Part 6

“The warm milk is true as if in a wooden bowl instead of a golden chalice,” she said. “Two days it has been your food, and has served you fairly.”

He drank it as a gift of God, and stared at her.

“And it is a vision come true,” he said. “Two days? And I not alone here. There were others—a dog and a man I killed.”

“They were dragged and rolled over the cliff of the glen. There was no other way,” she said.

“And this?” he asked, pointing to the mass of soothing poultice on his shoulder.

“It is anemone, a flower of healing. I but gathered it and bruised the leaves. The work of that was nothing. The only task of fear was to hold you from wandering. Too restless were you for the boat and the road of the Sionan.”

“And you did it? I dreamed of your hands touching me; I thought it a dream of Brighde who was goddess and then saint.”

He went asleep again almost as he spoke, for the weakness was yet on him.

When he wakened his thoughts were more steady, and he asked if the golden chalice had been a thing of dreaming.

“I took it from sacrilege in the tower,” she confessed. “It was the cup of sacrament, and not to be left to pagans if my life could give it guard.”

He looked at her long, with thoughts of that day in the tower, and asked where her dagger was.

“It is no longer with me—I have taken instead the one of the herder.”

“The other had sharp slimness and value of gold and jeweled hilt.”

“This, with the horn of a deer for handle, is a cleaner thing.”

He thought she meant cleaner than a knife touched by the hand of Ota, and his well hand went up to his neck where the necklet rested—the gold of it had saved him a death stroke of the herder.

“This necklet has served its task,” he said. “It can take its place with the other spoils saved by you.”

“It has no place among them,” answered Doirenn coldly. “I saved only holy things from sacrilege.”

And he saw by that he had said the wrong thing, for she was no longer the Brighde of tender service—she was a gold-crowned judge who looked down from a far height.

He held in his memory the wordy condemnation of the priests, and of Ronan the abbot, but it was easier to endure their revilings than her frozen look when she remembered the love gift and caressings of Ota the queen.

“It is to your Geroid you shall go,” he said, and looked at her darkly, and went out from the hut of the herder, though the blue of the sky and green of the turf were as one before his eyes because of the weakness on him.

It was better to be in the woods alone with his tranced vision of Brighde, than to face the cold scorn of the maid who had seen the white hands of Ota on his throat.

But despite the look, or the word of scorn for him, Doirenn was not at ease if he was long out of her sight. Never had she outgrown the fear of what she had felt at sight of the great dead dog and the dying foreign man crawling for the knife.

There was trouble on her for the thing she had done, and no holy man anywhere to take her confession and lighten her mind. Prayer she could make, and did—but for the sending of an unshriven soul to God there was no comfort, and her thoughts had no sunshine.

Sometimes there was terror on her because she could no longer judge Ruadan for the stark body at her feet in that first awesome night. From the rath of Fethna to the garden of the nuns at Cluain-mac-noise had been all the world known to her. Even in the raid of the Danes on her father’s house, when the black smoke of burnings had left her without roof of her own, or kindred of her own, she had been borne to safety before the battle.

Of the foreign men who were pagans she thought no more than of wolves in a pack leaving death on their path, but for Ruadan, called evil, yet with knowledge of godly things, she could find no gentle excuse—until her own hand had the secret stain of blood on it!

By that was she made kindred in evil to him, and the shining beauty of her was under shadow from the thought.

As strength came back and the wound healed, he had curious looks at her, ever with the book of amber and pearl of sea on the cover. But when he spoke of it she frowned her reproof.

“It is holy, and it is a safe charm to lead me out of the wilderness.”

“Yet is it made by the hand of a man,” he said.

“How should you be knowing that?” she asked. “It is knowledge not for sinful men. My own thought is that Saint Kieran sent an angel to do the words of this, it may be that a man made the cover.”

“It may be,” he said. “May the charm of it lead you safely, for another night we leave this place. I am able. Even Dermot and Grania never hid so long on the way to happiness as we here.”

“There is a difference,” she said, and she blazed a rose red at thought of Grania’s love.

“There is,” he agreed. “Dermot had to his aid friends and gods. The pagan gods are driven out by christian bells and there is only the wilderness for us with that white cat on the trail. I must find hiding for you and leave you there and gather men of the west to serve as guard.”

“I will not be left again,” she said. “To be left behind in darkling wood, or dreary cave, gives me more fear than to be on the way.”

She drove in a young cow and braided a rope of vines to hold her for the killing that food might be theirs on the way, for their journey along the shores of Lough Dearg must be in the nights, and all movement in light of the sun was danger.

With his one well hand and her two they managed the killing, but she turned away her head because the knife brought her thought of the dead foreign man under the cliff.

Ruadan went through the russet fern and the berry vines seeking the silky inner bark of a dead tree for the spark of flint and steel, and when he found it he wandered on to the circle of stones to sharpen spear and knife on the ancient altar. When he made his way back he saw a strange thing, for the glen below the cliff was plain before him, and he stood very still as if fearing the ancient gods had heard his speech of their fading away. There was a glitter of gold and a jewel among the ferns below him, and it was not a place for the seeking of such wealth.

He crept forward, and saw the dog and the man who lay face downward as he had been rolled from the cliff. And it was in the neck of the man the jeweled dagger had been thrust deep. The sun shone on it through a rift in the boughs above, and set it all aglitter.

It was the knife of Doirenn, and so deep had it struck that it took a strong hand to draw it out. Away from there he cleansed it in the earth, and washed it all in a shadowed rill, and brooded over it in a maze of wonder.

A woman of frankness like Ota the queen he could know the thoughts of. She said the thing she wanted and took it. If battle had to be waged to gain it, that battle she fought like a man and took her victory prize, or put her own foot on the neck of an enemy.

But this thing of radiant scorn and icy piety who thrust her knife deep and went to prayer was a different breed. He would not have thought her hand strong enough for that stroke. The edge was turned where it grazed a bone.

So he carried her secret—and with it the mystery of her.

As they could, they went from the hut of hiding and went seaward in the nights through the great lough, and hid in forest or swamp meadows or inlands at dawn, until the churning, quick current was reached, and there the boat was hidden, and cooked meat stored with the altar jewels in the leathern bag, and they went afoot through dusk of the deep wood, or crept, hidden, through lush grasses of wide meadows.

At times, afar off, they saw men with cattle on the hillsides, and a boat of courier speeding down the rapids. Once a warrior’s boat passed beneath a cliff where they lay hidden, and glittering shields were bright in the sun.

“Look well,” said Ruadan, “for it is Amlaf, the prince, who is on your trail. A strong man is Amlaf, with king and queen for his kinsfolk. It may be he could make you queen of Erinn by a lucky turn, for Turgesius—which is Latin for Thorgille—has great tribute, is not young, and it is said by all that the threat in the night sky is the ‘star of the enemy’; as it grows strong—will grow the strength of the Dane. If gods fight against it, where is the refuge of Erinn?”

She looked as bidden, and the man in the boat was slender and tawny, with long tresses of pale silk waving in the soft air. Jeweled he was in great beauty, and his armor was of white bronze. The blue-green of his eyes was like the glint of his spear-heads, and the cloth of his garment was broidered with wires of pale gold.

“He is as beautiful as your lover, the queen,” said Doirenn in scorn, “but not so strong. He will hold no strong star in the sky.”

Ruadan looked at her in gloom at the mocking, and after a little he laughed.

“That naming of her leaves no scar on me,” he said. “But ‘queen’s lover’ suits me ill.”

“Is it so?” asked Doirenn staring after the warboat with its deft oarsman. “Then again are you kin to Dermot who was not the lover but the many times loved.”

He took the mocking blackly enough.

“Sorrow is mine that, like Dermot, I have no bread unbroken to leave on the road for them that trail us,” he said. “And you to your Geroid!”

But she knew not the meaning of the words of broken bread, and he saw that, and the flame of his anger went out.

“It is ill enough to pass time in rages when our time on this earth may be ending,” he said. “That man below is a strong prince with a strong army at the shore. Horses and cattle are theirs and one spearsman in every Irish house of Thomond. No one king of Erinn commands tribute today like to the tribute of Turgesius and of Ota. Their swarms are here like bees on honey, and no roof is ours for safety. The caves of Iar Connaught are safe if we can reach them, with your monk to aid. You may have your fill of life in a cloistered cell ere the day I can guard you to safety.”

“And if—if Geroid is not to be found? And if all roads are closed?”

“Geroid will be found if he is left alive. These hills were once hunting ground for me, and the cells of Senan’s men were known as my own mountains.”

“And, if he is not left alive?”

“Of that we will not speak. If Amlaf, or if Ota, trap us in their wide net, you will die first, so make your prayers.”

She looked at him long, and the shadow on his face caused her wonder, for she had heard all evil of him but never that he was of faint heart.

“Is it so far to your own domains?” she asked, and never before had she asked of home or kindred or life of his.

“It is not far as the ravens fly, but my clan have their rages against me. After that judgment of cattle, not one would take spear for a maid I would hide on Ardsolais.”

“It is said you have good will of Niall the king. How can the friend of a king be without help?”

“The Lady Luaine is of the clan of his mother, and the grace of a king can grow cold.”

“Like enough,” said Doirenn, “she told them of your enchantments.”

“Like enough,” agreed Ruadan, and there was laughter in his eyes. “A woman must ever have ready some excuse of magic. Is it enchantment you are thinking?”

“What else to think when you are dark and not handsome? Wives of men put jewels on you and follow where you go. How is that but by enchantings?”

“How indeed?” asked Ruadan. “And since you are knowing that, it is a strange brave heart that is in you to drink from the same cup with me.”

“The cup is holy and is to go with Geroid into sanctuary, and the book with me is holy. That is my strength.”

“Since it is so I would ask concerning this godly Geroid to whose sanctity you would trust them. Since my life is too evil for your christian grace, what is the saintly enchantment of him, that a well-favored maid would cover herself with a veil because he chose to go walking out of her life?”

“Enchantments are evil, and he was never evil,” said Doirenn. “He made beauteous verses and told me his love in them sweetly. He gave me kind kiss at parting, and only to God would he give himself rather than to me. No payer of cattle was he, and—no love of a pagan queen!”

“It may be so,” said Ruadan. “And when was this high loving of his and of yours?”

“There is no hurt to him in making speech of that,” she answered, “and it may bear its lesson to you. He had seven and ten years to his age, and three less to mine.”

Ruadan stared, and then strove to seem grave, yet were his eyes full of laughter and she saw it.

“Yet he could love and he did!” she made protest angrily. “Tablets were sent to me often and his verses on them told me that.”

“Ay, his verses!” said Ruadan. “From the dull days of schooling he would have some fair thing to hear his calfloves, and you were the most gracious! Child, at that age I was writing verse to Venus and Brighde, and sad at heart for the ghost of fair Dierdre who loved so well! All the world is turned to love at that age—it is the schooling of hearts.”

“I alone was his Venus and his Brighde and his Dierdre,” she said and drew back in proud anger at his jesting. “How could you, queen’s lover and God’s Dastard, read that lesson of loving, or know holiness of such writings?”

Her anger was like a lash, and almost it whipped him into turning the pages of her holy book and show the writing of his own name there cunningly twined with the interlaced scrolls of the last page. But he knew it was not easy to believe that his other days had been filled by that beauty of line and color. It would be to her but another proof of enchantment if he should show it her, as he might.

And he put aside the thought for another reason: it would take from her the only thing to which she trusted as a link with her saints.

“Time is a good story-teller,” he said, and his smile was grim enough. “On a day to come you may know the weight of your words. Come, the hunter who seeks you is gone beyond sight, and we can cover much ground ere the dark comes down.”

She obeyed him in silence—half shamed because of her anger and his quietness.

She still bore the precious book, making prayer on it through all the terrible ways they trod, but he bore the leathern bag in which the food and cup and jewels were safe. It was strange to her, but after she had found him wounded and given him drink from the cup, she no longer thought so deeply of his evil repute, and since the herder went over the cliff with her dagger she felt less bitter for the other sins on his soul. But when she found herself thinking kindly of him as a human she grew angry with herself and went to her prayers.

All of a day did Ruadan of Ardsolais and Doirenn na Marvan lay in hiding of the hills where the path to the high cell of Saint Senan could be seen through the branches. Far beyond was the smoke of the northmen’s fires, and footmen and men on horseback were seen to cross open spaces. One rider, on a steed of shining black, had much of glittering gear and waving flaxen hair—it was Amlaf.

“He has had runners in these hills. See, they keep up their stride until report is made, when they fall anywhere for rest. It is well we hid long in the herder’s hut. Time was given them to make wide their search; it is over for this place, and that is well for us.”

Yet, he watched long for slightest sign ere he crept through the tall fern and alder and young oak on the hillside. On the ancient path in the stone to the cell above he dared not venture until the turn of the hill was reached, and no human thing in sight.

Like creeping wild things of the wilderness, they thus made their way beneath the leafy coat of green until the steep path was reached, and it in the gray stone cliff narrow and winding and curving the hill above the lough.

Then Ruadan looked at her with the look of parting.

“It is here I must hide you until I go up to that place,” he said. “You see the steepness and the danger. This is the place to wait where the leaves are thick.”

Doirenn made appeal to go, but he would not hear. Then she kissed the cup from which they had drunk, and fastened close the leathern bag into which she had placed all sacred things but the book.

“Take these holy things as warrant to a holy man,” she said, “lest evil come to you for intrusion on his pious thoughts.”

“And it is not evil you are wishing me then?” he asked, and looked on her steadily, but her eyes turned elsewhere, and rose color flushed in her pale face.

“I would not that you die in your sins,” she made answer, and his smile had weary bitterness as she spoke.

“A hundred deaths of dread has a man died for you those summer days,” he said. “Yet that man breathes human breath. The sacred things I will bear as you bid, lest I could not carry them, and you also, on the second journey—if I find your saint waiting you!”

“And if your footing should not prove sure, and if death should wait you on the rocks below?”

He stood still above her, looking down where she knelt with the book against her breast.

“Here is my answer to you,” he said, and tossed her his dagger. “That is the better part of Ruadan. Give the blade deep to drink if the eyes of Amlaf, or of Ota the queen, look on you again.”

“And you?” she whispered, “it leaves you without a blade for danger.”

“Not so, O Doirenn,” he said; “I have a dearer thing.” And he showed her the jeweled hilt of her blade of death.

She went white and covered her face, and he moved carefully along the narrow ledge with his burden and shield and spear, up and up until he noted birds fly out from nests in the crannies far below. Then a sharp turn came in the rock, and the cell sanctified by holy men for two centuries was the end of the narrow way.

A man knelt there by the stone trough which served as bed, and no other thing was there but a cauldron on dead ashes, and cup and bowl of wood. Some moss was heaped in a corner, and birds’ eggs were in the bowl.

“God’s blessing on the home,” said Ruadan in courtesy, but the kneeling man whirled in terror.

“Why have you come again? And why do you now speak in clear Latin and not before?” he asked, and his voice was high and shrill like that of an angry woman—much more like a woman even than was the deep voice of Doirenn.

“I am come because that is my task,” said Ruadan. “If you are Geroid of Cluain-mac-noise, I have gift and message for you, and I am Ruadan of Ardsolais.”

The monk cried out in horror, and waved him away.

“Man of blood and traffic in evil!” he said. “Begone from this place of prayer. Twice come the Danes here in search, with tales of your murders, and your stealing of maids. If they find you here it will be evil to me. Get you gone!”

“A man of blood I have been, and may be,” said Ruadan, looking in the pale, narrow face and the eyes of terror. “But I am also a keeper of sacred things, and it is your task as a man to help me in the guarding of them.”

“You! You were the outcast—God’s Dastard—the youth of holy training who threw off the robe for temptings of the world,” said the monk, and he moved the width of the cell away and spread out his thin hands as a wall, lest Ruadan move a step nearer. “Go back to the world and bring not your evil here where holiness has lived—here, where in prayer I wait the crown of sanctity and the wings of angels in Paradise!”

“I will go back when I have done my task. I bring here gold vessels of the altar that you may know my intent, and below a more precious thing waits for sanctuary—it is the maid they told you I stole away—it is Doirenn, daughter of Marvan. It is a body and soul to be saved by you, and by me.”

But Geroid fell groveling beside the stone couch, waving his hands in wild protest.

“Take your evils from this place,” he cried out. “Have I fought the demons of woman-temptings for naught? Seven times seven days in the spring of the year did I pray in water of ice to my armpits. Nine times nine prayers have I likewise made to that end, for youth is still on me! Is it from the King of Hell you are come to bring temptings of women who breed the evils of carnal loves?”

Ruadan stared at him as at a wild dog he would throttle, and then let fall the sack, looking at the wasted form and the wild eyes. He tried to see where her human youth of the verses was hidden behind the grievous mask, and could not.

“I need teaching to tell me that love is of Hell,” he said. “In a swoon of half death in a forest I had a vision of love with a difference. It was a radiant love, bearing healing for human ills—yes-and it shrank not from soiled hands, or blood-stained hands, in the service—that was my vision. You, monk that you are, have had more than vision: As children, Doirenn and you have gone with clasped hands and no wall between you. She has heart-love for the remembering of that time and she has come the hard way for your help above all men. You look not so much to me, but the priests tell us you are made in God’s image. No god of a man can be a coward, and we may have enemies to overcome ere we get her to safety, but I am here to help, and that is my message.”

“Go you hence with your sacrilege. Holiness does no battle,” said Geroid wildly. “Go you hence to your bloody wars for women and cattle and the things of the world. Leave me in peace with my God, and the saving of my soul.”

Ruadan listened and laughed.

“To save your own soul? By the Elements! I have belief in no man, and in no god of a man who hides in safe sanctuary when white innocence flees from the ravisher. To sanctuary here has come Doirenn who deems you holy. If you cast her out, she has only Ruadan as safety. And all Erinn can tell you Ruadan boasts no holiness.”

“Get you gone! Your ways are bloody and fearful and your ways are evil.”

“Not less evil than the weight of my hand on you if you hearken not,” said Ruadan darkly. “Two holy gifts have I borne to you through much danger, for the cell of a monk would seem best hiding place. One is this,” and he emptied on the floor of the cell the gold and gem-set things of the altar, “the other is a human soul in a fair body, which, O praying monk, is the holier thing for your shelter. This is the time for the choice of a man.”

The monk lifted the jeweled chalice and gloated over the golden monstrance with each ray of the sun set in crimson and rose and yellow gem.

“The man who wrought this work had help of the angels of God,” he whispered, and made the sacred sign as he lifted each treasure.

“What of the handiwork of angels in the creation of the stray maid of warm life, and music of voice and eyes of pureness?” asked Ruadan. “Look at this hand of mine. It has been a craftman’s hand in the work you adore there; it has been a bloody hand in the work you hide from here, the work of the world! It is a strong hand and not yet a conquered hand. Yet it shakes, as my soul shakes at thought of that fair creation when God spoke Doirenn into this world of ours. Make your choice of the holier thing, O monk she deems holy! This is the time for your choice as a man—and by your choice and hers, Ruadan abides.”

“Get you gone from holy ground with your sacrilege of creation and Hell’s vision of carnal loves!” screamed Geroid, and held the monstrance of red gold between his own body and Ruadan. “The things of holy altars I will hold at God’s will, but name no name of woman in the ears of God’s chosen—they drive out the music of angels’ wings!”

Then a cry came to them—the cry of a woman, and close, and Geroid fell on his knees in terror, and gathered close the glittering jewels, and Ruadan unslung the short spear from his back.

“It is the time for the choice of a man,” he said, and sped as a cat along the narrow path to the turn where he had last looked down on her.