The Fire in the Oaks: A Novel of St Patrick's Confession

by James Corkern

  ​Any news? Padraig asks.

  ​None, says Murchadh.

  ​You look tired, Padraig replies.

  ​So do you.

  ​Where are you coming from?

  ​From the town of the ford.

  ​Why did you go there?

  ​Milchu sent me to look at more slaves. He never goes on his own anymore, Murchadh replies.

  ​But you come back empty-handed?

  ​I do. There’s nothing worth buying right now. Some sort of illness has ruined all of their stock and I won’t bring some slave’s illness to our camp.

  ​Wise of you. Get some sleep.

  ​Murchadh grunts his acquiescence and shuffles off to his dwelling. Padraig sets out about his duties after wishing Clara, who is just rising, a good morning. That night they first realize something is wrong.

  ​Murchadh has not yet reappeared as the sun sets. Wet, violent coughs come from inside his shack. One of the braver of the slaves, a middle-aged woman named Aaue, at last decides to check on him. Not to be outdone, some of the others, Padraig included, gather at some distance behind her. The smell reaches them before they even reach the shack. When Aaue pulls back the flap which serves as a door, they all recoil. A feverish Murchadh lays inside coughing and moaning, his clothes pushed into a corner and his body slick with fever sweat and sick. When he coughs he expels a ropey, bloody sputum which he ceases to care about once it is past his lips, leaving the area around him an unsightly mess.

  ​The gathered slaves scatter immediately. Aaue goes to tell Milchu of what they have seen. The others gather around the fire and stare at each other with suspicion. The fire crackles. Milchu comes back with Aaue and watches from a distance as she shows him Murchadh. He can only see a pitiful outline within the darkness of the shack, but for him it is enough and he returns up the hill. Padraig and Clara huddle in their own home, avoiding the company of others.

  ​What did he look like? she asks.

  ​Terrible, he says. You don’t want to know.

  ​They’ll make a sacrifice, she says.

  ​They will, he says.

  ​They’ll wait for the moon, though.

  ​It’ll be another two weeks, then.

  ​It will.

  ​Less than a year until my freedom.

  ​I know.

  ​And then I will come for you.

  ​I know you will.

  ​They sleep that night ignoring the sounds outside their home, different promises made and bargains struck in different languages to different deities.

  In the morning, Murchadh is dead. They burn the shack where it stands and this is the closest to a burial he sees. All the slaves gather around to watch the flames and some cover their mouths because of the smell of hair and skin mixed into the woodsmoke. Suibhne cries, his big shoulders heaving from his sobs, but after a while he stops. There is only the sound of the fire consuming the remains of Murchadh and his diseased possessions. Even this eventually recedes, its fuel exhausted. The last of the fire leaves the smoldering remains, and only one sound remains. A cough.

  ​They return to their homes panicked. It isn’t long before the thing spreads. Unnamable, unseen, unknowable. Like the seventh plague it moves through the structures around Milchu’s ringfort.

  The next to die is Aaue and her death is hard. She gasps for air and sweats away her fluids for a day and a half before death takes her, leaving only a grotesque husk. They burn the body in vain, just as the one before it.

  ​Padraig and Clara huddle together in their home. No one works. No one interacts. From outside the only sound is coughing and wailing and fire. They sleep intermittently. In the morning, Padraig wakes and Clara is next to him, still warm, but she is moaning.

  ​I don’t know what’s wrong, she says.

  ​You aren’t coughing, he says.

  ​I know, but my stomach hurts.

  ​Maybe you need food.

  ​I don’t. I feel like I’m going to vomit.

  ​She grabs her stomach and draws herself into a ball. He grabs for her and unfolds her, but her hands keep clutching at her abdomen. He lifts her tunic and her skin is patched with a blackish rash. The areas not covered by the rash look as though she has been bitten by hundreds of stinging insects.

  ​What is it? she asks.

  ​Nothing, he says.

  ​It’s not nothing. I see your eyes, she says. She looks at her stomach.

  ​Oh.

  ​You’ll be fine, he says.

  ​That’s a lie, she says.

  ​What do you want me to say?

  ​Nothing. I don’t want you to say anything. Just stay with me.

  ​He does. He stays with her when the blood comes from her mouth in a trickle and he stays when it is much more. He stays while she is violently ill and he cleans her of the sick so that she doesn’t share Murchadh’s ignominious death. She loses consciousness as the day goes on and drifts in and out. As her fever intensifies, he brings her cloths to wet her head, leaving her side only to wander through the camp, now like a ghost town, and be seen by its other frightened inhabitants who stare at him through sunken eyes like he is death itself. He stays even as the smell worsens, as he realizes and keeps from her that her fingers and her toes have turned into blackened, gangrenous monstrosities, and he kisses her and looks at the wall of their shack.

  ​Padraig, she says, late in the night.

  ​What? he asks in Latin.

  ​I love you, she says.

  ​I love you, too.

  ​Padraig.

  ​What, my love?

  ​You have to go to Caomh.

  ​I know.

  ​You have to get him out of here.

  ​I will.

  ​Promise me?

  ​I promise.

  ​He kisses her on the forehead and holds her by her upper arms, looking into her eyes. Her hair is limp and matted and her body ravaged by the disease and he pictures her in the years before. He looks into her eyes, which are like rings of oak, and she looks back into his. They sit there for a while and then her focus fades and he no longer hears her breathing. He lays there next to her for a time and he feels something tickle at the back of his throat. He coughs forcibly and then coughs again and again, but no fluid comes. In the end it is just an itch and for a while he remains, but he must go to his son.

  ​Outside it has only been a few hours since he last left the tent, but the world is transformed. Fires rage all around and there is screaming. He looks up at the hill to the ringfort and goes to get his son. At the top he looks back briefly at the chaos below him. Outside of the dún three bodies lay scattered before the door, three women with lank hair over their emaciated faces. A sick hound chews at one of their throats weakly and whimpers at his coming. He ignores the dog and continues on through the door.

  ​Once inside he realizes he has never entered into Milchu’s home before. He had expected something elaborate, though he is unclear why, and is surprised and almost disappointed to find that inside the outer wall there is just an open grassy ring with a small stone home within. While it is a more sturdy structure than the shacks of the slaves, he realizes most of the buildings from his childhood have more grandeur than the home of this tribal lord.

  ​Milchu sits in a simple chair in the middle of the ring outside of the inner structure. There is a large basin next to him. He barely moves in response to Padraig’s presence, only turning his eyes and head enough to look at him squarely.

  ​Why are you here? Milchu asks thickly, slurring his syllables.

  ​You know why.

  ​How many of you are left?

  ​I don’t know.

  ​Murchadh I know is dead. And there are others.

  ​There are many who are dead.

  ​But you are not.

  ​I am not, Padraig says.

  ​You’ve done well here, Padraig, he says. When you came here you knew only a few words of our language, words I taught you on the road. No
w you speak as though you have always spoken it, and you have a proper beard, not the face of a child. But there is something you never learned. We have a word here, tairisiu. It could be my fault for having never taught you, though I feel I tried.

  ​What does tairisiu mean? Padraig asks.

  ​Exactly my point. You think you are someone special. You think what has been done to you should not have been done to you. But why? What right do you have? You are mine. I took you. Or got you from those who did. If I were weak and you were strong then we would be in the other’s position.

  ​I see.

  ​You don’t. You should have killed me a hundred times. A thousand. Every day you saw me and the day didn’t end in my death was another reason you’ll never be free. You think that you are here to get what’s yours, but you have nothing here. You own nothing. You are nothing. There is only mine. Mine only becomes yours if I allow it. And why would I give anything to nothing? You understand?

  ​Padraig stands without responding. It is just the two of them. Milchu readies himself. Padraig still stands. At last, with a sigh, Milchu lets himself fall again into the chair and speaks.

  ​Get what you came for then. He’s inside.

  ​Padraig walks into the home he has never entered before, his son’s home. Milchu sits outside and raises the basin to his lips before setting it back onto the ground. He stares at the walls of his fort, the individual stones so familiar, and he feels as though they mock him. Padraig walks out of the building a moment later. There is nothing in his hands. He leaves the dún for the last time and his only companion is Milchu’s dark laughter.

  ​The day is beautiful. He burns Clara to the music of birds wallowing above in the thermals of the fires below. He gathers the possessions worth taking and leaves the shack with food and clothing before it also is burnt. Once he is away from what is left of the camp, he sees that the smoke leaves nature untouched. The grass is soft enough to remind him of fur, the sun shines on him through the serene clouds, and he is on his knees in the middle of the emptiness. He remains there for some time before he rises and continues on his way.

  ​It is close to sunset when looking behind him he sees, silhouetted against the setting sun, a solitary figure at such a distance that it is impossible to make out detail. The figure seems to have the same thought as Padraig when the latter stops to make camp for the night, and soon two twin fires separated by considerable distance shine together through the night. Padraig means only to sleep for a moment, wishing to break camp before his pursuer, but when he opens his eyes again it is twilight and the other fire is out and the figure has gained on him.

  ​He readies himself to leave in minutes and then walks with the sun in his eyes. His eyelids are tight during the earliest hours of morning and then gradually he is able to see before him unimpeded.

  ​Again as the sun sets he sees the silhouette following him closer still, close enough that it could reach him in the night if it so desired. He prepares for nightfall and gets the fire going, but now that the darkness is his friend he sits away from the fire in the black of night and watches. There is no twin to accompany his fire on the second night.

  ​For hours he sits, not daring to sleep, when at last he hears the stranger approach. As the man nears the fireside he makes more of an effort to contain his noise, and succeeds in making himself quite stealthy except for a chronic, violent cough. For a while it is this way, Padraig sitting and watching and the stranger evidently doing the same, the stranger never venturing anywhere the light of the fire touches. The untended fire grows less and less brilliant as its fuel exhausts.

  ​Padraig, a voice says. Padraig, I know you are here. You didn’t just disappear and I know you came this way. Those that were left told me they saw you leave the settlement. They saw you leave after you left the dún. After you left Milchu. You were the last in there, you understand. And to find him that way. And you the last. You have to answer. No matter what’s happened, you have to answer. Disease doesn’t change that.

  ​The cough has mangled the throat, but he knows the voice is Suibhne’s. He doesn’t understand what Suibhne means but there is an edge in the voice he doesn’t like. He keeps watching, trying to pinpoint the source.

  ​Padraig, Suibhne shouts. Padraig, damn you I know you’re here. Come out. A man is responsible. A man is responsible and you can come out and we can talk and we can stay here tonight and go back in the morning. We can go back in the morning. If you have any food let’s see it and we’ll eat and then we can go back and maybe things will be fine for you. But I can’t protect you if you don’t help me. If you help me, then we can go back and I can tell those that survived. I’ll tell them that you’re fine after all and you never gave Milchu any trouble all these years. I’ll tell them that since you’ve been here all this time there’s no way. You’re no omen. Just come back and we’ll gather the wood. For our new homes. Where are you? the voice asks, turning into a whimper toward the end.

  ​Padraig curses himself that he has stayed this long. He could have been moving through the night and with the time it took Suibhne to reach the fire and with all the chattering he was doing into the darkness, he could have started ahead of him. Hating himself for taking so long but knowing the time still remaining is just as valuable, more valuable, he forces himself to set out in the void. The walk, with the fading fire and the unfamiliar blackened distance and the strange taunts and promises and pleas he hears from Suibhne, reminds him of the night he and Clara saw Milchu’s ritual. He walks faster. After a time he stops and catches his breath. He realizes that the fire is reduced to a star in the night. Suibhne’s voice no longer carries after him, and he hopes the distance is the reason and not that the man has grown wise. He walks faster still, breath or no breath. By sunrise his muscles ache and he looks for a place where he may dare to rest.

  ​The sun rises and the day is quiet. Padraig finds a grouping of rocks aged smooth near a small stream in a meadow. They sit there like the remnants of some forgotten civilization, a natural formation that almost mimics the look of a Neolithic temple. There is just room inside for a man to hide himself if he were so inclined. He decides this is a place to rest and tries as best he can to make himself comfortable. The morning is still young and the rock is cool and he is shaded from most of the sunlight and he decides to rest his eyes.

  ​He does not keep them closed long. He knows he must keep moving and the sun is bright enough that he can never really more than nap. He begins to gather his things lying near his feet when he hears footsteps and heavy breathing. Moving through the night was not as advantageous as it seemed. And now it is daylight. He dares peek out through the opening in two of the rocks.

  ​Suibhne stands not too far off in the meadow, looking far worse in the day than he had from the shadows around the fire. His clothes are a stained wreck and it is obvious he is sick. He stumbles forward, closer to Padraig’s hiding spot.

  ​You don’t think I see you, Suibhne says. These are the only rocks in the entire field and the sun shines through them differently when you move.

  ​He coughs. Padraig believes his words and steps out to meet him in the middle of the meadow.

  ​Here I am, Padraig says.

  ​Time to go back, Suibhne says. He stumbles.

  ​I won’t, Padraig says.

  ​I’ll force you.

  ​You can barely stand. The disease has taken you.

  ​And not you, Suibhne says. He coughs and it’s thick and red and he spits it into the grass. Is it because of your sorcery you’re spared? Did your god bring this upon us at your command?

  ​I don’t command God, Padraig says. You said others were left in the camp.

  ​There might be.

  ​I’ll never know if there are, Padraig says.

  ​Suibhne almost responds, but is cut short when he falls to his knees and vomits blood into the grass. Padraig steps back. The sun is not far past dawn and wind lifts through both men’s hair. A fox cautiously
makes it way over a hill with the scent of the men in the air. Suibhne spits and tries to raise himself to his feet, but he is too weak and falls again. He lies there in the grass moaning with Padraig watching.

  ​After a while, Padraig sits and the whispering turns to soft breathing interrupted by more sickness. Padraig starts walking away and leaves Suibhne. He crosses the stream and makes it another few hundred steps before he turns around and returns to the man, finding him as he left him. He stares at him awhile and eats some of the food he had packed and considers offering it to Suibhne, but decides that it might be more cruel than kind.

  ​After this meal he sets out again and makes it further than the first time before he returns. Suibhne has turned over onto his side and mutters to himself in between gargled breathing. From where he stands Padraig thinks he sees the same marks he had seen on Clara not too many days before.

  ​He can’t bear to watch and he leaves again, this time making it several miles before he again returns. He curses himself as he walks back, for he knows he has lost a day. When he arrives, Suibhne still breathes shallowly into the corrupted grass around him. Padraig doesn’t watch but goes to the stream and, wading in, searches around the bed until he finds a large, smooth stone. He takes the stone and walks to Suibhne, sitting in the grass next to him and listening to the labored breathing. Lifting the stone, he brings it down upon Suibhne’s head once, twice, three times and then leaves the stone next to the ruin of the skull. He washes himself in the water of the stream and makes camp for the night, for he has lost a day. He returns to the rock formation he had been hiding in earlier and he places the fire near the opening. With the fire standing sentinel, he sleeps.

  ​In the morning he wastes no time and sets out again across the stream. After some miles he has walked past the extent of his progress the previous day and he slows his pace. He does as he had done on the days before, particularly before he knew he was being followed, and walks with the rising sun in his face and the setting sun on his back. He stops to eat and then he sleeps. He wakes and he eats and he sleeps and soon he is on a beach and feels the sea wash up on his feet and he can no longer walk into the sun.