Last Summer in Ireland, page 11
I told her that it made it easier that Anacarrig was going to people I liked, but even as I spoke I wasn’t sure it was strictly true. Selling the house was one thing, but after only three weeks I had come to see the garden as mine. I felt I would have a long way to go before I could come to terms with that particular parting.
I waved them goodbye and turned my attention to the figures who were poking and prodding the last items into the back of the Peugeot. It was touch and go, but they managed it. Box after box, armful after armful of stuff on hangers, carrier bags full to overflowing. And the hats. As they drove cautiously down the drive, the back window totally obscured, my last image of Mother’s clothes was a collage composed of assorted hats, decorated with random flowers and feathers.
10
The red Peugeot with its cargo of clothes and church ladies lurched perilously across the main road, swung right towards Armagh and disappeared. I turned away and walked slowly back into a house that would very shortly belong to Carol and Robert Andscombe.
I paused by the telephone in the hall. I should ring the estate agent and confirm what I had said to Robert, I thought. Then I remembered Pat Dunbar was coming to lunch and I hadn’t even thought yet what to give her. I hadn’t seen Pat since the day mother died and I wished I could put her off till another time. But I couldn’t. I’d done that once already. Whatever we were going to eat probably needed to start defrosting an hour ago.
Instead of picking up the phone or heading for the freezer as I should have done, were I being my responsible, sensible self, I turned my back on the empty hall, hurried across the terrace and down the steps. I almost ran across the lawn to my sitting place under the hawthorns.
I wasn’t distraught or in tears, but, suddenly, being in the house was just unbearable. I breathed a sigh of relief as I settled myself on the bigger of the two pieces of stone, the one that lets you rest your back against the twisted trunk of the largest of the three trees. I took a deep breath of the cool morning air and drew in the heady perfume from the blossom that now weighed down the richly clothed branches above my head.
I did have a headache, but mercifully, it was nothing like the one Deara had come and healed for me.
‘Deara,’ I whispered to myself. ‘I wish you were here; I could do with a friend.’
I laughed at myself, knowing perfectly well that the more I wanted something, the less likely it was to happen. I flexed my aching shoulders, leaned back and promised myself five minutes peace and quiet. In five minutes I would go back and face what had to be done.
The moment I closed my eyes, I felt the sudden buffet of wind. Not a cold, wintry wind, but a blustery, rain-spattered turbulence, the kind you get in springtime. I opened my eyes and found myself outside the villa where only a few days ago I had sat in warm autumn sunshine with Deara. Now, under leaden grey skies, fragments of tender new leaves were blowing around the terrace. In the inner courtyard, a climbing rose had broken loose from its support. Long branches bright with the red shoots of new growth were trailing across the wet flags of the pathway.
From a storeroom at the far end of the rain-sodden courtyard, a young man emerged. He was dressed in a short tunic and carried two heavy metal stands. After him hurried an elderly woman with iron-grey hair, with two well-polished lamps in her hands.
Although I had no sense of having followed them, a few seconds later I found myself in the room where they were fitting the lamps onto the stands and adding wood to the recently kindled fire. As the glow of the lamps increased and they moved on to trim the candles on the table, the dim room sprang to life.
The broad table, spread for a meal and decorated with both fruit and flowers, dominated the other pieces of carved wooden furniture. The walls were hung with strange scimitar-like weapons incised with exotic lettering and with woven rugs which reminded me of those I had seen from Bokhara and Samarkand. At my feet, birds and fishes made a jewel-bright pattern in a circular mosaic.
Shadows flickered as the fire burnt up and I glanced back at the table. There, to my surprise, three figures, two men and a woman, sat eating, drinking and talking animatedly. The woman was Deara. Dressed in a most lovely white gown with a gold belt, embroidered around the neck and cuffs with gold thread, she looked so happy, her eyes bright in the candlelight, her mouth softened with laughter. I had to stop myself calling out to her for something told me she would not hear me. I could watch, I could listen, but this time, while I had come to Deara, she had not come to me.
‘Come, Sennach, my good friend,’ Alcelcius began vigorously, ‘another glass of wine. We will have none of your wretched moderation this evening. You’ll taste nothing like this for many a day. Come now, pour your own and Deara’s as well; my hand is too shaky for old wine.’
Sennach refilled the goblets, sipped his wine and nodded his agreement. I could see that he had tasted nothing as good even at the King’s table. But he wasn’t unduly surprised. He would certainly know, as I did, how passionate Alcelcius was about growing his vines and making wine. Deara had told me how much he loved to welcome any wine-merchant from his native Gaul, for he enjoyed not only making his own wine but sampling what others made as well.
‘Now, Sennach, we must drink to this young lady,’ he declared. ‘It is a special occasion. Do you know why?’
I could understand now why Deara was so devoted to her teacher. He was so full of life. His deeply wrinkled, bearded face was alive with delight as he turned from one to the other, his tone light and teasing.
‘Is it not always a special occasion when we old men are roused from sober thoughts by our young friend here?’ Sennach responded dryly.
‘Old men, Sennach?’ Alcelcius exploded. ‘Old men? Why lad, you’re only a stripling. What, forty or fifty? No age, man. Though I wager this evening you wished yourself twenty years younger. Eh?’
He winked at his friend and glanced towards Deara who laughed and blushed slightly.
Sennach really was a strange looking figure, very pale and thin, with long bony fingers that seemed barely covered with skin. He looked rather formidable, but I saw the firm lines of his face relax as he gazed across the table at Deara and nodded.
She returned his smile and I wondered if perhaps she was remembering the day she had gone to the Hall of Council to petition Morrough, the day she had offered him a draught of water from the God’s well.
‘Come, Alcelcius, I shall drink Deara’s health without more ado, unless you tell me at once what we celebrate,’ he insisted with mock severity, as he raised his glass.
‘Well then, I must. But it is the first time I have known you forget any date since the day we met.’
Alcelcius raised his glass. ‘That is what we celebrate, my friend. It is seven years today, this last day of May, since you brought this dear child to my house, to become my pupil and my teacher. And this very day she has completed my manuscript for me. My “History of the Celtic Peoples” is finished at last. Half my lifetime it’s taken to put together and it would not be half the book without her. Besides, no scribe in the world could read my spider marks.’
‘Splendid, Alcelcius, splendid. My congratulations on your work. How say you then, shall we drink to “the fairest of amanuenses?”’
‘Oh yes, I like that. Very good. That’s very good.’
Alcelcius drank his toast with Sennach, then turned to Deara and took her hand.
‘There is more,’ he said, nodding to himself. ‘Tonight I wish to tell you both. Deara has been my pupil and my teacher; she has also long been my heir. All I possess is hers, both here and in Albi and in Gaul. My will is drawn up in the Roman manner, Sennach. Now I ask you to do what is fitting under your brehon law. I want no difficulties for my dear girl when I go to meet my God.’
He paused, breathless, released her hand and raised his goblet again. ‘My dearest girl, your health, wealth and happiness.’
I was watching Deara closely. Suddenly I knew she was overcome with sadness. Here, in the midst of celebration, I saw her eyes mist with tears and knew she was thinking that one day soon she must lose Alcelcius and perhaps Sennach too – two men who had offered her their love and protection.
As I looked across at her, seeing her struggle to respond, to sustain the lightness of celebration, I was sharply aware of the young girl I had met only three weeks ago on the calendar I reckoned by. I could see her sitting at this same table poring over the letters and words on her wax tablet, struggling to master the new language he was teaching her, the language which meant that we had been able to talk to each other.
How strange for her after the huts of the encampment and the continuous presence of Merdaine, to enter a world where everything was unfamiliar: the language the servants spoke, the God they worshipped, even the tasks they performed each day to provide food and clothes for the household. She must have been amazed at how often people bathed. She might even have been uneasy about stepping naked into hot water. Did she miss the rushes on her bedroom floor and the animal skins on her bed in winter? Was she homesick for familiar things, even for the things she had disliked, the daily tasks like smooring the fire at night and blowing it into life in the morning?
As I watched the grown woman across the table, I wondered if the strangeness had been offset by the excitement, the delight, of writing her first words on the wax tablet. I could still feel my own excitement when as a ‘senior infant’ I first managed joined up writing and then, years afterwards when we were asked to write ‘compositions’. Later, at secondary school, I had loved translating from French or Latin, imagining myself a detective cracking a code, or an archaeologist unravelling a long forgotten language, turning what was unknown into something everyone could understand.
I saw Deara collect herself. She began to speak quietly: ‘I shall drink a toast too,’ she said firmly, ‘but I wish tonight I could stand in the midst of Emain to drink it. I, who hate the crowds and the council and the market place, would tonight climb even the Hill of Tara, when all the chieftains of Ireland come to greet Niall. There would I drink my toast, that all might hear me.’
She raised her goblet and looked from one to the other: ‘To my teachers, Alcelcius and Sennach, from whom I have learnt far more than they taught. May I always be a credit to their wisdom, as well as to their knowledge.’
Alcelcius was silent for a moment while Sennach studied minutely the oak grain of the table.
‘You rogue, Sennach, you rogue! Why did you not tell me you were teaching her oratory as well as law?’
I heard their laughter and for a moment was envious. Such love and trust, such companionship. How I wished there had been such figures in my own life to advise and guide me. I would have valued the friendship of a man like Alcelcius more than all his wealth in Ireland, or England, or France.
‘Sennach, my lad, clap your hands for that fine fellow of mine. Bid him bring my box,’ Alcelcius requested. ‘Then he may conduct me to my chamber before I fall asleep.’
He raised a hand in protest as Sennach got to his feet. ‘No, do not you go. It is early yet, far too early for the litters to be called, except for old men and dull women, as the saying is. Stay and finish the flask. Tell Deara that tale you told me earlier about the Christian slave who came to the King today.’
He stretched out his hands for the battered metal box his servant had brought him.
‘Been all over the east, this box,’ he said, striking it affectionately. ‘Used to keep my instruments in it, until I put down roots here and had a shelf. Didn’t often see a shelf in those days, bit of a luxury in a transit camp, or the desert, or up country in Galatia.’
He scuffled ineffectively amongst the parchment scrolls. I watched Deara remove his wine goblet to a safe distance before he caught it with his elbow.
‘It’s in here somewhere,’ he muttered. ‘I put it here myself.’
He picked up one scroll after another, examined the seals, the inscriptions and the bindings.
‘Here you are, this is the will.’
He handed the document triumphantly to Sennach, then peered again at a discoloured parchment in his other hand. He struck his forehead and closed his eyes.
‘Deara, I must beg your pardon and I do so most humbly. This bears your name and I was charged to give it to you when you could read it for yourself. You could have done it three or four years ago. But I put it away for safety and forgot.’
Deara shook her head gently. ‘It is of no matter. I shall read it by and by,’ she said soothingly.
‘I remember, she was most insistent you should read it for yourself, when you had mastered the Roman tongue,’ he went on. ‘She made me promise I would not assist you, and if you did not come to me, or if you did not complete your studies, I was to destroy it. That’s why I put it in my box.’
Deara fingered the seal and the linen bindings beside where her name was written. ‘Thank you for your care, Alcelcius, it could not have had a safer home.’
‘And now goodnight, my dear, and God bless you,’ he said as he stood up. ‘And you, Sennach, may He bless you, too, even if your heart is not His. May your sleep bring you peace.’
‘Do you really want to hear about the Christian slave, or shall we have a game of fidchell?’ Sennach asked, as the door closed behind him.
‘I should like to hear,’ she replied, ‘if you have a mind to tell me. More wine?’
‘Do you think that wise?’
‘That you must ask your stomach, Sennach, not me. But whatever it says, a glass of spring water might indeed be wise.’
Sennach poured a draught from the covered pitcher and looked at it thoughtfully before drinking it down.
‘It is also seven years since I was healed by just such a draught of water from your hand,’ he said. ‘Not instantly, that would misrepresent the facts; nevertheless, that same week, I did eat at the King’s table for the first time in months.’
‘The God was kind.’
‘Perhaps, and perhaps not,’ he retorted dryly. ‘What is indisputable, however, is that his handmaiden was remarkably perceptive and very persistent in her ministrations. You were quite unwilling to accept what seemed to me the overwhelmingly negative import of the evidence.’
He took up the wine flask and raised it towards her. When she nodded, he refilled both their goblets.
‘On reflection, I am most surprised I forgot that today was the day of your coming to Alcelcius,’ he continued. ‘You were very much in my thoughts while I was questioning that Christian slave Alcelcius spoke of. I recalled more than once another occasion, when a slave stood thus before the King.’
As they rose from the table and crossed to the hearth, I slipped deeper into the shadows of the room. I watched Sennach settle back in a handsome carved chair and begin to speak.
I was quite amazed by Sennach’s story. To begin with he was not at all the sort of man I would have imagined to be a storyteller. He hardly moved a muscle as he spoke and there was little variation in his voice quality, but there was something about his steady tone, his attention to detail and his passion for accuracy that was compelling in its own way. As I listened, Sennach’s words turned themselves into the very scene itself and I followed it step by step as if I had been standing among the crowd of clients waiting their turn at the back of the large chamber.
‘Name?’
‘Patricius Claudius, son of Calpurnius of Bannem Tabernae, sir.’
‘State your business with this Council.’
‘I come to petition the King, to give me leave to right a wrong which I have done.’
‘You’re a Briton, aren’t you?’ interrupted Morrough.
‘Yes, Sire, I am.’
‘Where did you say you came from?’
‘Bannem Tabernae, Sire.’
‘Where in the name of all the Gods is that?’
‘It is nowhere, Sire,’ the man replied quite coolly. ‘It is a heap of stones by a river flowing to the sea. But it was once a village of two hundred souls, the place of my father and grandfather. It was destroyed by fire and sword when I was taken captive seventeen years ago.’
Morrough’s brows darkened. ‘So you are a slave, are you? Where is your master, then? Let him step forward.’
‘I left my master eleven years ago,’ Patricius replied. ‘I know not if he yet lives, but I would pay my debt to him, if he does live, or to his kin, if he does not.’
‘You mean you want to go back and spare yourself a whipping, is that it?’
Morrough’s tone was harsh and the look on his face perilous.
‘No, Sire, I wish to be free as all men are born and should remain.’
I saw Deara catch her breath and indeed it did sound as if the slave was living dangerously by speaking to Morrough so directly. Seeing her startled look, Sennach paused and told her that Patricius had shown not the slightest sign of anxiety or fear. He had just gone on quietly with what he wanted to say.
‘I would repay my master the price he paid for me that he would not be wronged because by my flight I had sought to right a wrong.’
At that point Morrough had asked Sennach what the man was worth and Sennach had said that he couldn’t say until he had questioned him further.
‘Then pray question him further,’ he said testily.
‘What did your master employ you to do?’
‘I tended his sheep, sir.’
‘For how long?’
‘Six years, sir.’
‘And did you care for the sheep, or merely keep them from straying?’
‘I learnt to care for them, to help at birth, to shear and dip, to puncture if they gorged new grass. It was a large flock, two hundred ewes, in a land of many streams and rough woodland where they would often break their legs.’
‘Did you perform any other services for your master?’
‘I kept his accounts and I delivered his son in the bad winter, when there was no woman to help.’
