BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland (7 page)

The shaman felt Connor’s face, and shook his head. “Nothing more to be done but to remove the red hand.”

As soon as Bresal said this, the tall intruder with feral golden eyes left them.

Several witnesses pushed into the sleeping chamber but sentries led the Starwatchers through the hall and outside. When the woman Maedb caught sight of them, she shrieked what could only be insults.

“Don’t look at her,” Cian whispered and disappeared from them as quickly as he appeared when they arrived.

The sharp point of metal wielded by a different sentry escorted them into a small wooden structure without any openings except its door that the sentry barred with a thud from the outside. Here the two Starwatchers were confined while the amputation took place. They listened intently. Maedb’s wail carried throughout the Invaders’ camp, but brave and stupefied Connor gave out not a sound.

Time passed and any indication of sunlight vanished. A mostly male assembly around the great hall gave a series of rumbling shouts as Bresal spoke to them, then the two Starwatchers heard the throng dispersing. Still they were held fast inside the small, dark cell. At length, the two smelled food preparations from the west area of the camp, and heard the clink of earthenware cups brought together. A wooden pipe sounded a slow but reassuring tune. Maedb’s keening had ceased.

Boann said, “He did not suffer.”

Tadhg raised his face to find her still standing in the darkness. She had not once sat down on the ground while they were confined, but he had. His thighs would ache from being crouched for so long, the place pressing itself in on him. Being held inside walls was anathema to a Starwatcher and she detested being imprisoned here as much as he did. He appeared thankful for her lack of chatter or speculation while they were trapped in this dark hut among scores of warriors outside. Motionless, her back against the rough wall, her escape from this ordeal had been to think of every detail earlier and where Cian might now be waiting.

“The Invader champion must be dead,” Tadhg said. He stood up to her eye level. “Perhaps the long knives made a quick job of it.”

“We are to live, Tadhg. Their champion lives, or they would have swiftly avenged his death on us.” Mouth dry, she managed a whisper.

He inclined his handsome face close to hers. “Two deaths for the one, and all three would miss this evening’s meal. Then again, might they be trying to starve you and me?”

She returned his faint smile, and they leaned on each other’s shoulders. They waited for a sound, a word, a sign, from Cian or from any of the warriors plodding around the hut.

At last a stumbling drunk sentry with a torch opened the door, growled at them and motioned them into the cool night air. The tall Invader stood nearby watching her and Tadhg. She returned his look, caught up again by his long legs and his bearing. He was like one of the intruders’ tawny stallions, powerful and disturbing. His eyes scorched over her body and she turned away, confused.

Under the starflung sky, sentries with torches accompanied the pair to the gates and over the plank bridge, leaving them at the forest’s verge without ceremony or thanks. The sentries provided them no part of the intruders’ evening meal, and no torches for their journey home.

It was new moon and darkness swallowed the two. They waited at the edge of the forest while their eyes adjusted. Tadhg pointed to where a planet had already traveled below the horizon. They quickly located a star pattern in the east and checked its position against the North stars and bright stars in the west. Tadhg and Boann passed north through the woods and bracken and safely into their homes.

They eluded warriors lurking at a marshy clearing adjacent to the three brooding starchamber mounds. The Invader warriors sent by Maedb to kill Boann and Tadhg waited until first light to route themselves back to their camp and without so much as a glimpse of their prey.

‘S a chomharsana cléibhe, fliuchaigí bhur mbéal /
So, my bosom friends, drown your thirst

Mar ní bhfaighidh sibh aon bhraon i ndiaidh bhur mbáis /
As you won’t get a drop at all after you’re dead

From:
Bunan Bui,
Cathal Mac Ghiolla Ghunna, 17th Century CE

Punishment

T
HE SUNRISE ROLLED
north along the horizon. Soon it would be the time of long sunlight and heat, called Brightsun. Slights and injustices sparkled in the ripples on the Boyne, flashed from the white quartz on the mounds, and rose in dark plumes from the intruders’ fires.

The Invaders ignored offers to meet in a solstice council with the Starwatchers. More warriors scrambled to shore from arriving boats, carrying long knives and the new halberds armed with shining battle points.

The Starwatchers stayed well away from the intruders’ camp while their scouts monitored its activity to see if the camp absorbed the newcomers or they departed with their boats. A swift fox darted between river and woods under the drifting stars. However, the scouts had no report of Cian and this worried the elders.

After Boann’s safe return from the intruders, Oghma waited for her to speak. Several sunrises passed before Boann released her cares to him about being held inside the walled camp.

When she finished, he asked only, “Are you certain you could not have saved the murderer’s red hand?”

She almost told him about the assault on her before Sheela’s murder, her worries for Cian; everything. But that might be too much for him. “I went among the Invaders on behalf of our people. Sheela lies dead. It would do no good for her or the living if I neglected my duty as a healer.”

“You mean you had enough medicine to kill this man Connor and you chose to let him live.” Oghma nodded approval, the hearth’s fire highlighting his face so that it appeared carved in granite, ageless. “Their camp has calmed for the time being. You prevented great violence all the way around.”

At full moon Slainge had a meal prepared for Tadhg and Boann, at which the people offered thanks for their return unharmed. After the feast, the two shared with the elders their insights into what they witnessed within the intruders’ camp. The elders mulled over certain details and questioned the intruders’ motives, saying, “There is no metal here at the Boyne!”

Two moons passed after Boann’s mission inside the camp. Quiet ones watched the Invaders’ every move. They sent a warning to Starwatchers living at mountains to the southeast, and waited for their scout to return with strong axeheads of hard greenish rock, an expression of solidarity from the Starwatchers there. Boyne scouts traveled the length and width of the island, gathering intelligence and oaths of loyalty.

The skies brought no rains and the sun’s light seemed dim. To harvest what they could of medicinal herbs, Boann and Airmid trekked in a wide area around their village with the other women. As various plants came into maturity, they took the root or leaves or flower heads according to the known properties of that plant. Scouts accompanied them, especially into the woods, where the women also picked berries, leaves and bark for tea, and mushrooms and shade-loving greens. There Airmid stopped to talk with her lover Ardal, who was hard at work in a coppice of hazel and ash. Boann watched the two lovers parting, Airmid’s hand outstretched until Ardal disappeared among green leaves.

Since Sheela’s death, the two women grew closer and shared confidences. Now Airmid told Boann through tears, “We postponed our marriage ceremony. Perhaps we can marry after summer solstice. For now, Ardal must serve day and night with the scouts.” By day the scouts surveyed the bogs for dry ridgelines, and they tended to coppiced trees in the woods, all hidden from view. By night the scouts watched the intruders.

The two women went out at night, following the healers’ custom to gather certain herbs only during greatest potency at full moon. Airmid met Ardal in clearings, and rejoined Boann before dawn to return together to their village. If Oghma worried when Boann slept late into the mornings, he said nothing to her.

She continued working with her father at the mounds, going to her lessons with the Dagda, and attending the starwatching and discussions. The apprentices including Boann regularly checked the path of the sun’s light along the inner walls of the starchambers. They carefully recorded the stars’ nighttime positions, using the mound kerbstones and standing stones, to be sure that the carved symbols functioned as intended. Maintaining their vigil at the three major mounds gave them much to accomplish during the long days and short nights while the sun lazed as it neared summer solstice. She slept late after these nights as well.

High in the sky, a haze swirled. The astronomers waited for it to dissipate. On some nights the lingering dust made starwatching impossible. Nevertheless, the Dagda called for the summer retreat at Carrowkeel. Boann eagerly attended with novices from across the island, who walked to the ancient mounds at Carrowkeel. There lived Tethra and the respected tribe that descended from Griane, the Starwatchers’ first astronomer.

“We want you to focus on the erratic celestial beings whose cycles elude us,” Tethra reminded them.

That first evening proved frustrating. They attempted to track a bright object rising far from where they expected, then it crossed low in the night sky and disappeared. As dawn approached, the students assembled with the elders, who waited for questions from them. Signal fires glowed from one, and then another, of the mounds atop distant heights from where they sat.

“Dagda, why are some of the night beings never following paths?” asked an adolescent, a muscular, brown-haired fellow named Daire.

The Dagda waited several moments for someone to offer a reply. At last Tethra the elder spoke. “Perhaps they do follow paths but we have not yet determined what those paths are, my brother?” The youth brightened and nodded.

The Dagda addressed young Daire and the assembly. He spoke slowly and seriously. “It is your job to observe. You must avoid making assumptions. Only after many generations of observations have been confirmed and reconfirmed, can we describe the motions in the skies, day and night. Our ancestors have given us this precious knowledge in stories and stone carvings left to us, and we hold the privilege of adding to it.”

As the Dagda finished speaking, first light illuminated the east. Below stood the stone dwellings of Doonaveragh, almost a hundred of them perched on a plateau. A gauzy smoke rose gently from hearth fires rekindled for the morning meal. Far below the village plateau, the dense forest and patches of cleared plains stretched to the horizon where light tinted the sky. The Starwatchers’ imposing mounds punctuated the high places, visible to them now across the landscape’s deep green expanse. The long arrow-shaped lake below them glistened with the sun’s early rays. They listened, enthralled by the beauty of their island and the deep cadences of the Dagda.

“Some day your task might be completed, but that would occur many generations into the future.” He described a number so large that it defied their comprehension.

Daire spoke up again. “Our people would have to live forever!”

The Dagda smiled. “If we keep the star knowledge alive, that will be true.” He raised his shining red mace to the north. “The celestial cycles comprise decades, or even hundreds, of suns. Some cycles number in the thousands, reaching back beyond the memory of our people and forward to unknown generations. We needed a way to record this knowledge for everyone to see and use over time. We have chosen the most durable medium: stone. The stones of our mounds contain our past, present, and future.”

He pointed his mace at stars fading in the east. “We shall see a new constellation signaling each of the four seasons, the solstices and equinoxes. Our entire calendar of constellations will shift from its current sequence. That much we know from the ancestors’ chants. These chants tell us to choose the next star pattern to mark each season.” He paused. “We must not treat this cosmic shift with panic.” All knew that star sightings had been compared at the marker stones, hundreds of times, exactly on the equinoxes and according to the ancestors’ chants. Over their generations the line on the standing stones appeared to lose accuracy. Worse still, the sky dome’s shift appeared to move backward to the sun and moon.

“It is clear that our stones do not move,” the Dagda said. “The Northshift is one of many riddles that make our work interesting.” He urged them to figure out precisely how much the stars moved in a given time frame and obviously, to confirm the direction of the shift. “We have only so many equinox observances until the shift is complete. We must choose a new equinox constellation and choose a new North Star. Each equinox observation is essential.

“We will succeed. Wise people will voyage to the Boyne from great distances—using new boats or old—to learn from us and share with us just as those daring few have done for generations. They will help us persuade these Invaders to leave.”

The time of heat arrived, when they expected to see cereal grains ripening and calves fattening. One midsun when the golden-rayed orb climbed to its peak angle, Boann ventured out to gather herbs in the north meadow. Deep in thought, she quite forgot she had passed by the Starwatcher sentry some time ago at the weeping birch trees leading to the stream.

Her eyes swept the tall grasses and flowers. She could not see their scout but all appeared quiet around her. She lay down in the meadow, a sprig of mint on her tongue. A tiny butterfly with orange striped wings settled nearby. It vibrant wings opened and closed atop the bloom that it probed. The warm sun stroked her face, the bees’ humming around her faded, and soon Boann dreamed pleasantly among the scented stalks.

At a distance, men scuffled. A horse’s hooves drummed the hot clay in crossing the meadow toward her bower. The noises failed to wake her, but the butterfly darted up and away.

The abrupt cool of a shadow covered her face. She drifted back to waking, then with a start she saw above her the face of the tall intruder, the man with eyes the color of dark honey. She had not allowed herself to think of him after she was held captive in the camp. He let his horse eat the grass and held its reins loosely across his right arm, his other arm cocked with hand on his hip as he peered down upon her. Still half in a dream, Boann heard the small shiny pendants tinkling on his horse’s gear. The smell of his horse was very strong. She heard the heavy beat of hooves, more horses coming with more warriors.

She jumped up to run away, but in her tongue he ordered, “No!” She stood before him uneasily, locked in his searching gaze. He shifted the reins and drew his long knife with a motion as fluid as running water and lifted it above his head. The light glinted on the blade as he waved it high and she saw fresh blood smeared down the blade.

She waited for that foul blade to descend on her.
Ancient one, Shining One, witness my death and may it be swift
.

Instead the horse riders arrived, among them Cian. The Invader turned and exchanged terse phrases in his language, then all the men looked at her. The riders had their bodies bared to the hot sun but Boann met their eyes with a steady gaze.

The amber-eyed Invader grabbed at her, throwing the reins around her neck, his arm across her shoulders. Cian swung off his horse toward her but the tall Invader’s knife grazed his abdomen. Beads of red formed in a thin line on Cian’s taut flesh. He halted.

The Invader’s horse reared its head and Boann slipped away but she stayed in the circle of stomping, snorting horses. She would not run while this man threatened Cian.

The tall Invader watched her face. The others waited, deferring to him. He sheathed his knife and gave a sardonic smile at Cian, then at her.

Furious, she reached out with leaves to press on Cian’s wound, and asked in their own tongue, “Why do you come to me here?”

“Why are you here?” He motioned her to pick up her trug of herbs and return to the Starwatcher village, “Don’t be out alone again during the day. Or at night.”

He stepped back to his animal and she noticed a short dagger, bloodied, hanging from Cian’s belt. Was she dreaming this, a bad dream?

She watched them turn their horses and ride away, especially the tall man with the strange glowing eyes. His striking male beauty unsettled her, just as when she first saw him in the intruders’ hall. He moved with the animal, his long legs wrapped over its stout middle, his feet tucked off the ground. He was not tattooed or painted like the others. His skin had an even fawn color that almost matched his animal eyes. She had no glimpse of the man’s spirit behind those eyes. He stared back at Boann as he rode away, without expression, but her shoulders burned where the Invader touched her. This had been no dream.