Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  “Good lad. Yes, you’re a good old lad, you old son of a bitch. Yes, and you are one too.” He was wondering whether Mrs. McCaffrey had heard him. If she had, he had better go talk to her before she called the police, with disastrous results for everyone.

  Tancred was no longer barking, so he was able to tiptoe to the lighted window of the bungalow. Through transparent, lacy white curtains he could see a tall slim woman with silver hair. She was reading by the light of a table lamp. Another dog was asleep at her feet. It seemed she had no suspicion that anything was going on. Very carefully, John stole past the house toward the stables, with Tancred in close attendance.

  As he entered the building, he was greeted with welcoming nickers, and these sleepy sounds reminded him of how long it had been since he’d had a good night’s rest. Going first to the windowless tackroom, he switched on the light. He took Derval’s saddle and bridle. With the saddle in his arms he stalked around until he discovered Tinker. The big gray horse was turned out in one of the large paddocks surrounding the stable itself. At the stable door he made out the heavy shape of Mrs. McCaffrey’s own western stock saddle, hanging from a stand. This was more John’s idea of a saddle. Feeling extremely wicked, he took it, replacing it with Derval’s close-contact jumping saddle. He rather suspected Derval’s was worth more, anyway, despite its smaller size.

  Tinker was dozing. John patted him and whispered, “You old hefalump: how ’bout going out a bit, eh?” Standing next to the big animal, whose withers were above John’s head, he was not at all sure he could control it. In Newfoundland, he had handled harness animals, but his efforts as an equestrian were limited.

  Derval’s pride and joy was a crossbred Irish farm horse/Thoroughbred. Derval became infuriated when the English sporting press referred to Tinker as part “Irish draft horse,” because she denied that there was draft-horse blood in any native Irish equine, and considered it just one more ethnic slur by the English. Tinker looked much more like his gray mother than his stakes-winning father, and had her dark eye and easy attitude. He stood over seventeen hands high at the withers.

  As John fumbled with the cinch, this usually patient animal began to wiggle. John’s progress grew even slower, and his whispers shifted from endearments to curses. Somehow he got the pad and saddle on. Then the bridle. The horse opened his mouth reluctantly to take the snaffle bit and John felt a twinge of sympathy. He had worn braces as a child. Finally he led Tinker out of the paddock.

  He lifted his left leg and sprang off his right, aiming his left foot for the stirrup hanging far above his knee. With the first touch of his weight, the big rectangular saddle slipped neatly down under Tinker’s belly. The horse widened his eyes in alarm. Using his shoulder, John shoved the saddle back into place. He tightened the cinch further, wondering why it was now so loose, when it had been very snug when first put on. He was very proud of his cloverleaf cinch knot. Though it came from macrame, not horse training, he knew it was correct.

  This time he led Tinker toward an upturned section of log which had been set beside the stable door. The horse stood beside it calmly and John flung himself into the saddle. Tinker let out a grunt.

  Perhaps he ought to tie himself on, John thought, as the great animal began to move. Perhaps he could find a rope in the stable, and… But no. John remembered the saddle hanging under Tinker’s belly and imagined himself dangling down between the nervous hooves. Better to fall cleanly off.

  Now that John had mounted up, the dog Tancred was just delighted. Apparently moonlight rides were something he was occasionally allowed to enjoy. He began to prance around John and Tinker, and then finally to run around in circles, joyfully barking. John urged the horse around the side of the stable away from the McCaffrey bungalow. There was a beam of light in the distance, and Mrs. McCaffrey’s voice. “Tancred. Get in here and stop raising hell, you big, dumb dog!”

  Tancred whined and drooped at both ends. A romp over the Wicklow Mountains was much more attractive than sleep. “Tancred! Heel!” The dog dropped his tail and obeyed. “No rabbits for you tonight,” she scolded. “And no bailing you out of jail, either.” The light from the open door disappeared. John sat immobile for some time, while the horse shifted from foot to foot, impatiently. As he waited in the dark, he decided not to ride up the road. She would surely hear it, if he did. No—he would ride the horse across the pastures, where the soft grass would cover the sound.

  The horse was very fresh, and not content to walk. But his ground-eating trot bounced John like the proverbial sack of potatoes, which pleased neither horse nor rider, and at last the horse compromised in a long, swinging walk that covered a great deal of ground.

  When he had crossed the main road, it took John a little while to find the boreen over the mountains that Derval had used only last week to get to his house. He had only been with her a few times, but once he located it, it was relatively clean going. Tinker knew the way very well.

  He was having certain problems with Tinker. The horse was used to Derval’s understated dressage signals. John’s commands were so crude, even when correct, that the horse wasn’t sure what was expected of him. John had never mastered posting, either, and even if he had, the western saddle would not have cooperated, so whenever Tinker broke from his walk John would call a hearty whoa and bring him to a complete halt before starting over. The bags on John’s back bounced with every step, of course, and the cloth shopping bag with the needles in it dug into his back. After twenty minutes of suffering he rode up to his house.

  It was close to ten-thirty. Except for an occasional car, the streets were deserted. He felt a real sense of urgency now. If he was noticed by his landlady, or still worse by the local garda, it was all up. He had to get into the house without attracting attention, and that of course meant that somehow he had to pry the piece of heavy plywood off the door without making a sound. It was impossible to sneak the horse back through the bathroom window.

  He tied Tinker up to the fender of the Morris Minor, where the shadows from the trees made him a little less conspicuous. How, he wondered, do you make a horse inconspicuous? Then he sneaked around to the back and, unlocking the messy little garage, he located by feel the crowbar hanging up on a nail.

  It took him some time of very careful prying to loosen the plywood. He stood it gently to one side, unlocked the door, and, untying Tinker, led him easily into the house. Once inside, he tethered him to a leg of the kitchen table. The horse was unable to raise his head much above his back in the seven-foot ceiling.

  John dropped his bundles onto the sofa, went back out and, as gently as he could, closed the door, placed the plywood back against it so that the cops wouldn’t see anything amiss on their walk. Then he crawled back through the bathroom window, and after blundering around in the dark, he opened the refrigerator door. It would give him just enough light to do what he had to do.

  John shouldered the shopping bag and the book satchel, wadded up his Irish clothes inside a beloved Hudson’s Bay blanket, and tied it all to the saddle horn with a piece of clothesline.

  He turned on the stereo on the very lowest setting at which it was still audible. He put the needle at the accustomed spot of the record, hoping that its week’s abuse would not have destroyed it entirely. To his astonishment, the sound of a concertina filled the air.

  The disc had been changed. It was now a selection of Canadian songs collected by Alan Lomax. The song he was listening to was one called “The Shores of Newfoundland.” That struck him as very odd. Could it have been the gardai who put this on for amusement while boarding up his house? He felt a moment of householders outrage. Then for an instant he knew fear. What had they done with the music that would take him back through time?

  To his relief, he found the album neatly stowed with all his others in the rack below the stereo. Trembling he changed the record back. He turned on the fluorescent tube on his light table which illuminated his much-worked first tracing of Bridget’s cross. Picking up a burnishing
stylus, he began to follow the pattern to the accompaniment of the piper. Behind him it began to happen. A red glow like a gorgeous sunset began to compete with the sickly blue-green of the light table. Finally John put down his stylus and turned around to see the pulsating, living spirals that filled the gate.

  Tinker snorted, looking wild-eyed at that which had formed in front of the bathroom door. John took the reins and attempted to lead him in, but the horse refused to move. Tinker neighed and then pissed onto the musty carpet. John cursed, then he laughed. He could see two policemen with a forensic specialist down on their knees. “This seems to be horse piss, Lieutenant.” In the end, John picked up a dish towel, and then wrapping it around Tinker’s eyes, as though leading him through a fire, he took the cheek strap of the bridle, and the huge bulk of the horse and the small man disappeared into the impossibly tiny room. In a moment the house was totally empty. The only sound was the broken water tap, dripping away, and the needle of the stereo, circling around at the edge of the paper label.

  He felt the dirt under his feet as he blinked into the darkness. The bulk of the horse pushed him into grass. “No,” said John quite loudly. “No. It’s a church! I came out of the church, and I have to return to a church!”

  But it wasn’t a church, as his eyes told him moments later. It was a path parted in the high June grasses, where a week before bodies had lain bleeding. There before him under starlight were the scars in the soil where a great, broken stone had been dragged.

  Ard na Bhfuinseoge. Vikings. John pivoted, twisting the horse’s neck almost back to the saddle, but the attempt was futile; the red gate had closed almost immediately behind them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Are you better than Christ? He came to redeem woman no less than man. No less did he suffer for the sake of woman. No less do they enter the kingdom of heaven. Why should women not come onto your island?” Shame reddened the cheeks of Senan. “Enter here for the glory of God, then.”

  Saint Canair’s reproof of Saint Senan,

  from the Book of Lismore

  The news came to Derval O’Keane in the little round refectory as she sat in conference with MacCullen, Clorfíonn Iníon Thuathal, MacImidel, Father Blathmac, and the Abbot Conoran. The director of the scriptorium had just slapped his hand smartly on the tabletop, saying, “The way of Christ is not the way of bloodshed,” when Dobarchu clawed through the cattle guard across the door. Abbot Conoran had only time to reply, “But if blood is to be shed, would not the Lady’s Son prefer it to be that of heathens than of his own faithful?” When he and all around him were silenced by the wildness of the cook’s wife’s expression.

  “Miracle! Miracle!” She fell onto her plump knees before the bare wooden table. “I have seen a saint taken bodily into heaven before my eyes and in our own sanctuary!”

  All stared. Conoran narrowed his eyes in perplexed doubt. “What and where, good woman?”

  “The little fair stranger, Abbot. In front of the window of glass in the church. It was our savior’s cross that came for him, shining like the sun of morning, and he faded into the light of heaven and was gone. Gone—and there is nothing left but his relics behind him, drenched in the blood of Iosa.”

  Labres MacCullen smiled his fond, superior smile. “I suspect our Eoin Cattle Leaper is again showing his quality—” But in the middle of this sentence he glanced over at Derval, and his thoughts were startled from his mind. For she stood beside her chair with her mouth agape and her skin was mottled gray.

  “The gate!” she shrieked in English, and as she thrust herself out from the table she came near to fainting, and her knees hit the clay floor roughly. But Derval crawled forward unfeeling, rose again, shoved brutally past Dobarchu, and went out the doorway of the refectory.

  The company could do nothing but follow.

  MacCullen found her by the tall west window, shaking and shivering, dry-eyed. Before her was the sheet of paper, still creased and darkened, stuck to the lead and the glass. He stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “What has he done, woman?”

  As though his touch and his words were keys to unlock her from her paralysis, Derval slumped in his arms. Tears came out of nowhere.

  “He’s gone home. Without me.”

  MacCullen winced to see her pain, and shuddered at his own imaginings. He put his arms around Derval and locked his fingers together. With her face turned to the wall, Derval wept.

  “What is this story?” asked the abbot. “I will not hide from you the truth that I am easily confused today!”

  Derval said nothing. She put her hands up toward her face, but the poet’s hold restrained her and she let them drop.

  “Our Eoin has a power,” MacCullen answered for her. “I know not all about it and wish to know less, but he has come to the aid of the Gaels from…from a far place, and brought with him this warrior and noblewoman.”

  “He went and left me behind!” cried Derval with childish shrillness. She choked with the violence of her tears. MacCullen hugged more tightly.

  “Then he is no man, Daughter of Chadhain. And whether he goes or stays, he surely was never the man for you!”

  Derval turned with difficulty and faced him, struck dumb by his vehemence. Her eyes were soaked and her nose slimy. The poet kissed her on the lips.

  The abbot and MacImidal regarded this scene with no trace of comprehension. The brehan Clorfíonn only smiled and wandered, green-eyed, to the window.

  “I don’t think,” said Derval in a small voice, “that he meant to abandon me, you know. He doesn’t mean to do anything. He’s just a fool sometimes…a lot of times.”

  “Well I know!” replied MacCullen, letting her slip free. “And were he not such a natural, I would have fought with him long since over the poor care he’s taken of you, woman.”

  Derval wiped her face with both hands. Her dark brows drew together. “Why should Johnnie take care of me at all?”

  MacCullen picked up one of her hands and put it to his lips. One by one he touched her fingertips with his tongue. “In a year, noble lady, I could teach you not to ask such a question.”

  She let her hand slip onto his broad shoulder. There was still a shade of puzzlement, or else malice, in her voice as she said, “But I’m too thin. And talk like a servingwoman. I dug a hole in your side like I was digging onions and I… Ooof!”

  “Perfect memory is to be reserved for poetry,” MacCullen stated. His embrace came close to breaking Derval’s ribs. Her own response startled her, and it had to do with fear.

  Clorfíonn saw fit to interrupt at this point. “It is a heavy power of Eoin’s, to be certain, if it was his power that took him away. For Dobarchu did not exaggerate about the blood.”

  MacCullen freed his mouth from Derval’s black hair. “Blood there is, foster mother, but not that of our savior. It is only the blood of my battle wound that stained Eoin’s work.”

  “Is it, Labres?” asked Ui Neal very softly. “Look at it and tell me that again.”

  Her tone pulled him over to the window, with Derval O’Keane, hand in hand. He caught his breath.

  The tracing paper was there, firmly pressed to the window. Each knot and spiral of it stood out as thin and clear as knife cuts. But it was red, not brown. Red with blood as fresh as cherry juice, and though the sun beat on it, it remained clear.

  There was a beating on the door of the sweathouse. Ailesh, huddled in her misery, ignored it. Brother Eochaid went to the door with a lamp, scratching his pubic hair casually. On his way he tripped over the sullen bulk of Snorri Finnbogison. Eochaid engaged in low conversation through the door and then shut it again. “It was only Father Blathmac. He thought I shouldn’t be in here with you alone.”

  Ailesh raised her head dully. “Why?”

  Eochaid considered the question. “I suppose it to be because he is Roman trained. Rome seems to teach monks to be great worriers.” He squatted down beside the girl again. “I told him the Icelander was with us, however,
and with that he made content.”

  Ailesh lost interest in the matter. She groaned, not for the first time. Eochaid shook her gently. “Fortitude, my sister. Would you like the fine redheaded horseman to see you with your face all twisted like this?”

  “Piss on the redheaded horseman!” Ailesh’s sobs were smothered by her knees.

  “Even if he had to go,” she hiccoughed, “how could he have gone without saying good-bye to me? Did he think I would try to keep him—to restrain him from going home? I would not!”

  Eochaid patted her on the head and gazed off into the blackness of the sweathouse. He sighed. “Perhaps he meant to come right back from his far home. Perhaps he still does.”

  Ailesh’s head came up instantly. “Of course! That must be it! It explains everything—” Then her confidence slackened. “But Derval doesn’t think so. She wouldn’t have been so distressed if she thought he would return for her at any moment.”

  Brother Eochaid grimaced his annoyance to the hot stones on the floor. He produced another consolation. “Are we so sure that the bhean uasaluis in Eoin’s complete confidence? Could it be he had secrets even—”

  “That’s it!” Ailesh raised her head and smote her knees with both palms. “I say she is not! How could she be when her every word is a scourge on his back? If I were Eoin, it would be a long day in winter before I told her anything of my plans!”