Part 11

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Thus shall it ever be: Honor and sanctity Shed on the sons of Eire.

Sleep with the sword between Sons and a foreign queen! To daughters the blue dirk’s sheen Sooner than blood unclean!

For Fohdla the Fair Hold blood and the land, Else victors of Erinn Swarm red on her strand!

For eric is breaking; For soft heart in taking A mate out of Alba A thousand years’ snare!

A thousand years’ yoke On the bent neck of Erinn; A thousand years’ tribute of blood, Inis Fair!

“That was the _geis_ made binding by the priest-king in exile ere they cut out the tongue from him, and left him to rot when his clans heard of the maiming and sent no more gold of the ransom to the woman who had netted him. She was a queen; she had heard of his beauty and his sacred knowings, and had the jealous eye for that which was too fine for the vision of her people. Aye—she netted him and tricked his clan to pay eric against the day of his return. And in the end he fed with her wolfhounds, and was torn to death in their fightings. That is how it was; but he had the clear vision of the future years before his going! That rune I told, and the vision I told, to Cuan the Dark that it make strong his geis to hold against the charm of Dyveke the Dove.”

“Did it hold?” asked Diarmod.

“It did not hold. He broke from me and shouted that there were christian bonds between Erinn and the ancient enemies to the east. He would follow the christian bond, and make a forgetting of pagan geis laid upon princes of his line. That is how it was. I was the one who sent for the elders of our house, but it was too late. She was in his dun at Cualann ere their coming. There it was the men of his line put against him the ban of the unnaming, and the forgetting. That is where her lover, Thorold the Dane, stood him siege for her and made break in his walls. The curse of the _geis_ came in quickness to Cuan, for it was the hand of Dyveke, of the whiteness of doves, by which a knife found his heart, and his head was tossed by her from the tower to the feet of her lover, Thorold!

“With Thorold she sailed out to sea, but the girl child she had borne to Cuan after that beheading was hid in the cell of a monk who was let near for some shrivings. Thorold was raging like a maddened bull for the death of the child not his. Two were born that night. One was dead; it was given into his hands, and the fierce soul of him was content with that, not knowing. But Dyveke, the white, knew somewhat. She had heard the unnaming and the ban of his clan against Cuan for her sake. She had heard the _geis_ of the rune, and she had bitter hate for the banning of her, or of her blood, and it was a bitter curse she put against Erinn at her going away, and a bitter prayer she made that the seed of Cuan might raise up hosts of wolves to tear each at the throat of the other till the geis of the rune held true, and Erinn was broken, and her neck under the foot of the foreign men of enmity.”

The two kings looked at each other across the light of the fire and Diarmod turned to the portal as if a cold wind had struck him. He moved more close to the hearthstone and drew over him a robe of otter skin.

“And that was the ending?” he said.

“God and Mary knows! Mayhaps it was the beginning! It was the year Adrian, Pope in Rome, signed the grant of Erinn to King Henry what time he could win warriors for its conquering. The conquerors have not yet sailed from Alba, but the eyes of Alba are jealous eyes, and the grant was given the year the child of Cuan, Dyveke Og, came, born living, into the land of Erinn.”

“Young Dyveke?” repeated O’Carroll. “That name for her was never told me.”

“Your sister, the Lady Ethnea, had hatred of it, and Dervail was the name she made choice of instead. The mother of Cuan had kindred in the Ua Machflain, and to King Murtagh went the Lady Ethnea with concern for the dower and station of the unwelcome woman-child. A dower was given for her life in sanctuary, and that dower was doubled by Ethnea who had love for the father of the child. The ward of King Murtagh she has been called, and it may be she is thought of his breed. But Duighal knows she is Dervail nan Ciar, who had no right to live; and King Murtagh has no longing to see the evil face of her—she is of the shadows, and to be forgotten in walls of sanctuary—and the walls built high.”

“It is the first full hearing of the child I have asked for, though I had fear of the truth,” said Donough. “From the monastery she was taken to the castle of Ethnea, my sister. At the dying of that sister, she was brought to Maureen, who thinks her a bud of the tree of Machflain of Meath, to end in the convent of sheltered women.”

“Aye—that was hope of the prior when he gave penance to the monk who carried that white wolf’s whelp to his cell for safety! Aye—the years pass, and she has reached the age. No sons and no daughters should come to Erinn of that breed of Dyveke. I saw what I saw of the broken _geis_, and my hair went white in that seeing, and for that the fear is on me for that breed.”

“Then it was not in the young years the sight dark came on you, Kieran of the cell?” said Diarmod the king.

“It was not in the young years. It was by the hand of the one love of my kinsman, Cuan the Dark. Her lover, Thorold, found me out where I was putting a cover of earth over his headless body. The brute men of Thorold held me, and her white hand drew the hot iron across my eyes. She was hard, jealous, and she forgot nothing. She was Alba! She had the name of Dyveke the Dove, and her looks were sweet looks, and her voice had the music of birds, but her heart was the heart of her foremothers who ran with the wolf pack.”

Diarmod laughed low. “Your words are not the words of a priest of Mary,” he said. “An army of men with your heart would be a good army for battles.”

“Battles for Erinn were dreams in my life,” said Kieran. “Dyveke knew the dreams, and let me have my blinded life for the mourning of them! I wear the robe and do penance for my sins and for the sins of Cuan who died unshriven. But there is no sin in the strangle of a wolf, and no seas would be too wide for her following if I had but the sight. May she burn in hell all the years there is shadow on Erinn!”

“Be it so if she brings that shadow,” said Donough, “for that is no sin to say.”

“Truth for you! And the same to all who would walk in her thoughts! In the name of the Elements, and Mary, and the Father and Son!”

“In the holy names,” said Diarmod the king, and rose and stood by the fire with the otter skin robe about him in a quick tremble of cold.

Donough O’Carroll looked at him, and poured wine from the flagon into a jeweled cup.

“To your warmth,” he said. “We have talked the fire low on the hearth. Empty the guest cup with me for comfort of the body.”

Then he poured a cup for Kieran, thanked him and asked what gift he could give him for the story of the blood of Dervail nan Ciar, whose true name was Danish dove.

“Give your gift to Erinn for me, and make your own choice of that gift,” said Kieran, “but let it be a good ship to take the wolf’s whelp as far out of the land as the shores of Egypt, and that is a far sail for a good ship; or failing that, build a wall of stone, doubled, around the convent where she is barred from the sight of men. If she has what her mother, Dyveke, had, say prayers to Phadraig and to Brighde that the curse of the eric be not laid on Erinn.”

“That besides the doubled wall?” said Diarmod, who was warmed by the wine, and spoke lightly.

“Aye—besides the double wall! The paying of that eric is beyond thought. It is the yoke of a slave and a thousand years of blood on the bent head of Erinn!”

Kieran was led to rest by a servant of the castle, and was not told that Diarmod the king had been a listener to the tale of the rune.

Diarmod paced the room and quaffed another cup of the red wine of Gaul.

“Is it not enough that the priestly rules are ever near to ban anything of beauty coming a man’s way?” he grumbled. “But a hermit must bring runes of a thousand years to strengthen that ban! The tale would witch a man to follow her if but to see if she had the wonder in her of Dyveke the Dove—and tame that wonder as a falcon is tamed for the wrist of the master.”

“But that is a bird you will not take from its cage, Diarmod?” said Donough. “Take to memory the _geis_ of your own line against the hunting of birds—it is more than a thousand years, yet the bards are telling the legend even in our day—and it was a white bird in the legend, Diarmod, a white bird coming to earth with love-words and warnings to your ancestress, who was queen—and this white bird of the cloister you will not be seeking cage for, Diarmod?”

There was silence but for the crackle of the new wood heaped on the fire, and Diarmod looked long into the red heart of the flame before he spoke.

“No, Donough—one veiled maid of the cloisters brought shadow enough and blame enough to me—that is long since, yet never forgot.”

“It is Dhira you mean?”

“It is Dhira. Rest to her soul! She was robbed from me again by Dall Clairineach and hid in shadow to her death. No, I will not take another maid from convent walls—and no guest of yours from your castle; but if she is fair of body as that white mystery in the cloister, it is as well I have not crossed her path a-nutting in the forest.”

“You put light in my heart at that saying, Diarmod, for I saw the thought of you. But there are women always for you; women a-plenty.”

“Of a sort,” said Diarmod, who had to wife Maelmor na Tuathal, sister of Laurance the saintly, and a queen-woman in her own way, and a pious, of a sort, “but white birds with reaching wings do not wait on every road for a man.”

Donough O’Carroll went to his rest with content that night, and unburdened the cares of the day to Maureen, his wife.

“Get the maid, Dervail, on the road to sanctuary of Cluain-mac-noise in the dawn of tomorrow,” he said. “Our shelter has not kept her name from the ear of the king. Strange happenings have been, and curious portents. She is not one to win friend for any king of Erinn.”

“In truth she is the fairest thing in all your province, Donough, my heart,” said Maureen, “but, like a bird, she is—untamed.”

“Do not make that saying of her to me,” said Donough, “or sleep could not come to my bed this night. Too much I have heard this day of bird-women, both doves and falcons, and I would that the maid was ugly as a mud-hen among the bogs. Woman, let me have sleep, and pray that Saint Brighde speeds her in safety on the road from us tomorrow. If she is in truth of the blood of Murtagh of Machflain, King of Meath, the time has come for his claim of her. The mystery of her is abroad on the winds, and the very name of her sounds temptation to Diarmod!”

It was in the mist of the gray dawn when Ardan crept like a thief down the turret stairs, and to the castle wall on which the grianan of the queen gave entrance. The door of it opened from within, and to meet him came the maid called by Maureen the fairest in all the kingdom of Orielle.

Like forest pools were her eyes—gray with a glint of blue; her mouth was the rose for beauty, and her hair held the warm flame of red gold; heavy it fell either side of her face and reached below her girdle. A cloak of royal blue touched the stone floor, and a veil of silvery gray broidered with blue was held by the wire-spun circlet of gold about her head. The falling of that silvery veil gave her a strange mystical look to Ardan, and the dignity of the cloak hid every maidenly curve of her young body.

“Argatonel,” spoke Ardan as he stood staring at the beauty of her, “‘Silver Cloud’ in truth you are, Dervail; and you look as if you had slept in a fairy’s rath and woke changed and not young any more.”

“Sleep I did not at all—for the doom of going away was put on me ere the turn of the night. That was the time I sent the maid Kauth to seek you. The castle of the holy women at Cluain-mac-noise is to be my prison. Some sudden thing has stung the prior, Duighal, and his monks are to be my guard to sanctuary. It will be my grave they take me to!”

“I am to blame—to blame!” said Ardan. “I, too, must go a road this day, but it is to the Culdees of Saint Hilary. For my fault I am to study in a new place and among strange scholars.”

“Why are you to blame? You that were my comrade?”

“It is forbidden that I tell you all, or think of it—but I made an image of snow like a white bird that yet was a maiden. I thought of you and made it all of whiteness, but like you, too, in beauty. It was in the cloister. Duighal the prior says it is an evil thing to image any but sainted women, and a penance is put on me that I go.”

“But you—you have no unhappy heart at that going,” said Dervail, and sighed as she looked at him. “You will walk free to make other beautiful things in other places.”

“I will remember you in the far places, and the beauty I make will be thoughts of you.”

Dervail smiled on him with closed lips and eyes peering sideways through the silver veil. The veil made a new mystery of her face.

“Argatonel,” he said again, and was thinking of a rhyme for it to make a poem as a farewell gift, “Argatonel!”

“You do not love me, Ardan,” she said; “you only love beauty.”

“But you are that beauty.”

“You do not love me; you do not know I am alive! You look at me as on a saint, high on the church wall. I would rather dance free with the Ever Young People in the Hidden Hills!”

He did not know what to answer. Cormac had said hell waited for people of pagan thoughts, and Cormac had a soul of good intent.

“You are my best comrade, and as my sister,” he said; “my grief is much that you go unwilling—I would that you went not out from here until a marriage feast gave you to some righteous king. You look like a queen with that cloak and the veil of the silver cloud.”

She laughed a little bitterly.

“I said you did not love me, and I said true; you are almost of my age, yet you would pick a king out of the world for me! I steal ere the dawn to seek farewell of a poet, and his only seeking is a rhyme for my name—not to be found!”

“But I have found it!” he cried in triumph. “I will write it for you ere the troop leaves the portal. I will sing it in the lonely west where I go for scholarship. Dervail, what other thing could I do to show my thoughts and my heart to you?”

“I do not know. It is a boy you are, and my thoughts are of a man’s thoughts. Look: I am cloaked and shod for travel; there are swift steeds below, and there are boats at the sea’s marge. Beyond where the low sky takes the silver of morning, there is another land. Had I the strength of a man beside me, it is there I would go.”

“With the troops of two kings of power to claim you for the church? Who would dare give shelter to you in such flight?”

“Two kings?” she asked, puzzled and frowning.

“Diarmod of Leinster is guest of King Donough.”

She laughed again.

“So: that is why I have been kept to the grianan of the queen for three days! It has been so always when guests of might are housed here. What crooked stick of the forest am I that no prince or king must look my way?”

“The fairest things of earth are God’s offerings, Dervail,” he said. “I think of you as abbess of some white sisterhood of Mary. On some day of days I will surely see you so, and kneel for your blessing. You will be ever the white bird and the silver cloud to me.”

“That makes the cold stone no softer a pillow,” she said. “You live in dreams—sometimes you have made me see the dreams, but this no dream today. They take me for other prison and call it serving God!”

A clink of metal on stone sounded above them where the flying buttress carried a windowed room as a canopy above where they stood.

Dervail sped quickly back out of sight, but Ardan stepped further out to look above. What he saw there was Diarmod of Leinster with his finger on his lip. Horsemen clattered through the castle gate, and Ardan looked down at them from the edge of the wall.

“The castle is awake, and there is no other moment for speech,” he said. “My heart goes with you on the road, comrade maid of mine. May that road lead you to peace!”

She stood looking at him moodily while he lifted the hem of her cloak to his lips.

“Almost I see you here a queen in the queen’s grianan,” he said. “You look it in that robe you wear. Have you no farewell to me, Dervail?”

“For that I came, Ardan, and may it be so to you! I would you could teach me the content of dreams—my dreams lack content. Farewell, comrade! In the gray days I will think often of the white bird by which we are exiled. Fare you well, Ardan! Go you the way of your white dreams!”

There was a weariness in the sweet voice. So few days before she had run races and tossed the ball in the games, but the Dervail in the silver veil at the dawn was a different maid.

The veil—the silver cloud—Argatonel!—in a moment more he had out the inkhorn and quill and was tracing on the smooth stone the first words of the rhyme singing in his ears—he had promised her a verse of farewell.

The sun has set at morningtide, Argatonel! The wall between is high and wide, Argatonel! Above it stars of heaven may rise In witchery, But none so bright—

The rhythm of it sang itself, and he was glowing with eagerness when he became suddenly conscious of someone near, and turned to find Diarmod smiling at him in great good humor.

“I had joy of my eavesdropping, though I could get no glimpse of her face,” he said. “Anyone seeing your tryst might have had his doubts, but I’ll go your warrant to any father alive who has sweet-voiced daughters in want of a playmate.”

Ardan bent knee to him, and thus turned from the words, roughly noted in ink, still wet. Little escaped the eye of Leinster, and a step took him beside it.

“What’s to do here? ‘The sun has set at morningtide.’ That is against nature. How could that be?”

“My King, I cannot make you see it when you did not see her face—and she goes at morningtide.”

“So, that is it! My grief, to hearken to a tryst with a lad when it was the strength of a man she gave call for! And this—Argatonel?”

“It is the silver cloud of the veil she wore—the veil by which she was hidden from you above.”

“Very good—it looked, indeed, a veil of silver over hair of gold. Go on—finish your lines. Here is a scrap of vellum of no import; write it across that. Your craft is curious, and has interest to me. You shall write lovepoems for my daughters. Go on! ‘But none so bright—’”

And Ardan, encouraged by the king’s mood, plodded placidly on.

But none so bright as are your eyes Of mystery. Argatonel, white wings to you! Argatonel, deep heart to you! O Silver Cloud, that wraps the world, God’s Sun to you!

He finished writing and read it aloud, and the eyes of the king were on him curiously.

“That, and a maiden tryst at dawn, and you fasting!” he said. “What works then might you not do with good meat under your ribs? I’ve a mind to take you with me, if only to feed you, and watch your growth. Come! We’ll talk of it and eat. Clean white vellum shall be yours for your love-lines, though the maid read you true, my young cock-robin! You had no heart-love to give your Argatonel; your only seeking was some fair thing to sing about.”

Thus it was the friendship began between Diarmod the king, and Ardan, the fosterling of King Donough of Orielle, and thus it was that they went out together at sound of the gathering guard in the castle yard that morning, and from the shadow of the portal Diarmod looked on the unveiled face of Dervail.

The rising sun touched her hair to a glory, where it fell in braids to the saddle cushion. The deep pools of her eyes held shadows, and the black lashes were wet against her rosebloom cheek, yet the head of the silver veil was not humbled, and her chin was lifted in pride as she looked about her on the household back of the spearmen, and her maid, and the page holding her restless steed as it pawed the earth, and grew restless under the tinkling sweetness of its bridle bells.

“Truly you said it, Ardan; she is the sun at morningtide,” said Diarmod the king; but when Ardan attempted speech in reply he was silenced lest a note of the music of her voice be lost.

“Think of me as Regina in that new life,” she said to Queen Maureen at the farewell. “I wear the blue mantle that Mary the Mother may see I serve her in a royal way. The gray of life has no liking for me, and to the last I will wear colors of the deep sea, and the sky.”

“What a queen can do will be done that no gray robe is yours until the day you make choice of it,” said Maureen in kindness. “A writing to that end goes with you to the holy women.”

“All have spoke a farewell but yourself, King Donough of Orielle,” said the girl Dervail, with proud coldness in her voice. “I give thanks to you for years of sanctuary. Am I to have no host’s gift of the stirrup cup at my going?”

“A white road, and a white welcome to you,” said Donough, whose tongue was stiff with fear that she go not quickly enough. The wind of the morning had caught the silver cloud of her veil, and swept it back over the golden circlet; she looked a girl queen beyond all queenly beauty, and too fair for the men of Leinster to view.

Donough waved forward the bearer of the cup and the wine, and lifted his hand to pour the draught, but Diarmod, who stood in the portal with Ardan, came forward, and the hand of Diarmod was before that of Donough.

“That the right may be my right,” he said and filled the cup.

The servitor dropped to one knee, and the King and Queen of Orielle bowed low, and Dervail saw them, for the first time, stand aside for another man in their own castle keep.

The wonder of it filled her, and her lips opened for question, but Diarmod stood at her stirrup. He gave to her the verse of Ardan and lifted the cup, and when their eyes met she forgot that a king and his household bent low while only one man stood.

“Will you not kiss the cup?” he asked. “It is my grief that it is the farewell, and not the welcoming.”

With both hands she reached for the cup, with both hands he held it up, but their eyes never parted. Their look was a long, strange look, and the smile was gone from her face.

“I speak thanks to you, O my lord,” she said, “and the cup of parting will be remembered by me.”

The prior rode through the portal with six stalwart monks at his heels.

“I go north for pilgrimage to the shrine of Phadraig,” he said, “and we will add guard to the new nun for Cluain-mac-noise.”

He did not look at her at all, and his speech was to Donough O’Carroll.

Diarmod turned darkly on the cold-faced prior.

“Six of my own men will ride with you as far as the Shannon,” he said. “They are the best of my horsemen, holy father, and will bear to the abbott a message. A gift will go to the abbess as a dower for the Lady Regina, for such is her new name in religion. This on the word of Leinster.”

The prior stared at him, and bent head in brief courtesy. Never before had Leinster dowered maids, except they, in one way or another, were among his possessions.

But Diarmod, with full knowledge of the sharp ears and keen dark thoughts about him, followed his mood because of the red mouth of Dervail, and her trancelike gaze. He slipped a ring of gold from his hand and put it on hers.

“This my gauge of the promise,” he said. “Let it go with the dower. In sanctuary pray for Diarmod of Leinster.”