Chapter III: Part 3

By the narrow slit of the embrasure a girl stood as far from the opened door as she could get. She was flattened against the stones of the wall in terror, and clasped to her was a flat golden-brown book, and the gold of its cover was set with amber disks, and pearls of the sea.

Ruadan of Ardsolais knew that book, for his own hand had wrought it and it was the writings of Mark the Saint, and the chapter in it was that of the sermon of the sea, and the great faith when the storm of the sea obeyed the Voice.

The Abbot Ronan had asked it as a gift for Clonard, but Clonard had been sacked, and he saw again his lost handiwork.

In a corner were many other books—great piles of vellum in their rich casings. And on and around them were chains of gold, and necklets of gems, woven armlets, and silver sandals, silver trappings of chariots and war horses were stacked with the rest, and women’s jewels in girdle or torque, or ring, beyond belief. The sun struck on the heap through an embrasure and set it all aglitter against the gray stone of the wall.

“It speaks a brave hosting,” said Ruadan, and lifted the jeweled shrine in which a tiny bell of holiness tinkled. He never looked at the girl.

“I will take all the bells for the decking of our steeds when I ride the forests with you,” said Ota the queen.

“Nay, it will not be bells we will care to carry,” said Ruadan, and she laughed, well content, and emptied a leathern bag of altar jewels on the stone floor. A golden bell and a jeweled chalice were there, and a wondrous monstrance of gold all aglitter with ruby and amber and pale pearls. A censor of jeweled chains was there, and armlets and necklets thrust in among the vessels of holy use. Ota lifted from them a gorgeous necklet set with smoldering rubies.

“This has been gift of some king of the far world,” she said, “and it goes well with the ring you had from me a year ago. I have brought you to choose a gift; choose the richest you can carry.”

“My thought is that I could carry you if your long cloak would not tangle my feet on the ladder.”

She laughed at that, and clasped the necklet on him and loosened the lacing of his garment that it might be hidden next his skin. Then she glanced at Doirenn, rigid and white against the wall.

“Look at her face,” she said laughing. “If she has looks of such scorn at Amlaf he will not risk the knife of Gurtha for her!”

“So good a sister should make a good wife,” said Ruadan; “few women would pick so much of beauty in a slave—unless for sale.”

“Yes, I am good to my men,” agreed Ota. “They are strange children. They can be starved, and wounded, and beaten, but if they get their toys at the end of the raid their songs are only victory. Yet—” and she looked at Doirenn in thought and then turned to Ruadan, “think not because I would give such gift to a brother, or a husband, that I would allow one to a lover! So choose your gift from the spoils of kings, O Ruadan!”

He laughed with her and fastened a great gold brooch in her sweeping cloak.

“My choice is only a jewel for your wearing,” he said. “Are you ready to go down?”

“I do not know,” said Ota the queen. “Why is that girl staring hate at us? Ruadan, I like it not. She holds that book of the altar magic and it may be she works a spell! Ruadan, could it be?” And she clung to him and stared at the hate in the eyes of Doirenn. “Why do you look frozen? You have life left you, and food and shelter. You were not counted among the women for whom lots were drawn. What rage is then yours?”

“The grief is mine that in all that heap of jeweled sacrilege there is no thing of flint or of iron with edge for a maid of Erinn,” said Doirenn, and from the safe shelter of the arms of Ruadan, Ota gained courage again.

“A knife might be there,” she ventured. “You have no task all these days but to search among this wealth of beauties until Amlaf comes and finds your beauty.”

“There is no knife else only my body would be here for your mockings this day,” said Doirenn.

“Your caged bird of beauty croaks like a battle crow,” said Ruadan and laughed. “There are friendlier places than this place. Come, O Queen!”

“But that book she clasps? It is a thing for fear and why should she covet that when these jewels are in her reach? Art sure it could be no spell she works against us?”

“No, it could not be. What does a stripling maid like that know of books? I risk your gift in wager that she knows not the readings. Give me the book.”

Doirenn did not give it to him, but she shrank against the wall as he approached and let go of it. He turned the leaves and looked at her in scorn.

“There—” he said, and thrust it again into her hand. He took her other hand roughly and placed her finger on certain lines of the open page. “There, O young nun of the books, read me that!”

But she only looked at him in horror.

“God’s worst dastard—you!” she said.

“What does she mean?” asked Ota. “I need not save her for Amlaf. I can send her to the men if she does you ill. Was that a curse?”

“No curse: it is only a name the monks called me when I learned I was not fit for endless pen work, and endless prayers. Come! The wild thing will not eat while she has us to stare at.”

With tenderness he helped the queen down the wooden ladder and drew into place the stone slab of the floor.

Doirenn gazed after him, wide-eyed, hopeless. He did not turn one look toward her.

Her hand was still on the page where he had thrust it so roughly, and her eyes rested there, and then she sank down among the jeweled trophies and stared incredulous.

For there in beauty equal to the jewels about her were the words—“_Why are ye so fearful? How is if that ye have no faith?_”

The wine feast of Queen Ota was a victory feast for all. Gurtha was angered that it was given before Amlaf returned; neither had Barolf come. Early she went to her sleep, and said in going that if word should reach the ears of Ragnor that it was a wedding feast, she wanted not to be dragged forward for question!

But Ragnor was far to the south, the wine of the monastery was old and was good, and Ota left the filling of her cup to Ruadan of Ardsolais of the far mountains.

She whispered that his eyes worked magic without the brimming cup of gold he offered her, but he kissed the cup, and she emptied it, and talked her dreams of empire—and other dreams.

When the feast was ended he broke jewels from the necklet to give her women as bribe, and himself bore the queen to her silken couch, and rested beside her until all was silence, and the last reveller of the night sunk in sleep.

When the deep hour of the night had come, he took the key from the girdle of the queen—the cloak of hers, and the veil she wore in the sun, a dagger and a shield and spear he took from the place of arms, and the shoes of the queen he took.

He listened to her breathing, and drew the dagger from its sheath. He knew the right thing to do, for one dagger thrust was small payment for the nuns of Cluain-mac-noise—but he thought of Doirenn and halted.

With the queen living there could be only a jealous rage and a brief search for him and for the maid. But with the queen dead by his hand, there would be Thorgille and Amlaf and Barolf on the trail, and all her devoted men with hate for him and vengeance on the maid. Erinn might not be big enough to hide her in. Even from his own kinsmen he might get only curses and hounds on his track when they learned he had stolen away a maid of the cloisters. Another man might be given good thoughts for such stealing, but not Ruadan who had paid eric to Cairell, and had worn love gift of Ota.

To no dun of a friend could he take her, else that house would be stormed and the place left waste. There was nothing for it but the caves of the hills until the fleet of Ota was gone from the waters of the Sionan.

He thought of old forgotten sanctuaries of the early monks, if he could win south to the Skelligs and lay hidden, or reach to Arran, or hide in the grottoes of the loughs in Iar Connaught, carved ages ago by De Danaan magic!

These thoughts were with him as he gathered swiftly the needed things, and took last reluctant look at Ota the queen to whom he should deal death. Grief was on him that it must not be done by his hand if he would save the scornful holy thing in the tower.

So secure were all the guards of the outer walls, and the far points of vantage, that those of palace and cloister slept heavily and without care after the wine feast. It was not as an armed camp they rested, but a safe household.

He kept to the shadow of the walls from point to point and reached the tower safely. No guard was there, and he unbolted the door below it in silence, and bolted it back of him in the darkness.

The queen’s key served at top of the ladder and he felt that the girl was again crouched against the far wall.

“Haste,” he whispered, “here are shoes and cloak. Take a leathern bag in which the spoils were carried and thrust the garments in that. We have muck and mire to wade through ere a boat is ours.”

“Give me a knife that I may die here,” she made answer. “You are a greater thing of fear than the northmen.”

“Geroid is waiting a call of safety; I am his voice,” he whispered.

“Geroid!” and her voice was a flutter of hope. “I will trust his trust of you, if ... you give me a knife!”

“It is here to your hand.”

The dagger of the queen was passed to her in the darkness, ere she would take cloak, or shoes, or move a step toward the door.

“Haste!” he whispered as he heard her empty the bag with a little click of metal on stone, “haste, for the night is brief.”

She crept to the ladder but halted as his hand touched hers.

“Put no touch on me,” she muttered. “If die I do, it will not be in handclasp with the queen’s lover.”

At foot of the ladder he knelt and felt over the flagstone paving in the dark, and she heard heavy breathing as he worked fiercely among the rubbish and tossed aside sacks of grain stored there for siege. Then he found the stone for which he was searching and threw all his strength into his task.

Doirenn felt a rush of damp air where she stood. It had the smell of the river in it.

“The way is hard and narrow,” he whispered. “Also it is wet under foot. Give me the bag.”

“No,” she said, “sacred things are in it: the holy book and jeweled chalice, not to be touched by God’s outlaw. I am strong, I can follow.”

At first it was dry, then the dampness came, then the water, and she was wading near to the knees but wading toward the open. A tangle of vines and brush was to push through and she saw the glimmer of the Great Star on the still river.

“Steady,” he said, and moved up a space where the small boats were moored. A guard slept in one and Ruadan stood, girdle deep, beside it.

There was enough light to see the bare throat of the man, and strike true that no slightest cry go out on the night. He twitched once or twice and lay still forever.

Ruadan unfastened the boat and guided it back to where Doirenn stood, fearful and alert.

“Get in,” he whispered, and she did so, not noting the Dane until she stumbled and felt warm blood on her hand.

“What is it?” she asked, but Ruadan climbed dripping into the boat and took up the oars, but did not answer.

He dared not row, lest the dip of the oars be heard. They drifted in the darkness, making no more sound than an otter swimming in the night.

Doirenn stared at the still thing by her feet, and thence to the still man of horror, who was perhaps her safety, and wrapping herself in the cloak, she drew close the sacred helps in which all her trust was.

A late and fading moon came up over the forest as Ruadan used the oars for speed—they had passed the last fire of a river guard in safety.

The weird light showed the staring open eyes of the dead man at her feet.

“Dead and unshriven!” she gasped in horror, “and you with the soul stain of blood on you!”

“It is the first of the men for whom Bronach was washing grave clothes in the dream I rode to tell you of a year ago,” said Ruadan. “I saw his face yesterday, and knew he was the man. When we come to the high reeds of a meadow brook we will hide him there until the crows find him. There will be others.”

Until the edge of the day they bore the weight of the body ere a rushy place was reached where a boat could enter leaving no broken reeds near the sweep of the river. Far in, where a bog would hold the body, Ruadan stripped him of cloak and ax, and left him to the black earth.

“You make not a prayer,” said Doirenn in horror, “though well you were taught the ways of prayer.”

“It is yours to pray,” said Ruadan. “My knife did murder for you on him because you would not heed the warning I brought you from the mountains of the south a summer gone.”

“It was enchantments you spoke, and not warning. The enchantments of men of evil are things to fear.”

“Truth is truth—whether holy or unhallowed,” he said darkly.

“Who is Bronach?” she asked after a long silence, while he sought other channel where the reeds would leave no trace as he swept again into the Sionan.

“She is the washer of the ford. She washes in the land of souls the garments of men doomed to die. For my house to see her means death by us or for us. In a dream you stood beside her in my land.”

“The priests forbid,” she began, but he stopped her with a gesture.

“Talk me no priestcraft! Bronach is older than foreign priesthood in Erinn.”

“If I held not a holy book close in my hands for soul help, I am thinking the sky would fall on us with all its stars for that saying, or the water of the Sionan run backward from the sea!”

“It will do that in spite of your book,” he made answer, but she gave him no belief. She did not think the truth was with Ruadan at all.

She watched him in dread and in disdain while he bent to the oars in the dawn. The boat skimmed the air like a bird under his tremendous strokes.

“This is the time of the sun they will be searching,” he said. “One night is all we have in the lead of them, but many oarsmen has Ota the queen. Their course will be swift after they start the search.”

No guards of the river or lake were stationed in the middle land between Cluain-mac-noise and Killaloe, for forest and meadow and island were stripped of Irish herdsmen and Irish homes along the Sionan. He toiled lustily, with the current in his favor, while the day was young and the way clear, knowing that cover must be found ere midday, and all other water journeys must be in the night.

When a fair place of shelter came in their path he turned the boat to the mouth of a meadow brook and crept carefully over the black waters drained from bogs beyond.

It was none too soon, for his breath was scarce even again from the labor until a man was seen by them leaning on a spear, moving swiftly west above the meadow reeds; his head was turned ever from side to side, searching.

The boat and the oarsmen could not be seen because of the height of the swamp growths and the distance. But their swiftness was a wonder to view: it would be a good horse to be beating it.

But they swept out of sight, and Ruadan knew the lough toward the sea was now a place of danger.

“They have no trail, and that is a good help,” he said. “Now while the sun shines there is only the woods for us, and it may be berries or roots for food.”

Far he went inland where the boat was lifted over shallows into a little still lough under shadow of the wood.

“’Twill serve,” he said. “Nothing but the wild cattle may be coming, and it is a hiding place.”

He left her to get out as she might and wade with wet feet in the sedgy marge. Her looks at him were ill and fearful, and she clutched to her the bag in which the sacred helps were borne.

“I have no liking for this place,” she said, “and it will not be resting under birchtrees we will find Geroid.”

Ruadan made no answer. The labor had been to the limit of strength. He drank of the cool water and cast himself on the turf. She frowned at the discourtesy.

“Where is Geroid, O Queen’s Lover?” she asked. “It is to him I am going.”

He looked long at her, darkly frowning. He had killed a man for her, and was risking life for her, yet she had no thought for a creature of earth, but thought only of that anchorite who had turned to prayer and a bed of stone, and would not look in her deep, seeking eyes.

“By the Elements! It is to your Geroid you shall go,” he swore roughly. “My thought is that he is in his glory without you, but that is nothing. Though we circle Erinn to find the way to him, it is to Geroid you will go! Sorrow on the night you called for help and I was the fool to answer.”

She let fall the leathern bag and sank down beside it—her eyes wide in wonder.

“How are you knowing that—and you an evil man in an evil world? I did send the call. On my knees I made the prayer that holy Saint Kieran might help the call go out to some soul beyond the walls—and you—_you_—”

“I heard it in my sleep and knew your voice though I had only heard it when weighted heavy with hate. Also I followed it.”

She brooded over that long, and drew the book to her.

“You followed Ota the queen,” she said at last, “and you fled in the night with her jewels on you lest her kinsmen return and spear you to the ground.”

“You shall go to your Geroid,” he muttered, and got up and walked away.

So wearied was she that she fell into sleep there in that warm hour when the wind and the bees and birds all swept drowsily through the low green branches. So thick were they that a dusk was on the turf, though beyond their shadow the yellow light of sun was a glory.

It was beyond he had gone, and in her sleep she thought he had gone over some edge of the world where she could not find him. She woke with a moan of fear.

She lay there thrilled by a sort of terror that she had wanted him—it was a thing she could not understand, and puzzling things angered her. That thought of evil enchantments of his would not go away.

Then, while she framed a prayer against magic and druid spells, a sweet smell came to her, so close she thought it was part of a dream.

But it was a better thing, for fresh sweet blackberries were heaped beside her, and a little apart Ruadan sat with his back to her, eating.

She had not known how hungry she was until she tasted the melting sweetness of them, and then she determined that, on the rest of the way, she would pick her own berries—there was anger on her that she had not done it.

As she moved away to look for more, he spoke.

“You are not to go from this shadow,” he said. “Cattle are beyond, and a hut of a herder; we have far to go, and meat will be good to have. I am going in a circle till I come to them, that no track will seem to come from here, for this must be the hiding place of you.”

“And if foreign men are there? If they take you—if I am lost alone in this place where you bring me?”

“It is not in this place you will be lost. In the dream I saw you to the west, and that place is yet to find.”

No more than that he said, and no look did he give to see if it was well or ill she liked it.

She crept back to the birchtree shadow, and watched him go, and she held the book with its precious work and precious words close to her bosom, and was making prayers on it—the prayers of Phadraig the Saint against enchantments.

With the eyes of her closed she went over the prayers and over them again, and the sun was in the very center of the sky. Two wood doves came close and spoke their loves sweetly in a rowan bush near, and listening to them was like listening to the silver string of the magic harp of the god of music, for the silver string has the wood music of sleep in it.

The sun was low to the edge of the forest trees and was red as a signal fire of danger when she woke. The doves were flown away, and the world was very still about her.

He had not come back, and she felt fear at the wide aloneness of the deep forest and the reedy marge of the wide lough; alone she could not make her way even to the flowing Sionan or Dearg below.

She looked the way he had gone, and listened for faintest sound of his step until every droning bee set her heart to thump. When she could bear it no longer, she looked at her knife’s edge, tied the leathern bag of the sacred things to her girdle, and looking with care to all things by which the return way might be found, she ran with swift feet to the last point from which he had vanished in the green.

No living thing was in sight, and she went on more slowly. There was a hill to climb, and from that height she had hope to see the cattle toward which he had gone. On the high point of the hill there was a circle of stones, and two with strange spiral carvings. These magic places of the old gods had curious legends in Meath, and she drew close to her the holy things of the altar as she stood in the shadow of the great stone to look westward over the plain.

The herds were there, but they were only far moving specks, no more size to them than birds. But among them, or near them, she could see no man.

But the hut of stone and timber at the edge of a wood she did see, and sat long in the shadow of the huge stone watching for a sign of any living thing—and no sign was there.

Then she crept through fern and gorse at the edge of the land where the cattle fed, and dragged herself along the brink of a dark wooded glen, and the hut was at the wall of that glen, and the look from there was a wide look for the herding.

A sound came to her, and her thought was that her heartbeat was loud in her ears from the fear of the still, strange place. And she crept more close and knew it was not her own heart, for it was a man breathing, and the breath was a rattle in the throat.

Through a chink in the hut she could see the man, and him a stranger and a great dog dead near him. The man was stained with blood and was looking with no good looks at something her eyes could not see.

He was reaching for a long knife with blood on it—far from him it had fallen—and there was a stagger to every movement he made, for great weakness was on him.

Yet he watched one way whilst he crept to the knife and fell as if dying, yet roused himself to creep again a little ways.

The blood of Doirenn went cold from that look of hate on him, and then blazed keen and hot to learn why the knife was coveted even in the face of death.

With the dagger of Ota the queen unsheathed in her hand, she crept to the low door, and the low sun of the west pierced to the dark corner where Ruadan lay. She could see no movement of him, yet she knew he was not dead, for if it had been so, the foreign man would not reach thus for the knife, or creep, dying himself, on a wounded foe.

She had no plan of attack, yet as he grasped the knife and lifted it over the body of Ruadan, she leaped through the door, and her dagger struck deep and true in the neck of the stranger.

He gurgled, choked, and lay still.

She crept back to the wall and sat there, wild-eyed and fearful. She had not meant to do the thing before her: to strike the knife from him had been her thought. But the right hand of her had done its own task despite any thought of hers.

The lowering sun slanted over his dead face, filling her with horror at the moving shadows of it. Her teeth chattered with chill at the dead man and dog, and at the other man whose breath she saw lifting ever so little the lacings of his garment.

It was that piteous little breath, no deeper than of a child in arms, by which she was urged at the last to draw near. She felt frozen, and the leathern bag with the sacred helps lay without the portal, but without that help, and in forgetfulness of prayer, she crept forward.

He lay in a pool of blood, black and stiff. His shoulder bore a deep gash, and the red tide yet came faintly at each breath. A long slant of a blade had creased his brow and his face shone gray white where the dark smear had not touched it. It all seemed to have chanced a long time before.

That thought coming to her, she went over where the dog lay and touched it; stiff it was and cold.... While she had slept in drowsy rest under the birchtree Ruadan had fought out a battle of fierceness with the huge foreign man and the dog stretched there as big as a calf. The two men had all but killed each other. Each had thought his enemy gone out of life ere he gave way to weakness or swoon, and the foreign man had wakened first.

Terror went from her suddenly when the mystery of it went. There was left only a wounded man for her care, and she knelt beside him and loosened the lacings of his garment as she had seen the white fingers of the queen unlace it in the tower.

The sun set, and the other suns rose ere he wakened to knowledge. Troubled phantoms of blood and death were with him in his weakness, and a strange presence he did not know.

It was in a rosy dawn he wakened to know the walls, and how he had first found them, but the strange presence was like mist of the seafoam—ever about to take form in his mind, and ever fading again.

And out of that fog of dreams and phantoms of carnage a vision of Paradise came to him.

It was perhaps the slant of the sun through the mists of the morning by which the magical thing was wrought, but where the sun-kissed green had been seen through the portal, there was at once a glory of gold beyond any glory of saint told him in the teachings. He looked at her and thought of Brighde, the ever young, when bondmaid to her druid master, bearing cups and bowls of common things made holy by touch of her hands.

For she stood there with the sun making a halo of her red-gold hair, and in her two hands was held a golden chalice of richest handicraft, set with the thirteen flashing stones of beauty.

The chalice was brimming with foam of new milk, and when she saw his eyes, wide open, she stood silent, waiting, but the look in her eyes was the look of Brighde, ever the giver, the serving-maid to whom the angels sang.

“You are a dream, and not truth,” he muttered. “You are Brighde the goddess; you are the fiery arrow of radiance in hearts of men; you are Love, and you are Knowledge. When the priests could not stamp you out, they made a saint of your name to hold the worship of you. You are the vision always beyond a soul—you are only a dream, and I could wish you truth.”

“The warm milk is true as if in a wooden bowl instead of a golden chalice,” she said. “Two days it has been your food, and has served you fairly.”

He drank it as a gift of God, and stared at her.

“And it is a vision come true,” he said. “Two days? And I not alone here. There were others—a dog and a man I killed.”

“They were dragged and rolled over the cliff of the glen. There was no other way,” she said.

“And this?” he asked, pointing to the mass of soothing poultice on his shoulder.

“It is anemone, a flower of healing. I but gathered it and bruised the leaves. The work of that was nothing. The only task of fear was to hold you from wandering. Too restless were you for the boat and the road of the Sionan.”

“And you did it? I dreamed of your hands touching me; I thought it a dream of Brighde who was goddess and then saint.”

He went asleep again almost as he spoke, for the weakness was yet on him.

When he wakened his thoughts were more steady, and he asked if the golden chalice had been a thing of dreaming.

“I took it from sacrilege in the tower,” she confessed. “It was the cup of sacrament, and not to be left to pagans if my life could give it guard.”

He looked at her long, with thoughts of that day in the tower, and asked where her dagger was.

“It is no longer with me—I have taken instead the one of the herder.”

“The other had sharp slimness and value of gold and jeweled hilt.”

“This, with the horn of a deer for handle, is a cleaner thing.”

He thought she meant cleaner than a knife touched by the hand of Ota, and his well hand went up to his neck where the necklet rested—the gold of it had saved him a death stroke of the herder.

“This necklet has served its task,” he said. “It can take its place with the other spoils saved by you.”

“It has no place among them,” answered Doirenn coldly. “I saved only holy things from sacrilege.”

And he saw by that he had said the wrong thing, for she was no longer the Brighde of tender service—she was a gold-crowned judge who looked down from a far height.

He held in his memory the wordy condemnation of the priests, and of Ronan the abbot, but it was easier to endure their revilings than her frozen look when she remembered the love gift and caressings of Ota the queen.

“It is to your Geroid you shall go,” he said, and looked at her darkly, and went out from the hut of the herder, though the blue of the sky and green of the turf were as one before his eyes because of the weakness on him.

It was better to be in the woods alone with his tranced vision of Brighde, than to face the cold scorn of the maid who had seen the white hands of Ota on his throat.

But despite the look, or the word of scorn for him, Doirenn was not at ease if he was long out of her sight. Never had she outgrown the fear of what she had felt at sight of the great dead dog and the dying foreign man crawling for the knife.

There was trouble on her for the thing she had done, and no holy man anywhere to take her confession and lighten her mind. Prayer she could make, and did—but for the sending of an unshriven soul to God there was no comfort, and her thoughts had no sunshine.

Sometimes there was terror on her because she could no longer judge Ruadan for the stark body at her feet in that first awesome night. From the rath of Fethna to the garden of the nuns at Cluain-mac-noise had been all the world known to her. Even in the raid of the Danes on her father’s house, when the black smoke of burnings had left her without roof of her own, or kindred of her own, she had been borne to safety before the battle.

Of the foreign men who were pagans she thought no more than of wolves in a pack leaving death on their path, but for Ruadan, called evil, yet with knowledge of godly things, she could find no gentle excuse—until her own hand had the secret stain of blood on it!

By that was she made kindred in evil to him, and the shining beauty of her was under shadow from the thought.

As strength came back and the wound healed, he had curious looks at her, ever with the book of amber and pearl of sea on the cover. But when he spoke of it she frowned her reproof.

“It is holy, and it is a safe charm to lead me out of the wilderness.”

“Yet is it made by the hand of a man,” he said.

“How should you be knowing that?” she asked. “It is knowledge not for sinful men. My own thought is that Saint Kieran sent an angel to do the words of this, it may be that a man made the cover.”

“It may be,” he said. “May the charm of it lead you safely, for another night we leave this place. I am able. Even Dermot and Grania never hid so long on the way to happiness as we here.”

“There is a difference,” she said, and she blazed a rose red at thought of Grania’s love.

“There is,” he agreed. “Dermot had to his aid friends and gods. The pagan gods are driven out by christian bells and there is only the wilderness for us with that white cat on the trail. I must find hiding for you and leave you there and gather men of the west to serve as guard.”

“I will not be left again,” she said. “To be left behind in darkling wood, or dreary cave, gives me more fear than to be on the way.”

She drove in a young cow and braided a rope of vines to hold her for the killing that food might be theirs on the way, for their journey along the shores of Lough Dearg must be in the nights, and all movement in light of the sun was danger.

With his one well hand and her two they managed the killing, but she turned away her head because the knife brought her thought of the dead foreign man under the cliff.

Ruadan went through the russet fern and the berry vines seeking the silky inner bark of a dead tree for the spark of flint and steel, and when he found it he wandered on to the circle of stones to sharpen spear and knife on the ancient altar. When he made his way back he saw a strange thing, for the glen below the cliff was plain before him, and he stood very still as if fearing the ancient gods had heard his speech of their fading away. There was a glitter of gold and a jewel among the ferns below him, and it was not a place for the seeking of such wealth.

He crept forward, and saw the dog and the man who lay face downward as he had been rolled from the cliff. And it was in the neck of the man the jeweled dagger had been thrust deep. The sun shone on it through a rift in the boughs above, and set it all aglitter.

It was the knife of Doirenn, and so deep had it struck that it took a strong hand to draw it out. Away from there he cleansed it in the earth, and washed it all in a shadowed rill, and brooded over it in a maze of wonder.

A woman of frankness like Ota the queen he could know the thoughts of. She said the thing she wanted and took it. If battle had to be waged to gain it, that battle she fought like a man and took her victory prize, or put her own foot on the neck of an enemy.

But this thing of radiant scorn and icy piety who thrust her knife deep and went to prayer was a different breed. He would not have thought her hand strong enough for that stroke. The edge was turned where it grazed a bone.

So he carried her secret—and with it the mystery of her.

As they could, they went from the hut of hiding and went seaward in the nights through the great lough, and hid in forest or swamp meadows or inlands at dawn, until the churning, quick current was reached, and there the boat was hidden, and cooked meat stored with the altar jewels in the leathern bag, and they went afoot through dusk of the deep wood, or crept, hidden, through lush grasses of wide meadows.

At times, afar off, they saw men with cattle on the hillsides, and a boat of courier speeding down the rapids. Once a warrior’s boat passed beneath a cliff where they lay hidden, and glittering shields were bright in the sun.

“Look well,” said Ruadan, “for it is Amlaf, the prince, who is on your trail. A strong man is Amlaf, with king and queen for his kinsfolk. It may be he could make you queen of Erinn by a lucky turn, for Turgesius—which is Latin for Thorgille—has great tribute, is not young, and it is said by all that the threat in the night sky is the ‘star of the enemy’; as it grows strong—will grow the strength of the Dane. If gods fight against it, where is the refuge of Erinn?”

She looked as bidden, and the man in the boat was slender and tawny, with long tresses of pale silk waving in the soft air. Jeweled he was in great beauty, and his armor was of white bronze. The blue-green of his eyes was like the glint of his spear-heads, and the cloth of his garment was broidered with wires of pale gold.

“He is as beautiful as your lover, the queen,” said Doirenn in scorn, “but not so strong. He will hold no strong star in the sky.”

Ruadan looked at her in gloom at the mocking, and after a little he laughed.

“That naming of her leaves no scar on me,” he said. “But ‘queen’s lover’ suits me ill.”

“Is it so?” asked Doirenn staring after the warboat with its deft oarsman. “Then again are you kin to Dermot who was not the lover but the many times loved.”

He took the mocking blackly enough.

“Sorrow is mine that, like Dermot, I have no bread unbroken to leave on the road for them that trail us,” he said. “And you to your Geroid!”

But she knew not the meaning of the words of broken bread, and he saw that, and the flame of his anger went out.

“It is ill enough to pass time in rages when our time on this earth may be ending,” he said. “That man below is a strong prince with a strong army at the shore. Horses and cattle are theirs and one spearsman in every Irish house of Thomond. No one king of Erinn commands tribute today like to the tribute of Turgesius and of Ota. Their swarms are here like bees on honey, and no roof is ours for safety. The caves of Iar Connaught are safe if we can reach them, with your monk to aid. You may have your fill of life in a cloistered cell ere the day I can guard you to safety.”

“And if—if Geroid is not to be found? And if all roads are closed?”

“Geroid will be found if he is left alive. These hills were once hunting ground for me, and the cells of Senan’s men were known as my own mountains.”

“And, if he is not left alive?”

“Of that we will not speak. If Amlaf, or if Ota, trap us in their wide net, you will die first, so make your prayers.”

She looked at him long, and the shadow on his face caused her wonder, for she had heard all evil of him but never that he was of faint heart.

“Is it so far to your own domains?” she asked, and never before had she asked of home or kindred or life of his.

“It is not far as the ravens fly, but my clan have their rages against me. After that judgment of cattle, not one would take spear for a maid I would hide on Ardsolais.”

“It is said you have good will of Niall the king. How can the friend of a king be without help?”

“The Lady Luaine is of the clan of his mother, and the grace of a king can grow cold.”

“Like enough,” said Doirenn, “she told them of your enchantments.”

“Like enough,” agreed Ruadan, and there was laughter in his eyes. “A woman must ever have ready some excuse of magic. Is it enchantment you are thinking?”

“What else to think when you are dark and not handsome? Wives of men put jewels on you and follow where you go. How is that but by enchantings?”

“How indeed?” asked Ruadan. “And since you are knowing that, it is a strange brave heart that is in you to drink from the same cup with me.”

“The cup is holy and is to go with Geroid into sanctuary, and the book with me is holy. That is my strength.”

“Since it is so I would ask concerning this godly Geroid to whose sanctity you would trust them. Since my life is too evil for your christian grace, what is the saintly enchantment of him, that a well-favored maid would cover herself with a veil because he chose to go walking out of her life?”

“Enchantments are evil, and he was never evil,” said Doirenn. “He made beauteous verses and told me his love in them sweetly. He gave me kind kiss at parting, and only to God would he give himself rather than to me. No payer of cattle was he, and—no love of a pagan queen!”

“It may be so,” said Ruadan. “And when was this high loving of his and of yours?”

“There is no hurt to him in making speech of that,” she answered, “and it may bear its lesson to you. He had seven and ten years to his age, and three less to mine.”

Ruadan stared, and then strove to seem grave, yet were his eyes full of laughter and she saw it.

“Yet he could love and he did!” she made protest angrily. “Tablets were sent to me often and his verses on them told me that.”

“Ay, his verses!” said Ruadan. “From the dull days of schooling he would have some fair thing to hear his calfloves, and you were the most gracious! Child, at that age I was writing verse to Venus and Brighde, and sad at heart for the ghost of fair Dierdre who loved so well! All the world is turned to love at that age—it is the schooling of hearts.”

“I alone was his Venus and his Brighde and his Dierdre,” she said and drew back in proud anger at his jesting. “How could you, queen’s lover and God’s Dastard, read that lesson of loving, or know holiness of such writings?”

Her anger was like a lash, and almost it whipped him into turning the pages of her holy book and show the writing of his own name there cunningly twined with the interlaced scrolls of the last page. But he knew it was not easy to believe that his other days had been filled by that beauty of line and color. It would be to her but another proof of enchantment if he should show it her, as he might.

And he put aside the thought for another reason: it would take from her the only thing to which she trusted as a link with her saints.

“Time is a good story-teller,” he said, and his smile was grim enough. “On a day to come you may know the weight of your words. Come, the hunter who seeks you is gone beyond sight, and we can cover much ground ere the dark comes down.”

She obeyed him in silence—half shamed because of her anger and his quietness.

She still bore the precious book, making prayer on it through all the terrible ways they trod, but he bore the leathern bag in which the food and cup and jewels were safe. It was strange to her, but after she had found him wounded and given him drink from the cup, she no longer thought so deeply of his evil repute, and since the herder went over the cliff with her dagger she felt less bitter for the other sins on his soul. But when she found herself thinking kindly of him as a human she grew angry with herself and went to her prayers.

All of a day did Ruadan of Ardsolais and Doirenn na Marvan lay in hiding of the hills where the path to the high cell of Saint Senan could be seen through the branches. Far beyond was the smoke of the northmen’s fires, and footmen and men on horseback were seen to cross open spaces. One rider, on a steed of shining black, had much of glittering gear and waving flaxen hair—it was Amlaf.

“He has had runners in these hills. See, they keep up their stride until report is made, when they fall anywhere for rest. It is well we hid long in the herder’s hut. Time was given them to make wide their search; it is over for this place, and that is well for us.”

Yet, he watched long for slightest sign ere he crept through the tall fern and alder and young oak on the hillside. On the ancient path in the stone to the cell above he dared not venture until the turn of the hill was reached, and no human thing in sight.

Like creeping wild things of the wilderness, they thus made their way beneath the leafy coat of green until the steep path was reached, and it in the gray stone cliff narrow and winding and curving the hill above the lough.

Then Ruadan looked at her with the look of parting.

“It is here I must hide you until I go up to that place,” he said. “You see the steepness and the danger. This is the place to wait where the leaves are thick.”

Doirenn made appeal to go, but he would not hear. Then she kissed the cup from which they had drunk, and fastened close the leathern bag into which she had placed all sacred things but the book.

“Take these holy things as warrant to a holy man,” she said, “lest evil come to you for intrusion on his pious thoughts.”

“And it is not evil you are wishing me then?” he asked, and looked on her steadily, but her eyes turned elsewhere, and rose color flushed in her pale face.

“I would not that you die in your sins,” she made answer, and his smile had weary bitterness as she spoke.

“A hundred deaths of dread has a man died for you those summer days,” he said. “Yet that man breathes human breath. The sacred things I will bear as you bid, lest I could not carry them, and you also, on the second journey—if I find your saint waiting you!”

“And if your footing should not prove sure, and if death should wait you on the rocks below?”

He stood still above her, looking down where she knelt with the book against her breast.

“Here is my answer to you,” he said, and tossed her his dagger. “That is the better part of Ruadan. Give the blade deep to drink if the eyes of Amlaf, or of Ota the queen, look on you again.”

“And you?” she whispered, “it leaves you without a blade for danger.”

“Not so, O Doirenn,” he said; “I have a dearer thing.” And he showed her the jeweled hilt of her blade of death.

She went white and covered her face, and he moved carefully along the narrow ledge with his burden and shield and spear, up and up until he noted birds fly out from nests in the crannies far below. Then a sharp turn came in the rock, and the cell sanctified by holy men for two centuries was the end of the narrow way.

A man knelt there by the stone trough which served as bed, and no other thing was there but a cauldron on dead ashes, and cup and bowl of wood. Some moss was heaped in a corner, and birds’ eggs were in the bowl.

“God’s blessing on the home,” said Ruadan in courtesy, but the kneeling man whirled in terror.

“Why have you come again? And why do you now speak in clear Latin and not before?” he asked, and his voice was high and shrill like that of an angry woman—much more like a woman even than was the deep voice of Doirenn.

“I am come because that is my task,” said Ruadan. “If you are Geroid of Cluain-mac-noise, I have gift and message for you, and I am Ruadan of Ardsolais.”

The monk cried out in horror, and waved him away.

“Man of blood and traffic in evil!” he said. “Begone from this place of prayer. Twice come the Danes here in search, with tales of your murders, and your stealing of maids. If they find you here it will be evil to me. Get you gone!”

“A man of blood I have been, and may be,” said Ruadan, looking in the pale, narrow face and the eyes of terror. “But I am also a keeper of sacred things, and it is your task as a man to help me in the guarding of them.”

“You! You were the outcast—God’s Dastard—the youth of holy training who threw off the robe for temptings of the world,” said the monk, and he moved the width of the cell away and spread out his thin hands as a wall, lest Ruadan move a step nearer. “Go back to the world and bring not your evil here where holiness has lived—here, where in prayer I wait the crown of sanctity and the wings of angels in Paradise!”