Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  It was the power of the Irishman—the poet. Who said he had weapons that might cut, though he had never lifted a blade. The first man Holvar had ever struck without the presence of Odin lifting his arm, and the first who had not died. Holvar had been fool enough to let that power touch his men and now…

  “Today,” Holvar announced, “Odin has promised us our heart’s desire.” He turned his face toward the enemy.

  Tinker sniffed at the bloody thing MacCullen carried, but did not shy. Derval was sitting on his back stark naked, for the long léinne and brat had been intolerably constricting on horseback. Her flesh was flushed with cold and her nipples stood out. She looked uncomfortable in the enormous stock saddle John had brought with the horse. MacImidel sat beside her, and the difference between Tinker and the Dubliner’s pony made him appear the size of a child. Snorri Finnbogison sat on his heavy black horse with difficulty, for the animal was fresh. Ailesh clung behind him, looking through the crowd for one face.

  The poet delivered Delbeth’s body to other hands and looked over the milling horsemen to Derval, high above all. John came to join them, his hat in his hand and his hammer in his belt. He looked down at the horses’ legs.

  “It is only a sortie,” MacImidel was explaining to the abbot. “There is no value in having horse soldiers unless the horses keep moving. We will swing through their line and then return. Have the gate ready.”

  Derval called over, “We need something to break through their lines. Something big, to make a hole we can fight in.”

  MacImidel replied in irritation, “Fight? So speaks a woman who will not carry a weapon in her hand?”

  “I am riding my weapon.”

  Abbot Eochaid patted Tinker’s heavy shoulder. “Well, I can believe that! There is nothing bigger than this in the monastery, except the great cross and my great black bull.”

  Derval narrowed her eyes, gazing down at Eochaid’s unkempt tonsure. “Your great black bull?”

  He met her eyes, and then, without a word, ran off to the cattle sheds.

  Three monks returned with him, dragging a very large chunk of night, horned like an aurochs, between them. The bull plunged and swung his head left and right. Finally he was placed with his nose at the gate.

  It is now, thought Derval, and her insides lurched.

  “Open the gate and release him.” It was MacImidel who spoke, and a half-dozen tonsured monks moved to obey. But in the three seconds it took to open the gate and slip the ropes free, someone had leaped into the middle of them, grabbed the beast by the rough hair between his horns, and heaved up onto the animal’s neck.

  “Johnnie!” Derval cried.

  “Eoin! My Eoin Ban! If I had known you would ride, I would have come behind you!” shouted Ailesh, and she raised her hammer in salute. “Eoin, my hero and my man, now and for my life!”

  John stared at her, mouth agape, bobbing as the bull threw itself against its constraints. At last a grin stretched his indeterminate features and his white face flushed. At that moment the huge black bull was released.

  John Thornburn erupted out of the abbey swinging his hammer by its long leather thong and screaming in a falsetto that was half terror and half the pain of abused thigh muscles. Holvar saw him and believed for a moment that Thor, the rude hammer god, had come in response to the Irish poet’s call. But as the maddened animal bore down upon them, bucking and bellowing, and Holvar saw the horsemen charge out of the gate behind it, his fighting reflex took over. Even if it was Thor himself they fought today, they were the men of Odin, and victory was theirs.

  Halfway to the waiting Norsemen, the bull turned about, and with an enormous toss of his shoulders and head, threw John spinning into the air. Derval on Tinker’s back passed beneath him as he arced through the air, and then he was lying very flat on the ground, on the very spot of blood where Delbeth had met death. The entire horse troop passed over him, untouching.

  The gray horse and the black horse hit the Norse lines together, but where Snorri came on with sword unsheathed, not feeling the spear that glanced off his thighpiece of boiled leather, Derval rode straight on and cued Tinker into a capriole.

  It was a very bad capriole, for Tinker was terribly unprepared. He rose only three feet off the ground and his four legs kicked out unevenly. What was worse (to the horse’s limited perceptions) was that three of those legs hit things as they struck out. He came down stumbling and embarrassed, determined to do better at next signal.

  Next signal came immediately and the horse gathered himself and sprang.

  “By the teeth of Fenris,” cried Ospack in Holvar’s ear. “It is no mortal beast!”

  “Then make it mortal!” Holvar threw himself at the great gray, only to be blocked by the flanks of a black horse that thrust itself in. A shadow of a man on the black shouted, “Death to Holvar, shame of the Norse!” and a sword sliced down at his head.

  Half-contemptuously, Holvar blocked it and, on the return stroke, made ready to sever the black horse’s tendons. But there was a woman’s shriek and his sword rang in his hand. Holvar found himself staring at a broken blade and a hammer, which had dug a hole in the sod at his feet. The end of the broken blade had cut Holvar’s scalp in its flight. The woman—the flinger of the hammer—cried out in Irish, which Holvar did not understand.

  But then the black horse itself screamed and bounded forward with a knife haft sticking out of its ham. Holvar found himself with Ospack, who grinned with his bad teeth, handed Holvar another sword (Skully’s sword) and said, “You owe me a knife, Battle Chief.”

  MacImidel came into a snarl of horses and weapons and his men followed him. “Swing wide!” he called to them. “Stay clear and wide!” Then he had no attention to spare.

  The first Dubliner to touch the Norse line went down, as his pony’s forelegs were hacked away. The rider, falling with a leg under his mount, was dead and unrecognizable in moments. Behind him came another horseman, whose pony leaped the dead bodies in terror, to come down upon a spear. In less than a minute there was neither Norse line nor charge of horsemen, but a tangle of ruin and blood.

  “This is better!” called Ospack to his chief. “This is the play I crave!” Holvar returned a grin of teeth, but both knew it to be a lie. There was blood in Holvar’s mouth and his scalp stung like acid. Odin was not with them this morning. He would not forgive.

  Derval made the great loop along the edge of the clearing. Her concentration on Tinker was so intense she did not see the enemy below her, nor feel the wind of the swords that struck at her face. But she felt perfectly every connection those big hooves made with flesh, and she held him to the course so abhorrent to the gentle horse. When the Jolmsviking’s sword pricked his belly she felt it as surely as Tinker did, and in fury she turned the excited animal and forced it to trample its attacker into the dirt. Then she booted Tinker toward the monastery.

  Christ! Derval looked back to see the Dublin troop hacked and fallen behind her. Only five horses were up. MacImidel had not exaggerated their inexperience. They had allowed the enemy to re-form the shield wall she herself had opened. There was Snorri, however, riding toward her on a beast that limped badly. And there was MacImidel himself, still upright. He saw her and turned his pony’s head. Ax raised, he headed toward her.

  But in his path was a squat Viking, no taller than Johnnie. Derval saw that it was the man who had led the Vikings in song on the night she had raided their camp. His sword feinted toward the pony’s neck. As the beast shied off, the stroke re-aimed itself at MacImidel, who reversed his ax and parried. Letting the force of the contact swing the ax around, MacImidel struck at the attacker’s shoulder. And missed. He kicked his pony forward before the Viking chief could retaliate.

  “Here!” called Derval.

  But as soon as the horse captain had ridden far enough to view the battle as a whole, with his men down on either side and hardly a live horse to be found, he grimaced, let out a hiss, and galloped back. Snorri glanced at Derval, who shru
gged and followed.

  There were three men standing and one with a broken leg, whom Derval hauled onto the back of her saddle. These ran, protected by the remaining horses, toward the abbey gate.

  The gate was opened for them, but there was something in the way. Tinker swung wide around John Thornburn, refusing, even today, to trample someone he knew. Derval looked down and saw John. Cursing his stupidity, she reached to grab him and got only his cap. He had the knotted band in his hands; it came off. Then she was through the abbey gate, with Snorri’s black horse behind her, and behind them the broken and wounded Dublin troops.

  “Johnnie! Are you with us?” She heard no answer.

  John Thornburn had seen too much without understanding. He stood in the middle of a ring of battle, quite untouched, except by the blow of the earth against his head. Twice in a day’s time. Hardly fair. It left him very dizzy. John’s back was soaked with blood and he had no idea if it was his or not. It didn’t seem to matter. He watched Ailesh’s new red-haired friend go down, his head rolling across the ground like a soccer ball. He wondered if Ailesh would mind very much.

  He also wondered if he were dead already and that was why he felt so invisible and unconnected to all that was happening. If he were dead, though, why did it hurt so much? Well, perhaps it would stop soon, and he’d be able to rise away from here, into the sky. Or something.

  He played with his hatband absently. It seemed to relieve his head. This band of his grandfather’s was also the first piece of macrame John had ever studied. When Derval shot by and grabbed the cap out of his hands, he refused to let the band go.

  The horsemen were past and now the Vikings were running toward him. Soon it would all be over. John found himself singing “The Coast of Newfoundland.”

  Too bad it was the wrong song; he knew it so much better than the other. “No more will I go roaming on the coast of Newfoundland/With the seaspray making faces burn and the rope burning my hand/ Oh lie, did die di fingle and oh lie did die di cann.” Because he had learned it from his grandfather, John had originally believed the refrain to be in Micmac.

  Here came the Vikings.

  This was the man whom Holvar had believed to be some kind of deity. He stood in the path, holding a knotted cord in his hands, and Holvar wiped the blood from his eyes to stare at him. And as he looked, the battle chieftain’s eyes grew wider.

  It was his own younger son he saw, who died with his brother in Northumbria. It was not this, but rather Holvar’s own face, in the mirror of recollection. It was more the weathered, patient face of his wife, who was buried alone in Norway. Holvar, who had been at sea when she was buried, could never return to visit the grave.

  It was none of these, but a familiar-looking young man who regarded him without fear, anger, or even very much interest, and sang a Saxonish song not very well. Holvar raised his sword and then put it down again, thinking I won’t kill him. I’ll leave it to some other to kill him.

  But then the song was over and it seemed his men were all gone ahead. Holvar heard a voice—a familiar voice—calling, “Hurry, Holvar. You are late.” It was a very familiar voice, as the young man’s face was very familiar, and though the voice chided him (and he knew he was very late), it promised forgiveness. Holvar sprinted forward.

  When the song ended perfectly in time with the knotwork, John knew that this time it had been right. And the cold, strong smell that filled the air, as it had filled the stuffy church, had a name.

  Fish?

  Cod.

  He turned to see the green glowing gate behind him, with two dozen Norsemen standing with their feet in the water of the surf at L’Anse aux Meadows, looking very surprised. John was very surprised, too, for the Norsemen were standing where the net gallows should be but wasn’t.

  It’s a dream, he thought. All this. Not just the medieval thing but the whole Irish ball-of-wax. I’m home. I have only to wake up. He started toward the beach, believing that he would see the top of the school bell tower right around the corner of the green gate.

  Too much Book of Kells, he told himself. I’ve studied too much. Jeesus, imagine me trying to tell that to any of my teachers at school—that I’ve studied too much. Me, John Thornburn, the great slacker.

  As he approached the blue water that lapped so naturally and inexplicably out of the trampled sod, his delight at waking became mingled with regrets. This place—looking so much like Newfoundland, so much like his home. And he thought about the language that had been in his ears here, so much sweeter than English. He recalled the scriptorium, where a row of pens was always engaged in the best possible work upon paper. He thought about the face of Bridget. Was that a dream? Had he the capacity to make up—that?

  He thought of Ailesh and his dizziness receded. The bad dream quality which made everything absurd and meaningless around him was broken, and he remembered clearly what Ailesh had called him: “My hero and my man, now and for my life!”

  “You’re just a teenager, my maid,” he whispered with some bitterness. “Full of ramlatch notions. I’m no one’s hero and not much of—”

  At the edge of the water John stopped and hung his head. He shuddered once. “Ailesh?” he called out.

  Then the water went out, and the smell of fish dissolved in the air of Ireland. Sun touched the wall of the cattle enclosure before him, but John’s heart was a cold ball inside him.

  The only gate was the gate of the abbey, and it was empty. Ailesh herself came out of it and flung herself toward him. “No one’s hero, and not much of a man,” he said to her with some intensity, and then he allowed her to lead him in.

  There were the monks, some with axes and some with swords. There was the poet and Snorri. All were kneeling, even Derval. John Thornburn thought he’d better kneel too. He heard singing: much better singing than his. He leaned forward and rested his head on Ailesh’s shoulder and passed out that way.

  Chapter Eighteen

  That’s all gone by now, and the high heart and the fun are all passing from the world. Then we take the homeward way together, easy and friendly after our long revelling, like the children of one mother, none doing hurt or harm to his fellow.

  Tomas O’Crohan, The Islandman

  John woke in darkness with a terrible head. He hadn’t felt the aftereffects of a migraine this badly since he was a child. But of course, he hadn’t any drugs here. He felt a moment’s depression as he realized that his hope that the Beautiful Face had cured him of headaches along with everybody else was false. Then he remembered. This was no migraine; he’d fallen off a horse. No, a bull.

  Both.

  He tried to sit up, feeling his spine stretch very painfully along his back and neck as though it had come loose from its socket. Groaning, he sank back down. But the noise brought about events. There was a rustle of cloth and daylight played over wicker walls above his mattress. A beautiful face appeared before him. Her eyes were goldish-greeny-brown and her cheeks blushed like a rose. After a moment’s strenuous focus he recognized it was not Bridget but Ailesh. She smiled at him with a sweet happiness, and it occurred to him that much could be done with the lines of that face.

  John discovered that if he kept his face from moving, the pain was greatly reduced. Ailesh lifted his head carefully and held a metham to his mouth. The brew tasted like peppermint and garbage.

  “We—we won the battle?” he asked, amazed and gratified at how pitiful his voice sounded. “We must have, or else…”

  Her eyes went perfectly round. “How can you ask, Eoin? How can you, of all people, ask that question?”

  His only reply was to close his eyes, so Ailesh added, “Don’t you remember?”

  “I fell off a muckin’ huge bull. I remember that.”

  “You sent the reavers away.”

  He actually turned his head. “I…sent them away? I just went up to them and said, ‘Here, you. I think it’d be better all around if you just went—’”

  Ailesh giggled. “How sad you alone should f
orget your own miracle. You sang a great prayer and Bridget or the Son of Mary opened a hole and took them. I think it must have been the saint, for she shows such an interest in you.”

  John really did sit up. “Ye Gods and little fishes! I’ve sent the Vikings to my house!”

  “No, no.” Ailesh lowered him down. “I know well the gate of the red cross. This was a round, green shining, and they charged through it as though they did not see.”

  John laughed: laughed and winced. “Maybe I’ve sent them to Halifax.”

  “Wherever that may be.”

  “It’s the bad place. Or—” John had a jumbled memory. Then it went away. “I don’t want to think about it,” he said. He curled his hands under his chin and fell asleep.

  He had been having a good dream and awoke with one hand on his tumescent cock. As though the dream hadn’t ended, there was Ailesh hovering over him. It seemed she had noticed the quality of his dream. He sighed, clearing cobwebs, and then his face set in disapproval.

  “I’ll bet you’re fifteen years old, Ailesh.”

  Her eyes widened. “Every day of it! But surely I am not past the age of bearing, and whatever beauty I had a few years ago I still possess.”

  His smile turned into a wince. “You’re smashing, Ailesh. But I’m twice your age; I can’t take advantage—”

  She put a soft hand over his mouth. “It’s therefore for you to take care of me and teach me the wisdom of age.” John found himself kissing the fingers that covered his lips. “I love you, my heart’s heart. I will be to you whatever you choose me to be; if I am too young and silly for you, I will be your young and silly sister, and if I am…not a great enough woman for you”—Ailesh paused here, for John had put his hand over her own and was kissing it repeatedly—“then I will be your companion and student in work. But what I most desire…” She touched his trousers.