Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  John Thornburn, who had missed the counsel in the taiseach’s apartment, now got a chance to examine it thoroughly from his vantage outside the waist-high wall. First the ax on the wall became visible, and then the spear, and finally the lectern with its white parchment. Fixed, glassy staring at that rectangle gave John no hint of its contents, however, but only produced glowing circles within John’s eyes and gave him an alarm that he might actually be getting a headache. He turned his eyes away.

  Derval, though glad the girl had been wakened, felt irritation that the poet’s self-consequence should be stoked by such success. Mere chance. She glanced at the tall man distrustfully.

  Ailesh was moving again. She was turning slowly around, onto her back, and bringing up the feather bed with her like an ungainly pillow. It took a long time for this revolution to be completed, during which John knew Derval to be anxious, for she kept holding her breath to her limit and then expelling it audibly in his ear. At last the girl was face upward, though hidden from them completely by the bulky bed ticking, around which her mother’s foster sister still had her arm wrapped.

  Then another long wait, while John shifted from foot to foot and felt a cramp incipient in his left large toe. Perhaps the girl had fainted beneath the weight of anxiety and bed ticking, or perhaps she had merely fallen back asleep. Just when he was about to suggest as much quietly to MacCullen, Ailesh appeared at the half-wall, having slid on her back all the way off the mattress, leaving her shape in feathers behind. Clasped awkwardly before her was the harp. “We are going?” she mouthed silently.

  The moon had cleared the trees and struck them all in the face as they left the dun. MacCullen explained the situation to Ailesh in an undertone. When she discovered that John and Derval had been locked into the sweatlodge, her anger found vent in a catlike cry, and she fingered the hammer in her belt and turned to go back into the darkened house.

  MacCullen’s square form stood in her way. “Patience, Daughter of the Arts. Will you brain all your kinsfolk in their sleep?”

  “But they lied to me! MacCullen, my own foster mother has gone back against me, and done injury to those who saved my life!”

  He put a burly arm around her and led her out from the doorway. Under moonlight shone the shapes of sleeping cows, lumpy as river rocks. The poet led her to one beast that lay lamb-fashion, with its sticklike legs curled around it, and sat Ailesh down beside it. Both of them leaned against the warm and smelly back as though it were a cushion. “Tonight,” the man began, “you told a strange story to these people, Iníon Goban. You spoke of three miracles. Most people, you know, live their lives without seeing one miracle. Can you wonder they may have known doubt of you?”

  Ailesh’s mouth opened roundly. “Doubt? MacCullen, these are my foster kin!” Then, frowning, she added, “Do they think I am a child, not to know truth from my imaginations?”

  The poet stared at nothing and folded his hands over one raised knee. “When last they knew you, you were a child, were you not? A father does not notice his son growing tall, I am told, until he becomes too big to cuff safely!” MacCullen chuckled at his own joke and put his arm around Ailesh’s waist. “Besides, my dear heart, how many feuds can one woman maintain at a time? Forgive these uneducated cowherds and let us be gone!”

  She looked troubled, but willing to be convinced. “But yet, Ollave”—and as she spoke she scratched her back against that of the cow—“They were willing to believe in the attack of the Gaill!”

  MacCullen’s smile was pained. “Far easier to believe in things horrible than things wonderful, woman. And the longer one lives, the more true that becomes.”

  Because John had no hope of following the conversation, his senses were more animal-acute, and it was he who noticed the approach of the gate guard over the dust and dried manure of the enclosure. “Heads up!” he cried.

  Derval squatted beside MacCullen and Ailesh, resting her hand against the cow’s horn. That long-suffering animal rose, lowing, and deposited them all in the dust. “Ollave, what are we to tell the cowboys?”

  MacCullen turned his square head and watched the tall, gawky boy approach. “We will tell them the truth, certainly, Iníon Cuhain. It is up to each of them to decide whether their honor requires them to follow the plots of so mean-spirited a war chief. If it does, then we must overcome them. They are only boys, after all.”

  His face was calm and adamant, and Derval, meeting his eyes, had the sensation of having run full tilt into a wall. It was an experience to which she was not accustomed. Sweat spangled the woman’s forehead, and she saw in her mind’s eye the wicked iron axes piled in the dust by the palisade. She thought with the rapidity of thought that just precedes panic. “But MacCullen, because they are only boys, isn’t that a cruel position in which to put them—to give them the choice of dishonor or alienation from kin and clan? I think I can chart a course for us which would spare them this grief.”

  MacCullen half-smiled at Derval. His strong face was much improved by this expression. “I would be the last to deny you a chance to be merciful, lady warrior.”

  There was no chance for retort, for the gawky youth was beside them. “I—uh—we thought perhaps you might like to share our alebag,” he said, proffering the sloshing leather sack, which seemed to be made from the leg of a cow. Even under moonlight, the lad’s color could be seen to rise, especially when he shot a glance at John Thornburn.

  Derval cleared her throat. “Delbeth, champion of Ui Garrchon, I thank you, but I think such a gift would be inappropriate. I am forced to admit that our visit here was unwelcome to the taiseach, and so we depart.”

  Delbeth let the alebag slowly fall to his side. His face sagged like the leather. “You…de—depart? In the long hour of night?”

  “Even so,” replied Derval. “At no other hour is it possible.”

  The shy boy stared at the ground and scratched his face where the beard was coming. “I am very sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what was in Buan’s mind! A kinswoman, too…”

  MacCullen spoke. “Do not apologize for the taoiseach. When one has the governance of an entire finé, Delbeth, matters of policy become complex. Be glad that yours is the simple, honorable warrior’s role!”

  Delbeth looked up at this, gratefully.

  “We will take one horse only,” said Derval. “And were it not for the Ollave’s injuries, we would take nothing. Can you find us a good, solid pony to carry a wounded man to Dublin?”

  The boy’s eyes flashed. “Give me but a minute.”

  After a muted colloquy with the other guards, he passed out of the wicker gate. The four companions followed him.

  The pony he led up to MacCullen was pale and wide and very strange of eye. Derval grinned and looked to John. “A blue-eyed cream. Often put to death at birth.”

  John started and then sighed. “I keep forgetting how barbaric it was—is—back here.”

  “No, Johnnie. I meant put down in the twentieth century. Can’t you look at the coarse creature and see why?”

  He looked closely at the beast’s face. “Not at all. I think she looks very nice.”

  So did the poet. “This is a fine animal, Delbeth. I expected none such.”

  “She’s mine,” mumbled Delbeth. “I learned to ride on her.”

  MacCullen made to give the mare back, but the tall youth shook his head. “I don’t ride her much any more. I have two, you see, and she doesn’t get the work she needs.”

  “I will bring her back, should heaven spare me,” said MacCullen. For a minute they both watched Derval, who was struggling through the pen of horses, trying to get a rope over the neck of an uncooperative Muiregan. Delbeth giggled at the sight, his voice breaking up and down.

  “In the morning when your watch is done, Delbeth, please tell the taiseach that we have departed and that he must trouble himself no further about us. And tell him that should we meet the riders of DunLainge”—and MacCullen could not suppress a smile—“that they may derive
some amusement from my strange companions and I, but useful information will be slow in coming.”

  “DunLainge!” Delbeth’s long face was stricken. He dashed back through the wicker gate, leaving MacCullen holding the pony’s bridle. When he returned he was holding his ax. “Take this, Ollave. You must not be weaponless.”

  MacCullen gave it back. “A poet is never weaponless, true heart. And we will take no weapons from a dirb fine I leave in peril. But instead I leave this with you in hostage for the return of your sage mare.” And hefting the heavy harp, he gave it into the astonished Delbeth’s arms.

  “Ollave! I am not worthy to keep such treasure!”

  “I can think of none better,” answered MacCullen, and he climbed effortfully upon the cream pony’s back.

  They retraced the road they had taken only that evening, with Derval encouraging the unhappy hinny along with a willow wand. Within a hundred feet young Delbeth had chased after them and caught them once more. He put his hand on John’s shoulder. “Eoin Cattle Leaper, I crave of you the stranger’s blessing.”

  John looked dazedly at Derval, who explained. John tried to put his hand on the fellow’s head, but could not reach, and was covered with confusion as Delbeth knelt before him. “Tell him, Derval. Tell him that I ask Bridget and Christ and all whoever to bless him, eh? And—and tell him to look in the sweathouse when it’s light. I want someone to see my sketch.”

  “I will, John,” she said. “And I’ll tell him the work is for him.”

  “Why not? Let it be for him.”

  Derval translated very earnestly for the boy, who rose, kissed John on the face, and then ran home as fast as his overlong legs could carry him.

  “Eh? Is the guy gay, do you think, Derval? Not that I’m narrow-minded or anything, but he seemed to have quite a mash on me.”

  “Young men will develop their mad passions. Around fame and glory, of course. He doesn’t want to sleep with you, Johnnie: just to be as good as you.”

  John scowled, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

  Derval caught MacCullen looking at her with a sort of concentrated, uncertain expression on his face. She looked away. “I didn’t lie to the boy, Ollave.”

  “No, you did not. Not for a moment,” he answered. “But Daughter of Chadhain, I admit I had doubts, when you spoke to me of your far travels. I have difficulty, you must know, associating the hard tongue with education. Yet I know now you must have cut your milk teeth at the courts of Europe. Not a lie, and yet hardly a word of truth.”

  John, who understood most, if not all, of the above, sniffed deeply. “Yet young Delbeth is alive and whole, and maybe wasn’t to be so without Derval’s wit.” John was marching along with a great stride for his size and with his shoulders back.

  MacCullen lifted his eyebrows high. “Indeed! Let us be thankful for poor Delbeth’s sake.”

  The moon was no help. Instead it splashed randomly through the heavy oak forest in confusing fashion, and when the party issued gratefully into small meadows, they were glare-blind until reaching the next patch of cold damp. At least it wasn’t raining, thought Derval, clutching her brat to her with her free hand while holding onto Muiregan’s tail with the other.

  The old hinny led them along the road, for despite her age her eyes were the best among them. Or perhaps the mare of Delbeth might have contested this superiority, but MacCullen rode on her back and if she led, he might have brained himself against the limb of a tree. As it was, Derval’s height condemned her to a series of attacks about her face on the part of twigs (which she could not help visualizing as bat claws). Each time she suffered she flinched and pulled the hinny’s tail, the animal snorted, and MacCullen, Ailesh, and John tucked their heads. For the last two the gesture was entirely symbolic.

  It was now perhaps twelve hours since old Bride had shown Derval her power. Twelve hours. It was only thirty-six hours (or so) since they had plummeted through time. In her mind Derval clung to this short history: especially to the visit of…of… Jheez! And they called her a saint. Derval smelled the fresh cow shit on the road. Her body remembered the trembling of the earth. (Not under hooves. Not that alone.)

  No last brewing. No last brewing. She clung to that cackled phrase like scripture.

  Of course that didn’t mean Derval O’Keane wouldn’t die herself, and lose all the tastes and urgings and the picture-book memories and whisperings in the dark and touchings and readings and ambitions, fulfilled and fulfilling. And longstanding, deeply satisfying academic feuds. Like with…what was his name again? Sullivan? Who insisted (idiotically and in the face of all evidence) that the early medieval Irish either did or didn’t use stirrups: she couldn’t remember which. Come now, Dr. O’Keane, she told herself. You remember which side you defended in the June Irish Sword only last year, don’t you?

  But she didn’t. She still felt the delightful and worthy contempt of the man (was it Sullivan? Or was it Sully?), but she couldn’t remember which side of the argument was the right side. Her side. Well, there were other memories of more significance. The taste of tea, for instance. No tea in the tenth century in Ireland. Derval called on her private cellar of experience to relive a breakfast cup of black tea with thin milk and one-half teaspoon of sugar. This effort came to nothing also, being superseded by a belch of this evening’s warm ale and blood pudding.

  Derval knew a moment’s drowning panic, for if her memories were failing her, wasn’t she as good as dead already? What was she, after all, except the memory of all she had done, telling her the sort of person she was and guiding her next act consistently? Without that, what was left but blind chance and leaves blown meaninglessly through the trees? I must know who I am, thought Derval. I must know that.

  Derval didn’t remember herself and didn’t feel very good, either, being tired and cold. And riding boots were never made to walk in all night. Nothing was made to walk all night, especially Derval, and with a tiny moan of “Mother” she collapsed forward over Muiregan’s tentlike croup. The hinny stopped and looked over her shoulder.

  “What is it?” whispered Ailesh to MacCullen, trying to look around his pony’s rear. “Have you seen something?”

  “Not I,” replied the poet. “But Chadhain’s daughter in front of me. I think she is listening at the ground.”

  Derval indeed had her ear to the earth. Her whole body lay against the packed earth of the trail and her hand still gripped Muiregan’s sparse and yellowed tail. MacCullen listened intently. He grunted his discovery of sound.

  “Cows once more,” said John, nodding wisely.

  “Not cattle but riders. Ui DunLainge,” said Ailesh.

  MacCullen scratched his mouth with one hand. “I think, my friends, that it is better not to meet them.” He turned his horse to the right off the trail. In dark and confusion, John and Ailesh followed.

  Derval opened her eyes and saw feet: both rag-wrapped and bare feet, glowing silver under moonlight. Behind these were the knob-jointed legs of horses. The fear that she might be trampled drove her to her own feet. Her brat dragged on the ground.

  A redheaded man took her by both shoulders in a grip half-supportive and half-imprisoning. “Who are you, woman? What mischance has left you here on the road to die of the night cold?”

  She yawned in his face, albeit apologetically, and stared around her. A dozen ponies, mounted by men dressed in padded linen. Their spears were as limber as elongated arrows, and bobbed as the small steeds pawed the earth.

  Another twenty or so men on foot, carrying axes.

  Ui DunLainge, Derval’s brain told her. This was a taraigeacht of Ui DunLainge, of whom she had boastfully said she was not afraid.

  And as a matter of fact Derval was not afraid. She was too swimmily exhausted to be afraid. She made to conceal her gaping yawn with her hands and discovered she was still holding onto the hinny’s tail. Looking around, she discovered her friends were gone. Confusing.

  “I am,” she began, straightening in the war chiefta
in’s arms, “Derval Iníon Chadhain, and I come fleeing the destruction of the Abbey of Ard na Bhfuinseoge.”

  “The…destruction of the abbey?” The redhead let slip his hands.

  “By the Gaill! The madmen called berserkers took it two days since, and hardly a soul in the place still lives.” Again Derval was consumed by yawns that doubled her over like a coughing fit.

  But in her extremity she did not miss the cries and groans which escaped the warriors around her, nor when the taiseach invoked the face of Mary to stand between himself and trouble did she fail to read the man’s mood. Derval had always needed tea to start her intellect functioning in the morning, but sheer slyness she could call to use in a sound sleep.

  “And it is my holy purpose to gather Gaels to the revenge of their innocent blood. The reavers are many, certainly, and well drenched in blood, but so much more is the reward in heaven of Christians who fall in such an undertaking. I myself expect to live no longer than my next meeting with the berserkers, sending at least one Gentile to hell to balance my own ascent!”

  The silence would have been deafening but for the restlessness of the horses, who of course didn’t know of the quick road to bliss Derval was promising.

  She let the burly redhead stare for a few seconds before adding, “But I wake to my senses, brothers, and I see my news has gone before. For to what other purpose do Irishmen ride under moonlight, in coton and with ax and spear?”

  The chieftain muttered a word to a thin gray man beside him. That one brought forth a wide-backed, platter-jawed black horse that the chieftain swung himself onto.

  Stirrups, thought Derval. Of course stirrups, by the late tenth century. What an ass Sully is, after all, to say they didn’t exist here.

  “Our business, unfortunate woman, is our own,” said the chieftain from this added height. “And it is our misfortune that we may not add our cause to yours this night. But remember—we are not coast dwellers, and Gaillic reavers are first the business of the clans who suffer them. Ui Garrchon, for instance.”