The Secret of Kells (7 page)

O
n his journey back to the monastery, it seemed to Brendan that he could still hear Aisling’s voice in his head. She was telling him the way back home. He could hear other voices too, and his eyes seemed to see things he had not seen before. He had somehow come closer to being part of the forest. He could feel the life it had lived for the thousands of years during which its trees had grown and died into the earth and grown again. Faces peered through the branches, but they did not frighten him, as they might once have done. They reminded him of Aisling. She was all around him. He saw a white raven with green eyes. It was Aisling. In a pool in the stream, a silver salmon swam and caught the nuts that fell from the branch above. By the flash of its silver scales, he knew it too was Aisling. A young deer, pale as snow,
disappeared between the dark trees – Aisling again.

‘She is still here,’ he whispered to Pangur. ‘She is still part of the forest. And the forest is safe now.’

Finally, they reached the grey stone walls of the monastery. Everything was very still and quiet. In an hour or so, all the brothers would rise to sing in the new day, but for the moment, they all slept.

However, not everyone was asleep. A light burned in the Scriptorium. Brendan made his way carefully up the stairs and peeped in through the door. Aidan was seated alone at the table where they had worked together. He was surrounded by inkhorns and brushes, but he was not doing anything. His head was in his hands and the Book was in front of him. It was open at a blank page. The page that he had told Brendan was to become the Chi Ro page. He was muttering quietly to himself.

‘Oh, I’m only an old fool. I’ve made a right mess of things with my interference. I’ll never be able for the work. I’ll make a pig’s ear of it for sure.’

He raised his head but did not see Brendan.
Pangur had come over to him, and he began to stroke her ears gently.

‘So you are back, are you, you wild yoke. Out on the tear all night. And now you’re soaked. What were you up to? I was worried about you. It’s a pity you can’t draw, Pangur, you would probably do a better job than me … Brendan could have done it. Brendan could have made a masterpiece. But Brendan won’t be let out by Cellach unless he promises to stop drawing … oh, I should never have interfered. Old fools should learn to keep quiet …’

‘Unless young fools want to listen,’ said Brendan quietly. Aidan looked up, his face full of joy.

‘Boy!’ he said. ‘How did you get here? How did you get out of the tower?’

His face suddenly dropped, as if he was remembering his encounter with the Abbot.

‘This is not the place for you, lad. You must go back to the tower before the Abbot finds out. There is nothing for you here.’

Brendan moved towards him.

‘But you are here,’ he said. ‘The Book is here,’ he continued. ‘And,’ he paused, holding out his
bundle, ‘the Eye is here!’

Aidan took the bundle from Brendan and opened it slowly. Then his eyes widened in astonishment.

‘How is this possible? The Eye was destroyed.’

‘It’s a long story,’ said Brendan as he held the Eye up into the light, and the facets caught the glow and shone so brightly that they both blinked. But even when it was taken away from the light, the crystal still seemed to glow with a white, inner fire.

‘The Dark One had more than one eye, you know!’ Brendan explained. ‘And more than one home!’

‘What? What do you mean? You entered the Dark One’s cave? You took the Eye from Crom Cruach’s head? How did you …?’

Brendan laughed. ‘You can’t find everything in books, you know!’

Aidan smiled back. ‘I think I read that somewhere once,’ he said.

Then Brendan told Aidan the story of his adventures in the cave of the Dark One. He also told him about Aisling’s part in the story and her disappearance.

‘Who is she, Aidan?’ he asked. ‘She seems to be able to take all sorts of shapes. And she hated having to come inside the walls of the monastery. Why was that? I know she is not evil, but she is not one of us, either.’

‘You are right. She is not like us. But she is not human. She’s one of the Old Ones too, like Crom Cruach. But she is one of the bright ones, Brendan, the ones that walk in the light and do good rather than evil. I do not know very much about the Old Ones, but I do know that they do not go away entirely; they only change their form. So she will come back, and she left the flowers as a sign for you. I am sure you will see her again some day. Maybe when you are least expecting it, maybe in some shape – an animal or a bird – that you will not recognise at first. But never let anyone make you think she is anything other than good.

She is part of the goodness of the trees and the wind, and of the creatures of the wood. Colmcille knew that, when he talked to the wild things. And the other saints too. Do you know that Kevin had a wolf as a friend? And when a bird laid an egg in
his hand he didn’t move until the little thing was hatched out and able to fly away on its own. And St Ciaran saved a fox from hunters, and in gratitude, the fox used to carry his prayer book for him when he went to mass. And St Mochua, now, he had mouse to wake him for his prayers, and a fly to walk along under the line of his prayer book and help him in his reading … But here I am blathering on, and you must be exhausted by your great adventures. You are after turning out to be as great a hero, as great a warrior, as Colmcille himself!’

‘Ah, I’m no hero. And honestly, I’m not a bit tired,’ said Brendan. ‘I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I went to bed.’

‘In that case, lad, do you feel up to getting to work?’

Brendan nodded eagerly.

Aidan picked up the crystal. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘it has the same power. But as I thought,’ he squinted through it, ‘it may be even better and clearer than the Eye of Colmcille. This one will be the Eye of Brendan. Look through it now, and tell me what you see.’

Brendan took the Eye and looked at one of the pages in the Book. With it, he could see details he had not been able to see before. It seemed to bring the tiny pictures alive.

‘It’s wonderful! If I use it for the smallest of small details I will be able to make the pictures even more beautiful,’ he exclaimed.

Aidan nodded. ‘That’s right. Are you ready?’ he asked.

‘I think so. I hope so,’ said Brendan.

‘Then let us begin,’ said Aidan.

He took up a quill and held it out to Brendan, who took it from him. Quietly and confidently, he began to draw.

Through the rest of the autumn, Brendan worked on the Chi Ro page. Using the crystal, he could see things that were invisible to the human eye. Sometimes he felt he really had a third eye, for with the crystal he could see the detail of an insect’s wing or a spider’s web, of a blade of grass, of a brown oak leaf, or the heart of a flower. It was slow, painstaking work, and although Brendan spent hours in the Scriptorium, even after weeks of
work he had only a small corner of the page finished.

All this time his uncle thought that he was still locked in the cell at the bottom of the tower. Abbot Cellach asked Brother Tang to make sure the boy was warm and well fed. He was allowed out of the cell a few times a day to help in the gardens. Tang, or one of the other monks, was to keep a careful eye on him at all times. The Abbot gave strict instructions that he did not wish to see Brendan unless he was ready to promise not to see Aidan or go to the Scriptorium, and each time he asked Tang if this was the case Tang shook his head. The rest of the monks knew that Brendan spent most of his time with Aidan. They helped to smuggle him in and out of the cell. The monks brought him berries for ink and feathers for quills. They came and looked at the Book and stood in awe of Brendan’s skill.

‘It’s like Heaven,’ they said. ‘It is the work of angels!’

‘You are a better illustrator, a hundred times better illustrator, than any of us,’ said Leonardo. Brendan didn’t know what to say.

‘It’s not me, it’s the Eye,’ he said finally.

‘No, child,’ said Aidan. ‘It is not just the Eye. It is your own inner eye that has the imagination to see these wonders.’

The winter came. It was a cold winter, so cold, with the frost so hard, that everyone said that the Northmen would surely not come to Ireland until the spring thaws. There were rumours that they had gone back to their own cold countries. Ships had been seen, sailing away over the wild ocean, laden down with gold and silver and precious stones and even more precious children from the Irish monasteries and villages that they had plundered.

The wolves howled in the forest, and the birds no longer sang, except for the black crows which cawed warnings of disaster from the trees and the single robin that would come to the Scriptorium window and watch Brendan at work on the Chi Ro page. In turn, Pangur would watch the robin as it sat there, planning to pounce, but the robin was always too quick for her. Pangur had slightly better luck with the mice that sometimes ran across
the floor. Brendan and Aidan had to rescue quite a few of the small, soft creatures from her sharp teeth and claws.

Brendan was happy, although he missed Aisling. He still slipped into the forest when he could, but he never managed to see her. So instead, he watched the changes in the forest through the seasons. The trees that changed from glorious reds and yellows and coppers to the stark beauty of bare branches, to the absolute stillness of winter, gave him new ideas every day for his work.

And as Brendan worked on the Book, his uncle worked on the wall, and it grew higher and higher, until it blocked out the sun and the whole monastery lived in its shadow. There was only one entrance, a great wooden gate that was kept heavily barred and bolted. It was rarely opened. But as winter came in, more refugees from the raids of the Northmen arrived. It began to seem as if the icy cold and rough seas had not stopped their terrifying raids. The lines on the Abbot’s face deepened and increased and he worked as hard as any of the monks on the wall. Indeed, he worked harder, as if he was punishing himself for
something. During the evening, he sometimes went to the door of the tower, where he thought Brendan was still locked away, and listened. The monks watching him thought that he might open it, and held their breath in fear. But he never did. At the last moment he would turn away and go back to work on the wall.