Part 3
“And if we find a shore and no waiting maids, will you then take up the work waiting here to your hand?”
“That, if I cannot find her,” said Phadraig.
“And will you wed the lady who waits in the south, and hold court as of old for the good of your race?”
“Rather with her than another,” said Phadraig. “She is a fair and honest lady, and sweetly kind.”
And the holy man kept his word. He bore sacred symbols and a church bell, and sailed away with Phadraig to the west, and the chiefs on the shore were told it was a vow, and waited as they might and made prayers. The bells were rung from every tower that day to pray that Phadraig, the king, come again in health and safety.
No one ever knew what island in the sea they came to, but come to an island they did, and it was far away. The wood grew down to the shore, and there were mighty trees cast down as by a great wind, and the desolation of it was so great that no living thing moved or fluttered a wing, and out beyond the shore rested the white birds of Phadraig, the king, and they rocked on the waves there, and by no effort could be made follow.
“This is the farthest unknown land,” said the holy man. “By faith and prayer have we found it, and by the grace of God only shall we ever fare safely home or see again the faces of your clans. Look about you, Phadraig of the Dream, where are the ever-blossoming boughs and the castle of stone with the many towers?”
“Hear you not the music?”
“I hear only the sea wind moaning through the branches of dead trees.”
“Smell you not the fragrance of orchards?”
“I smell only the twists of seaweed cast up on the shore,” and the priest pushed aside a branch of wild thorns with green leaves reaching out from a gnarled and ancient bole.
But Phadraig caught the thorn branch, and under the scant green leaves was one tiny blossom, white and thick-petaled and with the fragrance of all sweetness of all the orchards in the world.
“See! Of this I told you, and it is alive here!”
“Then it is the sole live thing on the shore, for there is not even fish in this sea.”
But Phadraig led him over stones of great size piled high. Broken stone was there covered by sands—and other stone not broken, but squared on the four sides and grown over with lichens and wild vines.
“This is like the place of the tower where the sea tide swept into the moat,” he said.
And the holy man went over the stone, and stood on a broken wall. And beyond was a great place of sand piled high where the walls of a moat once stood.
“Come away,” he said, and crossed himself in fear. “This is no place of living things. No life has been here for a thousand years.”
But Phadraig held the blossom and heard the music of Danaan and would not.
“Come out first, as by your vow, to the forest,” he said, “for it was there I found her. Once only in my lifetime I was to come back if I had doubt. I have no doubt, yet I am here with you. Come you in.”
It was a wilderness beyond words, and the twisted thorn trees were gray and dead there, with neither green leaf nor white bloom.
“I am sorrowful to bring you through them,” said Phadraig, the king, for the priest was old and the way hard. “But over beyond the hill is the great forest—and there by the blue lake the pulse of the sea is—”
But the forest was a jungle with no path, and the lake was not there; only a bog stretched from the gray wood to a cliff of gray rock, and Phadraig could say no word but sat there on a crumbling stone and covered his eyes with his hands.
“Now, O Phadraig, will you come back to the warm blood of your own clans?” asked the priest. “For here is the end of the dream.”
But Phadraig, the lover, stood up and walked to the wall of gray rock at the edge of the bog.
“Not yet—O holy father,” he said. “Once only I was to come for proof in one lifetime, and here am I! Come you and look.”
He tore away from the rock wall the gray and green lichen and placed his fingers into the carving made there for the star of the north, and its circling seven, which makes both cross and wheel in the night sky.
“See! I drilled them deep as the flint knife would burrow the stone,” he said, “and the storm has beaten away the face of the rock until only the traces are here. But Danaan took one finger of her white hand and drew a circle as her bond, and it has eaten deep into the rock as if carved with tools of iron this day. Father, what should that tell to me?”
And the holy man looked in the face of Phadraig, the king, and made a prayer against enchantments, and rang the sacred bell of church there in the gray wood before he would speak.
“Since written bond it is, O Phadraig, rest your soul with the thought that it was a bond with a forbear of yours a thousand summers agone! You have only dreamed the dream that was born in your blood of that bond. You have kept the tryst for your ancestors, and risked your life and soul in the keeping. No more of duty for your race will be required of you in this life—naught but to wear the crown and rule in the ways of the clans.”
So Phadraig knelt there by the written bond of union, to the harmony of the circling stars, and he touched the circle of Danaan while he made his prayer, and then they went out again from the wilderness to the sea, and the white birds flew silently ahead of them on the sun-path to the home land of Erinn.
“Look not behind you,” said the priest, “but follow the birds and pray for all lost souls.”
For well he knew what would come of the church bell, and the Christian prayer in the gray wood. And come it did, for when he looked back the ancient island of enchantment was no more to be seen. And no living man has seen it to this day except its shadow every seven years far across the gold haze of the sunset path, and then the gray wood is glorified and young again—but there are those who can still hear the music of Danaan across the water in dusks and dawns.
And Roiseen of the Glen went to the great hall of Phadraig, the Ua Dinan, and nursed his children there, and gave comfort to Yva of Kilfernora, who was wife to him, and counseled her never to hedge in a child of the Ua Dinan from the open life and the old faiths; for in strange and dangerous ways they would cross the barriers, and it was safest to let them range free till they made the circle and came back to bide at the hearthstone and under the bell of the church.
The holy man of the cave of Saint Colman was given merit by the bishop for saving the soul of Phadraig, the king, who was known to have won a strange power through some holy source.
His hair whitened but his eyes were ever young, and his strength and wisdom grew, and his children’s children could not keep pace with him on the moors. He trained his eldest son to rule, and when the times were safe, he gave up the crown and wore the monk’s robe of white, and crossed over to Dun Aengus of the Isles of Arran. The singers of three centuries sang the songs of Nihil, his father, and the poets wrote of Phadraig, the king, as of a holy man by whom the white birds were tamed. Also he loved the stars and learned wisdom of them in the night, and in the blessed Isle of Arran he was always out under the sky when the wind blew from the west—and the music he heard then made him walk in beauty with the glad eyes of a lover who is beloved.
And when the Time came, he laid him down in the white robe and bade all doors be open, and all windows, that the west wind come over him! And the white birds came on the wind and circled the room and hovered there. While the brother monks lit candles and chanted the words for the dying, he smiled in content and whispered the music of the song of Nihil—
She takes my hand at the sea marge, She whispers low on the wind, She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue And leaves worn Life behind!
No pain was with him, and no sickness, but he went out on the wind as the birds went, and the monks who knelt by him, waiting some vision of his patron saint, heard him say at the last:
“Danaan, the star stands steady these thousand years and the circle closes. I come back on the breath of the gods!”
There was much learned discussion over this saying of his. Some thought he spoke of Daniel of the Hebrews, who was never a saint but was once a strong prophet. Others thought it was David, the king, of whom he spoke, for David was once a shepherd—and such were ever wise in the ways of the stars of night.
As to the “breath of the gods”—they could by no means make out the meaning of that, which would have been blasphemy had it been said by anyone, high or low, and in their charity the monks united to disbelieve their own ears and content their souls with the miracle of the white birds—which was a beautiful miracle indeed—and, of course, a holy one.
So Phadraig, the king, was buried in consecrated ground, and only two souls had lived in his day to read the riddle of his life. One was the Wise Woman of the Glen and the other a holy man of the cave of Saint Colman in the hills.
But each had passed on, long years before, and made their choice between heaven and Tir-nan-Ogue.
[Music] THE ENCHANTING OF DOIRENN
Not lucky is it for a man when his own clan gives him low looks, and Ruadan of Ardsolais saw how the wind blew in the rath of Fethna in Meath when his kinsmen brought there a counting of cattle, and they grudged that payment of cattle and grudged twice over the twelve white cows, for the white cows were the darlings of the herd, and his kinsmen were coveting them for their own fields. And to Fethna, who was lord of the judgments in that place, they spoke.
“What is this debt to Cairell?” asked Donn, of his clan. “Far from Deasmond is the dun of Cairell; far to drive cattle, and waste of time coming.”
Fethna would have been a cloak for Ruadan had he dared, but justice must have light of the sun.
“It is no debt, and I could wish you made me no asking,” he said. “It is a fine, and it had to be paid when Cairell brought witness and made oath.”
“Why not give to them the tale?” asked Ruadan, and laughed. “If Cairell and his wife Luaine care so little to have songs of us going round the fire, what is it to me? Luaine of the white hands can be queen of cattle for all I am caring. That is the comfortable kind of wife to have for old age, and she is a fair, sweet body.”
“It would serve you better,” said Donn, of his clan, “to take a wife of your own, that your kinsmen could bring their women folk to your dun, as is fitting. Neither monk’s robe nor wife will you take or will you keep.”
“I am not yet brave enough in spirit to pledge my name for every man’s child a woman may take fancy to bring; it takes a brave man for that. Until I find the right woman it is cheaper to pay trespass in cattle.”
“You talk heresy; for marriage is called sanctified.”
“So the priests are telling, but it takes more than their words to prove it so. Make not your quarrel here, because there is no wife in my dun, when all these coveted cattle are paid by me because there was a wife in my camp in the forest—ill-luck on that night!”
His kinsmen stared darkly, feeling they were laughed at, but Fethna spoke.
“It is the truth: the woman followed him, he makes no denial.”
“What good of it?” laughed Ruadan. “I left his dun and asked no company. Every jester in Erinn would have a song of me if I took flight from the same woman twice. And where would there be profit in it to anyone?”
“There would be profit in that you would not lose the love of Niall, the king,” said Fethna sorrowful, and Donn changed looks with the others.
“True enough,” agreed Ruadan, “but if Niall was pleased to give me love himself, why should he be in anger for the reason that his uncle’s cousin’s daughter should have followed after to do the same? How was I to know? Does a man waste time to ask about grandsires when a lovely woman would creep under his cloak? Out on you for a lot of cold-blooded fish! Niall Caille will show temper for a year perhaps, and I’ll be keeping my distance till he has need of a spear.”
“Is the favor of a king so small a matter that you pick it up and put it aside as you will?” asked Donn jealously. “Strange tales have come to us of other heads with crowns and other friendships of yours.”
Ruadan looked at his hand on which a foreign ring shone—a ring of deep gold and a red jewel in it.
“Rest you easy on that. There will be no cattle to pay there! I was on the business of the king; and the jewel was given only to the king’s messenger.”
“Ask of Niall another gille next time,” said Fethna, “for the last one had tales to tell of Queen Ota and that ring of yours! Turgesius of the Danes needs two eyes for her alone. Since kings and queens do not come to me to set fines for loves, I can laugh at that, and leave it to Niall. But the bards do be making songs of that and even the maids are singing them in their chamber.”
Back of the arras there was a movement and a scuttling of feet; maids were there listening because the drive of cattle had made talk.
Bevind, daughter of Fethna, was there, and held by the hand Doirenn, of the deep voice, to listen.
“Do you have wonder that I give him my looks when queens have given him love?” she asked, but the girl Doirenn looked her gloom and her scorn.
“How is it that you give looks to him whom they call ‘God’s Dastard’ when your eyes have looked on goodness in Geroid who has no blemish?” she asked. “This man has much blemish, and is not in shame because of it.”
“You are as hard on him as the monks, for it was the monks that put that name on him. It is heavy to carry, Doirenn. To put an ill name to a boy and hope he walks the white path is much to hope for, Doirenn.”
Doirenn looked at her, frowning.
“I have not seen his face, yet I am thinking ill of him,” she said. “Geroid would have no light word of women and cattle such as this man speaks. Give him no looks, Bevind, and no words. It is said that monks learn holy ghostly things, and, if turned dastard to God, they can use power for enchantments. If a queen, even a pagan queen, looked love on him, and a king’s cousin followed him, what can it mean but enchantings?”
Bevind gasped and rolled her eyes.
“I did hear old Aillve tell a tale of enchantment by love, and the man was old as the world, yet looked young, and he snared maids and took them to his rath where they were changed to white cats. His forest was full of beautiful white cats, waiting for a brave and pure youth to ride their way and make prayers there; and that would free them, and nothing else would free them.”
“Geroid could be that one,” said Doirenn. “All his verses on the tablets are against enchantments in these days. Here is one—
_Against incantations of false prophets, Against craft of idolatry, against spells Of women, and smiths, and druids, I bind Myself to the strong strength._
The prayer of a saint is that prayer, Bevind, and with it he could ride safe to free all enchanted souls.”
“But would he?” asked Bevind. “He is my kinsman more than yours, and the safe side of a good wall was ever the choice of Geroid when the play was getting rough. My brothers are wild to fight out the Danes when the time comes, but Geroid casts no spear for that practice.”
Doirenn sulked and frowned.
“Your brothers have not souls of religion,” she said, “they have jealous hearts because of the high words of Geroid.”
“They have jealous hearts because of your own beauteous eyes, and because not one of them would shut himself away with the monks, and feed a maid like yourself on letters and on the prayers of the old-time saints, and that is what Geroid is doing to you.”
“The tongue of you is bitter from some poison herb you have chewed on,” declared Doirenn, “you have no good word for the godly, but many good words for that swaggering lover of queens and other men’s wives. The more shame to you!”
Bevind laughed again. “Alanna,” she said, “he has no love, else he would have kept Luaine who followed his road. He would be fighting for her and not paying cattle for her—no—Ruadan of Ardsolais has not yet found Love, he has only found many fond women. Achone! That I was promised in troth before I was seeing him, for his kinsmen are saying it is a wife he should have, far away there, back of beyond where his dun is in the mountains.”
But Doirenn cared not where he lived, nor when he wived. She carried the last tablet of Geroid out through the arbor where she could read over again and again the written words of the lad who was dear and was far. She unbraided the red gold of her hair, and let it fall about her as a shimmering curtain. She had days in that sixteenth year of hers when the veil of a nun would have seemed to her a sweet thing to wear in sanctuary, but the cutting of that golden shower was a thing to shrink from; and the thought of Geroid was another reason!
It was there in the arbor Ruadan saw her, while his kinsmen fed and Fethna did a host’s duty.
At first he could see little but the glory of her hair and the bare feet under the striped skirt of white and brown. He was above her on the wall, and stood waiting some movement that her face might be uncovered.
Fethna found him thus, for she had not moved and he had watched her long.
“Who is that?” he asked, “or do I dream of magical gold in the shape of a maid?”
“It is Doirenn, daughter of no man now, for Marvan that was her father, and all his household, were swept into death by the men of Lochlann, and the gold of her hair is all the dower the child brings.”
“What does she there?”
“She is devoted these days because a queer twist of a lad is devoted, and hours she reads the prayers he is sending on tablets. It is a game of young years and is on the love path. She grows tall and nearing time to wed.”
“And she reads the writings?”
“She does, and who wants a cleric in a wife? Marvan taught her as a scribe ere he went the way—cows and slaves would be a better portion.”
“I do not say that,” said Ruadan. “Ten years I worked on letters alone in Cluain-mac-noise and books I made were gifts to kings. There is a joy in that. If in this life I found no house, I may go back to the pen and color pot after I have covered my circle.”
Then the voice of Bevind called from somewhere, and Doirenn stood up and shook back her golden mane.
“She has dower in plenty,” said Ruadan.
He listened to her voice and remembered its deep music, and he rode west with his kinsmen, who planted his fields and counted his herds.
A month went by, and again he stood at the gate of Fethna.
“Does that maid know me, Ruadan, from Donn or the others of my clan?” he asked, and Fethna looked at him and laughed loud.
“The last time it was a cattle-fine for a wife you paid, and now you are coming to ask of a maid and no name to her!”
“There is only one in the world,” said Ruadan. “She is Doirenn na Marvan, and I would have speech with her.”
“Sorrow the day,” lamented Fethna, “it is not now you would be seeing that one; grief of the world is on her, for Geroid who was her lover has gone into the ‘Solitary’—far west has he gone down the Sionan to the ancient cell of Saint Senan on the shores of Lough Dearg. She thinks the sorrow of the world is hers.”
“I would lift that load and carry it,” said Ruadan.
“You mean to take her to wed?” and Fethna’s face had a frown on it. It was not easy to shift the sails for every wind with Ruadan.
“It would mean war with me, or a race beyond me to the man who would offer her less,” he said.
But for all the urging of Bevind, Doirenn would not come where he was. She said he was the contrary in all ways to the pious youth who had her heart. If she loved Geroid, there could be only hate in her thoughts for one so near to the evil one as “God’s Dastard” was said and was sung.
“She has not seen me,” said Ruadan when her refusal came. “Let her see me and hear me, and let my own ears hear her words.”
It was not a pleasant day of joy for Fethna and the family of Fethna. His own sons were asking the same thing, and the girl had only one thought, and that was not of marriage.
But after much argument Doirenn put aside Bevind and walked alone into the great hall where Ruadan—God’s Dastard and the darling of fond women—waited.
White she was, and afraid, but the fear only made darker the blue eyes of her. Her hair was braided in long strands over each shoulder. Bevind had dressed her in white and the broidered shoes of skin were white. She was more lovely than a queen of the Danaan in the ancient legends.
But she stood, a pale, proud, frightened child in her loveliness, and she looked past Ruadan and not at him.
“I came by the courtesy of Fethna,” she said. “I do not come by my wish.”
Ruadan looked at her and saw the fluttering of the white throat and the tight clenching of her hand. She looked like a bird trapped.
“And I come despite my wish to go elsewhere,” he said grimly. “Child, I saw you once in the arbor and I shall not be forgetting the seeing of you. I meant not to see you again, but a dream came to me in the forest and it brought me to you, for you were in it.”
She looked at him then and looked away proudly.
“Your dream was false,” she said. “It should have been of Luaine who claimed your cattle, or Ota the queen, whose love gift you wear.”
“By the Elements,” he began darkly, but she put out her hand.
“I have no desire for speech with unholy men,” she said. “Priest and monk say you are that, and they have a name for it! They tell me you speak marriage for me, but I have a choice: If Geroid goes into sanctuary I also will go; I am going. The veiled women of Cluain-mac-noise will take me without dower. Your dream in the forest has no meaning to a veiled maid.”
“It will have in another time,” he said in patience, for her voice had the sound of tears, and it made a strange ache in his heart. “I dreamed that you were in sorrow and that I was to offer you shelter. I did not know your sorrow but I turned and rode back to learn. From Fethna I learned.”
“It is not your sorrow,” said Doirenn.
“It may be, and we may live to know it,” Ruadan made answer, and strove to gentle his voice to her sadness, “for I dreamed I saw you in a very different place—away to the west and in hills I know and by a shore you never have seen.”
“The west!” she whispered. “Geroid is there now, a stone cell in the mountains of the west!”
“I did not see the cell. I saw you there at a shore I know, and Bronach the Lamentable was there—the wraith washing the shrouds of mortals. I woke in the night with that dream, and turned in the night to take the road here. To the people of my house Bronach does not come for naught. You were in that dream, it means a bond with our house, and I am here to keep that bond, and offer what I may.”
Doirenn, by the arras, called Bevind and her father.
“You told me of enchantments men make on maids when of evil mind,” she said. “The power Ruadan learned as a monk he would turn to much usage today. Was it by tales of dreams you witched the ring from a queen’s hand? And witched the Lady Luaine to the forest?”
And then she laughed and went out and left them there. But when Bevind found her in her chamber she was weeping bitterly and would not tell them of the dream or the enchantment.
And within seven days Fethna was glad of heart to take her to Cluain-mac-noise for the year of preparing a soul for the veil. Between her weeping for Geroid, and the raging of his own sons there was no peace for a quiet man in his own house.