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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
“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.”
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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.