Brendan

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “Gaeth’s brother was a bard,” Dubán added. “He died years ago.”

  “He was killed years ago,” muttered the other man.

  “Did you bury him in the High Grave?”

  The boy’s innocent question shocked Gaeth. “Of course not!”

  “Time and weather have it almost destroyed by now,” Dubán said. “When we were children we went up there sometimes, but we never touched the tomb. The Druids said we would be cursed forever if we disturbed it.”

  Brendán started to ask about the Druids. Stopped. Sat very still.

  The boat rose and fell. Swooped and swung.

  Brendán’s stomach swooped and swung.

  When the first of the great ocean rollers struck the currach he turned a delicate shade of green.

  “I said,” Dubán repeated, “would you like to have a try with the oars?”

  “Not quite yet,” murmured the boy.

  “If you change your mind…”

  “That’s all right,” said Brendán. Even more faintly.

  While the two men discussed tides and currents for his benefit, he huddled in misery in the bottom of the currach. Time passed. Nothing improved.

  Without looking over his shoulder, Dubán said, “Always make the sea work for you, Brendán. We’ll go out far enough to ride back on the incoming tide. You understand?” When there was no response he turned around; looked down. “Are you all right, lad?”

  Brendán gave up the struggle. Shame-faced, he clambered to his feet to spew the contents of his stomach over the side.

  At that moment the sea heaved upward like some huge beast coming out of hibernation.

  The currach stood on end.

  I flew.

  For years afterward I relived that moment in my dreams. Caught so briefly between sky and sea that I had no consciousness of either, I was aware of something extraordinary. A spangled rainbow radiance enveloped my entire being. It lasted no more than the blink of an eye and ended when I struck the water. But it was real.

  “What are dreams, Sister Íta?”

  “Dreams are one of the ways in which God talks to us, Braon-Finn.”

  Rain was falling again: a heavy rain that bled the light from the sky. The scriptorium filled with shadows. Brendán lit a lamp so he could continue writing.

  Remembering.

  Down down down into salt water that flooded into my throat and nose. Burning them, choking me. I had been watching the sea for months yet understood nothing about it until that day. The sea was harder than a fist and colder than cruelty. No prayer for mercy could touch its icy heart.

  The light was not suddenly gone, it was as if there had never been any light. As if no eyes had formed in my eye sockets. All I had was the memory of an incredible radiance on the other side of the dark.

  A hand closed on his hair. His last conscious thought before the terrible darkness overwhelmed him was of Sister Íta. Rescuing him.

  Like most of their fellow fishermen, Dubán and Gaeth could not swim. A man who could swim was tempting fate, daring it to toss him into the sea and leave him struggling for agonising hours before succumbing to exhaustion. Better to die at once and have it over with.

  But they would never be forgiven if they allowed the godson of Bishop Erc to drown from their boat.

  One man frantically plunged into the water, hoping to catch the boy before he sank too deep to reach or was swept away by the current. The other was left trying to keep the currach stable in a running sea.

  In his journal Brendán wrote, ‘On the day we set out on the greatest of all adventures there was a running sea. We launched our boat in quiet water at the mouth of the creek below Diadche. Bending to the oars, we rowed until the sea took hold of us.

  Always make the sea work for you.

  ‘The tide carried us far out beyond the ninth wave. Then the sails were raised and the oars shipped.

  And we were in the hands of God.

  During that first day some of the brothers talked constantly to hide their nervousness, but I was calm. God gives each person a gift. Some are as obvious as Sister Muirne’s talent for music. Others appear to be of no benefit. Erc’s broken shoulder was one of these, yet it had led him to Christ.

  My gift is intuition. A sudden urge that comes from nowhere, yet is irresistible.

  Some might call it a flaw in my character.

  I was frightened of lightning and bee stings and half a dozen other imagined perils—until I was offered a ride in a boat. Intuition prompted my acceptance. When I was flung into the heart of the sea I discovered what real terror was.

  Surviving the worst that could happen endowed me with physical courage. This was the quality above all others which would make my remarkable future possible.

  “How could this be?” Erc roared at his wife. “Were you not watching the boy?”

  “You mean your student? You never asked me to stand guard over your students.”

  The student in question lay wrapped in blankets on the stone hearth, as close as possible to the fire. Brendán’s lips were blue and he was shivering violently, but he was alive—at least for now. Two men stood to one side watching him. They were shivering too, though not from the cold. Dubán and Gaeth were not sure how the bishop would react.

  “What can be done for him?” Gaeth asked hoarsely.

  As everyone in the room knew, the best healer in the territory lived not far away. If a deep-lunged man shouted from atop the wall of the lios, his shout would be heard and passed on to another, in the time-honoured method of communication, until the healer heard it and came running.

  The Druid healer.

  Eithne rolled her eyes towards her husband.

  They had been married too long; Erc knew her thoughts. He replied with the silent jut of his jaw. No Druids. “Brendán is in God’s hands now. If God wants him to live, he will. Let us pray.”

  The four adults knelt on the swept earth and bowed their heads over their folded hands.

  Afterward they told me I was ill for a long time. I don’t remember; everything ended for me with the dark.

  When at last I woke up, a girl was sitting beside me. Her face was only a blur. I thought she might be Íta and called out to her.

  She laughed and I slid back into the dark.

  The next thing I remember is Eithne trying to spoon a little warm broth into my mouth.

  “You gave us a dreadful fright, Brendán.”

  The boy could not answer. His throat felt as if a furze bush had been shoved down it. When he turned his face away from the spoon he saw the girl again, standing in the shadows. She was not Íta after all.

  Eithne said, “In your illness you kept calling for your brothers. I suggested you might be lonely for another child, so the bishop sent for….”

  Brige stepped out of the shadows to take the spoon from Eithne’s hand. “Taste this for me,” she urged.

  The light returned with Brige. Not the unearthly radiance I recalled, but a tender glow that lit a lamp in my soul. From the beginning I knew she was not like the rest of us. Brige could sing to the bees and make them swarm, but they never stung her.

  At least I was no longer afraid of them.

  During Brendán’s convalescence Brige fetched water, collected fuel for the fire, sewed and swept and scrubbed—performed all those tasks which had grown difficult for an aging woman. Under Brehon Law Erc could have taken a second wife if his first wife agreed and the second wife would have inherited these tasks, but Brehon Law was pagan law and Erc would have none of it.

  As they lay in their bed at night, Eithne casually called the bishop’s attention to the improvement in their domestic arrangements with Brige in residence. She did not make suggestions; she merely sowed the seed. In a soft voice, in the night.

  After a few such nights Erc told Brige, “I have decided that you will remain in my house. Your brother benefits from your proximity and you are a great help to my wife.”

  Brendán received an expanded explanatio
n. “Keeping your sister here leaves your mother with no youngsters to raise,” Erc pointed out. “Therefore I am sending Cara back to her own clan. They have an obligation to her, and their holding is out of sight and sound of the sea, so she will be spared constant reminders of her husband’s tragedy. In time she may even recover her senses. Her house will be given to a family with children.”

  “But…”

  “Yes, Brendán?”

  “Finnlugh’s house. Should it not be mine?”

  “When you are old enough you will be ordained as a priest and sent out to convert the pagans. Wherever you go, God will provide such dwelling as you require. Things always work out when we put our trust in him,” Erc emphasised.

  The bishop said I would be a priest, so I would be a priest. I was still of an age when the certainty of authority was comforting. I pitied fishermen and farmers, all those who must struggle throughout their lives to be worthy of God, while I was marked as God’s own from the beginning.

  At heart, the bishop was a simple man who looked for simple answers. He did not know, as I was to learn later, that sometimes there are no answers.

  As soon as Brendán was strong enough he returned to his cell and his studies. Returned to the little drystone hut he had to stoop to enter. The tranquil silence within the dome and the scent which he recognised as his own settled around the boy like a cloak. In just such a way an animal knows its own burrow and gratefully returns.

  The novice priests rejoiced in his recovered health—except for Ninnidh, a sallow man with thin red lips that were always wet, and a veiled gaze that never engaged with Brendán. The boy felt insulted. Ninnidh only acknowledged those he thought were above him in station.

  ‘The years that followed were among the happiest of my life,’ Brendán confided to his journal. ‘My sister, Brige, was a constant joy. Her bright spirit was the spirit of the rainbow and just as hard to capture. She spent long days working indoors, yet there was always a whiff of field and forest about her. She was like some wild creature who overcame its shyness and lifted its head to be patted.

  ‘The bishop would not allow Brige to attend lessons with me. Under Brehon Law women from noble families could receive an education, but Tearmónn Eirc conformed to the rules of Rome. Bishop Erc said, “Roman law considers the female, the weaker sex, as an adjunct but never a partner. God in his wisdom gave men greater strength and superior intelligence. For this reason, both authority and the education behind it should retained by the male for the protection of the female.”

  I didn’t argue the point. Perhaps I should have. Many years have passed since then, years during which the women in my life have been the comfort of my life. Now I know that a man dying in agony cries out for his mother.

  Privately I thought it was unfair to deny my sister that which was freely given to me, so I decided to teach Brige myself. I repeated Sister Íta’s adage: Learning is the game we play for pleasure. Brige gladly entered into the game. She mastered numbers more quickly than I had done and was not above boasting about it. I loved her for her faults and not in spite of them. Perhaps God gives us faults so we will know we are not gods.

  Late one afternoon Brendán and his sister made their way to a secluded nook behind one of the craftsmen’s huts; their favourite classroom, out of sight but sheltered from the prevailing wind. The two children sat down side by side. Brige asked, “Did the bishop tell any good stories today?”

  Brendán shook his head. “Not today. He was talking about the monastic movement. You know, nuns and monks. ‘Monk’ comes from the Greek word monachos,” the boy elaborated, showing off, “which means ‘one who is alone.’”

  “What is ‘Greek’?”

  “The language spoken in the city of Athens; that’s somewhere in the east.” Brendán vaguely waved his hand in the direction of sunrise. “The Athenians are very intelligent, they study science and philosophy and any number of interesting subjects.”

  “Science” and “philosophy” were unfamiliar terms to Brige, but she did not ask about them. Her brother was likely to respond with more information than she wanted.

  Brendán continued, “The bishop doesn’t speak Greek, but he knows a few words. He says it’s important to learn something about the east because Christianity consists of an Eastern Church and a Western Church, with one branch at Byzantium and the other at Rome. Monasticism began in the east, in Egypt and Syria, where a few men and women left the overcrowded towns and went to live in the wilderness.”

  Brige tried to pleat her smooth forehead into a frown of disapproval. “That was very foolish of them.”

  “It was very wise,” her brother contradicted. “The bishop says they chose to be alone with God.”

  “Alone with God.” The girl unexpectedly clasped her hands over her heart. “Oh, how beautiful! So much better than being alone with a madwoman!”

  It was the first time she had referred to her existence with Cara. Brendán was startled. With a child’s natural self-absorption, he had never thought about the lives being lived out of his sight.

  Brige’s remark expanded my horizons. Within days I was aware of currents in the bishop’s house. Below the surface, unseen yet powerful.

  Erc and his wife shared their Sabbath meal with Brige and me; my one escape from the diet of green martyrdom. The collation included a small piece of fish and an even smaller portion of red meat, usually venison. Remembering how I looked forward to the meat still makes my mouth water.

  Ninnidh often found an excuse to visit the bishop on Sabbath days. He brought a gift—a little jar of oil or a small basket of fruit, nothing ostentatious—so he would be invited to stay. During the meal he did not speak to us children. He scarcely acknowledged our presence, he was too busy buttering the bishop with flattery. I would have thought Erc too clever to be taken in, but if Ninnidh failed to visit us, Erc was clearly disappointed.

  Sister Íta taught that we should love everyone. She didn’t know Ninnidh.

  To Eithne, any and every guest was welcome. Ours was a poor diocese among poor people and there was hardly anything to share, yet Eithne always managed to produce some small delicacy. Her plain face lit with a kind of beauty when she offered the gift of hospitality. She hummed to herself while she prepared the food. And occasionally she laid a gentle hand on the bishop’s shoulder in passing.

  In 325 A.D. the Roman emperor Constantine had convened the first Ecumenical Council of the Church to establish universal doctrine and deal with serious controversies. More than three hundred bishops—the majority from the eastern branch of Christianity—and a number of lower clergy gathered at Bithynian Nicaea, between the Mediterranean and the Black Seas. The often-fraught Council eventually produced an official creed for Christians, and announced that all churches should celebrate Easter on a date to be determined each year by the bishop of Alexandria and promulgated by the bishop of Rome.

  Following a long debate about clerical celibacy, the Council also forbade priests to marry. With some reluctance they agreed that men who already were married when ordained would be allowed to cohabit with their wives, but continence was urged even for them.

  Ireland was a long way from the Roman province of Bithynia. The Gael, whose Druids taught that spirits are immortal and death merely an interruption in a long life, could accept the Risen Christ. They could accept the redesignation of pagan wells as holy wells, and pagan festivals as holy feast days. They could not accept the idea of an arbitrary date for Easter. They celebrated Christ’s resurrection on the day when Patrick first lit the Paschal Fire in Ireland, and that was that.

  Likewise, the men and women of the Gael—a passionate people long governed by Brehon Law, which took human nature into consideration—were not willing to accept restrictions to their sexual lives.

  In his journal Brendán wrote: ‘In the Ireland of my youth, priests often married in order to become more fully a part of the community they served. Most monks and nuns chose to remain celibate so they could devote themsel
ves entirely to God.” Yet humans are sensual beings, and God must have made us so for a reason. After all these years my little apostle still rises to praise Him.

  When the dreams began I didn’t understand them, not at first. I was accustomed to the familiar dreams of childhood, reflecting the life I knew.

  My new dreams were quite different.

  In the Western Sea we encountered a fish that looked like a woman. She swam for almost half a league beside our boat, her pale flesh glimmering up at us through the dark water. Several times she came to the surface as if to breathe. Once she raised what might have been an arm—or a fin—and appeared to wave at us.

  “Let’s try to catch her in our net,” urged Brother Moenniu.

  I shook my head. “You don’t know what manner of being you might catch.” I continued to lean over the gunwale, watching her.

  Brother Aedgal said, “She’s a woman, a beautiful woman, you can see that for yourself.”

  “What we see and what is really there may not be the same thing.”

  “You have a man’s eyes and a man’s parts as we all do,” Brother Colmán asserted. “Surely you won’t leave her to die.”

  “Surely I will not take her out of her element and into this boat,” I replied. “We have no right to abuse her. She exists, whatever she is, and that is enough. She is one of God’s creatures.”

  I continued watching her with my hands folded as if in prayer.

  The fish…the woman…came so close to the boat I could almost reach out and touch her. I did not. With the set of my shoulders I warned the other men not to attempt it either.

  When I thought she could see me I said, very softly, “Hello.”

  The woman…the fish…hung immobile in the water and looked up at me.