‘Think, Brother,’ urged Gormán quietly. ‘Think of the words.’
Eadulf closed his eyes and tried to recall what Uaman had said.
‘He did not mention any names of places. There were no clues. Just that Alchú would be raised by a shepherd and his wife, herding sheep in the mountains. And…’ He paused.
‘Have you thought of something?’
‘He said something about the mountains being haunted.’
Gormán gave a cynical grimace. ‘What mountain in the five kingdoms is not haunted by some wraith or other? Mountains are old and have seen countless great kings rise to lead their people and then be blown away like chaff from the wheat. They have memories, the mountains. They are haunted, right enough.’
Eadulf was shaking his head. ‘He said the daughter of someone haunted them.’
Gormán leant forward eagerly. ‘That is more promising, Brother. Whose daughter?’
The name came in a flash.
‘Dáire Donn.’ Eadulf was triumphant. He looked expectantly at Gormán but the warrior only shook his head.
‘We will have to make inquiries,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile, we must sleep. In the morning, if I have understood your friend Basil Nestorios, he has a horse and some precious objects that he left in the tower yonder. We will wait until the low tide and then go to fetch these.’
Eadulf agreed. Then another thought occurred to him.
‘We imprisoned one of Uaman’s warriors in the stranger’s cell. He might be a means of leading us to Alchú.’
Gormán was cheerful. ‘In the morning, while we are awaiting the change of the tides, I can ride up to the little settlement that I saw up in the mountains behind us. They should be pleased to hear that Uaman is no longer chieftain over them. Moreover, they might be able to help identify this Dáire Donn.’
‘Agreed.’
Eadulf realised, however, that the rest of the night was going to be cold in spite of the wood that Gormán was throwing on to the fire.
The night passed in fitful sleep. It was too cold to rest for any long periods and, as each wakened, they helped to keep the fire well fuelled. As well as the cold there were the cries of nocturnal animals, the howl of wolves and the cry of a wild cat to disturb their slumber. Eadulf was almost thankful when the sky began to lighten and grim, grey streaks started to appear from the east.
‘Tonight we find an inn,’ he announced, as Gormán set about making breakfast. ‘I will perish if I have to pass another night in the open.’
Basil Nestorios was already up and stamping his feet to restore some circulation. He seemed to guess what Eadulf was talking about.
‘I swear that I never knew it could be so cold,’ he said, reverting to Latin as their common language. ‘In my country, the icy hands of night may clutch you but as soon as the sun rises you will be warm again.’
Eadulf gestured to the thick grey clouds above them.
‘Here we do not always have a sunrise, my friend. The clouds always seem to cheat us by hiding it from us.’
Gormán had taken some salted slices of pork from his saddle bag and was turning them above the fire on the end of his sword. Basil Nestorios sniffed suspiciously and frowned.
‘I have noticed that you eat a lot of pig meat in this land. Pig is regarded as an unclean animal in our country.’
‘A strange land, this Jundi-Shapur,’ muttered Eadulf, helping himself to the drinking horn of corma and taking a sip of the fiery liquid before passing it to the physician. At least the alcohol gave him warmth.
Basil Nestorios sniffed in irritation.
‘I told you that Jundi-Shapur was simply a city in the land of Persia. It is also called Genta Shapirta, which means “of the beautiful garden”. It was the king of Persia, Shapur the second of his name, who first allowed the Nestorians to teach medicine in the city.’
‘Nestorians? Your own name is Nestorios,’ Eadulf pointed out. ‘What is signified by this?’
Basil Nestorios raised his brows in surprise. ‘You have not heard of the Nestorians and yet you are a brother of the Faith?’
Eadulf admitted his ignorance.
‘Nestorios was a monk of the east. He taught the Faith in Antioch. He was a learned and wise man and was appointed patriarch of the great city of Constantinople.’
‘When was this?’ queried Eadulf, who never missed an opportunity to expand his knowledge of the Faith, even when his thoughts were only half engaged.
‘About two centuries ago. Nestorios was condemned by what the Church called a heresy. He denied the complete emergence of the divine and human natures in Christ.’
Eadulf smiled tiredly. ‘I thought that the great council at Chalcedon had agreed that Christ was born of a mortal woman but possessed two natures — that divine and human united in one person without losing any of their properties.’
Basil Nestorios sniffed as if dismissing the matter.
‘That is the dogma of both Rome and Constantinople. They even go further to talk of three divine natures apart from the human one — that God, Christ and the Holy Spirit are one.’
Eadulf shrugged. ‘Well, the people in this land have no problem with believing in triune gods and goddesses, so they can easily accept a Holy Trinity.’
Basil Nestorios shook his head sadly. ‘We believe that Christ was only one person who had two natures — one human and one divine.’
‘Old arguments,’ countered Eadulf. ‘Didn’t Arms claim that Christ was not fully divine but created by God to accomplish our salvation? And are there not Gnostics who claim that Christ was never human at all, and his human appearance was merely an illusion to enable him to live among men? Then there are those who say that Christ was born a human male and became God’s adopted son only when he was baptised in the Jordan. There are many such arguments.’
Basil Nestorios was unimpressed.
‘Mary could not be the mother of a god because she was of human flesh and thus could not give birth to divinity. However, men, being what they are — frail and human — objected to the logic of what Nestorios said.’
‘So what happened?’
‘There was a synod at the city of Ephesus when the Bishop Cyril excommunicated Nestorios and his followers. The eastern emperor Theodosius exiled Nestorios and so our church, all those who follow Nestorian teachings, went its own way and flourished. We have taken the word far into the east, beyond the great mountain ranges that guard the strange, exotic lands that shelter behind them. We have spread the teaching through the deserts and Jundi-Shapur is one of our great centres of learning.’
Eadulf was fascinated. ‘I have never heard of this church from which you take your name.’
Basil Nestorios made a wry grimace. ‘But, then, dear friend, I did not know that the church in this country was so different from that which follows the rules dictated by Rome. We cannot know everything in the world. But we must keep our minds open and be receptive to what we can know.’
‘In that I would agree with you.’
Gormán had finished preparing the breakfast.
‘I did not follow all you said,’ he confessed. ‘My Latin is confined to just a few words. I gather that you were discussing religion.’
Eadulf smiled. ‘You do not sound enthusiastic’
Gormán reached for the corma. ‘Religion has its place, Brother Eadulf.’
‘Which is?’
‘There is a time for religion. Usually when there is adversity. Is it not an old saying that when there is prosperity, no altar is seen to be smoking? I turn to religion like everyone else — when there is a need for it.’
Eadulf grimaced in disapproval. ‘A pragmatic approach, I suppose.’
Gormán looked across the waters to where the tower still stood dark and brooding on the island.
The torches are smouldering,’ he observed. ‘They have burnt out. The doors are still open. That seems to indicate that there is no one moving inside. When the waters go down, we can go across and retrieve the property of the stranger.’ He motioned to Basil Nestorios.