BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland
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Authors: J.S. Dunn
Bending the Boyne
J.S. Dunn
© J.S. Dunn 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
Seriously Good Books
Naples, Florida USA
ISBN: 978-0-9831554-1-6
E-Book ISBN: 978-0-9831554-3-0
Cover and interior design by Deborah Perdue
Cover photo courtesy of Declan McCormack,
county Meath, Ireland © 2008
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dunn, J. S.
Bending the Boyne / J. S. Dunn.—1st ed.
p. : maps ; cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9831554-1-6
ISBN-10: 0-9831554-1-0
1. Cian (Fictitious character) – Fiction.
2. Prehistoric peoples – Fiction.
3. Boyne River Valley (Ireland) – Fiction.
4. Ireland – Fiction.
5. Historical fiction.
I. Title.
PS3554.U469963B49 2011
813'64—dc22
First edition: March 2011
For Jack and Leonie,
who brought laughter and love
Let us cease from the stories of the Gaedil,
that we may tell of the seven peoples who took Ireland
before them.
Lebor Gabala,
12th century CE
What is startlingly clear is that the Atlantic zone was now
closely bound up with the changes gripping the whole of central
and western Europe.
From:
Facing the Ocean:
The Atlantic and its Peoples,
Barry Cunliffe, 2001
Present-Day Dublin
T
RAFFIC CHURNED THE
fresh morning air to thick yellow. A glut of vehicles, their noise, the fumes, assailed his broad shoulders. His face brightened when he passed through the lofty portal with arriving museum employees. Already the museum visitors formed a queue.
He tracked the visitors’ steps throughout the ground floor exhibits. He could point out that Eire’s first copper daggers lay juxtaposed with smuggled guns used for the 1916 Rising, but he refrained. The museum authority had decided to remove the tangible evidence of that uprising to a new venue, a different building altogether. Too violent for current taste perhaps, or simply too recent for comfort, its heroes neither forgotten nor forgiven.
Dressed in a guide’s navy-blue suit, he presented himself when visitors wandered into the elegant tearoom, where he smiled and held the heavy door open. A presence with authority, the tall docent hovered while the visitors lingered at tables with coffee or tea or apple tart. They looked up as if expecting him to bring the exhibits, Ireland’s earliest weapons and stunning gold jewelry, to life for them while they rested. Modern feet they had, unused to much walking or standing. He took a seat and he obliged his audience by reaching back to the beginning.
“The people living here followed an obsession: they watched the sky day and night, sunrise and sunset.”
Eons before them, in the time before time, giant plates of rock collided, superheating and leaching out minerals and metals laid down as beds and veins. Ancient glaciers formed and advanced like tides to scour out ridges and glens, then retreated during warming and flooding. Mighty forces severed Eire from the larger island to the east and the continent beyond, as inrushing seas submerged coastlines and thrust up cliffs. The island lay apart in the west. Their ancestors arrived from the sea, to hunt and gather food and find sources of flint.
Recumbent, safe from the Continent, their island luxuriated in balmy currents flowing from far to the southwest and up through the cold northern ocean. The island appeared serene, verdant in its innocence. Birds wheeled above its gentle granite shoulders and thick forests. The valleys teemed with animals and leaping fish silvered its rivers.
Thousands of sunrises later, new settlers straggled in on hide boats, hauling with them new animals: sheep, cattle, and goats. Those people brought innovations; the growing of cereals, pottery making, and methods for observing the sky. Using just the naked eye, they excelled at their astronomy. They proudly called themselves Starwatchers.
“For millennia this island lay beyond any grasp while its people observed the sun by day, and the moon and dazzling array moving far above them by night. They built imposing mounds that spoke to the light from above.
“The Starwatchers transformed the island’s landscape with their great stones, the megaliths. Boann, a young woman in that time, was learning her people’s secrets.” The docent, his face grave but his manner amiable, paused to stir milk into his tea. His audience moved closer.
“At the beginning of all the struggles that forged a fierce independence, lived the Starwatchers.” He would tell their story, how the Bronze Age swept to Eire at the western edge of known waters and almost engulfed Boann and her people.
His tale would be long. After one sip of tea he resumed, deep cadences taking his listeners to a place of mist and stars and myth.
“The east held dark blue, sky indistinct from waves. Then a wisp of lighter blue revealed the startling edge. The pale swath intensified and turned to gold before her eyes. No matter how many times Boann had seen the sun rising, the spectacle thrilled her. She lifted her arms in welcome where she stood on Red Mountain, above the massive passage mounds along the river Boyne.”