What were they looking for? At first, it occurred to Ciarán that these ignorant Franks might have viewed Dónall’s medical texts and cache of herbs as evidence of witchcraft, but if so, why destroy them instead of confiscating them as evidence for a trial? No, they were searching for something else. So if Dónall needed to hide something, where would he put it?
The candlelight reflected off the only artwork in the cell: a cross with a ring surrounding its intersection, made of tiles cemented into the corbelled stone wall above where Dónall’s pallet once lay. Most would recognize the symbol as a Celtic cross, introduced by Saint Patrick when he brought the Christian faith to Ireland. But Ciarán also knew of its second meaning, one that Dónall was particularly fond of. For it was an emblem of Ireland’s pagan past—the symbol of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who ruled Ireland and built the ringforts of Aileach and Brú na Bóinne long before the coming of the Gaelic Celts. They were the mythical Fae folk of Ireland, and as Dónall often said, “There’s truth behind those old myths.”
“Of course!” Ciarán whispered. The answer was right before his eyes. To see it, one had to know Dónall and his love for Irish legends. Maybe that was why the Franks had found nothing: they lacked that knowledge of the Irish and their corbelled stones.
Ciarán began feeling around the wheel cross—for that was the symbol’s original name—searching for a loose stone. Sure enough, there beneath the foot of the cross, he found one that wiggled slightly. Corbelled stones, fitted together without mortar, were like a puzzle. And if one found the keystone, the puzzle could come apart and the stones be removed. Ciarán knew that his tinkering would not threaten the structural integrity of the cell, for the walls were as thick as a man’s arm was long. But under these finely jointed stones, one could hide things, just as the Tuatha Dé Danann had—which was precisely how Ciarán knew where to look. For when the Gaelic Celts defeated them, the Tuatha Dé Danann became known as the Sidhe, and according to legend, they hid beneath their hill forts and stashed their treasure under the stones.
Using his fingertips, Ciarán winkled out the first stone beneath the cross . . . and stared into blackness. The space beyond was hollow! He found the next loose stone beside the first and carefully slid it from the wall. Then, stone by stone, he lifted out the interlocking pieces to reveal an opening the size of a bread basket. He lowered the candle, and its flickering light caught a glint of metal. Reaching in, he felt leather and the weight of steel. He pulled it from the hollow cavity, and his eyes grew wide, for he found himself gripping the hilt of a short sword. The candlelight gleamed down the length of the blade, which was shaped like a leaf: wide in the center and narrowing toward the tip and the hilt.
Why would a monk need a sword? he wondered.
He set down the sword and peered back into the hollow space. Something else was down there—wide and thick and made of leather. It looked like the book satchel that the Franks had destroyed. Setting the candle on the stone shelf where Dónall’s cupboard once stood, he drew the satchel from its hiding space and was surprised at its weight.
Carefully, he unlatched the satchel and removed its contents. It was a wedge-shaped book, thicker at the spine and closed at the narrow edge by a leather strap and metal clasp.
The dark leather cover had featherlike patterns pressed into its surface, but it was the image dominating the cover’s center that captured Ciarán’s attention. Cross-shaped with a looped head, the symbol was a crux ansata—a cross with a handle. But he had seen the symbol elsewhere, too, in the margins of Greek texts, where it had a very different meaning. Egyptian in origin, it was called an ankh, a symbol of life—or was it death?
He studied the closed tome. The vellum looked old and weathered. He ran his thumb across its edges. The pages were dry and cracked, leaving a hint of dust on his thumb. This book was at least a century old.
An unexpected anxiety welled up in him as he unfixed the clasp and opened the tome. The cover page was unilluminated and bore no title—only a sentence that had been scrawled by hand rather than penned in Carolingian or Irish script:
I, Maugis d’Aygremont, write of the Mysteries that were revealed to me, which cannot die.
Who was this Maugis d’Aygremont? Ciarán wondered. Below the sentence was a verse from scripture, also handwritten:
For when people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair. And they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterwards – when the sons of God went into the daughters of men, who bore children to them. These were the heroes of old, the warriors of renown.
—Genesis, Chapter VI
“That’s odd,” he said as he began skimming through pages, concerned the Franks might return at any time.
The book appeared to be some sort of journal. The Latin was not in any form of ordered script, and Ciarán struggled to make out some of the characters. It was not the sort of painstaking work done by monks. Like the cover page, the margins were curiously unilluminated, and the text was dense, with words scrawled in the margins, many of them dangling with no apparent meaning or referent, as if the author had been struck by madness.
The pages that followed contained less text, and a number of drawings. They were not the work of an artist of any merit, but more in the nature of diagrams. There was a picture of a key, and another of a tree with a blackened trunk. A third appeared to be a ring. Scattered among these were other characters—letters perhaps, though not Latin or Greek. These characters appeared to be the only artfully drawn things in the entire book. They were flowing in style, with broad arches and wispy strokes. Some had curling tails; others jutted with crosslike appendages or strange dots that floated like little moons above the body of the character. He wondered if the characters were Egyptian Coptic, or maybe a form of runes like those carved by the Northmen. The characters, or symbols perhaps, were arranged in rows and sometimes divided by strange lines as if grouped into tiny boxes. They filled whole pages, while other pages were entirely blank and others yet were dominated by pictures. A staff, a human skull, and then a sword—one with a leaf-shaped blade. Ciarán glanced at the sword lying on the ground. Its blade looked identical to the one in the picture. A feeling of unease knotted in the pit of his stomach.
With growing trepidation, he turned the page. The curls on the symbols now appeared as tiny horns, and the appendages jutting from many of the characters looked like daggers or hooked claws. As he ventured deeper into the tome, the symbols and images grew more ominous. He turned another page . . . and gasped.
An alarming image dominated the vellum: a circle surrounding a seven-pointed star filled with heptagrams and symbols. They filled the outer circle and the spaces within the star. And there was something threatening in their arrangement. Were they glyphs or sigils—or some form of sorcerers’ script adorning a witch’s circle?
The bishop’s accusation flooded Ciarán’s mind. According to him, Dónall and eleven other monks had practiced sorcery with a forbidden book of spells!
Ciarán gazed in horror at the sword. And they had murdered a canon to conceal their heresy!
He shoved the book and satchel back into their hiding place and dropped the sword in after it. Fumbling with the stones, he replaced them as quickly as he could and then staggered to his feet. Glancing once more to make sure the wall was sealed, he snatched up the candle and fled from Dónall’s cell.
A sickening feeling seized Ciarán. He ran to his cell and pulled the door shut. A moment later, it opened again. Niall’s face beamed with exhilaration.
“So what did you find?”
Ciarán shook his head, struggling for words. “Nothing really.”
“Well, you missed a fine time. Those Franks are probably lost in the woods by now.”
Ciarán slumped onto his pallet, waiting for Niall to finish his account of the chase. Then Ciarán pulled his blankets tightly around him. He
didn’t know if he could ever tell his friend the truth. Shuddering at the thought of what he had uncovered, he recalled the bishop’s parting words. Indeed, what if everything he had come to believe actually was a lie?
CHAPTER SIX
THE GATHERING
Father Gauzlin paced through the scriptorium the next morning, eyeing the monks like a fox circling a henhouse. The bookbinders in the center of the room did not whistle their lilting Irish lays, and the scribes along the rows of windows worked with head down, hoping to avoid the priest’s gaze. The scratching of pens and the fall of Gauzlin’s boots on the rush-strewn floor were the only sounds save for an occasional whisper between monks.
Outside the windows, a cold mist lingered beneath a cloud-darkened sky, providing only feeble light for the scribes at their desks. Ciarán stirred a blue dye made from woad leaves, and dabbed it with a horsehair brush, adding the color to interwoven vines that meandered down a page of Saint Augustine’s City of God. He cared little whether it was his best work, for images from the sorcerer’s tome tormented his thoughts, and the presence of the priest with his condescending gaze only added to Ciarán’s unease. A drop of dye spilled onto a verse of beautifully penned Irish script. Swearing under his breath, Ciarán tried to remove the dye with his thumb but only further marred the blessed saint’s words.
“Leave it—it’ll scrape off,” Niall said under his breath.
Ciarán shook his head in frustration.
“What’s wrong with you?” Niall whispered. “You’ve looked out of sorts all morning.”
“I’m fine,” Ciarán said tersely as the sound of footfalls stopped beside his desk. He looked up at the black cassock of Father Gauzlin, who stood leering down at the two monks.
“Out and about last night, were we?” the priest asked.
Ciarán tensed, but Niall looked amused. “Haven’t the foggiest notion what you’re talking about,” he replied.
The priest’s eyes flashed with anger. “You two are pushing your luck.”
“In case it’s news,” Niall said, “we Irish have a lot of luck.”
Father Gauzlin drew a hissing breath. “All things pass away.” Then he continued his excursion down the aisle, peering over the shoulders of the other scribes.
Once the priest was across the room, Ciarán nudged Niall’s sleeve. “What if he saw us last night?”
“No chance,” Niall said. “If he had, the bishop would have tried to arrest us by now.” He leaned closer to Ciarán. “Besides, I and some of the brothers have had quite enough of these Franks. We’re going to organize against them. We’re gathering before Vespers, at the grove. You need to be there.”
“You’re mad!” Ciarán hissed. “These are trained soldiers—killers.”
Niall shrugged. “And we’re Irish. Sounds as though we’ve got the upper hand. You coming?”
Ciarán looked away, despondent. All this because of Dónall—and, worse, the accusations were true.
Niall clapped Ciarán on the shoulder. “I’ll come get you before we go.”
*
An hour before Vespers, Niall and Ciarán made their way through the ground-hugging mist to the grove. The monks had gone there one or two at a time, to avoid alerting anyone that a dozen men were heading uphill for a gathering. Beyond the earthen walls, pairs of soldiers and their mastiffs patrolled the edge of the woods, but Niall was careful to make sure none were near the grove before the brethren headed there. Ciarán glanced around for any sign of Father Gauzlin, but in the thick mist and fading light, the monks’ cells looked like shadowy hills, and a gray habit looked much like a black one.
When it was their turn, Niall and Ciarán walked uphill to the edge of the grove. They passed through the ring of ancient trees, treading across a carpet of damp leaves and acorns that were rich with the scents of autumn. To the druids of old, the grove was a sacred temple born of the Earth Mother. Yet Ciarán found it strangely like the oratory, though three times its size and a hundred times as beautiful—a cathedral crafted by God. Its walls were tree trunks, and its ceiling was a canopy of arching branches ablaze with leaves of russet and red. Normally, the grove was a sanctum where monks came to think and pray. But today they came to plot an uprising.
Ciarán was surprised to see so many of his friends, and more surprised to find them armed. Murchad, one of the young blacksmiths, gripped his iron hammer, and Fintan, a thickset bookbinder, held a cudgel of ash wood. Senach, a wiry young shepherd, had a shearing knife in his rope belt, and the twin scribes, Áed and Ailil, held long-handled hay forks. A half-dozen older monks joined them, including Bran, Derry’s hulking butcher, cleaver in hand, and other scribes and fieldworkers with hatchets, sickles, and staves.
“Ciarán!” Murchad said with a broad grin. “Knew you’d come!”
Ciarán forced back a smile, but his stomach tensed at the sight of these would-be warriors. Bran handed Niall a curved-bladed knife with a hooked spine, used for gutting pigs. It looked as though it could do much the same to a man.
“Glad you’re all here,” Niall addressed the group. “Because it’s time we took back Derry!”
Nods and amens resounded from the monks.
“Last night it hit me,” Niall continued, “when I lured two of them into the woods. That’s when I realized how we should take them. We’ll come at ’em like they did in the days of Cú Chulainn, harassing them at night, stealing their armor and weapons. We’ll lure ’em into the woods for the others to find bound and battered, just as they found that Frank two nights ago. We’ll move like shadows and make ’em think the spirits of this very grove have come from the Otherworld to haunt them. Me and Murchad will make the first sortie tonight, between Vespers and Nocturns. Then we’ll take turns each night after that until these Franks hie off and sail from our shore!”
The monks nodded and clapped, while Bran uttered another amen. But Ciarán shook his head. “And what if they come at us en masse?”
“Then we take a stand!” Niall insisted. Muffled cheers followed his words.
“That’s mad!” Ciarán said. “We’re monks, not warriors. And yet, you’d risk your lives. But for what? Brother Dónall?”
The monks quieted. “Wouldn’t you risk yours for him?” Niall asked.
Ciarán glanced at the leaf-laden ground. “We don’t know what happened in France,” he said. “What if these charges are true and these men have just cause?”
“Haw!” Bran scoffed.
“Then why did he run?” Ciarán asked.
“Because he’s not daft, lad,” Bran said. “These black-robed priests are liars, as everyone knows.”
Ciarán sighed. “He was standing right beside me when their ship arrived, and then he was gone before the bishop even leveled his first accusation. Dónall knew they’d come for him.”
“Listen to yourself!” Niall snapped. “You’ve known Dónall mac Taidg your whole life.”
“How well can we know what anyone did twenty years before we were born? And if he’s guilty, are we all to fight and die for his sins?”
Niall’s face darkened. “We fight because we’re brave and we’re Irish, because these Franks have no business coming here and lording it over us, regardless of what Dónall may have done!”
Ciarán stared at his closest friend, unable to summon another retort.
“We’re all in,” Niall said, “and it starts tonight. You’re either with us or you stay out of our way.”
Niall stormed from the grove, and the others followed by ones and twos. Ciarán glanced away from his friends. He could feel their disapproving looks prick him like daggers. He waited until they were gone. They didn’t know what they were about to do. He should have told them about the tome.
As Ciarán fought back the growing surge of guilt, he heard the shuffle of leaves. His heart jumped, and he spun about, fearful that Father Gauzlin or one of the soldiers had overheard everything the monks had said.
From the shadows between two great oaks, a figure em
erged, but it seemed to be robed in gray, not black—the imposing figure of Dónall mac Taidg.
*
“So, a heretic, am I?” Dónall mac Taidg leaned on his blackened staff. The mist shrouded him like a veil.
For a moment, Ciarán was too stunned to speak. But then his anger flared. “I found the tome hidden in your cell,” he said bitterly.
“I figured that was you,” Dónall replied. “Didn’t think you’d find it, but then, you always were a clever lad.”
Ciarán recognized the leather book satchel slung over Dónall’s shoulder, the one containing the sorcerer’s tome. A chill crawled up his spine. “It’s a spell book, isn’t it. The one from Reims. Did you kill for it?”
“I’m no murderer, lad. And you have no idea what that book is.”
“I’ve seen the symbols!”
“What you saw,” Dónall said, “is an ancient language, older than Noah and the Great Flood, preserved by Maugis d’Aygremont two hundred years ago.”
“Was he a sorcerer, too?”
Dónall chuckled. “Hardly. He was one of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne, who recorded the secrets of the Fae.”
Ciarán shook his head in disbelief. “The Fae? Then it is magic, and you practiced it. That’s condemned by the Church.”
Dónall growled, “This is not the sorcery spoken of in scripture! It is not the magic of the angels condemned to the abyss, nor the work of demons. This is the stuff of our Celtic heritage—the mysteries of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and Merlin of Britain, and the paladins of Charlemagne. Do you take those men to be evil? And what of the three magi who honored our Savior in Bethlehem? Were they sorcerers, too? The symbols you saw may be the language of creation—words that harness a power that, I’m convinced, exists within our immortal souls and can reach out to affect the elements of nature. Whether that power is used for good or for evil is the choice of the man who wields it.”
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