Saint Brigid's Bones (12 page)

“Do you know who I am?”

Illann started to sputter something but Dúnlaing cut him off.

“I am the
rí
, the king of this tribe. It is by my words and deeds that the gods judge all of us here. If I neglect my duty, the powers of earth and sky will destroy me and devastate our lands, as well they should. I cannot be king unless I know what is happening around me. I am the one to decide whether or not something is important, not you or your brother or anyone else in this tribe. And I assure you, boy, if the bones of Brigid have been taken from the church at Kildare, it is very important to me.”

All the guests, especially Illann, looked as if they wanted to crawl under their tables and hide. Dúnlaing was old, but I was reminded at that moment why this man had ruled our tribe for so long.

The king looked out at the crowd as he spoke to me.

“Deirdre, do you have any idea who took the bones?”

“No, my lord. I had hoped you might be able to help me find the thief. It has been said that some of your nobles might want to see the monastery weakened.”

Dúnlaing nodded, then took his sword from its golden sheath and laid it on the table before him as he spoke to the assembled nobles.

“I will only ask this once: Did any of you take the bones of Brigid?”

No one made a sound. No one moved a muscle. Once Dúnlaing's gaze had finished sweeping the crowd, he spoke again.

“If I learn that any of you has taken the bones, I will personally cut his throat with my sword, even if that man is my own son.”

The king sat down again and took a long drink of wine. Illann returned to his seat, his head hanging low. Life slowly began to return to the assembled guests as Dúnlaing turned back to me.

“Deirdre, I cannot tell you how much this grieves me. Brigid was the most holy person I have ever met. To think that anyone would touch her bones—”

Tears began to roll down his cheeks. It was no shame among my people for a man to cry.

“My lord, by the grace of God, I will find those bones and return them to their rightful place at Kildare. I will search this whole island if I need to.”

Dúnlaing nodded again.

“Ah, Deirdre, you were always a most determined child, as well as most gifted. I have no doubt that you will recover the remains of Brigid. If there is anything I can do to help—anything—you have only to ask.”

“Thank you, my lord. I will not hesitate to call on you.”

The joy seemed to have gone out of the feast. The king withdrew to his own tent and the rest of the nobles began to follow in turn. Before Illann and Ailill had a chance to escape, I cornered them away from the others.

“Gentlemen, a good Samain to you.”

Illann still looked distressed from the tongue-lashing by his father, but he kept his composure. It was Ailill who spoke first.

“What do you want, Deirdre? Why did you have to come here tonight? We didn't take your precious bones. You have no proof.”

“My, Ailill, you do seem defensive. I'm so sorry if I've caused you any trouble. What makes you think I suspect that you're the thieves?”

Before he could answer, Illann spoke.

“Deirdre, why are you here?”

“Because I
do
suspect that you're the thieves. Wouldn't you if you were me? You've always resented that the monastery holds such valuable lands in your father's kingdom. You'd love to have it for yourselves. And your friend Roech acted as guilty as sin when I asked him about it a few days ago. You're a reasonable man, Illann. I'll tell you what I'll do. If those bones are back in the church within the next three days, I won't ask any questions. I'll even tell your father you helped me find them.”

“We don't have them!” Ailill shouted. “I swear I'll—“

“You'll do what, Ailill?” I interrupted. “Do want me to sing another satire against you?”

Ailill reached for me, but Illann grabbed his arms and held him back.

“Deirdre,” Illann said. “You've delivered your message. I think it's best that you leave now.”

“Gladly, my lord.”

I turned toward the door.

“By the way, Ailill, if you did steal the bones, I hope the spirits are kind to you tonight. You know they always liked Brigid.”

“Well, that was fun.”

Dari and I were back in our tent on the edge of the fort. Thankfully, we had it to ourselves.

“Dari, I'm sorry. I hope you at least enjoyed talking with the king.”

“Yes, but I was scared to death the whole time. Dúnlaing is one of the most powerful men in Ireland while I'm the youngest daughter of a dirt-poor farmer.”

“I think he liked you though. He has a weakness for pretty girls.”

I walked to the door flap of the tent and looked around. I wanted to make sure no one was nearby.

“So, what did you think of the king's sons?” I asked her.

Dari yawned and stretched her arms.

“I think they're guilty. Of what, I'm not sure.”

“But it has to be the bones.”

“Maybe. Illann and Ailill were plainly terrified of you, as was Roech. But did you look at the women in that room?”

“Not really. I mean, I saw some of their jewelry.”

“I was looking at more than what they were wearing, Deirdre, and I was listening too. I have good ears. They spent the feast talking about how horrible you looked in your ugly robes and wondering why you would invite some trashy peasant into the king's royal hall.”

“Oh Dari, they were just talking. I'm sure they didn't mean it.”

“Of course they meant it, but that's not the point. What matters is that whatever plot is going on doesn't involve many people.”

“How can you tell that?”

“Because wives know everything their husbands are involved in even if the men think they don't. The only women in that hall who were worried were the two wives of the king's sons and that poor woman married to your sleazy cousin Roech. They looked like they were going to faint from the moment we showed up. They were afraid of what you were going to say to Dúnlaing.”

I thought about this for a moment.

“If that's true, maybe we could get one of the wives to talk to us.”

Dari shook her head.

“They won't, Deirdre. They may not agree with their husbands and they may even hate them, but they know that if their husbands fall, so do they and their families. No mother is going to sacrifice her children's future to help you.”

Dari collapsed on the bed and closed her eyes.

“Deirdre, I'm so tired tonight I can't even pray. Can we go to sleep now?”

“Of course. Let's leave early tomorrow. I want to get back to Kildare as soon as we can.”

Dari was asleep before I finished speaking. I pulled the blanket over her and tucked it around her shoulders. I placed my harp in its case and walked out of the tent to the top of the ancient earthen walls of Dún Ailinne. The moon was rising and gave the night an eerie glow.

“Powers of the Otherworld,” I whispered to the darkness, “if you will hear the prayer of a Christian on this Samain night, please help me find the bones of Brigid.”

A cold wind blew against my face and an owl hooted in the distance. For a moment, I thought I saw someone moving in the shadows at the edge of the woods, but I looked again and there was no one there.

W
hen we returned to the monastery the next afternoon, I was thrilled to see smoke rising from the roof of Father Ailbe's hut. He was sitting outside his door even though the weather had turned cold. I had a feeling he was waiting for me.

“Abba, you're back!”

Father Ailbe's real name was Albeus, but no one had used that name since he left his home in Egypt almost sixty years ago to make his way to our distant island. The Irish shortened his name to Ailbe, a common name among us. When I was a little girl still learning to talk, I couldn't say Ailbe, so I called him Abba. He thought this was wonderful and so I had called him that ever since.

I rushed to him as he struggled to his feet and gave him a big hug. I could feel the bones of his back through his cloak and knew he had lost more weight. He hadn't been eating properly
lately. I led him back into his hut to sit by the warmth and sweet smell of the peat fire.

His hut was small but comfortable, with a bench by the fireplace and a bed in back. An old chest stood at the foot of his bed and a writing table with a lamp sat beneath the window. A simple cross of twisted reeds hung on the wall, a gift from Brigid herself. Next to the cross was a single shelf holding a few mementos from his travels and a small wooden doll. The doll was unlike any other I had ever seen and I remember being fascinated by it when I was a little girl. The wood was hard like oak, but with a strange reddish color. For a long time I thought it was made from alder, which turns from white to blood-red when cut, but when he finally let me hold it I could tell the weight was wrong. The mouth, eyes, and nose were carefully but not skillfully carved, as if a father unused to working wood had made it for his child. The tunic was sewn with great skill, but the material was woven from coarse flax rather than the soft wool normally used for a doll's clothing. The wood also had bite marks on the limbs and head as if from a teething child, as was common enough, but the oddest thing about the doll was its obvious age. The cloth was frail and yellowed and smelled as if it had been made many years ago. Whenever I had asked Father Ailbe about it, he would only say that it had belonged to a patient of his long ago.

I brought him a hot cup of broth from the small pot over the hearth and sat next to him to make sure he drank it.

“Thank you, my dear. That does taste good.”

Some of the broth was stuck to his white beard, so I took a cloth and wiped it away. He winced.

“You don't need to fuss about me so, Deirdre. I'm not an invalid yet. And in any case, I hear you have a great deal more to worry about than an old man with a messy face. I stopped by your grandmother's house on the way here. She told me
all the latest news, including your trip back to Sleaty and the discovery of the Armagh cross.”

I had gone to my grandmother's house the day after my dressing down by Sister Anna. Over a slice of warm bread with lots of butter, she urged me to pay no attention to the disbelief of the abbess, though she said I should have told Sister Anna the truth about where I was going. She believed the cross was an important clue in my search, though I wasn't so sure.

“Yes, Sister Anna has put me in charge of finding the bones of Brigid,” I said to Father Ailbe. “But it's been over two weeks since we discovered they were missing and I'm no closer to solving the mystery. Oh, Abba, what am I going to do?”

He stood and put his medical bag on his shoulder.

“Why don't you come with me on my rounds?” he said. “There are a couple of patients I need to check on. We can talk on the way.”

Father Ailbe had been born into a wealthy merchant family in the coastal metropolis of Alexandria. His family lived next to the old Jewish Quarter of the city. He grew up speaking Greek, but he was also fluent in Latin, Coptic, Aramaic, and several other languages. He had studied with the greatest scholars of his day, mostly at the fabled Library of Alexandria. The library had once held tens of thousands of papyrus scrolls, but in Father Ailbe's youth Christian fanatics had burned almost all of them, believing they were tools of the devil. The remaining academics at the library spent their time teaching young people like Father Ailbe and frantically copying texts in hope that some might survive. But every few years the Parabolans, as the Christian brotherhood called themselves, would rouse themselves into a fury and destroy any books they could find. By the time Father Ailbe had reached his late teens, the collection had been sadly depleted.

One day the Parabolans came to the library with torches in hand to destroy the building and its contents once and for all. The head librarian quickly gathered a few precious scrolls and hid them in a small wooden chest. Father Ailbe was studying there that day and was a favorite student of the head librarian, so he was given the chest. He told the young man to keep them safe for the future, then sent him out the back door while he and the other librarians held off the mob in the front at the cost of their own lives. Father Ailbe took the chest home and protected it, as he had promised, reading the scrolls at night with the curtains drawn. It contained lost treatises of Aristotle, the complete works of Sappho of Lesbos, gospels ascribed to Peter and Judas, and other priceless works unknown elsewhere in the Roman world. When Father Ailbe came to Ireland, he brought the chest with him for fear it would be discovered and destroyed in Egypt. Now it sat at the foot of his bed, holding the last remnants of the great Library of Alexandria. I had spent countless hours over the years in his hut reading these scrolls by candlelight.

By his own admission, Father Ailbe was an impious youth. Although he was a gifted student and a passionate learner, he and his friends spent much of their free time roaming the back alleys of Alexandria picking fights and seducing girls. Over the objections of his father, he chose medicine over commerce, though he continued to travel frequently on trade missions for his family. He had often told me of his journeys to Constantinople, Jerusalem, and even India. But one night in his early twenties, he witnessed something that changed his life forever.