him as “Ard-Ri of Erinn.” It was but a tiny seed let fall from her
rose-leaf lips, yet had it grown in his mind, nourished by the
records and legends of his own royal line until he saw no head of
Erinn more fit for crowning! This was a dear secret thought of his,
spoken of to none, yet when he heard Turlough O’Conor called “King
with opposition” there came flashing back to him the music of her
words, and with them a long look ahead to the days when Turlough was
gone! To be chief king of Leith Mogh—all southern Erinn—would seem to
Donough a natural ambition. But to dream of the crown of High King
over all would put fear in the mind of every friend who was loyal
to Leinster. No thought of it had come to any heart but his own—and
hers!
That was the hold she had over his dreams; she had voiced the secret
thing much desired. And in his dreams she became a part of that which
was desired—the beautiful part!
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Yet Diarmod of Leinster did consider the words of King Donough, and
did join shields with Turlough against the men of O’Brian to the
west, and did make himself allies for the days when need would be
his, for that was his way. The strong family of Mor, his wife, he had
in bonds to him, and strong churchmen he had; if ever he ventured
to follow his dream he meant to have help of Rome through princely
clerics.
He took credit to himself for joining shields to Turlough the king
at that time. His mind was to go north, but the counsel of Donough
brought him thought and remembrance that Murtagh of Meath was no
strong ally even if he should make choice of the road of spears into
Breffni for the maid of beauty. Though reinstated in his holdings, no
one was forgetting that, for the blow to Gelasius the bishop, Murtagh
had suffered for a space the loss of all kingly rights, and the
devout and the spiritual fathers held it against him. It was no good
time for making bonds with him, even if he and Malachi, his son, had
been eager—for Malachi held no great strength of his own. The time
must be on another day.
But in all his thoughts of her there was the curious certainty that
their own time would come. She was the music singing far in the
forest of a fairy rath; she was the veiled maid beyond the lattice;
she was ever Argatonel, the silver cloud out beyond the nearer gray!
His men of the spears and battle-axes would have had curious thoughts
if they had known that the music to which the great Diarmod of dread
kept pace on his warhorse was the song of the boy, Ardan, in boyish
praise of her beauty.
He had forgotten that song, or thought he had, but in some far corner
of his mind it lay sleeping, and the thought of her whiteness in the
arms of that red terror of the north wakened it, and gave it music
until he heard the feet of his men and the feet of his warhorse
marching to it!
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And the young maker of the song?
His travels abroad made the wandering northward an easy path.
He slept at monasteries, and was known only as ward of “Dall
Clairineach,” who had been the scholarly abbot of Ardbreccan. But
that name, given the learned O’Cahsadhe, was a key to every door. At
Armagh, Ardan was even trusted with messages to other retreats of
religious men further along his way, and at one monastery was offered
a Saxon slave as gille, and a letter to Tiernan O’Ruarc, prince of
Breffni, giving thanks from a fortunate prior to whom he had sent
vestments and altar candles!
This lucky chance brought aid to Ardan and much comfort. He had only
to say, “A letter from a grateful priest to a gracious prince.” And
over mountain or moor the message was given a pleasure path. Near his
own domains the O’Ruarc did not plunder or lay waste, and the way to
Lough Gilla was an open way when within the Breffni borders.
But the Prince of Breffni was not at home to receive the priest’s
letter of thanks. He was gone north to the shrine of Phadraig in
Lough Dearg, as was his custom after great hostings. Even his
enemies never could say the O’Ruarc shirked pious pilgrimage, or
rich gifts of hospitality. The flat top of a great hill above Lough
Gilla was seen afar as a landmark and named the “Table of Breffni.”
It fitted in well with the giant cromlechs of the ancients to which
the Saxon slave made curious circles of respect, and told to Ardan
the faith for which the ancient gods had left such monuments. It was
different from the faith of the saints by which Ardan had been given
instruction, and he chided the slave and made a prayer, and went on
between hills touched golden by the carpet of gorse, and touched blue
as peat smoke when seen afar along the fair waters of lake and river.
The letter from the cleric opened the portals of Breffni for Ardan,
and his own youth and sunshine of face made him welcome alike to
steward and warrior. The cleric of the castle was less friendlike,
and had searching and priestly questions, and another man in
scholar’s robe gave long looks to him, but no question. He was called
Duffagan, and had been of the captured at Clonard—a silent student
to whom Tiernan gave care of the plundered books, because of his
learning in such craft.
No word did Ardan send to Dervail, but with a bard of Breffni he made
pact of friendliness, and told him of Erinn’s music in monasteries,
and the courts of princes in Gaul and beyond it to the east. An Irish
air he had brought back from Rome set to words of Italy, and he sang
it to the delight of all in the great hall. After the supper and the
songs of olden days, the little harp was given to his hands, and he
took his turn in making music, as was the custom and joy among those
of the musicians and poets. Young lovers would thus sing their
thoughts to the one maid most longed for, and maids and women of
the household of Breffni had their pleasure of the evening in that
pastime. The castle took to itself neither silence nor added prayer
for that Tiernan, the lord of it, had fared north for penitence at
the shrine of Phadraig.
It was a gay and very beautiful hall where the music was made, for no
stone of the wall but was covered with hangings of rich weavings from
the lands foreign, and under foot were many skins of animals, and one
of a great white bear was beneath the feet of Dervail where she sat
on the throne seat.
At the far end of the hall she sat with her maidens, and the chiefs
and ladies of Breffni’s household. Wearily enough she sat there above
the others, and brooding she sat in a robe of white, heavy with gold
threads and girdled with green ropes of gold-set emeralds from the
Kerry hills. Her veil was of white, and fell from a crown of gold and
glimmering green jewels. Her chin rested on her hand, and she had a
sidelong look for a chief who sat near her, reciting some late glory
of her lord’s victories.
Ardan noted it all afar off where he hid himself with the younger
singers. The song that came to his mind was of a white bird weighted
with golden chains. But in the old Irish tales of chained doves
or swans there were ever two birds chained together with golden
links—and she was alone. In his heart he was glad it was so. He could
not think of her in another way. She was still to him the lone white
bird, though a jeweled queen.
But it was not of that he dared sing when the tiny harp was put in
his hand, for he was to the others only a chance bearer of a letter,
and traveling in no great honor. And she was wife to Prince of
Breffni and sat on a throne.
And the thing he sang was the farewell song he had made for her in
a far dawn when she had worn a silver-gray veil instead of a queen’s
crown. And he had named her silver cloud—Argatonel.
The sun has set at morning tide,
Argatonel!
The wall between is deep and wide,
Argatonel!
Above it stars of heaven may rise
In witchery,
But none so wondrous as your eyes
Of mystery.
Argatonel—white wings to you!
Argatonel—white road to you!
O Silver Cloud that wraps the world,
My song to you!
He marked the very heart-beat in which she knew the song and the
singer, though she did not turn head or glance to where he was, and
her attention was given entirely to converse with the chief of Mac
Roigh and his lady wife who was an Irish princess out of Alba, where
Irish tribes had gone in a far-off time.
But when the song was ended, Dervail turned as if for mere courtesy,
and spoke.
“It is a fair, mellow voice, and a new song for us,” she said. “Bid
the singer come for speech.”
The steward of the castle brought forward Ardan, and told his name
and errand, and showed the letter and spoke.
“I bade him wait the return of our Lord of Breffni, and while he
waits we seek to give him fair courtesies, and the usage of a chief’s
son.”
“You serve your lord well,” said the queen. “He shall be of our
household. Whence come you, strange singer?”
“Late from Rome and other far lands,” said Ardan, his eyes on the
golden hem of her robe, and not lifted to her face, for the eyes of
the others were looking, and had nought else to do but look.
“Do pilgrims to Rome come back with songs of gallantry to bright
eyes?” she asked, and smiled, and the younger maids pressed close to
listen.
“A pilgrim sometimes carries the songs, and the memory of eyes, on
all the wide circle from the white strand of Erinn to the harbor of
return,” said Ardan, and she laughed at that, and bade him to a seat
near, and told him he should sing for her again, and he might teach
one of the maidens the song of “Argatonel,” for the air was a sweet
air, and a plaintive.
Then, having shown him this much of courtesy, her mind in appearance
strayed from him to matters of more import, but the youths and maids
circled him, and had their pleasure in questions of far lands, and
Roderick, son of Turlough, the King of Erinn, was there, and spoke
of Rome and the scriptures of the Irish sent eastward to carry both
religion and book craft to the Germanic peoples, and their neighbors,
the Gauls.
“For that purpose was Erinn the savior of learning for all Europe,”
said the Mac Roigh. “In the wars of the Huns and the Northmen the
great eastern land was swept bare of scholars, and Greek was lost to
the Gallic tribes until our books and our men carried it back again.”
“Strange to hear—that is,” mused Roderick. “As strange as to think
that the Gaelic and the Latin we speak and read could be lost to our
children in another day.”
“It may be that the waters on every side of Erinn will be the wall
to keep that loss far from us forever,” said Mac Roigh, “but in the
great foreign land there is neither wall nor waters of separation.
The tribes overrun and melt into each other, or they fight and
harvest the enemy as grain in a field. It is all and always change
there; thus were their settlements of religious men reaching out for
the Irish scriptures made here in sanctuary. Gelasius the bishop was
telling us of that at Clonfert.”
“I had thought,” ventured Roderick, “that between the Danes and
raiders of Norway and their Saxon mates, Erinn had work in plenty
to save even life, without the strife to save learning enough to
civilize her invaders. It’s a good gift they got from us when our
saints taught them religion. And it was an evil payment they made to
us with their ships full of raiders.”
“Our well-beloved Dall Clairineach told me Erinn was set apart like a
jewel in a lost casket,” said Ardan. “The old south sea-way to us was
lost to the traders of Europe through the time of the great wars; our
land was out of the path of battle and was forgot. When they found us
again, it was in a different way—an island beyond an island in the
sea! While they had fought and made destruction of all things, our
men of many crafts and many books had worked to garner and build. All
the learning was here to start anew the broken, foreign tribes.”
“More than some godly souls made welcome!” said Roderick. “I ever had
wonder on me to know what penance was given Forgal the saint when the
Pope at Rome reproved his heresy in writing that the world was round
instead of flat as we all are knowing it.”
“Forgal had lived on the coast here at home,” said Cineath the
cleric, “and took note that the masts of a vessel at sea are seen
before the body of the vessel is seen. Yes, he was given strong
reproof for saying it, but his writing was not changed because of
that—he left it as the words were written. In all else it is known he
was a true scholar, and a holy man—the blessing of God on his soul,
and on us!”
The talk went on thus, and the queen and her ladies listened. Ardan
could feel her eyes on him, though never once did he meet her gaze
with directness. He did not obtrude his speech, except as one of the
men of rank asked of his journey afar, but he knew that he did not
seem out of place near her throne, and had a pride in that.
“You speak of the wise and holy abbot of Ardbreccan,” said Mac Roigh
as the time for rest came, and the prayer of the cleric was ended.
“Was he well known by you?”
“He was as my father while he lived, and left me to his close friend
when he died,” said Ardan. “His fancy was to make me as a scribe and
genealogist—but why should I, a son of no family, turn genealogist?”
“No family?” said Mac Roigh, and looked at him. “If you were not of
blood and race, think you so renowned a man would have found in you
the stuff for his science? And you wear the colors of a noble.”
“Youth thinks not so much of these matters, and I was but a youth
when I turned from that work,” said Ardan. “Instead of a devout
priest with quill and ink pot I am a priest’s message bearer to royal
houses.”
“We will see you again tomorrow,” said the queen graciously. “If you
ride, you could attend on the ladies who fancy sport with the falcons
on the moor.”
“I ride,” said Ardan.
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Three days they were speaking like that before princes and chiefs,
and three nights he was led by Kauth, her woman, to Kauth’s own
curtained room of sleeping, and there Dervail came to him. Kauth was
their guard, and their nights were of whispers. He heard there her
dreams of strange greatness, and knew that Breffni’s crown was as a
golden rung in a ladder she meant to climb.
“And you, Ardan, will climb with me, for it is true what the chief
of Mac Roigh has said: no youth below the noble rank of _aire-desa_
wears the colors, and is taught music and chess, shooting and the
riding of horses—swift riding beautiful! You are fitting in all ways,
and have the trust of Diarmod, and that is a thing lucky. When the
day comes I will have you near the throne and my eyes are made glad
that you have visage and speech of a prince. It will be well for you.”
“Your talk is in circles,” he said. “You are queen—yet you talk of
the day when you win the throne! I come through all the wilderness
for the reason that you were a soul in prison—and it is a different
thing I find. You have freedom for the first time, and are using it
on men.”
“I do the things of my girl dreams,” she said. “I never was told how
women had power and here I am learning. When I go to Diarmod—”
“No,” he said, “it is not good to dream that. There is Prince of
Breffni and Mor na Tuathal between you two! Her people are of
greatness in power, and even a strong king might not stand out
against them. She is his wife, and her brothers are his watchers.”
Dervail lifted a feather, and tossed it upward.
“She, and her brother abbots, and sainted priests will weigh not so
much as that against my wish, when I wish it,” she said. “I am out of
the convent walls forever and am learning the power of women—and the
strength of it is sweet.”
“And what answer to Diarmod who would save you again for sanctuary if
your prayer was for that? for without your word he may not take this
road.”
“The time will come when I send him signal. It will be—it will be a
white pearl of royal size. There are creels of jewels here! I will
be sending one to him more beautiful than the one given by Gillebart
of Limerick to Anselm the archbishop oversea—and that one was called
a royal gift to the prince of the English church. Yes, it will be a
pearl I will send when I send the call for him. It is a fine thing
for me that I am able to bind my friends with a queen’s gifts.”
“It—is not a queen to whom he was sending me, Dervail. It was a
veiled maid of the cloisters, and she calling for champion.”
She laughed low, and looked at him in pride.
“Every man in this keep would be champion of mine if I called—and if
I gave him my smiles,” she said, “but not one is strong to control
all the others. I have given much thought to that matter and secret
knowings have been spoken to me by a man of the Old Wisdom! Diarmod
is, of all Erinn, the one of strength; and he will be stronger in
days to come, for his gathering of spears will be a great gathering.
The spears he gathers will make a new ruling for all Erinn. And I
was knowing that thing before the day I laid sight on Tiernan the
ravager.”
“You are talking of dark, hidden things, Dervail, and they are
forbidden.”
“They are true things, and the stars tell them! A secret man, who has
the name of Duffagan, told me that thing in Clonard. He was a scholar
but no monk, and Kauth gives him fellowship. When O’Ruarc would in
willingness bring any retainer of mine, I brought him as husband to
Kauth, and that was saving his life. He has a fever on him for old
books, and his was the task to carry north the annals most rare. He
has the trust of O’Ruarc who thinks him a book fool; but he knows the
stars and the tides, does Duffagan Mac Knea, and he knows the tides
of men’s lives as he does the tides of the sea! When he tells me it
is time to send call to Diarmod of the Spears, it will be gladness
for me to be sending it. And until that day comes I am waiting and
learning and dreaming my dreams.”
“Mac Knea,” said Ardan, “that means ‘Son of the Night’—it is a
curious name to put on a man.”
“Yet it is fitting,” said Dervail, “else he would not be having it.
Words have power, and the wrong word he would not have on him. He
has a wisdom not to talk of to every bird crossing over, and none
of these people are knowing it. They laugh at him, and call him the
little dark spider sitting ever alone in a corner with watching eyes;
but a spider spins webs beyond craft of mortal.”
“It may be evil craft you praise in him! How then if you find it so?”
“It is true craft,” she insisted. “Already it has proven itself on
me. Of Tiernan’s hosting I was warned by him. I was ready on that
day, and it was no weeping novice he found in me, but a king’s ward,
with the rights of a noble. He was my key to the world, and I used
him. I came not out of the walls a captive: it was the wife of the
Prince of Breffni who rode beside him.”
“A mystery are you to me, Dervail,” said Ardan, “and not the caged
bird I crossed the kingdoms to find.”
“The caged bird!” she said. “Ardan, have you memory of the snow bird
you made of me in the cloisters?”
“I have the memory—and the guilt,” he said. “When I listen to you I
think I was ‘fey’ that night I worked on it. I had cold and hunger
and my soul afire. Had I made likeness of the Holy Ones with such
perfectness, the monks would have made a saint of me; instead of
which they banished us both far as was in their power. And—they did
not break down its white wings of ice quick enough to save it from
the eyes of Diarmod!”
She gave a little cry at that, but it was a sound of joyous triumph.
“Again has Mac Knea proven true,” she said. “He told me it was by
some work of another that Diarmod’s heart turned to thought of me.
That I did not believe, and so I have said; but it was true! You,
Ardan, made one image of me poised for flight—you must make for me
another—when I have reached the end of the flight and picked my
throne.”
He thought she made a jest of him, but her beauty was so great that
he was content to look in silence, as he thought that no queen ever
told of in song or annal had such beauty as hers. Not fair Dierdre of
the sorrows, or the wondrous Brighde who was goddess of beauty and
art, or that Grania whose beauty and courage were as one when her
beauty won a crown, and her courage dared toss it aside as a ball in
her great game—and her game was Love.
He sat thinking these things, and knowing that all the beauty of all
of them could not equal the beauty of Dervail. It was seemly enough
that her fame might indeed grow great as she hoped, and her name be
widely known among the rulers of Erinn.
So deep was his dreaming of it that he kept no count of his silence,
or her curious looks.
“Of what are your thoughts when you stare past me as if there was
naught between yourself and the skins on the wall?” she asked, and he
roused and looked at her.
“I am thinking there was never your equal for beauty in all the wide
world, Dervail,” he said simply, “neither them that are living, nor
them who are gone the Way.”
“You are the same Ardan,” and her smile was strange.
“You think I fail to make note of beauty because I do not play the
sighing champion for your favor,” he said, “but you read me wrong.
As ward of Murtagh of Meath, and foster child of Donough of Orielle
it is a pretty puzzle to me why each king was not striving to make
best marriage for you with ally of his own. They shut you in high
walls for life without choice of yours—and would have forgot you were
living if—”
“If the Son of the Night had not made the key to come to my cell!”
“What would you say?”
“Three new moons was his work to help it to come that way,” she
whispered. “He made secret prayers for that thing—to the four ways he
was sending that call for the man—and Tiernan was the man to hear it,
and to come there, and Tiernan was the key!”
“More like it was that Tiernan sent your master of druid lore to spy
out the wealth of Clonard! You were part of that wealth, Dervail.”
“I have wonder if that be true,” she mused, and her eyes were looking
sideways in thought, but the red-rose lips curved over the white
little teeth of her, and the blue eyes had laughing pride.
“Even if it be so, the rule of Tiernan is over with that man, and
mine is the rule,” she said. “He pins his life to my service. Tiernan
is now but a man on our chessboard. And you are wrong in one thing:
Tiernan knows nothing of Duffagan’s hidden wisdom; no, Tiernan has
dread of such learning, for he was born at Whitsuntide, and it was
foretold that by a man and a woman of druid craft would his downfall
be if he followed their steps. That is why, after every hosting, or
every great killing he makes faithful pilgrimage to the shrine of
Phadraig. Great and rich gifts he will be leaving there to prove he
is christian surely. No—Ardan, Tiernan of Breffni has fear, and has
horror of all ‘Old Wisdom,’ and the life of Mac Knea would go out
like a rushlight in the wind if Tiernan knew.”
“And you! Is there no fear on you?”
“At first there was fear—and great fear—but not now. The strength of
the stars is with us, and that lifts and bears me above the fear.
The ‘Old Wisdom’ has made me Queen of Breffni and that, Ardan, is my
first move in the game, and it is a great game.”
“If someone should be telling Tiernan O’Ruarc?”
“I would kill that one, Ardan, and you alone have my secret.”
“Suppose I tell it to Diarmod?”
She looked at him, and thought a bit and laughed in silence.
“That would be favor to me,” she decided. “He has no love for me—yet;
though he has much thought of me. That telling would give him more
thought, for I will spend one secret night on Tara with the man
whose name will go down the centuries with mine! Take that saying
to Diarmod for me, Ardan; it will tell him that no pale-blooded nun
has come north to rule in Breffni. Let him give dreams to a night in
Tara!”
“Tara has been desolate these many generations.”
“Yet his fathers did rule there, Ardan, and it may be my own did! It
is the place for Ard-Ri of Erinn, and it may be a great rule will yet
be built on its ruins.”
“It is a dream, Dervail.”
“Duffagan is saying all great things of life have been grown from
dreams, and that the moon and the stars govern our dreams.”
“I would see this priest of the forbidden ere I journey south, and
tomorrow is the latest I may linger. It is no wish of mine to see
Tiernan of Breffni, whose plunder is sacred things of altars.”
“Yet are you loyal to Diarmod.”
“What then? Diarmod gives endless wealth to holy houses. His own gold
has built monasteries and churches for the glory of saints.”
“Ardan,” said Dervail, gently smiling, “all this is truth, yet
there are other truths of him; when a lord of the south refused his
daughter to Diarmod in the days of Diarmod’s youth, he gathered
spears and took her with the veil and the vows of a nun on her! In
amorous fellowship she was held in his castle and wedded there to a
lord of his choosing. That is the custom of a king who has power,
Ardan! He takes what he wants! I hear much of the power of Diarmod of
Leinster. He has their hate, but their tales are tales of praise to
me, for they tell of his strength.”
“Their hate may build untruths against him. When was this ravaging?”