the turn of the night. That was the time I sent the maid Kauth to
seek you. The castle of the holy women at Cluain-mac-noise is to be
my prison. Some sudden thing has stung the prior, Duighal, and his
monks are to be my guard to sanctuary. It will be my grave they take
me to!”
“I am to blame—to blame!” said Ardan. “I, too, must go a road this
day, but it is to the Culdees of Saint Hilary. For my fault I am to
study in a new place and among strange scholars.”
“Why are you to blame? You that were my comrade?”
“It is forbidden that I tell you all, or think of it—but I made an
image of snow like a white bird that yet was a maiden. I thought of
you and made it all of whiteness, but like you, too, in beauty. It
was in the cloister. Duighal the prior says it is an evil thing to
image any but sainted women, and a penance is put on me that I go.”
“But you—you have no unhappy heart at that going,” said Dervail,
and sighed as she looked at him. “You will walk free to make other
beautiful things in other places.”
“I will remember you in the far places, and the beauty I make will be
thoughts of you.”
Dervail smiled on him with closed lips and eyes peering sideways
through the silver veil. The veil made a new mystery of her face.
“Argatonel,” he said again, and was thinking of a rhyme for it to
make a poem as a farewell gift, “Argatonel!”
“You do not love me, Ardan,” she said; “you only love beauty.”
“But you are that beauty.”
“You do not love me; you do not know I am alive! You look at me as on
a saint, high on the church wall. I would rather dance free with the
Ever Young People in the Hidden Hills!”
He did not know what to answer. Cormac had said hell waited for
people of pagan thoughts, and Cormac had a soul of good intent.
“You are my best comrade, and as my sister,” he said; “my grief is
much that you go unwilling—I would that you went not out from here
until a marriage feast gave you to some righteous king. You look like
a queen with that cloak and the veil of the silver cloud.”
She laughed a little bitterly.
“I said you did not love me, and I said true; you are almost of my
age, yet you would pick a king out of the world for me! I steal ere
the dawn to seek farewell of a poet, and his only seeking is a rhyme
for my name—not to be found!”
“But I have found it!” he cried in triumph. “I will write it for you
ere the troop leaves the portal. I will sing it in the lonely west
where I go for scholarship. Dervail, what other thing could I do to
show my thoughts and my heart to you?”
“I do not know. It is a boy you are, and my thoughts are of a man’s
thoughts. Look: I am cloaked and shod for travel; there are swift
steeds below, and there are boats at the sea’s marge. Beyond where
the low sky takes the silver of morning, there is another land. Had I
the strength of a man beside me, it is there I would go.”
“With the troops of two kings of power to claim you for the church?
Who would dare give shelter to you in such flight?”
“Two kings?” she asked, puzzled and frowning.
“Diarmod of Leinster is guest of King Donough.”
She laughed again.
“So: that is why I have been kept to the grianan of the queen for
three days! It has been so always when guests of might are housed
here. What crooked stick of the forest am I that no prince or king
must look my way?”
“The fairest things of earth are God’s offerings, Dervail,” he said.
“I think of you as abbess of some white sisterhood of Mary. On some
day of days I will surely see you so, and kneel for your blessing.
You will be ever the white bird and the silver cloud to me.”
“That makes the cold stone no softer a pillow,” she said. “You live
in dreams—sometimes you have made me see the dreams, but this no
dream today. They take me for other prison and call it serving God!”
A clink of metal on stone sounded above them where the flying
buttress carried a windowed room as a canopy above where they stood.
Dervail sped quickly back out of sight, but Ardan stepped further out
to look above. What he saw there was Diarmod of Leinster with his
finger on his lip. Horsemen clattered through the castle gate, and
Ardan looked down at them from the edge of the wall.
“The castle is awake, and there is no other moment for speech,” he
said. “My heart goes with you on the road, comrade maid of mine. May
that road lead you to peace!”
She stood looking at him moodily while he lifted the hem of her cloak
to his lips.
“Almost I see you here a queen in the queen’s grianan,” he said. “You
look it in that robe you wear. Have you no farewell to me, Dervail?”
“For that I came, Ardan, and may it be so to you! I would you could
teach me the content of dreams—my dreams lack content. Farewell,
comrade! In the gray days I will think often of the white bird by
which we are exiled. Fare you well, Ardan! Go you the way of your
white dreams!”
There was a weariness in the sweet voice. So few days before she had
run races and tossed the ball in the games, but the Dervail in the
silver veil at the dawn was a different maid.
The veil—the silver cloud—Argatonel!—in a moment more he had out
the inkhorn and quill and was tracing on the smooth stone the first
words of the rhyme singing in his ears—he had promised her a verse of
farewell.
The sun has set at morningtide,
Argatonel!
The wall between is high and wide,
Argatonel!
Above it stars of heaven may rise
In witchery,
But none so bright—
The rhythm of it sang itself, and he was glowing with eagerness when
he became suddenly conscious of someone near, and turned to find
Diarmod smiling at him in great good humor.
“I had joy of my eavesdropping, though I could get no glimpse of her
face,” he said. “Anyone seeing your tryst might have had his doubts,
but I’ll go your warrant to any father alive who has sweet-voiced
daughters in want of a playmate.”
Ardan bent knee to him, and thus turned from the words, roughly noted
in ink, still wet. Little escaped the eye of Leinster, and a step
took him beside it.
“What’s to do here? ‘The sun has set at morningtide.’ That is against
nature. How could that be?”
“My King, I cannot make you see it when you did not see her face—and
she goes at morningtide.”
“So, that is it! My grief, to hearken to a tryst with a lad when it
was the strength of a man she gave call for! And this—Argatonel?”
“It is the silver cloud of the veil she wore—the veil by which she
was hidden from you above.”
“Very good—it looked, indeed, a veil of silver over hair of gold. Go
on—finish your lines. Here is a scrap of vellum of no import; write
it across that. Your craft is curious, and has interest to me. You
shall write lovepoems for my daughters. Go on! ‘But none so bright—’”
And Ardan, encouraged by the king’s mood, plodded placidly on.
But none so bright as are your eyes
Of mystery.
Argatonel, white wings to you!
Argatonel, deep heart to you!
O Silver Cloud, that wraps the world,
God’s Sun to you!
He finished writing and read it aloud, and the eyes of the king were
on him curiously.
“That, and a maiden tryst at dawn, and you fasting!” he said. “What
works then might you not do with good meat under your ribs? I’ve
a mind to take you with me, if only to feed you, and watch your
growth. Come! We’ll talk of it and eat. Clean white vellum shall be
yours for your love-lines, though the maid read you true, my young
cock-robin! You had no heart-love to give your Argatonel; your only
seeking was some fair thing to sing about.”
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Thus it was the friendship began between Diarmod the king, and Ardan,
the fosterling of King Donough of Orielle, and thus it was that they
went out together at sound of the gathering guard in the castle yard
that morning, and from the shadow of the portal Diarmod looked on the
unveiled face of Dervail.
The rising sun touched her hair to a glory, where it fell in braids
to the saddle cushion. The deep pools of her eyes held shadows, and
the black lashes were wet against her rosebloom cheek, yet the head
of the silver veil was not humbled, and her chin was lifted in pride
as she looked about her on the household back of the spearmen, and
her maid, and the page holding her restless steed as it pawed the
earth, and grew restless under the tinkling sweetness of its bridle
bells.
“Truly you said it, Ardan; she is the sun at morningtide,” said
Diarmod the king; but when Ardan attempted speech in reply he was
silenced lest a note of the music of her voice be lost.
“Think of me as Regina in that new life,” she said to Queen Maureen
at the farewell. “I wear the blue mantle that Mary the Mother may see
I serve her in a royal way. The gray of life has no liking for me,
and to the last I will wear colors of the deep sea, and the sky.”
“What a queen can do will be done that no gray robe is yours until
the day you make choice of it,” said Maureen in kindness. “A writing
to that end goes with you to the holy women.”
“All have spoke a farewell but yourself, King Donough of Orielle,”
said the girl Dervail, with proud coldness in her voice. “I give
thanks to you for years of sanctuary. Am I to have no host’s gift of
the stirrup cup at my going?”
“A white road, and a white welcome to you,” said Donough, whose
tongue was stiff with fear that she go not quickly enough. The wind
of the morning had caught the silver cloud of her veil, and swept
it back over the golden circlet; she looked a girl queen beyond all
queenly beauty, and too fair for the men of Leinster to view.
Donough waved forward the bearer of the cup and the wine, and lifted
his hand to pour the draught, but Diarmod, who stood in the portal
with Ardan, came forward, and the hand of Diarmod was before that of
Donough.
“That the right may be my right,” he said and filled the cup.
The servitor dropped to one knee, and the King and Queen of Orielle
bowed low, and Dervail saw them, for the first time, stand aside for
another man in their own castle keep.
The wonder of it filled her, and her lips opened for question, but
Diarmod stood at her stirrup. He gave to her the verse of Ardan and
lifted the cup, and when their eyes met she forgot that a king and
his household bent low while only one man stood.
“Will you not kiss the cup?” he asked. “It is my grief that it is the
farewell, and not the welcoming.”
With both hands she reached for the cup, with both hands he held it
up, but their eyes never parted. Their look was a long, strange look,
and the smile was gone from her face.
“I speak thanks to you, O my lord,” she said, “and the cup of parting
will be remembered by me.”
The prior rode through the portal with six stalwart monks at his
heels.
“I go north for pilgrimage to the shrine of Phadraig,” he said, “and
we will add guard to the new nun for Cluain-mac-noise.”
He did not look at her at all, and his speech was to Donough
O’Carroll.
Diarmod turned darkly on the cold-faced prior.
“Six of my own men will ride with you as far as the Shannon,” he
said. “They are the best of my horsemen, holy father, and will bear
to the abbott a message. A gift will go to the abbess as a dower for
the Lady Regina, for such is her new name in religion. This on the
word of Leinster.”
The prior stared at him, and bent head in brief courtesy. Never
before had Leinster dowered maids, except they, in one way or
another, were among his possessions.
But Diarmod, with full knowledge of the sharp ears and keen dark
thoughts about him, followed his mood because of the red mouth of
Dervail, and her trancelike gaze. He slipped a ring of gold from his
hand and put it on hers.
“This my gauge of the promise,” he said. “Let it go with the dower.
In sanctuary pray for Diarmod of Leinster.”
“Diarmod!” and her voice was a whisper of wonder, but her face held
liking, and swift joy, and hope. It was plain to see that cold
sanctuary was none of her choosing. “Diarmod, O some time Ard-Ri of
Erinn!”
Fire of pride flamed in his eyes at her words. She had voiced his
secret hope that the cloak of Leinster like the mantle of Brighde’s
legend might gain magic growth to cover all the land.
“The prayer of you for that day, O Regina,” he said, and lifted the
cup to drain the leavings of her draught. “By the Elements, I wish
for you all you seek in life!” The emptied cup of silver he put in
the hand of Kauth and stepped a pace aside as Duighal the prior
spurred his steed forward, and spoke to Dervail without glance of the
eye. He had known Dyveke, her mother, in her day of beauty, and had
seen the christening of the wolfs whelp—also he knew the moods and
loves of Diarmod of Leinster. Kindling for the pit of hell were both
of them!
“Veil your face from the eyes of man, girl, and ride forward with
your maid,” he said.
Dervail lifted her hand to the veil, but lifted proudly her head as
well, and cast one slow look over the awed group. Between the church
and the king none dared speak, and Maureen grasped the arm of Donough
in fear.
The eyes of Dervail rested last on Leinster and her eyes spoke for
her as she drew the veil and shrouded the beauty of her face.
Two by two the riders passed the outer portal, and yet Diarmod
stood, stroking his beard, and staring after the blue cloak and the
shrouding veil.
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“What is your will for the day’s hunt?” asked Donough at last, and
Leinster swung on him as if to find vent to his humor.
“What joy in the hunting of deer when Paradise opens portals a man
may not enter?” he demanded. “You played well to get my promise
before my eyes had looked on her! You played well, Donough!”
“But the promise was a good one, and you will live to give thanks for
the making of it.”
“It will not be this day you will hear such thanks,” spoke Diarmod
shortly. “The beauty of her is beyond belief, and it is not her
beauty alone! There is something—something—”
“True, there is,” said Donough, “there is the beauty of Dyveke, her
mother, but she is stronger than Dyveke, for she has the charm of the
man named The Dark, because he was made Nameless, and those that were
loving him could never see charm in another man. My sister, Ethnea,
was one. Her life wore itself out making prayers because he died
unshriven, and there is Kieran Dall, devoted even to vengeance if
need be!”
“Oh, you make it strong, and I have given my word,” said Diarmod,
“but it is well it was you and the church I promised. Had it been one
man claiming her—Murtagh of Meath or _any_ man—I would be gathering a
troop now to bear her back, and the monks with their prophecies might
carry their runes to hell.”
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Two years Ardan lived between the castle of Diarmod and the Culdees
of Saint Hilary’s cloisters, and then, with Diarmod’s sanction and
help, he joined a group of pilgrims for Tours, and thence on to see
the glories of Rome.
Five years of books and songs and travel he had, but ever close was
the craft of carving, and Diarmod’s attempt to make him a bard, and a
bard only, had not been a success.
“Let me work out my poems in stone if I can find them that way,” he
said. “Some need a pen, some need a brush and color for the telling,
and surely the stone has its own hymns—and it endures.”
“It is not a bad thought,” agreed Diarmod. “If the ancient books had
been carved of stone tablets the Dane raiders would not have carried
away so many of the treasures. And in our own day O’Ruarc of Breffni
is laying tribute on many an abbey of the north. The Culdees had best
save their parchment and use the chisel.”
“I saw him when I was a child at the ford, O’Ruarc,” said Ardan, “and
had bad dreams. He had only one eye, and an evil look. The monks told
tales of him, but they say his castle at Lough Gilla has the riches
of an emperor.”
“Well may be! His men hold the fords of the north for heavy toll,
and his robbings give him jewels enough to cover the many women he
steals.”
“As I mind him, he would get them no other way—none would go to Lough
Gilla for love of him.”
“Aye! But he has his ruler, strong as he is,” said a monk of the
north. “I heard of her in Armagh from a wandering bard who boasted
that he traveled north in poverty, but by her grace he wanted for
naught on his way back. Some message was his to bear for her, and he
was fair delighted by the rare beauty of her. Songs he was making
of her milk skin, and her gold of hair, until men fell in love to
listen.”
“Where found Breffni such pleasing treasure?” asked Diarmod.
“I know not—God knows! There are tales told. One is that a boat
of the Danes was wrecked on the north coast, and she was of that
wreckage. Another is that he got her when he sacked the abbey of
Clonard, and the new house of the nuns there. That may be. Her name
is Regina, and that is no name of a Danish maid—it is christian name
for a queen.”
“Regina!”
Diarmod whispered the name under his breath and stared at the guest
of the north, but Ardan cried out in horror of the heart, and turned
to Diarmod.
“My comrade maid, the white-winged one of sanctuary! Is there word
from King Donough as to that?”
“There is no word,” and the face of Diarmod had brooding blackness on
it. “To me he would not be sending that word. He would go first to
Murtagh of Meath, and abide by his word, and the word of Duighal the
prior. There is no love in their hearts for Breffni. It may be they
care not for her taking, if she is taken far enough north—and the
mountains and the bogs between!”
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After that, Diarmod said no more, but left guests and tale tellers
and singers to have their own cheer of the night—and went to his own
chamber. There he sent for Ardan.
“You have art enough to pass for a wandering singer, a cunning
worker in gold, or a carver of stone,” he said. “O’Ruarc adds to his
craftsmen as he can, to change treasures of the abbeys into gauds for
his women. Go you north into Breffni, and learn the truth of it. Here
is gold for your faring. Guard your own life for me, but venture all
else to bring me word.”
“And if Donough is on their track?”
“No word to Donough of this matter! If she is safe again in his
castle, or safe in the convent, come you back to me in silence. If
the tale be true, find her and bring me word of her need.”
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So it happened that Ardan had crossed the Shannon at Ath-Luin when
the wandering bard from the north found the way to the castle of
Diarmod, and craving audience, knelt and offered a ring.
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“This from her who calls herself Regina,” he said. “The dower given
to the convent for her has gone to Lough Gilla Castle with many other
things. The ring of the south should not be among the plunder of the
enemy, and for that reason it is sent back.”
“Is that the only word?”
“All that was given me.”
“Is she—in prison?”
“She is the wife of Tiernan O’Ruarc, King of Breffni; she rules all
within the castle by his love of her.”
“He has then taken a nun to wife against all rule of Rome? Has there
been naught of protest from King Murtagh of Meath?”
“Nay, O Diarmod, no vows had been laid upon her. She was free to be
sought in marriage to any man, and O’Ruarc was the man.”
That rankling thought was not good company for the man who had let
her ride out from O’Carroll’s castle into the new prison, and the man
who got her was his enemy!
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Two days Diarmod fumed over the thought, and then rode with his
spearmen and bowmen to council with King Donough.
“Is it in silence the men of Meath and men of Orielle let the
plunderer from Lough Gilla strip the holy churches and carry away the
cloistered women?” he asked. And Donough walked with him apart that
Queen Maureen might not hear.
“As to Clonard Abbey, it is true, and we should stand against this,
and send a spokesman to O’Ruarc; but as to women there was only one,
and that one is his wife. There is no profit in going against that.
She is Queen of Breffni and content enough. Since it is so, what call
for speech of it among the people? It is well her own name is lost
from her in those changes. To ride to her rescue would but bring her
back for other princes to fight for. She is too fair for peace to be
her dower in any land. Let that hawk of the north keep her safe at
his own nest.”
“She has brought him lucky fortune, since he sweeps all of church
wealths into his chests and goes scatheless, and it was a different
prophecy of her told by Kieran Dall.”
“We are born, but not dead yet,” said Donough, “and it is ill profit
to think of her now—and her a strong king’s wife.”
“Yet I am thinking of her, O’Carroll, and the promise holds me no
more. From your castle I would not take her, nor from the church, but
she is with neither. She and the other stolen things are now free to
who can take them.”
“No man will fight for her when her name is known, and Turlough
O’Conor will not be the man to let Breffni be robbed of a covenanted
woman. Murtagh of Meath knows it, and cares not how soon she brings
ruin to O’Ruarc—if bring it she does—_he_ is not of the line
forbidden to her blood.”
Diarmod glowered darkly and showed contempt.
“The short sight was on me when I let her ride away, and foolish was
the tale of Kieran Dall. Strong houses have ere this taken mates from
the Lochlannach. Why should a ban, forgotten for a thousand years, be
uncovered for her house or for mine? My own thought is that her dower
was the dower of a king’s daughter, and a gain for any holy group of
the veil. Without doubt she was a chance child of Murtagh of Meath,
and the tale of Kieran Dall was made to fit. I have had no other word
concerning Cuan the Dark; it is some old world tale of druid power.”
“If ban, or banishment and un-naming is pronounced in secret against
a man, it is more than death against him, Diarmod. There is no record
left that he was ever living. The father of Dyveke had youth with
him—he was the firstling of a devout house, and was meant for holy
life—there may be many who think he is living out his years in work
and prayer among foreign pagans. As a man he has left no name and
no record. Now that O’Ruarc has the maid, and caused question of
the source of the dowry, there is but one thing to do in the house
of Machflain. She is called ward of the King of Meath, and daughter
as well. It is a rich cloak to cover her white shoulders and cover
a buried and bitter scandal for the house of the man called ‘The
Dark.’ It will never be safe to lift that cloak, Diarmod; too many
pious hands have helped weave it, and work over each rough seam with
careful broiderings. Hidden forever now is father or mother of hers.
She is no longer Dervail of the Shadow; she is daughter of Murtagh
Machflain, King of Meath, and is wife to Tiernan, Prince of Breffni.
The whole of Erinn is between your shore and hers, and no cause for
your thoughts to cross over.”
“Yet are they crossing over,” said Diarmod, and looked at a ring of
gold. “There is no joy for her there in Breffni, and her own thoughts
are crossing the wide land.”
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Donough O’Carroll was not easy in his mind after that speech. He had
remembrance of the words of Malachi, son of Murtagh of Meath. He
also was afire because of her beauty, and the little love he had for
Tiernan O’Ruarc. He also could see no reason why the maid, and her
dowry as well, should go to a prince so well hated. For the truth of
her was not told by Murtagh of Meath to any of his household. Duighal
and certain monks knew it, and among them they hoped to hide the fact
that the child of Dyveke lived though she should have died. Some
fear of Dyveke’s curse was on Murtagh, and for that reason the maid
was dowered for sanctity as had been his own daughter, with little
thought that his enemy of the north would sweep hawklike on Clonard
and bear away the troublous maid with all her mysterious wealth.
“Hark to me, Diarmod,” said O’Carroll in all kindness. “Murtagh
Machflain is well pleased that she is taken to the far end of Erinn
by a man—any man—strong enough to hold her there! You are not the
only man she makes restless by a look, or a word, or it may be a
pledge! If it is adventure you hunger for, forget her beauty and seek
victories in the west where the men of O’Brian are ever snapping like
wolves across borders of Connaught or Leinster; I am with you to join
shields with Turlough O’Conor against them at any dawn you name to
set forth. Make yourself strong with allies ere you venture a hosting
into Breffni. With care you can be chief king of Leith Mogh.”
“You have the King of Meath and all the bishops on your side,” agreed
Diarmod of Leinster, “yet if I was a wifeless man, I would make her a
queen of more than Breffni. Tiernan of Breffni will yet pay with his
life for having her before me!”
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