Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Ailesh glanced back at John with curiosity. “A naked man, all over hair. With two deer. They disappeared.”

  “A holy man,” replied Ailesh.

  “Again? Isn’t anybody here ever holy in a comfortable way?” As John looked down at them, the kneeprints were filling with water.

  Ailesh giggled. “I am sinful in a comfortable way, Eoin. Will that do?”

  John smiled one-sidedly at the girl from the height of his many years. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Ailesh.”

  Her gaze was more puzzled than ever.

  Just beyond the willows, water spread like a smooth sheet over half an acre. Close to the rear bank there was a thing like a pier with arms sticking out. John could not imagine the function of it, for the single hide curragh the pond boasted was upturned in the shade of the trees. Coming closer he found it to be carved very realistically in the shape of a man, with arms and hands outstretched. As he passed it, it sniffled.

  “Another holy man, Ailesh?”

  She prodded him from behind. “Don’t disturb his prayer.”

  The ground rose again and became firmer. Fruit trees, carefully pruned and tended, lined the path. They could hear the rhythmic thuds of a hoe biting the earth. John entered the trees to locate it.

  The kitchen garden was on the south side of the orchard. The gardener stood among his pea stakes, leaning on his hoe. His hair was black and long in back, tied into a pigtail, but shaved from the forehead to a line running between the ears.

  “Looks like a bloody samurai, doesn’t he, Johnnie?” came Derval’s voice in his ear. The man looked up at the sound.

  “Good day to you, slave of Christ.”

  “The blessing of Mary’s son upon you, honored visitors. Welcome to the house of Holy Sechnaill.”

  The monk had a most engaging smile, and John felt himself relax into it.

  “Before you offer us welcome, know that we are twenty-six in number, with almost as many beasts, and we come pursued by trouble.”

  The monk’s smile faded, but not into alarm. “Then all the more need for welcome, my sister. I will take you to the abbot.”

  He stepped carefully among his hills of greens and turnips, and John could see his lips moving. He suspected counting the crop, rather than prayer, was the purpose of that movement, and felt the chagrin of any unexpected guest.

  The enclosure was low, only four feet or so in height. Its wooden gate ran on a post which rotated into a deep hole in a stone footing. As they passed singly through, Finnchu MacImidel put his hand out in a warding gesture. The last man through, the orange-haired Norse youth, had ready a foxglove pod which he tossed over the gate pole. Ailesh, already inside the enclosure, saw him wink at her. She blushed, for the gate was known as the union of male and female. Then she giggled, remembering how the captain of horse had feared it. There was a great diversity in men.

  “If at all possible, Brother Eochaid,” repeated the poet, “I would like to see the abbot himself.”

  The monk who had met John in the garden sighed. “I’m sorry, but it really isn’t possible. He is at his meditations.”

  MacCullen tried to be reasonable. He sat himself down on the refectory bench. “I value his meditations, and it is my great hope that my own soul may feel the cleansing of them. But this is a matter of some urgency.”

  Eochaid said, “Most especially I may not therefore disturb him, for he meditates with the aid of mushrooms today.”

  MacCullen’s eyes widened momentarily. He nodded his understanding.

  “Would you like to speak to the abbot’s wife?”

  MacCullen broke out in a grin.

  “I’m sorry, Ollave, but I am a very simple fellow and out of practice in dealing with visitors. The director of the scriptorium, then?”

  MacCullen nodded heavily. “Take me to him.”

  Father Blathmac was tonsured in the Roman style. He came to the door and squinted watery eyes at the sunlight. He listened to Eochaid’s explanation.

  “I see, Brother. Well. Perhaps it would be better if one in the position of our dear Father Conoran left such strenuous disciplines to the wild men in their cells. But that can’t be helped. Bear and forbear. Bear and forbear.” Blathmac turned and led the way into the scriptorium.

  John came to listen, though it was against his habit. But he could not resist the appeal of the place, inherent in the very smell of ink and leather.

  Monks, either in the old tonsure or that of Rome, sat at a long table, with small bottles of ink at their right hands and fresh feathers in a pile above each working page. A few of the workers had neither tonsure nor the hooded linnia of the monks. One was a very heavy woman of middle years, dressed in canary yellow. In order to supply light for these scribes, some of the thatch roof louvers had been raised, and rested propped on stout timbers. But despite that, John would have been hard pressed to make a fair copy in such gloom. He sat carefully away from the table, watching the woman press a dust-thin film of gold leaf over the letter n. When she had done it to his satisfaction, he rose and began to look over the open missals at another table.

  “It would, of course, take a large or foolhardy band of Gaill to attempt an assault on the monastery,” MacCullen said to reassure Father Blathmac, who seemed to need reassuring. “But it would be wise for all who live here to know that reavers are in the neighborhood.”

  “Sweet savior!” whispered the priest. “And all the wealth in this room alone—”

  Suddenly a gasp, followed by a cry, filled the room. As one, all the copyists raised their quills up into the air, studying their work anxiously for the suggestion of a blot. MacCullen swiveled on his bench. “It’s Eoin again. Never the expected.”

  He found John Thornburn on his knees, his hands over his mouth, his face a few inches from the surface of a book.

  “This is it! This is the Book of Kells!”

  Father Blathmac walked over, scowling. “That might have ruined much labor, Brother Eoin.”

  John heard none of it. He hovered above the Gospel of Matthew, hands fluttering like butterflies, not daring to touch. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he cried in English. “It’s the real thing, and even old already. A century old, maybe, and look at it…”

  MacCullen took the priest’s arm. “You must understand about Eoin. He is a great artist in his own right, and…far from home.”

  Father Blathmac looked at John with a shade more toleration. “He surely has the proper taste. Would that any one of my monks could do such work! But that book is heavily flawed. Beneath its gold and colors it is so full of copyist’s errors it can scarcely be read. And to my amazement it contains tables and indexes which refer to nothing at all. Such is the state of learning in these northern monasteries… We have the book only for repairs, anyway. It will return to—” Father Blathmac broke off at the sight of John’s unabated exaltation.

  Joh focused on the men standing above him. Awkwardly he got to his feet. “Please,” he said to Father Blathmac, “please turn it to the Chi Rho page.”

  Blathmac’s scanty eyebrows rose. “So you know the book, Brother Eoin? Then, assuming your hands are clean, turn the page yourself.”

  “Myself?” John’s voice cracked. Then, with infinite care, he put his hand on the book.

  Like a flea on a bald head, thought Holvar Hjor bitterly. Like a fly buzzing in milk, did they stand out on this bare table of rock. Who knew what eyes were watching in the distance? Two Irish had seen them so far, since they crept away from Dublin. One had run too fast to be cut down. That was disturbing, and could not lead to good.

  Wind threw his thinning hair into confusion. He brushed it from his eyes and noticed that Ospack, the old helmsman, had matched his pace to Holvar’s.

  Ospack smeared the tears of sun and weather from his squinting eyes. “This has been an ill-starred voyage, Captain,” he said. “All has been bad with us since those killings in England.”

  He spoke in tones of depression rather than resentment. Hol
var could think of nothing to say. Ospack was no Skully Ulfson to be beat into behavior by swordwork or threats. Ospack had carved the altar stakes at Jolm with his own hands. He had obedient grown sons. He had yearly gone on Viking raids with Holvar over England, Ireland, and the Baltic since both were young men.

  “Not ill-starred, old friend, but full of obstacles. We will leave this island with great wealth and the favor of Odin. He leads us on, in the persons of these dedicated ones who have escaped the sacrifice.”

  Ospack blinked. “Well, you have always understood far more about such matters than I, Godi. But how he can show himself in the persons of these Irish who are running away from his fulfillment so speedily—”

  “That is his raven cunning. Ofttimes we do the work of the god best when we believe we are evading him!” Holvar felt a moment of satisfaction in this answer. “And our journey into the land of the enemy will reward us for its peril by enough wealth to build our city on the shores of the Baltic.”

  Ospack scuffed the limestone with the sole of his high-thonged sandal. “Hah! Our city by the Baltic. How I will ever get Freydis there I don’t know. I don’t even know where she is living, since winter.”

  Holvar paused, looking suspiciously at a black dot on the horizon. After a moment it flew away and he laughed. “Then get yourself a new young wife, Ospack, and sire another dozen children.”

  Ospack regarded his captain sidelong. “Easy enough for a widower to say.”

  Another man matched his strides to theirs. It was Orm, the Swede who had joined them since their Northumbrian disaster. He was very close to Skully Crow.

  “Captain, have we any particular reason to believe our wild sheep went this way?” Orm’s words were more respectful than the tone in which they were uttered.

  Holvar stared cooly at him before answering. “I think we do. I was told they were going over the hills. Inland. Besides—who climbs to the top of a ridge only to parade along it? One goes over. And then, of course”—and here he pointed at a pile of wind-hardened horse manure—“we are following somebody.”

  Orm listened, shifting uneasily in his leather harness. Skully, more bold, replied, “The hills are full of these little wild horses. As they are full of caves, where a couple of frightened Irish sheep can conceal themselves for days.”

  Holvar nodded. “But at this point we are talking about more than a score of Irish, most of them mounted, and so not so likely to be as frightened as you think. Do not dismiss the anger of the Gaels, lad, just because you have taken one village without a fight.”

  Skully grinned. With the scab on his nose, the effect of it was frightful. “I fear no one but their girls. But as to the mounted men—then, Captain, why did we miss our chance to slaughter the camp last night, when we had them, and before the Dublin horseboys arrived?”

  Holvar, by habit, clenched the hilt of his sword. “Never! To attack these at night would be unredeemable shame!”

  “Shame?” echoed Ospack in disbelief. He had never known Holvar to be so scrupulous. Perhaps it would be ritually better—a greater weapon-feat—to have killed them in the light of day, but to his whole memory, Ospack could not recall that he had heeded such courtesies. Perhaps it would have been far more impressive for Holvar to have killed them in a fair fight, but now it seemed like an error again, in a series of error after error. Luck, that indefinable essence that showed life was going with you, or was strong in you, was gone. Loss of luck meant your days were running out. Great priests often lost their kin and then their lives, Ospack remembered. Maybe Holvar’s dead were drawing him. Ospack shuddered at the thought. The dead wife and since last year two dead sons.

  He looked up at the sky. A pair of crows, big ones, passed from the left to the right. He sighed quickly with relief. That was a good sign. Maybe not death for me, Ospack thought to himself. Maybe just for Holvar. He was a priest of Odin and he seemed now to be following the pattern: the usual astronomical rise to leadership, victory after victory, fame, the trust and gold of kings, followed by the jealousy of kings, and then what? A gradual turning toward a violent death. Odin’s love was always the same. They would not drink together this Yule, he thought regretfully, for he was very fond of his godi.

  There was a smudge on the edge of vision. Holvar peered and squinted at it doubtfully, and then climbed a bare bulb of rock which projected over the table. Ospack clambered up beside him, cursing his knee joints.

  There was the green plain in the distance, its patterns of forests, lakes, and fields, as shapely at the cleft in a woman’s bosom. There were farms laid out, and orchards, and water. There were the tiny round buildings, the rectangular church, and a slender round tower. And as Holvar perceived them all, a sense of meaning descended on him, heavy as a giant hand. He could scarcely breathe. The clouds in the sky seemed to roll over his head. But for the support of the helmsman, Holvar would have fallen.

  “There.” He pointed to the distance and spoke for the ears of all his men. “There it is. There our quarry is waiting for us, and there the favor of the rune winner will be shown to all who fight with untainted hand. Gold for a second Jolmsburg; its fame will never die out. So…” And here Holvar’s voice dropped to a whisper. “So he has revealed to me.”

  John hunched against the north wall of the church, guarding the book from sunlight and blowing dust. Ailesh perched on her heels beside him. She was very impressed with the book, and still more impressed with all he knew about it.

  “See this little man with the green coat? He was drawn by a different hand than the others on the page. If you look in the back, there are three names: Ferches, Rafn, and Hengisson. Father Ferches was an Irishman born who worked at the Abbey of Iona in your grandfather’s time. I think the other two were his assistants. I’m guessing it was Ferches himself who did the drawings for the Chi Rho. His style is far more confident than that of the others.”

  “And yet the book is almost a century in age, Eoin. It leads me to ask how old you are.”

  He glanced up vaguely. “Twenty-nine. Oh. Of course I wasn’t around to know all this. Father Blathmac told me about Ferches, and the rest I studied in books. Other books.”

  “There is much I don’t know,” answered Ailesh simply. As this is a sentiment never difficult for a listener to hear, John raised his head and grinned at her.

  Brother Eochaid strode by, his hoe over his shoulder. He smiled sweetly and waved as he passed them. John’s mood made him expansive. “That fellow is what I like to see in a holy man. Not cold water or crawling naked in the weeds. A comfortable sort of holiness.”

  Ailesh’s eyes narrowed. She bit the sour end of a stalk of grass. “But holiness is by its nature not very comfortable. Especially not for the one who is holy.”

  “Don’ see that.” John thumbed slowly through the sheets of heavy parchment.

  “I do. Your own holiness, now…when you are at work upon your drawings, is not at all comfortable to watch. Your face goes…idiotic.”

  John glanced up in astonishment from the Gospel of Matthew. “Eh? Idiotic, maybe. Holy, never. I don’t even know what I believe.”

  Instead of replying directly, Ailesh giggled and said, “My father was a very holy man. Or idiotic, if you prefer.”

  Derval looked up from the bronze harp strings she was cleaning with a linen mitt filled with powdered chalk. MacCullen also glanced across the refectory to see a man enter. He was heavy, very tan of face, and either tonsured in the old manner or bald at front. His steps hesitated. His manner was diffident. He began with an apology.

  “Forgive, my friends, that in your hour of need I was not available. Had I known there would be visitors…”

  Both MacCullen and Derval rose hurriedly, to greet the abbot.

  “…As it was I discovered…in my meditations…that there was need of decision, though I know not whether it was a message from the Son of our Lady or merely that I heard strange voices. I came out into the sunlight, and my brother Eochaid informed me of your grievous trou
ble.” After a moment he added, “I am Father Conoran.”

  MacCullen introduced Derval as the scholar Cuhain, and himself. “Though our trouble is serious, Abbot, it is not so immediate that you must wrest yourself from deep medicines and fasting. I myself know what it is to fast.”

  Derval stared at MacCullen. It occurred to her that between one thing and another, she hadn’t seen him in the act of eating since the meeting with Olaf. Not even his own birthday “cake.” Surely he hadn’t continued his fast, with the long walking and the impossibility of his deprivation affecting the king of Dublin at all?

  “I am in no danger,” said the abbot, lowering himself onto the bench. “This abbey is under the protection of the high king. His namesake founded it. Besides, Mealseachlinn is stepson to Olaf. Between Dublin and Teamair we have no enemies here. I hope there is no danger in any respect, now that you are here. You believe the Gaill to have followed you all the way from Ard na Bhfuinseoge?”

  MacCullen nodded. “Though it sounds very odd, Father, and I myself have no notion how they discovered our escape, nor what would drive them to such ceaseless pursuit…”

  “Except piety, perhaps,” answered the abbot shrewdly, with an odd little smile on his face. “Piety will drive men to mad deeds, and the northern heathen have a very wild sort of piety.”

  MacCullen, not denying this, drummed the tabletop. “We will be gone tomorrow, Father, and expose your monastery to no more danger.”

  Derval plucked an experimental octave around the sister strings. The abbot’s head turned and his eyes softened in expression for all the thirty seconds that the bell-like note rang in the stone chamber. At last he said, “What is to say we will not be raided by this group of pious heathens after you are gone? Or that they might have found us without your aid? We are not poor in works to grace the sacrament, and our scriptorium is as good as the best in Eire.

  “Stay, my friends. My great-grandfather, the first abbot of this place, had a belt of skulls that he wore, trophy of the enemies he had killed in his youth. I still keep it in my cell, under the breviary table, since Father Blathmac will not permit it to be stored with the other relics of the monastery. As I am rather fat and take up the girth more than my ancestor, I might be able to fit a few more heads on it. I shall ask Eochaid what he thinks.”