Three monks whom I had not chosen for the mission came scrambling down the steep hillside and splashed through the shallows. As the boat was being launched they tried to climb into it. Colmán lifted an oar to push them away, but I stayed his hand.
“We have neither space nor supplies for them,” said Liber, who had been put in charge of provisioning our vessel.
Tarlách added, “They didn’t even help build the boat.”
The interlopers fell to their knees in the water and extended imploring hands towards me. “We want to be pilgrims for the rest of our days. Allow us to go wherever you go, Brother Abbot, or we shall remain in this place until we die.”
I said, “You are likely to die sooner if you come with us. We are venturing out onto the Western Sea and only God himself knows what lies ahead of us. We might sail off the end of the world and fall into the abyss.”
“If you are willing to take the chance, why can’t we?”
“I have taken care to select only those men who are stoutest of body and spirit for my companions,” I explained. “We have fasted for three days of every week in order to cleanse our bodies, and prayed for forty days to prepare our souls for this voyage. My failure to include you is not a criticism but a kindness. I spare you from trials you are not equipped to face.”
The three insisted I was mistaken. Each of them claimed special abilities which would more than qualify him to make the voyage. While my crew grumbled among themselves and our boat skittered like a restive horse, I stood with folded arms, listening until the last argument had been uttered and the last plea made. Then I said, “I have explained my reasons, yet still you demand to come with us. Very well. But I tell you this much. One of you has performed a deed of great merit and God will reward him in due course. For the other two a dreadful judgement awaits.”
Each man assumed he was the one who would be rewarded. All three climbed into the boat.
I had warned them. They could never claim I failed to warn them.
Chapter 4
‘On the morning following my arrival in Tearmónn Eirc I attended Mass,’ Brendán wrote in his journal, ‘together with other members of the Altraighe. My tribe. Strangers to me. Each acknowledged me with a nod or a smile, but I was too befuddled to respond. Thank God they were Christians and forgave me.
After Mass the little boy said to the bishop, “Your church is very dry, but how can it be God’s house when God’s house is at Cill Íde? No one can have two houses. Are there two Gods?”
Erc frowned. “Only one God,” he said firmly. “One God, who is not dead. One God who is All. You will understand in time.”
“I want to understand now.”
Erc busied himself gathering up his cloak and staff. When the boy glanced dubiously at the staff, Erc said, “This is called a crosier, the symbol of Christ the Good Shepherd and emblem of my office. Think of me as a shepherd who will take care of you.”
The child was looking at him as if he spoke in another language entirely.
Brendán wrote, ‘After Mass the bishop took me for a long walk to the Wild Place, and my mother.” Wild Place indeed. There was nothing gentle about Fenit. No tree, no flower; only a little rough grass clinging to the earth with fierce intensity. My birthplace was on the north shore of the bay of Tra Lí, with the great empty sky brooding overhead like the eye of God.
I thought it more beautiful than the bishop’s church.
Meeting Cara was an unsettling experience. She was nothing like Íta. The woman was as thin and brittle as a dead twig. Her face was scored with long red weals where she had clawed her own flesh. She looked at me once, emitted a piercing shriek, then closed her eyes and never looked at me again. She would not let me touch her—nor did I want to. Cara smelled of rot and decay, of pernicious grief.
The only life in the house was her daughter, Brige, a thin little girl with slightly pointed ears. She held out her arms the moment she saw me. “My brother!” she exclaimed. Her enthusiastic hug warmed me to my toes. The scent of her pale skin reminded me of ferns and moss, but her little hands were chapped and red.
We chattered happily together while the bishop tried to have an intelligent conversation with Cara.
With no success at all.
Erc waited until he and the boy were out of earshot of the house—and of Brige waving from the doorway—before saying, “I trust you understand why I could not leave you in that house. The poor child has all she can do to take care of her mother.”
“And you say Cara’s my mother too? How do you know that?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“But how do you know?”
“I was present when you were born.”
The boy stopped walking and looked up at the man. “You were?”
“Indeed I was. I shall never forget it.” Erc’s swift voice slowed once again, altered its rhythm. Became music. “You entered this world at high tide during a full moon. While your mother laboured to give you birth, a surge greater than any in living memory roared out of the ocean. Infants are born bloody, yet when you emerged from her womb clear water streamed off your flesh. You appeared to have been lifted straight from the sea. The watery portents surrounding your birth could not be ignored, so I christened you Braon-finn.”
“You christened me?”
“The authority came to me through Patrick from Jesus Christ himself,” the bishop chanted. “You were born four hundred and eighty-four years after the birth of Christ. Four hundred and eighty-four years after you die Christ will still be remembered.”
The chant ceased. Erc blinked, cleared his throat. “Contrary to our hopes,” he said in his normal speaking voice, “your presence has not ameliorated your mother’s grief. Seeing you may even have made it worse. You do look uncommonly like Finnlugh.”
“What will become of her?”
“We shall pray for her.”
“How will that make her better?”
Erc had learned that he could not dismiss this child with facile answers, so he worded his reply carefully. “By helping Cara to be whatever God wants her to be.”
“You mean God is still alive?”
“Of course.”
The little boy heaved a sigh of relief. “All my fathers aren’t dead, then.”
Erc was not an emotional man, yet for a moment he rested his hand on the child’s curls. “Come along now, boy,” he said. “We have a long way to go before dark.”
“And you will send me home tomorrow?”
“By ‘home,’ you mean Cill Íde?”
“Yes.”
“In all good conscience, I cannot. I would be remiss in my responsibility to your family if I did not keep you here and tutor you myself.”
“But you have to send me back to Cill Íde! Sister Lerben’s going to teach me the Latin alphabet.” The little boy’s voice wavered at the very end. Not tears, but almost.
“A commendable beginning,” said the bishop, “but only a beginning. Men who are called to the priesthood come to me for an education. You too are going to have that privilege. I shall teach you to read and write in Latin, and also in a phoneticised version of the Irish language. In addition you will study mathematics, geography, and canon law. Our scriptorium contains books from Rome and Alexandria. The world is about to open up to you, my lad.” He paused to clear his throat. “Perhaps we should begin by calling you Brendán. That is how Braon-finn would be pronounced in Rome.”
“You can’t change my name!”
“Of course I can. I named you in the first place.”
The boy had not known the meaning of the word ‘subsume,’ but he recognised the sound of inevitability.
He squared his small shoulders and rolled the name across his tongue. “Brendán,” he said aloud. Trying out the sound.
‘So began the second phase of my life,” he wrote in his journal. ‘The bishop installed a sense of discipline which I sorely lacked. In the beginning, one-third of my day was allotted for prayer and one-third
for study. The remainder of my time was for those things which the bishop deemed necessary to life; eating and sleeping, but also contemplation.
Not ‘play,’ however.
To step from sunlight into shadow. To feel the world shift as things change and change again, and realise nothing will ever be the same.
Different is not necessarily worse.
When Erc returned home to Eithne with the newly named Brendán he did not offer an explanation for the change, nor did she ask. She knew he would tell her eventually. The bishop’s wife was his unacknowledged confessor.
In their bed at night Erc said, “I suspect Íta and her nuns are imparting a one-sided vision of Christianity to the boys in their charge.”
“Is that so?” Eithne tried to sound surprised. She knew where this was going. Having made the decision, her husband needed to justify it.
“Íta can afford to prattle of lambs and good shepherds,” the bishop said. “That is all she knows of life. As her father’s favourite daughter she finds no rocks in her path—she has only to ask, and whatever she wants is given to her. It has never been like that for me.”
“Never,” Eithne echoed. She was well trained in responses.
“I have worked hard for everything I have. You know how difficult it is to get the smallest amount of funding out of Rome. Even Patrick had trouble.”
“I know,” said Eithne.
“It was time to take the boy away from Íta,” the bishop went on. “Bringing Christian enlightenment to the Irish depends upon opening their minds to new ways of thinking. And that requires education. Unfortunately, the Church of Rome is preoccupied with the barbarians who are destroying civilisation. Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Huns…” Eithne felt her husband shudder. “We need an army of dedicated Christians here,” he stressed, “to defeat the forces of paganism and superstition on this island. Ours is a new sort of warfare, Eithne, and no one is better suited for it than Finnlugh’s last son. Having spent some time with him now, I know him to be a child of uncommon strength and will. But if he is going to join the struggle he must be properly educated.”
“And is he?”
“Is he what?”
“Going to join the struggle?”
“Of course he is,” Erc said briskly. “The boy was consecrated to the task at birth. The sea claimed Finnlugh—but Christ claimed Finnlugh’s last son. It is my obligation to prepare him for his special life.”
Erc understood the requirements of a special life. His own noble blood had not protected him from pain and disappointment, but everything he had endured was worth it. Ultimately his sacrifices had taken him to Tara and the court of the high king, and then to the Hill of Slane on a cold spring morning…
Brendán laid the quill aside. The real work of writing took place in the head.
Loneliness weighed hard on me at first. The bishop did not want for words; he spoke to me frequently but discouraged my asking questions. Any conversation with him was inevitably one sided. I could talk to Eithne, of course, but she wasn’t interested in the things that interested me.
I sorely missed the boys who had been my brothers, my playmates, my friends. The other residents of Tearmónn Eirc were adults. Their conversations took place in the air above my head.
The novice priests, all of whom were much older than I, conversed almost exclusively in priest language. “Icky icky icky, ooyus ooyus ooyus.” I was jealous and fascinated—every boy loves a secret language. Recognizing a few of the words I had heard at Mass, I tried to join in. My first efforts were awkward. The others laughed. Ninnidh, a relative of the bishop, accused me of being slow-witted.
On that day I resolved to master the language of Rome.
Brendán resumed writing. ‘Time was measured in canonical hours announced by the ringing of bells adjuring us to pray. Matins, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, and Compline. All of life’s other activities were fitted into the spaces between. The bishop did not share Íta’s philosophy of gentle simplicity. He preached the value of bare subsistence for focussing thoughts on God. My bed was a mat of reeds laid on hard earth, and I was given just enough food to take the edge off my hunger without ever satisfying me. We all were.
Only later did I realise that Erc’s austerity had a practical reason behind it. Altraighe-Caille, embracing the bay of Tra Lí, was not fertile farmland.
‘My clothing consisted of a thin woollen coat with a hood attached, worn over a plain tunic that fell almost to my ankles. The same leather sandals served me summer and winter. The only difference between my attire and that of the novice priests was the heavy cloak, or brat, which I had brought with me. Eithne insisted I be allowed to keep it, but the bishop would not let me wear it except in the most extreme weather.
‘The bishop explained that Christianity recognised three degrees of martyrdom: green, white, and red. White meant giving up everything one loved for the sake of God; red meant giving up life itself in his name. I was to undertake green martyrdom, which involved fasting and labor to free oneself of evil desires.
At my age I did not know what evil desires were. Sister Íta had never mentioned them. Yet the bishop arbitrarily attributed them to me.
Am I being objective in my depiction of Erc? Are my remarks coloured by knowing too much about him, or not enough?
To give him credit, the bishop was as strict with himself as he was with others. He ate sparingly and wore the same clothes summer and winter, varied only by the vestments he put on for divine service. Eithne had made a great shaggy cloak for him, but I never saw him wear it.
Erc commanded respect by using the formal language of a brehon, even in casual conversation. On one drawing of breath he could employ more long words than I had heard in my short lifetime. There were moments when the poetry inherent in the Gael shone through—that was his gift. The beauty of his voice on those occasions drew people to him, and through him to Christ.
Among the Irish it is well known: whatever a person might say in the ordinary way, when he speaks poetry he speaks truth. That’s why I believed in the silver-horned stags. The bishop spoke of them in his poetic voice.
One summer’s day when no one was watching, I ran all the way to the strand to search for them.
The sea. Right here.
I never thought there would be so much of it.
The little boy had stared in awe at the dark blue water, the living water, glimmering all the way to the horizon. Fearful and fascinated, he watched it advance with a rushing hiss and a skirt of foam, fall back, advance again. Coming ever closer. Swallowing the pebbled sand and carrying it away; leaving different pebbles in trade.
When he shaded his eyes with his hand he could see as far as Fenit. Between himself and Fenit he noticed a strip of high ground jutting out from the land; a disintegrating promontory being eaten away by erosion. The great bay in front of him was freckled with fishermen in little boats, casting their nets.
Water was access. By sea one could circumnavigate Ireland. Rivers made travel within the interior possible. Large rivers were navigated in sturdy dugout canoes carved from immense oak trees. Bowl-shaped vessels called coracles were useful in shallow water. The most common type of boat was the currach, a wickerwork frame covered with oxhides that had been tanned with oak bark and stitched together with leather thongs. Currachs were propelled by spoon-shaped oars, though it was possible to rig a mast and sail.
Currachs were built in different sizes and readily portable. A strong man could carry one, a dozen men could fish from one, or even transport a cow and her calf to an offshore island for grazing. The currach was indispensable in the territory of Altraighe-Caille.
Brendán shaded his eyes with his hand so he could watch the men fishing, but they were too far away for him to see any details. Nor did he hear the belling of the stags, or glimpse their silvery horns on the crests of waves. There were plenty of other things to interest him, however. He sat down to strip off his sandals and tie the thongs together. Then he slung them over his
shoulder and set out to explore the beach.
The tide line was littered with exotic stones he had never seen before, with gelatinous growths dissolving back into ooze, with fragments of tiny skeletons hinting at miniature monsters. Treasure trove for a small boy. He ran from one to another with shouts of glee. If only Sister Íta were here! She would know the name of this, and that. She would marvel at the numerous seashells and call them jewels. She would…
Brendán stubbed his bare toe and yelped with pain.
Crouching down to rub saliva on the toe, he discovered the culprit. It was a stub of wood. Sister Íta had taught him about trees and plants, so he knew that white ash had no business growing on a beach. The boy scrabbled in the sand…
…and uncovered part of a skeleton shaped by the hand of man.
A flexible wooden lath to which a fragment of oxhide, slimy from long immersion in water, was laced by disintegrating strips of leather.
Brendán tightened his fingers around the wood. Cocked his head as if listening. A play of emotions ran across his face like the shadows of clouds on water.
He stood up and gazed towards the distant boats, then began walking along the beach. When he came to the eroded promontory, he scrambled up the side and buried the fragment of wreckage on the top. From a nearby tumble of rocks he took enough stones to erect a small cairn over the grave. White quartz stones, glittering in the sun.
The task completed, he stood beside the cairn and turned his eyes towards the sea. Not thinking much of anything. Letting his eyes follow the movement of the waves. Listening to the cries of the gulls.
Gradually he became aware of himself and the ground on which he stood as existing apart, in an Other Place.
The world was outside. In this Other Place he felt intensely alive, yet deeply at peace.
Brendán told no one about his adventure: the first totally private thing in his life. He returned whenever he could to the promontory. Over a matter of months he was troubled to observe that the strip of headland was shrinking. Would the Other Place vanish with it?
Brendan Page 4