Chapter IV: Part 4

“I will go back when I have done my task. I bring here gold vessels of the altar that you may know my intent, and below a more precious thing waits for sanctuary—it is the maid they told you I stole away—it is Doirenn, daughter of Marvan. It is a body and soul to be saved by you, and by me.”

But Geroid fell groveling beside the stone couch, waving his hands in wild protest.

“Take your evils from this place,” he cried out. “Have I fought the demons of woman-temptings for naught? Seven times seven days in the spring of the year did I pray in water of ice to my armpits. Nine times nine prayers have I likewise made to that end, for youth is still on me! Is it from the King of Hell you are come to bring temptings of women who breed the evils of carnal loves?”

Ruadan stared at him as at a wild dog he would throttle, and then let fall the sack, looking at the wasted form and the wild eyes. He tried to see where her human youth of the verses was hidden behind the grievous mask, and could not.

“I need teaching to tell me that love is of Hell,” he said. “In a swoon of half death in a forest I had a vision of love with a difference. It was a radiant love, bearing healing for human ills—yes-and it shrank not from soiled hands, or blood-stained hands, in the service—that was my vision. You, monk that you are, have had more than vision: As children, Doirenn and you have gone with clasped hands and no wall between you. She has heart-love for the remembering of that time and she has come the hard way for your help above all men. You look not so much to me, but the priests tell us you are made in God’s image. No god of a man can be a coward, and we may have enemies to overcome ere we get her to safety, but I am here to help, and that is my message.”

“Go you hence with your sacrilege. Holiness does no battle,” said Geroid wildly. “Go you hence to your bloody wars for women and cattle and the things of the world. Leave me in peace with my God, and the saving of my soul.”

Ruadan listened and laughed.

“To save your own soul? By the Elements! I have belief in no man, and in no god of a man who hides in safe sanctuary when white innocence flees from the ravisher. To sanctuary here has come Doirenn who deems you holy. If you cast her out, she has only Ruadan as safety. And all Erinn can tell you Ruadan boasts no holiness.”

“Get you gone! Your ways are bloody and fearful and your ways are evil.”

“Not less evil than the weight of my hand on you if you hearken not,” said Ruadan darkly. “Two holy gifts have I borne to you through much danger, for the cell of a monk would seem best hiding place. One is this,” and he emptied on the floor of the cell the gold and gem-set things of the altar, “the other is a human soul in a fair body, which, O praying monk, is the holier thing for your shelter. This is the time for the choice of a man.”

The monk lifted the jeweled chalice and gloated over the golden monstrance with each ray of the sun set in crimson and rose and yellow gem.

“The man who wrought this work had help of the angels of God,” he whispered, and made the sacred sign as he lifted each treasure.

“What of the handiwork of angels in the creation of the stray maid of warm life, and music of voice and eyes of pureness?” asked Ruadan. “Look at this hand of mine. It has been a craftman’s hand in the work you adore there; it has been a bloody hand in the work you hide from here, the work of the world! It is a strong hand and not yet a conquered hand. Yet it shakes, as my soul shakes at thought of that fair creation when God spoke Doirenn into this world of ours. Make your choice of the holier thing, O monk she deems holy! This is the time for your choice as a man—and by your choice and hers, Ruadan abides.”

“Get you gone from holy ground with your sacrilege of creation and Hell’s vision of carnal loves!” screamed Geroid, and held the monstrance of red gold between his own body and Ruadan. “The things of holy altars I will hold at God’s will, but name no name of woman in the ears of God’s chosen—they drive out the music of angels’ wings!”

Then a cry came to them—the cry of a woman, and close, and Geroid fell on his knees in terror, and gathered close the glittering jewels, and Ruadan unslung the short spear from his back.

“It is the time for the choice of a man,” he said, and sped as a cat along the narrow path to the turn where he had last looked down on her.

But a man on a black stallion waited there instead, and the face was the face of Amlaf, brother of Ota the queen!

He looked up and laughed, and the thing he laughed at was Doirenn, who stood on the narrow ledge waiting Ruadan, and in her hand was his dagger.

“You were so keen for his choosing that your heart could not wait that I save your feet this hardship?” said Ruadan, darkly mocking.

And the monk in the cave, and the prince on the black stallion, were as far from them both as was fear, when she looked in his eyes.

“I followed, O Ruadan, lest he do you harm for your life as a man of sin. And I listened, O Ruadan, that your dagger might in truth drink deep if you made me his portion—and you going elsewhere,” and his dagger was held with the book, in love, against her breast.

“To my heart!” he said, and circled her with his arm, and she was borne along the path by him while his eyes searched below for glitter of spears or followers of the prince.

Amlaf fitted an arrow to his bow and waited the turn where Ruadan would be fair target without hurt to the coveted maid of beauty.

But the hand of Ruadan, thrilled by the love of her, was strong and steady. His spear had been sharpened at the altar place of the old gods, and the cast of it took Amlaf in the throat as he looked up laughing. After that he laughed no more on earth but went to his own Norse gods of the summer sailors.

Ruadan stripped him of his warrior garb, and weighted the body with stone, and cast it in the waters of Lough Dearg, while Doirenn stood on the shore holding the quivering steed, alert at the presence of Death.

Ruadan looked about him, and looked at the girl, whose face was a drooping flower, and whose hair was a golden veil.

“Look up, O Doirenn,” said Ruadan, “for this is the end of the dream! This is the shore on which I saw you with Bronach—washer of raiment for the dead. Beyond this all is dark to me on the road.”

“Not so,” she said. “We have walked together through the nights of the evil star, but now the light is ours.”

He caught her to him, and kissed and mocked her.

“This is all your prayers and your glittering book served you against enchantings,” he said.

“They served me well,” she made answer staunchly. “In the sickness of the wound I prayed for your life. Here, where you left me, I prayed that Geroid might take into sanctuary the altar jewels but leave me free for always to walk with you.”

Among the Danes, that wood by Lough Dearg gained weird tales of Irish enchantings, and the reason was that Amlaf the prince had ridden along the marge for his pleasure one summer day, and never came again into the sight of mortals.

Belief it was in these enchantings and in the powers of the mystic books of Christ’s men that went far to lead the invaders, also by this time weary of their raiding, back to their own shores.

Far north in Connaught a youth in dress of the northmen was seen with Ruadan riding a black steed with royal chains of silver in his furnishings. The cropped hair of the youth was the color of the sun, and Latin was his only speech. He was named Angus and called a prince of the foreigners, but heart-companion to Ruadan. Not while Ota and Turgesius held sway in Deasmond did Ruadan go south out of Connaught, or let the youth see the lands of the south.

And when he went again into his own domain of Ardsolais a woman of mystery rode beside him, and for her radiance of beauty she was thought a fairy mistress such as men of olden time had met at some edge of the mortal world.

He called her Brighde the Beautiful, and all the people were calling her that, and she was his wife, and the cattle of Ruadan stayed on his own hills after she came.

Because of the vanishing of Amlaf the prince no Danes climbed again to the cell of the solitary monk, and after the weakening of the Danes the stories of enchantment there went abroad far and wide, and it was a place to shun both day and night, and no one was remembering the young monk who, in that year of the fearful star of Turgesius, had climbed that hard way for holiness.

But in after years, a strange harmless babbler appeared one day among a herd of cattle in Thomond, shouting to them of heavenly crowns and wings of angels.

He had no clear speech to men, and was called the “Nameless” for the reason that no clan knew him, and he knew no mortal and no home.

His dress was of skins, and his hair and beard were his only mantle to the middle. Neither in Gaelic nor in Latin could his life be learned, but no door was closed on him nor food denied him, for gods and saints were known to come under secret and lowly guise to the abodes of men.

And on a fair day, after seven years, Doire, the childling of Ruadan, divided a cake with the Nameless on the green, and then led him, as a child with a new playmate, through all the garden and to the grianan where the wife of Ruadan sat with her maids and discoursed of the day when the master of Ardsolais would come again from the wars.

All said, “God save you, and Mhoirre bless you,” to the visitor from the wilderness, and food was given and the child watched in wonder that a mortal could feed as the hounds fed.

“The name of me is Doire, son of Ruadan, who is lord of the mountain,” said the boy. “You have eaten my cake and come in my gate; tell to me now whose son are you?”

But the Nameless stared vacant and seeking, and made mutterings, and all they could hear from him was “Ruadan? Ruadan—Ruadan?”

Then the wife of Ruadan, who was called Brighde the Beautiful, called to her son Doire, and whispered in his ear a secret saying, and the lad ran back and spoke.

“May it be that you were once the son of Kineath? And that your name was once Geroid?”

At which saying the Nameless stood up in fear as if for flight, and cried out, “Kineath—and Geroid—and Ruadan! Ruadan and she who was weighed in the balance with the jeweled chalice? Call you your druids, or your priests of wisdom, that I uncover the place of that hiding! Go you in haste ere the mist again covers the knowing!”

In haste they did go—all the maids aflutter, and the wife of Ruadan sat in the shadow ordering all things, speaking no word aloud.

And Fergus, her cleric, came in haste from the oratory, and made prayer, and hearkened, and the Nameless spoke in good Latin, and said:

“Take with you this childling who lifted the mist from me. Go you to the cave in the mountain over the Lough of Dearg; to the cell of Senan the Saint find you the way; and in the stone trough of the bed there find you the jeweled chalice, and the golden treasures. They were the bribe of Hell to bring temptings of the world. Let them be weighed; let them be put in the scales against my name and my soul in the Day of days!”

“Against whose name will I write it for that day?” asked Fergus, “and against whose soul?”

But at the question the Nameless turned away and shook his head. The mist had again fallen, and he wandered again to the fields babbling of crowns and wings.

“He is but a strange innocent,” said Fergus, “and has no likeness to owners of golden service and jeweled treasures. It would be as search for the many-colored palaces of the magical Danaans under the hills about us.”

But the wife of Ruadan had a different thought.

“What the search may uncover rests with God and Mhoirre,” she said. “But a sign has been sent to the son of Ruadan, and to him the honor will be if precious things or holy things are in that cell of a hermit. Take horses and take men, and take Doire, our son, to that place of the cliff on the shore of Dearg, and take well-cured skins and ink for the record and witness. Every jewel write you down as count is made, and every other thing of treasure. If it be that they are holy things of Senan the Saint, their blessings may descend upon another altar.”

Thus it was done, and great glory went to the son of Ruadan, who uncovered the jeweled chalice, and wondrous other golden altar service buried under moss, and shells of eggs, and bones of animals.

Legends grew up about that finding, for after they were blest by the cleric that no evil thing might leave smirch on their beauty, they were placed with prayer in the oratory, and on the altar beside them was found in the morning a jeweled book of holiness, thick set with amber and pearl. No book had been found in the stone cell, and Fergus, the priest, had never before seen or heard of it. Many viewed it, and all thought it had, without doubt, belonged to Senan the Saint, and after two hundred years of death he had come back to gather together the things once precious to him on earth as a proof to pious souls.

This was the thought of Fergus, who had a pride in the holy honors sent to the roof where he was sheltered.

And when Ruadan came back victorious from battle with the Danes, it was Fergus who discoursed to him of a great church as their shrine. He made clear that the wife and son of Ruadan had strange gifts and powers of knowledge. If they were christian gifts it was well for their souls, but if the power was of pagan strength, then fastings and prayers should lift the last doubt. He reminded Ruadan that his own peace with the church was not yet accomplished, and that there were strange tales of how the mother of his son had ridden out of the wilderness on a black stallion and no clan and no country had been named for her claiming. The trappings of her steed were those of a king, and she wore coat of mail like a young warrior of the sea gods, riding out of the waves. No word to her confessor told of her life before that day, and there were times when the soul of Fergus was troubled over these mysteries, and was craving more altars to the saints at Ardsolais.

“That is well enough,” said Ruadan. “She shall have a temple of her own fashion for the housing of her sacred things—women and priests have hunger for such. Guard you the souls by prayers in the temple, Fergus, and my spearman will guard the temple if our shields are lucky. That is the task of the man.”

And with his wife, the Beautiful, in her bower, he laughed, and stroked her white shoulder, and mocked as was his wont.

“Thus I pay for temples to guard your soul from enchantments,” he said, “for Fergus the priest finds you in a grievous way.”

She mounted the black steed and rode beside Ruadan with Doire, their son, and sought a fair level on a green height where huge stone slabs stood upright with other slabs resting on them like high altars. It was the place of ancient fires and for that was called the Hill of Lights.

“Here, by this circle, are the hearts of the people,” she said, “for at new moon they are coming, and at the rise of sun they are coming in certain summer days. Why build the new altar in another place?”

She paced with her child the great space where the new temple would be built for sinners, and the eyes of Ruadan looked their love on her, and on the son she had borne him.

And in the edge of the wild field where the forest came down from the mountains, the cattle lifted their heads as a man, hairy and clad in skins, strode among them with proud authority shouting to them of crowns and wings.

“Whose is the voice?” asked Ruadan.

And his “heart-companion” of the wilderness touched his shoulder and spoke low and awed.

“That is the voice of the man who saw no holiness in battle to protect the helpless—it is the voice of the man who saw in love only the mating of beasts—and his reward is his.”

[Music]

LIADAN AND KURITHIR

“_I am Liadan
Who loved Kurithir.
It is true as they say._

“_The music of the forest
Would sing to me when with Kurithir,
Together with the voice of the purple sea._”

It was the time of Hugh Finnliath, Ard-Ri (High King) of Erinn, and glad youth of May lay on the land.

The hawthorn was in bloom against the hills, and the cuckoo was calling as it flew in long billowy glides to its mate in the yew-tree nest.

As the bird to its mate, went the gray eyes and the heart of Liadan na Donal, when she looked on Kurithir, the poet and friend of kings, in Far Connaught. Fair and gracious was he among the friends of her host, and fair and gracious was Flann Siona, prince of the Sionan, beside him as they greeted her, and greeted Aevil, her sister, who was beautiful as a night of stars.

It was not the beauty of bronze-gold hair, or blue eyes of Kurithir, by which she was held, and it was not the beauty of raiment and the jeweled links of his garments, for the daughters of the Ui Maic of Far Kerry were not without grandeur in the castle of Donal, their father. Out of all the guests and the greetings, she knew not if Kurithir, son of Doborchū, bent head or knee more graciously than others. She knew only that his eyes looked deep, and looked steady, into her own, and that without words they bore to her a message.

The message was strange because her heart leaped in her bosom to meet it, and that was a new thing in her life.

And that message was this: “We have found the way to each other at last, and both of us knowing it!”

Other eyes saw that look, and the wild-rose flush on her white throat, and Aevil, her half-sister, spoke bitter words when they were safe within their chamber, and there was present only the dark nurse of Aevil, whose name was Moria, and whose lore was deep in herbs and curious knowledge of druidcraft.

“Know you not that as elder sister my day of marriage must pass before your day of courting?” raged Aevil. “For that reason I am making this circuit of visits to see the lands and the furnishings of our friends. It was in my charity that I brought you by me, and an ill day it was to me!”

Liadan sat by the window and looked down into the enclosed garden where a red rose tree and a white rose vine were twining against the stone wall, and she mode no reply, for her thoughts were all of Kurithir, and that look in his eyes, and she felt close to him as the white rose twining to the tree of the red bloom.

But Moria talked much as she smoothed the black hair of Aevil, and vowed by the Elements that the beauty of Aevil exceeded by much all other beauty at the Dun of Dearg. And that the eyes of Flann, Ri Domna of Erinn, had not passed her by—nor had the other men.

There was truth in this, for black and red and rich cream was the beauty of Aevil, and her pride was great because of her beauty to which all men did honor. Liadan had heard all her life that there was no beauty in Connaught to compare with Aevil who should, for beauty alone, be a queen, and Liadan was well content that the crown go to her sister so long as she had her harp and her garden, and now—two blue eyes for mirrors!

But Aevil stormed and threw off the hand of Moria and would have no caressing of words.

“Well you know there is one man spoke of here for my meeting, and that man is Kurithir the poet,” she said. “He is the man whose songs are sung by many, and my greeting was spoiled by a gray rat!”

“Only my eyes are gray, sister,” said Liadan, “and if you like not my gray robe, it shall be put aside for our visit. What you choose shall be done; all is one to me.”

For the song of joy was so strong in her heart that all the world was shining summer for her. Her slender gray-clad feet trod as on the clouds of heaven because of that look in his eyes. She donned a robe of green with a girdle of silver, and in the brown curls of her hair she fastened green jewels from oversea, and in the rush light of the great hall she slipped quiet as a moonbeam, but Flann and Kurithir, who were foster brothers and friends ever, left all others to bow before her.

“We look for Maighdenmara in the old sea waves where the white foam is,” said Flann. “Men never hope to see her drive in a chariot from the forest.”

Kurithir said nothing, but his eyes were on hers, and she liked that best, and dreamed of him sweetly that night on her maiden pillow.

In the dawn Flann and Kurithir walked along the sea cliff and spoke as brothers in bond.

“There are other maids and many for you, Flann. For me there is only this one and I loving her.”

“You speak your heart and that is best, comrade. My eyes will look the other way, and her sister is a fair queen for any castle.”

“I am thinking no castles,” said Kurithir, “I am thinking of a little house under the oaks where the thrushes sing, and where heart can hear heart away from sound of the steps of man. My harp I will take, and hers. The hands of her were like white lilies on the strings when she touched them last night. I could have knelt at her feet for joy that we have found each other.”

“It is good to be you, Kurithir,” said Flann, who was a king’s son. “May you hear the thrushes sing.”

And Kurithir went back at sunrise, and watched her window in the tower until her face looked down on him. Speak she dare not because of Aevil and Moria. Go to him she could not for the locked door and the key on the chain of Moria. But look at him with all her heart in her eyes she could and she did, and a white rose she let fall from her breast to his, and that was the first gift of Liadan and Kurithir.

That day was fair with beauty, and all went riding gaily to a neighbor castle of friends, and gaily home at the setting of sun; but Aevil put Aillain, the son of her host, to ride with Liadan, under strict word that their visit would end if he heeded not her order—for Liadan must either be guarded, or sent home at the dawn; so Aevil rode with Kurithir and talked much with Flann, and was a sweet and gracious lady to charm all. But Liadan sat quiet, smiling ever like sun touching mist of the morning. Her heart was full of joy only to hear his voice, even though the words were to another—which is Love itself.

And that night was a very poet’s night of a young moon and the scent of dew on the hawthorn, and under the tower Kurithir sang, and touched the harp, and this was his song:

Sweet-scented branch of silver
Abloom above me,
Lean low to love me!

Gray bird of harmonies
Honey voice, morning star,
Wake to love’s dreaming!

His voice and the strings of the harp were whispers soft on the night, yet in her heart every whisper was held, and the fury of Aevil was as a storm seen afar in the valley. For Liadan was as snow on the mountain shining in the sun.

When she left the locked door of her chamber, the dark woman, Moria, carried her shuttle and thread, or her tablet of white birch and the stylus, or the tiny harp of the six strings, but not apart the length of a spear did she walk, and she listening.

But the love of Kurithir forced him to the speech of a man to his mate, and he spoke.

“The song of the night was to you, Liadan, and all of me calls for you more strongly than song can be telling. Liadan, marriage is well for two singers who find the same song. It is by that choosing the bird of the forest seeks ever its own mate, for the song is the soul of the winged things. That is so of the birds and it is so of men, Liadan. Thus the nightingale holds his song pure in rapture, thus the children of us will sing our songs, and their own songs, in the future years, Liadan.”

The soul of her moved to him that she trembled, but the dark woman, Moria, behind the arras, was ears for Aevil who walked the garden with Flann, and Liadan veiled her gray eyes lest he read them too well, and spoke in sweet courtesy.

“Fair friend, it must be in the rath of my father I give troth to a man and not in another place,” she said. “That gate will be open to you on a day to come, and your singing will win you fair welcome when you are coming there.”

“Your words are as snowfall at harvest time and the sheaves golden,” spoke Kurithir. “Your eyes make themselves shadows of gray and are veiling their sweetness. But I am servant of Liadan what day of days I may ride her way through the forests.”

“The day may be long—the length of days rests in the heart itself,” said Liadan. “A far circle of visiting is pledged to the friends of our father. That circle must be closed ere we welcome poets or princes at the portal of our own castle.”

“Honey mouth, the sweet coldness of you would freeze the red rose, and all its flame could not save life to it,” he said. “But within me is a deeper flame, and I wait my day, and I wait some sign from you for speech again.”

But the bodkin of the dark woman touched the arm of Liadan through the arras as a warning against other words, and she spoke no more but bent her head over the harp as if alone, and Kurithir looked at her, pondering, and then called for his stallion, and rode alone and apart from the rest that day.

But Liadan rode not at all lest the hand of another man touch her hand, or the hem of her garment, or offer her cup which another than Kurithir had kissed.

But the harp of his in the hall was the only one she touched that day, and she wished that forbidden druid power could be hers to charm the strings into speech for his ear alone. With bodkin she traced one word in ogham on the harp frame, but Moria watching! More she feared to do, and her tablets of writing had been broken in the rage of Aevil.

The dark woman told to Aevil all that discourse of the day, and Aevil laughed her victory.

“Tomorrow’s sun takes us away from this place and this blind-eyed poet,” she said. “I have a secret to tell, for Flann has desire of me, and a king’s rath will yet be my abiding place. But I choose to be away from the roof of my father ere these poet songs again make night sleepless. My marriage comes before her betrothal. See you to that!”

The dark woman promised and praised the maid Aevil, and had joy of the thought of Flann who was king’s son and of power to be.

At the supper time, Aevil held up her square cup of mead and asked a good wish on the road for the morrow. Her journey of joy was a circle, and their chariot must start with the sun on the round.

There were words of pleading from many, but Kurithir said no word, only stared at Liadan for a sign—and she there frozen with the grief on her!

It was the first word she was given of the journey, but he could not be knowing that, and his pride was a cloak as he stood before her.

“Sun-rise or sun-setting makes no change in me but to leave me in darkness,” he said, “and the servant of Liadan is ever her servant.”

But Aevil laughed at his shoulder, and bade him not practice poet’s art for the sake of practice, for Liadan knew the light worth of a rhyme—and herself turned all things, from cock crow until moonrise, to such usage!

Then she sent Liadan to her chamber on an empty errand, and laughed again at Kurithir, and watched him, and his face white.

She knew that he felt hate for her, and would sing grief and disaster on her but for the bond of one father and sisterhood with Liadan. The dark woman plucked her by the sleeve and whispered warning lest he do that thing and shame her before Flann and the host. Aevil was green-jealous and was going far!

But the laughter of her scarce touched him, for the reason that he saw only the face of Liadan who had gone past him, dumb and without word of courtesy, and she hard struck at the fear of great forest and wilderness between them.

It was that fear made her bold to dare what she dared not do before the people. No tablet of writing could she send. No secret friend could she trust in the castle of the Dun of Dearg where Aevil bore casket of gifts for service rendered.

But more quickly than Moria could follow, she sped to the enclosed garden where the red May rose bloomed against the south side of the wall, and close under her linen shift lay a blossom of it before the dark woman, with dark words, grasped her wrist, and drew her within the portal.

“The fury of Donal your father will not be a summer storm to you if he hears of lovers of yours before the Lady Aevil has her right as a wife ahead of you,” she said. “The visits of honor are spoiled by the endless twanging of the fool’s harp, and of yours, and the end of it is coming!”

Liadan knew there were dark words said of Moria in whispers by the people of the hills of Kerry. Her love for Aevil was a real love, but her hate was a thing to fear, and the soul of Liadan trembled, yet the thought of Kurithir brought back life to her, and she spoke.

“With your hands you will not touch me again,” she said, “and this to your warning. As a child I mind me how, for curious reasons, you sang sleeps upon me at noontide. I saw strange things in the sleeps you sent me and some I remember. But I am not now a child and my life is a different thing to me. No will of yours shall be on me again, nor the will of any other mortal, save one only—and I loving that one. My duty to Donal, my father, and Aevil, my sister, will be paid in silence. But to the man who gives me heart-love there has been too much of silence, and the end of that is coming!”

The dark woman looked at her sideways and said no word lest the maid grow wild and run shrieking, or do some other ill thing to shame them. For the words of Liadan told her it was a woman deep in love who spoke, and that at once both her body and mind were sacred to her as love’s offering on an altar.

And Moria went from the chamber in fear of the wrath of Aevil if the lovers met, and in fear of other things! The key on the chain was forgot at her girdle, and it was the first time.

At the foot of the turret stairs she remembered the key and would have turned back, but Aevil was there and heard her story and smiled.

“Wait for the locking of the door,” she said, and frowned and thought. “Since she is turned rebel on our hands, and a dagger is forbid, we will try other ways, and ways will be found. Her poet is sick with love and mooning alone, yet far enough from the turret. Keep you ward, and send to me Aillain, son of our host. He mutters poems of hers instead of grace.”

It was true Kurithir was alone, and a new thought with him for company. The next house of the visit of the sisters was that of a friend where a welcome for him was ever waiting. Yet at this time he would not ride there without a castle servant to ask his presence. But on white beech tablet he was writing that friend to send for him quickly, and his own servant was put on the road with it, while the others played chess, and took pawns, and looked love to women, and Aevil laughed, thinking that he wrote poems on dull tablets when he could find more human pleasures. Flann laughed when she laughed, and knew nothing of the heartache of his friend. After their words on the cliff there had been no more words between them of Liadan or of Aevil.

Their laughter sat ill upon him, and he moved to a casement where he could see the window of the turret chamber, and perhaps a light there.

No light was showing, but the soft note of the little harp was heard, and its sweetness was dear to him, for it was his own song of the night she had caught.

“It is well Liadan is playing that,” said Aevil. “All the day she was making practice of it because you, Aillain, gave it praise.”

“I?” said the youth Aillain, and stared, and his mother heard and laughed.

“What does a manling do when music is made by fair lady to his liking?” she asked. “A gold-caged thrush would be fitting for a lady’s gift, or flowers for fragrance.”

They made jests of him as at a lover they were training for love, and the eyes of the youth laughed also, yet he was courteous.

“No less than my duty, and the gift, shall be offered,” he said. “The less garden bloom for the other ladies on the morrow.”

Straightway he started for the garden in the dusk, glad to show grace to so fair a guest. The sky had primrose tints in it afar, and the golden curve of the moon was above dark ocean. Only one star shone high, and shadows fell thick where the hedges were, and where a great vine threw wide arms at the foot of the tower.

A moment the boy paused to look up where the harp strings were softly touched, then there was silence, and a white hand reached far out, and a bit of fragrance touched his breast—it was a red rose, crushed where it had lain under the linen of her warm bosom.

The youth was mazed and stood waiting with staring eyes. Was it a mocking the gay group would make because of his lack of years, and his height of a man? This was the reasonable thought, for he had a sweetly gay temper of his own, and was used to their baiting.

But while he held the rose and listened for their laughter, something finer came to him: it was the hushed voice of Liadan singing. A very whisper of a song it was, and heard only by him, and by a man at the casement.

The mystic rose are you to me
In secret bower growing,
The grayling bird of grief am I
Not joyous taking wing!

One star for both above the sea—
The trysting star! A grayling
Lets fall a rose and breathes her sigh:
Not joyous taking wing!

The voice ceased and the harp strings gave a wail as a heavy hand of discord crashed it. The boy could make nothing of that, and walked slowly into the dusk of the garden, intent as before on the gift of blossoms.

It was a sweet song as she sung it, and a pleading one. He wondered as to the meaning of the mystic rose. It was a new word to him and he had an ear for words of beauty.

Then there came swiftly the rush of a slender form into the garden’s dusk. Like a low-flying bird before a hawk she ran, for the dark woman was at the portal.

“O rose of flame,” said Liadan sobbing, “that I should have given snow for your fragrance!”

The tall youth, Aillain, had plucked a hand full of bloom, but stared at her strangeness, and drew back from her.

“The roses are for your gift, fair Liadan,” he began courteously, but at his voice she moaned in terror and caught his shoulder.

“O rose of brief bloom for me,” she said, and fell in whiteness at his feet. He bent to lift her, but the dark woman was first.

“Silence is best for this,” she said to Aillain. “It is no new thing and I can bear her alone.”

She was very strong, and Liadan lay in her arms like a broken flower, and thus she faced Kurithir at the portal; he was white as the maid, as he barred her way.

“Tell me of this meaning,” he said, and Moria laughed as Aevil herself might have laughed.

“You are a man and should know,” she said. “The boy is a new plaything and she broke the lock to keep tryst with him. You poets play over much at the love game, and oft choose your mates strangely.”

“If you were a man my hand would send you to hell for that saying.”

“Even that would not make her over, or change the heart of her,” said Moria. “Give way that I may put her back under lock ere her sister learns this newest shame.”

He gave way, and paced like a chained thing the length of his leash under the wall where he could see the light of her window. He listened for her voice, but no sound came.

Later he sought Aillain, but the youth had gone straight to Aevil in his amaze and fear, and she had cunningly bound him to silence, as if Liadan were some distraught creature ever to be guarded when the moon was new. To Flann, Kurithir could not speak.

In the morning Liadan was dressed by Moria for the journey, listless and cold, staring.

Aevil mocked her despair, and hummed the words of her trysting song.

“Think you a man of pride waits for tryst with a maid so bold?” she asked. “The rose alone might have won a hearing, but men are fain to do their own wooing. Your song argued practice in love, so he walked away, O grayling, you!”

Liadan took up the harp and broke the strings.

“It will make songs for no other man,” she said. “So much for love’s practice on me!”

Cold and white she sat for the braiding of the gold disks in her brown hair, and cold and white for the girdling of the gray robe, and the lacings of the gray shoes. After the breaking of the harp Aevil mocked no more, for there were guests and a host to face in the farewells, and it might prove a hard hour.

But Liadan strangely bade farewells as a child is taught to do. There was a faint little smile on her lips, and she looked into faces as if scarce seeing, while the dark woman watched her curiously.

“Her boast was that no will but his should lead her,” she said to Aevil. “Look you! Whose will leads her now?”

“What thing have you done?” asked Aevil, “for his is the one face she does not lift her eyes for. What druid’s draught have you brewed for her?”

“No draught,” said Moria. “She gave you fear when she broke the harp, and that was the time to give her the quiet. Look not fearful, a weakness is on her from these days, but weakness goes again in youth.”

Liadan was seldom gay, and none but Kurithir and Flann noted her stillness. Neither spoke of it. And so she went away from them. And the music was stilled in Kurithir. His harp was laced in its cover of otter’s skin, and the message she had writ on it was hidden—to their sorrow!

When word came from the friendly house that he was ever welcome there, but that the Lady Aevil, and her sister, the poet Liadan, had not come their road, he bade farewell to his friend Flann and took a boat for the sea.

“The thrushes do not sing, even for poets, on the sea,” said Flann, and that was the first time he mentioned the dream of love of Kurithir.

“There are no longer thrushes singing for me in the shadows, and no dreamhouse of love in any forest,” said Kurithir.

Straight south he steered and then east, through storm and stress seeking new ports, seeing new faces, hearing new songs but singing no more. Women looked on him with warm invitings in many a harbor, and one of sweet words and gray eyes sent him out into open seas against wind and tide.

“Other men are not remembering like this,” he said. “Back of the look in every woman I see the look of Liadan, O lost gray bird of mine—Liadan—Liadan!”

To say her name brought her before him strangely. He leaned forward in the dusk and brushed his hand over his eyes as if to clear vision.

For there in the prow he saw—something! It was the faint gray shadow of a girl with a broken harp. The harp he could see very clearly, for the broken strings were black against the green-white foam.

“Liadan,” he whispered, and moved to her, but white spray dashed between them and no other thing was there. And that was the first time she came.

“She is dead,” he said, and the world was more empty for the thought, yet strangely enough, when sleep came she began to come very close to him, and very warm and very much alive.

In the dusk of starlight he saw her, shadowy, with his earthly eyes again and again, and at times he thought the fragrance of hawthorn and roses of May was on the sea.

“Is it the way of a madman I am going?” he asked himself, “for there can no more be fragrance of roses here than there can be songs of thrushes.”

And that night in sleep he heard the thrushes! It was together they heard them—her hand in his, and she listening.

And the words he said to her there were words he had never said to any woman in life. Her eyes shone on him like warm stars, and it was as if they had both been waiting always for the words and the hearing of them. And in the dream he sang to her, and she within his arms warm there. In the morning he remembered that song—and he remembered whispers of hers between the lines of it.

O Liadan!
O mist of honey fragrance!
Within my dreams,
You drift the night with me!

You are the star
Old sea reflects forever,
You are the grianan within my heart.

The white-breast bird are you,
The whitest rose,
The ever-singing harp of silver string.

You are my secret,
Breast unto my breast,
Until the lark shall call the sun,
O Liadan!

It was the first time song had come to him since he sang under her window at Dun Dearg of the sea cliff, and all the call of his heart for her was wakened in new strength. He turned the boat and steered west and then north, and every twilight she sat in the prow faintly gray, and in every sleep his head rested on her warm bosom, and warm arms were holding him, and her face was bending over him with her eyes looking into the depths of his own.

“Even though it be madness on me I will follow the way it leads,” he said. “I will go as bid to the rath of Donal, her father. I will put out of mind all else I saw or heard, for mystical things and deep things are sending fair winds to me at every turn of tide, and never a day but the seas are glittering fair like silver.”

And it was so. Never a storm touched him after the night he saw her first.

In the nights he smelled hawthorn and May roses over the dark sea, and there was one night when he was off Arran, and she sang to him, and in the morning he remembered her song as well as his—and this is what she was singing that night:

I dreamed of the yew tree,
Its sheltering shadow,
I dreamed of your arms!

I woke to the thrushes,
Their song was to nestlings,
And your arms about me!

Then he felt her stir as a bird might stir against a mother-bird’s breast, and her kiss was on him, and in that kiss he smiled, fearing to open his eyes, fearing to lose the dream of her. But he whispered in a dream song:

My eyes are in shadow
But sun in my bosom,
My world—Liadan!

To dream true is—loving,
Gray eyes of enchantings,
Gray lark of sweet singing,
—Your music to me!

Into the deep harbor of the cliffs he sailed on a fair morning, and men with shields and spears watched him as he climbed the heights, and Flann was first with the greeting.

“The summer raiders of Lochlan came down the coast to wreck and plunder,” he said. “No roof is left of Castle Dearg; we drove them off and sunk half their fleet, but much evil was done by them. Our host and his people are dead, and Donal of Dun Conchinn is dead, and many other good men have gone the Way.”

“It was to the rath of Donal I was going.”

“It is a late day to be going; death has been there, and veiled women are there.”

The heart of Kurithir went cold with fear to ask a question, and he did not ask it, but walked silent beside his friend until they stood under the portal of the tower where all now was blackened ruin from fire and stress.

He looked up to the window and then mounted the stone steps to the chamber where once she had slept, and Flann in silence followed, for their hearts had been close-knit.

The furnishings were gone and it was a desolate place.

“Come away,” said Flann. “There is no profit to a man in seeking empty cages when the singer has flown.”

But under the carved stone seat by the window, where no fire could touch it, there was a little harp with the strings broken. Kurithir knew that harp and every broken strand from the nights on the seas to the south.

Flann took it up and looked at the frame where “Liadan” was set in silver wires deep in the dark wood; with the haft of his skean he scratched it until it shone bright.

“It is true,” he said, “I thought it was a woman’s lie to mock me—but it is true.”

“Who was the woman?” asked Kurithir.

“It was Aevil,” said Flann, “and now with this before us, and Sun and Day, and Earth and Wind, to witness, I will speak you the truth. When you sailed south and gave no farewell to Liadan, who turned her eyes from you in parting, I rode to the rath of Donal and made offers for her as a wife. My promise to look another way was broke when you two parted and no pledge between broke.”

There was silence for a while and only the eyes of Kurithir spoke.

“It was all no use,” said Flann. “She would not say the word for all Donal’s anger. I know not what his words were to her—God knows! He was regretful for the words when dying and said it to me. But before that day he offered me Aevil instead, and ordered Liadan to the veiled women, and Aevil was a star of beauty, and was willing, and I took her.”

“And what was the lie of this?” asked Kurithir, holding close the harp with the sweet name of her on the frame.

“It was no lie. It was the truth. The harp was broke by Liadan that no love song should ever be made on it after her tryst song to you—and you walking away from it.”

“There was no tryst song to me. The woman Moria carried Liadan from tryst with another—and mocked me that I was yet sick at heart for her love.”

“There are dark things in this somewhere, and there are false things somewhere,” said Flann. “Aillain, the boy, is dead, and dark Moria is dead—it is late for the sifting of the wheat from the chaff.”

“When were the deaths?”

“He in the first raid, but she, sabbath a week since, together with Donal, before our bowmen reached his rath for succor.”

Kurithir remembered that day, and when Flann would have gone on with speech of the fighting, and the retreat of the raiders to their ships, he held up his hand for silence.

“That was the night she came to me on the sea, Flann,” he said, “and that is why I am here listening. Darkness is on my mind—a darkness and a fog, but this is true as the Sun: the way of these broken strings was never told to me, yet I knew that her harp was broken, for at the sabbath twilight a week since, Liadan sat at the prow of the boat with the broken harp in her hands, and the smell of the hawthorn was there following, ay, and the song of the thrush in the nights!”

Flann peered at Kurithir in awe, and a swift chill touched him. When he spoke again it was with the soft gentleness as to a child.

“And where was this happening, Kurithir?” he asked.

“It was off the south coast, and I have been sailing straight to find her, night and day since that twilight,” said Kurithir. “Never was there such a sailing, for the wind was ever with us, and I had but to close my eyes to feel her near and to smell hawthorn and May roses.”

Flann looked down into the garden where ashes and a fallen wall covered the rose vines.

“The roses of May linger not for anyone through the harvest time,” he said. “Come Kurithir, what I can I will do to bring you to her in time.”

Kurithir followed after and carried the broken harp, and said over to himself words of her tryst song which he knew now was meant only for him.