The Dove of Death sf-20

by Peter Tremayne

  Fidelma smiled quickly. ‘Forgive me, lady, but carp is usually found in fresh water. I presume your Morbihan is seawater?’

  Trifina waved her hand as if to indicate the matter irrelevant. ‘There are plenty of other fish to be found at night.’

  Iarnbud’s expression had become more serious, if such a feat were possible on his impenetrable features.

  ‘Many things are found at night when fishermen leave their homes,’ he stated.

  ‘That sounds mysterious, my friend.’ Fidelma turned to examine him.

  ‘It is not meant to be so. It is just a statement of fact.’

  ‘What sort of things?’ Eadulf demanded.

  Macliau joined in with a chuckle. ‘Iarnbud is just jesting with you.’

  ‘Indeed, I have spoken in jest.’ The thin-faced man gave a parody of a smile. But there was no conviction in his voice and he looked away.

  ‘Yet there is a meaning behind your jest, Iarnbud,’ Fidelma challenged him. ‘Perhaps you will share it with us?’

  Iarnbud turned his sallow face to them with his thin red lips drawn back in a mirthless smile. For someone whose features were usually without emotion, it was like watching a mask being bent and altered into unusual shapes.

  ‘All I mean is beware of this shore, lady. It is not a place to venture after nightfall.’

  Fidelma regarded him with interest.

  ‘This shore?’ she asked, using his emphasis. ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘The fisherfolk around here will tell you,’ the man replied, as if wanting to increase the air of mystery.

  ‘I regret that I cannot wait to go out and find a fisherman,’ Fidelma said coolly, ‘so perhaps you will enlighten me — since I presume that you know the story?’

  Iarnbud blinked at the forthrightness of her manner. He seemed to receive no help from Macliau or his sister Trifina.

  ‘This is the haunted coast. Along these savage shores the souls of the dead wait for their transportation to the Otherworld,’ he intoned solemnly.

  While Eadulf shivered a little, Fidelma was doing her best to suppress a smile that played at the corner of her mouth.

  ‘And if we venture out at night we might encounter ghosts?’ she added innocently.

  ‘Since time began, the sea folk that dwell along this coast have known the route to the Otherworld,’ Iarnbud replied. ‘Fishermen recognise the day when they are marked to perform a sacred duty. At midnight, they will hear a knocking at their door and they must then go to the shore, where they will see strange boats awaiting them — and these boats are not their own but strange empty vessels. They must go aboard and loose the sails and, even if there is no wind, an inexplicable breath of air will come and they will be taken out to sea and along the coast to the west to the place we call Bae an Anaon…’

  ‘The Bay of Souls,’ interpreted Brother Metellus. ‘I have heard it lies at the western end of Bro-Gernev, the kingdom that borders us to the west.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Iarnbud said. ‘It is a desolate place where the lost city of Ker Ys sank beneath the waves when its King was cursed by the Abbot Winwaloe because of his allegiance to the Old Faith.’

  Once again, Fidelma tried to hide her amusement at their solemn faces, saying simply, ‘It seems that this Abbot was a powerful man if he was able to drown a city with a curse.’

  Iarnbud sniffed in disapproval at her levity.

  ‘He was the son of Fracan, a prince of Dumnonia in the Old Country who had to flee here to escape the Saxons. He founded a great abbey in Bro-Gernev called Landevenneg.’

  ‘So what has this to do with the Bay of Souls?’ Eadulf was touchy at yet another reference to his people.

  Iarnbud smiled, almost maliciously this time.

  ‘I say it to point out that it is a mysterious place, where there are mysterious currents beneath the waves and dark forces above them. The swell enters the bay with such mystical force that many avoid those brooding waters.’

  ‘I don’t understand the connection with warning us to avoid the shores here after nightfall.’ Fidelma was growing tired of Iarnbud’s tendency to the dramatic.

  The sallow-faced man suddenly looked pained. ‘I am coming to that,’ he said.

  ‘You were talking about the fishermen being drawn by some strange wind to this Bay of Souls,’ prompted Brother Metellus with a grin at Fidelma.

  Iarnbud compressed his lips for a moment in frustration at the loss of atmosphere the interruption in his story had made.

  ‘As the fishermen approach the Bay of Souls, they hear muffled voices around them and their boats grow heavy; so heavy that a boat’s gunwales sink to barely a finger’s breadth above the waterline. Yet they see no one on their boats and their crafts are drawn westward at amazing speeds — so that within a short time they come to land. They come to a place where there should be no land, but they arrive at an island, and here their ships are halted, and soon the weight in the boats lightens as if they were empty, and as they lighten the boatmen say they hear a voice asking invisible people for their names, and the names are given — men, women and children, all who are dead souls, who have waited for the time when the gods of the dead will transport them to the Otherworld, to the Island of the Blessed. And then the wind comes up again and the boats go back, the fishermen disembark and return to their homes and the strange vessels vanish until the next time the fisherfolk of these shores are asked to transport the souls of the dead again.’

  Iarnbud sat back with a deep sigh at the end of his narrative.

  Eadulf snorted indignantly.

  ‘It seems to me that the fishermen are superfluous in this story. If these dark forces supply the craft and the wind to take them to the Otherworld and back again, why are human fishermen needed to man their ships? These forces could do the job by their own powers.’

  Iarnbud looked shocked.

  ‘We have similar stories,’ interposed Fidelma. ‘Stories even the coming of the New Faith has not entirely eradicated from our land. To the west of my brother’s kingdom is an island we called Tech Duinn, the House of Donn. Donn was our God of the Dead. It was an island where the souls of the dead had to assemble before they began their journey westward to the Otherworld.’

  Iarnbud glanced at Bleidbara and shrugged as if he were disappointed. It was so slight that the motion of his shoulder was almost lost on Fidelma — but not quite. She turned to where Bleidbara had been sitting in silence during this whole conversation.

  ‘You are a warrior, a practical man,’ she said smoothly, ‘and you say you command a ship. Do you believe in such tales?’

  Bleidbara had been deep in thought and now he looked up.

  ‘Tales?’ He reflected hurriedly. ‘I believe only in what I see, feel, hear and smell, lady.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘it was a good story, well told, and these ancient beliefs are to be respected.’

  She looked at Eadulf for support. He interpreted her expression correctly, for he nodded earnestly.

  ‘That is so,’ he agreed. ‘For there is usually a reason behind an ancient tale. It is best to be sitting before a blazing hearth fire or, better yet, to be in a warm bed, rather than stalking the shores in the dead of night when the powers of the old gods are exalted.’

  Brother Metellus regarded him in disgust.

  ‘The old gods have only the power we give them,’ he rebuked.

  ‘As do the new gods,’ Iarnbud rejoined quickly.

  ‘Are you a believer in the old gods, then, Iarnbud?’ asked Fidelma gently.

  Iarnbud looked nervously at Macliau who pretended to be interested in his little dog, still stretched asleep at his feet.

  ‘I am, as you have heard, Bretat to Canao, Lord of Brilhag. I am a keeper of the arcane knowledge of the people of this land.’

  ‘That is not what I asked,’ Fidelma responded gently. ‘It just sounded as though you gave equal credence to the old gods as you do to the New Faith.’

  The man pursed his lips in thought for
a moment or two and then sighed.

  ‘It would seem strange, lady, that the gods who the people accepted at the time that was beyond time, and who were believed and worshipped for generation after generation for millennia, could suddenly lose their power and disappear in such a short space of time when some people turned to stories of other alien gods from the east.’

  Brother Metellus did not seem outraged but he observed quietly: ‘That is sacrilege.’

  Iarnbud was unperturbed by his condemnation.

  ‘You know from old, Brother Metellus, that I merely state what is logical. Many of our people still make offerings to the old gods and goddesses. They have proved their worth over the generations while the new deities have only just appeared in the land and need to demonstrate their greater power — if they have it.’

  Macliau stirred and set down his wine and, as he had been doing throughout the evening, bent to caress the ears of his little dog Albiorix. It was obvious that he was fond of the animal.

  ‘Is it not enough that when the New Faith entered our lands, it did so soon after the Roman legions?’ he said vehemently. ‘First the Roman legions came and slaughtered our people, and then the New Faith came and subverted the minds of those who remained, turning them away from their very roots.’

  Fidelma and Eadulf stared at the young man in surprise. Fidelma was aware that he had been helping himself very liberally to the wine and she wondered if this had been the means of making him so outspoken.

  Trifina surprised them even further by giving a peal of laughter.

  ‘My brother likes to annoy people by being contrary,’ she said. ‘He says what he knows to be opposite to their views merely to provoke them.’

  Macliau stared at his sister for a moment and Fidelma was sure that she gave him a warning signal. He turned back with a shrug.

  ‘I do not believe it is a fault to stimulate conversation,’ he explained grumpily. ‘If we all sat around agreeing with each other, it would surely be a boring existence.’

  ‘The way our great teachers provoked knowledge was taking an opposite view, to induce the student to bring forth argument,’ confirmed Iarnbud.

  ‘That was also the method in our land,’ agreed Fidelma. ‘But it sometimes gets in the way of the seeker after facts.’

  Iarnbud leaned back in his chair and examined her quietly for a moment.

  ‘Then the facts are simple. This New Faith is spreading through the land. The princes have seized upon it and great centres have been erected, like the abbey built here by Gildas. These new centres dominate the lives of the people. But the beliefs of a thousand years and more are hard to eradicate. The old gods and goddesses live on, and in the depths of the great forests north of here, they are still respected and worshipped. And even among those who follow the Christ, while they might genuflect before His symbols, in their minds they still respect the old gods and the customs of the ancestors.’

  Eadulf stirred uneasily. He had been a youth brought up with the gods of the Saxons — Woden, Thunor, Tyr and Freya — until a wandering monk from Hibernia had converted him to the New Faith. But still, in times of stress, it was the old gods that he mentally invoked. Iarnbud’s comment was a telling one.

  Iarnbud noticed his discomfort and smiled knowingly.

  ‘I think you understand me well, Saxon,’ he said, before turning to Fidelma. ‘You have travelled on shipboard to this place, lady. Have you noticed the behaviour of seamen or the fisherfolk? Have they abandoned their faith in the protection of the old sea gods? They have not. They will give them their due, especially to the goddess of the moon who controls the seas. They will not even mention her true name once they set foot on shipboard for fear of her.’

  Fidelma had to agree that among the fisherfolk of her own land, this was true, for there were many names by which the moon was called, and all were euphemisms for her proper name. Names such as ‘The Brightness’, ‘The Radiance’, ‘The Queen of the Night’ and ‘The Fair Mare’. She shivered slightly. Was Iarnbud secretly laughing at her?

  Eadulf was trying to disguise his irritation.

  ‘What does it matter?’ he said. ‘Most people accept the Faith now.’

  ‘The New Faith is but a veneer to disguise other true allegiance to the old ways.’ Iarnbud turned to face him. ‘When your Saxon hordes started to land on the island of Britain, the Britons had long converted to the New Faith and welcomed you at first with talk of peace and the rule of Thou Shalt Not Kill. Your people, crying upon your War God Woden, soon dissuaded them by eliminating them or driving them from the land.’

  Eadulf’s jaw tightened. ‘I am not responsible for what my ancestors did,’ he muttered. ‘I live in the present.’

  ‘And the Saxon kingdoms are now being converted to the New Faith,’ pointed out Fidelma, coming to his defence.

  Iarnbud laughed. ‘Indeed, converted by those religious of Hibernia. Do you see any Britons converting the Saxons? The Britons have better sense. One day you Hibernians may regret it.’

  Trifina suddenly stretched languorously and yawned.

  ‘You will excuse me,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘The hour grows late and I must retire.’

  With a glance that embraced the company, she rose and left them.

  Eadulf waited until she was ascending the stairs before he turned to Iarnbud.

  ‘What do you mean,’ he demanded angrily, ‘that the Britons have better sense?’

  ‘When the Bishop of Rome sent the Roman Augustine to Britain less than a hundred years ago, he decided to meet with the bishops of the Britons. He even chastised them for making no attempt to convert the Angles and Saxons to the New Faith before his coming. Augustine was an arrogant man who had swallowed the stories told him by the Saxons that the Britons were savages. So, when he met the bishops of the Britons, he pitched his camp on their borders and demanded that they come to him. When they did so, he remained seated, not even rising to greet his fellow bishops as was the custom, but launching into a tirade of criticism of their behaviour and rites and rituals. He ordered them to join him in converting the Saxons and accepting his church at the old capital of the British Cantii as their spiritual centre.’

  Eadulf frowned. ‘The Cantii?’

  ‘The town or burgh, as you call it in your language, of the Cantii, Canterbury. Agustine was ignorant as well as arrogant. Did not the Britons have greater and older centres of their faith? There was Blessed Ninian’s great abbey of Candida Casa in Strath-Clóta with its extensive library. And the Blessed Dewi’s abbey of Menevia in Dyfed. Augustine was a brash upstart and the Britons were astounded at his behaviour. And when they refused to submit themselves to him, he lost his temper and in a rage told them that the Saxons would come and the Britons would suffer vengeance for refusing to meet his terms. On his return to his new Saxon flock, he even officially designated Athelberht, the King of Kent, as Bretwalda, ruler over all the Britons.’ Iarnbud’s voice was bitter. ‘So the Britons continued to flee from the Saxon arrogance in search of new lands to dwell in freedom.’

  At this point, Bleidbara rose abruptly.

  ‘Forgive me. I have to be on board my ship early in the morning, for I have duties to attend to.’ The warrior bade a good night to them all and left through the door that led to the kitchen quarters.

  No sooner had he departed than the girl, Argantken, rose and said something in pointed tones to Macliau. As the young man stared at her, it was clear to Fidelma from the way his eyes took time to focus that he had indulged himself a little too freely with wine. When Macliau answered her, in a slightly slurred speech, Fidelma was surprised to see the girl flush and reply in petulant fashion, even stamping her foot. Macliau’s face grew angry, his voice irate as he responded. The girl’s mouth became a thin line and she stomped her way across the room and up the stairs.

  Macliau glanced at the company with an imbecilic grin, which was obviously meant to be one of apology, but Brother Metellus was pretending not to notice that anything was am
iss.

  ‘We are all human beings,’ the monk was now pointing out, continuing the discussion that had been raging. ‘Augustine was a stranger in a strange land. He was a monk from the Caelian Hill in Rome, and had merely been wrongly advised as to the nature and history of the Britons.’

  ‘So ignorance excuses all things? Do you Romans not have a saying — ignorantia non excusat?’ Iarnbud riposted, picking up the thread again.

  Macliau was chuckling and nodding approvingly.

  ‘A point well made, Iarnbud. I swear that I enjoy your visits. At least we are not wanting in stimulus.’

  Fidelma had raised her head with interest. ‘So you do not reside in this fortress, Iarnbud?’

  The bretat shook his head. ‘It is my choice to live on my little boat among the islands. I prefer life under the open sky.’

  ‘You have no fear of these thieves and murders?’ Eadulf enquired.

  ‘Fear?’ The sallow-faced man smiled thinly. ‘I fear only that the sky may fall and crush me, the sea may rise and drown me, or the earth may open and swallow me.’

  Fidelma recognised the ancient ritual saying which meant that he feared nothing at all.

  She glanced at Eadulf and raised a hand to her mouth as if to disguise a yawn. Eadulf took the hint and he rose, bowing slightly to Macliau.

  ‘This has been a long day for us. We will retire, with your permission.’

  Fidelma followed him, leaving Macliau, Brother Metellus and Iarnbud still in conversation.

  Once in their chamber Eadulf showed his irritation.

  ‘Well, I for one did not find Iarnbud’s conversation stimulating but rather insulting,’ he began, but Fidelma raised a finger to her lips.

  ‘You cannot change history and so you cannot stop people from giving their views on it, Eadulf,’ she admonished.

  ‘And what about those silly ghost stories of fishermen transporting souls at night?’

  ‘It is obvious that Iarnbud and, by logical deduction, Macliau and his sister do not want us investigating any strange lights along the shore at night. Their supernatural story was meant to frighten us. That is why I pretended to go along with it in the end, once I realised their intention.’