Odinn's Child (39 page)

I was missing. It was Colman who made some plausible excuse for my absence. As spring passed into summer - it was now the second year of my rime as a novice - I grew bolder. My nocturnal meetings with Orlaith were not enough. I thirsted to see her by day, and I managed to persuade Brother Ailbe that two more satchels might need the leather-worker's attention. They were humdrum items of little value, and I offered to take them to Bladnach's workshop for his inspection, to which the librarian agreed.

My reception when I arrived at Bladnach's workshop was deeply unsettling. There was an awkward atmosphere in the workshop, a sense of strain. It showed on the face of Orlaith's mother as she greeted me at the door, and it was repeated in Orlaith's response to my arrival. She turned away when I entered the workshop and I saw that she had been crying. Her father, normally so quiet, treated me with unaccustomed coldness. I handed over the two satchels, explained what needed to be done and left the house, puzzled and distressed.

At the next meeting by the ash tree I asked Orlaith about the reason for the strange atmosphere in the house. For several harrowing moments she would not tell me why she had been crying, nor why her parents had been in such evident discomfort, and I came close to despair, faced with some unimaginable dread. I continued to press her for an answer, and eventually she blurted out the truth. It seemed that for many years both her parents had needed regular medical treatment. Her father's deformity racked his joints, and her mother's hands had been damaged by years of helping her husband at the leather-worker's bench. The smallest finger on each of her hands was permanently curved inward from the strain of tugging on thread to pull it tight, and her hands had become little more than painful claws. Initially they had used home-made remedies, gathering herbs and preparing simples. But as they aged these medicines had less and less effect. Eventually they had presented themselves at the monastery's infirmary, where Domnall, the elderly brother who worked as a physician, had been very helpful. He had made up draughts and ointments which had worked what seemed a genuine miracle, and the leather-worker and his wife were deeply grateful. In the years that followed, they began to made regular visits, every two or three months in summer and more frequently in winter when the pains were worse. Blad-nach would be carried to the monastery on a plank, and it was on one of his early visits that he first came to Brother Ailbe's attention and received his initial commission to work on the library satchels.

But Brother Domnall had paid for his selfless work at the infirmary with his life. A yellow plague had swept through the district, and the physician had been infected by the invalids who came to him for help. Willingly he made the final sacrifice, and the running of the infirmary had passed to his assistant, Brother Cainnech.

When Orlaith mentioned the yellow plague and Cainnech's name, my heart plummeted. I knew all about the yellow plague. It had struck in the late winter, and to my sorrow it had carried off the stoneworker Saer Credine. His commission from the abb, the grand cross, still stood half finished as there was no one skilled enough to complete the carving. The yellow plague had left Brother Cainnech as our new physician in its wake, and there were many in the monastery who considered that he was a reminder of the pestilence. Brother Cainnech was a clumsy, coarse boor who seemed to enjoy hurting people under the pretext of helping them. Among the novices it was generally considered preferable to endure a minor broken bone or a deep gash than let Cainnech near it. He seemed to enjoy causing pain as he reset the bone or cleaned out the wound. Often we thought that he was under the influence of alcohol, for he had the blotched skin and stinking breath of a man who drank heavily. Yet no one doubted his medical knowledge. He had read the medical texts in Brother Ailbe's library, spent his apprenticeship as Domnall's assistant, and stepped naturally into the chief physician's role. After the outbreak of the yellow fever it was Cainnech who insisted that every scrap of our bedding, blankets and clothes were thrown on a bonfire, leading me to wonder if this is what my mother had intended at Frodriver when she had insisted that her bedding be burned.

One day, Orlaith told me, she had accompanied her father and mother on their regular visit to the infirmary for their treatment and she had come to Cainnech's attention. The following month Cain-nech informed her parents that it was no longer necessary for them to come to the infirmary. Instead he would call at their house, to bring a fresh supply of medicines and administer any treatment. It would save Bladnach the difficult trip to the monastery. Cainnech's decision seemed a selfless act, worthy of his predecessor. But the motive for it soon became clear. On the very first visit to Bladnach's home, Cainnech began to make approaches to Orlaith. He was shamelessly confident. He presumed on the complicity of her parents, making it clear to them that if they thwarted his visits or hindered his behaviour while in their home, they would not be welcome back at the infirmary for treatment. He also emphasised to Bladnach that if he complained to the abb, there would be no further work from the library. Cainnech's visits quickly became a frightening combination of good and harm. He always remained the conscientious physician. He would arrive at the house punctually, examine his two patients, provide their medicaments, make careful notes of their condition, give them sound medical advice. Under his care both Bladnach and his wife found their health improving. But as soon as the medical consultation was over, Cainnech would dismiss the parents from the workshop and insist that he be left alone with their daughter. It was hardly surprising that Orlaith felt she could not divulge to me what went on during the sessions when she was shut up with the monk; she had never told her parents. What made the nightmare even worse, for both Orlaith and her parents, was Cainnech's absolute certainty that he could repeat his predatory behaviour for as long as he liked. As he left the house, leaving an abused Orlaith weeping in the workshop, he would pause solicitously beside Bladnach and assure him that he would return within the month to see how his patient was progressing.

Orlaith's wretched story made me all the more passionate about her. For the rest of that dreadful rendezvous, I held her close to me, feeling both protective and helpless. On the one hand I was outraged, on the other I was numbed by an acute sense of shared hurt.

Worse followed. Even more anxious to see Orlaith, I risked visiting the leather-worker's house in broad daylight, pretending that I was on an errand for the library. No one stopped me. The following week I repeated my foolhardy mission and found Orlaith by herself at her workbench. For an hour we sat side by side, mutely holding hands, until I knew I had to leave and get back to the monastery before my absence was noticed. I was aware that my luck would eventually run out, but I felt powerless to do anything else. I was so desperate to find a solution, I even suggested to Orlaith that we should run away together, but she dismissed the idea out of hand. She would not leave her parents, particularly her invalid father, who depended on her skill with the fine needle now that her mother was unable to work.

So it was an irony that her mother, unintentionally, caused the calamity. She came with a group of her friends to the monastery to pray at the oratory of St Ciaran. As she was leaving the oratory, she chanced to meet Brother Ailbe and mentioned to him how much she appreciated his continuing to send me to her house to assist her husband. Of course, Brother Ailbe was puzzled by this remark, and that evening sent for me to come to the library. He was standing beside his reading desk as I entered, and I thought he was looking slightly pompous and full of his own authority.

'Were you at the house of Bladnach the leather-worker last week?' he asked in a flat tone.

'Yes, Brother Ailbe,' I answered. I knew that I had been seen by the townsfolk on my way there and that the librarian could easily check.

'What were you doing? Did you have permission from anyone to go there, away from the monastery?'

'No, Brother Ailbe,' I replied. 'I went on my own initiative. I wanted to ask the leather-worker if he could teach me some of his craft. In that way I thought I could learn how to repair our leather Bible satchels here in the monastery, and then there would be no need to pay someone for outside skills.' My answer was a good one. I saw from Ailbe's expression that he anticipated a favourable response if he put the same proposal to the abb. Anything which saved the monastery money was a welcome suggestion to our abb.

'Very well,' he said, 'The idea has merit. But you broke our rule by leaving the monastery without authorisation. In future you are not to visit the town without first asking permission from me or from one of the other senior monks. You are to make amends by going to the chapel and reciting psalm one hundred and nineteen in its entirety, kneeling and cross figel.'

He made a gesture dismissing me. But I stood my ground. It was not because the punishment was severe, though the hundred and nineteenth psalm is notoriously long and would make the cross figel - kneeling with arms outstretched — very painful. I faced down the librarian because a strange and wild spirit of rebellion and superiority was welling up within me. I was overcome with scorn for Brother Ailbe for being so gullible. It had been so easy to dupe him. 'I just told you a lie,' I said and I did not bother to hide the contempt in my voice. 'I did not go to the leather-worker's house to ask to be his apprentice. I went there to be with his daughter.' Brother Ailbe, who had been looking rather smug, gaped with surprise, his mouth open and closed without making a sound, and I turned on my heel and left the room. As I did so, I knew that I had irreversibly destroyed my own life. There was no going back on what I had said.

Months later I realised that the spirit of defiance which had overwhelmed me had came from Odinn. It was his odr, the frenzy which throws aside caution and pays no heed to sense or prudence.

As I walked away from the library, I knew that I would be severely punished for breaking monastery discipline, above all for consorting with a female. That was the worst offence of all as far as the senior monks were concerned. But I found some consolation in the thought that at least I had brought Bladnach and his family to the attention of Abb Aidan, and it would be unlikely that Cainnech would risk continuing his abuse of their daughter until the scandal of my behaviour had died down. Maybe he would be warned off for ever.

I underestimated Cainnech's viciousness. He must have realised that, through Orlaith, I knew about his degenerate behaviour, and he decided that I should be put out of the way for good. That evening Abb Aidan called a conclave of the senior monks to discuss my fate. The meeting was held in the abb's cell and lasted for several hours. Rather to my surprise, there was no immediate decision on my punishment, nor was I called to give an explanation for my actions. Very late in the evening my friend Colman whispered to me that Senesach wanted to see me, and I was to go, not to his cell, but to the small, newly built oratory on the south side of the monastery. When I arrived, Senesach was waiting for me. He looked so despondent that I felt wretched. I owed so much to him. Yet I had failed to live up to his hopes for me. It was Senesach — it seemed so long ago — who had persuaded the abb that I should be released from slavery as the stonemason's assistant and given a chance to train as a monk, and Senesach had always been a fair and reasonable teacher. I was sure that if anyone had argued my case for me during the discussion of my transgressions, it would have been Senesach.

'Thangbrand,' he began, 'I don't have time to discuss with you why you chose to do what you did. But it is evident that you are not suited for life within the community of St Ciaran's. For that I am heartily sorry. I hope one day you will regain your original humility enough to pray for forgiveness for what you have done. I have asked you here for another reason. During the discussion of your misbehaviour, Brother Ailbe spoke up to say that he believed you may be a thief as well as a fornicator. He claimed that several pages are missing from the library copy of Galen's
De Usum Partium,
which you were studying as an exercise to improve your Greek. Did you steal those pages?'

'No, I did not,' I replied. 'I looked at the manuscript, but the pages were already missing when I consulted the text.' I had a shrewd suspicion who would have stolen them: Galen's writings were the standard authority for our medical work, and I wondered if Cainnech had taken the missing pages - as monastery physician he had regular and unquestioned access to the volume - and then drawn the librarian's attention to their absence.

Senesach went on, 'There was another complaint, a more serious one. Brother Cainnech' - and here my heart sank as usual — 'has raised the possibility that you have a Satanic possession. He pointed out that your association with the leather-worker's daughter has a precedent. When you first came to us you said your name was Thorgils, and we have learned that you were captured at the great battle at Clontarf against the Norsemen. Another Thorgils defiled this monastery in the time of our forefathers. He too came from the north lands. He arrived with his great fleet of warships and terrorised our people. He was an outright heathen and he brought with him his woman, a harlot by the name of Ota. After Thorgils's troops captured the monastery, this Ota seated herself on the altar and before an audience she uttered prophesies and disported herself lewdly.'

Despite the seriousness of my situation, an image of the Sex Hag sprang into my mind and I could not help smiling,

'Why do you have that stupid grin on your face?' Senesach said angrily. His disappointment in me came boiling to the surface. 'Don't you understand the gravity of your situation? If either of these accusations is found to be true, you will suffer the same fate as that stupid fool who ran off with the relics a couple of years ago. You can be sure of that. I've never told anyone this before, but when our abb condemned that youngster to death, I broke my vow of unquestioning obedience to my abb's wishes, and asked him to reduce the penalty. You know what he replied? He said that St Colm Cille himself was banished from this country by his abb because he was found guilty of copying a book without the owner's permission. Stealing the pages themselves, our abb told me, was a far worse crime because the misdeed permanently deprived the owner. So he insisted that the culprit had to suffer the greater penalty.'