Part 8

But more quickly than Moria could follow, she sped to the enclosed garden where the red May rose bloomed against the south side of the wall, and close under her linen shift lay a blossom of it before the dark woman, with dark words, grasped her wrist, and drew her within the portal.

“The fury of Donal your father will not be a summer storm to you if he hears of lovers of yours before the Lady Aevil has her right as a wife ahead of you,” she said. “The visits of honor are spoiled by the endless twanging of the fool’s harp, and of yours, and the end of it is coming!”

Liadan knew there were dark words said of Moria in whispers by the people of the hills of Kerry. Her love for Aevil was a real love, but her hate was a thing to fear, and the soul of Liadan trembled, yet the thought of Kurithir brought back life to her, and she spoke.

“With your hands you will not touch me again,” she said, “and this to your warning. As a child I mind me how, for curious reasons, you sang sleeps upon me at noontide. I saw strange things in the sleeps you sent me and some I remember. But I am not now a child and my life is a different thing to me. No will of yours shall be on me again, nor the will of any other mortal, save one only—and I loving that one. My duty to Donal, my father, and Aevil, my sister, will be paid in silence. But to the man who gives me heart-love there has been too much of silence, and the end of that is coming!”

The dark woman looked at her sideways and said no word lest the maid grow wild and run shrieking, or do some other ill thing to shame them. For the words of Liadan told her it was a woman deep in love who spoke, and that at once both her body and mind were sacred to her as love’s offering on an altar.

And Moria went from the chamber in fear of the wrath of Aevil if the lovers met, and in fear of other things! The key on the chain was forgot at her girdle, and it was the first time.

At the foot of the turret stairs she remembered the key and would have turned back, but Aevil was there and heard her story and smiled.

“Wait for the locking of the door,” she said, and frowned and thought. “Since she is turned rebel on our hands, and a dagger is forbid, we will try other ways, and ways will be found. Her poet is sick with love and mooning alone, yet far enough from the turret. Keep you ward, and send to me Aillain, son of our host. He mutters poems of hers instead of grace.”

It was true Kurithir was alone, and a new thought with him for company. The next house of the visit of the sisters was that of a friend where a welcome for him was ever waiting. Yet at this time he would not ride there without a castle servant to ask his presence. But on white beech tablet he was writing that friend to send for him quickly, and his own servant was put on the road with it, while the others played chess, and took pawns, and looked love to women, and Aevil laughed, thinking that he wrote poems on dull tablets when he could find more human pleasures. Flann laughed when she laughed, and knew nothing of the heartache of his friend. After their words on the cliff there had been no more words between them of Liadan or of Aevil.

Their laughter sat ill upon him, and he moved to a casement where he could see the window of the turret chamber, and perhaps a light there.

No light was showing, but the soft note of the little harp was heard, and its sweetness was dear to him, for it was his own song of the night she had caught.

“It is well Liadan is playing that,” said Aevil. “All the day she was making practice of it because you, Aillain, gave it praise.”

“I?” said the youth Aillain, and stared, and his mother heard and laughed.

“What does a manling do when music is made by fair lady to his liking?” she asked. “A gold-caged thrush would be fitting for a lady’s gift, or flowers for fragrance.”

They made jests of him as at a lover they were training for love, and the eyes of the youth laughed also, yet he was courteous.

“No less than my duty, and the gift, shall be offered,” he said. “The less garden bloom for the other ladies on the morrow.”

Straightway he started for the garden in the dusk, glad to show grace to so fair a guest. The sky had primrose tints in it afar, and the golden curve of the moon was above dark ocean. Only one star shone high, and shadows fell thick where the hedges were, and where a great vine threw wide arms at the foot of the tower.

A moment the boy paused to look up where the harp strings were softly touched, then there was silence, and a white hand reached far out, and a bit of fragrance touched his breast—it was a red rose, crushed where it had lain under the linen of her warm bosom.

The youth was mazed and stood waiting with staring eyes. Was it a mocking the gay group would make because of his lack of years, and his height of a man? This was the reasonable thought, for he had a sweetly gay temper of his own, and was used to their baiting.

But while he held the rose and listened for their laughter, something finer came to him: it was the hushed voice of Liadan singing. A very whisper of a song it was, and heard only by him, and by a man at the casement.

The mystic rose are you to me In secret bower growing, The grayling bird of grief am I Not joyous taking wing!

One star for both above the sea— The trysting star! A grayling Lets fall a rose and breathes her sigh: Not joyous taking wing!

The voice ceased and the harp strings gave a wail as a heavy hand of discord crashed it. The boy could make nothing of that, and walked slowly into the dusk of the garden, intent as before on the gift of blossoms.

It was a sweet song as she sung it, and a pleading one. He wondered as to the meaning of the mystic rose. It was a new word to him and he had an ear for words of beauty.

Then there came swiftly the rush of a slender form into the garden’s dusk. Like a low-flying bird before a hawk she ran, for the dark woman was at the portal.

“O rose of flame,” said Liadan sobbing, “that I should have given snow for your fragrance!”

The tall youth, Aillain, had plucked a hand full of bloom, but stared at her strangeness, and drew back from her.

“The roses are for your gift, fair Liadan,” he began courteously, but at his voice she moaned in terror and caught his shoulder.

“O rose of brief bloom for me,” she said, and fell in whiteness at his feet. He bent to lift her, but the dark woman was first.

“Silence is best for this,” she said to Aillain. “It is no new thing and I can bear her alone.”

She was very strong, and Liadan lay in her arms like a broken flower, and thus she faced Kurithir at the portal; he was white as the maid, as he barred her way.

“Tell me of this meaning,” he said, and Moria laughed as Aevil herself might have laughed.

“You are a man and should know,” she said. “The boy is a new plaything and she broke the lock to keep tryst with him. You poets play over much at the love game, and oft choose your mates strangely.”

“If you were a man my hand would send you to hell for that saying.”

“Even that would not make her over, or change the heart of her,” said Moria. “Give way that I may put her back under lock ere her sister learns this newest shame.”

He gave way, and paced like a chained thing the length of his leash under the wall where he could see the light of her window. He listened for her voice, but no sound came.

Later he sought Aillain, but the youth had gone straight to Aevil in his amaze and fear, and she had cunningly bound him to silence, as if Liadan were some distraught creature ever to be guarded when the moon was new. To Flann, Kurithir could not speak.

In the morning Liadan was dressed by Moria for the journey, listless and cold, staring.

Aevil mocked her despair, and hummed the words of her trysting song.

“Think you a man of pride waits for tryst with a maid so bold?” she asked. “The rose alone might have won a hearing, but men are fain to do their own wooing. Your song argued practice in love, so he walked away, O grayling, you!”

Liadan took up the harp and broke the strings.

“It will make songs for no other man,” she said. “So much for love’s practice on me!”

Cold and white she sat for the braiding of the gold disks in her brown hair, and cold and white for the girdling of the gray robe, and the lacings of the gray shoes. After the breaking of the harp Aevil mocked no more, for there were guests and a host to face in the farewells, and it might prove a hard hour.

But Liadan strangely bade farewells as a child is taught to do. There was a faint little smile on her lips, and she looked into faces as if scarce seeing, while the dark woman watched her curiously.

“Her boast was that no will but his should lead her,” she said to Aevil. “Look you! Whose will leads her now?”

“What thing have you done?” asked Aevil, “for his is the one face she does not lift her eyes for. What druid’s draught have you brewed for her?”

“No draught,” said Moria. “She gave you fear when she broke the harp, and that was the time to give her the quiet. Look not fearful, a weakness is on her from these days, but weakness goes again in youth.”

Liadan was seldom gay, and none but Kurithir and Flann noted her stillness. Neither spoke of it. And so she went away from them. And the music was stilled in Kurithir. His harp was laced in its cover of otter’s skin, and the message she had writ on it was hidden—to their sorrow!

When word came from the friendly house that he was ever welcome there, but that the Lady Aevil, and her sister, the poet Liadan, had not come their road, he bade farewell to his friend Flann and took a boat for the sea.

“The thrushes do not sing, even for poets, on the sea,” said Flann, and that was the first time he mentioned the dream of love of Kurithir.

“There are no longer thrushes singing for me in the shadows, and no dreamhouse of love in any forest,” said Kurithir.

Straight south he steered and then east, through storm and stress seeking new ports, seeing new faces, hearing new songs but singing no more. Women looked on him with warm invitings in many a harbor, and one of sweet words and gray eyes sent him out into open seas against wind and tide.

“Other men are not remembering like this,” he said. “Back of the look in every woman I see the look of Liadan, O lost gray bird of mine—Liadan—Liadan!”

To say her name brought her before him strangely. He leaned forward in the dusk and brushed his hand over his eyes as if to clear vision.

For there in the prow he saw—something! It was the faint gray shadow of a girl with a broken harp. The harp he could see very clearly, for the broken strings were black against the green-white foam.

“Liadan,” he whispered, and moved to her, but white spray dashed between them and no other thing was there. And that was the first time she came.

“She is dead,” he said, and the world was more empty for the thought, yet strangely enough, when sleep came she began to come very close to him, and very warm and very much alive.

In the dusk of starlight he saw her, shadowy, with his earthly eyes again and again, and at times he thought the fragrance of hawthorn and roses of May was on the sea.

“Is it the way of a madman I am going?” he asked himself, “for there can no more be fragrance of roses here than there can be songs of thrushes.”

And that night in sleep he heard the thrushes! It was together they heard them—her hand in his, and she listening.

And the words he said to her there were words he had never said to any woman in life. Her eyes shone on him like warm stars, and it was as if they had both been waiting always for the words and the hearing of them. And in the dream he sang to her, and she within his arms warm there. In the morning he remembered that song—and he remembered whispers of hers between the lines of it.

O Liadan! O mist of honey fragrance! Within my dreams, You drift the night with me!

You are the star Old sea reflects forever, You are the grianan within my heart.

The white-breast bird are you, The whitest rose, The ever-singing harp of silver string.

You are my secret, Breast unto my breast, Until the lark shall call the sun, O Liadan!

It was the first time song had come to him since he sang under her window at Dun Dearg of the sea cliff, and all the call of his heart for her was wakened in new strength. He turned the boat and steered west and then north, and every twilight she sat in the prow faintly gray, and in every sleep his head rested on her warm bosom, and warm arms were holding him, and her face was bending over him with her eyes looking into the depths of his own.

“Even though it be madness on me I will follow the way it leads,” he said. “I will go as bid to the rath of Donal, her father. I will put out of mind all else I saw or heard, for mystical things and deep things are sending fair winds to me at every turn of tide, and never a day but the seas are glittering fair like silver.”

And it was so. Never a storm touched him after the night he saw her first.

In the nights he smelled hawthorn and May roses over the dark sea, and there was one night when he was off Arran, and she sang to him, and in the morning he remembered her song as well as his—and this is what she was singing that night:

I dreamed of the yew tree, Its sheltering shadow, I dreamed of your arms!

I woke to the thrushes, Their song was to nestlings, And your arms about me!

Then he felt her stir as a bird might stir against a mother-bird’s breast, and her kiss was on him, and in that kiss he smiled, fearing to open his eyes, fearing to lose the dream of her. But he whispered in a dream song:

My eyes are in shadow But sun in my bosom, My world—Liadan!

To dream true is—loving, Gray eyes of enchantings, Gray lark of sweet singing, —Your music to me!

Into the deep harbor of the cliffs he sailed on a fair morning, and men with shields and spears watched him as he climbed the heights, and Flann was first with the greeting.

“The summer raiders of Lochlan came down the coast to wreck and plunder,” he said. “No roof is left of Castle Dearg; we drove them off and sunk half their fleet, but much evil was done by them. Our host and his people are dead, and Donal of Dun Conchinn is dead, and many other good men have gone the Way.”

“It was to the rath of Donal I was going.”

“It is a late day to be going; death has been there, and veiled women are there.”

The heart of Kurithir went cold with fear to ask a question, and he did not ask it, but walked silent beside his friend until they stood under the portal of the tower where all now was blackened ruin from fire and stress.

He looked up to the window and then mounted the stone steps to the chamber where once she had slept, and Flann in silence followed, for their hearts had been close-knit.

The furnishings were gone and it was a desolate place.

“Come away,” said Flann. “There is no profit to a man in seeking empty cages when the singer has flown.”

But under the carved stone seat by the window, where no fire could touch it, there was a little harp with the strings broken. Kurithir knew that harp and every broken strand from the nights on the seas to the south.

Flann took it up and looked at the frame where “Liadan” was set in silver wires deep in the dark wood; with the haft of his skean he scratched it until it shone bright.

“It is true,” he said, “I thought it was a woman’s lie to mock me—but it is true.”

“Who was the woman?” asked Kurithir.

“It was Aevil,” said Flann, “and now with this before us, and Sun and Day, and Earth and Wind, to witness, I will speak you the truth. When you sailed south and gave no farewell to Liadan, who turned her eyes from you in parting, I rode to the rath of Donal and made offers for her as a wife. My promise to look another way was broke when you two parted and no pledge between broke.”

There was silence for a while and only the eyes of Kurithir spoke.

“It was all no use,” said Flann. “She would not say the word for all Donal’s anger. I know not what his words were to her—God knows! He was regretful for the words when dying and said it to me. But before that day he offered me Aevil instead, and ordered Liadan to the veiled women, and Aevil was a star of beauty, and was willing, and I took her.”

“And what was the lie of this?” asked Kurithir, holding close the harp with the sweet name of her on the frame.

“It was no lie. It was the truth. The harp was broke by Liadan that no love song should ever be made on it after her tryst song to you—and you walking away from it.”

“There was no tryst song to me. The woman Moria carried Liadan from tryst with another—and mocked me that I was yet sick at heart for her love.”

“There are dark things in this somewhere, and there are false things somewhere,” said Flann. “Aillain, the boy, is dead, and dark Moria is dead—it is late for the sifting of the wheat from the chaff.”

“When were the deaths?”

“He in the first raid, but she, sabbath a week since, together with Donal, before our bowmen reached his rath for succor.”

Kurithir remembered that day, and when Flann would have gone on with speech of the fighting, and the retreat of the raiders to their ships, he held up his hand for silence.

“That was the night she came to me on the sea, Flann,” he said, “and that is why I am here listening. Darkness is on my mind—a darkness and a fog, but this is true as the Sun: the way of these broken strings was never told to me, yet I knew that her harp was broken, for at the sabbath twilight a week since, Liadan sat at the prow of the boat with the broken harp in her hands, and the smell of the hawthorn was there following, ay, and the song of the thrush in the nights!”

Flann peered at Kurithir in awe, and a swift chill touched him. When he spoke again it was with the soft gentleness as to a child.

“And where was this happening, Kurithir?” he asked.

“It was off the south coast, and I have been sailing straight to find her, night and day since that twilight,” said Kurithir. “Never was there such a sailing, for the wind was ever with us, and I had but to close my eyes to feel her near and to smell hawthorn and May roses.”

Flann looked down into the garden where ashes and a fallen wall covered the rose vines.

“The roses of May linger not for anyone through the harvest time,” he said. “Come Kurithir, what I can I will do to bring you to her in time.”

Kurithir followed after and carried the broken harp, and said over to himself words of her tryst song which he knew now was meant only for him.

“It will be in time,” he said. “No human thing can part us now, for our coming together on the sea had no mortal touch to it, yet we were as one soul. Since she lives nothing can change that. She is the soul of me.”

“She lives,” said Flann.

More than that he had no heart to say, but while food, and horse, and servant were made ready for the journey through the wilderness, Flann spoke apart to Ronan, his cleric and confessor, who had been with the men through the battles, and shrived them as they went the last Way.

“Is it madness of the mind is on him, or is it some spell of magic that makes for him a vision far out at sea of that which is true on land?” asked Flann. “Is it evil, or is it good?”

“It has been both. The words of druids and the words of saints are witness. It comes between a man and a maid. It comes not of earthly marriage but rather of separation of the mortal body. It comes of great strength and of much weakness. Saints have known it to the glory of God’s mysteries, but it is not for the telling to every asker of curious things. You have a kinsman in sanctuary who has the right to tell you more than I have right to know. The craft of idolatry, and the spells of druids, and power of saints, have one likeness to the eyes of the unlearned. Yet is there a difference, and a great differing, too! The mother of Liadan was of the race of Dana, and she went the Way at the birthing. Her child came into life with the sign on her of secret knowings. It is a thing of grief that she was bred in the rath of that dark woman of Slieve Mis who could use arts of her own on a child of secret vision.”

“You mean dark Moria, the nurse?”

“I mean Moria, the concubine of Donal, who went into death beside him. It is an old story and strange. The Dun of Donal is far enough in the wilderness to hide many secret things.”

“You know that I have taken his daughter Aevil to wife,” said Flann darkly.

“I do. You were swift about it, else I might have spoke caution. But the two are dead and God send that her evil died with her, and that your children live by God’s grace. Judge you not Kurithir with harshness because of his own words. The darkness is on his mind concerning this matter. Few of us see as God means us all to see in His own good time.”

“God be with us till the Day,” said Flann.

“By the Elements, and the Father and Son,” said Ronan.

The raiders were gone from Connaught and the work of the chiefs was done there, and Flann rode south and told Kurithir he rode to fetch back his new wife Aevil, from Dun Conchinn, where death had been, and many shadows. And Kurithir scarce noted that Flann rode neither in state nor in joy. He rode silent and with dark thoughts, and with few servants or comfort.

But he saw to it that none but himself held converse with his friend on the long south journey. And Kurithir went through the rivers and wilderness as he had sailed north over the sea, thrilled by the nearness of the sweet warm spirit of her.

It was at rising of sun they reached the Dun of Conchinn, and saw marks of the siege on it, and it was Aevil who met them in the hall, vested in royal weaves and with a golden circlet of richness above the black braids where pearls were woven. Already she was wearing all gauds and trappings of queenship, and waiting jealously the day of the succession of Flann.

She stared in dislike at his company.

“Have you fallen to meaner estate that you ride home with none of the chiefs you led away?” she asked. “A servant and a horseman is small retinue for Flann.”

“Greet my friend and send for your cleric,” said Flann. “I have questions to ask of this household.”

“I give greeting to any friend of yours, O Flann,” she said, “but your words and your looks coming back with him are not those of Flann, the prince, who went away with his many men of the shields.”

“If it is your will I will walk apart until granted welcome,” said Kurithir to Flann. “It is you who know best the desire of my heart and the way to it.”

“We will find that way,” said Flann, “but the first thing must come first! Send your maids to their duties. I want only your cleric, and his tablets for writing. It is your own desires I make plans for. You will not be wanting the enviers of a princess around you this day of your days.”

Kurithir was no less amazed than Aevil at the curious speech of Flann, or at his long curious stare at the cleric with his tablets and his scrivener.

“Send your assistant out of the hall,” said Flann, and went on staring, first at the comfortable, round old man, and then at the queenly woman he had called a star of beauty.

“Nealis of Desmond,” he said, “it is a long time you have been in the Dun of Donal, and it is much you have seen of the woman who died with Donal, and it may be much you had to know of her.”

Nealis, the cleric, went the color of old wax, and looked at Aevil, and Aevil flamed red while her brows were a straight black line of rage.