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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?”
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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.
But a man on a black stallion waited there instead, and the face was
the face of Amlaf, brother of Ota the queen!
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He looked up and laughed, and the thing he laughed at was Doirenn,
who stood on the narrow ledge waiting Ruadan, and in her hand was his
dagger.
“You were so keen for his choosing that your heart could not wait
that I save your feet this hardship?” said Ruadan, darkly mocking.
And the monk in the cave, and the prince on the black stallion, were
as far from them both as was fear, when she looked in his eyes.
“I followed, O Ruadan, lest he do you harm for your life as a man of
sin. And I listened, O Ruadan, that your dagger might in truth drink
deep if you made me his portion—and you going elsewhere,” and his
dagger was held with the book, in love, against her breast.
“To my heart!” he said, and circled her with his arm, and she was
borne along the path by him while his eyes searched below for glitter
of spears or followers of the prince.
Amlaf fitted an arrow to his bow and waited the turn where Ruadan
would be fair target without hurt to the coveted maid of beauty.
But the hand of Ruadan, thrilled by the love of her, was strong and
steady. His spear had been sharpened at the altar place of the old
gods, and the cast of it took Amlaf in the throat as he looked up
laughing. After that he laughed no more on earth but went to his own
Norse gods of the summer sailors.
Ruadan stripped him of his warrior garb, and weighted the body with
stone, and cast it in the waters of Lough Dearg, while Doirenn stood
on the shore holding the quivering steed, alert at the presence of
Death.
Ruadan looked about him, and looked at the girl, whose face was a
drooping flower, and whose hair was a golden veil.
“Look up, O Doirenn,” said Ruadan, “for this is the end of the dream!
This is the shore on which I saw you with Bronach—washer of raiment
for the dead. Beyond this all is dark to me on the road.”
“Not so,” she said. “We have walked together through the nights of
the evil star, but now the light is ours.”
He caught her to him, and kissed and mocked her.
“This is all your prayers and your glittering book served you against
enchantings,” he said.
“They served me well,” she made answer staunchly. “In the sickness of
the wound I prayed for your life. Here, where you left me, I prayed
that Geroid might take into sanctuary the altar jewels but leave me
free for always to walk with you.”
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Among the Danes, that wood by Lough Dearg gained weird tales of Irish
enchantings, and the reason was that Amlaf the prince had ridden
along the marge for his pleasure one summer day, and never came again
into the sight of mortals.
Belief it was in these enchantings and in the powers of the mystic
books of Christ’s men that went far to lead the invaders, also by
this time weary of their raiding, back to their own shores.
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Far north in Connaught a youth in dress of the northmen was seen
with Ruadan riding a black steed with royal chains of silver in his
furnishings. The cropped hair of the youth was the color of the sun,
and Latin was his only speech. He was named Angus and called a prince
of the foreigners, but heart-companion to Ruadan. Not while Ota and
Turgesius held sway in Deasmond did Ruadan go south out of Connaught,
or let the youth see the lands of the south.
And when he went again into his own domain of Ardsolais a woman of
mystery rode beside him, and for her radiance of beauty she was
thought a fairy mistress such as men of olden time had met at some
edge of the mortal world.
He called her Brighde the Beautiful, and all the people were calling
her that, and she was his wife, and the cattle of Ruadan stayed on
his own hills after she came.
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Because of the vanishing of Amlaf the prince no Danes climbed again
to the cell of the solitary monk, and after the weakening of the
Danes the stories of enchantment there went abroad far and wide,
and it was a place to shun both day and night, and no one was
remembering the young monk who, in that year of the fearful star of
Turgesius, had climbed that hard way for holiness.
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But in after years, a strange harmless babbler appeared one day among
a herd of cattle in Thomond, shouting to them of heavenly crowns and
wings of angels.
He had no clear speech to men, and was called the “Nameless” for the
reason that no clan knew him, and he knew no mortal and no home.
His dress was of skins, and his hair and beard were his only mantle
to the middle. Neither in Gaelic nor in Latin could his life be
learned, but no door was closed on him nor food denied him, for gods
and saints were known to come under secret and lowly guise to the
abodes of men.
And on a fair day, after seven years, Doire, the childling of Ruadan,
divided a cake with the Nameless on the green, and then led him, as a
child with a new playmate, through all the garden and to the grianan
where the wife of Ruadan sat with her maids and discoursed of the day
when the master of Ardsolais would come again from the wars.
All said, “God save you, and Mhoirre bless you,” to the visitor from
the wilderness, and food was given and the child watched in wonder
that a mortal could feed as the hounds fed.
“The name of me is Doire, son of Ruadan, who is lord of the
mountain,” said the boy. “You have eaten my cake and come in my gate;
tell to me now whose son are you?”
But the Nameless stared vacant and seeking, and made mutterings, and
all they could hear from him was “Ruadan? Ruadan—Ruadan?”
Then the wife of Ruadan, who was called Brighde the Beautiful, called
to her son Doire, and whispered in his ear a secret saying, and the
lad ran back and spoke.
“May it be that you were once the son of Kineath? And that your name
was once Geroid?”
At which saying the Nameless stood up in fear as if for flight,
and cried out, “Kineath—and Geroid—and Ruadan! Ruadan and she who
was weighed in the balance with the jeweled chalice? Call you your
druids, or your priests of wisdom, that I uncover the place of that
hiding! Go you in haste ere the mist again covers the knowing!”
In haste they did go—all the maids aflutter, and the wife of Ruadan
sat in the shadow ordering all things, speaking no word aloud.
And Fergus, her cleric, came in haste from the oratory, and made
prayer, and hearkened, and the Nameless spoke in good Latin, and said:
“Take with you this childling who lifted the mist from me. Go you
to the cave in the mountain over the Lough of Dearg; to the cell of
Senan the Saint find you the way; and in the stone trough of the bed
there find you the jeweled chalice, and the golden treasures. They
were the bribe of Hell to bring temptings of the world. Let them be
weighed; let them be put in the scales against my name and my soul in
the Day of days!”
“Against whose name will I write it for that day?” asked Fergus, “and
against whose soul?”
But at the question the Nameless turned away and shook his head. The
mist had again fallen, and he wandered again to the fields babbling
of crowns and wings.
“He is but a strange innocent,” said Fergus, “and has no likeness to
owners of golden service and jeweled treasures. It would be as search
for the many-colored palaces of the magical Danaans under the hills
about us.”
But the wife of Ruadan had a different thought.