Part 5

“Yes, I am good to my men,” agreed Ota. “They are strange children. They can be starved, and wounded, and beaten, but if they get their toys at the end of the raid their songs are only victory. Yet—” and she looked at Doirenn in thought and then turned to Ruadan, “think not because I would give such gift to a brother, or a husband, that I would allow one to a lover! So choose your gift from the spoils of kings, O Ruadan!”

He laughed with her and fastened a great gold brooch in her sweeping cloak.

“My choice is only a jewel for your wearing,” he said. “Are you ready to go down?”

“I do not know,” said Ota the queen. “Why is that girl staring hate at us? Ruadan, I like it not. She holds that book of the altar magic and it may be she works a spell! Ruadan, could it be?” And she clung to him and stared at the hate in the eyes of Doirenn. “Why do you look frozen? You have life left you, and food and shelter. You were not counted among the women for whom lots were drawn. What rage is then yours?”

“The grief is mine that in all that heap of jeweled sacrilege there is no thing of flint or of iron with edge for a maid of Erinn,” said Doirenn, and from the safe shelter of the arms of Ruadan, Ota gained courage again.

“A knife might be there,” she ventured. “You have no task all these days but to search among this wealth of beauties until Amlaf comes and finds your beauty.”

“There is no knife else only my body would be here for your mockings this day,” said Doirenn.

“Your caged bird of beauty croaks like a battle crow,” said Ruadan and laughed. “There are friendlier places than this place. Come, O Queen!”

“But that book she clasps? It is a thing for fear and why should she covet that when these jewels are in her reach? Art sure it could be no spell she works against us?”

“No, it could not be. What does a stripling maid like that know of books? I risk your gift in wager that she knows not the readings. Give me the book.”

Doirenn did not give it to him, but she shrank against the wall as he approached and let go of it. He turned the leaves and looked at her in scorn.

“There—” he said, and thrust it again into her hand. He took her other hand roughly and placed her finger on certain lines of the open page. “There, O young nun of the books, read me that!”

But she only looked at him in horror.

“God’s worst dastard—you!” she said.

“What does she mean?” asked Ota. “I need not save her for Amlaf. I can send her to the men if she does you ill. Was that a curse?”

“No curse: it is only a name the monks called me when I learned I was not fit for endless pen work, and endless prayers. Come! The wild thing will not eat while she has us to stare at.”

With tenderness he helped the queen down the wooden ladder and drew into place the stone slab of the floor.

Doirenn gazed after him, wide-eyed, hopeless. He did not turn one look toward her.

Her hand was still on the page where he had thrust it so roughly, and her eyes rested there, and then she sank down among the jeweled trophies and stared incredulous.

For there in beauty equal to the jewels about her were the words—“_Why are ye so fearful? How is if that ye have no faith?_”

The wine feast of Queen Ota was a victory feast for all. Gurtha was angered that it was given before Amlaf returned; neither had Barolf come. Early she went to her sleep, and said in going that if word should reach the ears of Ragnor that it was a wedding feast, she wanted not to be dragged forward for question!

But Ragnor was far to the south, the wine of the monastery was old and was good, and Ota left the filling of her cup to Ruadan of Ardsolais of the far mountains.

She whispered that his eyes worked magic without the brimming cup of gold he offered her, but he kissed the cup, and she emptied it, and talked her dreams of empire—and other dreams.

When the feast was ended he broke jewels from the necklet to give her women as bribe, and himself bore the queen to her silken couch, and rested beside her until all was silence, and the last reveller of the night sunk in sleep.

When the deep hour of the night had come, he took the key from the girdle of the queen—the cloak of hers, and the veil she wore in the sun, a dagger and a shield and spear he took from the place of arms, and the shoes of the queen he took.

He listened to her breathing, and drew the dagger from its sheath. He knew the right thing to do, for one dagger thrust was small payment for the nuns of Cluain-mac-noise—but he thought of Doirenn and halted.

With the queen living there could be only a jealous rage and a brief search for him and for the maid. But with the queen dead by his hand, there would be Thorgille and Amlaf and Barolf on the trail, and all her devoted men with hate for him and vengeance on the maid. Erinn might not be big enough to hide her in. Even from his own kinsmen he might get only curses and hounds on his track when they learned he had stolen away a maid of the cloisters. Another man might be given good thoughts for such stealing, but not Ruadan who had paid eric to Cairell, and had worn love gift of Ota.

To no dun of a friend could he take her, else that house would be stormed and the place left waste. There was nothing for it but the caves of the hills until the fleet of Ota was gone from the waters of the Sionan.

He thought of old forgotten sanctuaries of the early monks, if he could win south to the Skelligs and lay hidden, or reach to Arran, or hide in the grottoes of the loughs in Iar Connaught, carved ages ago by De Danaan magic!

These thoughts were with him as he gathered swiftly the needed things, and took last reluctant look at Ota the queen to whom he should deal death. Grief was on him that it must not be done by his hand if he would save the scornful holy thing in the tower.

So secure were all the guards of the outer walls, and the far points of vantage, that those of palace and cloister slept heavily and without care after the wine feast. It was not as an armed camp they rested, but a safe household.

He kept to the shadow of the walls from point to point and reached the tower safely. No guard was there, and he unbolted the door below it in silence, and bolted it back of him in the darkness.

The queen’s key served at top of the ladder and he felt that the girl was again crouched against the far wall.

“Haste,” he whispered, “here are shoes and cloak. Take a leathern bag in which the spoils were carried and thrust the garments in that. We have muck and mire to wade through ere a boat is ours.”

“Give me a knife that I may die here,” she made answer. “You are a greater thing of fear than the northmen.”

“Geroid is waiting a call of safety; I am his voice,” he whispered.

“Geroid!” and her voice was a flutter of hope. “I will trust his trust of you, if ... you give me a knife!”

“It is here to your hand.”

The dagger of the queen was passed to her in the darkness, ere she would take cloak, or shoes, or move a step toward the door.

“Haste!” he whispered as he heard her empty the bag with a little click of metal on stone, “haste, for the night is brief.”

She crept to the ladder but halted as his hand touched hers.

“Put no touch on me,” she muttered. “If die I do, it will not be in handclasp with the queen’s lover.”

At foot of the ladder he knelt and felt over the flagstone paving in the dark, and she heard heavy breathing as he worked fiercely among the rubbish and tossed aside sacks of grain stored there for siege. Then he found the stone for which he was searching and threw all his strength into his task.

Doirenn felt a rush of damp air where she stood. It had the smell of the river in it.

“The way is hard and narrow,” he whispered. “Also it is wet under foot. Give me the bag.”

“No,” she said, “sacred things are in it: the holy book and jeweled chalice, not to be touched by God’s outlaw. I am strong, I can follow.”

At first it was dry, then the dampness came, then the water, and she was wading near to the knees but wading toward the open. A tangle of vines and brush was to push through and she saw the glimmer of the Great Star on the still river.

“Steady,” he said, and moved up a space where the small boats were moored. A guard slept in one and Ruadan stood, girdle deep, beside it.

There was enough light to see the bare throat of the man, and strike true that no slightest cry go out on the night. He twitched once or twice and lay still forever.

Ruadan unfastened the boat and guided it back to where Doirenn stood, fearful and alert.

“Get in,” he whispered, and she did so, not noting the Dane until she stumbled and felt warm blood on her hand.

“What is it?” she asked, but Ruadan climbed dripping into the boat and took up the oars, but did not answer.

He dared not row, lest the dip of the oars be heard. They drifted in the darkness, making no more sound than an otter swimming in the night.

Doirenn stared at the still thing by her feet, and thence to the still man of horror, who was perhaps her safety, and wrapping herself in the cloak, she drew close the sacred helps in which all her trust was.

A late and fading moon came up over the forest as Ruadan used the oars for speed—they had passed the last fire of a river guard in safety.

The weird light showed the staring open eyes of the dead man at her feet.

“Dead and unshriven!” she gasped in horror, “and you with the soul stain of blood on you!”

“It is the first of the men for whom Bronach was washing grave clothes in the dream I rode to tell you of a year ago,” said Ruadan. “I saw his face yesterday, and knew he was the man. When we come to the high reeds of a meadow brook we will hide him there until the crows find him. There will be others.”

Until the edge of the day they bore the weight of the body ere a rushy place was reached where a boat could enter leaving no broken reeds near the sweep of the river. Far in, where a bog would hold the body, Ruadan stripped him of cloak and ax, and left him to the black earth.

“You make not a prayer,” said Doirenn in horror, “though well you were taught the ways of prayer.”

“It is yours to pray,” said Ruadan. “My knife did murder for you on him because you would not heed the warning I brought you from the mountains of the south a summer gone.”

“It was enchantments you spoke, and not warning. The enchantments of men of evil are things to fear.”

“Truth is truth—whether holy or unhallowed,” he said darkly.

“Who is Bronach?” she asked after a long silence, while he sought other channel where the reeds would leave no trace as he swept again into the Sionan.

“She is the washer of the ford. She washes in the land of souls the garments of men doomed to die. For my house to see her means death by us or for us. In a dream you stood beside her in my land.”

“The priests forbid,” she began, but he stopped her with a gesture.

“Talk me no priestcraft! Bronach is older than foreign priesthood in Erinn.”

“If I held not a holy book close in my hands for soul help, I am thinking the sky would fall on us with all its stars for that saying, or the water of the Sionan run backward from the sea!”

“It will do that in spite of your book,” he made answer, but she gave him no belief. She did not think the truth was with Ruadan at all.

She watched him in dread and in disdain while he bent to the oars in the dawn. The boat skimmed the air like a bird under his tremendous strokes.

“This is the time of the sun they will be searching,” he said. “One night is all we have in the lead of them, but many oarsmen has Ota the queen. Their course will be swift after they start the search.”

No guards of the river or lake were stationed in the middle land between Cluain-mac-noise and Killaloe, for forest and meadow and island were stripped of Irish herdsmen and Irish homes along the Sionan. He toiled lustily, with the current in his favor, while the day was young and the way clear, knowing that cover must be found ere midday, and all other water journeys must be in the night.

When a fair place of shelter came in their path he turned the boat to the mouth of a meadow brook and crept carefully over the black waters drained from bogs beyond.

It was none too soon, for his breath was scarce even again from the labor until a man was seen by them leaning on a spear, moving swiftly west above the meadow reeds; his head was turned ever from side to side, searching.

The boat and the oarsmen could not be seen because of the height of the swamp growths and the distance. But their swiftness was a wonder to view: it would be a good horse to be beating it.

But they swept out of sight, and Ruadan knew the lough toward the sea was now a place of danger.

“They have no trail, and that is a good help,” he said. “Now while the sun shines there is only the woods for us, and it may be berries or roots for food.”

Far he went inland where the boat was lifted over shallows into a little still lough under shadow of the wood.

“’Twill serve,” he said. “Nothing but the wild cattle may be coming, and it is a hiding place.”

He left her to get out as she might and wade with wet feet in the sedgy marge. Her looks at him were ill and fearful, and she clutched to her the bag in which the sacred helps were borne.

“I have no liking for this place,” she said, “and it will not be resting under birchtrees we will find Geroid.”

Ruadan made no answer. The labor had been to the limit of strength. He drank of the cool water and cast himself on the turf. She frowned at the discourtesy.

“Where is Geroid, O Queen’s Lover?” she asked. “It is to him I am going.”

He looked long at her, darkly frowning. He had killed a man for her, and was risking life for her, yet she had no thought for a creature of earth, but thought only of that anchorite who had turned to prayer and a bed of stone, and would not look in her deep, seeking eyes.

“By the Elements! It is to your Geroid you shall go,” he swore roughly. “My thought is that he is in his glory without you, but that is nothing. Though we circle Erinn to find the way to him, it is to Geroid you will go! Sorrow on the night you called for help and I was the fool to answer.”

She let fall the leathern bag and sank down beside it—her eyes wide in wonder.

“How are you knowing that—and you an evil man in an evil world? I did send the call. On my knees I made the prayer that holy Saint Kieran might help the call go out to some soul beyond the walls—and you—_you_—”

“I heard it in my sleep and knew your voice though I had only heard it when weighted heavy with hate. Also I followed it.”

She brooded over that long, and drew the book to her.

“You followed Ota the queen,” she said at last, “and you fled in the night with her jewels on you lest her kinsmen return and spear you to the ground.”

“You shall go to your Geroid,” he muttered, and got up and walked away.

So wearied was she that she fell into sleep there in that warm hour when the wind and the bees and birds all swept drowsily through the low green branches. So thick were they that a dusk was on the turf, though beyond their shadow the yellow light of sun was a glory.

It was beyond he had gone, and in her sleep she thought he had gone over some edge of the world where she could not find him. She woke with a moan of fear.

She lay there thrilled by a sort of terror that she had wanted him—it was a thing she could not understand, and puzzling things angered her. That thought of evil enchantments of his would not go away.

Then, while she framed a prayer against magic and druid spells, a sweet smell came to her, so close she thought it was part of a dream.

But it was a better thing, for fresh sweet blackberries were heaped beside her, and a little apart Ruadan sat with his back to her, eating.

She had not known how hungry she was until she tasted the melting sweetness of them, and then she determined that, on the rest of the way, she would pick her own berries—there was anger on her that she had not done it.

As she moved away to look for more, he spoke.

“You are not to go from this shadow,” he said. “Cattle are beyond, and a hut of a herder; we have far to go, and meat will be good to have. I am going in a circle till I come to them, that no track will seem to come from here, for this must be the hiding place of you.”

“And if foreign men are there? If they take you—if I am lost alone in this place where you bring me?”

“It is not in this place you will be lost. In the dream I saw you to the west, and that place is yet to find.”

No more than that he said, and no look did he give to see if it was well or ill she liked it.

She crept back to the birchtree shadow, and watched him go, and she held the book with its precious work and precious words close to her bosom, and was making prayers on it—the prayers of Phadraig the Saint against enchantments.

With the eyes of her closed she went over the prayers and over them again, and the sun was in the very center of the sky. Two wood doves came close and spoke their loves sweetly in a rowan bush near, and listening to them was like listening to the silver string of the magic harp of the god of music, for the silver string has the wood music of sleep in it.

The sun was low to the edge of the forest trees and was red as a signal fire of danger when she woke. The doves were flown away, and the world was very still about her.

He had not come back, and she felt fear at the wide aloneness of the deep forest and the reedy marge of the wide lough; alone she could not make her way even to the flowing Sionan or Dearg below.

She looked the way he had gone, and listened for faintest sound of his step until every droning bee set her heart to thump. When she could bear it no longer, she looked at her knife’s edge, tied the leathern bag of the sacred things to her girdle, and looking with care to all things by which the return way might be found, she ran with swift feet to the last point from which he had vanished in the green.

No living thing was in sight, and she went on more slowly. There was a hill to climb, and from that height she had hope to see the cattle toward which he had gone. On the high point of the hill there was a circle of stones, and two with strange spiral carvings. These magic places of the old gods had curious legends in Meath, and she drew close to her the holy things of the altar as she stood in the shadow of the great stone to look westward over the plain.

The herds were there, but they were only far moving specks, no more size to them than birds. But among them, or near them, she could see no man.

But the hut of stone and timber at the edge of a wood she did see, and sat long in the shadow of the huge stone watching for a sign of any living thing—and no sign was there.

Then she crept through fern and gorse at the edge of the land where the cattle fed, and dragged herself along the brink of a dark wooded glen, and the hut was at the wall of that glen, and the look from there was a wide look for the herding.

A sound came to her, and her thought was that her heartbeat was loud in her ears from the fear of the still, strange place. And she crept more close and knew it was not her own heart, for it was a man breathing, and the breath was a rattle in the throat.

Through a chink in the hut she could see the man, and him a stranger and a great dog dead near him. The man was stained with blood and was looking with no good looks at something her eyes could not see.

He was reaching for a long knife with blood on it—far from him it had fallen—and there was a stagger to every movement he made, for great weakness was on him.

Yet he watched one way whilst he crept to the knife and fell as if dying, yet roused himself to creep again a little ways.

The blood of Doirenn went cold from that look of hate on him, and then blazed keen and hot to learn why the knife was coveted even in the face of death.

With the dagger of Ota the queen unsheathed in her hand, she crept to the low door, and the low sun of the west pierced to the dark corner where Ruadan lay. She could see no movement of him, yet she knew he was not dead, for if it had been so, the foreign man would not reach thus for the knife, or creep, dying himself, on a wounded foe.

She had no plan of attack, yet as he grasped the knife and lifted it over the body of Ruadan, she leaped through the door, and her dagger struck deep and true in the neck of the stranger.

He gurgled, choked, and lay still.

She crept back to the wall and sat there, wild-eyed and fearful. She had not meant to do the thing before her: to strike the knife from him had been her thought. But the right hand of her had done its own task despite any thought of hers.

The lowering sun slanted over his dead face, filling her with horror at the moving shadows of it. Her teeth chattered with chill at the dead man and dog, and at the other man whose breath she saw lifting ever so little the lacings of his garment.

It was that piteous little breath, no deeper than of a child in arms, by which she was urged at the last to draw near. She felt frozen, and the leathern bag with the sacred helps lay without the portal, but without that help, and in forgetfulness of prayer, she crept forward.

He lay in a pool of blood, black and stiff. His shoulder bore a deep gash, and the red tide yet came faintly at each breath. A long slant of a blade had creased his brow and his face shone gray white where the dark smear had not touched it. It all seemed to have chanced a long time before.

That thought coming to her, she went over where the dog lay and touched it; stiff it was and cold.... While she had slept in drowsy rest under the birchtree Ruadan had fought out a battle of fierceness with the huge foreign man and the dog stretched there as big as a calf. The two men had all but killed each other. Each had thought his enemy gone out of life ere he gave way to weakness or swoon, and the foreign man had wakened first.

Terror went from her suddenly when the mystery of it went. There was left only a wounded man for her care, and she knelt beside him and loosened the lacings of his garment as she had seen the white fingers of the queen unlace it in the tower.

The sun set, and the other suns rose ere he wakened to knowledge. Troubled phantoms of blood and death were with him in his weakness, and a strange presence he did not know.

It was in a rosy dawn he wakened to know the walls, and how he had first found them, but the strange presence was like mist of the seafoam—ever about to take form in his mind, and ever fading again.

And out of that fog of dreams and phantoms of carnage a vision of Paradise came to him.

It was perhaps the slant of the sun through the mists of the morning by which the magical thing was wrought, but where the sun-kissed green had been seen through the portal, there was at once a glory of gold beyond any glory of saint told him in the teachings. He looked at her and thought of Brighde, the ever young, when bondmaid to her druid master, bearing cups and bowls of common things made holy by touch of her hands.

For she stood there with the sun making a halo of her red-gold hair, and in her two hands was held a golden chalice of richest handicraft, set with the thirteen flashing stones of beauty.

The chalice was brimming with foam of new milk, and when she saw his eyes, wide open, she stood silent, waiting, but the look in her eyes was the look of Brighde, ever the giver, the serving-maid to whom the angels sang.

“You are a dream, and not truth,” he muttered. “You are Brighde the goddess; you are the fiery arrow of radiance in hearts of men; you are Love, and you are Knowledge. When the priests could not stamp you out, they made a saint of your name to hold the worship of you. You are the vision always beyond a soul—you are only a dream, and I could wish you truth.”