Where the Stones Sing (16 page)

So Kai sang, and as she sang, she heard the voices
joining
in. First she heard Tom and Edward and her own father, then Dame Maria and Brother Albert and all the brothers but Brother Malcolm, then Ymna and Joan and Master Giles and his wife. But then the other voices joined in, the warm, bright voices of the children: Jack and Finn and all those who had sung in the cathedral since its foundation. And the music was so beautiful that every person there wondered how they could ever have been angry. And after the singing had finished, Brother Albert and Prior Stephen came forward. Prior Stephen said, ‘How can you believe that such wonderful music, sung in praise of the Lord in his own house, can be evil? How could you think that? It is those who would have you harm this innocent child that are the evil ones. But let us leave it to God to punish them for their ill will towards her. Now let us all sing, and pray for forgiveness to the Lord and to Our Lady, that we may be freed from the will to harm that lives in our hearts.’

And so within the ancient walls of the cathedral the people of Dublin sang, sang in praise of creation and in thanks for the glory of the world, sang for comfort and courage and hope. And when they came outside, it was a bright and sunny day and the bells were ringing out from every church in the city.

The Blackbird in the Garden, April 1349

here was a blackbird singing in the garden of Dame Maria’s house. A sign that spring was really here, thought Kai. This spring was
bringing
hope with it, because the plague was
gradually
loosening its grip on Dublin. The dark shadow that had lain over the city was finally lifting.

Soon her father would be here too, for he had promised to come to Dublin at Easter. Kai was doing some
needlework
, seated on a stone bench at the gate to the river, but she kept getting distracted. She was finding it difficult to keep the stitches straight, for the blackbird’s song and the tolling of the Christ Church bell for vespers made it hard to keep her mind on her work. Being a girl was not all fun. Learning to wear skirts again had been hard at first, but she had got used to it. And how she loved her new blue dress. She stroked it thoughtfully, delighting in the feeling of the
soft wool under her fingers.

Tom and the three new choirboys would be singing in the cathedral now. It would be the hymn in praise of the Queen of Heaven, the
Salve Regina
. She hummed the music quietly to herself. Sometimes she missed the choir badly. She had loved to hear her voice joining with the others; she had loved the way they blended together to make something
beautiful
. That was one of the things she had learned from the choir. Voices singing together could make a kind of beauty that one voice singing alone could never make. Of course, she sang at Mass with all the other people and alone with Tom sometimes, but it was not the same as when the four of them – yes, even Roland had had his part to play – had been together in the choir. Sometimes she missed other parts of her old life too. She even missed the lessons with Brother Albert, although Dame Maria was helping her to keep up her Latin and her reading. She had come to stay in Dame Maria’s house, and now she loved her even more than she had when she had seemed a distant and angelic figure. She had learned that Dame Maria could be as testy as Brother Albert when things were not done to her satisfaction, and that needlework could be as boring to learn as any other task. But she was happy. She could see Tom when she liked and she visited the canons often. Edward had come back to Dublin where he was making great advances with his craft.

Her father had stayed in the city until after Christmas, but
then he had taken off out onto the roads again.

‘Dame Maria would give you work, if you wished,’ Kai had said to him. ‘She said there is always work for a man of your wit and strength.’

‘You can’t keep an old dog tied up for too long,’ he had said to her. ‘I need the open road and the chance of adventure.’

But he had promised to come back to visit regularly. Sometimes Kai made up stories to herself about her father and Dame Maria getting married, but she knew they were only stories. She could not imagine him staying in Dame Maria’s quiet and orderly house. It would very soon stop being quiet and orderly.

Kai smiled to herself and leaned back against the apple tree. Primroses and the first forget-me-nots grew at her feet and budding apple-blossom surrounded her. Dinny slept in a ray of sunlight on the bench beside her. The water of the Liffey lapped against the walls of the garden and Kai thought of Jack. She still missed him, though no longer with the same grief she had felt in the early days. His spirit, she knew, lived on, in her memory and in the music and even in the very stones of the cathedral. Tom had been given his wish and was to return to the mill after Easter, to take up his father’s trade. His voice had started to break and he had finally plucked up the courage to tell Brother Albert that he had no desire to become a monk. Brother Albert had been not been
surprised, though he had been sad.

‘I have lost every one of my best choristers,’ he had said forlornly. For now even Roland had left the priory. The escheator, after his humiliating defeat in front of the people of Dublin, had left for England and taken Roland with him, leaving Dame Rachel to her fanaticisms. Brother Malcolm too had left. No one knew where he had gone. He had simply disappeared one night, with coins from the collection plate and a side of lamb that the kitchener had been saving for the Easter celebrations.

Kai was content. She knew she would be here to see the apple and pear blossom ripen into fruit. She was safe and
settled
in this garden in this city.

The city holds us all, she thought. All of us who are here now and all of us who have ever been here. All of us who will be here in time to come. It holds the cathedral too, safe inside its walls. And the cathedral holds all the voices of the children. She smiled suddenly, thinking of something else. I’m only a very tiny part of it all, she thought. Yet I myself hold all of it inside me, because I am sitting here, thinking about it.

Now as the light faded, the blackbird’s song grew louder, climbing high, stronger than the fading notes of the bell. He sang out his final note and there was suddenly quiet in the garden. In the light-filled moment between the clear notes of the blackbird and dying call of the bell, something, neither
silence nor song, echoed back from the cathedral stones, where, like a great bird resting from its flight, it brooded quietly over the city below.

HISTORICAL NOTES

The cathedral of the Holy Trinity, better known as Christ Church, was founded
c
1030, by Dúnán, first bishop of Dublin. The land it stands on was granted to him by Sitric ‘Silkbeard’, the Viking king of the city.

The cathedral came under Anglo-Norman control after their arrival in the 1170s, and was rebuilt shortly afterwards under
Archbishop
John Cumin.

This is also the period when St Laurence O’Toole (whose reputed heart relic is still held in the cathedral) introduced the rule of St Augustine to the cathedral, and the cathedral would remain staff ed by these Augustinian canons until the Reformation. St Laurence was also known as a peacemaker during the upheaval of the Anglo-Norman period, and is believed to have saved the lives of many orphans and other Dubliners through his negotiating skills.

The records of Christ Church detail disasters such as the fire of 1283 and the storm which damaged the belfry in 1316. The cathedral and the adjoining priory played a very important role in the political and social life of Dublin.

An account roll of the cathedral priory covering the period 1337–1346 is the source of much of the detail in
Where the Stones Sing
, including the name of the washerwoman, Ymna. The detail of priory
life and the layout of the buildings as recounted in the book is accurate, with the exception of the description of Hell, which is only mentioned in later accounts. The Dolocher and Greenteeth Jenny are also later creations of folk imagination. The Christ Church clergy were known as ‘canons’ at the time of the story, but they are addressed in the novel as ‘brothers’, which was the usual term used for monks during the medieval period.

The Black Death, however, was a very real part of the history of Dublin, first appearing in late summer 1348 and continuing to ravage the city well into 1349. The annalist John Clyn records that 14,000 people died in Dublin of the plague between the beginning of August and Christmas in 1348. One reason for the devastation caused by the plague was lack of medical knowledge. No connection was made between the presence of fleas from black rats and the spread of the disease. The mayor of Dublin Kenewrek Scherman and Archbishop Bicknor of Dublin were both said to have died of the plague. It is possible that Prior Robert [de Hereforde] was also a victim of the epidemic.

Stephen de Derby became prior of Christ Church between 1347−49 and was responsible for the creation of the Christ Church psalter, a wonderfully illustrated manuscript showing the musical arrangement for the psalms sung by the canons in the cathedral. Music was an important part of the liturgy, although Christ Church did not have a choir school before the fifteenth century. In the interests of the story, Brother Albert’s school has been moved to the time of the Black Death. In 1480, the cathedral was given a grant for four choristers by the family of the mayor of Dublin. The choir school was founded in 1493. Music has continued to be a hugely important part of the cathedral ceremonies, with the tradition of singing and bell-ringing continuing right up until the present day.

Politically, the cathedral was an important centre of activity. In 1487, Lambert Simnel was crowned as King Edward VI, in an unsuccessful attempt by the Yorkists to wrest the throne of England from Henry VII. Politics intervened again at the time of the Reformation, when the relics of the cathedral, such as the Staff of Jesus and the Speaking Cross were publicly burned and the priory was dissolved. From this point on the cathedral was under the control of a Dean and Chapter, and no longer connected with the Augustinian order.

Despite the disaster of 1562, when the south wall of the nave of the cathedral collapsed bringing the roof with it, the church remained an important part of the civic life of Dublin. During the seventeenth
century
the law courts occupied the old monastic buildings adjoining the cathedral. As the years passed, the cathedral buildings suffered more and more from the ravages of time. But it was not until towards the end of the nineteenth century that George Edmund Street undertook the
restoration
and rebuilding of the cathedral, an enormous project funded by Henry Roe. After its completion Christ Church took its present
appearance
. The cathedral continues today as a centre for worship and a
significant
part of the heritage of the city. Its bells and its music still call out to the people of Dublin.

If you visit the cathedral, you will be able to see some of the parts described in this story: the pillar with the musicians carved on it, the pilgrim foxes, the child’s tomb. You will also see the mummified body of the cat chasing the rat, which I took as my inspiration for the important part cats play in the story.

Eithne Massey

Information courtesy of Dr Stuart Kinsella, Research Advisor, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin