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.”
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
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!”
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
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._”
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
[Illustration: DERVAIL NAN CIAR]
[Illustration: March of Battles]
[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!”
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
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.”
“You mean he comes to wake Cethair, spirit king of the forest, out
of his winter’s sleep,” said Ardan. “Cethair but breathes over the
fields, and all the snows melt, and all of leaf and bloom comes out
for his carpet of green fragrance.”
“There is no king but King of Heaven and Turlough, Ard-Ri of
Erinn—our own kings of Leinster and Orielle, and such,” said Cormac,
but Ardan was deep in his new play and had no words of argument. Once
Cormac looked and saw he had set upright a slender straight sapling
of yew in the packed snow of the slab, and once he noted that
the hands of Ardan stripped from the sapling all but two branches
reaching out east and west as the arms of a cross, and after that
Cormac carved at stone traceries, well satisfied that the fosterling
of King Donough was, after all, but making a holy thing.
That was a comforting thought to the good Cormac, who had love for
the lad who was known only as Ardan of Ardbreccan, and whose stay
near them had not been so long. He had been the ward of the holy
and learned O’Cahsahde of Ardbreccan, where his childhood had been
lived between gray walls, and under the great oaks’ shade. At death
of that holy man, who was called “Dall Clairineach” and known of all
scholars, his ward Ardan, with wealth and comfort, was left to King
Donough with instruction that he was the son of a mother whose dying
hope had been that sheltered holiness be his share in life; and no
more was known of him than that.
But his breeding spoke of gentle blood, and Maureen the queen made
choice of him for comradeship with her own children, and her own
maidens in the garden games, and the gracious sweetness of him won
its own way in king’s palace or monastery walls.
[Illustration: Decorative separator]
In the shadow of the wall he made his snow form—that the rays of
gold of the sun not melt the white of it; and Donough O’Carroll of
Orielle, and Diarmod of Leinster, his overlord, passed that way and
spoke of the handsome boy and his destiny, for the work he did made
him look like a monk, and his father had been known only to the holy
Dall Clairineach of Ardbreccan, where many sons of princes wore the
robe of scholarship and holy sanctity.
The two kings went their way, and Cormac was called by Duighal the
prior to another place, and the boy was forgot by all, and the snow
image was not seen by any until the morning after, golden lances of
the sun touching it when coming first over the edge of the green sea.
And then, at sight of it, Cormac the monk cried out in awe, and his
cry called others from the chapel.
Duighal the prior was there, and the two kings were there and Ardan
stood in the shadow of the wall in a queer trembling of joy—and
mayhaps some hunger, for he had worked till the setting of the moon,
as in a trance, fasting.
“Is it a miracle of Brighde, the Foster Mother of God, as the blessed
mantle was given her?” muttered the prior, and others thought it
Mary, Queen of the Elements. But Diarmod the king stood beside
Donough and stroked his dark beard, and his eyes shot green fire.
“A miracle it may be, holy father,” he said, “but the miracle is
in the gift given the mortal hand placing it there. Where is the
Ardbreccan fosterling who heaped up the snow on this slab but
yesterday?”
Cormac the carver of stone pushed forward Ardan, whose teeth
chattered as he knelt under the eyes of all the brethren and the two
kings.
“This is the lad, your royalty; always he is making the coaxing word
for my edged tools that are not for a child. It is true I tossed him
a trowel yesterday, but this thing of whiteness with jeweled robe of
dewdrops could not have been formed by mortal hand and mason’s blade.”
“Speak, if you did it,” said Diarmod of Leinster.
“Of snow I did it with a tool cut from wood. In the light of the moon
I worked on the mantle with clear water from the well. The freezing
water there made the jeweled fringes to the robe—it was no miracle,
O King, and I will do penance that I made the thing on consecrated
ground. The fever took me to work, and I asked no permit.”
“You need ask none forever in Leinster,” said Diarmod. “Rise up to
walk where you will in our domain, and work when you will.”
There was a buzzing as of bees among the monks who looked at the lad
and at the white limbs of the snow creature, tip-toe with wide-spread
arms like a bird lifting for flight. The mantle of it spread from
wrist to wrist across head and shoulders and hung truly like jeweled
wings in the early risen sun, but the white breasts and limbs and
body were bare against the mantle save for the girdle of maidenhood.
The prior Duighal was the one with a frowning face at the words of
Diarmod, and he looked from the king to the white wonder, and then to
the faces of the monks, bent and shifty-eyed as they glanced sideways
at each other, and then at the white snow of the round breasts.
“Penance for all whose eyes are smitten by the sight!” he thundered.
“This is no holy thing—no white picture of saint: it is the work of
the Evil Father forming temptation! What wench has bared herself for
you that you know the way of that?”
His staff was lifted as in threat above Ardan, who gazed, round-eyed,
at the faces of the monks, and the holy fury of their shepherd.
Donough O’Carroll stepped between the lifted crook and the builder of
the mystery.
“Look again, holy father,” he said. “The boy has not been tempted;
that understanding is elsewhere.”
“My word with Donough,” said Diarmod. “The lad says he worked in a
fever a day and a night—”
“And fasting, too, your royalty,” said Cormac.
“And fasting, too,” said Diarmod. “Look at him: it might be words of
foreign tribes we speak for all he understands. Look at him! It was
only a game of chance that he formed a virgin maid instead of a white
bull—or a white fawn of the forest.”
“But the bulls roam the hills uncloaked,” said Donough O’Carroll with
a laugh; “so also does the fawn and its dam. Speak, lad—we know it
was no wench came to you here in the cold of the night—and to a wench
no girdle would be given. How got you that mystery as you got it?
This is sanctuary—you can speak.”
Ardan stared at the listeners like a trapped thing, and then knelt
before Donough.
“I am under bonds as a son to you—and I meant no evil. I have the
mind dark on your meanings. I crave your pardon, and the pardon of
your queen for her fosterling. It was at the bathing pool in the
summer time. Her maidens were in the water, and like that she stood
tip-toe on the high stone at the pool’s margin. Like a bird with
wide wings she stood ere the mantle slid from her shoulder. Proud
she stood, and I from the thick green of the other shore saw her
thus—more of beauty in her than snow and ice can tell! I went deep
into the forest that day—lest they see me and deem me a spy on their
pleasure-place. That is all, O Donough! If I have done a wrong deed,
I ask to atone to the priests and to the maid.”
“Her name has not yet been spoke,” said Donough, and Diarmod made a
quick step forward and laid his hand on the head of Ardan.
“To your feet,” he said. “Is there name to a living maid for the
double of that? Is there a name?”
Ardan turned his gaze from the eager king to Donough, and then to the
frowning prior.
“If it might be spoke in another place?” he plead, but the prior
lifted the staff.
“Here in this place where the evil thing was wrought,” he thundered,
“here begins your penance with open confession before all!”
Ardan turned to Donough O’Carroll.
“If first I could speak of the word to you alone?” he said.
But Donough laughed at the pleading, and lived to know sorrow of the
heart for that laughing.
“As you have shown her breasts and her body to us, give us the name.”
“But—let me entreat—”
“The name, lad, the name! What is she called?”
“She is called—Dervail.”
The voice of him went low as the breath-whisper. Yet it was too loud
for Donough, whose face was thunder-black and threatening.
The prior heard and turned on the monks, with words of censure for
hearkening, and his orders brought them to heel like a pack of
hunting hounds on the wrong trail.
Diarmod heard, and his eyes, with the strange green fire, narrowed as
he looked at King Donough.
“What sweet hidden thing have you put away for holidays, good
friend?” he asked. “The lad only spoke in whisper, yet the sound of
it echoes among you like a thunder-clap in the hills.”
“It is not hidden by choice of mine, Diarmod,” and the voice of
Donough had the gloom on it. “We will to break fast and then—”
“The lad at our table for the food!” decided Diarmod. “Look not so
down, lad, because you held beauty in your mind more close than most
of us. The monks today dare not bury you alive as they once did to
sinners. Their forbears would have left you pinned to the earth for
a smaller thing than a naked virgin in their cloister—even the prior
will have dreams tonight!”
Then he walked around the white figure to see the solid backing of
the cloak to the slender body, and smiled at the craft of it. The
mystery of it was going, yet he glanced from under his brows at the
lad, and had wonder.
“Lucky for me that I abode the night with you, Donough O’Carroll,
else would I have missed this in life,” he said, “and no man can hope
to see it twice. This will be a melting day, and the wind has turned:
it comes the sea-way since the dawn.”
“The sea-way,” said Ardan, “the eastern sea-way—the path of sorrows.”
“Why do you give that word?” asked Donough O’Carroll, staring at him.
“I have no knowing why I spoke it,” said Ardan. “I thought I heard it
somewhere. And look you! It is true: I fasted and half froze to build
that while the joy of building was with me—and like a white jewel it
was when the sun touched it this morn. But the sun ray is gone, and
the wind of the east brings the melting with it, and the jewels of
the mantle are dripping tears already—tears! I should have wrought
with metal tools in stronger stuff.”
Cormac had come back with a stout, long stave under orders of the
prior, and stood waiting in courtesy the going of the two kings.
“Go you to your food, lad,” he said kindly; “the tools you shall have
at need. But go you, for your fasting gives you the sight of things
you know nought of at all! The Hidden People of the Ancient Days are
putting speech on you; go to food, and drink, and human thoughts.”
“I would rather do that,” said Ardan. “I had the Dream of things with
me when I built this, and my heart would sorrow to watch the white of
it melt gray in its own tears. She is still the white bird tip-toe
for flight!”
Donough O’Carroll looked at Ardan as if he was seeing him for the
first time in life, and Diarmod the king tore himself from the
gazing, and strode beside Donough with the swing of the man who had
found things easy in life.
“Diarmod MacMurrough, have you given heed to the words you have heard
beside that white wonder image?” asked Donough.
“I have that. Some of the words are as full of wonder as the image
itself,” said Diarmod.