Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  The old woman in the front of the company put her hand to her head and the white hair fell over her face. Her bony fingers pulled at the lank locks in an oddly restrained and formal gesture of anguish. “That was always a mistake. I told the abbot Colm from the beginning, it was a mistake not to keep at least some sling spears! Now he lies martyred for the glory of Mary’s Son!”

  MacCullen said, “Let you, who have not seen the war frenzy of the Gaill, not speak against Abbot Colm! Had we had axes and spears, each of us, the outcome may have been the same—for these who attacked us were madmen, biting their own shields until the blood ran from their tooth-flesh, and foaming at the mouth like dogs.”

  There was a moment of stillness, and it seemed to Derval she could taste a change in the air of the small assembly. So quiet might songbirds sit, while the hawk soars between them and the sun.

  Berserkers. Her hands grew cold as she mouthed the word.

  “I was in the sweathouse with Medb, Ardes, whom you also know, and Gignait, Mell’s daughter, when the Gaill burst among us,” Ailesh said. “Medb died quickly, before it occurred to the butchers they might have another use for us. I was dragged out by my hair and the motherless demon flung himself onto me. There I was raped and my body torn and my first joy of man stolen from me.

  “And there I killed the brute.” Some cries of joy at her revenge interrupted her. She waited, then continued. “May his punishment be hell. His blood and my own soaked me red.” Ailesh spoke evenly, but Derval could see her tearing her thumbnail viciously all the while. Like Johnnie, she thought, with a new stab of pity.

  “I leaped the cattle fence and ran along the road to the Ard na Scamall where Goban finished the cross he had promised to Bridget long ago, after mother died. In doing so…” Her voice faltered. “In doing so I led the enemy to him.”

  MacCullen’s arched eyebrows lifted and he took Ailesh by the hand. “Do not believe he would have been spared, child. Nor would he have willingly hidden while his heart’s treasure was being destroyed.”

  Ailesh shook her tears violently from her eyes. “Then, by my father’s cross, the saint granted me the first of three miracles.

  “I found my father waiting for me, with his hammer in his hand. He picked me up in his arms as the pursuers reached me, and there I thought we would die together. Instead he flung me at the cross itself and the stone gave way before me. I found myself far from trouble in the home of Eoin Ban, my father’s foster brother.”

  In the general buzz and stir, one voice spoke up: that of the white-haired woman. “I didn’t know Goban had a foster brother.”

  “Nor did I,” said Ailesh, “until later, when I saw the work of Eoin’s hand. But I was in his glass-walled house, far from violence, and there he and this warrior woman, Derval Cuhain, gave me aid and friendship. By the skill of his hand and the cross of Bridget, Eoin brought me back again, so that I may go to Dublin and demand the murder price for my father!”

  “This is true? This is not a dream tale?” came a voice from the wall. An old man sat up. He was missing an arm. “Are you sure you’re not all from the Ui DunLainge, out to trade joke for joke?”

  The taiseach smothered a grin. “Peace, father! I don’t think Ui DunLainge yet regards our raid as quite the joke you do. Nor would our kinswoman play their game upon us.

  “You spoke of three miracles, Iníon Goban.”

  “I did. The second occurred this very evening, when an old nun came into our camp to share our food, and spoke wisdom to us. It was Bridget herself, and as she left she showed her radiance to both Derval and blond Eoin. Although I was not privileged to see her for who she was, by her presence she healed every hurt on my body. Look at me and judge!” She opened her brat and displayed her sweet, plump, naked body.

  “She was injured,” said Derval, stepping forward. “The blood of this brave woman’s slashed belly stained the floor red! It was as though a human wolf had torn her breast open. Such injuries do not heal in a day!”

  The eyes that shifted from Derval to Ailesh were uneasy. “MacCullen,” said the chieftain. “You are a man who guards his reputation. What do you say to this? Did you see the face of Bridget?”

  Goddamn! thought Derval. Cynical, supercilious bastard: they had to ask him. Now he will destroy her in front of her own people. Everyone will think Ailesh is crazy, and John and I…

  MacCullen met her eyes. “I admit I am disappointed that I myself was not worthy of the aisling vision,” he said carefully, looking straight at Derval. “I did not know this visitor for the saint, but the daughter of Goban the carver does not lie. And as for miracles, anyone who had seen me last night, bloodless and lost in fever from the stroke of the heathen’s sword, must call my life a miracle.” He turned to the company.

  “I stand by what the daughter of Goban said.”

  Staring slantwise into Labres MacCullen’s blue eyes, Derval silently apologized for her distrust. She pulled a smile from him.

  “I am neither saint nor bean sidhe,” Derval replied to a question from the chieftain’s mother. “Nor yet am I a hero, though the young Ailesh calls me one. I am instead a student of languages; though I was born on this island of Gaels, still you can hear that Irish is not my native tongue.”

  “An Irishwoman without Irish? That is a riddle I haven’t heard before,” said the chieftain doubtfully, and then that large man lay back with his head in his old mother’s lap. She patted his hair as though he were a dog.

  “My parents were travelers, and much of my early life was spent among Saxons and other speakers of the hard tongue.

  “And I cannot explain the miracle of Ailesh’s rescue; I only know she came to us: to Eoin, who is called the Cattle Leaper, and me…”

  “Yes. Tell of this cattle leaping. Another riddle?” asked the chieftain with narrowed eyes. “This one could easily be of the blood of the Gaill himself; is he not a Leinster Dane or an Orkneyman?”

  “Not so. I speak not of a riddle but a deed. John is a craftsman and a Christian,” Derval said, hoping the last was not a complete prevarication. “His home is in Eire.”

  “A house of glass?” The taiseach’s questions brought a new sweat to Derval’s face and armpits. At any moment he would evoke from her some statement either unbelievable or incriminatory. She could see herself announcing to this sober assembly that she was a woman from one thousand years in the future. She herself hadn’t believed Ailesh’s story of Vikings in suburban Greystones.

  “Only a house with glass windows,” Derval corrected the man gently.

  “Flat as mica and clear as air,” testified Ailesh, much to Derval’s irritation. “Huge windows the size of doors.”

  “That is Eoin’s house,” Derval admitted, if only to shut the girl up.

  “A magical house?”

  Derval smiled. “No. Eoin has no magic about him, except in his art. Any man can have glass in his windows, if he can pay enough. And the house belongs not to Eoin but to his landlady…er, patroness.”

  “I did not meet the patroness,” Ailesh said, “unless it was the woman who was looking for her chicken.” She looked rather shamefaced as she added, “We raided her hen away from her and would have eaten it tonight but for your cattle.”

  The chieftain smiled slowly. “That’s all right. We raided the cattle also. From the Ui DunLainge. Lucky for you you met us instead of them, for they are as angry as bees.”

  Derval’s eyes opened wide. “Cattle raiding! Does the Church let you do that in this time?” she blurted. The man returned her glance with some hauteur. “I mean…rather…”

  The old woman gently dropped her son’s head on the ground beside her. She leaned forward. “That is enough about our guests, son. Further personal questions would be unmannerly.”

  The taiseach let his mother speak.

  “What we must know, Scholar O’Cuhain, is where the Vikings landed and when they are going to leave. For we have only thirty among us who wield the ax at all, and none of us are champion
s. We will not willingly encounter Odin’s mad hounds.”

  Derval noted the title the old woman had granted her. Well, why not? She had claimed as much to MacCullen, and she was a scholar, wasn’t she? She had worked hard for her doctorate. Let the poet take note. But her face was sober as she answered. “Alas, mother, the Gaill do not leave. I crawled close to Ard na Bhfuinseoge last night and I saw the prows of their dragon boats set up in the ruins of the cattle enclosure, among the stumps of the sacred trees. They plan to stay.”

  The old woman said nothing. Her mouth, ragged-toothed, hung open. The chieftain rocked forward onto his haunches, staring at her. In the sudden quiet Derval heard a child crying and wondered if the sound had just begun.

  “It is for that reason especially we must receive the support promised us from Awley Cuarán of Dublin,” Ailesh said. “Otherwise, even here you are not safe.”

  “Indeed we are not!” whispered the old woman. The taiseach frowned like thunder and met his father’s worried eyes.

  “If he is still in here, there’ll be nothing left of him,” Ailesh called over her shoulder to Derval. She pried open the door of the sweathouse, expecting heat and dark.

  The lamplight and gentle warmth surprised her and drew her in. Derval, the chieftain, and the chieftain’s mother followed.

  There stood blond Eoin, but blond no more, for his hair and his face were smudged with charcoal. He was drawing on the wall, and when he heard them and turned, he blinked like one newly awakened from sleep. His rampant manhood hung out before him, as dark as the yard of a black bull. His hands, too, were black. “Hello,” he said in English, adding, “Is it late? I lost track of the time.”

  “It is a man of wonders who can go from a bathhouse dirtier than he went in,” said the taiseach. It was he who first noticed the walls, and then his mother did. At last Derval turned and stared at what John had done. She whistled through her teeth.

  Ailesh was last to look away.

  On the back wall, first seen upon entering the sweathouse, was Bridget, with her calm cow eyes and her hair coiling outward, enclosing all creation. There about her were the wren and the heron, the ouzel and the osprey. There among them stood a penguin in full dress, not drawn realistically but quite recognizable. Around the saint ran deer and camels and bison, and a thing Derval alone recognized as a Morris Mini Minor, its tiny wheels filled with tinier patterns of spirals.

  The right-hand wall sported both a triskelion and a large yin-yang. The Oriental symbol was worked out in fish eyes, fish scales, and fish netting, while the three-lobed circle was composed of seals and polar bears.

  The third wall’s decoration, interrupted by the entry of Ailesh, was a knotwork composed of connected rectangles of curious form. “A…locomotive, Johnnie?” she asked, staring. “Oh yes. Had I seen the caboose first, I would have understood.”

  “I…I’m not done,” said John, shifting from foot to bare foot. He became aware of his erection and turned his back on everyone.

  The chieftain’s mother paced around the room, holding her own oil lamp near the walls. Her son followed. At last the old woman stepped up to John and held the lamp to his face.

  “You are worth a house of glass,” she said, mystifying John completely. Then she added, “But young man, it is past time you were married!”

  Derval sat up. “Somebody just threw the bolt! The bolt on the door!”

  John tried his best to surround her without moving his body. “You’re nervous, Derval. Shouldn’t still be nervous.”

  She released herself efficiently by prying John’s fingers back, and ignored his complaint. “We’re locked in, Johnnie!” Derval cried, floundering through darkness toward the door. A quick pull at the wooden latch proved her point. She hissed her anger.

  John Thornburn opened his eyes. It was very difficult to do and didn’t help affairs much, as the only light that entered the sweatlodge was diffused starlight around the airhole near the ceiling. “What’s the matter? Do you have to piss that bad? Maybe they’re only protecting us from bears or something.”

  “No bears,” said Derval sullenly. “Not in Ireland.”

  “Or something.”

  She felt her way back to the fine heather mattress and the heap of feather tickings with which the taiseach had provided them. “Don’t talk like an idiot, John.”

  “An idiot!” John sniffed. “A little while ago I was your grand, lean-thewed, cuddly, silk-haired—”

  “Stuff it.” Derval crawled back under the ticking to think. Her bare skin was chilled; John chafed it vigorously. He rubbed his own body against her back. His hand wandered over her thigh.

  “I said ‘Stuff it’! And I didn’t mean… John B. Thornburn, what’s gotten into you tonight, anyway?”

  “I’m sorry,” said John, contrite. “But I can’t seem to help it.” He eased away from her reluctantly.

  Derval flipped over, staring into the darkness where his face was. “Now, if you could just distribute that ardor over a period of, say, a fortnight, that would mark a general improvement in your performance. But not now. For one thing we’re in trouble, and for another…

  “…my mucous membranes are wearing thin,” she concluded in a mutter.

  John sighed. It seemed incumbent upon him to allay Derval’s suspicions, so he brought his arms under his chest and ejected himself from the snug nest of feathers. On his way to the door he scraped the wall once with his shoulder and cursed, wondering what he had smudged. He reached the door jamb and found the latch.

  “It’s only locked.” John spoke decisively.

  “Yes. So I said.”

  He leaned against the door, feeling the oak boards warp ever so slightly at his pressure. It was a heavy wooden stick that was holding it, he decided. Like a two-by-four. An oak two-by-four. John sighed again.

  “So we’re locked in? What do you think the villagers plan to do—burn us in a wicker basket?”

  “Off by five centuries,” stated Derval, her contempt muffled by layers of covers.

  “Not off,” replied John. “Merely being sarcastic. After all, Derval, Ailesh is out there. And the olive.”

  “Spare me. Spare me the ‘olive,’ Johnnie,” said Derval, with a show of bluster. “But you’re right about Ailesh. I can’t believe these people mean ill to one of their own, and I know Ailesh won’t abandon us. Nor let us come to harm. Perhaps it was only a pranking kid who thrust the bolt.”

  John agreed readily, and navigated back to the bed by Derval’s voice. By the time he buried himself in covers once more, he was so cold his body balled up like a sow bug. Derval gave him the warmth of her chest and belly. He lay that way for sixty seconds, shivering, and then said, “You know, I’m beginning to think we should worry, eh?”

  “Stuff it, Johnnie,” murmured Derval, licking his ear with her tongue.

  It was only a short while later that Labres MacCullen quietly shot back the bolt on the sweatlodge and edged in. He heard the grunts, the panting and heaving, and stepped toward the mattress in his soft leather shoes. With trained courtliness he waited till they were done with that particular bout, but when it appeared that there would be no real respite, he cleared his throat.

  Derval gave such a gasp she came close to inhaling her tongue. Her reflexive huddle bounced John six inches into the air.

  “Forgive me,” said MacCullen considerately. “I didn’t mean to startle you, nor to interfere with your pleasures. But I am sadly disappointed in the honor of this taiseach, and I thought it best no one notice my visit.”

  Derval sat up, denuding John of covers. “Why? What has the man done, Ollave? Why were we imprisoned here?”

  Slowly the poet sat down beside her and sighed. “They mean no great harm to you, Scholarinion Cuhain. But it grieves my heart that fear should bring Irishmen to treat visitors of welcome in this manner. And it is inconvenient, isn’t it? But for the respect these villagers owe to my profession I would have had my liberty constrained also.” Then he leaned over unti
l she could feel the warmth of his face over her breast and said gallantly, “What a fine woman’s smell you have.”

  Derval felt an embarrassed heat over her face. “What did he just say to you, Derval?” inquired John, at her other side. “Did he just say what I think, eh? He didn’t say that you smell, did he? He’s got a right to talk, if he did!”

  As John spoke in English, it was all noise to the poet. “The problem is this, my friends. The taiseach, after consulting with his mother’s brother, has decided the clanstead cannot bear the force of a Viking attack, God give him a blessing for his sense! But he also fears to meet the wrath of Ui DunLainge while on the move, with all the cattle milling and babies to care for. Surely if they are caught on the road they would lose half their herd, in reparation for a raid of twenty-two cows! So they leave tomorrow and go south and inland, over the hills toward the lowlands of Wicklow.”

  “What has that to do with us?”

  MacCullen fingered the fringe of his brat. “Her kinswoman wants Ailesh to go with them. She is clanless, but for these people, you see, and they feel…”

  He ground his teeth. “They feel she will get no great hearing in Dublin for her trouble. This clanstead resisted the pressures of Dublin and submit only to Leinster. They feel the Dublin king, being one of the Gaill himself, takes his tribute without honor to give justice.”

  Derval had listened closely. “And are they right, Ollave? You ought to be objective.”

  MacCullen snorted. “May the saints stand between me and the men of ignorance! Perhaps the taiseach judges by his own standards of what is due a guest. Hardly half of these cowboys have been in the city at all, and they don’t speak the language. I know Olaf Cuarán. I have composed before him in his own tongue many times, and he will not have forgotten me. Besides, the king in Dublin may not be a great ruler, like Aud the deep-minded, when she was queen in Ireland, but he is, after all, a king! And how could a king survive without maintaining his sword pledge?”