Colla dropped the blood-soaked blanket back to cover the figure with a curious groaning sound. He turned swiftly away and started to retch.
Chapter Two
Fidelma of Cashel balanced against the taffrail of the ship, watching the coastline bobbing away behind it with surprising speed. She had been the last to board the vessel that morning and had barely stepped aboard when the captain had shouted for the single great square sail to be lifted on its hoistable yard up the central mainmast. At the same time, other sailors were hauling up the heavy anchor. She had not even had time to go below to inspect her cabin before the great vessel strained forward, its thin leather sail cracking and filling with the wind, like a lung filling with breath.
‘Set the steering sail!’ came the captain’s stentorian tone. The crew ran towards a long-angled mast, pointing forward of the main mast. A small sail was pulled into place on a cross yard. Beside the captain, on the raised stern deck, stood two muscular, thickset men. Here, on the larboard side of vessel, a large steering oar was fixed. It was so large that it took the combined efforts of both sailors to control it. At the captain’s shouted command, the sailors heaved on the oar. The ship caught the tide and fairly sliced through the wavelets like a scythe through corn.
So fast was the departure of The Barnacle Goose from the Bay of Ardmore that Fidelma decided not to go below for the moment but to stay on deck and watch the activity. The only sign of any of her fellow travellers were two youthful religieux standing arm in arm, at the port rail amidships. They were deep in conversation. There were no other passengers in sight, and Fidelma presumed that the rest of the pilgrims were below decks. Half-a-dozen sailors, whose job it was to sail the ship across the stormy seas to Iberia, were going about their various tasks under the watchful eye of the captain. Fidelma wondered why her fellow passengers had chosen to miss one of the most exciting parts of the commencement of a sea voyage, the leaving of harbour. She had made several voyages in her life, but never ceased to be enthralled by the sights and sounds as a vessel left its harbour, feeling the first bounce of the hull against the waves, seeing the rise and dip of the vanishing coastline. She could spendhours simply watching until the distant line of land dipped below the horizon.
Fidelma was a natural-born sailor. She had often been out in a tiny curragh on the wild, windswept west coast, journeying to remote islands, and had not felt any qualms. A few years ago she had journeyed to Iona, the Isle of Saints, off the coast of high-hilled Alba, on her way to the Synod of Whitby in Northumbria, and then she had travelled to Gaul on her way to Rome and back again, and, in all those long voyages, she had never felt the slightest seasickness in spite of the most severe motion of the ship in which she travelled.
Motion. The idea caught at her mind. Perhaps that was the answer? From a child she had been on horseback. Maybe she had become used to the motion of riding horses and therefore did not react to the motion of a ship as someone who had always kept their feet on dry land might do. She promised herself that on this voyage she would try to learn something more about sea lore, navigation and the distances to be run. What was the point of enjoying a voyage if she did not know the practical side of it?
She smiled to herself at the useless wandering of her thoughts and raised herself up against the wooden ship’s rail to focus on the vanishing height of Ardmore with its tall, grey-stone Abbey buildings. She had spent the previous night there as guest of the Abbot.
Unexpectedly, as she thought of the Abbey of St Declan, she felt a curious sensation of loneliness.
Eadulf! She identified the cause at once.
Brother Eadulf, the Saxon monk, had been emissary from Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the court of her brother, Colgu, King of Muman at Cashel. Until a week or so ago, Eadulf had been her constant companion for almost a year, a supportive comrade in several dangerous situations when she was called upon to exercise her skills as a dalaigh, an advocate of the law courts of the Five Kingdoms of Eireann. Why was she troubled suddenly by his memory?
It had been her own decision. A few weeks previously, Fidelma had decided to part company with Eadulf to commence this pilgrimage. She had felt that she needed a change of place and space in which to meditate, for she had begun to view her life with dissatisfaction. Afraid of the emotional routine in which she had found herself, Fidelma no longer trusted her own feelings about her purpose in life.
Yet Brother Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham was the only man of her own age in whose company she felt really at ease and able to express herself. Eadulf had taken a long time to accept her decision to leave Cashel and set out on this pilgrimage. He had raised objections andprotested for some time. Finally he had decided to return to Canterbury to rejoin Archbishop Theodore, the newly appointed Greek Bishop whom he had accompanied from Rome and for whom he acted as special envoy. Fidelma was annoyed with herself for missing Eadulf already with the coastline still in sight. The coming months loomed lonely. She would miss their debates; miss the way she could tease Eadulf over their conflicting opinions and philosophies; the way he would always rise good-naturedly to her bait. Their arguments would rage but there was no enmity between them. They had learnt together as they examined their interpretations and debated their ideas.
Eadulf had been like a brother to her. Perhaps that was the trouble. She compressed her lips at the thought. He had always behaved impeccably towards her. She found herself wondering, and not for the first time, whether she wanted him to behave in any other way. Members of the religieux did cohabit, did marry, and most lived in the conhospitae, or mixed houses, raising their children to the service of God. Did she want that? She was still a young woman and with a young woman’s desires. Eadulf had never given any indication that he felt attracted to her as a man should feel towards a woman. The closest she had come to the subject, to prompt his thoughts upon it, was during a journey when they had spent a cold night on a mountain. She had asked Eadulf if he had heard the old proverb that a blanket was the warmer for being doubled. He had not understood.
There again, she reflected, Eadulf was a firm adherent to the Church of Rome which, while it still allowed its clergy to marry and cohabit, was clearly moving towards the doctrine of celibacy. Fidelma, on the other hand, was an adherent of the Irish Church which disagreed with so many of the rites and rituals of Rome, even to the dating of Easter. She had been raised without any prohibition on her natural feelings. Those differences between her culture and that now espoused by Rome were a major source of the arguments between her and Eadulf. The thought had barely entered her mind when she remembered the Book of Amos. ‘Can two walk together, except that they be agreed?’ Perhaps the philosophy was right and she should dismiss the subject of Eadulf altogether.
She wished her old mentor, the Brehon Morann, were here to consult. Or, indeed, her cousin — the chubby-faced, happy-go-lucky Abbot Laisran of Durrow who had persuaded her, as a young girl, to enter the religious life in the first place. What was she doing here anyway? Running away because she could not find a solution to her problems? If so, she would merely carry those problems into whatevercorner of the earth she journeyed. There would be no solution awaiting her at her destination.
She had argued herself into this pilgrimage for the purpose of sorting out her life without any pressure from Eadulf, from her brother, Colgu, or her friends at Cashel, her brother’s capital. She wanted to be somewhere that had no connection with her previous life, somewhere she could meditate and attempt to resolve matters. But she was confused. She was not even sure that she wanted to be a religieuse any longer! That thought brought her up with a shock as she realised that she could now ask that very question which she had been suppressing or hiding for this last year or so.