there. That boy had the right knowing, and was right in his silence,
but I made him speak. It is my grief.”
“It is no grief of mine,” said Diarmod, and laughed as one who holds
his own thoughts.
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At the angle where the path narrowed to the portal, Donough, in
courtesy to his overlord, stepped a pace aside and behind. A sound
came to him of wood striking on wood, and he looked back, and he was
glad the lad was making reply to some asking of the king, and did not
see the thing he saw.
Cormac was doing well his task: the white wings were shattered, and
the slender white body broken. There was nothing left of the Dream
but the dark cross of the young yew tree dripping drearily against
the gray stone of the wall. The wind from the east carried the
melting mist with it, and there was no longer any sight of the sun
anywhere.
Donough O’Carroll went into his house that day with a heavy gloom on
his face—a strange gloom for one shown honor by his overlord.
The woman who loved him looked her amaze that he put aside the bread
she offered, and called first for the wine at morningtide.
“Let be, Maureen,” he said, and spoke to her lowly. “Take your heed
of our friends if I limp lacking in courtesy this day. I feel ‘fey’
with some happenings of the morn, and would that you send best
messenger and swiftest horse for Kieran Dall of the caves. The king
must be told some truths and some sayings. And it must be a holy man,
and a wise one for the telling.”
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The coming of Kieran Dall was at the nightfall, and the O’Carroll had
a day of fever and fuming with his overlord who had moods of haste
for the thing he wanted.
“Why should the name of a strange maid so witch your thoughts from
Mor na Tuathal and the daughters of princes?” asked Donough, and
Diarmod laughed his happy laugh by which hearts had been won.
“Why should the lad who knows not love have made her his Dream?
Answer me that, and you will have your own answer! What put silence
on the monks when her name was spoke? There are mysteries in it, and
riddles are sometimes witchery.”
“Mine is not the telling of the riddle, but it will be told for you,”
said Donough.
When the supper was over, and only the two kings and the blind monk
called Kieran Dall were in the great room which was for private and
secret things, their talk began.
“It is for a curious thing I have sent for you, O Kieran,” said
Donough of Orielle. “With me is my friend, a hunter from the south.
He is a MacMurrough, and I want him by my side when I hear the story
of the maid called Dervail nan Ciar.”
“That maid is of your fostering, since the death of Ethnea your
sister, to God her soul! She is called the ward, or the daughter,
of Murtagh of Meath—is Dervail of the Shadow. Beauty was hers by
birth, and wealth is hers by a dower of fear. Of that you should
know somewhat, O’Donough, as you should know why the wife of Murtagh
has fear of her and would give all wealth of the valley of the Boyne
rather than have her under the roof of Meath. What new thing can a
hermit of the caves have for your worldly knowing, O Donough, prince
of Orielle?” said Kieran Dall.
“It is not of the new I would hear—it is of the ancient old. It is of
the prophecy; it is of the reason why that blood is feared and must
not repeat itself in Erinn. It is the year and the time when she was
to go from my castle to the walls of holy sanctuary, and the dower of
fear to go with her.”
Diarmod, stretched on a pile of wolf skins in the glint of the
firelight, looked up and gave Donough a smile at that. But the
sightless eyes of Kieran could not see the look, or the mockery of it.
“True, it is the time,” said Kieran, “and the reason of it goes back
to the dim old days when men who walked the world took mates ofttimes
from the Hidden Tribes. Aye, that was the way of it more oft than in
the days in which we live. The dark mist of the earth-mind was not so
thick between us in them times, and there were other matings not to
be spoken. Women of the sea and wolves from the forest have helped
man bring forbidden lives—lives without souls—on the earth. The
saints know it, and God knows it, and the tribes of that people have
often strange evils in their blood.”
There was silence while the blind eyes stared into the red ash as if
seeing visions.
“How far back can you be going into the dim days of that time?” asked
Donough.
“The mind can go far back on paths where speech must not follow,”
said Kieran. “To give words to things gives power to them as well.
To give names calls up the shadow—white or gray—of the soul that
answered to it on earth. That is a true saying. And there are them
not to be called back—the names going out in shadows! Under a like
shade the child Dyveke Og, called Dervail, was born into Erinn. Her
birthing belonged in another land, and not here—not here at all.
“Among the druids of the dim days there were sacred things, sacred
rules, and names, and priests who were kings. I am not naming the
name of one, or the name of his tribe, but there was one who was
Highest, who was given ‘the sight,’ yet the rules were broke by him,
and broke for a woman who brought temptings. The name of that woman
is not to be spoke, but she was a queen in her own tribe—and it was
a tribe of the blood of the wolves of Alba. To Erinn she fled as for
sanctuary—and brought her temptings. The madness of love she brought
on that priest who was king, and he was netted by her as a fish is
netted in a deep-sea net—and was borne by her kinsmen across the sea
to their land. Her kinsmen were the barbarians of the east, and he
was held by them as hostage while Erinn paid eric in skins of the
deer and otter, and gold from the rivers of the west. That is how
it was until a helot of Alba made way through their traps and their
walls and brought the word to Erinn; and a sad word it was, for
there was no truth in that people! The priest-king, netted through
love, had neither feet, nor hands, nor eyes left to him. Their women
tortured him, yet kept him alive as mockery of a king, for a king
of Erinn must be without blemish. Speech was left him, and nothing
else of a human was left him. He made a rune, and word by word the
helot learned the words of it and brought it to Erinn. A long rune
it was, too. And first of it was that no further eric was to go out
of Erinn for him to the red brutes of the eastern shores. He alone,
by his death there, would pay the price of his fall—but it was worth
the summer and winter of torturings if he alone could pay for the
lesson to Erinn, and to the men of Erinn. He laid on his own clan a
heavy rule that by Sun and Moon, Earth and Air, Fire and Water, and
the lives of their children, no bond of faith be made with the men of
Alba, and no marriage with a woman of Alba, for the blood was not the
blood of clean people, and the eyes of that people had no vision of
clean faith in bonds of fealty.
“In that rune he had the vision of the greatness of Erinn if tribe
by tribe they made bonds only with each other for the glory of Inis
Fohdla, which, even in far ancient days, was named that—the Isle of
Destiny.”
“Why is Erinn, in the ancient runes, called by that calling?” asked
Donough.
Kieran Dall shook his head.
“I do not know. God knows! Men who named the stars called it by that
name, and had ‘the sight.’ A land was given to the Hidden People, who
were great people; they have not known death, yet have never left
the land of Inis Fohdla. In the years ahead they will again have a
birthing, and the hidden things of the wise are in their keeping
until that day. For three centuries Erinn has been the school for
the sons of Brythen and France, and other foreign people. The Dane
invaders were driven home by Brian of the Tributes, and Inis Fohdla
pays tithing to no viking of the foreign in our day; it may happen
that we are near to reading the riddle of Inis Fohdla and that
naming; it may be so if the faith is kept in peace, and the rune of
that king of the tortures be not lost again as it was lost by Cuan
the Dark in the days I hold in memory.”
“Who was Cuan the Dark?” asked Donough.
“He was of the blood of that priest-king of the rune; he was also of
my blood, but his own name is not spoke. He was of the sacred line
into which no blood of the enemy must flow lest it bring the curse of
a thousand years’ helotage on Inis Fohdla.”
There was silence as the slow words of the blind hermit sunk to the
minds of the two kings.
“A thousand years!” muttered Diarmod. “How could Erinn be held as
tribute-payer for a thousand years to a king of the foreign? Thorgils
and Ota the queen did hold the Sionan and many harbors, and the tax
paid to the Danes was a heavy tax. But years more than one hundred
are gone since there was taxing like that. How could it be coming
again?”
“I have not the sight for that,” said Kieran. “It was the prophecy,
and the penalty spoken in the ancient rune if that line of the kings
should take mates from the red-wolf women of Alba.”
“But—it was of one line alone—one family—or one clan,” said Diarmod.
“Aye—it was one alone, but that one was the sacred line of the
priest-kings. Their rule was the rule for the men of the crown and
the temple, and the people of lower rank would follow. It was before
the time of christian men in Erinn. It would take more than the time
of one winter night to tell you all the difference in minds and
lives between that day and this day. But through all the changes the
line of Cuan the Dark kept to the law of that rune—eight times one
hundred years was the time it was held to and the line was clean, and
the record of that line was proud.
“And then?”
“Then the young had the teaching that no thing could be truth but the
truths spoke by the saints of the New God, though truth was in the
world before Mary came to the birth.
“Truth is truth for always, and even the pagans had many true things
in their hearts. But the young are light of mind, and do not see
these things. So it was with Cuan the Dark.
“To Spain he sailed for a matter of import, and I was beside him. To
the land of France we went, and I walked the lines of mighty Carnac,
and thought of kindred wonders at Knocknarea in our own land. There
were women everywhere, and they were the days of his youth, and he
gave them love, and good-will, and farewell! So it was with us, and
home he sailed, glad and free of heart; and it was here in Erinn he
met that trial he was to meet. He broke the geis laid on his line,
and on his birth, when he looked on Dyveke the Dove, child of Gorm,
son of Knud of the rath of Knud.
“The mother of Dyveke had been a woman out of Alba, blue of eyes and
flaming of hair, and in her own land she had been to the front with
her kinsmen in battle. But Gorm the Dane had his way with her and
stole her to sail the seas with him, as was well-fitting, for each
was of a tribe drinking from skulls at their joy-feasts, and fierce
alike in their lovings.
“Sons they had, but they never kept life long; that fierce mother
held her strength for her own passions. There was a saying for that
among the Danes. Then Dyveke came to birth, and the mother went out
of life. It may be there were fairer things on earth than Dyveke; but
I never saw them.
“Dyveke means ‘dove’ in the wording of her father, Gorm, and no
breast of dove was whiter, and no flight of dove had more of
grace—and no love-call of a dove had more of music than her voice.
“From her grianan she smiled down with look of longing on Cuan the
Dark, who sat on his black racer below, and the madness came on him
there for that look and for that woman—and the madness stayed.
“None of his elders was there—I alone who knew the geis was there—the
_geis_ every son of our line was bondman to.
“But he was deaf to my words when she spoke!
“A noble of the Danes named Thorold had heard, in the far north, of
the beauty of her, and came with gifts and with offers. She took his
gifts and gave him love looks as she gave to Cuan the Dark. The boats
of Thorold the Dane were anchored in the bay, and the word went out
that it would be with Thorold she would sail as wife.
“That was the day Cuan the Dark changed to a wild thing showing his
teeth—the girl Dyveke had looked love on him, and he had that madness.
“I made him listen to the record of the ancient horror when a woman
of Alban birth had brought death in life to a prince of his line.
“I held him as I reasoned with him, speaking over the names of the
men who for the hundreds of years had taken the vow and the bond for
his own life, and the lives of his children. He fought me and growled
back that the vows were pagan vows—not christian—and not binding on a
christened man.
“I spoke the rune of the priest-prince who had warned his clan to
make no bond forever with the fierce Albans of the jealous eyes:
* * * * *
Thus shall it ever be:
Honor and sanctity
Shed on the sons of Eire.
Sleep with the sword between
Sons and a foreign queen!
To daughters the blue dirk’s sheen
Sooner than blood unclean!
For Fohdla the Fair
Hold blood and the land,
Else victors of Erinn
Swarm red on her strand!
For eric is breaking;
For soft heart in taking
A mate out of Alba
A thousand years’ snare!
A thousand years’ yoke
On the bent neck of Erinn;
A thousand years’ tribute of blood,
Inis Fair!
“That was the _geis_ made binding by the priest-king in exile ere
they cut out the tongue from him, and left him to rot when his clans
heard of the maiming and sent no more gold of the ransom to the woman
who had netted him. She was a queen; she had heard of his beauty and
his sacred knowings, and had the jealous eye for that which was too
fine for the vision of her people. Aye—she netted him and tricked his
clan to pay eric against the day of his return. And in the end he fed
with her wolfhounds, and was torn to death in their fightings. That
is how it was; but he had the clear vision of the future years before
his going! That rune I told, and the vision I told, to Cuan the Dark
that it make strong his geis to hold against the charm of Dyveke the
Dove.”
“Did it hold?” asked Diarmod.
“It did not hold. He broke from me and shouted that there were
christian bonds between Erinn and the ancient enemies to the east. He
would follow the christian bond, and make a forgetting of pagan geis
laid upon princes of his line. That is how it was. I was the one who
sent for the elders of our house, but it was too late. She was in his
dun at Cualann ere their coming. There it was the men of his line
put against him the ban of the unnaming, and the forgetting. That is
where her lover, Thorold the Dane, stood him siege for her and made
break in his walls. The curse of the _geis_ came in quickness to
Cuan, for it was the hand of Dyveke, of the whiteness of doves, by
which a knife found his heart, and his head was tossed by her from
the tower to the feet of her lover, Thorold!
“With Thorold she sailed out to sea, but the girl child she had borne
to Cuan after that beheading was hid in the cell of a monk who was
let near for some shrivings. Thorold was raging like a maddened bull
for the death of the child not his. Two were born that night. One was
dead; it was given into his hands, and the fierce soul of him was
content with that, not knowing. But Dyveke, the white, knew somewhat.
She had heard the unnaming and the ban of his clan against Cuan for
her sake. She had heard the _geis_ of the rune, and she had bitter
hate for the banning of her, or of her blood, and it was a bitter
curse she put against Erinn at her going away, and a bitter prayer
she made that the seed of Cuan might raise up hosts of wolves to tear
each at the throat of the other till the geis of the rune held true,
and Erinn was broken, and her neck under the foot of the foreign men
of enmity.”
The two kings looked at each other across the light of the fire and
Diarmod turned to the portal as if a cold wind had struck him. He
moved more close to the hearthstone and drew over him a robe of otter
skin.
“And that was the ending?” he said.
“God and Mary knows! Mayhaps it was the beginning! It was the year
Adrian, Pope in Rome, signed the grant of Erinn to King Henry what
time he could win warriors for its conquering. The conquerors have
not yet sailed from Alba, but the eyes of Alba are jealous eyes, and
the grant was given the year the child of Cuan, Dyveke Og, came, born
living, into the land of Erinn.”
“Young Dyveke?” repeated O’Carroll. “That name for her was never told
me.”
“Your sister, the Lady Ethnea, had hatred of it, and Dervail was
the name she made choice of instead. The mother of Cuan had kindred
in the Ua Machflain, and to King Murtagh went the Lady Ethnea with
concern for the dower and station of the unwelcome woman-child. A
dower was given for her life in sanctuary, and that dower was doubled
by Ethnea who had love for the father of the child. The ward of King
Murtagh she has been called, and it may be she is thought of his
breed. But Duighal knows she is Dervail nan Ciar, who had no right to
live; and King Murtagh has no longing to see the evil face of her—she
is of the shadows, and to be forgotten in walls of sanctuary—and the
walls built high.”
“It is the first full hearing of the child I have asked for, though
I had fear of the truth,” said Donough. “From the monastery she
was taken to the castle of Ethnea, my sister. At the dying of that
sister, she was brought to Maureen, who thinks her a bud of the tree
of Machflain of Meath, to end in the convent of sheltered women.”
“Aye—that was hope of the prior when he gave penance to the monk who
carried that white wolf’s whelp to his cell for safety! Aye—the years
pass, and she has reached the age. No sons and no daughters should
come to Erinn of that breed of Dyveke. I saw what I saw of the broken
_geis_, and my hair went white in that seeing, and for that the fear
is on me for that breed.”
“Then it was not in the young years the sight dark came on you,
Kieran of the cell?” said Diarmod the king.
“It was not in the young years. It was by the hand of the one love
of my kinsman, Cuan the Dark. Her lover, Thorold, found me out where
I was putting a cover of earth over his headless body. The brute men
of Thorold held me, and her white hand drew the hot iron across my
eyes. She was hard, jealous, and she forgot nothing. She was Alba!
She had the name of Dyveke the Dove, and her looks were sweet looks,
and her voice had the music of birds, but her heart was the heart of
her foremothers who ran with the wolf pack.”
Diarmod laughed low. “Your words are not the words of a priest of
Mary,” he said. “An army of men with your heart would be a good army
for battles.”
“Battles for Erinn were dreams in my life,” said Kieran. “Dyveke knew
the dreams, and let me have my blinded life for the mourning of them!
I wear the robe and do penance for my sins and for the sins of Cuan
who died unshriven. But there is no sin in the strangle of a wolf,
and no seas would be too wide for her following if I had but the
sight. May she burn in hell all the years there is shadow on Erinn!”
“Be it so if she brings that shadow,” said Donough, “for that is no
sin to say.”
“Truth for you! And the same to all who would walk in her thoughts!
In the name of the Elements, and Mary, and the Father and Son!”
“In the holy names,” said Diarmod the king, and rose and stood by the
fire with the otter skin robe about him in a quick tremble of cold.
Donough O’Carroll looked at him, and poured wine from the flagon into
a jeweled cup.
“To your warmth,” he said. “We have talked the fire low on the
hearth. Empty the guest cup with me for comfort of the body.”
Then he poured a cup for Kieran, thanked him and asked what gift he
could give him for the story of the blood of Dervail nan Ciar, whose
true name was Danish dove.
“Give your gift to Erinn for me, and make your own choice of that
gift,” said Kieran, “but let it be a good ship to take the wolf’s
whelp as far out of the land as the shores of Egypt, and that is a
far sail for a good ship; or failing that, build a wall of stone,
doubled, around the convent where she is barred from the sight of
men. If she has what her mother, Dyveke, had, say prayers to Phadraig
and to Brighde that the curse of the eric be not laid on Erinn.”
“That besides the doubled wall?” said Diarmod, who was warmed by the
wine, and spoke lightly.
“Aye—besides the double wall! The paying of that eric is beyond
thought. It is the yoke of a slave and a thousand years of blood on
the bent head of Erinn!”
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Kieran was led to rest by a servant of the castle, and was not told
that Diarmod the king had been a listener to the tale of the rune.
Diarmod paced the room and quaffed another cup of the red wine of
Gaul.
“Is it not enough that the priestly rules are ever near to ban
anything of beauty coming a man’s way?” he grumbled. “But a hermit
must bring runes of a thousand years to strengthen that ban! The tale
would witch a man to follow her if but to see if she had the wonder
in her of Dyveke the Dove—and tame that wonder as a falcon is tamed
for the wrist of the master.”
“But that is a bird you will not take from its cage, Diarmod?” said
Donough. “Take to memory the _geis_ of your own line against the
hunting of birds—it is more than a thousand years, yet the bards are
telling the legend even in our day—and it was a white bird in the
legend, Diarmod, a white bird coming to earth with love-words and
warnings to your ancestress, who was queen—and this white bird of the
cloister you will not be seeking cage for, Diarmod?”
There was silence but for the crackle of the new wood heaped on the
fire, and Diarmod looked long into the red heart of the flame before
he spoke.
“No, Donough—one veiled maid of the cloisters brought shadow enough
and blame enough to me—that is long since, yet never forgot.”
“It is Dhira you mean?”
“It is Dhira. Rest to her soul! She was robbed from me again by Dall
Clairineach and hid in shadow to her death. No, I will not take
another maid from convent walls—and no guest of yours from your
castle; but if she is fair of body as that white mystery in the
cloister, it is as well I have not crossed her path a-nutting in the
forest.”
“You put light in my heart at that saying, Diarmod, for I saw the
thought of you. But there are women always for you; women a-plenty.”
“Of a sort,” said Diarmod, who had to wife Maelmor na Tuathal, sister
of Laurance the saintly, and a queen-woman in her own way, and a
pious, of a sort, “but white birds with reaching wings do not wait on
every road for a man.”
Donough O’Carroll went to his rest with content that night, and
unburdened the cares of the day to Maureen, his wife.
“Get the maid, Dervail, on the road to sanctuary of Cluain-mac-noise
in the dawn of tomorrow,” he said. “Our shelter has not kept her name
from the ear of the king. Strange happenings have been, and curious
portents. She is not one to win friend for any king of Erinn.”
“In truth she is the fairest thing in all your province, Donough, my
heart,” said Maureen, “but, like a bird, she is—untamed.”
“Do not make that saying of her to me,” said Donough, “or sleep could
not come to my bed this night. Too much I have heard this day of
bird-women, both doves and falcons, and I would that the maid was
ugly as a mud-hen among the bogs. Woman, let me have sleep, and pray
that Saint Brighde speeds her in safety on the road from us tomorrow.
If she is in truth of the blood of Murtagh of Machflain, King of
Meath, the time has come for his claim of her. The mystery of her is
abroad on the winds, and the very name of her sounds temptation to
Diarmod!”
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It was in the mist of the gray dawn when Ardan crept like a thief
down the turret stairs, and to the castle wall on which the grianan
of the queen gave entrance. The door of it opened from within, and
to meet him came the maid called by Maureen the fairest in all the
kingdom of Orielle.
Like forest pools were her eyes—gray with a glint of blue; her mouth
was the rose for beauty, and her hair held the warm flame of red
gold; heavy it fell either side of her face and reached below her
girdle. A cloak of royal blue touched the stone floor, and a veil of
silvery gray broidered with blue was held by the wire-spun circlet
of gold about her head. The falling of that silvery veil gave her
a strange mystical look to Ardan, and the dignity of the cloak hid
every maidenly curve of her young body.
“Argatonel,” spoke Ardan as he stood staring at the beauty of her,
“‘Silver Cloud’ in truth you are, Dervail; and you look as if you had
slept in a fairy’s rath and woke changed and not young any more.”