,” she scolded.

  “Husband, is it? There be a strange tale worth the telling or I’m mistook.” He ladled out a portion of stew and handed it to her in a wooden bowl. “Hungry?”

  “Aye,” she admitted, accepting the rich-smelling offering with gratitude.

  “I supposed your Northman is, too,” he said grudgingly and scooped out a bowlful for Jorand as well, jerking his hand back when the younger man took the food from him. Murtaugh leaned toward Brenna and asked in what passed for a whisper, “Is he safe?”

  She stifled a laugh, then remembered the hair-raising tale Moira told of Jorand’s berserkr fury against the men who had attacked her and the look of cold mayhem in his startling blue eyes when he started after the raiders.

  “No, he isn’t in the least safe,” Brenna admitted. “But he can be trusted.”

  “He also doesn’t appreciate being talked about as though he isn’t here,” Jorand said.

  “Speaks the fair tongue, eh?” Murtaugh slurped at his bowl, dropping all pretense of deafness. “Can’t be all bad, then.”

  That seemed to satisfy the sexton for the moment, and he turned his full attention to the stew. When they were finished eating, Brenna decided it was time for her questions. But something the abbot had said demanded explanation first.

  “When we first happened upon Father Ambrose,’ he was saying ‘mea culpa’. Why does he seem to think all this is his fault?”

  “Och, that’s bad, it is.” Murtaugh scratched absently at his balding pate. “I wasn’t here, ye ken, being upriver seeing to the butchering of a couple of beeves for the abbey’s winter table, but I got the tale straight from Himself.”

  Brenna gathered their bowls together to wash later in the Shannon and leaned in expectantly to hear the story.

  “Ye see, the Northmen made to parley at first, the gate being barred and all,” Murtaugh explained using his gnarled hands to gesture his meaning. “They demanded a certain weight of silver to let the abbey be.”

  Brenna looked askance at Jorand.

  He shrugged. “It’s not unusual. Most towns are willing to pay to avoid a raid. Coming to an agreement saves time,” he paused “and lives. Did the abbot have the wergild?”

  “I don’t know about that foreign stuff, but Himself had the coin and no mistake. God’s no pauper ye know,” Murtaugh said. “But it didn’t seem right to part with the Lord’s bounty just on the say-so of a bunch of heathens.”

  Jorand made a snorting noise and the old man eyed him suspiciously. Brenna suspected it bothered her husband to be considered no better than the raiders.

  “My Lord Abbot wouldn’t part with so much as a mite, much good it did him. The Northmen got it all just the same. And, as ye can see, they put the rest to the torch.”

  After the lives of the people at Clonmacnoise, the irreplaceable wealth of the library meant far more to Brenna than any amount of precious metal. “So nothing was saved then? None of the books?”

  “What would a Northman do with a book? Them being all ignorant savages.”

  Brenna knew for a fact that Murtaugh was totally illiterate himself, but the old man did hold a reverence for the written word. He’d spent hours watching Brenna illuminate the pages she pilfered from the scriptorium. Since she was forbidden to work with the male scribes openly, the sexton had let her steal away to his cottage to practice her art.

  “The Ostman devils destroyed it all,” Murtaugh said.

  “Not all.” Brenna heard Father Ambrose’ voice, faint and disheartened.

  She turned to see the abbot wobbling in the doorway, a hand to his head. He must truly be losing his wits if he didn’t think the destruction of Clonmacnoise complete.

  “They didn’t destroy everything,” Father Ambrose said with surety. “The Northmen took the Skellig Michael Codex. I saw the leader carry it off.”

  “What’s that?” Jorand asked.

  “The Codex is a fabulous treasure,” Brenna said, a tiny thrill running through her just thinking about the bejeweled volume. “It’s a set of the Gospels and so much more. The art folios alone are worth more than...” she searched her mind for a staggering sum, “than all the rest of Clonmacnoise put together. The illumination is unparalleled.”

  “Then it’s worth quite a bit?”

  “Aye, ye could say that,” Brenna said. “All the gold and jewels in Tara would seem beggarly by comparison. “ ‘Tis too fine a thing even for a king to own. ‘Tis truly a book that can belong only to God.”

  “And now it has fallen into the hands of the heathen.” The abbot trudged over to join their circle, careful to position himself between Murtaugh and Brenna, as far from Jorand as possible. “But now, child, what brings ye back to us from Donegal?”

  “Surely, ye must know, Father. ‘Tis the babe birthed here. Me own sister’s babe.” Brenna folded her hands in her lap to keep them from quivering. “I’ve tried to put i
t out of me head, but I can’t put it from me heart. I need to know once and for all. How fares the bairn?”

  Murtaugh shot the abbot a glance that clearly said, ‘I told ye as much,’ but kept his lips in a straight hard line.

  The abbot seemed to consider her request, then slowly shook his head. “No, ‘tis best to let matters lie as they are. Ye must trust me for this.”

  ***

  Jorand felt the pain that flashed across Brenna’s face, sharp as a knife to his ribs. The pudgy churchman may have been head of this smoldering abbey, but the abbot had no power over Brenna now. Not if he had anything to say about it.

  He rose to his feet and, fists clenched, leveled Father Ambrose with a dead stare. “You will tell her what she wants to know and quickly, or no god will deliver you from the fury of this Northman.”

  To his surprise, Brenna leaped between them and planted her splayed fingers on his chest.

  “No, not like this,” she pleaded. “He’s been through too much already.”

  “I haven’t even started yet.”

  “No, no violence,” she said with adamancy. “There has to be another way.”

  Jorand glared at the abbot. “An exchange then,” he offered with grudging reluctance. “If I tell you the name of the man who holds the Codex, you must tell Brenna where to find the child.”

  Emboldened by Brenna’s unexpected protection, the abbot dusted off his cassock and met Jorand’s gaze. “And what good does a mere name do us here in the House of God? Think ye we shall pray for the blackguard after this desecration?”

  “Is there nothing we can do to persuade you, Father?” Brenna asked.

  “I can think of several things.” Jorand bared his teeth in an expression he was sure the churchman couldn’t mistake for a smile.

  Brenna frowned and put a restraining hand on his forearm. “Please, Father. We’ve come so far and not knowing vexes me beyond bearing. I can’t return to Donegal without finding out what became of Sinead’s bairn.”

  “I sympathize, my child, but ye wanted nothing to do with the babe when it was born,” the abbot said, placing a speculative finger to his lips. “Now if ye were to find and return the Codex intact, that might be an act of contrition worthy of reward. But alas! The Codex has passed from the hands of civilized men. How do you hope to retrieve it?”