Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Derval came through the gate last, stiffly, almost reluctantly, feeling she accepted hospitality under false premises. Without actually regretting a word she had said—for in her physical misery all lashing out seemed legitimate—she loathed herself cordially. Consequently, when MacCullen presented her to the brehan first, before Ailesh, as the scholar Derval Iníon Cuhain, her response was a shamefaced mumble. It seemed to her that the brehan regarded her warily.

  Derval had to notice the knocker, which was a strangely calm-faced bronze man whose knees held an oar. His arms swiveled up and, when brought down, made a loud metallic thud. “A brass knocker. Dublin never changes,” she mumbled to herself.

  Entering the house, she stood with her back against the wall, while both Clorfíonn and a woman in a brownish-red linnia moved in practiced fashion to put hospitality into effect.

  After the serving woman gestured and grinned for a few moments, Derval realized she was expected to remove her boots and socks. The bucket was waiting, and the “foot-water.” Sitting on a little bench provided for that purpose, Derval submitted to this ritual of welcome. She winced as the slimy cold soft-soap was rubbed over her feet and ankles. The rinse, again cold, was over swiftly. Clorfíonn stepped over with a towel she had warmed over the fire. As a sign of special welcome, she dried the guests’ feet herself. “I will prepare a bath for you all.”

  “Thanks for that,” Derval said, and got the first real smile from the brehan. She smiled back. Her hostess dried the feet of the others and was gone again, leaving Derval to look about her.

  A yurt, Derval decided. The house was like a great yurt, with limed walls. John would love it, if the silly fuck-pig ever showed up, for these walls were so closely and intricately painted in the colors of red, green, and gold that it took a good hard stare to make out what they meant.

  At least there was plenty of food, she saw, for from the rafters opposite the door hung at least a dozen cured hams. But looking more closely, Derval realized that what she had taken for legs of pork were really leather bags, each painted, riveted, and embroidered carefully, and containing hard, flat, lumpy…

  Books. The brehan had her library hanging from the ceiling. Derval smiled. How better to keep them from rats and damp? Being Derval O’Keane, she could not help herself from approaching the bags, almost colliding with the rufous-clothed woman, who scuttled by with a pot of hot water. Derval apologized, feeling another emotional jolt as the woman replied in an Irish as badly accented as John’s. Without touching the precious leather bags, Derval followed this woman back to the door.

  The brehan was already out in the yard beside Ailesh, who stood in a wooden tub, and standing on a box she doused the girl with warm water out of a sprinkler-headed leather bag. Ailesh let out a gasp. The two spoke, but Derval could not make out the words. She turned at a sound to find MacCullen standing beside her. He put a cup of warm milk into her hand. On his face was no reminder of their last exchange. “That woman,” she began. “Not the brehan, but…”

  “Hulda?” His face already had regained some color.

  “She speaks oddly.”

  The poet’s smile was only slightly malicious. “She speaks with an accent. So do you.”

  He mistook her silence for offense taken. “Not so badly as she, of course, Scholar. And yours is not quite the same accent. But in Dublin you will have to get used to hearing Dublin Gaelic, for most of the people are Danes or of mixed kindred.”

  “Are those people her servants?” Derval tried not to seem wounded by his last remark.

  “They are not.” MacCullen smiled. “They are her fosterlings also, though legally I suppose they could be called bondmen. Clorfíonn fished them out of the Liffey when they were infants.” Seeing her expression, he added, “That’s the way the Norse dispose of their unwanted children, especially”—he hesitated, making sure no one but Derval heard him—“the children of slaves. Clorfíonn knew the mother. She was a Saxon, taken on a raid in Wessex. She tried to buy the woman and free her. It is a most shameful thing for a Christian woman to be enslaved, and still worse to bear children to the one you hate most.”

  Derval shuddered. She was going to ask more, but the conversation was cut off as Ailesh came bustling in, wrapped in a leinne that glistened. “Next one,” she said. MacCullen pushed Derval out the door. “You first, Iníon Cuhain.” She peered back at him, distrustful, and he added, “I wish to stand here and delight my eyes with your many charms.” Derval found herself blushing.

  The water was not very warm, but it was welcome nonetheless. Clorfíonn held the bag for her with her own hands. Afterward they put over her head a clean leinne belonging to Hulda, for the brehan’s would scarcely have reached her knees. When this was done Derval really did feel better, and went to find the poet for his turn at the bath.

  He already wore clean linen and his hair was slicked back. Ailesh stood beside him, looking fresh but combative. “I washed from a pot by the fire,” he explained.

  “He won’t let me look at his injury,” Ailesh told Derval, and then added, with an adolescent eagerness, “Help me hold him, Bhean Uasail, and between us he won’t be able to do a thing about it.”

  MacCullen’s eyes issued a warning.

  “No, heart’s treasure,” Derval said calmly to Ailesh. “I won’t touch him. A man’s body is his own business.”

  “Good woman!” said the poet, with a grudging smile.

  It was a heavy porridge, flavored with butter, leeks, and onions. Derval watched Hulda cutting the onions, noting that she did it in a bowl of water. It had been only three years previously that Derval had learned this trick for avoiding tears.

  Ailesh was no more than a face peeking out of a pile of heather beds at the other side of the house. MacCullen sat on a pillow with a great shawl over his head, facing the wall. He was either deep thinking or asleep. The manservant sang in the yard as he fed and groomed the animals. His voice was good and his style complex. None of the airs were familiar to Derval. A fly buzzed through the air before her face and exited out a large flap window in the thatch. The house smelled of melting butter and raw onions, mixed with the scent of heating cider.

  Something cracked and opened within Derval: a kind of guardedness or shock, and she looked around her as though seeing this new/old world for the first time. She found the brehan Clorfíonn looking up at her.

  Those heavy, deep-set eyes were not really blue. In this light, there was an amethyst cast to them. “Tell me, my heart,” the older woman said. “How many bowls?”

  Derval wrinkled her forehead. “Did you ask how many beds?”

  “No, of course not. I have enough heather beds to spread across most of the floor, and cloaks and cowhides to cover them. Bowls. I ask,” continued the brehan very quietly, “because who is eating together is such a sensitive subject, and through my years I have found it impossible to understand the ties among my guests within the first few hours, and if I guess wrongly, I’m sure to offend someone. I need to know how many bowls to set out for the three of you.”

  Derval smothered a laugh by turning it into a sigh. “Bhean Uasail, Brehan and daughter of the kings, I am in many respects a foreigner to this island’s customs. But I can tell you that four days ago I had not met either the poet or Iníon Goban.” And as though it were torn out of her mouth, she added in a whisper, “And since then I have scarcely been an hour with Labres MacCullen without some sort of sharp word between us.”

  The old woman’s smile broadened into an immense grin, and in the same whisper she replied. “An hour is not so bad! Be comforted, Scholar, for Labres is a very young man, who has had to work hard, and often feels the great world his enemy.”

  Hearing the Ollave described as a young man who had had to work hard so astonished Derval that she stared slack-jawed at Clorfíonn, who walked to the fire still grinning, swaying her hips from side to side as she went. The brehan’s eyes, just before she turned away, had been green.

  In the musty shadow of his woo
len shawl, Labres MacCullen tried to block out his appeal to King Olaf, but he was distracted to torment by the light, the buzz of flies, and the buzz of women’s voices. Not to mention the smell of butter-fried leeks.

  His mind wandered back to Derval’s temper at Ailesh, which had been shameful. Shameful and impossible to understand, unless the little man was her husband. Yet MacCullen doubted this. If it were true, then Eoin was most terribly henpecked. MacCullen grinned at the thought, for he found everything about John Thornburn very humorous. Except for the man’s skill of hand, of course. But a fellow who was a buffoon as well as a craftsmaster was a delightful paradox.

  But that did not mean he made a suitable mate for a fine big woman like Derval Iníon Cuhain, here. She was far too much woman for him, just as the great cow had been far too much mount. By Mary’s face, though, that woman might be overmount for anyone. At the thought of Derval, MacCullen’s grin faded, grew tentative. He reminded himself he was a poet and not a trainer of horses. He heaved his thoughts back to Olaf Cuarán.

  Derval wished she had half the flexibility of the old brehan, who sat cross-legged beside a little traylike table, spooning porridge out of a riveted iron pot. At either side of her squatted her servants, and they ate out of the same bowl as their mistress. MacCullen’s wooden bowl was dyed red, Ailesh’s green, and Derval’s bleached white. The center of the table was occupied by a roasted joint of venison, which Hulda had run out to buy, ready-cooked and hot, from someplace along the waterfront. There was hot hazelnut cider to go with it. Derval caught the old woman staring from one of her guests to another and was suddenly convinced that the brehan had chosen the bowl colors deliberately to match her various guests, and wondered what the choice meant.

  White.

  She felt herself blushing.

  With the first edge of everyone’s hunger blunted, Ui Neal began to speak. Her voice was so soft that all three leaned forward across the table to hear. “Labres, son of my heart, I have thought now for a good hour on your question, and I believe you are in the right. If you must approach Awley Na Ri do so under the mantle of your art, rather than at law.”

  “If I must approach Cuarán…” MacCullen’s voice rose. “How can there be any question I must approach the king? His lands of cattle tribute are ravaged and left full of dead men! Wild Gaill are seated on the trunks of an abbey’s sacred trees—”

  “Do not forget that Awley Sandal, too, is a Gentile born,” said the brehan in the same quiet tones.

  MacCullen’s head was up and his nostrils twitched like those of a mettlesome horse. “You, I know, will never forget that.” He turned to his companions and said, “Forty years ago this woman before you instigated an uprising of the Gaels that whipped every Dane in Dublin back to the sea. Such is her power in this kingdom!”

  “Instigated?” The brehan stopped to chew and swallow. She smiled ruefully. “Did I cozen those Ui Neals and Ui Fáeláins, Labres? If you think that, then I think that you weren’t there. Besides, Awley then had York to worry about. That may have made him clear off as well as what we did.” Looking straight at Derval she said, “I was then newly ordained at my calling, and I spoke the law as I learned it.”

  “And now you don’t, Daughter of the Ui Neal?” he rapped back.

  “Now…” and the brehan spoke even more softly and left a premeditated pause between her words. Derval listened so intently she nearly lost her balance and fell into the porridge. “Now half of those heroes of our island are dead and the other half are old. Their sons, now, are as rotten as Cerball MacLorcan or as luckless at Domnall Cloen. And any manor woman—with the spirit to lead has been bought off by the gold that won Olaf back his law hall. What a merchant’s victory that was, and a king’s daughter for his bed to seal the bargain. Gold and what is greater than gold, support for a claim and the swords to back it. Awley and his fathers have always had that.

  “First Congalach sold himself to Awley. He learned too late! Maelsechnaill is no better an Ard-Ri—he of my own blood. His mother bought Awley’s loyalty to her claim by her own flesh. She even bore him a son.” Clorfíonn shook her head. “After her, another king’s child was served up. Another daughter of my clan. I am safe here, Scholar Iníon Cuhain, because of the fornication of my own blood: the southern Ui Neal with my sworn enemies. But I can watch them here!” She raised her hand for emphasis.

  “There has been much to watch too. Kings and subject kings of this island have killed each other for the profit of these foreigners, or have stood by while the Dubliners killed them. I don’t know which is worse: when they hold the weapon themselves or when they drink with the murderer after.

  “Lorcan MacFealin,” the brehan almost chanted, “you were the choice man. Your blood was the cleansing of this place for a while. For you Congalach and Cellach of Leinster and Bran MacMealmorda rose and struck a good blow. I spoke the judgment! I knew there would be no murder price to be got out of Sigtryggsson.”

  Tears welled up in Clorfíonn’s eyes. “My brothers were with them that day. I remember the smoke rising from the burning—how it hung heavy and thick along the river. We won, avenging Leinster at a stiff price. And it’s all gone to smash, what we did then. Nothing was really changed, except that after it my father had no sons. I bore children to comfort my parents. Never took a husband: only concubines. Ochono! It’s over and long over!”

  She lifted a spoonlike strainer of perforated bronze, placed a small piece of linen in it, and poured the hazelnut cider fresh for everyone. She took a little sip and passed the meather. She looked dreamily down at the fire.

  MacCullen put down his spoon and pushed the bowl away. That’s not quite the truth, Iníon Thuathail.” He caught first Ailesh’s eye, then Derval’s.

  “Look at this woman and see the power of the Word on her. A daughter of the Ui Neals, she is, and all of Northern Leinster would follow where she led.”

  Both Hulda and the manservant sat up straighter at these words, but the brehan seemed unaffected. “Easy to say, when you know I am not in the business of leading, Labres.” She winked at Derval and added, “I told his father he had to be a poet, for he had such unbendably noble ideas he would fail at anything else.”

  “Clorfíonn!” cried MacCullen, outraged. “Will you never let me grow up?” The old woman broke up laughing and he dissolved in blushes.

  “Labres, my heart, was your singer killed as well as Caeilte?” Clorfíonn asked earnestly.

  “He was not, God be thanked,” MacCullen answered earnestly, shaking his head. “Beoan is ill. He went home to his parents for care. He has a trouble of the lungs which makes him bleed from the throat. The physician in his grandfather’s house is the only one who can turn the illness from him. So I sent him back with a rich payment. It was his great luck that I did that; I would to God that Caeilte and I had gone with him for the journey.”

  Clorfíonn looked anxiously at her foster son. “Let me hire a harper and a singer. You can rehearse here with them. It’s shameful for you to appear before Awley speaking your poems like a common bard.”

  Labres laughed softly. “Mother of my soul, their poets of greatest renown speak before them without such niceties.”

  Clorfíonn flushed with sudden anger held in tight reserve. “My fosterling, do not degrade yourself!”

  “I am degraded! Before high heaven and the blessed earth!” MacCullen choked on the words. Derval turned sharply from her eating to see a tear well up glistening in the eye of the chief poet. It did not run down his cheek but hung there while he spoke. “I am a slave and less than a slave. Slave Ollave to a slave king. Just now you spoke of luckless Domnall Cloen, my lord to whom I am the conscience and the honor, whom Olaf holds imprisoned.”

  Clorfíonn covered the side of her face with her hand. She had let her tongue run away with her, and was now aware she so had pierced MacCullen with a knife of grief.

  “Do you think I’ve spent all those weeks,” MacCullen went on, regaining control of his voice with every
word, “licking the feet of Olaf Sigtryggsson because I wanted gold and horses?”

  Clorfíonn reached up to touch his face. “No, my sweet boy. I knew you better than that.”

  “You did, my mother of affection, as many did not.”

  He turned in bitterness and found the eyes of Derval. “And that, Scholar Iníon Cuhain, is why the Ollave of Leinster is found kenneled at the court of the Gaill.”

  “I didn’t know,” answered Derval.

  Ailesh, taking the blame on herself as always, spoke up. “That is my fault, my sister. I ought to have known to tell you, far traveler that you are.”

  MacCullen grinned thinly at the both of them. “No matter what you thought, dark woman. My name is shit from here to the border of the Shannon!”

  “Forgive me, dear foster son,” the old brehan insisted with maternal tenacity, “but I still think you should have two artists of skill to put the poem to him, while you stand by in dignity.”

  “You never give over, do you?” MacCullen laughed suddenly. He scratched his head. “I need to rest, Clorfíonn.”

  “You will have your own way of it. I would never dream of trying to influence you.” This time MacCullen’s answering laugh held real amusement.

  Derval found herself staring at MacCullen’s profile. Was it Clorfíonn’s influence that made the man seem five years younger? She felt an irritating urge to comfort him, and yet she was afraid to speak. That was even more irritating.

  In the confusion Derval found Ailesh looking at her across the table. Derval mouthed the words “I’m sorry I used my tongue on you before.” Ailesh gave back a broad smile which broke in the middle, as happiness made the girl remember her own grief once more.

  “Listen to me, my new friends and old,” said the brehan, and such was the power (gift of sovereignty or long training) of her voice that everyone turned to her face, including the stolid manservant. “I said I could not recommend the case to Cuarán, not because I distrust the man, but because the time is very bad to bring such business into Dublin. Know that ever since April he has been expecting the wedding visit of his son-in-law, Olaf Tryggvason, prince of Norway. It is three days since the arrival of a Moorish ship that had passed the king’s longboat along the coast, coming from York. Until Tryggvason arrives safely, with Olaf’s daughter, I don’t think he will have ears to hear of a raid off the coast; do you?”