Patrick (17 page)

She smiled sadly. “I could not believe they would beat you so and then leave you up on the mountain by yourself.” She shook her head. “Stupid, stupid men.”

“What will your husban—” Somehow I could not say the word. “I mean, what does Cernach think about you spending all your time up here tending me?”

“Cernach was killed in the raid against the Connachta.” She said this as if describing yesterday's weather. There was neither sadness nor regret in her tone, and she did not seem the least sorry for the death of her new husband.

I thought back to the day of the raid. I had, of course, seen Cernach before the raid—if not for him, I would have made
good my escape—but I had not seen him after. And when the warriors returned, I had worries enough of my own. “Oh, I am sorry, Sionan.”

“Why should you be sorry?” she asked simply. “Cernach was no friend to you.”

“That is true,” I agreed. “But I thought you might be sad.”

“Well, I am not,” she replied, the fire flaring up in her eyes.

“I was given to Cernach by the king. Our marriage pleased one person and one person only, and that was never me.”

“I see.”

“Cernach was a dull and ill-tempered man. He cared little for anything save fighting and drinking. He raised his hand to me more than once, and I vowed he would die—or I would—before the year was out. The Connachta saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Sionan's bitter outpouring surprised me, and I could think of nothing to say.

“You condemn me for my hardness of heart,” she said, gazing at me defiantly.

“Not at all,” I replied. “Who am I to condemn anyone?”

“I don't care what you think. I did not like Cernach, and I never loved him. That is the truth of it.” She frowned, lowering her dark eyes. “Still, I tried to be a good wife to him…” she paused, shaking her head, “but he should never have beat me.”

She raised her head and looked away. I saw tears glimmering in her eyes.

“I'm sorry, Sionan.”

She rubbed away the tears with the heels of her hands, and an awkward silence stretched between us. “What about the sheep?” I asked at last.

“The sheep?” she tilted her head to one side. “Oh, they have been moved down to the valley. One of the pig lads is looking after them for now, never worry.”

“When will Cormac come back?”

Her lips bent into a slow, teasing smile. “What, are you tired of me already?”

“By no means,” I said quickly. “I only wondered.”

She regarded me with benign concern for a moment. “You should rest now. When you awake, Cormac will be here, no doubt.”

“Thank you, Sionan,” I said, overcome by a sudden outpouring of gratitude. “Thank you for saving me.”

“You said that already,” she answered lightly. “Now, go to sleep.”

She sat with me a long time, watching over me while I slowly sank into a deep, exhausted sleep. The next morning when I awoke, she was gone.

I
T WAS LATE
morning when Cormac returned to the bothy. The young druid stayed with me for the next three days, and we had many wide-ranging talks. His knowledge of his island realm seemed inexhaustible. I, however, was too easily exhausted. Try as I might, I could not keep up with him. Our mild encounters left me bemused, bewildered, and slightly disconcerted by the things he said.

For example: One day, as I was lying on my bed looking up at the dark clouds swirling overhead, he sat down cross-legged beside me and said, “Do you believe there are objects of such potency that the sick are healed simply by touching them?”

“I suppose.” Certainly the rustics and pagan Britons held similar beliefs.

“It is true,” he affirmed with a sharp nod. “There are other objects which protect their bearers from all harm and still others that cause no end of harm and mischief to anyone unfortunate enough to encounter them.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“Likewise there are seers able to view the past simply by holding an object.”

“Have you ever witnessed this?”

“Oh, aye.”

“How do you know what they say is true?” I asked, drawn into the discussion somewhat despite myself. The pagan practices of the godforsaken heathen were beneath the regard of civilized men. Yet, Cormac was my physician and
friend, and I had no wish to insult him. He seemed intent on talking, so I listened.

“Ah! You are a quick one, Succat. You cut to the heart of the matter there.”

“Well? How do you know?”

“Alas.” He sighed. “It is hopeless. You see, no matter how persuasively they speak to earn their meat and meal, it is impossible for anyone to tell how much of what they say is true and how much is merely dream, how much speculation, and how much invention. Not even they themselves always know.” He leaned slightly forward. “To this I can testify,” he said confidently, “for I myself have the same gift.”

“Truly?”

He nodded. “Even so, I can tell you that something is retained in objects that have been used and loved by their owners over time, or which are associated with great good or powerful evil.” He picked up a twig and began scratching in the dirt. “A certain subtle power remains that can be felt and interpreted. But it is vague and dreamlike and fully as illusory as it is true.”

“That is interesting,” I told him. “Is there any more of the mead left?”

“And did you know,” he said, warming to the subject, “there are sacred places so potent with holiness that they can be recognized by anyone who sets foot within the charmed circle of their grace—although no altar, no votive stones, no carved images mark the site?”

Before I could reply, he continued.

“Usually these are places where tremendous good has triumphed over evil,” he said, rocking back and forth slightly, “or where unimaginable calamity has claimed a victory over the forces of light and reason. To step within the radiant sphere is to join the human spirit to the spirit of the place, for good or for ill.”

I thought of the dolmen Madog had shown me and where we had laid the old shepherd to rest when he died. “It does not surprise me.”

“All this I know.” Cormac regarded me with a wise and judicious look. “All this I have observed.”

We talked then of his druid training, and he told me many things. All the time we talked, he seemed to be assessing me, trying me—though for what purpose I could not guess. Perhaps my receptiveness to the ideas he expounded interested him. In my own way I was agreeable—at least I did not wish to offend him. I owed him a great debt of gratitude for my healing.

Whatever he saw in me, he seemed determined to delve deep and bring it out; thus our discussions grew by turns more earnest, solemn, and weighty.

“All men yearn for certainty,” he proclaimed one night. This is how our discussions usually began; Cormac would announce the topic, and off we would go. Sionan had been with us earlier in the day but had gone down to the ráth, leaving Cormac and me to talk long into the night. “Do you believe this?”

“I do. It would be a great boon to know where we stand in this world, what is, what has been, what will be. And to know it absolutely.”

“Indeed.” He seemed well satisfied with my answer. “All men pray for assurance that time cannot corrupt nor doubt corrode. Thus the soothsayers compare the liver of a slaughtered sheep with the clay model in their hands and declare sureties which can never exist. Divine inspiration is lacking, therefore they are fallible.”

“My grandfather said such men were wicked for deceiving those who trusted, and it was a sin even to speak to them.”

“Nor is that all. There are priests who have learned the secrets of discerning the future from flights of birds.” At my questioning glance he said, “Truly. But when they are confronted with signs they do not recognize, they become confused and utter their predictions blindly. Likewise, there are some who seek answers in the smoke and flames of sacrificial fires and others who claim to read destiny in the issue of blood and bile of dying men.”

“How is this accomplished?” I asked.

Cormac frowned. “No, I will not speak of them. Nor will I stoop to mention the interpreters of lightning who ascend the hilltops before the storm in order to rank the thunderbolts according to their color and position in the vault of heaven, which they have divided into sixteen celestial regions, each ruled by a separate deity.”

“Tell me, Cormac,” I insisted.

But he would not. “I will not speak of such things, for thus it has ever been and thus it shall ever be. Nothing is more lamentable than dead and ossified knowledge: fallible human understanding instead of divine perception. A man can learn much, but learning is not knowledge. The only true source of infallible certainty is divine illumination.”

“Now you sound like my grandfather,” I told him.

“So you say. Tell me about him.”

“Potitus? There is little enough to tell. I was still very young when he died. He was the presbyter of Bannavem. He performed the observances of the Holy Church for our town and the surrounding countryside.”

“He was a Christian.”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“I was,” I replied, “but no longer.”

“Why not?”

“Do you need to ask?” I said, my voice growing tight with irritation. “Look at me, Cormac. I am a slave. I prayed for deliverance—with all my heart I prayed—and
this
is how God answered me.”

“Then why not accept his answer?”

“Bah!” I sneered, exasperation getting the better of me. “Now you
do
sound like my grandfather.”

“Is that so strange?”

“Strange? It is uncanny,” I retorted. “I mean no disrespect, Cormac, but I find it more than strange that you, a heathen, should hold the same views as my grandfather.”

“Where is the difficulty?” he asked. “Is it that your grand
father and I should agree, or that a heathen should know something of God?”

I stared at him. “What do you know of the Christian God?”

“I know what is to be known,” he answered. The druid-kind, I was learning, rarely answered a thing straight when they could evade it somehow.

Before I could protest that this was no answer at all, he said, “Iosa the Mighty, son of the Goodly Wise, has long been known to us.”

It was such rank nonsense I could think of no apt reply, so I said, “Who is this ‘us' you speak of? You and your fellow idol worshippers?”

My nasty remark cut him; he did not expect it, and it stung. He winced, and fire came up in his eyes, but he held his tongue. In a moment, his expression softened. “You should not mock what lies beyond your grasp.”

He stood.

“I am sorry, Cormac. You are right. It was a stupid thing to say. Please, forget I said it.”

“Three things cannot be called back: the arrow when it speeds from the bow, the milk when the churn is upturned, the word when it leaps from the tongue.”

The color crept to my cheeks, and my ears burned under his gentle rebuke. “I am sorry, Cormac.”

He drew himself up. “Words are worth little when the heart refuses to hear. Therefore, judge us by our works.”

The offended druid turned and stumped away. I tried to call him back, to no avail. I was left alone with my regretful thoughts for the night.

Sionan arrived late the next day with supplies. “Never fear,” she said when I told her what had happened. “He cannot remain angry for long. Cormac is the mildest of men; when next you see him, he will have forgotten all about it.”

“You seem to know him very well,”

“How not?” she asked. “He is my brother.”

“Then I'm even more sorry than before. You and Cormac
have been nothing but kindness itself. I had no right to speak to him as I did.”

“And I tell you he has already forgiven you.” She regarded me with an expression I could not read, then said, “But if you wish to make amends—”

“I do.”

“Then take off your filthy clothes and let me wash them.”

“But I—”

“Tch!” she said, raising a smooth eyebrow. “You should be happy someone is offering.”

“Sionan, I cannot move as it is,” I complained, “and anyway, I have nothing else to wear.”

“All you have to do is lie there beneath the fleeces until they're dry.” She lowered the bag of provisions to the ground and stepped nearer. “Here, now, I will help you get them off.”

“Sionan, please, can we not let it wait?”

“I think it has waited too long already,” she said crisply.

“Off with them, now.”

I began removing my tunic, every movement a trial of stiffness and pain. I got it raised to my shoulders and could go no further. Sionan had to help me get it over my head, but as she tried to draw it over my splinted arm, I heard a rip as the well-worn fabric gave way.

“Not to worry,” she said, tossing my tunic aside. “Now your bríste.”

This was more difficult; I could do little more than lie back as, having loosened my trousers, she slid them down over my unbending legs. I pulled the fleeces over me once again, and looked at my once-fine clothes—now merely filth-crusted rags. “I fear they will not survive the washing,” I told her.

“Well,” she said doubtfully, holding up the threadbare trousers, “I will see what can be done.” Then she cast a critical eye over me. “And how long since you were bathed and washed?”

“I bathe,” I replied.

“When?”

“You cannot expect me to wash like this.” I held up my splinted arm.

“When?” she demanded.

“Not since the last beating.”

“And not before either,” she said.

“We have no soap,” I offered by way of explanation. “No one ever brings us any.”

“Well,
I
have soap,” she said. “I was going to use it for washing your clothes. You can have that.” She looked around. “Now, then…” She saw the stone basin outside the bothy. “There!”

“Sionan, have a heart,” I pleaded. “I cannot bathe in that. I am too big. Besides, what would we drink?”

“Come.” She moved quickly to me. “Get up on your feet. I will put some water aside for drinking, and then you can stand in the stoup.”

“Even if I could move, I would not do it,” I told her vehemently.

But she was no longer listening. She filled the bowls and waterskin and, taking some heated rocks from the fire, put them in the stoup to warm the water. And then, with no thought or care for my dignity, she pulled away the fleece and began pulling and prodding me to my feet. I shuffled on her arm to the basin and carefully stepped in, holding to the side of the bothy with my good hand. Even with the heated stones, the water was still icy cold, and I had to cling to the rough timber of the bothy to remain standing as Sionan doused me until I was drenched, and then she began to wash me.

The soap was hard and strong, and she was vigorous and unrelenting in her scouring of my poor, battered hide. Aching, shaking, humiliated, I stood to her ministrations. She talked while she worked, but I paid no attention; every movement brought a wince or a twinge of pain, and it took all my strength and concentration to keep from crying out.

Finally the ordeal was over. She emptied a few more
bowls of water to rinse away the soap and then pronounced her victim clean. “Here, take my fallaing,” she said, draping her cloak over my shoulders. “There,” she cooed, “is that not better now?”

“It is,” I lied.

She helped to dry me and then stood a little apart, her head held to one side. “Human again,” she declared at last, and, with a quick, calculating glance at my long, unkempt hair, added, “nearly.”

She led me to Madog's stone beside the fire ring and made me sit down. She fetched from the bag a bone comb and a pair of shears, small and finely made. “What is this?” I asked.

“Every sheep needs a good shearing now and then,” she replied, “and likewise every shepherd. Not so?”

With some difficulty she began dragging the comb through the wet, massed tangles of my hair, clucking her tongue at the wretched condition I had allowed myself to get into. There was still a large bump on my head where the spear shaft had cracked me, and I cried out whenever she passed over it. “Be quiet,” she ordered. “You could be making it easier, you know.”

“You could just let the warriors have at me again,” I whined. “I am certain they'd happily finish the job.”

“No one is ever going to beat you again,” she told me, her voice taking on an edge.

The quiet confidence of that bald declaration astonished me. I wanted to ask her how this miracle would come about, but dared not, for fear of proving her false. I held my tongue, and let the assertion go unchallenged.

Sionan worked over my bruised head and with quick, skillful snips reduced the untidy crop of hair to a more acceptable length. When she finished, she ran her fingers lightly over the short stubble of my lumpy pate and admired her handiwork.