As if in answer to this, Dugal replied, "I brought something for you." He put his hand to his belt and withdrew a small leather pouch which he flattened and smoothed on his hand. The pouch was new, and on its side he had carefully burnished a name: Dana. The word meant "bold one"-a name Dugal had given me years ago, and one that only he used-a small jest from this prince of warriors to a docile scribe.
I thanked him for his gift, and observed, "But it must have taken you a long time to make this. How did you know I would be chosen?"
The big monk simply shrugged. "I never doubted," he said. "If anyone were to go, I knew it would be you."
"I do thank you, Dugal," I told him. "I will keep it with me always."
He nodded with satisfaction, then turned his face away. "They say the sky in Byzantium is gold," he said simply. "And the very stars are strange."
"That is true," I confirmed. "Also, I have heard that the people there have black skin."
"Everyone?" he wondered. "Or some only?"
"Some, at least," I told him confidently.
"The women, too?"
"I suppose."
Dugal pursed his lips. "I do not think I would like to see a black-skinned woman."
"Neither would I," I agreed.
We sat in silence for a time, thinking about the utter strangeness of golden skies and black-skinned men. Finally, unable to contain himself any longer, Dugal sighed: "Please God, I wish I were going with you. I would give everything to go."
I heard the yearning in his voice, and a sharp pang of guilt nicked my heart. Since learning of my good fortune, I had not given my friend a single thought-nor considered the feelings of any of those staying behind. Indeed, I had thought of nothing but myself and my own happiness. Smarting with shame, I cringed at this fresh evidence of my rampant selfishness.
"I wish you could go, too," I told him.
"What a fine thing that would be!" He paused, considering this daring possibility. When it proved beyond his imagining, he resigned himself with another sigh. "Ah, my soul…"
The cattle across the valley began lowing as they moved slowly down to the river to drink. The pale sun sloped further down, staining the undersides of the clouds the colour of butter. I noticed the wind had slackened and changed direction, bearing the scent of smoke from the cookhouse.
"Mo Croi," the big monk muttered after a time, "look at the two of us. Whatever shall become of us, do you think?"
I will go and you will stay, I thought and, at that very moment, realized for the first time that I would be leaving every familiar thing I had ever known. I would go, and it would be months-years, perhaps-before I clasped arms with any of my friends and brothers again. The close-woven cloth of my life would be rent in ways I could not now conceive. I said none of this-how could I? Instead, I merely replied, "Who can say?"
He was silent for a while, then asked: "Will you bring me back a treasure, Aidan?"
"That I will," I promised, glad to have something to offer him in consolation. I shifted my head to look at him; he was still gazing out across the valley but his eyes were misty with tears. "Anything you like," I added.
"I hear the knives of Byzantium are the best in all the world-better even than those the Saex-men make."
"Would you like a knife?"
"Aye, that I would."
"Then I shall bring you the finest knife in all Byzantium," I vowed. "And a spear as well."
He nodded and looked out across the valley in the fastfading light. "I should go back," Dugal said, drawing a hand quickly across his eyes. "Ruadh will be wondering what happened to me. Some of us, at least, do not have leave to sit and think all day."
"I will go back with you," I said. He stood and reached a large hand down for me. I took the offered hand and he hauled me upright with a single quick pull, and we faced one another without speaking.
Finally, Dugal turned and looked out across the valley one last time. "It is pleasant up here, though."
"I like it." I drew the air deep into my lungs and looked around again. The sun was disappearing quickly now, and the far hills gleamed a smooth frosted green with ice-blue shadows. "Sure, I will miss it."
"But think of all the new places you will see, Dana." Dugal did not look at me this time. "You will soon forget all this-this…" His voice faltered.
A crow flying overhead cracked the cold air with its lonely call, and I thought my heart would break.
"How I wish I was going with you," Dugal murmured.
"So do I, Dugal. So do I."
3
Dugal and I returned to the abbey, and to the daily round. Although the abbot had relieved me of my duties for the day, I thought best to resume them, and indeed, to increase them if I could, and in this way prepare myself for the rigours of the journey. Dugal took himself off to the brewhouse, and I continued on to the scriptorium intent on taking up my work once more.
The sun skimmed the low hilltops, casting a deep yellow light and blue shadows over the yard; I reached the door as the bell tolled none. Pausing at the door, I stepped aside, and a moment later my fellow scribes began trooping out into the yard. Others came from their various chores, talking loudly as they toiled up the hill to the chapel.
"Returned so soon, Aidan?" I turned to see Cellach, the Master of the Library, watching me, his head held to one side as if pondering a philosophical complexity.
"Ah, Brother Cellach, there is a task I would finish."
"Of course." Cellach started away, tucking his hands into his sleeves.
When everyone had gone, I entered the scriptorium and went to my place. The unfinished manuscript lay on the board. I picked up my pen and stood contemplating the line that I had last been writing. The neat black letters, so graceful in their simplicity, seemed perfectly conceived to carry the weight of their inspired message. Into my mind came a scrap of verse I had written numerous times: Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my Word shall never pass away…
Word of God's Word, I thought, I am the vellum and you are the Scribe. Write what you will, Lord, that all who see me shall behold your grace and majesty!
Laying aside my pen, I sat in the empty room, looking and listening, remembering all that I had learned and practised in this place. I gazed at the clustered tables, each with its bench, and both worn smooth, the hard, hard oak polished through years of constant use. In this room everything was well-ordered and precise: vellum leaves lay flat and square, pens were placed at the top right-hand corner of each table, and inkhorns stood upright in the dirt floor beside each bench.
Thin light slanted in through the narrow windholes high in the four walls. The dying wind whined as it circled the scriptorium, searching among the chinks in the timbers for entrance, but many hands over many years had pressed tufts of raw wool into the cracks, frustrating all but the most savage gales.
I closed my eyes and breathed the air. The room smelled of peat from the small fire of turves glowing red on the hearthstone in the centre of the room. The pungent white smoke drifted up through the smokehole in the roof-thatch.
It had been my chore, when I first came here, to carry the turves, guard those embers, and keep that fire going through the chill winter days. I would sit in the corner on my pile of peat, and watch the faces of the scribes at their labour, all sharp-eyed and keen as they copied out Prophet, Psalm, and Gospel, their pens scritch-scratching on the dry vellum leaves.
I saw the scriptorium now much as I had seen it then: not a room at all, but a fortress entire and sufficient unto itself, a rock against the winds of chaos howling beyond the monastery walls. Order and harmony reigned here.