Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  “It was a Gael who made you your throne, King Olaf, and it was to him you promised protection.

  “Goban is dead now, and I was saved from his fate only by the intercession of Holy Bridget, and because I was able to kill the man who ravaged me. All my community is dead, where you were known as the King of Dublin without question. We gave you cattle! What else could we have called you but king, though never having seen either your city or your face, Awley Cuarán?”

  Ailesh Iníon Goban looked about at the housecarls who surrounded her, and at last she knelt before the throne of the king, her hands caressing her father’s work. “I was,” she said, her voice breaking in anger, “a maiden. I had never known man. Now I know only to hate, and the blood he rent from my body…the blood he rent from my body—”

  Ailesh didn’t recognize the sounds she heard around her, but they were enough to stop her weeping and drive her to her feet again. She stepped in a clumsy circle over the wooden floor of the dais, mouth open and staring.

  For the housecarls who stood before the king’s throne were laughing at her. Olaf himself wore a grin, which tightened at the look of reproach which Ailesh cast at him.

  “It’s your own fault, girl. If you’re in such a hurry to publish your shame, what can you expect?”

  MacCullen put his arm over Ailesh’s shoulder and pressed her head against him. John, never quite understanding, stood close and glared at the fat old Swede on the high chair. All the Gaels in the court stood frozen, their gaze fixed on Gormflaith, who only watched her son turn his little dagger over and over and over.

  Olaf snorted. He glanced almost angrily at his young wife and ran his hand over his thin hair. “What do you want out of me, child? Your father was paid for his carving. Shall I get you another Norse husband? You used up the first one fast enough. But I tell you—I tell you all—that you’ll get no more recompense from me than that.”

  Snorri was by this time so angry that he elbowed his way to the front. The insult to the little woman, the child of another craftsman, had stung him hard. Still, he opened with flattery, just to be on the safe side. “Noble Gold-Ring Giver, do you remember me?”

  “Of course.” Olafr laughed a little, raising his hand in greeting. “I just paid you for a ship. Aren’t you satisfied, Finnbogison?

  “Only a dragon would be unsatisfied with the payment you heaped on my hands, Olafr Konig. But I am here to give my support to these people. This I ask. Tell me if it is not true that in these lands you rule a craftsmaster who has made goods for a king is not given a wergeld—a murder price—of one-third of that of the king himself?”

  Clorfíonn Iníon Thuathal smiled slyly. Snorri did know something of the old law. Olaf’s features worked as he wrestled with his confusion. He beckoned the advisors to him. They whispered for a moment, and then nodded in assent. “It appears to be true,” Olaf said warily.

  Snorri stepped closer to the king and lifted his hand in pleading. “Forgive the proud words of these people. Grief has stirred up their hearts. Surely you can overlook that. If you are generous to this girl and this poet, lasting fame will be yours.”

  Snorri’s face was eager, as if expectant of a change in the king. He was disappointed.

  “I’ve had enough of this. I can’t be responsible for every cattle raid. Your case falls. So say I, who am the King of Dublin.” And Olaf brought his hand down on his chair arm with a smack.

  “King no more,” said MacCullen, not taking his arms from Ailesh.

  “Now you have said it!” Olaf hurled the challenge with satisfaction at the poet’s face. “I have seen your face today only because you hoped to see Domnall here. Do you think me a fool? You come here with your poetry for no other reason! You have looked for a long time for an excuse to heap curses on me. You engineered this to bring ridicule on my name and for no other purpose.”

  “I have said it because I have witnessed it this day,” replied MacCullen. “I have seen Olaf, Child of Ivar’s Line, reject his own throne under the beams of his hall. Your kingdom, I believe, rested upon Ard na Bhfuinseoge, this place of which you have never heard.

  “By my own state and honor I, Labres, son of Cullen son of Duach, now proclaim Olaf son of Sigtrygg of word faithless and of honor forfeit, polluted by twisted judgment. I will sit upon his doorstep fasting until he fulfills his pledge…or departs Dublin to do penance.”

  “Will you?” The king stood beside his narwhal throne. “Will you do that, indeed, MacCullen? That saves me the trouble of putting a spear through you. You will go very hungry through my feasting today.”

  “That is upon you.”

  An idea occurred to the old king. “King Domnall Cloen, my prisoner, will eat with me. I will see to it he hears nothing of your madness until he has feasted.”

  “That is upon you also,” replied the poet, though his hands balled to fists, and he led his company down the length of the torch-lit hall.

  John went last, as he had come. When halfway to the far door, he turned his head to look back toward the light. There, a spot of light surrounded by shadow, Queen Gormflaith sat staring after him, sitting quite alone, and holding in her hands her boy’s little dagger.

  The Gaels of Dublin had set up a light pavilion. From somewhere had come benches and a table for writing. The pounded dirt of the doorway had been carpeted by clean reeds. MacCullen’s bivouac before the law hall was comfortable in every respect save one.

  John could smell each individual roasted cow in the far kitchen, and the onions in butter (not normally his favorite food), and honeyed oat cakes, and the fried fish were driving him mad. He sat curled on the straw with his back against the curved wall of the building. Occasionally he coughed on smoke.

  “Don’t be…this way, Ailesh,” said John Thornburn. He slapped her arm with spurious roughness. “That old man is a…a…

  “How do you say ‘fart’ in Irish, Derval?”

  Derval raised her head from her hand. “Leave her alone, Johnnie,” she said in Irish. “You’re not helping.”

  “He is certainly doing no harm,” MacCullen corrected her quietly, and answered John’s distrustful glance with a smile of quiet friendship and understanding. John thought of all the nasty things he had wanted to say to the poet in the last few days and he blushed as though he had said them. John stared at his own feet.

  Ailesh’s tears had fallen off and on all day, with the rain. Like the rain, they were cold and almost soundless. She bit her lip to hold them back. “Where is this shame the king talked about, my sister Derval? What is it I have done that I ought to feel ashamed?”

  MacCullen let his blue eyes focus on the girl. They were lit with a very strange light. “There is no shame here except in the man who calls himself King of Dublin. He raped you with words and fouled his mouth for all time.”

  The poet sat on a low bench without back support. There was something oriental in his erectness and self-possession. It was as if he were gathering power into himself. “What we do now is beyond shame and not of our own choosing, Daughter of Goban. But know that no king can stand against all opinion. And be comforted that my calling is sacred.

  “Even this one, false king and Gaill that he is, will not touch me, and while you are at my side, I believe you will be safe.”

  Then the brightness died from his face. “But I worry about others…the brehan. They are old enemies, Clorfíonn and Cuarán, and when Cuarán came back to the throne of Dublin, she left for many years’ far travel. Now in the king’s—in Olaf’s—hate and old anger, he might commit the sacrilege of murder upon her.”

  “But not the sacrilege of killing you, Labres MacCullen?” Derval poked him in the leg in proprietary fashion.

  He looked uncertainly back at her, as though he could not decide whether to take her words as concern or scorn. But she continued, “John’s big Icelander friend is with the brehan. What could we do that he can’t? But I also don’t trust the old…fart, as John calls him, and my fear is that he may leave the flower
and wealth of Ireland’s history in blood.”

  Now MacCullen turned from her and examined the reeds by his feet. “This sort of flattery is a new art with you, Derval Cuhain.”

  “No flattery,” she replied. “I value knowledge. You are more full of this land’s past than any great book.”

  He colored. “I have not shown you that, woman. The one time I ventured to speak in my calling—”

  “I knew that one fact, Ollave,” said Derval, tracing the weave of her brat with her fingers on her lap. “You knew a hundred others around it. And then—you listened to me. That is the mark of the real scholar.”

  He gave a small sigh. “So what would you have me do?”

  She lifted her hem. “Not you, but me. I’m carrying a knife in my boot.”

  He smiled at her. “My champion! I will have no more fear.” Then his face grew serious again. “Woman, if I lock you up and feed you nothing but the cream of choice cows for a month—”

  “Do what to me?”

  “Eh?” John tuned in to the conversation.

  MacCullen laughed. “And then if I could dress you in the gowns you deserve, and put gold around your head and your throat, then the fabled beauty of Olaf’s queen would be nothing to yours.”

  Derval sat back and gaped at the poet. “Oh. So you can’t even try to flatter me without it ending in insult. Well, hear this: among my people the saying is, ‘You can’t be too rich or too thin.’ ”

  MacCullen’s blackened eyebrows bristled. “But that is nonsense, on both counts. A man dead of starvation is too thin, while as for wealth, the story of Bres, the king of the Dannans, who was deposed for covetousness much like that of this false king, ought to teach us—”

  But Derval was sputtering with laughter. “Curlytop, someone ought to teach you not to argue with a proverb.”

  His answering smile was tentative. “Curlytop?”

  So this was the substance of MacCullen’s friendship, thought John Thornburn. And of Derval’s faithfulness. He glanced up at the tall poet, who met his eyes with a sudden confusion, and John’s anger was replaced by depression as dark as the rain. When had Derval promised him anything, that he should now feel betrayed? It was merely that back home she had found it easier to hide the fact she kept many strings to her bow. John rose, almost pulling over the heavy linen awning. “I’ll go watch the brehan,” he said, and disappeared into the drizzle.

  Derval did not watch him go, but neither did she speak any more to MacCullen. Faithful or faithless, Derval stared out at the rain-slimy logs of the street, afraid to meet the censure of Ailesh’s eyes. MacCullen only sighed and shifted.

  Silence amplified the drum on the awning.

  The rain ceased an hour before twilight and almost immediately after, with a horn squeal and a shout from the wharf, Olaf Tryggvason was welcomed to the docks of Dublin.

  Neither MacCullen nor Derval saw anything of him, for he entered at the far corner of the fortress. But behind the oaken door, the sounds of laughter multiplied, and soon the rattle of platters and knives was added.

  The casual sprinkling of Gaelic loiterers on the street changed its makeup, but remained constant in number. Derval found her fingers and toes growing chilly. It was close to dark.

  What had she gotten herself into? This affair, begun as an attempt to dispose humanely of an awkward visitor—and Derval had to sneak a glance at Ailesh as she sat in all her red hair and hurt, to make sure this was the same madwoman who had barricaded herself in John’s bedroom—had grown and blossomed into a confusion of Irish politics. What did this fast represent to the brehan? To the nameless loungers along the street, or Ailesh herself? Derval felt nothing but hungry.

  And what would it lead to? Derval searched her brain for some memory fitting the time and place. But the tenth century had never been her period, and all she could remember at the moment was the Battle of Clontarf. What would that be—forty years away? No help. Brian of the Tributes was alive now, surely. Should be king of Munster.

  “Hey,” she began, nudging MacCullen. “You were trained in the Munster Academy, weren’t you?”

  The poet admitted as much.

  “Then why weren’t you there—among the Gaels, instead of roaming near Dublin?”

  MacCullen half took offense. “Because of Domnall. Besides, it happens my own people live just north of here, woman. And from the first, I was good in my Norse. Why should I not—”

  “No reason,” replied Derval, shrugging. “I only wondered if you knew the king of Munster.”

  With a touch of vanity he replied, “I know every true king on the island, Scholar Iníon Cuhain.”

  “What do you think of him—Brian, I mean.”

  He took a breath and held it for a moment. “He is, like all kings, proud. And a lover of violence, jealous for the supremacy of his own tribe.”

  “What if he became Ard-Ri?” Derval pressed.

  “God turn it aside!” was MacCullen’s quick answer. “He is of the DalCais. His foot would be heavy on the necks of Leinstermen. Other than that he has no real blemish.”

  She sat slumped on her low stool and thought about Brian, the man who would die near this place in forty years’ time, having unified Ireland with much killing and burning.

  Unified it for a moment.

  With a heavy grinding the iron hinges of the door behind her began to turn. Derval pivoted on her seat to squint at the light of torches. There were three serving men, dressed in the strange Russian-style costume, and they carried plates.

  Derval smelled beef and pork and honey through the onions. She saw, centered on a platter that might as well have been gold as brass, the shape of a bird, steaming, covered in bright feathers. Gladness bubbled up within her, both for the light in her wet darkness and for the wonderful food. But immediately it was replaced by fury, that someone would tempt them this way. And she wondered if she would be able to sit with Labres MacCullen and die slowly, for a matter of principle.

  The poet had risen, not in reaction to the servers but to someone behind them. Derval rose also, to look into that face that unsettled her: that woman with a complexion of black and damask-rose, clothed still in the flame-colored dress she had worn in her husband’s hall.

  “Dark Lady of Sovereignty. Queen of this place.” MacCullen spoke with deep respect, and Derval remembered about Gormflaith.

  The queen bowed her head and sent the servers away. “Please eat,” she whispered to the three fasters. “You will do no good, here, this way.

  “I myself,” and she took Ailesh’s cold hand in hers, “will pay you a price out of money that is mine. Fat cows without number will be yours. I will find you a good husband.”

  Ailesh stole an awed glance from the queen to MacCullen. “I…I thank you, Bhean Ri. But I don’t want to take gifts, but rather what is mine.”

  “You want vengeance so much then?” Her hurried eyes sought each face. “A heap of skulls for your dowry? You’ll get no marriage with that.”

  MacCullen answered. “If to want killed the wolves that are harrying Dublin’s villages is vengeance, then yes, that is what we want. And then, she has been made a laughingstock. That in itself is a heavy wrong to be compensated.”

  I want to go home, said Derval to herself, as emotion and hunger made her reality slip away once more. I don’t want to talk about vengeance or wolves. I want to eat a sandwich. I want a Guinness.

  “Whatever you call it, you will not get it from Olaf,” said the queen. “You will only get a slow death in the streets, while he feasts and makes mock of you.”

  “He feasts?”

  Her black hair shook loose in her face. “Of course, Poet. His customs are not ours—yours. We are welcoming his daughter’s husband.”

  “You, Queen? Do you join the feast? Do you, Queen, woman of bright honor, daughter of a great king?” His question was very gentle.

  She shook her head. “No. No. I haven’t. I…don’t want a poet’s curse on Sitric’s young head.”

/>   Sitric—Sigtrygg. The last bell went off in Derval’s swimming head. She stepped forward.

  The queen stood with her hands humbly over her gown, over the jeweled box brooches made of gold which adorned her breasts, as she said, “I want only that he grow to be the force that welds Olaf’s people and mine into one—”

  “Is that what you want?” Derval found herself saying. “Well, you are doomed to disappointment. He will betray you, Lady. His loyalty will be foreign, and his sword on the necks of the Irish people.”

  Gormflaith shone white in the shadows, and then her face reddened in anger. “You know nothing of it! Sitric is a good, kind lad, and only eight years old. It’s very easy to make up a future and call yourself a seer, but—”

  “Not easy at all,” answered Derval, swaying as the dark world began to go pale around her, and her ears filled with ringing. “It’s been very difficult, and likely to end in death, for Johnnie and me.

  “Queen, your troubles ought to be no more than footnotes in a history to me. I have my own troubles. And fears. Be glad you don’t know my fears: then you’d have something to lose sleep over. I don’t need to tiptoe around the ego of some fat squarehead with a kingdom the size of a very small bus route.”

  Gormflaith stared uncomprehending at the unfamiliar words. Derval found herself sitting on the edge of a bench, breathing hard. “Do you know what I am, Queen of Dublin? I am she who has no mother on this earth, nor any father. Nor are the bones or ashes of my parents to be found by any skill. I come without family, clan, or relation into this world. I have known the facts of your life and death, as well as those of your husband and son, since I was a child.

  “You.” Derval pointed at the queen quite rudely, and sat straddle-legged on the bench, panting with effort. Her hand, despite the cold, glistened with sweat under the torchlight. “You are most afraid of being like the other Gormflaith, who had three kings for husbands and died in a nunnery. Your fate will be very much like hers. You will outlive this husband of yours and marry again. The Ard-Ri will be your next husband, and then the king of Munster, and no happier than this shall those unions be. You will be taken by force from one and repudiated by the other. As for your son, Sitric, he will marshal Gentiles from Alba, Wales, and the Orkneys, from York and Mann, to stand against the men of Ireland. There will be a great battle when Norse shall oppose Gael, and Christian oppose pagan. At the end of that all Ireland will be united under one clan. For the moment.”