Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Now she turned on the inoffensive monk. “And another thing, Brother Eochaid. Eoin did not leave for fear of the Gaill! It is only this week that he saved the life of Snorri here with nothing but a bowl of curds to match against a Saracen’s sword, and the next night he slew an assassin with an ax, practically before my eyes.”

  Snorri Finnbogison, hearing his name coupled with the word “Saracen,” grunted in agreement. He added a long statement of his faith in Jan Thorboern’s wisdom and integrity, which, though in Norse, was completely intelligible to Ailesh.

  “I believe you,” answered the monk stoutly. “He must be a hero of classical proportion. Such a man would never leave his friends in trouble. Nor would he take away with him a book of immense value that does not even belong to us. (I tell you quite frankly that Father Blathmac is more upset about that than about any possibility of Norsemen at our door!) It must be he has thought of some plan for our aid.”

  Ailesh, with the emotional flexibility of both love and youth, thrust out her hand and found Eochaid’s ear. “You have comforted me, Brother! I am perfectly at ease now. And—eh? What was it he said about you? Oh. Eoin said he liked you best of all the monks, Brother Eochaid, because you had such a comfortable sort of holiness.”

  Eochaid flinched away with a grunt. “Holiness? Comfort was better said indeed. Far from being a holy man, child, I have been so obstinate in my will as to refuse the orders of priest and abbot, preferring instead my own peace of mind.”

  “Then you have much in common with Eoin! I understand you both!”

  Eochaid grinned. “No doubt you do. But who on this earth is fine enough, my sister-child, to understand you?”

  In the early darkness, under no moon at all, MacCullen went walking with Derval O’Keane. From the apple orchard they could look downward to a lake full of broken stars, surrounded by black lowlands.

  He sat down on the turf and pulled her beside him. But then he turned his face from hers and said nothing for five minutes. A wariness, a preparation for rejection, seeped into her. Finally he said, “I have a thing to say to you, woman, that should have been said long since.”

  Something went hard and ancient inside Derval. She took her hand out of his. “I know. A wife and five children.”

  He blinked at her in astonishment. “Not at all, Derval, pulse of my heart. Do you think I could have a wife and not have mentioned her in all these days? There are men so secretive, I know, but by my office, woman, they are not myself!” His quick grin went out again.

  “No. What I must tell you is a thing of shame which will perhaps ruin your trust in me, and now that I have… Now I would regret that with great grief.”

  Derval’s spine crawled, as all the shames she could think of paraded before her. “Then don’t tell me, Labres. Just lie here with me and be quiet.”

  He did lie down, but his chuckle was rueful. “Lying down is about all I can do with you, lady with hair of night. For I have not broken fast since I met Olaf Cuarán in the law hall of Dublin, and what with the journeying and the worry I might as well be an infant in wrapping for all the use I can be to a woman.”

  Derval shook him in fury that was only half pretense. “Still fasting? I suspected it! You bloody, bloody fool! Why?”

  “Because I set a fast,” he replied, wrapping her up in his brat. “It grates on me to fail in it, merely because there is a perjuring Gaill on the throne of Dublin.”

  “Well, I know a man can live a long time without eating, if he starts out fat, but you—having a wound in you I could poke my fist into…”

  MacCullen sank onto his back again and regarded the stars behind the apple leaves bleakly. “That is my shame, Derval O’Keane. For you see I have no wound on me at all. And perhaps that is why I feel I must fast, that I do not escape all suffering—”

  “You what?” Derval propped herself up on her elbow. She could hear a single cricket in the grass nearby. “You don’t have a wound? By Jesus you had a wound, as you and I both know!”

  He sighed heavily. “By Jesus and by his Mother I did. But not since the saint, whom I denied, showed herself to us in the woods. I was healed with young Ailesh.”

  Derval puzzled. “You were? Then why did you work so hard to convince us it was a sham—a false visitation?”

  MacCullen looked over at her. His eyes glistened faintly. He dug his fingers into the brat which covered them both as he said, “Because I didn’t know her when she came before me.”

  She could feel the tension in his arms. A thread of wool snapped. “I am an ordained poet,” he said, “and my duty and my labor—and my glory, if glory I can find—is to be open to the inspiration of the unseen world. I tell you in truth, Derval, that I have had more labor than inspiration in my life: though I studied as no other boy at Munster in my time, I never felt the touch of the Spirit in my poetry. And why should I, I ask myself? None in my family before me have been poets. Poetry is a divine calling, and a man may wonder if perhaps he has misheard the call. Perhaps he was not called at all and has no business—”

  Derval put her hand to his cheek but said nothing. He stopped for a moment to kiss that hand.

  “And what good was I at Ard na Bhfuinseoge, with all my learning and the respect they gave me? There is no greater power than true poetry. But they are dead, and I live by accident and by the compassion of one who didn’t know my name. Oh, Scholar, believe I was not quick to admit that the vision of the saint of Kildare in her beauty had been granted to two who seemed to me Dubliners of the serving caste, if not runaway Saxon slaves!

  “And when the daughter of Goban, who also was not permitted to see, found she had been healed of all her injury, I, too, put my hand to my side and found whole flesh. Scholar Chadhain, my heart was hardened like that of the king of Ulster who raced the woman Macha against his horses when she was heavy with child.”

  Derval leaned over him. She laughed in her nose. “That explains a lot,” she said. “I thought you were superhuman.”

  “I have thought I was. Now I would be very content to believe myself only a decent man. But I have allowed my dear foster mother to praise me to my face for my honesty! That was both crime and its own punishment.”

  “Forget it.” Derval smiled. “It was never your fault that you failed to recognize the old goddess—er, saint. She has her purpose, and remember what she said to you? That one day you would curse and rave with the best of them. By her authority, I forgive you for denying her, Labres MacCullen.” She kissed him lightly on the face.

  He took her face between his hands. “You have the authority of Bridget, Daughter of Cuhain? God be with us! How did that come about?”

  She grinned and kissed him, openmouthed. “I’m a woman, curlytop. And I’m overjoyed to find you sound, however long you concealed the fact. Now I don’t have to worry that you’re going to fall dead at my feet at any moment.”

  His teeth shone. “If I fall at your feet, lady, it will not be because I am dead.” Growling, he drew her down on top of him. Nothing was said for a few minutes, though much was accomplished, until he murmured in her ear, “Three days is not such a time to go without food, it seems.”

  Derval snuggled into the bedding in the little beehive cell she shared with Ailesh and two of the female penitents in residence at the abbey. This dividing of her from her companions was Father Blathmac’s Roman idea, and might have caused some sharp words between Conoran and his director of the scriptorium, had not the two women decided it was better to go and keep the peace. The light of a single, stinking tallow rush light showed her the features of the worn, middle-aged woman across from her. As Ailesh was not in bed yet, Derval shared her overwhelming happiness with the stranger, in a smile so sweet it would have astonished many who knew her well.

  Her heart was full of radiance, and she had not felt this way since the day she got her first horse. Each time her thoughts drifted back to MacCullen (and they were never far away) she found another grace or quality to cherish. His fine face, his p
erfectly proportioned body, the generosity and expertise of his lovemaking… He was intelligent, endlessly loyal, and he threw himself into his work with a dedication which she knew how to value. Even the aspects of his character which had put them into conflict, and would undoubtedly do so again, could be reevaluated. After all, who wanted a horse anyone could ride? Derval, despite her temper, could be a strong and tactful rider.

  Rider. Her mind, by its own pathways, drifted back to his expertise in lovemaking. “Poor Johnnie,” she murmured to herself with compassionate dismissal. She glanced covertly at her companion in the cell and determined to sneak out when she was sure Father Blathmac would have retired to his joyless Roman-trained meditations. But no sooner had she closed her eyes than there was a noise in the doorway, and Ailesh stood framed by night.

  “Derval! Wake up; it is the Gaill! The reavers have found us, and their fires surround the abbey wall!”

  Behind the low stone wall small lights flickered, moving between one building and the next. There was no one in the place sleeping tonight, Holvar reflected. And that was fitting, for a man needed time to prepare for death. In the end he would kill them all, of course, for this he did was not sport.

  He wondered how many there were, in there, and how many of them were women. Without queasiness of any kind his mind slid to a contemplation of his oldest daughter, who slept on a bed of down and rushes, warmed by the bodies of her seven children. He yawned. It would be a long time before he saw Thjodhild again, if ever, for she had not suffered under the decree of banishment like her father.

  It was just as well Halldis was dead. Had died before knowing her sons—Holvar’s sons—pyre-burned on the English shores. Before seeing her homeland disappear behind the ship’s wake forever. Halldis would have called the raid a bad bargain; she had never any passion in her for Odin. What woman did?

  Holvar saw movement, white in the distance. A man approached from the direction of the abbey church. He was tall and well built. He glimmered in the darkness. Holvar found himself looking up into the face of a man he had killed the week before.

  MacCullen also recognized Holvar, but as he was a subtle man, he let no clue of that recognition pass. He only stared down at the red, wind-roughened arm which had held the sword, and he said, “My name is Labres MacCullen, and I am a poet of the Munster Academy, and Ollave of the kingdom of Leinster. Why did you come here, Godi?”

  The voice was as much a shock as the Gael’s reappearance, for he spoke in perfect Norse, with a more cultivated accent than did Holvar himself. “I have pursued you through the woods of the island, as you well know, man. Know also that you are the dedicated victim of Odin and will not escape him again.”

  MacCullen took this with seeming calm. “Of Odin, you say? Well, I was dedicated at the age of seven to Jesus, son of Mary, and to the saint of Ireland who serves them, so I feel that may have precedence.”

  “Take care your words, lest you go to the god’s presence defiled, Irishman.”

  MacCullen stared coolly at the Norseman. By leaning over the wall he was able to make a certain use of his height. “I? Defiled? You are incomprehensible, reaver. But tell me—am I your only object in this place? For if that is so, it seems to me a great waste of substance for your men to throw themselves upon both a fortress full of monks—”

  “Monks!” Holvar tossed out the word in contempt.

  MacCullen smiled grimly. “Irish monks. There is a difference. And a troop of Dublin cavalry as well—”

  “Plowboys on ponies, man. Do not try to cow me with such threats. Know that in Northumbria just this year my men took a fortress of a hundred, and when the sun was high there was not one of them left, and we lost but eight men. And I doubt there is a man here to fight the equal of Cadmusson.”

  “I know about Cadmusson, Holvar Hjor,” replied the poet. “The captain from Dublin told me. I know further that neither your rightful king nor the king you have chosen to follow smiles upon you. I suggest, ere you add destruction to folly, that this morning see a battle of different sort: between your chosen champion and me alone.”

  Holvar took a step backward. He forced his eyes from the tall poet’s face and looked at the stars. He thought of a battle against a man that could not die and he suppressed a shudder. He said, “An Irish poet challenges me? But I have always been told such a man is a bull without a pintle, for all the good he is in war.”

  This pulled MacCullen upright. Holvar put his hand to his sword hilt, half-believing the Ollave would attack him with bare hands. But after a moment’s silence, MacCullen said, “My weapons are not common ones, Gaill, but you may find there is a point in them.”

  Holvar laughed, almost against his will. “Perhaps so. But I am a skald of my people, Irishman, and the voice of the Wolf’s-Father. I know that great songs come after great deeds and not in place of them. Odin has promised this place to us and sent us to it through hardship. Tomorrow he will deliver it—and you—to us. Your lives will be a sweet offering to my god, and your riches will build us our city to replace the home fortune has denied us.”

  MacCullen opened his mouth to curse the Norseman for a devil, but instead he heard himself saying a very different curse. “Holvar Sword, I tell you that after tomorrow morning you will not go down from this mountain to trouble Ireland any more. Both my land and the country that has vomited you out will be quit of you forever. So shall it be.”

  Holvar hissed between his teeth and braced his hand against the cold stone of the wall. “You! You’re a dead man already!”

  But MacCullen was walking away.

  Delbeth did not know where he was going, but the pony seemed to. It was well-known that a dun horse could see through a wall of stone, so Delbeth merely clung to Sedna’s mane and hoped he would not lose his head to any low-hanging branches. But as the night drew on, and the cold with it, the track evened under Sedna’s hooves and there was a feeling of space around him. He looked up to find himself in an ocean of stars, and he caught his breath. Even the stars—the Lady’s lamps—shone on him in unfriendly manner. Nothing was right for a man without dirbfine.

  Delbeth was glad when the pony sniffed, whickered, and broke into a running pace, for he was just about as weary as he had ever been, and this exposed hilltop was no place for a campfire. He descended into the low country now undisguisedly relinquishing control of the journey to Sedna. The clàirseach tied to the saddle scraped against sally wands with a sweet protest.

  The ground was mucky, and then dry again. The pony called out, and was answered by a horse in the distance ahead. There were lights. Delbeth found himself in a clearing, with a cattle wall before him. Behind it he could see a row of beehive cells. An abbey.

  But not all the lights were before him. In the bare, closely grazed space around him were fires. And men about them. How odd. With clumsy hands Delbeth pulled Sedna to a halt.

  Someone approached the boy. Politely Delbeth slipped off his horse. His feet, travel-swollen, stung where they touched the ground. He stared at a short, broad man dressed in a leather skirt and tunic. The man spoke to him, and Delbeth did not understand a word.

  Surely the fellow was no monk from the abbey, thought Delbeth. He had no tonsure, and the leather and padded cotton tunic bore no resemblance to a religious habit. And why would a monk be carrying a sword that nearly brushed the ground? After that one long greeting (if greeting it had been) the man had said nothing at all, but only stared at Delbeth thoughtfully. Another came to stand beside him: a thinnish fellow with very bright eyes and something wrong with his nose. Delbeth felt his hair pulling itself upright. His shudders woke the harp. He led the pony quickly to the gate in the wall.

  “In the name of the gods my kin swear by, who comes here?”

  The voice behind the wickerwork spoke Irish. Delbeth replied, “It’s only me. Delbeth of…of… I have brought the poet’s harp to him.”

  Brother Eochaid opened the door. He had a small lantern. He peered beyond Delbeth and then at him. “Co
me in and God protect you,” he said. “God protect us all.”

  MacCullen came to Delbeth from the refectory, where council was being taken. He met the boy by a poor lamplight and found himself wishing he could read the expression on Delbeth’s face. “I have returned the harp,” Delbeth said.

  “You must have come a hero’s road to do so tonight,” replied MacCullen, a bit uncertainly.

  “No one bothered me, if that’s what you mean.” He handed over the clàirseach in its sheepskin case. MacCullen did not look at Delbeth as he took it. “Those men out there. Are they Gaill? Reavers?”

  Now the poet raised his eyes. “You passed through them and did not know it?”

  Delbeth sighed and rubbed his long nose with two fingers. “When I came to Dublin I found everyone looked like the Gaill. These men look no different. And they didn’t hinder me.”

  MacCullen’s confusion turned to pity. “Their intent is to kill us all at dawn.”

  Delbeth heard this through a sort of cold gray fog, like old woodsmoke. “To kill us? So. Well, it hardly matters…to a man without kindred.”

  “Without kindred?” Suddenly the reason behind Delbeth’s presence became clear to the poet. His face darkened in a leonine scowl. “You are without clan? Because of this? Of us?”

  The boy’s hidden anger found vent for a moment and he glared at MacCullen without words. Then he dropped his eyes as he said, “You lied to me, Ollave. Perhaps it doesn’t matter much to you—I’m only a cowboy. But you left me with nowhere to go.”

  “No word of it was a lie!” And then MacCullen flinched away from Delbeth and the little oil lamp he held threw wild shadows between the two. “O saints of God, I am entirely undone!” he cried. “I, who spent a life in boast of my word!”

  MacCullen dropped to his knees. The lamp fell and spilled, making a platter of flame which the earth drank and put out. He wrapped his arms about Delbeth’s bony legs and touched his head to the boy’s knees. “Honest man! In honor far beyond me! My dirbfine be yours, and my cattle also, and my brotherhood and my blood! Delbeth, once of Ui Garrchon, take me for your lesser brother, that you may be a model to me in truth, honor, and humility.”