The Greener Shore (41 page)

I held up one hand. “Be quiet for a moment. Let me think.”

Our two young men had landed on Mona and departed again without ever encountering the druids. Some time later, the chief druid had referred to them as “two who have visited here before”—according to Probus, who was precise in his language. This meant Mona’s druids had been aware of the pair when they first visited the island. Yet they had not revealed themselves.

The reason, my head commented, was rooted in the philosophy of druidry. Cormiac and Labraid had been seeking only water. They required nothing from the Order of the Wise on that occasion, so the druids had not interfered.

To interfere without being asked can distort the Pattern.

Labraid looked as if he were about to explode with the effort of keeping quiet.

“Perhaps we should let him tell his own story now,” Probus suggested.

With a grateful grin, the young man prepared to launch himself into a highly colored and probably rambling discourse. I forestalled him. “Let’s keep the string straight, shall we? Where did you go when you left Mona?”

“We went to sea, of course, where I was an excellent—”

“But where did you
go,
Labraid? It’s been two years since you left Hibernia. Where were you all that time?”

“At sea, mostly.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Keep it simple,” Probus advised in a kindly tone, demonstrating insight. Friendship might work with Labraid but exasperation never would.

“We set sail for the east, skirting the southern coast of Albion thanks to my understanding of the stars. But when we entered the waters that separate Albion from Armorica things started to go wrong.” Labraid’s tone changed abruptly. It was the first time I had ever heard him sound subdued. “We ran into a fleet of Roman warships. They didn’t have much trouble overpowering us, and by sundown we were galley slaves.”

“You were actually on a Roman ship? Where did you go, what did you see?”

“I have no idea where we went, Ainvar, and I never saw much of anything. On the rowing deck your only view is the sweaty back of the man in front of you. You smell nothing but the stink of the men around you. You hear nothing but the thudding of the oars and the pounding of the drum that beats out their rhythm over and over and over again until your head feels like it’s going to burst. On the rowing deck you can’t tell if it’s night or day. It’s always hot, though; you can’t imagine how hot. How stifling. A lot of men simply die where they sit, so there’s always a need for replacements. As soon as we were brought on board Cormiac and I were clapped in leg irons and then chained to a rowing bench.”

Labraid Who Sails the Seas. One should be careful when choosing a name for oneself. That Which Watches has a sense of irony.

“I thought we were on one of Caesar’s warships until the other rowers told me Caesar was dead and we were under someone else’s command. They said, ‘It doesn’t matter who’s in control, it will make no difference to us.’ They were right. There’s only one kind of life for a galley slave. You row until your muscles are on fire, then they take you down into the very bottom of the boat and you’re given some food—never enough—and a chance to sleep—not long enough—and then they take you back to the rowing deck and it starts all over again.

“Most of our urine came out in sweat. What didn’t ran into the bilge at the bottom of the boat and we had to put our feet in it. If we broke the rhythm of rowing they beat us. Briga saw my scars, she’ll tell you how bad they are.”

I took a good long look at Labraid. He had grown as big as his father, and even gaunt and battered, he was a physically impressive man. Whatever hardships he had endured had only made him stronger.

He interpreted my appraising gaze correctly. “I fought back, Ainvar.”

“I’m sure you did. What happened to the boatmen who’d accompanied you?”

“I never knew. It was only by chance that Cormiac and I were left together. We were chained together at the ankles, so we rowed the same oar,” Labraid added through gritted teeth.

That explained a lot.

“When I realized I was so strong that being a galley slave wasn’t going to kill me, I almost wished it would. The monotony was terrible. And it was no good trying to talk to Cormiac, you know how he is.”

I did know. Cormiac spoke only if he had something worth saying.

“Eventually we were transferred to another warship. Different slave-masters but the same life. The ship took part in several battles but we didn’t know much about them; we worked like oxen in the steamy half dark while above us warriors sounded trumpets and tried to kill one another. That was a frustrating experience, I can tell you. Once or twice we came near to sinking. I thought we might have a chance to escape then, but they never unfastened our chains. Galley slaves go down with the ship,” he added bitterly.

“At last we put into a port where the galley slaves were taken off and thrown into holding pens. There was a lot of yelling and cursing but it didn’t bother me; it was bliss not to hear that drumbeat night and day. The food was bad but there was plenty of it. Cormiac thought we were being rested and fattened up for a reason. He said we must be on the losing side and whoever was in command was trying to hoard his resources.”

A shrewd guess, my head observed. If Cormiac Ru survived his injuries he would make a fine leader for our clan.

For Labraid I had other plans. “Where were you at this time?”

“In a
pen,
Ainvar! Timber and iron bars. Weren’t you listening to me?”

“But where was the pen? What harbor, what town?”

“Somewhere in Iberia,” he said impatiently. “I don’t know where, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was escaping. Which we did, thanks to my cleverness. I told the others that I had a plan and they should follow my lead, then late one night I threw myself on the ground and shouted that something was wrong with my belly. I kept howling until the guards came running; I sounded very convincing. When they opened the gate of our pen—there were twenty of us in each pen—we rushed them. About half of us got past and scattered like rats. Cormiac and I hid under a wharf until the morning, then I scouted around and found a merchant ship being loaded with cargo. The two of us sneaked aboard and concealed ourselves until we were out of sight of land. Then I made a deal with the captain. I know how to strike a bargain and the captain knew a good man when he saw one.”

“I’m sure he did,” I said dryly. “What about your chains? I assume you were still wearing them. How did you explain those?”

“Oh, Cormiac broke them off long before then,” Labraid said dismissively. “With a rock or something.

“I arranged for us to work for our passage as independent seamen. Crewing a cargo vessel is hard work and willing men aren’t that easy to find. It was an ideal situation for us. The merchantman was going to sail north as far as Armorica, then turn around and head south again, passing through the Pillars of Herakles to the Mid-Earth Sea. Once we got that far I was certain I’d be able to find your daughter. But Cormiac changed his mind and began insisting we return to Hibernia. He’d lost his nerve.”

I doubted that. Never in his entire life had the Red Wolf lost his nerve.

“I’m beginning to tire,” the Roman interjected. “Shall we go back to the lodge for a while?”

In truth, Labraid was the one who was tired; he had become very unsteady on his feet. If I had made the suggestion he would have refused, but since it was his friend he complied. He kept on talking, though. “I could have gone to the Mid-Earth Sea without Cormiac, Ainvar; I didn’t need him. But I’m not one to abandon a member of my own tribe. I planned for the two of us to steal a rowboat when we reached the point nearest Albion and slip away in the night.”

“How would you know when you were nearest Albion? And how, for that matter, did you intend to find your way back to Hibernia?”

“I have an excellent sense of direction,” Labraid said loftily.

Probus caught my eye. As surely as if I heard him speak aloud, I knew we were thinking the same thing. The only way to obtain an accurate account of this episode would be from Cormiac Ru.

Which must wait until he was stronger.

After we returned to the lodge Labraid continued his narrative, relating more than I wanted to know about his exploits. Not only relating but reiterating, elaborating, and exaggerating, in exhaustive detail. According to him he had single-handedly engineered their escape from the merchant ship with no assistance at all from Cormiac Ru.

“Did you not feel it was dishonorable to desert,” I inquired, “after the captain had treated you so fairly?”

He scoffed at the suggestion. “Men jump ship all the time, Ainvar. It’s expected.”

“Was that when you were injured? Was there a scuffle before you got away?”

“We weren’t caught in the act, I’m far too clever for that. We were over the side and gone before anyone knew.”

“Then how did you acquire your wounds?”

“Fighting the Romans, of course. I was brilliant in battle, you should have seen me. I had no sword, not even a meat knife, only fists and feet, but I was as quick as a—”

“Fighting the Romans? Do you mean Probus?”

“Oh no, not him! I can tell you about him later, Ainvar. First you must hear how I reached the coast of Albion. Not one man in a thousand could have done it. We only had a little boat meant to row officers ashore, and there was a terrible gale blowing. The waves were like mountains crashing over us. But I’m amazingly skillful at sea, so I…”

At some point my ears stopped listening, leaving my imagination to fill in the details. Which I am sure it did with more accuracy than Labraid’s hyperbole.

He fell asleep suddenly, between one word and the next.

“Pick him up and put him in his bed, Grannus,” Briga instructed. “He’s overexerted himself; I was afraid of that. For the next two or three days he’s not to leave this lodge. Stay right with him so he doesn’t. And don’t you tempt him to go outside again, Ainvar!” she added to me. The charge was unjust, but when a wife wants someone to blame a husband is a convenient target.

Before I went to my bed there was something I had to do.

Cormiac Ru appeared to be asleep. When I bent over him he opened his eyes. “Ainvar,” he whispered.

“How do you feel?”

“Better than yesterday.”

“I’d like to ask you something, then. Am I right to assume your swords were taken from you when you were captured by the Roman warships?”

“They were.”

“And the sword you lost…was my father’s?”

“I’m sorry, Ainvar.”

“It’s of no consequence, I just needed to know.”

“It is of consequence. Your daughter and your sword. I wanted to bring them both back to you.”

“You’ve come back to me, that’s all I needed.”

And it was true.

The following morning was bitterly cold; the wind off the sea slipped icy fingers through the walls of wattle and daub and ran them up our spines. With Grannus guarding the doorway, Briga kept all three of her invalids indoors. I was free to wander around on my own and talk to anyone who would talk to me. In this way I enlarged my knowledge of the region.

Thus I learned that the estuary of the Liffey provided one of the few breaks in the mountainous, forest-clad, natural bulwark that encircled Hibernia, embracing the fertile central plain. The people of Dubh Linn were in an ideal location to carry on seagoing trade, yet I was told they preferred to fish. “Everything we need is already within our reach,” said a cheerful woman as freckled as a blackbird’s egg. “Why would we want to give our wealth to strangers trying to sell us what they don’t want?”

One often encounters wisdom in unexpected places. When we were home again I would tell my students—many of whom would never travel this far in their lives—about the Gaels of Dubh Linn.

How odd to realize that we, who had been the Gauls, who had traveled the length and breadth of a land vastly larger than Hibernia, now made our home on an island where a day’s journey was considered a sizable undertaking, and our grandchildren might never see the sea.

Life expands and then shrinks. And then expands again, like some great creature breathing.

I walked as far as the neck of a peninsula that jutted out into a great bay. The bay was large enough to accommodate hundreds of trading vessels, but only a few fishing boats were visible, hugging the shore. As I gazed at the incoming tide I tried to convince myself that Gaul was still out there, somewhere. I could no longer remember the way the light fell on the fields, or the fragrance of the vineyards.

Even when we stand still, the past runs away from us.

At last I roused myself from my reverie and went searching for someone who might answer the riddle that had been tormenting me ever since we arrived: the identity of the thing that had screamed in the night.

“It’s one of
them,
” I was told by a toothless old fellow I found mending his fishing nets. Having mentioned “them,” he looked fearfully around, then got to his feet and performed the curious ritual of spitting in four directions, turning solemnly as he did so. It was astonishing that a dried-up old man had so much spit in him.

“Who do you mean by ‘them’?”

He looked me up and down. “You’re not from around here, are you.” A statement, not a question.

“I come from a place far away.”

“Then maybe you don’t know about the good people.”

“Good people? You act almost as if you’re afraid of them. Why should you be afraid of good people?”

He gestured to me to bend down until my ear was level with his mouth. “They aren’t really good,” he whispered. “We only call them that so we don’t make them more angry with us than they already are. They can do terrible things.”

Suddenly I understood. “Are you saying it was one of the Túatha Dé Danann?”

He took a step backward and made wild gestures with his hands. “Don’t do that, you’ll call her!”

“Call who?”

“Rígan’s
bean sídhe
!” he cried, using the Gaelic for “fairy woman.” With these words his nerve broke entirely. Pulling his cloak over his head, he scuttled away from me as fast as he could.