Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Ailesh’s round head drooped forward. She ran her spoon along the smooth wood of the edge of her bowl. But her eyes were more belligerent than daunted. And MacCullen squeezed her small hand in his. “A king’s pledge does not await his convenience,” he said, bringing his other hand, palm down, onto the table.

  The brehan nodded. “Quite. And perhaps he will accept that lesson if offered to him in verse. But if I present it as a matter of law—”

  “He must accept it however offered, unless he wishes the Powers of the World to take his kingship from him.”

  He is protective of Goban’s daughter, thought Clorfíonn. While she is beside him, he will consider it a defeat to listen to reason. He would probably consider it so, anyway. Poor Labres. Clorfíonn’s deep, mutable eyes gazed at him dispassionately, remembering how few cows MacCullen’s father had left, after paying for his long schooling, and how nervously both father and mother had watched his progress in the world, until sickness took them. It was no fun to be the most renowned in the family.

  Poor young Labres. He would have to go up to Navan to explain about Caeilte too.

  She glanced at Ailesh and away again. Nothing wrong there. She was certainly to be pitied, losing a father like Goban MacDuilta, but it is better to have lost such a man than to have never known him at all. Though Clorfíonn had never met the stonecarver, she knew his work, and the stories of his immense good humor had spread beyond the Boyne. She was glad to see that the girl hadn’t stuck that hammer of hers, pasted with dried blood, into the belt of the silk linnia Ui Neal had brought all the way from the Holy Land.

  Then she shifted her hooded, almost invisible regard to Derval. What was the foreign woman doing with them? Dare she ask? Did she really want to know? The brehan decided she really did want to know, for the severe beauty of the young woman, as well as her air of proud isolation, attracted her. She was glad she had chosen her a white bowl, to go along with her ivory face and silver-rooted black hair. Clorfíonn remembered a snatch of poetry from the Voyage of Mealdun: “Her skin was snow-white under her white shift. Her cheeks and mouth were as red as the foxglove, and her hair as black and shiny as the raven’s wing. Here is a fit woman to sleep with our chieftain tonight, said the men to each other. Let us woo her for him.” Clorfíonn smiled and her soft eyes turned bright green.

  Holvar glared at the ocean below from under scowling brows. His men shuffled tentatively around him at the cliff’s edge.

  “Perhaps they flew off from here,” suggested someone from behind, giggling nervously.

  Holvar did not take the bait. Instead he cursed the stony ground, adding a malediction upon himself for letting himself be led wrong. “We should have continued north.”

  “North? To Dublin?” asked Ospack. “Why would these Christians flee to a pagan city?”

  “Because it’s the only city they’ve got,” Holvar replied. “And but for the Danes, they’d have none at all. But I had thought their refuge would be nearer to hand.”

  Thorir spoke, diffidently. “Godi, the earth was not that hard. Didn’t it rain only yesterday? If we lost the tracks of the little ass, perhaps it is Odin’s work, and he is taking this deed away from us.”

  Though the man had meant his words as a comfort, Holvar gave a shudder. The god taking the deed away. Taking Holvar’s frenzy away. His priesthood away. He turned on his heel, ploughing through his men without meeting their eyes.

  The east path had looked so right. Holvar had believed himself led to it—led to the edge of a cliff above deep water. He gave a ragged breath, filled with an unlawful resentment. He stalked back along the rocky, broken trail, anger obvious in the set of his head and shoulders, and in the way his hands gripped his swordbelt.

  Wind off the ocean had shrunk and shaped the few trees that grew there. Holvar, coming down from the last hill, felt dreadfully exposed at all sides. No matter that a force of eighty battle-hard Vikings was in no danger from anything that might be brought up to oppose them along the wild countryside of Ireland: a battle against some Gaelic cowboys now would be an endeavor without gain at the end of it, and it might interfere with the search. Holvar breathed easier once the heavy oak forest took him under its shadow.

  Here once more was the intersection where he had gone wrong. Holvar stared at the road north, where the outcrops of stone had been scored and whitened by the wheels of carts, and the litter of oak leaf and mast blew lightly in the brisk air. No sign whatsoever of an ass’s hooves, nor of the intricate and distinctive patterning of the boot soles one of the fugitives was wearing. Instead, much to Holvar’s dismay, the ground was liberally scuffed by the soft boots of his men. He groaned aloud.

  But when exactly had he last seen the light track of his quarry? Holvar was now not sure the footprints had been seen in the previous few miles before the turnoff. It was possible—quite possible—that they had struck off into the woods far behind. Holvar bit his beard in frustration.

  Joyous cries from his men roused him. Holvar glanced around to see four or five Norsemen with something between them, which they hung from like dogs on a deer. As he waited a woman was dragged before him.

  Great gladness turned sour in his heart, for it was not the girl he had been chasing, but a dark woman of middle age, who stared at Holvar with absolute blankness. Two men held her arms, while a third, his hands locked in her hair, tilted her face toward the godi’s. Her struggles were silent.

  Ospack didn’t need to be told this was not the fugitive of the abbey. Smiling dryly, he held out to Holvar a large wicker basket, mounded with cloth.

  Without hurry, Holvar stooped to the basket. His knees cracked. Something was wrapped in the cloth, he discovered, and carefully he picked up a section of it. Eggs. He sighed and stood again. He gazed at the woman speculatively, and she, seeing no malice in his face, spoke a few words.

  Holvar turned to Ospack. “Though this is not the one we follow, yet she may lead us to them.”

  “But there is not a man of us who can tell her what we want of her,” the old warrior objected. “I doubt she speaks any proper language at all.”

  Holvar smiled. “That isn’t what I meant.” He turned to the prisoner, rested his hand gently on her shoulder, and said, “I am going to send you with a message. When you come before Odin, you must say that we are his men and will accomplish our sworn pledge to him, but that he must show us the way.”

  The woman stopped struggling as she listened to Holvar. Very carefully she said, “I have no Norse. I have no Norse.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” replied Holvar, and his hand on her hair was a caress.

  The holy rope was unwound and hung from the lowest limb of the oak beside the intersection of the two roads. As they pulled the brat and linnia from the woman she began to fight again. She had a strong body with dangling breasts and brown nipples. Her arms, legs, and crotch were thickly hairy. When she saw the noose she arched her back like a hooked fish and began to scream. Ospack ripped off a section of linen and stuffed it into her mouth. “Do we tie her hands, Godi?”

  Holvar shook his head. “Not necessary for a woman.” The oldest men of the troop carried her to the hanging noose and placed it over her head, carefully pulling her long hair out of the rope’s way. Three men took the end of the rope which dangled from the limb and pulled, lifting the sacrifice into the air.

  Evidently they should have tied her arms, for the woman’s hands clawed upward and clutched the rope. Wild-eyed, she pulled herself up toward the limb of the tree. It was so large a branch she could not get around it, so she dangled just below, yanking at the tight noose with one hand. Holvar could hear the breath whistling through her nose. He frowned at this imperfection in the ritual and walked over to where the woman’s feet flailed and kicked. He leaped upward and grabbed her about the knees, raising his own feet off the ground. Her hands slid down the rope and the noose tightened again. Holvar whispered a short prayer and then let himself down.

  Now the legs kicked without coordinati
on and the hands did no more than twitch at her sides. Holvar looked up into the blue, swelling face and raised his sword before him. “Tell Odin we await instruction.” At the moment her legs sagged straight he took his blade and sliced cleanly down from her throat to her belly, letting both blood and offal spill at his feet.

  Her long hair was cut off and braided into a black noose, which Holvar put around his own neck. He went off into the bushes. Seventy-nine men awaited him, flush-faced and reverent, staring at the corpse with the large brown nipples which spun lazily in a circle in the air. Bowels and bladder were voided down its legs.

  Holvar was gone only ten minutes. “We are to continue north,” he said.

  Derval awoke at the table with her hand lying greasy in her porridge bowl. She glanced confusedly around to see if any had noticed her nodding. It seemed everyone had.

  “I think that is a very good signal that the meal is over,” said the brehan in her almost-whisper. “Is everyone replete?”

  MacCullen did not demur, but he swallowed a last bite of venison and raised the three-handled metham once more to his lips. After drinking deeply he passed it on to Derval, who imitated his action, passing the cup to Ailesh.

  There was something in the way the young woman took it—a kind of prodding awkwardness—that caught Derval’s sleepy attention. She looked carefully at the three brass handles on the wooden cup to discover that two of them were jellied with grease, and Ailesh was searching for the third. A close, covert inspection on Derval’s part revealed that the second, third, and little finger of Ailesh’s hand were soiled with food, but the index finger and thumb were not. Derval glanced under her lashes at MacCullen to discover the same. When she looked over at the brehan, that woman was giving the cloth into MacCullen’s hands, to be passed in turn to Derval and Ailesh. Derval blushed furiously to notice that only she left dark stains on the fabric. In trying to avoid all eyes she was caught by those of Clorfíonn, which were once more green. The old woman smiled at her blandly.

  “I will spread out my mattresses now and we will all take a nap. At my age I need one in the middle of the day.” To forestall MacCullen’s budding protest, she added, “It will be only self-punishment for you to try to design a poetic appeal to the king in your present state, Labres. Besides, deep night is the time to make poetry, and I will wake you, I promise.”

  The poet shifted uneasily on his bench, but any argument he was about to make dissolved into a yawn, which proved quite contagious. To stave off collapse, Derval rose.

  “I must go find Johnnie,” she announced.

  The brehan, lavender-eyed, smiled sweetly but shook her head. “My dear, Holdfried will see to that. I sent him out as soon as he had eaten, and he will bring your friend to us.”

  Derval felt her brow corrugate, and wished she were more alert. “But…Holdfried has never met John. He doesn’t even know…or at least I haven’t told him what the fellow looks like.” She turned from MacCullen to Ailesh, questioning them wordlessly.

  “I surely did not describe him,” said Ailesh.

  The little brehan rose, folding the napkin on the table. “On the contrary, my treasure, but you did. You all did.

  “You, Ni Goban, called him Eoin the Fair. You, Iníon Cuhain, said that his accent was worse than that of a Dublin Dane, and you, my friend and son of my friends, jested that the man looked even smaller riding the shoulders of the bell cow than he did usually. Therefore I sent Holdfried out to find a small blond stranger with terrible Irish. Though Dublin is a rather large city—for this island—still there are not so many who fit that description. And Holdfried knows every corner of the town.”

  Both Ailesh and MacCullen made noises of appreciation for the brehan’s cunning. Derval’s “Elementary, my dear Watson,” spoken in English, was taken as more of the same. But Derval said in Irish, “I could have shortened his task considerably. I could have told the man to look for Johnnie around beer or boats.”

  John shifted his ale to his left hand, moved into the square of light thrown by the doorway, and drew on the hearthstone a sketch of a clinker-built rowboat. “Better,” he said in English. Why not in English, when this Snorri didn’t understand a word of his laborious Irish anyway? “Less caulking.” The other followed the line of John’s stick with a blunt finger, in critical appreciation. He stuffed a smoked sausage into John’s unused left hand.

  The publican came behind, to ascertain what damage his customers were doing to his hearth. Seeing John’s jauntily ranked sketches, he paused, smiling. “You do good, fellow,” he said slowly in his bad Irish: so slowly even John’s unpracticed ears caught the words. “Maybe we could finally do something about the walls in this place, if you do not charge too much.”

  The ale, the food, the warmth of day and the warmth of appreciation all sparked a small golden sun glowing in John’s middle section. He felt it a special victory that his idiosyncratic style (damned as “consciously naive,” and “self-limiting” at the reviewed shows at Cooper Union) should have found such a niche of welcome. He was about to explain to the publican just how inexpensive he came, when the light of the door darkened.

  A moment’s irritation turned into panic as John remembered the warring Saracens. He, Snorri, and the publican turned: a united front against the invasion.

  But it was no lean figure in a burnoose or pegged trousers that stepped through the low doorway of the alehouse, but that of a man larger even than Snorri, dressed in Dublin style: knee-length long-sleeved tunic, belted at the waist, trousers, and leather shoes. He stood in the room’s shadow and surveyed the company for a few seconds, and then stepped directly over to the three at the hearth.

  “Holdfried!” The publican greeted him. “It has been a while since you gifted us with your company. How is the brehan, Holdfried?”

  Holdfried answered all with a nod, and then furrowed his pale forehead in concentration. “John Thornburn,” he said quite clearly. “I am sent for you,” he added in Irish.

  John’s jaw dropped and his dirty, vague, and sunburnt face looked even more unfinished than usual. “S—sent for me? You mean by…”

  “Holdfried is the brehan Clorfíonn’s man,” explained the publican.

  “And the brehan Clorfíonn is…”

  “The speaker of the law, of course.”

  “I thought so,” replied John, his ears ringing. Everything in the alehouse seemed to withdraw to a great distance. “What does he want me for, do you know?” He glanced up at the square face that was so obviously that of a policeman that it made his overfull stomach churn.

  “She, not he,” corrected the publican affably.

  “Clorfíonn will tell you,” Holdfried said. He put out an enormous, work-hardened palm, as though he intended to walk John hand in hand through the streets of Dublin to the station. That hand looked as formidable to John as handcuffs.

  And that was exactly how John did go—his own hand lost in the meaty depths of Holdfried’s, like a boy parading beside his father on a Sunday afternoon. But he had gotten no farther than the sunlight at the alehouse door when he also felt his neck weighted by a brawny arm. It was ruddy-skinned Snorri once more, and he whispered into John’s ear a message of unflagging friendship and support, regardless of the penalties of civil law or king’s insolence—none of which John understood at all.

  Between the bulk of Holdfried and that of the Icelander, John stumbled frequently.

  Derval woke again with great reluctance, hearing a voice echoing loudly through the house. There was another voice, much less forceful, but familiar. She clawed the linen sheet back from her head and peered around.

  That hump was Ailesh; she could tell by the frizzy hair. The larger one by the wall was Labres MacCullen. Neither budged an inch. But where the old brehan had lain was only a crumpled blanket and bolster. Derval lugged herself through the clinging bedclothes to look at the door.

  There were the tennies and loose-hanging trouserlegs of John Thornburn (spindleshanks that he was). Bu
t the rest of John was eclipsed by the mass of a great red-bearded man whose hand was on the hilt of large, serviceable belt knife. He was speaking Norse, and it was his voice that had disturbed Derval.

  She knew old Norse to read sagas—especially with a crib sheet beside the text—but its spoken form was mostly a loss to her. She caught the words “crime,” “protection,” “oath bond,” and (odd in the context) “little brother.” She saw that the man’s arm was around John’s neck, and that John’s hand was clasped tightly by the brehan’s servant, and she hoped against hope that John hadn’t done anything unforgivable to the stranger’s little brother.

  But Clorfíonn was standing by the doorway, her white silk leinne, embroidered with scarlet birds at the throat and hem, fading into the whitewashed and brightly painted wall. Her quiet words were lost to Derval, but her gesture of welcome could not be mistaken. John shot into the mattress-covered room as though shoved from behind (which he had been) and gaped around him with no intelligence in his face at all.

  Derval sighed. “Do you have to shame me in everything you do, Johnnie?”

  “Eh?” John Thornburn turned around, leaving complex-patterned tennis-shoe prints on the white linen. He focused on Derval.

  “Take off your shoes. This is a bed,” she said. Obediently he sat down and did so.

  One by one John made out the shapes of his companions lying cuddled on the downy mattresses, under blankets. His eyes stung with woodsmoke and sentiment, feeling a warmth even at meeting MacCullen’s ironic eye. It occurred to him that he had perhaps caused these people some worry. He felt a pang of regret, for in his weariness and relief he found he liked them all very much. Been through a lot together. He grinned at little Ailesh, whose bright eyes peeped out from her covers like those of a bird in a bush. “I’m not under arrest then, eh, Derval?” he asked, and his question turned into a yawn. Without another glance at Clorfíonn, his hostess, he sank down onto the corner of one heather mattress.