Like a symbol in a language we did not know.
He dived back into the sea with hardly a splash.
And the fog began to thin.
“Take up your oars,” said Brendán. “But be careful to advance slowly.”
The fog shredded; the unmistakeable outline of land appeared in the distance. Brendán began to chant, “The Lord is my shepherd…” The paean of gratitude was taken up by the monks. With all their might, they rowed towards the distant shore.
Aedgal shaded his eyes with his hand. When he saw a rocky beach strewn with boulders, he exclaimed, “There’s our landing place, waiting for us!”
As soon as they were near enough, the more agile men clambered over the gunwales and splashed through the shallows. Shouting. They did not know what words they cried. It was enough to be alive in that moment; in that place.
With the last of their strength they dragged the boat ashore.
Sechnall looked around. “Paradise,” he said in a dazed voice. He sat down abruptly and put his head between his knees to keep from fainting.
The beach was overlooked by a low ridge crowned with scrubby trees. On the beach was an abundance of driftwood; some of it above tide line and dry enough to burn. Brendán ordered the brothers to collect enough wood to build a fire. “We need to gather our strength again before we do anything else.”
Leaving the huddle of men on the beach, Colmán walked up the ridge. The stand of little trees along the crest had been twisted into bizarre shapes by the wind. They smelled almost but not quite like the pines he knew. Beyond them lay a rugged landscape composed of rocky ledges thrusting out of dense forest.
“We’re here,” Colmán said aloud. To assure himself it was true.
His voice was a stranger to the silence it shattered.
The answer was a cry unlike any he had ever heard. From somewhere in that rugged landscape came an inhuman scream of defiance.
Colmán swiftly drew his knife from his belt.
“Come back down here,” Brendán shouted to him.
“But there’s a…”
“Come back here! We need to stay together.”
Reluctantly, Colmán returned to the beach. Moenniu was saying to Brendán, “If this is Paradise we should be safe.”
Brendán gave him a sharp look.
If this is Paradise…
The tiny fire was blazing to life. The crackle and snap was familiar, and comforting. So were the voices of gulls scolding the invaders. But Brendán could not hear the belling of the silver-horned stags; not on this shore. The sound was different.
The smell of the air was different.
The strings of seaweed lying on the sand were different, and the sand itself was a different colour.
Even the light…
Paradise.
They did not spend their first night on the beach but made a camp on the ridge; the high ground. Colmán stood the first watch with his knife in his hand. Brendán observed the knife but said nothing.
In the morning the sun rose, singing, out of the sea.
Sunrise. Right here.
Brendán recorded in his journal, ‘To commemorate our landing we searched for an appropriate stone. Upon its face we carved the ogham symbol for friendship, and the fish for Jesus Christ.’
Leaving Cerball and Tarlách to guard the boat—a precaution Gowrán scoffed at—the monks turned their backs to the east and explored for almost half a day without coming to the western shore of the island. They searched out stones to carve and leave as signposts so they could find their way back.
Ogham is a handy skill.
Machutus, who was fond of wine, was overjoyed to find grapevines growing wild. “If this were not Paradise it could be called the Island of Grapes!”
The seemingly limitless forest was interrupted by streams and lakes abounding with cranes, swans, geese, and ducks of every size and description. In the trees were sparrows and linnets and finches and a score of unfamiliar varieties in all the colours of the rainbow. Brendán observed glossy blackbirds with scarlet patches on their wings and large speckled thrushes with red breasts; he saw four different types of hawk and a vast flight of pigeons that blackened the sky.
Of course it was Paradise. There was nothing comparable in all the world.
When half a day had passed, they headed back towards the boat for the night. Cerball listened in open-mouthed envy to the sights they described.
Tarlách was less impressed. “If this is Paradise,” he said, “why didn’t you see any other people? You can’t tell me we’re the only men who ever made it to Heaven.”
“The answer is simple enough,” Gowrán assured him. “Paradise must be large enough to hold every good person who will ever be born.”
The following morning they launched the boat and sailed further down the coast, then went ashore and continued exploring. This time they caught a reassuring glimpse of human beings peering at them from behind trees; bronze-skinned, black-haired, with features unlike those of the Celts.
In his travels, Brendán had met people of other colours. In a soft voice and with many inviting gestures he tried to persuade the bronze people to come out in the open, but they ran away. “Obviously Paradise contains people of every race,” he said to the monks. “We should meet some of our own soon.”
‘For forty days we wandered this magnificent wilderness,’ wrote the abbot of Clon Fert. ‘We made camp on the banks of a wide river whose waters bore thousands of river-hyacinths. In a different place on a different morning we awoke to the cooing of a thousand doves. We experienced every season in swift succession, moving between the heat of summer and bitterest winter.’
In fact we built more than one drystone shelter against the climate. As might be expected, Tarlách constantly complained about the weather.
‘No matter where we roved, we saw the strange and wonderful. But in spite of our most patient efforts we were unable to converse satisfactorily with the inhabitants. They were shy at first but not hostile; they merely seemed astonished by us. We gave them gifts of the little we had.’
Eventually Brendán discovered a few sounds and signs which some of the bronze people appeared to understand. He and Gowrán attempted to talk to an elderly woman with sad, liquid eyes. She laughed at everything they said. At last they gave up in defeat.
Gowrán remarked, “She must have misunderstood. When we asked her where we could find God she said…”
“I know what she said. ‘Everywhere.’”
“Can it be that simple, Brother Abbot? It sounds almost pagan.”
Brendán nodded wordlessly.
“How are we to find him, then?” Gowrán wanted to know. “If he is here—and I have no doubt that he is—why doesn’t he appear to us?”
My gift is intuition. Intuition had led me to accept Tarlách as an important part of the whole; without him we might still be wandering in…
In the abbey of Clon Fert, Brendán laid down his quill and rubbed his burning eyes.
Almost time for Vespers, thank God.
A monk exhaling the odour of boiled eels spoke at his shoulder. “No matter how carefully you choose your words, Brother Abbot, whoever copies your manuscript may change a few of them. And the next copier may change more. It has been my observation that people often think they can improve on someone else’s writing.”
Brendán shoved his stool back before the monk could read what he had just written, and looked up. “Is that what you do, Brother Tarlách? Change the Gospel of the Lord in order to improve it?”
“Never! I was merely saying what I know to be true of mankind in general.”
“Why would anyone make a copy of my journal?” Brendán inquired.
“I seem to recall you promised to send one to Gildas.”
The abbot shook his head with rueful amusement. “You forget what you should remember, and remember what I’d as soon forget.”
“Does that include your promises? I would have thought better of you,” Tarlách said reproachful
ly.
“What I’ve written has meaning only for me, but a copy will be made for Gildas.” Noting the suddenly wary expression on his friend’s face, Brendán added, “I’ll assign it to one of the other brothers, I wouldn’t want to add to your work. First I have a little more to do on the manuscript. Not now, however. Will you walk with me to the chapel, Brother?”
Chapter 27
“Will you walk with me, Brother?” Brendán had said to Tarlách that day; that radiant summer day when Paradise was in full bloom around them. Side by side they strolled away from the other monks. Once they were out of earshot Brendán said bluntly, “Do you believe this is Heaven?”
Tarlách rubbed his nose with his sleeve.
“Tell me the truth,” Brendán urged.
“I don’t believe it.”
“All right,” said Brendán.
“And I don’t think you do either, or you wouldn’t have asked me that question. We’ve come all this way for nothing, haven’t we?”
All this way for nothing.
Brendán’s smile mingled sadness with serenity. “On the contrary, Brother Tarlách, during our voyage we’ve received everything we need. Perhaps not what we want, but what we need. We shall go home much richer than we left.”
When I told my companions we were returning to Ireland each man responded in his own way. Young Fursu was the most reluctant; he would have gone on sailing to the ends of the earth if we let him. Those who were closer to my age pretended disappointment. But I saw the gladness in their eyes.
Brendán wrote, ‘On our return journey there were none of the unpleasant incidents we had endured before. The weather was cold but clear for the most part, and the wind sped us on our way. We spent a peaceful Christmas and Epiphany with the community of Ailbe. Some of the brothers wanted to stay longer but Ailbe was too wise to agree. “You have your own place,” he told us.
‘I never appreciated Ireland until I sailed away. My voyages were always composed of two parts, and returning home was the better half. The brothers agreed with me. Upon entering the bay of Tra Lí we lowered our sails, shipped our oars, and knelt in the boat to offer prayers of thanksgiving.’
The miracles I had seen were mine to see. A different person might have seen something else, but I must look out of the eyes God gave me.
And I walk in the radiance of God.
Not every day, alas, and not as fully as I wish. There are still times when I worry, brood, desire, despair. The burdens of humanity remain with me, yet I lessen them by visiting the sacred place which is partly within my own soul.
I live in the here and now, wearing this skin, walking this earth, yet I am also living in eternity, where I shall be forever. Even after the sun and moon fall down.
With the passage of time my spirit becomes ever more lightly tethered to my body. For brief moments I can almost touch the incomprehensible yet perfect pattern that underlies Creation.
Humans are not true creators. We cannot make something out of nothing as God did in the beginning. We only can imagine that which already exists in some form. Because we live in a patriarchal society we envision God as an all-powerful father. We think of him as wrathful and jealous and compassionate because we are familiar with those emotions. We imagine Heaven as Earth Perfected.
We get everything wrong.
At night my sweet God talks to me. Sometimes, with an old man’s foolishness, I think it is the cry of seagulls, but there are no seagulls at Clon Fert. Surely I of all men know the authentic voice of God. Have I not heard it singing a thousand times? In the sun and the sea, in the wind and the waves. The old woman was right. God is everywhere.
The good brothers worry about me. They consider my age an infirmity. They do not understand that the flesh is being abraded from the spirit, setting it free. As Fionn-barr said, death is the whole point of life. And life, from beginning to end, with all its fleeting beauty and certain pain, is an education.
An education is always intended to prepare one for what comes next.
We had spent the day sailing before the storm, watching for a place where we could put ashore. We began to fear we might have to spend the night on open water. Shortly before sunset Aedgal called our attention to a stark black rock rising from the sea like an accusatory finger.
As we drew nearer we could make out the figure of a man crouched at the base of the rock. He was half in and half out of the water, being cruelly attacked by the pounding waves and even the rags he wore. The wind lashed his face with his shredded cloak but he made no effort to protect himself.
Over the gale we could hear his shrieks of pain.
“An unfortunate survivor of shipwreck,” Solám declared.
We bent to the oars and made all speed to offer assistance. When we reached the rock there was no landing place but we edged as close as we dared. The condition of the poor stranded creature was dreadful to behold. His emaciation was evident through his tattered clothing. He must be near death from starvation.
In the language of Rome I called to him, “Reach out your hand and we will bring you into our boat.”
He raised his head and looked straight at me. I have never seen such agony on a human face. His sunken eyes were pools of pain. “You cannot help me,” he said in the same language. “Go away and leave me to my fate.”
“Never!” I leaned as far as I could towards him. “Extend your hand.”
Instead he made a weak downward gesture, calling my attention to his body. For the first time I noticed heavy iron chains around his torso and ankles, holding him affixed to the stone. Incredibly, the chains appeared to have rusted in place.
Satisfied that I realised his predicament, he dropped his head onto his breast again and sagged against the chains.
The waves were rising. The boat shuddered with their force. If we remained where we were for much longer, our vessel would be dashed to pieces against the rock.
“We have tools that can break your shackles,” I called desperately. “You have only to reach for them, but you must hurry!”
Hearing my words, he lifted his head one more time. His face was smeared with his own blood. When he spoke his voice seemed to come from very far away, some lightless cavern of the human soul. “You do not understand,” the suffering man said. “I am he who was called Judas Iscariot.”
Brother Machutus gasped aloud. “That cannot be!”
Yet I had no doubt. I was looking into those eyes.
“What you see here is not punishment,” said the captive, “but the ineffable mercy of the Lord. This is the escape I am allowed from sunrise to sunset on every Sabbath during the seasons of Christmas and Easter. This is a veritable paradise compared to the tortures I suffer otherwise. For the rest of eternity I writhe in the blazing bowels of Hell, being smelted like lead in a pot.”
Across the bitter sea, across the agony of centuries, I gazed at that face. That pitiful face.
The ineffable mercy of the Lord.
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
“I can tell that you have a kind heart,” said the man called Judas, “and there is something you can do for me. Intercede with the Lord Jesus on my behalf. Ask that I be granted one additional day on this rock each year, in honour of our meeting.”
We bowed our heads and began to pray.
When I looked up again he was gone. The rusted chains hung loose.
Brendán’s lips moved silently as he scribed the final words on the vellum. ‘After we landed our battered boat on the strand of Tra Lí for the last time, I went alone to Diadche. God spoke to me on the mountain.
‘God. Not a, or the.
‘God. Who is All.’
The fate of the tragic individual chained to the rock is the exception to my rule of relating incidents when I remembered them. It is right to conclude with him; he is never far from my thoughts. I suspect that God’s purpose in all my voyaging was to arrange our meeting.
The lesson of Judas is this: the punishment will be in proportion to the sin
.
The message of Christ is this: every sin can be forgiven.
The bounteous land we found was not Paradise, nor did it hold the dream I have cherished for so long. All right. Through the ineffable mercy of Our Lord I know that Paradise still lies ahead of me. On the other side of the dark.
But I am afraid of the dark.
Historical Note
On the sixteenth of May in the Year of Our Lord 576, Brendán died in the abbey of Annagh Down, where the nuns had been caring for him in his extreme old age. A royal chariot transported his body back to Clon Fert for burial.
During the sixth century, more than three thousand students, many of them from Britain and the European continent, attended the great monastic colleges of Ireland, including Clon Ard in Meath and Clon Fert in Galway. In institutions like these the flame of literacy was kept alive through the Dark Ages.
By Morgan Llywelyn from Tom Doherty Associates
Bard
Brendán
Brian Boru
The Elementals
Etruscans (with Michael Scott)
Finn Mac Cool
Grania
The Horse Goddess
The Last Prince of Ireland
Lion of Ireland
Pride of Lions
Strongbow
The Novels of the Irish Century
1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion
1921: A Novel of the Irish Civil War
1949: A Novel of the Irish Free State
Brendan Page 26