what had been, and in further dread of what might be: with one army
of the foreigner on the south shore, and one in the very heart of the
land, and the fearful star of danger sweeping the heavens! He took
Fethna aside, and when they were alone he spoke as follows:
“Go you back. This is not the game of an old man. Bid your sons keep
silence as to the call I heard; I had too much of hill and valley to
cover and have come too late. I will take my gille and go a day’s
ride farther. I may learn somewhat.”
“It is better not to go, and not to know,” said Fethna. “When I
was younger than you they stole the maid I was to wed; their ships
sailed out to sea and no word was ever coming back. What is there
to do for one man against an army? What is there for you to do at
Cluain-mac-noise? We can gather men and fight them out, but it will
take time. While we are getting our clans and arms together they will
have ravaged the land and sailed away.”
“That is true,” said Ruadan. “Send your couriers to every point
while I go on and see as I may. I will be back for a spear when the
time comes, rest you easy on that.”
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So, with his servant, he went on in deep thought and silence,
striving to find ways to answer that call of Doirenn, who held him in
bitter disdain.
When half-mad wanderers were met, fleeing from the Danish scourge,
and smoking ruins were seen afar, Ruadan halted in a grove of little
oaks and washed in the stream and took more sightly apparel from the
bag carried on the horse of the servant. A purple cloak from overseas
he put on, and from the lining of a girdle he took a golden ring with
a great red jewel of beauty, and set it on his hand.
“From here you take the back road,” he said to his servant, “and if
you would favor me, and the house in which your family had protection
of spears, this is the time for the favor.”
“Tell it and it is done,” said the man.
“There may be half-Dane spies among these fleeing people. When they
ask of me tell them I have made quarrel with my clan, and that the
monks call me ‘God’s Dastard’ for putting off the robe and letting my
hair grow as God meant it to.”
“It is a hard thing you are asking,” said the servant, “for it is
myself has had many a fight to deny your unfaith.”
“I know that without words else I would not be trusting you. Say what
you can to let them think I have cast off my own people to follow
Queen Ota and her fortunes. There will be no need to say it to them,
they will say it for you if they are given the hint. They will call
me ‘pagan’ because I follow a pagan queen. And you can be sad and of
downcast countenance, and say a prayer against evil for me. Never
fear it will get to Ota herself before you get to your home.”
“And where will I be waiting for you, Ruadan?”
“In paradise, man, and good luck to you on the way! Go you back to
Ardsolais. Tend the herds and wait what comes. It is not with chance
our life is.”
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Then he mounted his horse and when his servant looked downcast at the
parting, Ruadan tried to cheer him, and sang words of the hymn of
Saint Colum for a journey.
_It is alone I am on the mountain,
O King Sun of the lucky road!
There is nothing to fear on that road!_
_If I had three score hundreds of armies
To defend the body
When the day of my death comes
There is no strong place to hold out against it._
_Whatever God has settled for a mortal
He will not leave the world until he meets it.
Although a high head goes looking for more
He will not get the size of a grain of it!_
_He that is spent may find death in a church
Or on an island of a lake he may find it;
He that has luck to his way
His life will be safe in the front of a battle!_
_It is alone I am in a wilderness,
O King Sun of the lucky road!
There is nothing to fear on that road!_
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Queen Ota, wife of Ragnor who was called Thor’s servant,
Thorgille—“Turgesius” by the christian land—was a thing of strange
beauty in her first sailings with the fleets. Flaxen straight hair
of a child was hers—silken straight. Her face had a slim whiteness,
and her eyes of amber were the eyes of a white cat. Men had fought
and slain each other for love of her red mouth and her round breasts.
Her raids were more fierce than the raids of Turgesius or Amlaf, her
brother, for no chief but knew that valor might win for him more than
his share of the spoil if his deeds were worthy her smile.
But many sailings had been hers and much profit from Erinn, and none
had been greater in one place than the spoils of Cluain-mac-noise, in
the year of the Great Star, for princes of Gaul and Alba sent their
sons to Cluain-mac-noise and had sent rich gifts with the sons, until
the wealth at the great place of learning on the Sionan had become
the wealth of kings.
All that wealth of gold and silver vessels and jeweled censor
chains, and crosses of golden wonder, were heaped on the floor of
the strongest of the stone towers. With them were heaped the dreaded
magic altar-books of Erinn, in jeweled cases. Neither church bell nor
church cross was feared by the pagans of the north seas as the mystic
writings of the books were feared—it was dark magic to them, and to
be burned or drowned or buried on every raid.
And Ota, wearied after the battle and sick of the smell of old
blood—though the red of it fresh flowing from her opponents was sweet
to her as red berries ripening for her in a garden—went within the
dwelling from which Ronan, the abbot, had been dragged by her men. On
a couch of furs over which broidered silk of altars had been spread,
she rested herself and spoke wearily.
“Let none enter here until my rest is come to me,” she said, and the
wife of Amlaf, whose name was Gurtha, looked at her in wonder that
she would confess to need of rest, for the hatred of growing age was
with Ota always.
“But Barolf, chief of your spear men, has been twice here for
speech,” said Gurtha.
“I am wearied of Barolf. When he comes tell him I take it ill that he
troubles me today.”
But a man stood in the doorway, broad of shoulder, his yellow hair
reaching down to his gold-banded arms.
“O Queen, how has Barolf wearied you?”
She looked at him and the amber eyes narrowed to golden slits under
the silken flax of her hair. He was a favorite of a year gone, who
was daring much! He waited with folded arms—and Gurtha was watching!
“Yours was the word to the men to burn the bodies where winds brought
stench to me, which is weariness enough,” she said. “I am badly
served when Ragnor is south and Amlaf in the north.”
“Was it ill service when my men mowed down for you the clerics and
guard of this place, and brought the wealth of it to your feet?” he
asked. “No man of the blood of the queen has done her more service
than that.”
The queen looked at Gurtha who frowned darkly. Well she knew that
Amlaf, her man, should be first of the chiefs, yet because of his own
nature, was not. His sister, the queen, was the greater warrior.
“Another time we will speak of the men of my blood,” said Ota, “but
this day of weariness it is enough to say that fires of the dead must
not be built in these days of summer. Illness is on me from that
burning. Your men are strong to dig the earth. Let them dig.”
“It will be done,” said Barolf, “for the hounds are now full.” He
looked toward Gurtha, and his look spoke hope that she be sent away,
but Ota the queen chose not to see the look.
“That is well,” she said.
“And the division of the spoils, O Queen?”
“The time for that will be when Amlaf is with us for the counting.”
“And that other in the tower,” he began, but she made him secret sign
for silence, and he spoke no more.
“When Amlaf is with us I will give you a feast and we will speak of
all the things,” she said with less coldness, and at that there was
nothing to do but go.
“He is not of quiet mind,” said Gurtha darkly, and Ota laughed.
“This victory makes him look long for the death of Ragnor, and his
crown perhaps,” she said. “He forgets I have a brother to rule beside
me in need.”
“Yet he was high in your favor with the coming of May,” said Gurtha.
“What of that? Springtime and summer bring different hunger. I am
tired of huge white bodies and blue eyes, I would rest myself with
other color.”
“You had that other color on the south shore a year ago, and Ragnor
had a knife ready,” warned Gurtha.
“You lie. The man never was with me alone. But there was none like
him! Wine-brown were his eyes, and his curls were shadows of night to
nestle in.”
“He has no kingdom, and no army to fight for a queen if he chose
one,” said Gurtha. “He is only a noble of Deasmond who was once a
monk in this place.”
“In this place? That would be strange if it be true, but he looked
not a monk to me.”
“No. He was rebellious and cast off the robe, for some anger. They
call him a name of their own—it means outlaw to their gods.”
“And I let him go, not knowing that!” said Ota. “I would I had the
year back—he should not go!”
Gurtha went out and left her regretful over a year of coveted love
with one man, after the many years of love with the men she had grown
tired of.
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A day went by and the spoils were not divided. She carried the key
of the treasure tower at her girdle, and walked among the ruins her
fierce sea-wolves had made, and thought of wine-brown eyes and the
searching smile of a man who had as a youth lived there by the Sionan
in sanctuary.
Kings and warriors had given her wealth of love and wealth of tribute
but the love of an anchorite was a new thought. It charmed her as the
song of a bird of spring after the nuts are ripe and the ferns past
their greening. In a cell of stone she saw one white robe untouched
by ruin, and bade it be sent to the palace of the abbot, now her
place of rule.
She laughed with it beside her on the couch of rich robes and silken
broideries, and closed her eyes to fancy wine-brown eyes beside her.
Then the impossible chanced to her, and gave her strange belief in
her own powers in which her devotees believed, and in the power of
the strange trailing star, called “the star of the Danes” in Erinn.
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For a runner from the south hills came to her with strange word, and
she put secrecy on him, and told Barolf and told Gurtha that a strong
ally of the nobles of the Irish was coming to swear fealty, and help
in the conquest. One would bring two, and in time all Erinn would be
ruled from the center by the children of Thor.
Barolf secretly mocked, but the other men did not mock, for they
had fought the Irish and would rather have them as comrades than as
enemies.
“Strain not your eyes looking,” Barolf laughed, and went up the river
to the fort there of Rinnduin.
For all that, they did climb on the walls, and did look toward the
hills of Meath, and when afar they saw one horseman who rode steadily
and without fear, their wonder was great, for he was tall and
handsome and dark Irish, and no other Irish in that day was seeking
alone any fort of the Danes.
“Tell the stranger Ota sees no man of Erinn who comes without gauge,”
said the queen, but she laughed and the robe she put on her was a
robe of richness as if to greet a king of great armies.
“O Queen, the man brings a gauge, and his word is that it was a key
of all gates when you wore it.”
“That is true,” said Ota, and looked at the ring he sent. “Give it
to his hand in courtesy and lead him to me. It is still a key to all
gates for Earl Ruadan.”
Ruadan walked between lines of men with lifted spears until he
reached her portal. Two of the elder chiefs entered with him, and
Gurtha was there watching.
“I come without bard to chant your praises or my wishes,” said
Ruadan. “I come without men-at-arms or wealth or cattle. I bear no
shield for battle, though I will take one at your hands. My own clan
put shadow on my name because I cast off the robe of a monk. The
priests add their word to my blame, and I will take service with you,
Queen Ota of the ships, or I will go over to Gaul and fight there if
you have no spear or no shield as a gift.”
Ota looked on her head men, and saw that the words pleased them.
“We will talk of that gift,” she said, and her smile was level and
steady while the head men were there, and Gurtha was there.
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But when they were gone, it was not a gift of shield or spear she
would give Ruadan for the enchantings of his wine-brown eyes. Ota had
been Queen of Love always, and gave royally.
“I brought you—I brought you here!” she whispered. “For a year I have
wished it—and at last you have come to me! You shall be chief instead
of Barolf who grows jealous. A knife from you to him in the dark and
you shall head his fleet.”
“Give me the knife,” said Ruadan.
She laughed and kissed him.
“So keen are you? O wine-brown eyes! O dark man of the red mouth!
Shields and spears are in that corner, and tomorrow we will make
choice. Tomorrow you shall see the spoils of our raid and choose a
jewel gift from me.”
“But the man who stands in my way to you?”
“He is gone north in a boat at dawn and no one stands in your way to
me. When he comes again, and Amlaf, my brother, comes, we divide the
spoil, but this night is ours and tomorrow night may be ours. See? I
hold a monk’s robe here in memory of you, and dreamed of dark eyes
and kisses, and through the wilderness you brought them!”
Gurtha lied for the queen to the men, but the men laughed, and knew.
They were told that Ota promised a wine feast of welcome to the Irish
earl, and that gladdened them, for they would get their share, and
the wine of the cloisters was good.
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There was starlight and it pleased Ota to walk with Ruadan in the
night. And the cell where he had once slept was where she would go.
It was whole and in no ways injured. She kissed him there, and asked
of his dreams there, and of the Lady Luaine and the song made of him
a year agone—all things heard of him had been remembered by her.
But he laughed and wound her long cloak of silk about her lest the
river-damp do her hurt, and would not tell her the things she asked.
“What difference does her beauty make when I left all others to
follow you?” he asked. “There is only one queen.”
The men on the walls saw them and made jests, for the trailing star
left no darkness anywhere. None watched too closely; for their
outposts were many and there was no enemy near for an uprising.
“Tomorrow we look at the spoils in that tower there,” she said. “I
would that Barolf be the one to tear the jeweled covers from the
mystic book of Christ’s men before the books are burned. There is
evil magic in them, and I want no black enchantment from them. We
will have Barolf live long enough for that work of danger. But go
he must. He has wish for the place of Amlaf, my brother, and it is
making troubles.”
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Ruadan looked up at the tower where a white face moved at the narrow
slit in the stone wall—the face did not reach the height of a man.
“You have a guard there besides the key at your girdle?” he asked,
and she pressed his arm quickly.
“Speak not of that before Gurtha,” she whispered. “It is a young
thing with a golden mane I am hiding for Amlaf. There is no other
place to keep her from the men, and from Gurtha’s knife. Amlaf sulked
because of a girl he lost in his last raid—I need his help to get
Barolf out of my path, and the girl is a fair bribe. I dare not send
her to him. When he comes he can hide her in a boat and take her to
the north if she pleases him. If she please him not, she can go with
the others.”
“And that is—where?”
“I never ask about women unless I need them. There was a convent
across the raised road, but I see no women there now, and hear
none.” Then she held his arm with both her hands, and looked up at
him in the dusk and laughed shortly. “The other men may follow their
will in a raiding, and take their women as they choose, but you must
take no maid to wife!”
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The sun was high in the morning when Ota the queen took her
serving-man, who was her slave, and her new guest, of the Irish, to
the tower of the spoils. The serving-man carried a dish of food and
told Gurtha it was for a hound with a litter of wolf pups, but he did
not pass the tower with the food.
The outer door was unbarred, and the inner door unlocked with the
queen’s key; a ladder was there, and the queen was helped up by
Ruadan, his arm circling her for safety. The slave sent up the dish
of food in a basket by a rope of grape vine.
“There are ladders above and floors above, but the upper door is
chained now because of the red bird caged here for Amlaf,” said the
queen.
By the narrow slit of the embrasure a girl stood as far from the
opened door as she could get. She was flattened against the stones of
the wall in terror, and clasped to her was a flat golden-brown book,
and the gold of its cover was set with amber disks, and pearls of the
sea.
Ruadan of Ardsolais knew that book, for his own hand had wrought it
and it was the writings of Mark the Saint, and the chapter in it was
that of the sermon of the sea, and the great faith when the storm of
the sea obeyed the Voice.
The Abbot Ronan had asked it as a gift for Clonard, but Clonard had
been sacked, and he saw again his lost handiwork.
In a corner were many other books—great piles of vellum in their rich
casings. And on and around them were chains of gold, and necklets of
gems, woven armlets, and silver sandals, silver trappings of chariots
and war horses were stacked with the rest, and women’s jewels in
girdle or torque, or ring, beyond belief. The sun struck on the heap
through an embrasure and set it all aglitter against the gray stone
of the wall.
“It speaks a brave hosting,” said Ruadan, and lifted the jeweled
shrine in which a tiny bell of holiness tinkled. He never looked at
the girl.
“I will take all the bells for the decking of our steeds when I ride
the forests with you,” said Ota the queen.
“Nay, it will not be bells we will care to carry,” said Ruadan, and
she laughed, well content, and emptied a leathern bag of altar jewels
on the stone floor. A golden bell and a jeweled chalice were there,
and a wondrous monstrance of gold all aglitter with ruby and amber
and pale pearls. A censor of jeweled chains was there, and armlets
and necklets thrust in among the vessels of holy use. Ota lifted from
them a gorgeous necklet set with smoldering rubies.
“This has been gift of some king of the far world,” she said, “and it
goes well with the ring you had from me a year ago. I have brought
you to choose a gift; choose the richest you can carry.”
“My thought is that I could carry you if your long cloak would not
tangle my feet on the ladder.”
She laughed at that, and clasped the necklet on him and loosened the
lacing of his garment that it might be hidden next his skin. Then she
glanced at Doirenn, rigid and white against the wall.
“Look at her face,” she said laughing. “If she has looks of such
scorn at Amlaf he will not risk the knife of Gurtha for her!”
“So good a sister should make a good wife,” said Ruadan; “few women
would pick so much of beauty in a slave—unless for sale.”
“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!”
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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?_”
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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!