by Erin O'Quinn
I looked down, unable to hold his gaze. “I, ah, I think I also promise a world of pleasure.”
Galen turned again and translated my words to Liam. “Thank ye for your honesty, cailín. Ye have answered your own question.’
“Then I will kiss blindfolded, like High King Murphy.”
As Galen translated, Liam laughed with outright delight. Galen looked puzzled. “Sure an’ there was an Ard Rí Murphy?”
Liam spoke for a few minutes, telling the holy man the bawdy tale of the beauty competition. Galen listened closely, then he laughed loudly. “Nay, lass. Methinks King Murphy could see right through that blindfold. An’ it is not just your eyes that make the promises, if ye catch me drift.”
Liam spoke up then. “Then Gallagher, ye must find a way for Caitlín and me to enjoy each other. I promise I will not fornicate her. But surely the Lord will find a way to please himself, an’ the two of us besides.”
After telling me what Liam had said, Galen was silent again, reaching for another helping of food. I poured a second cup of grog for him, and he took a long swallow before finally speaking again. “I would strike a bargain with ye.”
I was strongly reminded of Liam’s conversation with MacCool as he bargained for the monster inside his cousin.
Liam nodded, and Galen continued. “Ye will set aside one hour each day, first thing after breakfast, and ye will come to me teach. I live with a few other acolytes near the church. There we will sit for an hour, an’ sure I will talk to ye of sin and salvation.”
“Ye will get a possible convert. And what will I get?”
“Besides the almighty Lord himself? Ye will get whatever Caylith is willing to give ye.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. I was willing to give Liam the very moon if he asked for it, and he knew it. But as I sat thunderstruck, I thought about what lay behind the monk’s words. He knew I would commit no sin, unless Liam and I somehow went too far one night. But Liam had just told him he would not do it again—he would not ask for the moon. That meant Galen was relying on me—trusting me—to stay true to my promise to Father Patrick. And meanwhile, he would be teaching Liam about the joyful promise of the Lord and the nature of sin. It was quite a bargain, if Liam agreed.
Liam did not even hesitate. He proffered his hand to Galen, and they clasped each other’s hand with a firmness that spoke of trust and even friendship.
So once again, it was up to me to keep us pure for the marriage bed. It was very like starting all over again. A redemption. And this time I promised myself I would not let the promise slip away.
After supper, Galen and I sat back on our benches while Liam played his mouth organ. Every other song or so, Galen would ask for an old favorite, and I saw that he was alternately rollicking or mournful, responding as deeply as I to Liam’s magic. I squeezed the last of the beer into Galen’s cup, and we sat for another hour as Liam then sang in his lilting tenor voice while the monk and I sat dreaming and weaving ourselves into his lyrics.
At last it was time for the monk to leave. He stood by the door, stone sober to the eye. He laughed at my silent appraisal of his well-being. “A man big as meself needs twice the grog to end up under the bench, lass. I feel slightly cheered, no more. Liam, I will see ye first thing in the morning—an hour after sunrise.”
As soon as he left, Liam and I lingered by the door. He looked somewhere past my shoulder, and I, looking down, took his rough hand in my own. Without looking at him, I brought his hand to my mouth and opened it, bringing it palm up to my lips. I stroked it and kissed it, nuzzling each finger one by one. Still not looking at him, I murmured, “I love you very much.”
He drew me into his body and kissed me, very tenderly. “We wait.”
That night I stood next to the bed, trembling. I had turned around while Liam undressed, and he was lying on his side, his eyes closed as though sleeping. I walked to the little cabinet that held our clothes, and I drew out Magpie’s hideous gift. I made a little face as I slipped it on and extinguished the candle. Then I joined Liam on the bed.
“Póg dom,” I said quietly. “Just once.”
He rolled close to me and held my face in his large hands. I had put out the candle so he could not see my hungry eyes—or my ugly tunic. I felt his mustache first, the fine soft hairs tickling my mouth and chin. He let his beard and mustache tease me for a few moments, as he used to when we first knew each other, prolonging the moment until his mouth closed over my own. We lay with our lips moving together, talking softly into each other’s mouths, pretending to understand every word.
When sleep finally came, we were still lying close in the same position, as though separating was forever.
* * * *
When I awoke, I awoke completely. There was no in-between state for me of drowsy desire for Liam, no soft dreams of last night’s lovemaking. Liam had rolled away during the night—no doubt chafing from contact with the harsh fabric of my haircloth nightclothes. I thought of the ugly tunic as my hair shirt and I myself as the suffering penitent.
Sighing, I quietly got up and relit the fire. I pulled my tattered deerskin tunic from the cabinet and went outside seeking the river. Dawn was still a promise sung by the half-waking birds, and I greeted the sky without my usual good nature. In fact, I felt downright peevish.
Kneeling in the eddies and currents, I filled the ewer and poured very cold water from my head to my legs. I dressed quickly in the cold, just as soft, golden-red tendrils of clouds in the eastern sky made their vague gesture toward daybreak. I was almost at the door-lintel of our teach as Liam was coming out, and I stood, waiting for him to join me outside the door.
He had his breeches in his hand, and he awkwardly held them in front of his groin as he lowered his head to kiss me good morning. Ah, what monster had I wrought, to be deprived of seeing his remarkable body?
Our lips touched, but very lightly, like a whisper.
“Dia duit,” I said.
“Hello, I love ye.”
As I had done yesterday, I reached my hand up to his short, silken beard and lightly stroked it and his mustache, as if memorizing their softness.
He looked at me long and searchingly, as he had long ago when I first asked his full name, perhaps wondering back then what my motive was for asking him.
Then a realization struck me, sudden as a shaft of lightning. We really are starting over again. And the new start is as potent as the first. Every little movement now held a world of meaning, just as it had the first days Liam and I had discovered each other. This was a boon to us. A blessing, not a curse. I felt suddenly suffused with the wonder of this wild young man, and I knew my eyes at that moment told him all about my amazement and curiosity.
And I beheld his own fascination with me, as though I were an exotic animal that stood poised and alert, just outside his grasp.
Our eyes fell at the same instant, and each of us moved to our morning task. But I felt a tremor in my hands as I fumbled with the cook pot, and I burned the pan bread quite handily.
We sat eating our stir-about, I slowly spooning the porridge from my bowl as though to prolong our time together this morning.
“Conas tá tú, a mo chroí?—How are you doing, darling?” I wanted to know, looking up at him as I ate. He was always silent during meals, but this morning he seemed to be in a world of thought, his eyes well beyond me.
“Um, good,” he said. He was trying hard to speak my language, ever since he and Glaedwine had ended up working side by side on the bally defenses. But I thought “um, good” was not much of an attempt.
He would spend an hour this morning with Brother Galen, and I was sure he was turning in his mind the consequences of seeking a Christian missionary. His father, High King Leary, was a staunch pagan. The Ard Rí had been well schooled by Lucet and Loch, the most powerful druids in all of Éire. So the king was not just a pagan—he was the staunch opposite of Father Patrick, whom the druids had thoroughly reviled, frightened of losing their own au
thority.
I knew Liam well enough to know that he feared not the druids, nor even his own father, if he thought his cause was just. But what of the “almighty powers” he had spoken to me about that day when we knelt near the ancient stones? Would he go this morning to Brother Galen at the peril of his soul, according to the beliefs of his father and his people? And if so, was he putting himself in a possible personal hell for love of me?
I reached out and squeezed his forearm in a brief gesture of understanding. His eyes shifted back to mine, and he smiled. His face was suffused with all the fierce love I could ever ask for.
At last he stood, ready for his introduction to the “glad tidings” of a mysterious Christian god.
Before he left, I reminded Liam of the meeting today. “Folkmoot,” I said “Midday. Will you come?”
He nodded. “At…church.”
I lifted my head to him, and he bent slowly to my lips, tasting them, savoring them, his tongue barely running along my mouth. The anticipation of it was as thrilling as if he had kissed me with his former reckless passion. After he left, I stood for long minutes feeling his mouth on my own, loving him.
I changed into my pale green-and-pearl léine, and over it I wore the pretty yellow gown that Brigid had given to me. I loved the way the long, full sleeves of the léine emerged from the gúna, trailing almost to the floor. Ready for the folkmoot, I saddled NimbleFoot and we rode slowly to the church.
The late morning was cool and sparkling clear. I tethered NimbleFoot under the great oak near Jericho’s teach and saw that MacCool’s stallion was still there among a large number of other horses. The stallion’s presence meant that Jericho had waited until after the moot to leave with his charge. I turned to walk to the church, and I saw MacCool lounging near the oak tree, his shillelagh still gleaming in his belt.
I nodded stiffly to him and kept walking, but he fell in easily beside me. “Wait, lass. I would speak with ye.”
I stopped and waited, not responding, while he seemed to gather his thoughts. “Jericho and I leave tomorrow morning,” he said. “I have been talking with a fellow named Gallagher, an’ sure me mind is all a-spinning. He is like me very twin. And yet he is a priest. How can that be?”
“Accepting the Lord does not change a man’s very nature, Mister MacCool. But I think it can change his soul.”
“I was fearful of being twisted into something I am not. But Gallagher gives me hope.”
“Pádraig will ask for honesty. He will not ask you to be someone you are not.”
“I will be back after he releases me. I want ye to know that I have already begun to be truly sorry. An’ ye will see a changed man when next I stand before ye.”
“You know you have told me all this. I do not wish to be unkind, Mister MacCool, but I have to convene a folkmoot. Will you please excuse me?”
“Wait, cailín. I ask only that ye call me ‘Fergus.’ Will ye do that?”
“I think some day I will,” I told him. “For I think the humor is on you to change. But you need to know that by then I hope my own name will be O’Neill. Farewell to you.”
I walked away from him then, for I saw that his feelings for me still leapt from his eyes. Let the Lord afford him redemption, I thought. And let him find love someday, too, as I had found with his cousin Liam. But please Lord, I silently prayed, let his joy depend on thee and not on me.
Chapter 17:
The Folkmoot
As spacious as it was, the church was just barely large enough to seat all the people who crowded together that day to participate in the citizens’ meeting. When I entered, I looked around and estimated that the benches held about one hundred fifty people, roughly one-tenth of our population.
We had started with a little more than three hundred, about a year ago. Since that time, there had been four waves of currachs—a total of forty currachs, each carrying about thirty pilgrims. I was no arithmetic adept but I thought that would be about fifteen hundred pilgrims. Some of them had decided to stay in Glenderry, a subsidiary monastery near Patrick’s large priory in Emain Macha, and some had spread throughout the countryside seeking their own private homes in larger settlements.
We had held our meetings here ever since the church was built, one of the first buildings to be constructed. Several long benches had been reserved for me and for the people who were my former currach captains, the ones who still administered our settlement. I saw Gristle, lean and grim jawed, waiting for me to begin the proceedings. Thom and Brindl sat together, as always, close and quietly talking, with and without words. Thom’s father and mother sat nearby—the gnomish captain Graewith and his wife BriarThorne Stout. Jay Feather sat laughing and talking with his brother Crowe and his son-in-law Raven. I did not yet see my old friend Luke, nor my mercenary Glaedwine.
I walked to where my friends sat, and I greeted everyone. To Gristle, I asked, “Are you ready, O armsman?”
He nodded glumly, never a man to speak more than it took to convey his meaning. “I will wait five more minutes,” I told him, and he nodded again, understanding that I wanted to wait for the absent bally council members. I spoke in low tones to my trainer for a few minutes, outlining my own ideas for what we needed to discuss today.
My eyes sought Liam among the townsfolk. At last I saw him. He was standing near the doorway talking with his cousin MacCool. Both men seemed a bit reserved. I knew that they each had a great deal to think about.
I looked at the people crowding the room, grateful for their interest. The folkmoot was our way of adapting the provincial law structure of Éire—the Brehon—to our own Roman-based legal system, really a meeting and agreement of all the people. We had felt compelled to call a moot only a few times since we settled in the Derry area—to set up the construction of homes, the church, and other buildings, to name a mayor and municipal body, to discuss and set up military defenses.
In the past, I as leader had called the moots. But now that I had ceded power to Gristle, I needed to turn the procedure over to him. Perhaps he would want to convene a moot once a month or more. Whatever he decided was acceptable to me.
Luke hurried up to me, his dark hair all tousled, a smudge of ash on one cheek. “Ah, sorry, Caylith,” he said with a grin. “The forge got a bit out of hand this morning.” I put my hand on his arm with a smile. “Please think nothing of it, my friend. We are waiting for Glaedwine.” He took a seat. He was a delightful man, next to Brindl my oldest friend, a young man equally at home constructing furniture, fashioning metal at the forge, or discussing ancient philosophy with scholars and kings. Along with the scribe Andreas and the teacher James, my two friends who were still with Father Patrick, Luke gave us the makings of our own school and library.
I missed those two now, and not for the first time. I thought we needed to confer with Andreas and James on setting up schools. But we were fortunate to have Brother Jericho. I had found out that Jericho was a very well-educated man, smart enough to head his own monastery. Of course, Father Patrick knew that very well, and I was sure that he had sent Jericho to our outpost for that very reason.
The doorway dimmed for a moment and I saw that it was the bulk of Glaedwine blocking the sunlight, pausing to clasp Liam’s hand and to meet his cousin Fergus MacCool. My mother stood nearby, small and dainty, looking even more diminutive alongside her overgrown swain.
Glaed glanced my way and caught my eye. I arched my brows a bit expressively, and he ducked his head in embarrassment. He grasped my mother under her elbow and she joined him as he sat with the rest of the council, his broad butt overlapping the bench by a considerable margin.
I raised my hands above my head, a signal for quiet. After no more than half a minute, the room was silent, waiting for me to speak. I cleared my throat and began.
“O pilgrims,” I said. “My friends. I am joyed to see that so many of you came together today. Our settlement is only as strong as its citizens, and your involvement makes it vigorous indeed. Thank you.
&n
bsp; “I know there are at least fifty new pilgrims in Ballycaitlín these past six weeks or so, for I was on the longship Brigid that carried them to the shores of the Lough Foyle. Perhaps a few of those same people are here today. For you, and for those new to our folkmoot, I would present our bally council.”
I turned and introduced each of my friends, who stood as I spoke their names.
“The first matter I need to discuss is the command of our entire settlement. Up until now, I have been your commander—not because of any special strength or skill on my part, but because I was the one to lead the pilgrimage out of Faerie and Britannia. Yet there is one among us who was almost born a commander. By his very admission, even when he cannot eat or drink or sleep, he can still command.
“This person is one whose skills far exceed the task I have asked him to undertake, yet he has agreed.
“I give you my own second-in-command, my own armsman and valuable trainer—Gristle. From this moment, Gristle will be the new commander of Ballycaitlín and the settlement of Derry, together henceforth known as ‘Derry.’ Please step forward, my friend.”
Gristle stood, not betraying even by a flickering eyelash any emotion he may have felt. The bally folk set up a traditional acclamation by rhythmically stomping their feet, much as soldiers in a mess hall would pound their cups on the table.
Gristle stood until the pounding ceased. “I have not the speaking skills of Caylith Vilton. I am a man given to plain speech. So I will outline for you what I think we need to talk about today. And then we will talk.
“First, I am concerned about the defense of our settlement. Second, we need to name a new mayor, for reasons you will shortly hear. Third, I want to talk about the building of a school and library. After that, we are open to any matter you want to discuss.”
Gristle then spoke—most eloquently, I thought, in spite of his modesty—telling us about the need for defending ourselves all the while living in peace and prosperity. Having had a small taste of violence in my adventures with the murderous Sweeney, I knew that Gristle was absolutely correct. The entire blissfully beautiful land of Éire was a storm of conflicts—province against province, clansman against clansman, with shifting loyalties along with ever-changing chieftains and kings.
