Book of Kells

by R. A. MacAvoy

  “But, Daughter of Wisdom, do you know what happens if the brewer is careless, and adds too much of the new batch into the old and then seals the keg nicely?”

  “It blows up,” replied Ailesh cheerfully. “And the flies crawl over everything, licking it up.”

  Derval flinched in the darkness where she had retreated. The old nun turned her head in her hood, and white eyes gleamed with an amusement that seemed pitiless. “What a tremble I’ve put you in! You’re afraid I may lose my ale, warrior woman?”

  Ailesh felt compelled to explain. “The Bhean Uasal O’Cuhain has had a bad dream, old mother, and a bad dream may blacken the day after it.”

  “Or many days,” added the hag, still gazing coolly and without particular sympathy at Derval.

  Derval wiped the cold sweat of her hands onto her thighs. Unreasoning fear drove her to honesty. “What I am afraid of, Bride the Brewer, is you.” She stammered as she said it.

  The old crone smiled with three teeth. “I won’t be heart-wounded over that, warrior. Untried woman of fierce words, you may fear whom you like.”

  Derval’s jaw hardened. “Tell me one thing. Is this batch you brewed your last?”

  MacCullen cleared his throat and grinned tightly at the fire. “Once again the shining daughter of Chadhain displays her fine courtesy. Forgive us, Old Mother, that that one there knows no better than to talk of death in the face of an ancient.”

  From under the hood came a flash of green. “Shut your mouth, boy-o. You’ll have your own time to piss your legs; pray to the twins that you do it so bravely!” Then she turned back to Derval and brushed her hair, coarse and gray as pony’s forelock, from her eyes.

  “Daughter, it is the new brewing that gives life to the old. There is always a new malt ripening as the old goes down the throat! And as for this old cow dying, I promise you she’s far too busy.”

  Derval faced the hooded figure with a cornered, white-faced courage. “Why is everything going so deadly bad for everyone? Is it our fault?”

  Bride’s heavy laughter brought the chicken leg in contact with John Thornburn’s nose. He rebelled. “Take it away!” he cried in bad Irish. “It’s making me sick!”

  “Ocho!” The old woman clapped as though John were a baby who had shown a cunning trick. “The one doesn’t trust Bride, and she makes the other one sick! It’s a sad life for a mother, isn’t it?”

  She proffered one limp dug to John. “Surely you remember the teat in your mouth, little bull?” Dropping it, she leaned forward and spread her legs. Her hands reached between them. “And surely you have some fondness for your first and kindest home, and the red tunnel that gave you to the world?” She presented herself to John Thornburn.

  He fainted.

  The old hag blinked at him. Carefully she set him on his back and petted his silken hair. “Fulya, fulya! Poor little bull-calf! What herdsman would breed from you, I wonder? Yet, look here…” She lifted John’s pale, raw, and red-blistered hand and showed it to the others as though displaying a wonder.

  “Who’d have thought it!” Her voice held a senile satisfaction.

  Ailesh stepped around the fire. Carefully she detached Bride’s gnarled fingers from John’s wrist. “He has an illness that comes upon him,” she said softly to the old woman. “And he doesn’t know our ways. But Eoin’s no cull, for all that.”

  Bride pulled down on her upper lip until the end of her nose almost touched her mouth. “Treasure of my heart, why do you apologize for everyone? Not even a mother is responsible forever.”

  “Don’t speak!” whispered Derval in a strangled voice to Ailesh. “Don’t talk to her. It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what she means to do to us!”

  The old woman let her thighs slap together and she leaned back against the bank. As she glanced back at Derval, her eyes were sly. “You make me tired, maiden, with all that fear. What old Bride will do is what she’s always done; she’ll turn to her caoruheacht and she’ll brew her beer. Maybe that’s fearful and maybe it’s not.

  “She’s not afraid; that’s certain. What does it matter if all the priests turn her out, or the birds shriek from the ash trees?”

  She sighed rheumily. “But once she had two sons who loved her, and that she’ll swear to. One was light and the other was dark. The finest of men: wood carvers both.

  “Gone to earth they are, of course. I bury them and I bury them and I bury them again. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times.”

  She looked down at the black earth and met the opening eyes of John. She took a handful of his silky, flaxen hair. “Little Thor with the white head and the white callused hand,” she murmured. He didn’t move.

  Old Bride rose and stalked off, away from the road, and up the hill again. “And little Iosa Dubh with his eye for wood. Such a good worker he was, and how the ladies loved him.”

  She barged between Derval and Ailesh, who gave back silently. Her cataractal eyes were weeping. “They used the nails, you know. Always the nails.” But as she clambered up the gentle hill she looked over her shoulder at them, panting. “What a shame on you,” she said, as she caught her breath. “That you should wish me to get out from you.” Then she started up again. The four of them heard her deep, loud laugh, like the lowing of a cow.

  MacCullen rubbed his hands together before he spoke. “That one is growing very close to her savior this night.” He pointed to his head. “Poor old cailleach.”

  Derval gave a strange little giggle.

  With the departure of old Bride, the timidity—the revulsion—fell from John like bedsheets sliding to the floor. The knowledge of his own clownishness awoke.

  “I’m sorry,” he said truculently, in English, to Derval. “I’m sorry. God save the mark, I don’t do that on purpose: falling apart like that. Some can be jack-easy about themselves, and I wish they were me. And I know you do too.” He took a cold breath. “But I’m too much the nuzzle-tripe—the scud of the lot—and it’s not going to change.”

  Derval turned her eyes to him for a moment, but they were empty, for his lapse into the dialect of his father had left her behind and she was too busy with her own fading panic ask what it all meant. Ailesh gazed at John with worried eyes trying to hear past the foreign language. MacCullen pursed his mouth. Only Bride ignored him, choosing her ancient, cautious way into the dark. The wind picked up amid the forest and the dry twigs of the hazel rattled. They told John to look up.

  Whatever is least expected, that is the very thing that will happen.

  As the old nun mounted the bank, that spine that was bent with all the sadness and work of women straightened. The silhouette against the golden moon changed.

  Derval had been watching too closely to be mistaken in what she saw. Her throat contracted now. She grasped John’s arm for reassurance, as her fear multiplied itself beyond all bearing. Fear became not-quite-fear.

  John didn’t notice Derval at all, for he was staring into Her Face.

  The brat had fallen back. The golden hair—curling, glowing with light like a rayed sun: it looked alive. It reached out as if in blessing to the teeming shadowy creatures that suddenly filled the air around her.

  They were long-horned cattle, golden bees, heavy-hooved horses, and dogs thin as a sickle moon: all kinds of animals of the forest, farm, and sea, their limbs intertwining harmoniously and in constant movement. A confusion of life. Exquisite form. Translucent color. And beneath it all a rumble in the earth, like the sound of a great heard of cattle.

  John fell headlong into the wellspring of the illuminators—the source of inspiration. It was an infinity of order, color, line. Beyond formalism, encompassing chaos, it was his own art—the art of his midnight visions—taken far beyond what one life would permit a man.

  And it was not his alone. No. More accurate to say he belonged to it—to her—along with a host of other hearts and souls that worked toward her gentle glory. And John felt a heated joy to know that he lived and breathed now among others with eyes lik
e his, who had brought into being manuscripts that Cambrensis would say “seemed more the work of angels than men.”

  But from this wonder John’s eyes were drawn to the center of it all: her beautiful face. Her eyes.

  Heavy-lidded, huge, and patient like those of a cow, yet filled with unspeakable serpent wisdom, they shone like moons of blue. They were the color of sunlight reflected off the white sand bottom of deep bay water. Those were the eyes of Bride: old hag, perfect maiden. Milk mother of Christ.

  And this sight cut open John’s heart, tearing at everything in him that he felt was weak and petty. Then it was mended with beauty.

  Derval stood up. She cried, “Mother! Don’t go!”

  Then throwing her cloak over her head, the cailleach—the hag—broken double with age, left the top of the ditch and was gone. Ailesh, whose concern for her champions had held her eyes until now, turned just too late to see.

  Bending herself onto the earth until her forehead touched it, Derval wept like a child, while John’s tears fell silently. He licked his lips, over and over, savoring not salt but the strong taste of honey ale—of mead—that filled his mouth. He laughed, feeling phlegm rattle in the back of his throat, and then leaped up the little bank after Bride, light as a lover.

  He gasped. The spreading, black-ringed horn of a cow caught him in the ribs. John lost his wind and grabbed, as the cow swung its massive head and lifted him off the earth. He bent in the middle and jackknifed over the horn gracefully to touch down beside the running beast once more. As his hands refused to let go, John was dragged along.

  A yard from his face was another cow, equally heavy and as terribly horned. Shaggy as a buffalo. And as a third pressed him close he screamed and was tossed aloft. He clutched handfuls of rough hair and found himself lying flat out on the broad back of the first animal, where he clung, bawling weakly, like the calf old Bride had named him. The beast bellowed in response.

  All around him were black backs and flashing horns beneath black oaks and the stars. The hooves of the cattle poached the damp road to bog. He pulled himself onto the cow’s neck, squatting, with both feet together over her shoulder blades and his hands locked in the coarse ruff, begging gods he couldn’t name to let him escape impalement. He cried out wordlessly, in rhythm to her canter.

  Where were the others: Derval, Ailesh, and the injured poet? Trampled, turning the mud red? Gored mindlessly and left in heaps? Surely the small embankment would not have stopped this endless, unnatural invasion.

  He dared turn his head, to see behind him a glimmer of white. The hinny? No, bigger.

  A horse’s head. A man’s leg. A saddle rug of gold and red embroidery. John swiveled on the cow’s flat back, caught by the sight of that saddle rug. The rider squeezed his horse closer and shouted at John. He had a whip, and laid it right and left as he came, whistling shrilly. The cattle gave back without dispute.

  The man was bearded, blondish, and round-faced. He looked somehow familiar to John, and he cried a question over the thunder of the herd.

  John shrieked in reply, “My Irish is very bad! Very, very bad!”

  The herder choked on dust and laughter. With a quick flick of the wrist he wrapped his whip around the base of the cow’s horns. The white horse, dwarfed in size by the cow, set its legs and lay back its tiny ears. It stared fiercely, shaking its pale pony head.

  The great-horned cow dropped her head and allowed herself to be led out of the path.

  John dropped his legs to the sides of the cow’s neck with a sigh of relief. He pointed at the churned road behind them. “My friends! Your cows hit my friends, I think.”

  The rider’s eyes narrowed in worry. It was of Ailesh the man reminded him, John saw. Still on the cow’s broad back, he was led along, watching the marvelous saddle rug sway with the horse’s pace.

  The cattle were now clogged and milling. The sound of whips was heard ahead, along with the splashing tattoo of horse’s feet in mud. The rider led his captive cow and John (captive, too, he wondered?) to the very edge of the road.

  There were four more riders, standing in a group around something. Three of the horses gleamed white with the light of a rising moon, and one was dusky, with stripes on its legs and along its back. On the path between them was a man—no, not a man but Ailesh, standing in an attitude of authority and conversing with the men. Derval peered over the lip of the road behind.

  John’s leader joined the group. “Be easy, Daughter of Goban. I have your far traveler. I found him standing on the lead cow’s back, and she wild, with a horn of her in either hand, looking like the world’s own champion.”

  All stared at John with awakening respect, save for Derval, who just stared.

  Chapter Seven

  That he might not give beyond right to anyone.

  That he might not pass a false judgement.

  That no quarrel take place in his house,

  For that is the great restriction of his restrictions.

  Saint Benean’s instructions to a king,

  The Psaltry of Caiseal

  “That pink pudding: there was something about it. It reminded me of home,” said John Thornburn to Derval, as they lay baking side by side in the sweatlodge. “Something fishy. Salty. Was it salmon?”

  Derval managed to shake her dripping head. “No, Johnnie. Not salmon. You don’t want to know what was in that pudding.”

  Slowly John turned on his side. He prodded her. “Go on, Derval. You can’t say that much and stop, eh?”

  Derval gave a wet sniff. “It was blood, then. Raw blood and milk, set to congeal by itself.”

  John flopped back. “I didn’t want to know that,” he said reflectively, and added, “Just like the Masai?”

  “Just like the Masai. They bleed their cattle here, more often than slaughter them.”

  John shifted and swallowed. He stared up at the thatch of the sweatlodge, which hung like a dark circle over the white clay walls. “What about the yogurt with honey? What was it, really?”

  “Yogurt with honey.”

  He belched, grimacing. “And the onions? And all that oatmeal? Why so damn many onions? I’m swollen like a car tire.”

  Derval examined him with an ironical eye. I guess so. I can see your little air valve sticking up from here.”

  John glanced at her self-consciously. Surely she knew that remarks like that destroyed his ability to…to approach her. (John could phrase it no other way, not even to himself.) And she was the first to complain when the strength of his desire, or more likely its endurance, let her down.

  But much to his surprise, his cock only bobbed at her wit in the most defiant manner. John grinned with embarrassed pride, but Derval’s attention seemed to have shifted already. She propped herself up on one elbow. “So. I’ve finally seen you ride. And I think you’ve found your destined mount too.” She laughed softly in the heated air.

  John settled back on the sweat-damp plank, breathing in the thick comfort of warm air. Steam stung the raw patches on his hands and the bruise on his ribs, but the relief he felt in his bones and muscles outweighed any irritation. Besides, his full stomach made him unwilling to move. His shrug was invisible in the darkness.

  “Why not? She was going fast enough.”

  “But I’d hate to see her try a fence,” Derval murmured sleepily. She laid her moist cheek against John’s arm.

  “But I don’t mean to denigrate your achievement. You looked like thunder and lightning, sitting on that huge mother beef.”

  John giggled. “The thunder and lightning of Thor—nburn.” He stroked Derval’s rich hair.

  She was certainly mellow tonight. So was he, if he came to think of it. And they were alone in the clanstead’s sweathouse, now that Ailesh and the poet had gone to talk with the taiseach. Were it not for his digestion…

  In the blackness of closed eyes came the image of Bride’s old tits and yawning vulva. John’s shoulders stiffened under Derval’s head. Flooding behind this came the vision of the
face of Bridget with her shining arms outspread: star pale, sun golden, with all creation multiplying around her like echoes of her wonder. His hand slipped in idle circles over Derval’s slippery, sweet-musky skin. John sighed and stared at the ceiling, shaking his head slowly.

  “It’s not Thornburn they call you here, but Eoin Ban—Blond Eoin: like Ailesh does. Or Eoin the cattle leaper.” Derval took one of John’s raw hands and laid it in her own, half-curled upward, like a cup. She touched the palm with one fingertip. “I’ve also heard them say ‘Bridget’s Owen,’ because of all Ailesh has told them.” John’s hand closed over her finger tightly, remembering. Derval looked over and met his eyes. “Changed everything, didn’t it?” she whispered.

  He put his other arm over Derval’s lean shoulder. “Yes.

  “Or on second thought, no. No: what should it change? Sunlight? Cows? The way hair curls?”

  “The way one lives,” she replied. “Only to know that man isn’t the only force in the universe. That there is power. Power to shake the earth…”

  John grinned. “It was cows, doing the shaking.” He nuzzled between her neck and shoulder, feeling flesh smooth and wet, like rubber. His heavy dinner was forgotten, along with all the onions.

  “Don’t laugh,” Derval murmured. “Not at that. It was real.”

  “Not laughing.” John leaned over Derval. His hand slipped between her slippery thighs. She, too, reached down.

  The thick, oaken door creaked. John and Derval sprang apart convulsively. John raised his knees and folded his hands so Ailesh would not see his erect member.

  He need not have bothered, for her eyes were not adjusted to the dark, and she stood at the door, blind.

  “My dear friends?”

  Derval replied warmly for them both, while John made a rustling, so she would know where he was. Ailesh shuffled forward toward the hot stones, grateful for the heat on her nakedness.

  John watched her. Smooth, rounded, and once more ruddy (as he had first seen her), she held her arms over the pile of hot stones, drawing in the dry heat. John wrapped both of his hands around his penis and squeezed it absentmindedly. He had done one good thing in his life, he reflected, if his hand had helped save Ailesh. I never had a little sister, he thought complacently, and put his hands away from his organ.