Part 9

“What should he know?” she asked. “What should he know of my nurse and my friend? Why ask a man of the household and pass me by?”

“I asked for an answer—and I am answered,” said Flann. “Fear not that you will be the one passed by! I will ask another question. Nealis, it is not the husband of Aevil who asks you this, it is the man who is Ri Domna of Erinn. Donal talked with you here when I offered marriage to his child, Liadan?”

“That is true,” said the cleric, but his small eyes looked right and left like a trapped rat, fearing what the question might lead to.

“And it was that time the word went out that Liadan was dying of a secret ailment?”

Kurithir sprang to his feet, but Flann put out his hand in kindness.

“She did not die,” he said. “It was a crooked plan but of her death there was no need, and the plan was changed.”

He looked at Aevil, and the flame was gone from her face; she was gulping as if to strangle back some fury of protest.

“You were her confessor—also the confessor of Moria. You surely heard things curious between the two.”

“What should he hear more curious than other priests hear?” demanded Aevil after one look at his pallid face.

“It is not your confession, Aevil, for which I ask,” said Flann, “so rest you easy. But it may be easier for Nealis to tell the thing here where there are few ears than in open shame before the king and before his spiritual superiors. Nealis, was it drug of herbs Moria of the hills gave to Liadan, or was it the deeper craft of a mind chained until life and death was all one to her?”

“You are asking that which is not asked even by princes, and I would it were not asked,” said Nealis. But his voice shook and Aevil glared at him frowning, striving to make him meet her eye, which he would not.

“The witch is dead,” continued Flann. “I ask nothing concerning sins of the living, but this thing I mean to know. It is not best to depend on the grace of a Ri Domna’s wife. There will be no queen of mine but by my will—and justice may come before my will, and before I come to a king’s seat.”

“Is that gray rat to come between you and me even with your marriage gifts on me?” shrilled Aevil. “The High King may say something if you take two sisters to wife at the same time.”

“The sisterhood will come later,” said Flann in great quietness, and at that Aevil choked, and the cleric looked at Flann.

“It is little use to speak, since knowledge has somehow come your way,” he said. “I know of no drugs, but the Lady Liadan lived as in a trance when I was let see her. I was told it was a love sickness and that life was hateful. To me she said nothing but that she was a shamed maid, and that the man had sailed on the seas, and away from her.”

“She sees no man but you. Is she growing more weak as the days go?”

“No,” said the cleric with the first straight look, “she has slept well, and smiles now—and her maids no longer fear for her.”

“When did this begin?”

“It is strange to tell it, but the day of the battle with the Northmen was the day she changed. A swoon came on her, when the woman Moria died, but when she waked from it the trance look was gone. No fear of the battle touched her, so the women say. She is pale as a primrose, but she smiles again, and the maids now gossip that she sings in her sleep.”

“You tell more than you know, and you tell it straight,” said Flann. “She had lived under the black shadow of Moria of Slieve Mis until the life was smothered by that curse. When Moria died the shadow passed. Do you see, Kurithir?”

“I see and I know,” said Kurithir. “She was seeking me that first day of freedom, and found me at the nightfall.”

Aevil looked her scorn for the words she did not understand, and her look was black at Nealis of Desmond.

“There is one other thing,” said Flann. “The mother of Liadan was known, and her race was known since Erinn had a name to it. But who was the first wife of Donal of Dun Conchinn?”

Aevil arose, trembling with rage, and her eyes glaring down at him.

“Keep to your seat,” he said in the voice of a master. “I am to know these things and the reasons for them. A lady out of Spain was brought to these shores a bride in his youth, all are knowing that. But where is there some man or some woman to tell me when she died, and what of her children?”

There was silence and the breathing of Aevil could be heard as she leaned forward, her eyes on the cleric, and her hand slipping into the folds of her robe.

“I—I was not here at that time,” he said, stammering.

“But you have seen records, you know?”

“It—is true. I—”

No more than that was said when Aevil leaped forward with a slender Spanish dagger crashing for his throat, but Flann was quick, and caught her arm. She struggled and fought, but he shook her as he would a rat and flung her to the floor, where she lay senseless.

“The dagger is a dainty toy and useful,” he said. “It was perhaps for me she carried it.” Then he turned to the wounded and trembling man, “Go on, tell it as you meant to.”

“She knows,” he said, looking down on Aevil in her rich robes and braided pearls. “The Spanish wife died, and died soon, without children. Moria was then what she always has been, full of one thought only, and that for her daughter here. Donal himself had fear of her, and made promises to her and kept them.

“But when men looked on Liadan they did not forget her. She came before Aevil, despite the beauty of Aevil, and of that the troubles began, and many of them. It was jealousy first, and after that there is no knowing what it was, but it has brought terror, and it has brought grief to this roof.”

“Write this as you have told it,” said Flann, “and call the maids to look after the daughter of Moria. See that a guard is at her chamber door, and no more toys like this to play with.”

Then he turned to his friend.

“There will be no shadow between you ever again,” he said. “You have been shown all the reasons.”

“There can be no more shadows,” said Kurithir, and thought he spoke truly. He followed Flann through the hall, and to the grianan on the south wall; from there a troop of horsemen were seen lounging in the shadow, and four more with furnishings for women riders.

“It looks a holiday for gay gallants,” said Kurithir, but Flann had no smile; he strode to the door and threw it open.

The grianan was no longer the lightsome ladies’ chamber for broideries or games or music. An altar was there, and candles lit, and four nuns knelt where a priest recited a prayer, and their voices responded.

One voice out of the others pierced the heart of Kurithir, and he broke from his friend and called out in love, but the priest stepped between, and the eldest nun threw a gray veil over the primrose face he knew.

“Liadan!” he cried.

“Kurithir!”

She drew the veil aside, and the two lovers looked long at each other. But even with love in her eyes she put out her hand.

“It is for life, Kurithir,” she said.

“I have come for you!”

“Flann, my brother, tell him!” she said.

“I knew of this,” said Flann, “but had hope to outride the ending of it. This is why Aevil met us in queenly circlet and royal robes at sunrise to flaunt before Liadan a final magnificence.”

“We are here to guard a new sister on the way to sanctuary of Clonfert,” said the priest. “From this day she has no life in the world. Men are her brothers, women her sisters. There are no other human bonds for her.”

“But there are bonds not human, yet between two mortals,” said Kurithir. “I have gone through hell to learn that truly, and have sailed far over deep seas to bring the word to her.”

“It cannot be said here,” said the priest. “You are doing sacrilege in your speech. You disturb the spirit of her on her path to Paradise. You to your confessor for penance, and abide by his ruling!”

“Penance will I welcome for her sake,” said Kurithir, “and some brotherhood will I find to give right of converse with this, my friend. For that I will wear the robe and go into silence forever after.”

Her eyes were on his as she passed out the portal between the two nuns, and the look in her eyes was the look of the nights on the sea. Yet there was question in that look, and a wistful question.

Flann bade them farewell in the stead of Aevil, and watched them cross the plain into the forest.

“The evil magic of Moria lives on, even though her body is dead,” he said. “It was she put into the head of Donal this business of sanctuary—and Aevil helped as she might, until this is the end.”

Kurithir was silent, thrilled by that look, and dazed with the temptings to follow after, to take her and reach the sea and some land of foreign men, even though all the bells of Erinn rang their curses on him.

“Did you mean that as to wearing the robe of a brotherhood?” asked Flann.

“I would do more for one day of converse out of life with her,” said Kurithir.

That night he abode with Flann, and when the late stars were going into the west, she came as on the sea and crept between his arms, and lay silent there.

No songs were between them that night and no words. She rested like a tired bird after long wanderings, and in the morning he told Flann of how it was between them.

“She will walk free in a walled garden,” he said. “Peace she has and no fear, and in the Dun of Conchinn she had many and strange fears, and of them she would speak to me, and not in dreams.”

“I am believing your word,” said Flann. “No other man could, but I saw _the look_. In all of life I will see nothing again like that. My feet are on the earth, and my cares are of earthly things.”

A runner from the castle of the kings came to Flann at the breaking of fast, and he opened the seals of the tablet, and read, and took Nealis the cleric, and went to the chamber of Aevil.

“Daughter of Moria,” he said, “the dower of a daughter of Donal shall be your portion. It goes with you for gifts to whichever holy home of cloistered women you may choose from out all Erinn.”

She crested her head like a dark serpent, and her eyes were points of jet with jeweled disks on the band above them.

“My Spanish blade is not in my holding else there would be another man than you in line for the crown of Hugh,” she said. “You would wall me from the world that the grayling rhymer come to you at last. Late it is for that—and she under veil! All bells of church in Erinn would ring to damn you.”

“Liadan is not in this, nor can be,” he said. “You go to a cloister for a dagger stroke to a churchman, with thought to silence his speech in death. You could be killed like a wolf for that, and no one to make further question. But Liadan wears the veil to pray for sinners, and she would not have wish that you die in such sin as you have known. You go also into cloister lest you bring to birth a thing of poison such as your mother bred. You are of the women who know lusts, but not love, and such should not be breeding.”

“What then of the love of that grayling?” she asked in mock. “What is the thing it breeds in men?”

“Its breeding will last while speech of Erinn lasts—and after! Liadan’s is the mystical soul. Aengus of the white birds is the priest to hear her confessings. His is the key to unlock gates for Liadan where your feet and my feet may not walk.”

Then while she brooded there Flann turned to Nealis the cleric.

“To you the records of this,” he said, “and let me not hear even the name of cloister she is choosing. It is the daughter of Moria who enters that silence, and is not the wife of Flann. See you to that—and your life and her life to answer if there is mis-writing in this rule of mine!”

Aevil, glooming, took her last throw of the dice of fate.

“To the ears of Hugh the king this may go on a day to be,” she said, “and he may make other ruling against an heir of his.”

“The king of Erinn has no heir,” said Flann, “and when the time comes, it is a clean woman he will be choosing for the mother of heirs. That is a riddle for your reading.”

But she read it quickly and stood up, and cried aloud.

“He is dead then—dead at last! And _you_ are the king!”

“Since the sun of yesterday went down, I am king,” said Flann. “I go now for the seat of the king, and the taking of the white rod.”

Aevil, daughter of the dark woman, took from her hair the gold circlet she was pleased of her pride to wear, and trampled it under foot in her rage at the thing she had coveted and had lost. She knew no record would be writ into the annals of Flann to show that when he was only a prince, and had gay journeys for his pleasure, he had ever taken to wife a daughter of Donal of Slieve Mis.

But of Kurithir there were records, for there was grief on Erinn when he put aside the music of the world and took a monk’s robe for the cover of his youth.

And the day of days came to him when he earned indulgence of his confessor, Cummine, son of Fiancha, to talk apart in the walled garden, and the converse to be of things spiritual with a noble woman, and a youth between them as was custom with mortals in sanctuary.

And there Liadan came to him, and his hands touched hers after the long days.

“O Heart of me,” she said, “twice have I made earthly tryst with Kurithir, and this time he is keeping it!”

“And the May roses in bloom, and the thrush again singing,” he said. “Speak again, speak, Liadan! It is long we have whispered in the nights apart, and now you are in my touch, and I would hear your living voice, Liadan.”

“Kurithir, Kurithir, Kurithir!” she said. “There has been no music like your name written in my heart.”

“Your harp is with me. I mended the strings, and the wind plays on them in the nights in my window, Liadan.”

“I know,” she said, “and I wrote ‘love’ in _ogham_ on the frame of your harp, and you only found it there when you came back from the sea.”

“That is true,” he said, “and you knowing it! You are in the likeness of a flower, Liadan, yet are you strong as mortals are not strong, and you found strong ways to come to me over ocean.”

“I was dying that time, Kurithir, and the death shadow was on me for the shame that you thought my tryst song of evil boldness. The dark woman had sent me in sleeps to vision for her the unseen things, and when her bonds on me were loosed, your bonds drew me, and I found the way to you. You were the stronger then, Kurithir.”

“Liadan! Liadan! We have only this day.”

“Kurithir, we have all the days forever, Kurithir!”

The sun went behind the world, and the birds called to each their vesper song, and the moon of May grew warm through the dusk, and the youth walked in the shadows while Liadan lay in the arms of Kurithir. Their litanies of love were murmured there, and ever the wonder that their souls had found the way of meeting.

“You were the mystic rose, O Kurithir. The fragrance led me through the deep to you.”

“Oh, sweetest bloom! There was no fragrance on the sea till you were bringing it.”

“You heard the music, too, O Kurithir?”

“With my lips on your rose-leaf body I was hearing it all the nights. You brought it there.”

“It was like this—the clasp thrill of your hand.”

“It was like this—the yearning of my mouth.”

“Sweet dream—O Kurithir!”

“It was like this—O Liadan!”

The moon went down, and the stars of dawn broke on the world, and a veiled woman who had once dreamed of Erinn’s crown stood watching two sleeping lovers in the convent garden. A youth crept from the shadows at sound of her step, and lifted the discarded veil of Liadan.

He spoke, and the lovers wakened and smiled at the waking, and at the dear closeness of the other, but Liadan cowered in the arms of Kurithir at glimpse of the mocking eyes of the watching woman.

“Is it even to a cloistered garden that Aengus, god of Youth Dreams, brings you the key for soul mysteries, O Liadan of Kurithir?” she asked.

“The Liadan of Kurithir is a new name to me and a proud one, sister. Shadow there may be on it, but no shame.”

“By the Elements, you dare it well, grayling, and well your lover! It may be the prior and the abbess can give vouchings for you.”

Cummine came to them there at the bidding of Aevil, and shouted holy wrath at sight of the veil of Liadan.

“It was not told me that a veiled woman was the friend he would converse with in this sanctuary,” he said. “This is a shame beyond words to both our houses—and beyond penance.”

“I could kill you here, Liadan, before their hands touch your sweet body, Liadan,” whispered her lover. But she shook her head and took her veil from the youth.

“In that way we might lose each other in some dread darkness, Kurithir,” she said. “But now we will never lose each other. Give me sweet farewell, O Kurithir.”

“Liadan—O Liadan!”

“Kurithir!”

They bound him there and took him away for slow torturings and penance in a stone cell of the “Solitary Ones” on whom silence is put forever.

They stripped her in shame that she might walk in only her winding-sheet of the grave, and that walk was nightly, and her slender bare feet on the rough stones to the place of tombs. Before all the line of cloistered women she walked thus until the stones of the way were red from her bleeding feet.

After that they took her to a stone cell at the edge of the forest where holy women might not soil their eyes on her. Only her confessor and a poor lay sister came to her window there. She was under penance of silence, and writing-tablets were hers for speech.

She wrote prayers on the tablets, and she wrote confessions. There were times when she wrote poems.

The years left no trace of age on her—she was ever the primrose face of May. Marvels grew up around her because of that—and because of other mysteries.

At a time when the Danish raiders were stealing up the Sionan to the heart of the land, Kurithir wrote the number of their vessels and the number of their shields ere they had fared as far as Killaloe from the sea. When questioned, and told to speak, he asked that Flann, king of Erinn, be sent a warning and gather shields, for Liadan, of the cell in the forest, had seen them coming, and asked him in the night to send word to Flann the king.

When the men of Flann took the battle path and proved the truth of it by a battle with the foreigners, and brought back slaves and many spears, Flann himself rode to Clonfert and talked with the abbot there, and silence was lifted from Liadan and from Kurithir.

The son of a dead prince of Tormond was being disciplined at that time for the reason that he wished to revoke the gift of his life to the cloisters. The gift had been made by his kindred when he was a child, and was not binding on his soul. He had been with the spearmen for the defense against the Danes, and there was a wound in his shoulder, and he talked as prince to prince with King Flann.

“Since my days of a child I have lived this life, and the schools of it delight me,” he said. “I have joy in the work of the annals and their making. I may come back in gladness to cloisters when the snow is on my hair, but they call me ‘God’s Dastard’ for the reason that I would walk free into the world in my youth to win what youth may win.”

“It was not always so with him,” said his confessor darkly. “There was a time indeed when he was quite content.”

“Yes, when I was a child,” said the soldier-monk, but his face went white and he looked elsewhere.

“Come, tell me of it,” said Flann, and walked away with him.

“You are a man and not a monk, Flann, and I can speak. I was a child here—it is not so long ago. I saw the love-night of Liadan and Kurithir.”

Flann looked at him and the tears were thick in his eyes for the penance done for that one night of a May moon.

“Then you saw that which was holy, for there was no evil ever in the soul of Liadan,” he said. “You will come to my castle and make books as you will, or range free where you will. I heard of the hard penance given to that lad to force his speech of that night.”

“The scourgings were given, and were heavy,” said the youth, “but the speech they did not get.”

Flann took the youth away with him and later placed him back at the head of the province where his jealous kindred were dividing his goods and his lands.

So, by this and by that, Flann left trace of the heart-faith he gave to Liadan, and to his friend who had the love of her.

He lived as a king lives, and took to wife Maelmara, the queen of Hugh Finnlaith, who had no knowings of druid power or of jealous loves, and children grew around them to strengthen their bond.

But when the Night of nights was come to Liadan and Kurithir, and their souls met at last tryst, and did not come again to either body, it was Flann the king who did them honor. It was by his will that the building of their tomb was at the cell of Liadan in the edge of the forest where the thrushes sang.

It was also Flann the king who had their poems of love writ on fine vellum, and set in a golden, gem-crested casket, that the memory of Liadan might live.

But in the wreckage made by wars and plunderings of the men of Lochland the treasure books and annals of beauty were wrested from many a castle and monastery, and stripped of their cases of silver, and pale gold, and copper into which jewels were craftily set. Among such plunder of priceless worth fell the royal gifts of Flann the king, whose memorial slab at Cluain-mac-noise is a wonder of beauty after the passing of a thousand years.

And of the veiled poet-maid whose soul he saw rightly, there has come down through the centuries only fragments of her love lines, and among them her wistful unashamed confession:

“_I am Liadan Who loved Kurithir, It is true as they say._”

[Music: _Eleventh Century._]

DERVAIL NAN CIAR

(Dervail of the Shadow)

Ardan, the fosterling of Donough O’Carroll, King of Orielle, watched with longing the carving of the stone as leaf, and bud, and traceries grew under the precious tools of Brother Cormac for the new temple to God and Mary.

“To me the doing of that work would be dearer than to wear robe and circlet of the king,” he said.

“The cowl of a monk to you if cold stone contents your youth,” said Cormac. “Hard and cold it is. The crown of a king means warm robes, and warm cherishing on snowy nights, and—and all the other comforts a king can command. Go you to your verse-making and folly. Your head is o’er soft if you would trade a king’s crown for a mason’s tool—and neither crown nor trowel yours for the trading!”

“But to dream beauty and then form it out of the stone—that is to be as one of the _Daoine sidhe_” (Gods of the earth).

“You will burn in hell if you believe in the pagan ancient gods; not even must their names be said. To make speech of them calls them near.”

Then Cormac crossed himself, and muttered a bit of the lorica of Phadraig the Saint, and looked at the lad whose face had a pale dark beauty, and whose gray eyes looked black under heavy lashes.

“Take clay and make your dreams,” said Cormac at last. “If well mixed the mud will take all shapes. What are we all but the dust of the earth?”

“It is not in mud I see dreams,” said Ardan, “but you give me a thought, O Cormac!”

The white snow of the past night lay, rose-tinted, under the path of the early sun, and, singing low to himself, Ardan began to gather the whiteness on a great slab of gray stone near the south wall.

“It will not be mud of which I build my dreams, good Cormac.”

The monk watched him idly for a while, and then tossed to him a trowel from among the tools of the builders.

“It will take no harm from the snow,” he said, “and will save your hands. But make your play quick, for the sun travels north to bring the end of the cold moons.”