Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  The shelter Ailesh had made grew warm with body heat.

  “Maybe they’ll be gone tomorrow,” Derval said to Ailesh. “And then we can get the cross back and try to put it together again.”

  Ailesh, who was pressed against the other side of MacCullen from Derval, lifted her head. “But the cross is broken off, Bhean Uasal. How can it still help us?”

  Derval shrugged, jostling the wounded man just a little bit. “It’s broken worse at our end. I mean at John’s house.”

  “You…do not live there?” Ailesh’s question was diffident.

  Derval shot a quick glance into the darkness. Ailesh was staring up at the moonlight through the woven branches “Not always.

  “But the cross being broken won’t matter, I think.

  “…I hope.”

  “You wait for the…the power of heaven to take you home?”

  Derval couldn’t miss the forlornness in Ailesh’s words. She tried to remember why it was important that the redheaded girl be left back here. Paradox. The military-industrial complex.

  Sounded like so much bullshit with the Vikings next door. So what if the destructive technology of this period was primitive? It was shockingly effective, and Derval would not consider leaving the girl to the sword’s threat. All that was necessary to avoid temporal repercussions was for Ailesh to learn English and keep her mouth shut about her past. Easy work, in comparison to dying.

  “You, too, Ailesh. You can come back with us.”

  Ailesh turned over. Derval saw with a bit of surprise that the girl was stark naked, except for her bandages. “To John’s house? That is a strange place. It is not on this island, is it?”

  Derval sighed, not for the first time. “It is…and it isn’t. This place, now”—and she thumped the earth with her hand—“is much more Ireland than that is.”

  Ailesh nodded, as though she knew it all already. “But I will stay, when you go, for I have to go up the Slige Chualann to Dublin.”

  “Dublin?” It was John who spoke. Both women started.

  “To Dublin?” repeated John. “Why to Dublin?”

  Ailesh smiled. Her teeth gleamed in the broken moonlight. “You talk!” she whispered. “How nice.”

  “I begin,” he said, after some thought. “Little bit.”

  “John has been studying,” drawled Derval. “Studying especially hard today.”

  “I have to go to Dublin,” Ailesh said slowly and distinctly to John. “For though we are of Leinster, we bought the protection of the Dublin Danes at a high tribute, and we did not get it. I go to get the murder price for my father and for the fallen trees of the monastery, as well as redress for the profanation of the body of Christ within our altar. It is my right and my duty.”

  “This I don’t like!” answered John with some force.

  Derval nudged the edge of the basket, which swayed. She begged pardon. John Thornburn could not see her. He lay curled in the half-hedgehog position, his knees as near his chin as his tight tendons could manage.

  The wind came through, there was no doubt about that. It was marginally colder than it had been ten minutes ago. Little dead branches dug pits into his shoulder, his cheek, his ear. John listened to the ragged, effortful breathing of the poet, whose head rested near John’s midsection. Evidently every breath had to be grabbed through pain.

  Poor fellow. Although John could not feel for him the kind of pity that had grown in him for Ailesh—MacCullen was neither winsome nor smaller than John—still John Thornburn was aware of a sort of participation in the man’s suffering. How had he insulted Derval—so tall, confident, and athletic? He must have made fun of her temper. John decided.)

  The redheaded girl was sleeping snuggled against MacCullen; her breathing was gentle and deep. She seemed comfortable.

  Tomorrow morning John, too, would stand up a class. It was a small class and didn’t pay him much, but it was a professional responsibility. Both his head and chest swelled with the familiar “oh, do leave me alone” feeling he got whenever he had failed in something, and people were set to fix him with hurt, reproachful glances. But of course he did not have to apologize for missing his appointments. It wasn’t his fault, for once. It had been an Act of God, like the insurance forms say. In fact, he was not even present in the world where the appointment had been made any more, to receive possible hurt, reproachful glances.

  Might as well be dead.

  For John Thornburn that realization was not tragic but comforting. Unlike head colds, broken equipment, and smudged appointment books, death was an excuse no one could deny. He was dead to the twentieth-century world, at least for a while.

  There was noise: insistent, repetitive noise that was neither his companions’ breathing, nor the beating of his own heart in his ear. Chanting. Heavy, in five-beat rhythm. The Vikings were making noises in the night.

  John huddled closer to the wounded poet. His sense of comfortable distance faded. Actually, he’d rather be teaching the mathematical bases of Celtic design at Trinity and be dead to this world’s bloody appointments.

  He was getting tired of that word: dead.

  For years, whenever John had had trouble sleeping, he was in the habit of calling to mind a page from his masterbook—the Book of Kells. It was always the same page: the Chi Rho page, which consisted of two Greek letters so intricately, endlessly elaborated in line and color that there was no white left on the page.

  One could look at the piece from many different focal lengths. At greatest remove there was the lettering itself, strong and solid against the fine grain of the background. At a closer look it was a pattern of linked circles. With nose to paper one could make out that each individual circle was complex work in itself. At all distances, it was perfectly satisfying.

  John liked to set up the page behind his closed eyes, prodding himself to remember the placement and form of each individual spiral, bird, or tiny human head that ornamented the letters. Always he was asleep before half-reaching his goal.

  But tonight the figures would not behave; they twisted before his eyes in great indecision: heron’s head into man’s head and key pattern into scallop. It was not as though his own abilities had been blocked, nor yet that his odd, unreasoning discipline had deserted him. It was as though the template from which he worked—the Chi Rho page itself—were missing.

  Could it be, he asked himself, that the illumination did not exist? That it had not yet been penned and painted by its anonymous master hand?

  No, of course not. The book was late ninth or early tenth century: already seventy-five or a hundred years old. It must be John’s nerves giving him trouble. He let his efforts lapse.

  But the splashes of color which would not follow direction would also not let him be, and John found himself the helpless observer in a play of light and line which spread without limit over the canvas of his mind. There was a saint’s head with a halo of carmine hair and a saint’s hand pointing, with each finger ending in a spiral like no natural fingerprint, and all the power and radiance of that hand expressed in golden double braid.

  The eyes of the bird were golden too: the odd, fat bird with each feather a square knot and its long legs stretched out sideways and lost in the tight, three-dimensional pattern of line behind the whole. And the bees were gold, around the hive of knotted willow.

  That red blazon was a mouth—or rather the stern lips were flat and heraldic. And the black brows beneath the black hair of the saint (but hadn’t it been red—like Ailesh’s?) were the shape of an ouzel in flight, and the crest of twin spirals like weeping eyes.

  Around, bordering the saint, and the bird and the hive with its golden, sleeping bees and the argent swords in the hands of bone and the shadowed figures, unrecognized because never yet encountered…

  …were looped, endless, oceanic spirals. They closed in the picture like seasons of history. Binding. Making inevitable. When the spirals multiplied in their colors of blue and silver John knew the work was finished.

&n
bsp; I can do this, he said to himself. I can put this all down. His heart was pounding as though he’d climbed a hill.

  Now he was nowhere near sleep. He wondered how he’d even thought to try, here in a strange world without language and no jacket at all. John sat up and huddled into himself.

  The damn squareheads were still grunting away down there, he growled to himself. He—John Thornburn—was of course not a squarehead but a Canadian. A peaceful people; Canadians. Never hurt anyone but the Indians and he was part Canadian Indian too. He hugged his national harmlessness to his bony sides, shivering.

  The rhythmical noise came closer and John knew a moment’s awful panic. But this was not the chant of the Danes. It was somebody crunch-crunching through the damp oak groves. Numb with fear, he put his eye to the wickerwork.

  Out there in the moon-touched dimness, in the direction of the village, something white moved. It was large. It sought left and right over the ground. It was only twenty feet away. For a moment John Thornburn simply could not breathe.

  He reached over the sleeping poet to shake Derval. His groping hand scraped the dry boughs that floored the hutch. In an agony of fearful impatience, he leaned over and pawed the empty bedding.

  Derval was gone.

  John’s fear overcame him and his senses failed for a brief moment, and then that overambitious fear extinguished itself. “Dear, dear, dear,” he whispered to himself, relishing his own control. “One damn thing after another.”

  It occurred to him that the two strangenesses—the white apparition and Derval’s disappearance—might cancel each other out. If it was Derval creating the disturbance out there…

  Would a yellow smock look white under moonlight? Certainly. Would Dr. O’Keane muddle about the wet earth alone at midnight with Viking raiders carousing only a few hundred yards away? Of course. Indubitably. How could he doubt it? John pried up the edge of the hutch as Derval had done and slipped out.

  The prowler saw him and started violently. John saw the prowler and did the same. It was not Derval, after all, but a…a creature of some variety.

  Domestic, apparently, for after its initial spook it came up to him readily and laid its heavy head against his hand.

  It was fat, stocky-legged, and bigger than a goat. Its tail was slight and dangly and its little ears pricked. It had a round forehead covered with curly white hair, as was the rest of its body. Its nose was delicate and it had tiny hooves conical as elephant’s feet. It made a sort of gasping sob as it nuzzled John’s stomach.

  A deformed horse, John decided with some amazement. A deformed horse living alone in the black woods. He regarded the thing with pity mixed with revulsion.

  Should he tell his companions? John was subject to some indecision. There was such an air of unimportance about the creature. Surely Ailesh wouldn’t welcome being hauled out of her sleep of exhaustion to be shown this. And if he did wake her, would he be able to communicate his message? Wouldn’t it be more pertinent to convey to her that Derval was gone?

  No. The little Irish girl, not knowing O’Keane’s mettle, would assume she had been carried off. John Thornburn knew better with every fiber of his being.

  Most likely she was spying on the Vikings. Horrible thought. It implied worse—such as that John should go after her. He shuddered and remembered it was very cold out here. John snuggled against the pale, downy side of the deformed horse.

  Hearing a crackle and a crunch, he turned to see the thing setting its square teeth into the fabric of Ailesh’s woven hutch. It pulled back and the great inverted bowl swayed perilously. John took hold of the creature’s skimpy mane and hauled it back. With no sign of rancor, it set its legs against him and returned to its destructive task.

  “Hush!” said John rather loudly, and he threw his slight body in between the animal and the shelter. With the large, boxy teeth against his T-shirt he wondered if he had done the wisest thing, but the horse seemed bent on vegetable pillage, and bent its lean ewe’s neck around him. Shoulders larger than his crowded him back.

  Now John was stretched back over the arc of the shelter. His feet hardly touched the earth and the branches sagged dangerously under his weight. Pulled among irritation, fear of discovery, and the seeping chill, he made a small mewling noise. The animal’s head was above him. He grabbed it by its long jaw and little chin and, Samson-like, forced it back.

  The retching, gasping sound it made turned John’s bones to water. He released his grip and the animal stepped in again, gape-mawed. John felt the ribs of the hutch crack beneath him.

  “Come now, hinny dear,” whispered Derval, and she led the creature away with an ear between her two fingers.

  “Ye Gods!” hissed the blond, sliding down to his feet again. “How did you do that? I couldn’t do a thing with it!”

  Derval’s smirk was lost in the darkness. “And Hinny was well aware of your inability, Johnnie. Shame on her.” But was she spoke she petted the creature’s large rounded forehead and little nose.

  John shifted from foot to foot and hugged himself from the cold. “You…you know this thing?” The animal was melting beneath Derval’s expert caress.

  “Not this one personally: just hinnies,” she replied. “Look how she gleams in the moonlight!”

  “I noticed. I only hope the Vikings don’t.” He examined the animal dispassionately. “Birth defect, eh?”

  Derval’s dark head started in the darkness. “Birth…? Oh, John!”

  He found her snigger quite offensive.

  “She’s a hinny,” the woman lectured. “Offspring of a donkey jennet and a stallion.”

  “Eh? That’s a mule. I might not know much about horses, but I know that much!” John’s voice was a bit loud. Derval touched his lips with a feather finger. “And this… this abortion doesn’t look like a mule,” he concluded more quietly.

  Derval stroked the pointy head with a tenderness she had never showed John Thornburn. “Abortion! Did you hear that, Hinny? And you as cute as a teddy bear.

  “Isn’t she rather like a stuffed animal, Johnnie? All white and rounded, with her little feet and her little ears? And they’re not mule ears because she gets them from her daddy. Along with her color. But her size and stuffiness are asinine, aren’t they, Hinny. Honey-Hinny!” She kissed the thing on the end of its black-nostriled white nose.

  John Thornburn turned away from Derval in disgust and made to crawl under the rim of the hive. “Hold it for me, John. I’ve got stuff.”

  Propping up the woven edge, John remembered about Derval. “You’ve been spying on the Vikings,” he accused.

  “I’ve been raiding the Vikings!” she retorted, and pushed a large, soft lump of something before her into the shelter.

  The body warmth was welcome within. “Ye Gods, Derval! Why? What craziness could be worth—”

  “This craziness, Johnnie,” replied Derval, very close to him, and she shoved into his hands a weight of soft, clinging, very warm wool. “I couldn’t get to the packs, Johnnie…but have a brat. It’s the same color as your eyes—er—your right eye.”

  He fingered it in unwilling gratitude, feeling the instant warmth in his hands. “Give…put it on the sick man,” he said with effort.

  “The Ollave will have one,” stated Derval. “And so will Ailesh, and myself. There was no lack of cast-off clothing at Ard na Bhfuinseoge.”

  John shuddered, only half from the cold. “It’s not bloody,” said Derval. She began to strip the bundle of its layers. It revolved with an oddly solid thump.

  “When I got through the palisade I wished my Norse were better. They were singing, and I’d love to know about what.”

  “Can’t you guess?” mumbled John.

  “In general. But they’re behaving oddly, for raiders. They’re cleaning out the wreckage.”

  “Eh?”

  “They’ve piled the Irish bodies in a cow byre: I guess to burn.” Derval ground her teeth together. “Don’t tell Ailesh. And they’ve set up a sort of headquart
ers in the square shed where I put the Ollave.”

  “What about the cross?” asked John.

  Derval shrugged. “I don’t know. It was dark. But you know what they do have set up there, Johnnie?”

  John sighed his strong disinterest in the question.

  “Two dragon heads! From the bows of longboats.”

  John Thornburn’s curiosity woke. “How styled?”

  “Styled? Jeezus, John, I don’t know how styled. Of painted wood with big eyes and teeth. But the important thing is—”

  “Is whether it’s representational or simply zoomorphic,” replied John with certainty. “If it’s representational, then it’s probably degenerate.”

  Derval remained silent a moment before saying, “There is about you, my dear, a certain heroic consistency. In my mind these Gaill are by the nature of their calling a bit degenerate.

  “But what is important to me is that there are two ships in all, which means eighty men, and that they took the figureheads off their ships and set them up in the clearing. I was always taught that when Vikings touched a foreign shore, they would take off their figureheads and set them down on their sides, lest they offend the local gods. These fellows must be very confident in themselves.”

  John frowned in the darkness. “Or maybe they’re planning to stay for a while?” he ventured.

  “Could be.” Derval finished unwinding her bundle, and revealed its center, strung with shining bronze.

  Chapter Six

  God is strong and he has a good mother.

  —Gaelic proverb

  Ailesh was not truly asleep, but she had sunk into that depth of physical passivity that will rest the body while the mind watches. Her thoughts, too, were restrained, for every warp and weft of them led to the grief which was too great yet to be touched. She was cold and not aware yet that she was cold, for the chill seemed only the echo of her abandonment.

  But she was not abandoned, of course. She was in the midst of divine assistance. She promised the saint she would feel grateful when she had the energy.