Authors: Joseph Finley
The bishop snapped back, “The devil’s province is deception!”
“Listen to the bishop!” Brother Cellach cried, but the others shouted him down.
“Enough!” Abba yelled, his aged voice cracking from the strain. He turned to the bishop. “You’ve said what you’ve said. We respect the laws of the Church, but we will not rush to judgment. If Brother Dónall is found or comes forth, there must be a trial.”
“As you wish,” Bishop Adémar said coldly. “But remember this: to aid a heretic is to
become
a heretic.” He stepped forward, standing nearly a head taller than most of the monks.
“That was a bit bold even for you,” Niall said to Ciarán.
“I couldn’t help myself.”
Niall moved toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.” Ciarán turned to go with him, but hard fingers grasped his arm in a grip like a blacksmith’s.
“You’re the whelp mac Taidg brought here,” Bishop Adémar said, his fingers digging into Ciarán’s flesh. “A bastard of heretics.”
Ciarán’s eyes hardened. “My mother was a nun, not a heretic.”
The bishop released Ciarán’s arm. “Yes, I suppose that is what he would have told you.”
“How do you know who I am?” Ciarán asked.
The bishop gave him a cold smile as he turned to walk away. “All you need know,” he called back, “is that everything you have come to believe is a lie.”
A
low baying cut through the
hiss of the rain. Dónall grimaced at the sound. The Franks had unleashed their mastiffs
.
Down the oak-wooded swale behind him, twigs snapped and dead leaves crackled under the dogs’ massive paws. And far behind them, he could hear the halloos of men rushing through the woods.
Dónall peered through the streaming rain. A dense labyrinth of oak, ash, and birch thickets surrounded him, but they would provide no concealment against the dogs’ keen noses. He had hoped to work his way through the woods, around the peat bog, and across the hills to Aileach, his ancestral home, but that would have to wait.
His thoughts whirled and tumbled. Archbishop Adalbero of Reims was dead, his inquisition disbanded. So why had this new bishop from Blois traveled all the way to Ireland these twenty years later? Dónall struggled to remember whether he had seen the man before—working with Gerbert of Aurillac, perhaps, back at Reims.
The baying grew louder, punctuated with throaty snarls. Dónall hefted his staff. Sturdy and as tall as he, it had been cut from a lightning-struck alder and then painted with soot and flaxseed oil until it was as black as the tree that formed it. The staff was a formidable enough weapon against men, but Dónall knew it would be no match for the mastiffs. For these were the war dogs of Franks and Saxons, a terror to foot soldiers and strong enough to pull an armored man from his horse.
As the rain pattered against the bare branches and forest duff around him, Dónall saw the blur of a mastiff’s tawny coat, bounding toward him through the trees. From a pocket in his rough woolen habit, he took out an opaque white crystal the size of a hazel nut. With an effort, he ignored the onrushing beast and cleared his mind of conscious thought.
The mastiff burst through the undergrowth, barking ferociously, its great teeth bared and snapping at the air. Eyes on its quarry, it leaped into the natural corridor formed by a broken line of birches. Not ten paces behind it streaked a second mastiff, spittle flying from its massive jaws.
Dónall held the crystal to his lips and, blowing softly, whispered a single word:
“Eoh.”
Within the crystal, a tiny spark appeared. A verse rolled off Dónall’s tongue, the words neither Irish nor Latin. He thrust his hand forward, and the crystal’s spark flared into a soft yet brilliant white light. The two mastiffs skidded to a halt, just feet from Dónall. They ceased barking and cocked their heads, entranced by the light.
Dónall uttered another verse, and comprehension glimmered in the dark canine eyes. They sat submissively as the crystal’s light faded to a warm glow.
“Good dogs,” Dónall said, patting their heads. The lead mastiff let out a passive whimper. Then the pounding of boots and the faint
chink
of mail sounded from the woods. Dónall peered into the trees, looking for the Frank, but the man must still be well behind his dogs. Scratching the scruff of the lead mastiff’s neck, Dónall spoke another strange word, then waved toward the trees to his left. Both dogs darted away.
Through the trees, Dónall spied the mail coat of a Frankish soldier. Heart pounding, he ducked behind the trunk of an ancient oak. The light within the crystal had died, and he stowed it in his habit.
The Frank, sword in hand, rushed down the corridor of birches, raindrops streaming off his helmet as his weathered face peered left and right, searching for the dogs. The mastiffs were gone, but their paws had punched deep into the wet forest duff. He stopped at the sight of the prints and put two fingers to his lips. A sharp whistle followed, cut to a mere chirp by the crack of Dónall’s staff.
The heavy alder stave glanced off the Frank’s helmet and crashed down on his shoulder, driving him backward. Dónall sprang from behind the oak and swung the staff again, catching the Frank behind the knees. Arms windmilling, the soldier went down hard on his back, the sword slipping from his grasp. He looked up at his attacker with a stunned gaze.
“Why are you here?” Dónall asked.
“Because the bishop wants you dead,” the man growled.
Dónall drew back on the staff as if to strike again, and the man flinched. Rain pelted his face, thinning the blood till it looked like wine. “Why?” Dónall demanded.
The Frank grimaced. “Because of something you possess.”
Dónall drove his heel hard into the Frank’s rib cage. “
What,
damn you!”
“The book,” the Frank gasped. “The one you stole from Reims.”
Dónall’s eyes grew wide. “No,” he muttered under his breath. And bellowing with Irish rage, he slammed the staff downward, smashing it into the man’s jaw.
Dónall breathed heavily as new and troubling questions arose in his mind. He knew what he must do.
For now, he would hide. Then he must go back to Derry.
T
hat night, the bishop’s soldiers
rousted the monks from their sleep, searching for Dónall among the cells. The soldiers were in a surly mood. Ciarán, who shared a cell with Niall, had to hold back his friend, and they watched in silence while a broad-shouldered Frank, with the monks’ beer on his breath, invaded their home.
Though the cell was round like a beehive outside, inside the mortarless stone walls it was a single small, rectangular room with nowhere for anything bigger than a rat to hide. And yet, the Frank lingered, scanning every inch of the candlelit cell, and making the two junior monks lift their straw pallets just to prove nothing was hidden underneath. The whole time, the Frank fingered the pommel of his sheathed broadsword, while outside, the mastiffs filled all of Derry with their barking and baying.
“Go back to bloody France, you piss-drinking bastard!” Niall yelled after the Frank stepped back outside. The soldier whirled about, hand on his sword hilt, but Ciarán breathed a relieved sigh when it became clear that the Frank did not understand the Irish words. The Frank shot Niall a wicked grin before turning away and striding to the next cell.
“Are you looking to get us killed!” Ciarán hissed.
“Bloody Franks,” Niall said. “There’s a hundred of us and only twenty of them. We should make ’em leave!”
“I think Abba hopes to avoid a fight with the Roman Church. And besides, we can’t fight mailed swordsmen. We’re monks, not warriors.”
Niall scowled and shook his head. “This is wrong. We should take a stand. Saint Columcille would’ve fought ’em.”
Ciarán clapped Niall on the shoulder. “Well, it’s our bad luck he’s not here. Now, get some sleep.”
Niall grumbled a reply, and Ciarán had to listen to him complain until the bell rang for Nocturns, when the monks gathered in the oratory for the next holy office of prayer.
The bishop and his priests did not attend the vigil, but rumors quickly spread that one of the Franks was found in the woods, half conscious with a broken jaw. Ciarán could not help but wonder whether Dónall was the cause, for though he was no warrior, he was big and strong, with a temper that could flare like a birch-bark torch. Ciarán prayed that his friend was safe for the night. With luck, he had fled to Aileach, where his cousin ruled as king.
When the monks returned to their cells, Ciarán could not sleep. The bishop’s parting words still haunted him. Ciarán knew that his mother had sinned in the eyes of the church by abandoning her vow of chastity and having a child out of wedlock, but that was a far cry from the bishop’s claim of heresy. And Ciarán’s father was just a commoner, some charming Breton she had met during a pilgrimage through Brittany and France, who had left her before either knew that she was with child. Yet more troubling was that this bishop from Blois should even know who Ciarán was. Certainly, the bishop had lied, just as he had lied in accusing Dónall. But why? These questions heaved and churned in Ciarán’s mind like an angry sea, causing him to toss on his straw pallet until the bells chimed again for Matins, the holy office observed between midnight and dawn to mark the moment Saint Peter denied Christ for the third time.
He slept no better after Matins, but by Terce the sun had risen, and while Ciarán suffered through fitful dreams the rain had gone, and now the sun shone bright on the green hills of Ireland. After observing the holy office, Ciarán and Niall, along with a score of their brethren, returned to their work in the scriptorium—until an hour before Sext, when another ship arrived at Derry.
*
A bell signaled the ship’s arrival, all but emptying the scriptorium. Ciarán and Niall joined their fellow scribes heading down the clover green hill toward the riverbank. Passing the oratory’s moss-speckled roof in the shape of an overturned boat, they met another score of monks streaming out of various workshops. They passed the round tower and arrived at the banks of the river, where sunlight shimmered like quicksilver on the water.
The newly arrived vessel moored next to the bishop’s ship was an Irish curach, with a narrow wood-framed hull covered in black ox hide, and a single mast with one weather-stained sail. No fancy pennants adorned the curach’s masthead, and rather than a crew of soldiers, six rugged Irishmen were busy unloading chests and barrels with the help of their burly, black-bearded captain, whom all the monks knew as Merchant mac Fadden.
Ciarán smiled when he saw mac Fadden’s ruddy face, burned by the wind and sun from his constant journeying across the Celtic Sea. The captain had long served the monastery by transporting books between Derry and abbeys in France, continuing a practice started centuries ago in the days of Saint Columcille, when Irish monks and their quill pens saved countless written works from the Continent that otherwise would have perished at the hands of the Visigoths and Vandals. Ciarán always loved the arrival of new books, and this morning it was the only thing to brighten his day.
“What do you have for us today, Merchant?” asked Brother Áengus, a lanky senior monk who served as the scriptorium’s provisioner.
“Some fine books from Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” Merchant mac Fadden replied. “Several nice Psalters, a few epistles, a copy of the
Lives of the Saints
and one of that history book by Herodotus, and the cream of the crop: a complete Bible in Latin, just like Saint Jerome would’ve copied it. It fills a whole chest, though, and may take two stout lads to move it.”
“Splendid!” Brother Áengus said, clasping his hands together like an eager child.
“Oh,” Merchant mac Fadden added, “and a book for Brother Dónall.” The old captain scanned the collection of monks who had gathered at the pier. “Now, where is he?”
Several of the brethren looked away, and Brother Áengus ran his fingers nervously across his chin.
“He’s gone away for a while,” Ciarán said, stepping up.
“That’s too bad.” Merchant mac Fadden reached into the nearest chest and took out a rather ordinary-looking book, bound in dark leather. “It’s from a Brother Remi. Real odd bird, that one, and very anxious for Dónall to have it. Said it was urgent.”
“I can hold it for him,” Ciarán offered.
“That’d be good, lad.” Merchant mac Fadden gave Ciarán the book, then squinted past him. “Now, who in the world might that be?”
Ciarán turned around. Striding toward the riverbank was the bishop with a half-dozen of his soldiers, followed by one of the black-robed priests.
“That’d be His
Holiness
from France,” Niall answered. “Bishop Adémar of Blois, who thinks he can just sail over to Ireland and take over.”
“He’s part of some archbishop’s inquisition,” Ciarán said more evenly.
The bishop’s long strides forced his soldiers and the priest to jog to keep up. “Inspect that cargo,” Bishop Adémar snapped before turning to mac Fadden. “And who are
you
?”
“A poor merchant, Your Excellency. I transport books and wine between here and the continent.” Merchant mac Fadden stood no taller than the point of the bishop’s gray-flecked beard. “I’ve got charters from the abbots of Saint-Ouen, Saint-Denis, and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, among others.”
The bishop’s eyes narrowed. “I’d like to see those charters.”
Merchant mac Fadden’s cheeks flushed red, and a hint of anger furrowed his brow. But two of the bishop’s mailed guardsmen stood beside him now, so he nodded and said, “I’ve got ’em back there.” He turned to walk back to his curach, grumbling under his breath.
“Inspect all the books!” Bishop Adémar barked to his men. And before Ciarán could back away, the bishop snatched the book intended for Dónall. Ciarán froze. The priest standing beside the bishop seemed to gloat in silence. He was a thin-faced man with oily hair, whom the monks had quickly come to know and despise as Father Gauzlin.
Bishop Adémar flipped opened the book’s leather cover. A title, penned in letters illuminated with interlacing patterns of purple and red, dominated the first page:
THE APOCALYPSE OF JOHN.
A thin smile spread across the bishop’s lips. “The book of Revelation,” he said. “How appropriate.”
To Ciarán’s surprise, he handed back the book. Ciarán took it, exhaled a grateful sigh, and shrank back into the little throng lest the bishop change his mind.
“I want four men at this pier at all times,” Bishop Adémar ordered his men. “No one leaves on this boat except the merchant and his crew.”
Merchant mac Fadden came walking back from the curach with several rolled parchments in hand. Passing Ciarán and Niall, he whispered in Irish, “I’ll be in Magh Bhile all week if you need me, lads.” Niall gave a subtle nod as Merchant mac Fadden turned to the bishop and held out the charters.
“Let’s go,” Ciarán told Niall under his breath. He glanced at Father Gauzlin, who was watching them the way a hawk might eye a crippled hare. Ciarán lowered his head, looking away, and then followed a group of monks back to the scriptorium.
Once back at his desk and warmed by the crackling fire, Ciarán fiddled with his quills, sharpening and cleaning them and paying scant attention to the manuscript before him as he waited for the bell to toll Sext.
When it did, he whispered to Niall, “Linger here.”
Niall looked at him, perplexed. “We’re not going to the oratory?”
“No one will notice we’re gone,” he said, reaching for the leather-bound book that Merchant mac Fadden had given him. “The monk who sent this to Dónall said it was urgent that he get it. We need to know why.”
Niall shrugged. “But it’s just the Apocalypse of John. We must have five of them already.”
“So, then, what makes
this
copy so important?” Ciarán asked.
“Ah,” Niall said. “I see what you mean.”
Ciarán waited until the scriptorium cleared out before opening the cover. The pages smelled of fresh-scraped vellum. “This is new,” he observed. He began leafing through the pages. The script was well penned in the Carolingian style, but it was the illuminations that caught his eye. Vines of red, green, and yellow crawled up the margin of one page while, along the bottom, interlaced ribbons formed the image of a four-winged bird wreathed in flame. Green, blue, crimson, and gold filled the spaces between the lines of script. “Whoever illuminated this was a master,” Ciarán said.
“It has pretty pictures—so what?” Niall remarked.
Ciarán thumbed through several more pages. “I’d call them
disturbing
.” The page bore a large illumination of an angel with sprawling wings, surrounded by billowing clouds. The angel blew a long golden trumpet that spewed blood on a crowd of people, who writhed in apparent agony. Beneath the picture was a verse:
The first angel blew his trumpet, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were hurled to the earth.
Niall stared at the image. “I should say so.”
Another page depicted three trumpet-blaring angels, and a flaming star falling from the sky toward a walled town. A page later, another verse preceded another illumination:
And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.
Beneath those words, the illumination portrayed a horde of winged demons erupting from a smoking pit whose fumes blotted the sky. The demonic horde assailed a host of monks who prayed and wept atop a turf of flamelike grass, where another word was painted:
“Abaddon.”
Two pages later, a cavalry of armored men charged across the land on fire-breathing lions with tails that were writhing snakes, and on the next page, a great city’s majestic columns and domes collapsed to dust.
Ciarán flipped through two more pages, skimming the text, then turned another page, which was tagged with a bookmark of burgundy ribbon attached to the binding. “Someone marked this page,” he said.
“This Brother Remi is not the cheeriest sort,” Niall quipped, looking down to a verse that preceded a stunning illumination:
And war broke out in Heaven. Michael and his archangels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in Heaven.
The painting that followed, consuming nearly two full pages, portrayed a serpentine dragon in the sky, twisted in battle against the hosts of heaven. Angels thrust spears into the beast, except for Saint Michael, who held a blazing sword. Teardrop flames spilled from the dragon’s mouth onto the earth below. In the bottom left corner, a great white horse with a flowing mane stood rampant, kicking out with its forelegs. And at the bottom of the second page, more angels threw cadaverous-looking demons into a fiery pit. From the pit, smoke rose, gathering near the dragon’s tail, which swept stars from the heavens to the earth.
“Is this supposed to mean something to Brother Dónall?” Niall asked.
Ciarán shook his head, “I have no idea.” He felt drawn to the painting’s elaborate detail. Each of the stars had six white points outlined in black. The demons each bore red marks—the wounds wrought by the angels’ spears—and each angel wore elaborate robes embroidered with lines of gold and blue, in between which the artist had painted small dots of color representing jewels. But none of these details could match the dragon’s. Its white eye had a glaring red pupil within a jet black iris. And there was something about the scales. Each was painted in a distinctive pattern, alternating between red and gold over a black surface. Close up, the pattern appeared random, but from even a slight distance, the scales rippled over the dragon’s snaking torso like tendrils of red smoke rising from a burning candle. At points, the pattern inexplicably shifted direction. Lost in this detail, Ciarán traced the patterns with his finger.
“What?” Niall asked.
Ciarán ignored him. In the middle of the torso, the scales devolved to an even stranger pattern. “My God,” Ciarán said, “I think there’s a letter concealed here.” He pointed to the image. Against the black background, the scales formed a “D.” “There’s more, too.” Amid an array of red and gold scales, an “Ó” emerged, followed by “N” and three other characters. The letters made a word, and down the dragon’s tail, more hidden letters formed a second word.
Ciarán’s blood ran cold. For together, the words made a phrase:
DÓNALL BEWARE!
Niall stared wide-eyed at the page. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “You were right.”