Read BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland Online
Authors: J.S. Dunn
The great hall and its clearing occupied a rise overlooking where river swirled with ocean. They climbed the hill, led by the sentry. At the summit lay a wide path paved with quartz cobbles, split and polished to a high gloss. Cian halted. He had never seen white quartz used other than at a sacred mound entrance and its use underfoot paving the way to the hall of Taranis struck him as extreme arrogance. The sentry jabbed at him and only then did he step forward on the path.
Yew hedges growing beneath shaped beech trees lined the approach. Halfway to the hall’s entrance, he stopped again. On their left, a man’s head rested on a pike; it was a few days sitting there atop the pole, he judged. Behind the grisly pike stood a tall stone grotto stacked with layers of skulls and long bones, clearly not a burial. The burly guard approached to prod him again and he and the Basques moved along.
The wooden structure appeared many times larger than the Invader hall at the Boyne. They passed beyond carved entrance doors, into a chamber and through more impressive doors, then into a narrow antechamber with inlaid beams and patterned hangings. A crowd of men waited. Strong guards wearing leather helmets stood before a heavy door rubbed with red ocher and wax, their pikes crossed in front of it. Men talked in muffled accents behind smooth plank walls on either side. From somewhere, a man groaned in pain. The Basques stood firm around Cian, waiting.
Their turn came. Guards hurried them into the commodious reception chamber. One man sat at ease behind a long table made of rare wood. His hooded, eagle’s eyes locked with Cian’s.
An aide standing beside the seated chief ordered, “Taranis wants to see your pass for this port!” He phrased it in the Invader dialect.
The young Basques stiffened: a Basque craft traveled without any pass for any port. Cian thought the ermine skins and hefty gold nugget he handed over to the port official disposed of the matter.
Faced with Taranis, Cian seized the moment. “With all due respect, I ask Taranis to recognize my pass for these shores.” From a gap in the seam of his tunic he drew out a heavy deerskin purse and emptied it onto the table. Guards bolted toward him.
Gold nuggets large and small rumbled out, covering the tabletop. Taranis jumped to his feet. Before his eyes lay more gold than he could have imagined one man carrying, more gold than he had seen in his life. Even for the owner of the fabled gold cape, this heap of nuggets presented an incredible sight. He called out and more sentries stepped into his chamber. The brave Basques surrounding Cian drew their concealed knives, ready to spring in defense.
Cian looked steadily into Taranis’ eyes.
The chief raised both his forearms and lowered them with palms downward. His guards stepped back to the walls. Taranis spoke. “My sentries will protect my guests, not harm them.”
The Basques lowered their knives slowly. The trader chief bade his guests be seated and they met for a considerable time around his smooth table burdened with gold. In the end, Taranis assigned them a personal guard, the very same official who relieved Cian of the large gold nugget. The man entered Taranis’ chamber and fell to his knees before his chief.
“Do you want me to kill him?” Taranis inquired of Cian.
“No!”
“Then he serves you and these
Euskaldunak
with his life. This man’s already been well paid as you know. Don’t pay him again,” Taranis snapped. He glared at his port official and each guard. “You may all leave me now.
“Starwatcher, you return to me at sunrise. I’ll have an interpreter. We have much to discuss.”
Over the next sunrises, Cian held the great trader’s attention through prolonged audiences while others cooled their heels, outside the chamber. He brought more of the impressive nuggets, “as a sign of good faith and for safekeeping,” Cian said, as if he had access to unlimited gold.
The trader chief commanded the Starwatcher and the Basques to move into ample quarters close to his hall. They remained vigilant and kept an eye on their ship with the help of the newly meek port official.
In lengthy discussions with Taranis, Cian spoke openly. “I want to establish trade in gold directly from the Starwatchers to the Continent. I need your help. There are other harbors, other nodes on this long coast to ship gold or goods inland, but I like your routes here from the Loire. I’ll pay you well for my landing privileges through one full cycle of the sun, if you show me that the gold will not be molested coming into this port by anyone, from your lowest port official to the top. And we’ll need a safe place to be storing the gold.”
Taranis grumbled while they determined how not to be robbed by his own men at his port. He looked down his long nose set in a sculpted face, in a manner that showed him fully aware of his good looks. He wore his hair smoothed with rosewater and formed into black curls around a high forehead. Over a simple linen tunic, Taranis flung a length of softest wool in rich dark blue; it formed a drapery that hung perfectly on his formidable frame, elegant and masculine at the same time. Taranis’ nails displayed an even trim and buffing. This chief wore no bauble that would distract the eye, yet he oozed power.
Cian reminded himself to get a much better tunic, a fresh leather vest and shoes, maybe a good cloak, and a shave and haircut in the market; but he would do without rosewater curls and buffed nails.
The two men agreed by and by, in addition to the landing fee paid for ships carrying gold from Cian’s agents, that more gold would be apportioned to Taranis after one full solar cycle. In four seasons hence, Cian thought, he would know how much gold the Wicklow streams would reliably yield. He placed great trust in the trader chief who seemed as sound as Lir, feeling his way through their intense negotiations until all had been decided to mutual satisfaction. Elcmar would have no share in Eire’s gold.
Afterward, in his private quarters, he shook his head to clear it. The man Taranis had better prove worthy of his trust. It was only then that Cian saw how daring he had been with his own neck—and that he held the freedom and fortunes of Eire in the palm of his hand.
Taranis might send his own party looking for gold, careful as Cian had been to not give its location. Cian called for one of his Basques and sent him to the harbor ships to find a messenger, someone headed south who could fetch Lir from that coast.
Lir would bring the first shipment of gold from Eire.
Still dazed, he withdrew from the Basques and strolled to the ocean horizon as the sun set. Much depended now on the fickle waves and weather. You shall not fail for trying, he told himself. Cian prayed to Griane and Coll, his ancestors, as the mighty sun spread its fire over the waves before it set.
Taranis found their arrangement to be reasonable and much to his liking. Elcmar’s recent copper shipments from Eire had been unreliable and so his credit suffered with Taranis. That bounder and your man Connor had diverted copper to the Seafarer coast to pay off their goods and travels, the chief knew.
If any trader so much as sneezes, I hear about it
. Nothing bound him to permit only Elcmar to trade from the Starwatcher isle.
Why not allow this clever lad to establish Starwatcher gold flowing to me? So much better than my having to wait for others to find it!
In their meetings, the astute Taranis questioned Cian about his island of the setting sun, on the northwest edge of known waters and fabled for its learned Starwatchers.
As a Seafarer, Taranis had some understanding of star signs. The two men worked out a notation system for their gold shipments. They sought to verify that the gold’s original weight coming from Cian’s agents on the Starwatcher island matched its weight on arrival at the port and again at delivery to them. Cian showed him the stone plaques introduced to Cian by Gebann. Stone plaques were durable and portable, and copies could be made; they seemed reliable in that etched symbols on them could not easily be changed or erased. Taranis showed him small clay cylinders used to keep track of goods by those trading in hot lands far to the south, he said; but then he agreed that fragile clay seals didn’t suit their purpose.
Taranis remarked, “It goes without saying that your average Invader wouldn’t be able to read scratches on a stone plaque.” He smiled at the Starwatcher.
He saw Cian’s hazel eyes twinkle in return. “All my men handling the gold can be trusted. And they know the symbols, at least those we’ll be using, so.” His face grew serious once more as Cian took from his tunic a striped dark yellow stone, polished to highlight its color and grain. “Have you ever seen a stone like this?” he asked.
Taranis held out the striated yellow stone to see it better under pitch torchlight. “Yes, perhaps—and I know someone who would be certain what it is. A collector of stones, a metalsmith. I want you to meet him for our purposes anyway. I’ll have him here with the sun.”
Shortly Cian had a supply of safe passage stones to send on to Eire, scores of these stones, in fact.
The chief concerned himself with getting the gold flowing. The Starwatcher and his boisterous escorts served merely as a means to an end, though Taranis did wonder why the muscular young Basques remained with Cian. Over the next moon, he had the Starwatcher and his companions monitored and reports made to his ears alone. Once Taranis understood of the search for Cliodhna, he sent out word among his network along the coasts, and for that help Cian expressed utmost gratitude. From Cian’s personal habits, Taranis inferred that the lad’s tastes ran to women and not men; though he kept to himself, reserved if not aloof, an enigma. To the worldly trader, the young Starwatcher exhibited no sign of guile in word or deed.
If this young Starwatcher had exceptional loyalty and smarts, then he might have further plans for Cian but not before the lad proved himself. He announced to Cian that he would send the Starwatcher and his Basque companions traveling inland, save one whom Taranis kept behind as a hostage and to exploit that one’s talent, an excellent hand at preparing food.
Cian adapted to this swift change. Taranis moved like the planets, on his own course and not with ordinary stars. He too must plan in advance and act swiftly, to catch up with events or make things happen far away. His new life entailed trying to outrun the sun rather than working within its risings and settings. He needed to get Sreng moving with miners to Eire’s eastern mountains where they could take the gold. Soon Lir would be arriving at the Loire, but that master of the waves would know to wait here until his return.
Before their expedition inland, Cian and his Basques searched among the boats moored in the estuary for one bound for the northern isles. Their obeisant helper the port official pointed out a good ship that readied to depart for the Lake mine of the Starwatcher island, a stroke of luck. It looked to be a high-sided
naomhog
that Lir would approve. They rowed past it in a little coracle. Cian chose with care from the faces on board and singled out one man to approach.
That night under a crescent moon, the Basques tempted this crewman ashore on the pretext of selling him a portion of brined meat. “Good sea salt from this coast. That tasty meat’s sure to last the voyage,” they told him. On the broad landing stones they all bent to examine the potted meat. Cian stepped out from the shadows, a cloak over his features. The Basques pulled their knives, pretending to be startled, watching the mariner.
“I have a better offer for you,” Cian told the Seafarer. He held up a large gold nugget while he convinced the man to deliver the pot with its contents intact all the way to Sreng at the Lake mine coast. The Seafarer’s eyes glittered and he stretched out a toughened hand for the big nugget. Cian gave him a smaller chunk of sun metal.
“I can see that you are wise. You’ll receive the large nugget and be set for life when you return from the Starwatcher island with the man Sreng’s sign to me. Fail in that or give this pot over to the wrong hands, and Lir himself will chase you to the bottom of the seas. Safe journey to you!”
The Seafarer’s eyes narrowed but he accepted the pot and small gold nugget, and good cheese that would fill his stomach on the voyage, they told him.
Cian melted into the darkness and watched, pensive, as the Basques rowed the man back out to the moored ship soon to leave for Eire. If the stone plaque hidden at the bottom of the sturdy pot made it safely to Sreng, all would be well.
It was Gebann who suggested that Sreng lead their men, for stalwart Sreng would know which miners to recruit and he had seen firsthand the mining and export of copper. The sun metal had such inestimable value that it would not take many men working with Sreng… While he crossed Eire west to east, Sreng could seek news of Cliodhna. Then perhaps Gebann and his wife could have an answer.
Ayah
; Cian inhaled making the sound that meant affirmation.
The Basques rejoined him in the shadows. Satisfied that the mariner and big pot had tucked in without awakening his crew, the men left the slumbering boats.