Dublin (39 page)

  There was still an hour before the bell for prayers. The other monks were shuffling towards the door, but he did not follow them.

  For he knew exactly how to employ the time. In the corner, on a lectern, lay a large volume. It was kept in the sacristy of the big stone church normally, but it had been brought into the scriptorium for the time being. It was encased in a silver cover which was set with gems.

  Taking up a candle from a table now, he advanced towards it.

  As he did so, he noticed with pleasure that one of the gems caught a glow from the candle's flame.

  The greatest treasure in the monastery of Kells: the Gospel book. It was the chance to spend time with the magnificent illuminated text that had brought him to Kells two months ago. His skill in calligraphy had advanced so rapidly at Glendalough that he had branched into illustration, at which he had shown talent also. In return for two months" work copying texts, he had been granted leave to study the treasury of illustration in the Kells collection, and in particular the great Gospels, which he normally did for two hours every morning. This extra hour was a bonus, therefore. He reached the lectern and was just stretching out his hand when he heard a hiss at his ear. It was the elderly brother in charge of the scriptorium.

  "I'm locking up now."

  "I could lock up later and give you the key afterwards, if you like."

  The old man treated this suggestion with silent contempt. Osgar knew better than to argue. He sighed and, after lingering hopefully a few more moments, went outside.

  Silence. The light wind had stopped. The snow fell softly, caressing his face. The last remains of daylight gave the pale scene an eerie glow.

  His eyes scanned the street and peered down the slope towards the monastery gateway. There was no sign of Sister Martha. Nobody about at all.

  He sniffed. The air wasn't very cold. Perhaps instead of returning to the dormitory where he was staying, he'd stretch his legs and go down to the gateway. Pulling his hood over his head, more to hide his face than to protect it from the light snow, he began to walk down the street.

  There was no doubt that it was comforting, in these dangerous times, to find oneself safe within the great walls of Kells. Even in the snow shower, it was an impressive place. Extending all over the low hill, with its stout buildings, stone churches, and well-laid streets, not to mention the market and suburbs that lay just outside its high walls, the monastery was not only a walled sanctuary, like Glen dalough, but like several of the other great religious houses, it was really a medieval city.

  As Osgar knew, this idea went back to the early days of the Christian mission on the island. For when Saint Patrick had begun his mission, he had come as a bishop. All over the crumbling Roman Empire, the pattern was the same: Christian priests and their flocks were guided and led by a bishop, who would be based in the nearest important Roman town. It had been vaguely assumed, therefore, that even in the distant western island, matters would be organised in a similar way. The trouble was, of course, that the island, never having been part of the empire, did not possess such things as towns; and though the first missionary bishops tried to attach themselves to the tribal kings, these Celtic chiefs were always moving about their territories. It didn't suit the Roman priests at all.

  But a monastery was a permanent, year-round centre.

  You could build a church, living quarters, even a library there. It could be protected with walls. It was self-sustaining, providing workers, priests, and leaders from within the community. The abbot could act as the local bishop himself, or provide a house for a bishop within the safety of the monastery's walls. For a long time the bishop who oversaw Dyflin had kept his house up at Glendalough.

  Craftsmen and traders were attracted to settle by monasteries. Markets appeared; whole communities grew up in suburbs around the walls.

  No wonder that within a century of Patrick's mission, these monasteries were rapidly becoming the main centres of the Christian community on the island.

  Until the first Viking coastal settlements, centuries later, the larger monasteries were the only towns in Ireland. Kells had been built upon this pattern.

  He went through the gateway into the marketplace. It was empty. Near one side, like a priest at a snowbound offertory, stood a handsome stone cross, and behind it several covered wagons, already white. He looked around. All the stalls and workshops were closed. A solitary lamp shone from a cowshed, but the only signs of human life were the wisps of smoke from the thatched roofs of the surrounding cottages, shuttered against the snow and the dying day. Osgar turned round, took three deep breaths, decided this was enough exercise for the present, and would have been gone in another moment if he hadn't noticed, just then, a figure emerging from one of the wagons. It wasn't Sister Martha, yet the figure looked vaguely familiar.

  It was Morann, the goldsmith from Dyflin. It had been years since he'd seen him, and he'd only known the man slightly, but his face wasn't one you'd forget. The craftsman was surprised but seemed glad to see him and explained his own reasons for seeking sanctuary there.

  "I supplied the abbot with some fine candlesticks last year," he added with a grin, "so they're glad to give me shelter."

  "And you really think Brian Boru will destroy Dyflin?" Osgar asked.

  "He's too clever for that," Morann answered.

  "But he'll teach them a terrible lesson."

  "You think the religious houses are safe, don't you?" Osgar asked, thinking of the little family monastery.

  "He has always respected them in the past," said Morann.

  They had paused now, in front of the great market cross. Kells had several of these elaborately carved stone crosses which, like the round towers, had become a feature of the island's monasteries. The arms of the cross were set in a ring of stone-an arrangement which, though known as a Celtic cross, went back to before the time of Saint Patrick, to the Roman wreaths of triumph, and echoed the symbol of the sun god earlier still. But the truly remarkable feature of the island's crosses was their carving. Some were incised with the interlaced patterns and swirling spirals of the ancient days. But the crosses at Kells were typical of the finest work: arranged in panels, every surface, even the plinths on which they stood, seemed to be covered with sturdy reliefs:

  Adam and Eve, Noah and his Ark, scenes from the life of Christ, angels and devils; the base of the market cross showed a striking scene of warriors going into battle. Like the statues and carvings inside the churches, the figures on these great ornamental crosses were brightly painted. The spears of the warriors were even tipped with silver. Morann looked at it with approval. Though on a much bigger scale, the arrangement of its parts was not unlike the jeweller's art.

  They were about to return when they saw her, standing in the gateway. Sister Martha. Osgar cursed under his breath.

  He liked her. With her broad face and kindly grey eyes, the middle-aged nun was a good soul.

  Sister Martha, the nun from Kildare. The Abbess of Kildare had given her permission to visit Kells to attend to an aunt who was thought to be dying there. But the old lady in question had recently made an unexpected recovery, and Sister Martha was now anxious to return. If only, in a moment of weakness some time ago, he hadn't promised that he would accompany her back.

  There was certainly every reason why he should do so. He had almost finished his own work at Kells; he could, without going much out of his way, travel back to Glendalough byway of Kildare; and it was unquestionably his duty to accompany the single nun be across the countryside in troubled times like these. He had originally expected to be ready to leave by now, but his work had taken a little longer than he had thought. When he had explained this, she had accepted it cheerfully enough, but he knew very well that she was anxious to be gone, and she had been gently asking him for some days when he thought he might be ready to depart. He suspected that she knew he would complete his copying the following day, so she must reasonably be expecting to go the day after that.

  The trouble was, he didn't want to go. Not just yet. For when he had completed his task, he had been looking forward to spending a week alone with the treasures of the Kells library, especially, of course, the great Gospel book. A week of blissful private study, undisturbed. He had worked hard; it was a treat he had well deserved.

  And now the thought of warding off her enquiries and keeping her waiting for days longer filled him with a thoroughly tiresome sense of guilt. Yesterday, with the latest turn of events disrupting the countryside, he had suggested that she might want to wait for a while before setting out. But unfortunately she had given him a shrewd look and then answered gently, "I'm sure that God will protect us." He'd been trying to avoid her ever since.

  Hearing his muttered curse, Morann asked him the reason; and as they walked towards the gateway, Osgar briefly told him.

  So it was with delight, after introducing the craftsman to the kindly nun, that he heard Morann remark:

  "I hear you are both travelling down to Kildare, Sister Martha. I should tell you that the countryside may be a little unsafe at the moment, but if you could wait, I shall be going down that way myself in five days, and we could all travel together." He smiled at her. "There is safety in numbers." It was hardly an offer that anyone would reasonably refuse; and after the nun had accepted, and the two men had walked on, the craftsman turned to him. "Will that give you enough time?"

  Three clear days in the library. Morann's company across what might, indeed, be dangerous terrain. "I can't believe my luck," Osgar replied with a smile.

  Morann's own plans, he learned, were to settle his family at Kells and then return to Dyflin where he wanted to check on the safety of Harold's family. "But I have a piece of business I'd been meaning to do in Kildare," he explained, "and so I may as well go down that way first." Osgar remembered the big farm in Fingal where he had encountered Harold's father after being attacked by the robbers years before, and he was impressed by the craftsman's loyalty to his friend.

  "Are you not afraid of the danger at Dyflin?" he asked.

  "I'll be careful," Morann replied.

  "If you get to Dyflin," Osgar remarked, "you might see my uncle and cousins at the monastery.

  I hope they are safe. You could give them my greetings."

  "I will, certainly," Morann answered. "By the way," he added, "I saw another cousin of yours, I believe. She was coming into Dyflin just before I left, to be safer while her husband was away at the fighting.

  "Indeed? And who was that?"

  "She's married to a rich man out at Rathmines.

  Wasn't her name Caoilinn?"

  "Ah." Osgar stopped and looked at the ground.

  "It was," he said quietly. "Caoilinn."

XT'

  : ft It was the last day before leaving. For the first hour of the day, Osgar liked to practise his illustration. If calligraphy was painstaking, illustration was even more intricate. Of course, there was the design first. That could be simple or complex. Only those skilled in geometry should even attempt the making of a Celtic pattern. But once the design was made in rough, then carefully fair copied and transferred onto the vellum as a drawing, the intricate business of choosing the colours and of slowly painting them in with needle-thin brushes required extraordinary patience and skill.

  The pigments themselves were rare and valuable. He dipped his brush in a red, to colour part of the scalloped design of an eagle's feathers. Some reds were made from lead, but this came from the I pregnant body-it had to be pregnant-of a certain Mediterranean insect. He checked a proportion on the design with a pair of dividers.

  Purple next, from a Mediterranean plant. The greens were mostly from copper. You had to be careful.

  If the page got wet afterwards, the copper could eat through the vellum. The whites were usually made with chalk. Cleverer were the golds. The pigment for gold was actually a yellow-arsenic sulphide-but when applied it would develop a metallic shine so that it looked like gold leaf. Most precious and rare of all was the blue lapis lazuli. That came from the farthest Orient, from a place, it was said, where the mountains, higher even than the Alps, rose into the blue sky until they touched I it. A country without a name. Or so he had heard.

  The greatest art of all, in Osgar's opinion, was the delicate layering of colours one on top of the other so that one achieved not only subtle gradations of tone but even a relief, like a landscape as it would be seen from above, as by the eye of God Himself.

  But when he entered the scriptorium that morning, Osgar did not trouble to practise his own poor art.

  He went straight to the great book on the lectern.

  It was, after all, his last opportunity to do so.

  The wonder of it. As he stood before the masterpiece, it was hard for Osgar to believe that he might not see it again. For two months now he had explored its creamy vellum pages and discovered its wonders so that, like a pilgrim to a holy city who has come to know all its byways and secret places, he felt almost as if the great treasure belonged to him personally.