Part 13

“It may be that the waters on every side of Erinn will be the wall to keep that loss far from us forever,” said Mac Roigh, “but in the great foreign land there is neither wall nor waters of separation. The tribes overrun and melt into each other, or they fight and harvest the enemy as grain in a field. It is all and always change there; thus were their settlements of religious men reaching out for the Irish scriptures made here in sanctuary. Gelasius the bishop was telling us of that at Clonfert.”

“I had thought,” ventured Roderick, “that between the Danes and raiders of Norway and their Saxon mates, Erinn had work in plenty to save even life, without the strife to save learning enough to civilize her invaders. It’s a good gift they got from us when our saints taught them religion. And it was an evil payment they made to us with their ships full of raiders.”

“Our well-beloved Dall Clairineach told me Erinn was set apart like a jewel in a lost casket,” said Ardan. “The old south sea-way to us was lost to the traders of Europe through the time of the great wars; our land was out of the path of battle and was forgot. When they found us again, it was in a different way—an island beyond an island in the sea! While they had fought and made destruction of all things, our men of many crafts and many books had worked to garner and build. All the learning was here to start anew the broken, foreign tribes.”

“More than some godly souls made welcome!” said Roderick. “I ever had wonder on me to know what penance was given Forgal the saint when the Pope at Rome reproved his heresy in writing that the world was round instead of flat as we all are knowing it.”

“Forgal had lived on the coast here at home,” said Cineath the cleric, “and took note that the masts of a vessel at sea are seen before the body of the vessel is seen. Yes, he was given strong reproof for saying it, but his writing was not changed because of that—he left it as the words were written. In all else it is known he was a true scholar, and a holy man—the blessing of God on his soul, and on us!”

The talk went on thus, and the queen and her ladies listened. Ardan could feel her eyes on him, though never once did he meet her gaze with directness. He did not obtrude his speech, except as one of the men of rank asked of his journey afar, but he knew that he did not seem out of place near her throne, and had a pride in that.

“You speak of the wise and holy abbot of Ardbreccan,” said Mac Roigh as the time for rest came, and the prayer of the cleric was ended. “Was he well known by you?”

“He was as my father while he lived, and left me to his close friend when he died,” said Ardan. “His fancy was to make me as a scribe and genealogist—but why should I, a son of no family, turn genealogist?”

“No family?” said Mac Roigh, and looked at him. “If you were not of blood and race, think you so renowned a man would have found in you the stuff for his science? And you wear the colors of a noble.”

“Youth thinks not so much of these matters, and I was but a youth when I turned from that work,” said Ardan. “Instead of a devout priest with quill and ink pot I am a priest’s message bearer to royal houses.”

“We will see you again tomorrow,” said the queen graciously. “If you ride, you could attend on the ladies who fancy sport with the falcons on the moor.”

“I ride,” said Ardan.

Three days they were speaking like that before princes and chiefs, and three nights he was led by Kauth, her woman, to Kauth’s own curtained room of sleeping, and there Dervail came to him. Kauth was their guard, and their nights were of whispers. He heard there her dreams of strange greatness, and knew that Breffni’s crown was as a golden rung in a ladder she meant to climb.

“And you, Ardan, will climb with me, for it is true what the chief of Mac Roigh has said: no youth below the noble rank of _aire-desa_ wears the colors, and is taught music and chess, shooting and the riding of horses—swift riding beautiful! You are fitting in all ways, and have the trust of Diarmod, and that is a thing lucky. When the day comes I will have you near the throne and my eyes are made glad that you have visage and speech of a prince. It will be well for you.”

“Your talk is in circles,” he said. “You are queen—yet you talk of the day when you win the throne! I come through all the wilderness for the reason that you were a soul in prison—and it is a different thing I find. You have freedom for the first time, and are using it on men.”

“I do the things of my girl dreams,” she said. “I never was told how women had power and here I am learning. When I go to Diarmod—”

“No,” he said, “it is not good to dream that. There is Prince of Breffni and Mor na Tuathal between you two! Her people are of greatness in power, and even a strong king might not stand out against them. She is his wife, and her brothers are his watchers.”

Dervail lifted a feather, and tossed it upward.

“She, and her brother abbots, and sainted priests will weigh not so much as that against my wish, when I wish it,” she said. “I am out of the convent walls forever and am learning the power of women—and the strength of it is sweet.”

“And what answer to Diarmod who would save you again for sanctuary if your prayer was for that? for without your word he may not take this road.”

“The time will come when I send him signal. It will be—it will be a white pearl of royal size. There are creels of jewels here! I will be sending one to him more beautiful than the one given by Gillebart of Limerick to Anselm the archbishop oversea—and that one was called a royal gift to the prince of the English church. Yes, it will be a pearl I will send when I send the call for him. It is a fine thing for me that I am able to bind my friends with a queen’s gifts.”

“It—is not a queen to whom he was sending me, Dervail. It was a veiled maid of the cloisters, and she calling for champion.”

She laughed low, and looked at him in pride.

“Every man in this keep would be champion of mine if I called—and if I gave him my smiles,” she said, “but not one is strong to control all the others. I have given much thought to that matter and secret knowings have been spoken to me by a man of the Old Wisdom! Diarmod is, of all Erinn, the one of strength; and he will be stronger in days to come, for his gathering of spears will be a great gathering. The spears he gathers will make a new ruling for all Erinn. And I was knowing that thing before the day I laid sight on Tiernan the ravager.”

“You are talking of dark, hidden things, Dervail, and they are forbidden.”

“They are true things, and the stars tell them! A secret man, who has the name of Duffagan, told me that thing in Clonard. He was a scholar but no monk, and Kauth gives him fellowship. When O’Ruarc would in willingness bring any retainer of mine, I brought him as husband to Kauth, and that was saving his life. He has a fever on him for old books, and his was the task to carry north the annals most rare. He has the trust of O’Ruarc who thinks him a book fool; but he knows the stars and the tides, does Duffagan Mac Knea, and he knows the tides of men’s lives as he does the tides of the sea! When he tells me it is time to send call to Diarmod of the Spears, it will be gladness for me to be sending it. And until that day comes I am waiting and learning and dreaming my dreams.”

“Mac Knea,” said Ardan, “that means ‘Son of the Night’—it is a curious name to put on a man.”

“Yet it is fitting,” said Dervail, “else he would not be having it. Words have power, and the wrong word he would not have on him. He has a wisdom not to talk of to every bird crossing over, and none of these people are knowing it. They laugh at him, and call him the little dark spider sitting ever alone in a corner with watching eyes; but a spider spins webs beyond craft of mortal.”

“It may be evil craft you praise in him! How then if you find it so?”

“It is true craft,” she insisted. “Already it has proven itself on me. Of Tiernan’s hosting I was warned by him. I was ready on that day, and it was no weeping novice he found in me, but a king’s ward, with the rights of a noble. He was my key to the world, and I used him. I came not out of the walls a captive: it was the wife of the Prince of Breffni who rode beside him.”

“A mystery are you to me, Dervail,” said Ardan, “and not the caged bird I crossed the kingdoms to find.”

“The caged bird!” she said. “Ardan, have you memory of the snow bird you made of me in the cloisters?”

“I have the memory—and the guilt,” he said. “When I listen to you I think I was ‘fey’ that night I worked on it. I had cold and hunger and my soul afire. Had I made likeness of the Holy Ones with such perfectness, the monks would have made a saint of me; instead of which they banished us both far as was in their power. And—they did not break down its white wings of ice quick enough to save it from the eyes of Diarmod!”

She gave a little cry at that, but it was a sound of joyous triumph.

“Again has Mac Knea proven true,” she said. “He told me it was by some work of another that Diarmod’s heart turned to thought of me. That I did not believe, and so I have said; but it was true! You, Ardan, made one image of me poised for flight—you must make for me another—when I have reached the end of the flight and picked my throne.”

He thought she made a jest of him, but her beauty was so great that he was content to look in silence, as he thought that no queen ever told of in song or annal had such beauty as hers. Not fair Dierdre of the sorrows, or the wondrous Brighde who was goddess of beauty and art, or that Grania whose beauty and courage were as one when her beauty won a crown, and her courage dared toss it aside as a ball in her great game—and her game was Love.

He sat thinking these things, and knowing that all the beauty of all of them could not equal the beauty of Dervail. It was seemly enough that her fame might indeed grow great as she hoped, and her name be widely known among the rulers of Erinn.

So deep was his dreaming of it that he kept no count of his silence, or her curious looks.

“Of what are your thoughts when you stare past me as if there was naught between yourself and the skins on the wall?” she asked, and he roused and looked at her.

“I am thinking there was never your equal for beauty in all the wide world, Dervail,” he said simply, “neither them that are living, nor them who are gone the Way.”

“You are the same Ardan,” and her smile was strange.

“You think I fail to make note of beauty because I do not play the sighing champion for your favor,” he said, “but you read me wrong. As ward of Murtagh of Meath, and foster child of Donough of Orielle it is a pretty puzzle to me why each king was not striving to make best marriage for you with ally of his own. They shut you in high walls for life without choice of yours—and would have forgot you were living if—”

“If the Son of the Night had not made the key to come to my cell!”

“What would you say?”

“Three new moons was his work to help it to come that way,” she whispered. “He made secret prayers for that thing—to the four ways he was sending that call for the man—and Tiernan was the man to hear it, and to come there, and Tiernan was the key!”

“More like it was that Tiernan sent your master of druid lore to spy out the wealth of Clonard! You were part of that wealth, Dervail.”

“I have wonder if that be true,” she mused, and her eyes were looking sideways in thought, but the red-rose lips curved over the white little teeth of her, and the blue eyes had laughing pride.

“Even if it be so, the rule of Tiernan is over with that man, and mine is the rule,” she said. “He pins his life to my service. Tiernan is now but a man on our chessboard. And you are wrong in one thing: Tiernan knows nothing of Duffagan’s hidden wisdom; no, Tiernan has dread of such learning, for he was born at Whitsuntide, and it was foretold that by a man and a woman of druid craft would his downfall be if he followed their steps. That is why, after every hosting, or every great killing he makes faithful pilgrimage to the shrine of Phadraig. Great and rich gifts he will be leaving there to prove he is christian surely. No—Ardan, Tiernan of Breffni has fear, and has horror of all ‘Old Wisdom,’ and the life of Mac Knea would go out like a rushlight in the wind if Tiernan knew.”

“And you! Is there no fear on you?”

“At first there was fear—and great fear—but not now. The strength of the stars is with us, and that lifts and bears me above the fear. The ‘Old Wisdom’ has made me Queen of Breffni and that, Ardan, is my first move in the game, and it is a great game.”

“If someone should be telling Tiernan O’Ruarc?”

“I would kill that one, Ardan, and you alone have my secret.”

“Suppose I tell it to Diarmod?”

She looked at him, and thought a bit and laughed in silence.

“That would be favor to me,” she decided. “He has no love for me—yet; though he has much thought of me. That telling would give him more thought, for I will spend one secret night on Tara with the man whose name will go down the centuries with mine! Take that saying to Diarmod for me, Ardan; it will tell him that no pale-blooded nun has come north to rule in Breffni. Let him give dreams to a night in Tara!”

“Tara has been desolate these many generations.”

“Yet his fathers did rule there, Ardan, and it may be my own did! It is the place for Ard-Ri of Erinn, and it may be a great rule will yet be built on its ruins.”

“It is a dream, Dervail.”

“Duffagan is saying all great things of life have been grown from dreams, and that the moon and the stars govern our dreams.”

“I would see this priest of the forbidden ere I journey south, and tomorrow is the latest I may linger. It is no wish of mine to see Tiernan of Breffni, whose plunder is sacred things of altars.”

“Yet are you loyal to Diarmod.”

“What then? Diarmod gives endless wealth to holy houses. His own gold has built monasteries and churches for the glory of saints.”

“Ardan,” said Dervail, gently smiling, “all this is truth, yet there are other truths of him; when a lord of the south refused his daughter to Diarmod in the days of Diarmod’s youth, he gathered spears and took her with the veil and the vows of a nun on her! In amorous fellowship she was held in his castle and wedded there to a lord of his choosing. That is the custom of a king who has power, Ardan! He takes what he wants! I hear much of the power of Diarmod of Leinster. He has their hate, but their tales are tales of praise to me, for they tell of his strength.”

“Their hate may build untruths against him. When was this ravaging?”

“In Kildare, and her name was Dhira. Her house was the house of Cahsadhe, and one hundred and seventy lives were sent back to God in her capture. She lived a hidden woman after that time, but the story could not be hidden. That was before your birth, or mine, Ardan.”

“Dall Clairineach surely had knowing of that if it was a true thing, Dervail, yet yours is the first word of it I am hearing.”

“It is not for nothing Diarmod founds monasteries and religious houses! You have been bred in them, Ardan, and it is a place for holding secret things.”

Kauth slipped through the arras to tell them the cocks were crowing and the old day was gone. She looked strangely at Ardan, and to Dervail, when alone, she said the youth had much of beauty, too much for such distance of converse as was his custom.

“True enough,” said Dervail, unbraiding the pearls in her hair. “But there are other men for other uses, and this one has such honestness he would be useless to me except in his own spirit. Because I tell him much, he thinks I tell him all; and in his prayers my name will not be forgotten.”

Kauth, who had been lay sister of Clonard, was given higher place than the place of a serving-woman in the castle of O’Ruarc, and her dress held three colors. She rode abroad with Dervail when the days were fine, and ever stood between when man or woman made approach to the hall of the queen.

Thus she rode obedient with the glad riders of the springtime in the forest, and with adroitness found way to lose herself with the queen and Ardan, and all three rode in the edge of the great wood, and looked out on the moor where women with their young were gathering gorse bloom and marsh marigold to keep luck in the house when hung over the door on May Eve. Others were plucking primrose for the doorstep, and youths were seen bearing holly and rowan and a young tree of the yew for the circle dance of the many stars around the Still Star of the north.

“It would seem a strange nightfall to be out in the wilderness,” said Ardan. “All christians are together elsewhere on the eve of Beltain.”

“Duffagan Mac Knea gives me word that the prayers are the same, and only the difference is that saints’ worship is given instead of druid. The dance does not change, and the harp music does not change, and the faith does not change. I have spoken at every chance with these people concerning all things, and not yet has Duffagan told me anything not of easy proof.”

“But the castle cleric, Cineath, has he no reproof?”

“He knows Duffagan only as student and scribe, who has gone into the foreign world to the shores of the Nile, and tells no cleric of the deeper things learned there.”

They had reached a hill of three circles, and Kauth, who rode apart, came close and slipt from her horse.

“No animal must press foot up above,” she said. “So said Duffagan to me. Since the end of yesterday has he been here, and fasting. It is new moon, and Beltain.”

Dervail sat on her white horse and looked up at the steep sides of the hill, and looked beside her at a huge square stone, pierced, and once rudely carven, but now covered with lichen gray and green and russet. It was high as her own head and she on the back of the horse. Other stones of the same bigness were seen as if standing guard around the circle of a great earth temple.

“There were great men in the world when that thing was done,” she said. “It was not two or three people who were coming here then to take note of the sky and the clouds over the new moon.”

Ardan said no word. He saw Kauth take from under her cloak a white pigeon wound about with white and saffron bands. She placed it in the hands of Dervail and pointed upward.

“Not empty-handed must you go there,” she said. “Pluck a rowan or a holly branch for the hand of your friend. I have my happiness in lack of knowledge, and will be your guard of the horse below.”

A dim path went up through the wood clothing the steep, and at the first terrace they saw other tall stones like sentinels circling the hill. Ardan felt as if he had passed some strange dread portal into an ancient life; far above he saw that which he had heard of in Gaul but never dreamed to see in Erinn.

It was a temple in the open with the sky for roof. Great squared pillars arose in a circle, and to the east a sanctuary was made by a huge slab overhead and two uprights on either side. An altar was there on a raised floor of stone, and Duffagan the silent, in white robe and saffron bands, stood there watching the sinking sun, and striking flint on flint craftily where the silken strands of the wild flax made tinder.

A tiny spiral of smoke curled and drifted along the stone slab above him, and the two at the edge of the circle stood still and spoke no word.

A curious hoop of hazel wands was beside the altar, and two balls suspended at either side—one of yellow, one white; twigs of rowan were there, and twigs of yew.

The priest lifted the hoop and whirled it sunwise through the smoke, and Ardan knew it was symbol of sun and moon circling thus through the smoke of the earth altar.

As the last fire of the sun went beyond the great sea of mystery, the blaze of the temple leaped up—it was as if stolen out of the western sky!

Dervail thrust spray of holly into the hand of Ardan, and went forward with her offering.

Ardan could hear the low murmur of a prayer or incantation as water from a shallow cup in the stone was sprinkled in a circle about the slender blaze.

Sun and Sky, Moon and Earth, Fire and Water, Living Green!

As the priest lifted his eyes, Dervail went forward with her strange offering. Without fear she walked, yet with a look of question. And Ardan knew it was for the first time.

“As Life I make my offer,” said Dervail.

“As Life I give it again to the elements by which life endures.”

The voice of the man had a sweet singing note in it by which Ardan was won in surprise. He had expected roughness or harshness in an un-christian priest, yet Duffagan, who was also “Son of the Night,” was gentle beyond belief.

So amazed was he at this that he scarce noted the firm, quick stroke of the flint knife until the wings fluttered once, and then were held close and steady while the blood trickled from the slit throat to the altar where the fire was.

Dervail stood, serene, yet pale of face, for it was a place of curious imaginings. Ardan saw her cast quick look over her shoulder, and knew that, like him, she felt the movement, or the very breathing of a multitude circling that high place of ancient mysteries. Once he thought he heard the sound of shrill singing far off, to the tramp of thousands of feet, but in another moment he knew it was a distant shepherd’s pipe, and the wind hurtling through the forest below.

Wind caught the flame and blew it against the hazel hoop of the symbols. Dervail led Ardan forward.

“Once I was to come to this place where you read the stars, Duffagan,” she said. “I am here to keep faith, and I bring my one friend who makes offer beside me.”

Ardan’s hand held out the branch of holly, and Duffagan stripped the leaves, and let them fall one by one on the blaze. His watching of each new flame was curious. He did not speak until there were left only red embers of the twigs.

“Good it is that your soul is strong in faith, O Queen,” spoke the strange, gentle, even voice. “The trial times of life will call for much strength of yours, and it is well to prove faiths. I have fasted and prayed here, and have read the sky at this new time of the moon, but this is not a moon in which change will come to you. It is a moon for patience. Your friend who has come as a new star in your sky is safest if his going is soon. There are watchful eyes in the head of the cleric of Breffni. Take you leave as if careless of time, but ride for life when you have turned a hill!”

“Cineath the cleric?” mused Dervail. “He is a ferret for Tiernan. I will provide for you extra horse on the way, Ardan.”

Ardan gave curious glances to the man whose words she heeded, and made promise to act on. Dark he was, as his name denoted—dark, and small, and gentle—and his dark eyes had a strange, withdrawn look as if looking at the two mortals, yet listening to unseen things!

“The Great Bear of the stars points again to the east at fall of night,” he said. “It is the mid-sign between heat and cold, and is the time for searching. The old learning has been lost for the reason that no royal protector dare stand against the craft of the saints and their followers. But many, Dervail, will have your name in their speech, and you will cause much wonder in the minds of many. That is a thing I read in all castings for you, and it may come to pass that you will be the royal one who dares openly sanction that ancient hidden wisdom to which each simple heart makes secret prayer.”