BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland (11 page)

“Much labor goes into felling trees and hauling wood.” He gestured toward an area naked of trees.

Creidhne grabbed for a slab of cattle ribs, and eyed him. “You are a quiet one, at that. So in honor of your asking me, I’ll tell you: it takes tens of trees to produce one copper axehead. That’s from the start of it, burning roundels of oak and ash inside the tunnels to shatter the rock. Then as you’ve seen, the rock is transported to the charcoal pits. If we carried wood to the mines and smelted ore there, we’d have a lot more work than we have carrying ore to the smelting pits, believe me. To make copper uses wood amounting to hundreds of times the weight of the finished copper. It’s easier to transport the mined rock to the fire pits, rather than carry all that wood to the mine, so.”

Creidhne traced symbols in the dirt that counted sun cycles, to show him how much wood the fires consumed to make just one axehead. Still the smith said nothing about the smelting process itself.

Cian took his meals with Creidhne and other miners, seated on cattle skins. The miners ate boiled or roasted meat of cattle and pig. He found the food well-prepared: they used a grated root that made his eyes water, different herbs than he had tasted, and ocean salt. Their women foraged for nuts and produce in the woods. He liked their soup of forest mushrooms and herbs pureed under a pestle and heated. They had supplies from the rare boat, like dried beans from over the waters, in varieties new to him.

The miners traded locally for beef and cereal grains, and they were aware of the harsh growing season after the dust storm early in that spring. Here, unlike warriors at the Boyne, men did not go raiding for foodstuffs; or so it appeared to Cian. If the winter ahead looked bleak and short of food, these workers would want to go to their homes. No one spoke of boats coming for them. He wondered if this camp would keep peace with the locals on empty stomachs.

The women favored him with a meat that melted in his mouth. These Seafarers raised their pigs in enclosures and fed them only acorns, then lightly smoked the meat until pink and tender, at the ever-tended charcoal pits. Cian fairly well gorged himself on that succulent ham.

He took another bite from his chunk of ham and asked Creidhne, “Why aren’t the men here using copper axes to fell trees?”

Creidhne pawed at his beef and answered offhandedly, “Cost. You’ve seen that it takes a great amount of wood and many men to produce copper. The traders decide what copper stays here and what they send off, east to the big island and farther beyond.”

“The copper axes wouldn’t do the work faster?” Cian persisted.

The smith shrugged his broad shoulders. He was massive, but from those hands Cian had seen delicate work, finely etched lines decorating copper tools made by Creidhne’s sure fingers. “We make copper axes for trade. But for these ordinary workers to use, we have a good supply of hard stone axes. These men know the proper stroke with a stone axe.”

Cian thought of Connor’s trip to the north: did Connor want the blue-grey stone axeheads that Starwatchers there made in great quantity? No, he decided, it would be foolish to journey north just for those axeheads, and it would be more foolish to ruin those ceremonial axes at felling trees. Those famed axes came from fine-grained rock quarried on the slopes of Tievebulliagh, a mountain far up in the north. The highly polished, ovoid axes had long been deemed valuable for exchange. His people had an exchange network for axes that included other coasts and they didn’t need Invaders for that. More likely, Connor sought copper or the sun metal, gold, on his sudden trip north with his men. If they found ores, the Invaders might quit the Boyne and move north. He kept his face impassive while Creidhne continued speaking.

“Your axes on Eire—the polished flint axe, and those made from hard green rock found along the east coast—take down any tree well enough.” Creidhne looked to see if his answer satisfied Cian. “This island is awash with stone axes, so!”

Cian saw that the smith did not bother himself about the enormous amount of work and wood to produce just one axehead of the metal that Starwatchers called shadow moon, the exact color of an eclipsed moon. Of necessity, Cian compared the intense labor at the mines with the Starwatchers’. Building their immense mounds at the Boyne had required hundreds of Starwatchers working over a long period—when the fields, or the animal breeding and birthing and grazing rotations, did not occupy them. But he did not see the reason for so many workers brought over hazardous seas to these Lake mines, working throughout the light and dark, and felling vast numbers of trees, to produce so few axeheads of this copper. It must be possible for Starwatchers to make copper and pour axes. Cian wanted to try using a copper axe to see how well it felled a tree, although he had seen that the smiths kept the copper axeheads and ingots under an alert guard.

What power does this shadow moon metal have over the Invaders, he wondered.

He decided to take another approach. “The workers know how to fashion a stone axe, also stone hammers. They know how to make charcoal to heat the copper ore. What is to stop them from going off to mine the shadow moon metal from other places?”

“Right you are, Cian. Nothing stops them from mining ore themselves. Except that Invaders control the copper trading. And the big boats! These workers want to go home, back to their peninsula far over the waters, to their women and children. They have to get there on a big Invader boat. For example, that
currach
your man brought you lads in on from the Boyne, won’t hold up for another sea journey.”

So that was it, Invaders controlled who received a metal axehead. They drained copper from the earth and sent Eire’s copper over the ocean. No exchange, no ceremony; he sat stunned. It didn’t appear that Elcmar alone controlled the copper, and if not, who did?

Creidhne’s last remark referred to the Invaders’ boat called the
naomhog
: a high-sided
currach
that was larger, swifter, and less likely to be swamped in tall waves. None were to be had on this coast at present, but Cian heard the rumor that Elcmar was considering using the currach in which they arrived to cross the great waters to the Continent. He had seen it was not well suited to the ocean. It was madness to consider using that currach again, even to return to the Boyne.

His grip tightened on the drinking cup he held. Its blossom shape reminded him that he carried messages from Cliodhna and others at the Boyne camp, for delivery here at the Lake mine. The crescent moon sparkled over the sooty lake surface in the distance. Before this moon was full, he would find all the trusted persons and deliver those messages.

Creidhne sat chewing, and Cian saw that the brawny smith did not want more questions, that he stubbornly withheld the details of the smelting art. Cian finished the last bites of his meal.
Creidhne follows Elcmar’s directions, to keep me busy around this camp, but not show me their magic of pouring shining metal from rock.
One of the workers had told him that it took a long time, much practice, to smelt copper correctly.

He put one more question to the smith. “It is said that gold is the best metal, the easiest to work.”

Creidhne yawned. “Gold is warm, soft like a woman. Copper is more temperamental than a woman. If only tin were to be had here we could use it with this slick copper for making a good malleable bronze.” The big smith sighed, and his fingers twitched as if touching a woman, or gold, or both.

“What is tin?”

But the smith arose from Cian and went off to his cold bed of sheep skins, alone, in his hut like the others, a domed wicker enclosure roughly plastered over with mud. Despite knowing some star cycles and using them to communicate numbers to Cian, Creidhne rarely looked up at the skies. This night was no different.

That one has journeyed far away from his ancestors, thought Cian as Creidhne lumbered off into the darkness.

Before Cian would sleep, he withdrew himself from all in the camp in order to look at the moon and certain bright stars. Seeing the mining camp shook him to the core. How much longer there could be equilibrium on Eire given the intruders’ ways, he did not know. He saw no reason for the Starwatchers to adopt Invaders’ ways. And there were not enough island women for these intruders to steal for wives, certainly not if they murdered women in the process.

This Elcmar was no fool. It would be easier to make friends through a marriage than to battle the Starwatchers, who greatly outnumbered the Invaders. Cian himself could see both sides of things better, after living among the warriors. Hadn’t his people, Starwatchers, fought to establish themselves, clear areas of the land, and build their mounds? Of course, that conflict happened generations ago; things improved and his elders had forgotten days of battle. The tribes on this fertile island kept relations peaceful, trading polished axeheads and brides. They lived in relative equality, uniting for projects like building the mounds. All the people engaged to some degree in starwatching, proud that their island had become a destination, a place of pilgrimage to their Boyne mounds. Complacent, his elders had no idea how vulnerable they now were.

Invaders would not tolerate equality; it appeared they had no word for it.

He should have explained himself better to his elders after Sheela’s murder. We cannot defend ourselves unless we understand these Invaders, he should have said. Not that it would have done any good. His elders could not, would not see what was happening to their island, despite the murder. Invaders had not turned over the man responsible, nor made amends.

His fists clenched now, to recall armed warriors bringing him before his elders so he could translate Elcmar’s demand to have Boann, long knives on either side of him. The elders’ disbelief changing to consternation with Cian. Then, the look of scorn at him from Tadhg when Boann made her fateful choice. He’d considered leaving the Invader camp at the first opportunity, on that very night if possible. He would have changed her mind, or left the Boyne.

When his head cooled, he stayed on inside the camp walls to try to protect Boann. She must remember their precious nights together; maybe she wouldn’t go through with the marriage to Elcmar… He looked for an opportunity to kill Elcmar at the warrior games. But your man Elcmar was too clever and skilled with the long knife for that.

He recalled Boann being led by sentries to the great hall.
If it were a Starwatcher marriage, she would have been accompanied by joyous women, not armed guards. She must have been choking, for the smells coming off those lads.

How he strained to follow Boann from the crush of onlookers, catching sight of her russet hair shining in the sunlight, caught up and beautifully braided. Airmid and her friends outdid themselves in presenting the bride, though this day pained them all. The overtunic she wore could only have been made by Sheela of the spirits; its fine knotting molded every curve of Boann. To him, she was perfect, nothing to be changed. Gold discs shone at her earlobes, a gift from Elcmar. Elcmar barely noticed her during that long day and Cian despised him all the more. For all that these Invaders occupied themselves with boasting and ogling, they lacked the most basic skills with women. In fact they brutalized women; a knot formed in his throat.

He regretted his silence, how he stood suspended among the Invaders shoving to see the Starwatcher bride. He never could manage to say much to Boann, even when they were children; her presence made him awkward, shy. If asked whether that was why he had left Oghma and carving the kerbstones, he would have denied it. Yet there she was and there he stood, tonguetied and inert. She would become first wife to that bounder, Elcmar. Cian wanted to carry her away, fly away together like mated swans. Instead he stayed at a distance while she passed by and into the intruders’ great hall, unable to assert himself.

Constrained by long knives in light and darkness, here in this mining camp just as he had been at Boann’s wedding. He stared down at his tight fists, shook his hands to get feeling back in them. He would fight his way out of this camp, make it back to her at the Boyne after taking revenge on Elcmar. As Creidhne said, his people have stone axes enough.

He’d need only one axe for the deed.

He shivered in the first autumn chill at the Lake mine. Killing Elcmar would accomplish nothing. More Invaders seeking metals would take Elcmar’s place, more boats and yet another swaggering
ard ri
. Courage alone could not win the battle against bronze.

Cian’s spirit ebbed so low that it frightened him.

Through that night he watched the skies as he had been trained to do. He would find the plan for what he must do, if he kept himself receptive to seeing it. He would keep his thoughts about the future to himself. The eyes and ears for Elcmar were all around him, he knew.

He continued to make scrapers and tools, placating Creidhne when the smith was about. But while that smith dozed, Cian moved closer and closer to the smelting, sitting nearby as workers toiled into the night. He offered them interesting comments about the stars, hearing in return bits of what these Seafarers knew. They had but brief exchanges, for the men at the pits dashed like fireflies with the red-hot ore under a shower of fiery sparks from the smiths’ hammers.

Lir, a mariner whose trading boat had foundered at the rocky coast, sat close by and perceived that Cian could not be observing the dark skies while seated so near to the glowing coals. Lir could tell that the youngest smith, Lein, did not want this Starwatcher watching them at their smelting. It might well lead to trouble with Creidhne or Gebann, or worse, Elcmar. The smiths resented Elcmar’s dictates but he held sway as
ard ri
.