Brendan

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Praying is the easiest thing in the world. Simply talk to God. Aloud or in your head; either way he will hear you. After that it’s up to him.

  Brendán braced the bird’s body against his thigh. Took hold of the arrow shaft with both hands. Closed his eyes. And pulled.

  Help us.

  From the height of Diadche, Aedgal saw the currach approaching. Sechnall and Anfudán heard his shout and scrambled down towards the harbour.

  A year after Brendán’s voyage began there were streaks of grey in his hair and his clothing was ragged, but he managed a smile for his friends. “Where are the rest of you?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

  “At Tearmónn Eirc with Ruan,” Sechnall said. “He’s begun illuminating a Gospel and they wanted to watch.”

  “He never returned to Clon Ard?”

  “He’s been waiting for you,” said Anfudán. “We all have. Now that you’re back to stay…you are back to stay, aren’t you?”

  Before Brendán could answer, a wild cry came from the bottom of the boat.

  Sechnall hastily signed the Cross in the air. “What manner of demon makes such a sound?”

  Brendán reached into the currach and tenderly retrieved a large bundle wrapped in damp wool. “This demon is the friend who took an arrow meant for me,” he said. He turned back a corner of the cloak to reveal the injured raven.

  After staunching the initial bleeding he had packed the wound in Préachán’s breast with moss. He tried to stitch it closed as he would mend a hole in the boat, but the skin was too thin. The stitches tore loose immediately. His only option was to cut wide strips from his tunic and snugly bind the entire torso.

  Next he turned his attention to the bird’s wing. The arrow had splintered a bone as it passed through. When Brendán removed the splinters of bone protruding through the feathers, Préachán roused enough to try to bite him. He carefully washed the wing with seawater and folded it into a normal shape, then bound both wings to the body. Only the head and feet were left free. Brendán wrapped the immobilized raven in his cloak and immediately set sail for home.

  As the fisherman had predicted, his next landfall was on the north Irish coast. But the voyage around the island became a nightmare. He could not find a friendly current; the wind was always against him. Every moment he could spare was spent in caring for the raven. Brendán did not remember eating or sleeping, urinating or moving his bowels. He must have gone ashore for fresh water but he never recalled that either.

  For most of the journey Préachán lay in the bottom of the currach with his eyes closed. His long toes clenched and unclenched in pain. Brendán talked to him almost constantly, using his voice to anchor the bird to life. He recited Holy Scripture and the pagan tales of the seanachie. He even tried counting, first in Irish and then in Latin.

  Occasionally the raven struggled to get his head free of the cloak and called out to him. As they neared the Corca Dhuibhne peninsula, the calls grew stronger. Brendán began to hope.

  “It’s a miracle you got him here alive,” said Aedgal.

  “A miracle is a decision God makes,” Brendán replied. “We are all miracles.”

  “Is he still in pain?”

  “Probably. It was a terrible wound and we’ve had a rough voyage. The wound seems to be healing, but he’ll never fly again.”

  Anfudán offered helpfully, “I could wring his neck for you. It’s very quick.”

  Brendán rounded on him. “Can you fly?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then shall I wring your neck for you?” Brendán growled.

  Préachán would remain with me for twenty-two years, sharing every voyage I made during that time. I built a secure perch for him in the prow so he could enjoy the wind on his wings and imagine he was flying. Sadly, he missed the greatest adventure of them all. One morning I awoke to find his body cold and still beside my bed.

  I buried him in consecrated soil. At Ard Fert.

  The number of Brendán’s followers had increased in his absence; more clocháns had been built on Diadche. A fish oil lamp was kept burning night and day in front of the oratory. “That was my idea,” Aedgal said. “Had you had sailed into the bay at night, you would have seen it.”

  “No matter how far away you were, we could feel you with us all the time,” Liber assured Brendán.

  I was embarrassed to realise how rarely I had thought of them. My faithful companions—erased by distance and circumstance. I did not deserve such good friends.

  The people of the parish gathered in Tearmónn Eirc to celebrate Brendán’s return, while Dianách the runner carried the news to more distant members of his tribe. Catching Brendán—briefly—alone, Ruan said, “There’s something I’d like to show you.”

  In one corner of the scriptorium a table and stool had been placed behind a screen of rushes. On the table lay an open manuscript. Ruan’s dark face lit with the simple joy of competence as he indicated the uppermost page. “This is what I’m working on now, Brendán. It’s for the Gospel of Matthew.”

  The sheet of vellum was not just a page; it was a work of art.

  The black ink was composed of soot bound with fish oil. Vibrant colours had been produced by pulverising minerals such as red lead, malachite, and folium. “In Clon Ard they use lapis lazuli for the Virgin’s robe,” Ruan said apologetically, “but it’s expensive. We have nothing like that here.”

  Brendán recalled other gospels he had seen on his pilgrimage, their pages ornamented with gold leaf as if the light of God shone out of the vellum. Ruan would have had access to unlimited materials if he had stayed at Clon Ard. But he chose to be with me.

  I have to love him. I have to love them all.

  My unexpected family.

  An unexpected message for Brendán arrived a few weeks later. Íta wrote, “We were unaware of your voyage until after your return, but give thanks that Our Lord kept you safe on your travels.”

  Brendán read the few lines again and again. Then he folded the letter into a tiny square and tucked it between pages in his Psalter.

  While he was away the number of people attending the ecclesiastical centre had dropped substantially, but with his return people flocked into Tearmónn Eirc to hear about his journey. Afterwards they hurried back to their clans to repeat the story.

  Because they were Irish, word borrowed word. The details of the voyage changed. In time, saving the raven was transmogrified into raising the dead.

  This was never repeated in my hearing, but I knew about the rumour. And in my terrible pride I made no effort to stop it.

  The first time someone suggested that I found a monastery I laughed. Given my many sins, it seemed impossible. But the third or fifth or tenth time, I listened.

  There is something rather sad about a man who lets other people persuade him to do what he really wanted to do all along.

  When Brendán approached Molua about the possibility of founding a monastery, the bishop pounced on the idea. “Not just a monastery; a complete abbey! You will build it in Altraighe-Caille, of course?”

  “I haven’t thought about the location yet, Molua. I’m still considering the idea.”

  “The abbey must be here, where you were born,” the bishop insisted. Even as he spoke, the buildings were rising in his mind. “There’s plenty of land available within a cock’s crow. You will be the first abbot and Tearmónn Eirc will be your mother church.” Molua’s thoughts raced on. “I shall write to Rome and request funding for essentials—we are always woefully short, but perhaps with the promise of an abbey where none has been before—and then too, the monks who join your order will bring their own property, those who have any, and of course they will make their own robes and raise their own food and….”

  As he chattered I imagined the tide going out, and me with it. Away, away…then the tide returning with inexorable force, carrying me on its silver crest, thundering onto the defenceless beach.

  The sea always wins.

  I shaved the fo
refront of my head in a monk’s tonsure and put on one of the hooded robes I would wear for the rest of my life.

  Brendán spent several days selecting a site close to Tearmónn Eirc. He finally decided on a low ridge that overlooked the bay and Altraighe-Caille, but also offered a view of Ciarrí Luachra to the north.

  He had seen enough abbeys; he knew what he wanted to build. The rectangular chapel would consist of a nave and chancel, and form one side of a rectangle. The other three sides would contain dormitories, offices, refectory, and scriptorium. The centre would be a courtyard open to the sky.

  There was much discussion about a burying ground for the monks. Some thought it should be adjacent to the chapel. Others wanted it at the foot of the ridge. When Brendán told the bishop he planned to have a crypt dug under the chancel, Molua was upset. “There’s plenty of space available outside. The chapel should be reserved for the living, as God intends.”

  Brendán narrowed his eyes. “He hasn’t told me that.”

  “Are you implying God speaks to you on any subject at all?” Molua demanded. His feelings towards Brendán oscillated between admiration and irritation. He had expected Erc’s godson to be more respectful; malleable, even. But there was a stubborn streak in the man.

  “What passes between me and God is private,” said Brendán. He folded his arms across his chest and looked the bishop in the eye. His own eyes were twinkling; a clue the bishop overlooked.

  “I can tell you why I’ve decided on a crypt, Molua. In a separate burying ground a person is in exile; cut off from all he held dear. The pagan Gael have never acknowledged a barrier between death and life. They celebrate the dead along with the living; they even bury loved ones beneath their doorways. The dead continue to be included in the lives of their families and I think that’s how it should be.”

  Liber and Cerball paced out the dimensions of the proposed abbey; Sechnall wrote them down. Anfudán dug a hole at one corner; Eber and Moenniu sank a long stone into the earth. Ruan carved the top of the stone with the ogham symbol for friendship. Aedgal said, “What shall we call the monastery, Brendán?”

  I thought of Diadche. And the bay of Tra Lí. And the promontory which was no longer visible to human eyes but always visible in my memory. I thought of the past and the future, and the brothers who would be buried here someday. On the high ground.

  “This monastery shall be known as Ard Fert,” said Brendán.

  Many years later Brendán wrote, ‘Founding a monastery was not difficult; establishing it was much more demanding. The ongoing survival of the community would depend upon the quality and character of the brothers.’

  Although my followers were good men, there were three more I hoped would join us. I sent Dianách the runner to look for them. He was given their names and description and instructed to seek them among the tribes of Munster. After so long a time they might be anywhere, however.

  Or even dead.

  Fleeing the Island of Smiths, we sailed southwards. I was too shaken to consider a course; I only wanted to get as far away as possible. Our hearts and prayers were full of the man who had died. Some of the brothers wept. The rest of us gazed wordlessly at the sea.

  My grief was doubled; I mourned for the lost monk and for my sense of invulnerability. The terror I thought was almost fifty years behind me had returned in full measure. When the fire demon bore down on me I had recognised my mortality.

  Burning to death would have been much worse than drowning in the sea.

  But the sea went on and on.

  For three days we sailed under clouds so dense the iolite stone could not capture a single ray of sunlight. At night the stars were hidden. I had no idea where we were. The supplies we had with us would soon be gone, though I rationed them strictly. When I tried to sleep I had ghastly dreams. When I awoke my body ached with every one of my years.

  Dawn on the fourth day brought a clear but windless sky. The sea was perfectly still. I instructed Eber to climb onto the side of the boat and reach down into the water. When he held up his hand we saw gobs of slimy weed clinging to his fingers. “It is as thick as curds down there,” he informed us.

  Without wind the sail was useless. My crew took to the oars but their best efforts failed against the masses of weed. We were becalmed. Cerball remarked, “I wouldn’t give two balls of roasted snow for our chances of getting out of this.”

  “Remember we are in God’s hands,” said Gowrán. “In his good time he will act on our behalf.”

  So we waited. Nothing happened.

  The grumbling, led as usual by Tarlách, grew louder. I began to fear my crew was losing faith in me. What is leadership but the ability to inspire confidence? If I had no confidence in myself how could I captain my men?

  The sky was full of blood that night—a pulsing angry crimson like the sky over Armageddon.

  “We’re all going to die,” moaned Solám, “and I am too young to die. But the world is ending just as the prophets predicted and we are stranded in the middle of nowhere, far from our own people. Who will bury us? Who will mourn us? What have we done to deserve this?”

  “We are going to die sometime, but not yet,” I told him. “We are alive now; we will be alive tomorrow when the wind begins to blow.”

  “The wind will never blow,” Tarlách asserted. “There is no more wind. No more hope, no anything. Leave us in our misery, Navigator.”

  “Each of us carries within himself the seed of happiness.”

  Tarlách gave me a sullen look. “I don’t.”

  I could not allow his attitude to poison the others. Taking hold of Tarlách’s face, I forced his lips into a smile. “Now,” I said, “I command you to hold that expression. Gowrán, you smile too. And you, Eber, Cerball—all of you. Crosán, you are always the readiest to laugh. Do so now.”

  “At a time like this?”

  “This is the best possible time. I command you: laugh.”

  Crosán responded with an hysterical giggle that set the rest to laughing in earnest.

  The mood in the boat improved.

  Waiting for God is all very well for a lazy man, but throughout my life I had been a man of action. In the morning a seagull came close to the boat. I hit it with an oar. I parcelled out its few drops of blood and its stringy, oily flesh. We used its feathers to make lures and drew more birds from the sky. I prayed that Préachán would forgive me. He never liked gulls anyway.

  When their hunger and thirst were satisfied, the monks were less despondent. “Tell us what to do now,” they demanded of me.

  They did not want to hear about my problems, the pains I suffered, the nights I spent trembling and afraid. No. Definitely not. My brothers expected me—no, they needed me—to be invincible. Anything less threatened them. Their abbot was their sword and their shield in the temporal world.

  The insecurity I felt—and now I realised that I had walked through life on a tenuous cobweb, suspended above disaster—I must keep to myself. I could not bare my soul to my companions though they regularly bared theirs to mine.

  During his lifetime, had Christ’s apostles demanded invulnerability of him? And did he find it as much a burden as I do? I, who am so much less than Christ. I who am no saint, not even a good man. I have no expectation of Heaven. I lose my way more often than I find it.

  I stood tall in the boat and squared my shoulders. “Past a certain point,” I told my crew, “grief is an indulgence. We have allowed it to incapacitate us for long enough. Raise the sail again; unship the oars. We are going on.”

  And we did.

  Chapter 19

  Tarlách was in a sour mood when he arrived. “That runner of yours, Brendán—what’s his name, Dianách?—caught up with me on a good day or I would have knocked him flat. Instead he made me accompany him to this dreary place for no good reason.”

  “There is a very good reason,” said Brendán. “We’re building a new monastery here and the brothers need a contrary, irascible man to help them learn patience
.”

  Tarlách snorted. “Enough of your flattery. Why did you really send for me?”

  “On my pilgrimage I met several exceptional men whom I hoped would join me in God’s service. You’re one of them.”

  “More flattery. Why do you think I’d have the slightest interest in being a monk?”

  “What do you have the slightest interest in?”

  Tarlách scowled. Wiped his nose on his sleeve. Scratched his jowls. “Not much,” he admitted.

  “If you’re not happy with your life as it is,” said Brendán, “I’m offering you a chance to change it.”

  Brendán wrote to Íta, “God has led me to found a monastery. Ard Fert is being erected near Tearmónn Eirc. When it is ready, Bishop Molua will perform the consecration. The brothers and I hope you will attend.”

  To his amazement, she responded immediately. “Your letter filled me with joy, Braon-Finn. I cannot attend the consecration, but you will be in my thoughts and prayers, on that day and always.”

  And always. And always.

  “Your friend Gowrán is impossible to find,” Dianách reported to Brendán. “I never caught up with him, though any number of people told me, ‘You just missed him.’ Apparently he’s been wandering around Ireland for years and no one knows why. Perhaps he’s mad.”

  “He isn’t mad,” said Brendán, “and don’t worry about it. We live on an island. If Gowrán keeps travelling and I keep travelling we’ll meet again someday.”

  “But you’re not travelling,” Dianách pointed out.

  ‘In the construction of Ard Fert,’ Brendán wrote many years later, ‘we combined earth and stone. The base of the rectangular earthwork walls was buttressed with upright stones set in trenches. Within the walls we constructed a drystone oratory similar to the one on Diadche. Our clocháns were stone, but our refectory was made of tightly packed sods sealed with mud.