“There is nothing here, Madog,” I called, my voice booming with a hollow sound.
I moved deeper into the dolmen. Behind the center stone the chamber divided; one side formed a stall-like box and the other a long, low passage with short slab stones projecting out from the sides. I could see nothing in the darkness at the end of the passage, but I smelled the musty, damp, metallic scent of old wet stone and earth. In the larger stall was a niche in the wall and in the niche a small round stone. I stepped into the stall and took up the stone; holding it in the thin light from the entrance, I could see that it was incised with two slits for eyes and a slit mouth. That was all: just three lines, but the shape of the stone and the slant of the eyes combined to produce in me a sensation of dread—or perhaps it was the force of Madog’s words working in me, for I looked at the complacent arrogance etched on the face of the stone head and my apprehension increased.
I returned the stone to its place and backed away from the niche, retreating from the curious encounter. But even as I prepared to flee, I saw myself running from the chamber in disgrace. That I, a noble Briton, should become squeamish and fearful before such a vulgar image disgusted me. Instantly my trepidation left me. I felt an inexplicable urge to smash the thing.
I reached into the niche and took up the stone head once more. “Crom Cruach,” I said, “you have eaten your last soul.”
With that I hurled the head into the corner of the stall, where it collided with the wall. The impact broke a chip from the stone head, and this emboldened me. I picked up the head and returned to where Madog was waiting.
“See here, Madog,” I said, “I have conquered Crom Cruach.” I held up the stone head for him to see and then heaved it against the massive slab which formed part of the entrance to the dolmen. There was a loud crack, and the stone head split in half. I retrieved the two halves. “Look, it is just a bit of stone after all,” I told him, holding half in each hand. “There is nothing to fear.”
The old shepherd regarded the broken rock dubiously. He reached a tentative finger to the clean-cracked stone and felt the rough edge. “He is gone?”
“Crom is gone,” I confirmed, tossing the two halves aside. “Come, let us go back to the bothy now and get warm.”
Madog allowed himself to be led away; he was quiet on the walk through the forest. Upon our return, I built up the fire and set about warming the food once more to give him a fine supper. He ate little, however, and soon lay down to sleep, exhausted by the exertion of the day. While he slept, I fed and watered the sheep and then sat to watch the day slowly fade. A blue-gray mist rose in the valley as the sun bled to a pale, ghostly white: the color of dead men’s bones.
THIRTEEN
MADOG DID NOT rise the next morning but lay the whole day by the fire, shivering despite the heat of the flames. I gave him some bread and the rest of the beer at midday, and he sat up for a while. He did not seem to remember what had happened the previous day, so I told him about visiting the dolmen. He liked the story and lay like a child gazing at the flames while I spoke.
When I finished, he made to get to his feet, but the effort started him coughing. I was alarmed to hear the deep, liquid gurgling sound as he struggled to catch his breath. I went to ease him down again, but he pushed my hands away. “The sheep…” He gasped between spasms. “…the sheep…”
“I have already seen to the sheep,” I said. “We must stay here and wait for the filidh to come.”
I coaxed him back to his place by the fire, and he soon fell asleep again. He passed a restless, fever-fraught night. His breathing grew labored, and the coughing, when it came, was deeper in his chest. Once he awoke and sat up, saying he was going to take the sheep out to graze.
“It is night, Madog,” I told him. “It will be morning soon enough. We will take them then. Go back to sleep.”
He lay down, and the trembling started soon after. He shuddered and shook so much I thought he would break the few teeth he had left in his mouth. I built up the fire and put his fleece over him, but there was little more I could do.
Later, as the sun rose, he woke, saying he was going to take the flock to the south meadow. “Good,” I told him. “Just rest a little and get your strength before you go.”
He protested that he felt better, so I suggested that we eat something before we departed. While I readied the meal, he fell into a fit of coughing that squeezed him hard and left him weak and breathless. After that he sank into a deep sleep and did not wake again until evening. He ate and drank and then asked for his crook so that he could get up to relieve himself. I had to help him with this, and then he said he wanted to see the sheep, so I helped him down to the enclosure, where he stood for a while, leaning on his crook. He soon grew cold, however, and began coughing.
We went back to the fire, where he lay down, utterly spent. He slept then, resting more easily, it seemed to me; he woke only once, looked at me, and chuckled. “Crom Cruach,” he said, repeating that portion of the story I had told him, “you have eaten your last soul.”
He liked that, and he made me tell him again how we had walked into the forest and he showed me the dolmen, and how I had gone inside and found the round stone head and…he was asleep again before I finished.
I dozed off and on through the night and rose just before dawn, when I heard Madog call out in his sleep. I waited, but he said no more, so I got up and went to the water stoup and dipped out a bowl; I drank some myself and then took a bowl to Madog.
Though I shook him and snapped his ears with my fingers, I could not rouse him. The old shepherd’s breathing was light and shallow, with a deeper gurgling sound that reminded me of the swish and surge of the sea. I poured a little water on his mouth to wet his lips and went to fetch wood from the pile. There was frost on the ground and on the trees; my feet crunched lightly as I walked.
I built up the fire and sat down to wait. At last Madog woke. He looked at me and said something, but his voice was so soft I could not make it out. “What is it, Madog?” I said, bending near.
He swallowed and drew a shaky breath. “Take care of the sheep,” he said in a voice thin as spider thread. Then, closing his eyes, he gulped a little air, exhaled, and died.
It took me a moment to realize that Madog was dead. He seemed simply to drift away between one faint breath and the next.
I was still sitting there, wondering what to do next, when I heard a voice on the mountain trail. I rose and went to look and saw a man coming up from the valley. I hailed him and watched as he toiled up the last steep portion of the track.
“They told me the old shepherd was ill,” he announced. Over his plain gray robes the druid wore a dark cloak ornamented with tufts of white fur, which gave him a curious speckled appearance. He carried a long staff made from a rowan sapling and a large leather bag on a strap across his chest.
“Madog is dead,” I told him. “He died this morning. You came too late.”
He nodded, his expression placid. “Show me.”
“There by the fire,” I said.
He walked to where the body lay curled by the edge of the fire ring. He knelt down and put his hand on the old man’s neck, rested it there for a moment, and then turned to me. “In truth, his spirit has gone. He is dead.”
“He is that,” I agreed snidely. “And he has you to thank.”
He looked at me curiously. “I know you,” he said. “You roused Ercol to fury at the fleá.”
I stared at him as a hazy recognition came to me. “Is it Cormac?”
His smile was wide and welcoming. “None other.” Indicating Madog’s body, he said, “I am sorry.”
“Why sorry?” I said. “He was nothing to you.” My peevish tone irritated even me. I do not know why I took on so. I suppose I wanted to rebuke him for taking so long to come to Madog’s aid.
“You are right to feel grief for your friend,” he said. “But he is beyond hardship, beyond care, beyond the pains of this world. Even now his feet are treading
wondrous paths in the Otherworld, and his joy is richer than any he has ever known. You can believe this. It is so.”
That a heathen druid, not much older than myself, should lecture me so with words my old grandfather might have used rankled me. “So you say.”
He regarded me once more with a mild, almost pitying look and then said, “There is a dolmen near here. We can take the body there—unless you have any objection.”
“It makes no difference to me.”
The young druid made quick work of straightening the body and arranging the lifeless limbs. He uncurled the crooked hands and folded them over Madog’s chest, then took a bone-carved comb from his bag and proceeded to smooth the old man’s hair. Cormac’s care surprised and even moved me, but I was still too irritated with him to credit the kindness.
When he finished, he indicated that I should take hold of Madog’s feet, while he took the head and shoulders. Together we lifted the dead weight between us and started off. “Wait,” said Cormac, stopping suddenly. “I forgot.”
We lowered the corpse to the ground once more. Cormac stretched out his staff and, walking slowly around the body, spoke in a low, chanting voice. On the completion of his third circuit, he lowered his staff and balanced it lengthwise on Madog’s body. Then, taking his place at the head once more, he indicated that I should grasp the feet. We raised the corpse again, but this time it weighed nothing at all.
We resumed our walk, but it was as if I did not so much carry the body as simply guide it along the path. Thus, holding to the old shepherd’s ankles, I led the way into the forest and to the dolmen. Upon our arrival Cormac directed me to enter the burial chamber. We placed Madog’s corpse in the long, low passage; I bade him farewell and retreated from that damp tomb.
The druid lingered, performing some heathen rite; I heard him singing, but the words were strange and unnatural. I considered leaving him there, but waited nonetheless—more out of respect for poor dead Madog than for any wish for companionship from the druid.
“He brought me here yesterday,” I told Cormac when he joined me outside once more. “I think he knew he was about to die.”
“That is sometimes the way of it,” he replied.
“He was afraid of Crom Cruach.”
I watched the druid closely to see what his reaction would be, but he merely nodded.
“I told him Crom Cruach held no power over his soul.”
I said this last part somewhat defiantly. I wanted to challenge the druid to see what he would say in defense of his pagan beliefs. I did not, however, tell him I had smashed the idol’s carved head.
To my surprise, Cormac’s gaze quickened with undisguised interest. “Did he find some comfort in what you said?”
“It seemed to ease his mind.”
“Then you did well,” he replied. “The time for such fear is long past. The world has changed, and men must change, too.”
My attempts to rebuke the druid or raise his ire had failed. Perhaps my efforts in the Irish tongue lacked the necessary cut and thrust, but he seemed disposed to benevolence; no matter what I said or did, he received it with benign—and aggravating—tolerance.
Even so, on the way back to the bothy, I could not help being drawn to the pagan magician. “With Madog just now,” I asked, “what did you do?”
He glanced at me, his expression earnest and thoughtful, but he made no reply.
“And at the feast—Ercol was but a blink away from gutting me like a fish, yet you prevented him with a word. How was that done?”
He nodded, considering the question carefully. At last he said, “The filidh have their ways. It is not for everyone to know how we do what we do. It is enough that we know, is it not?”
“Perhaps.” His refusal to answer irritated me anew. “I was always taught that druids consorted with, ah…deamhana, yes?—with demons.”
Cormac pursed his lips in contemplation and nodded again to himself. Finally he said, “Now you have seen for yourself. Is that what you believe?”
“I have seen nothing,” I retorted. “Nothing to alter my belief.”
“Then ask yourself this question: Would a demon have rescued you from Ercol?”
The question was stupid, and I did not deign to answer it, lest I become entangled in a disputation I could not win. Everyone knows that Satan is a liar, the Father of Lies, who can plait words into pretty snares for the unwary, so I ignored him the rest of the way back to bothy. On our return he said, “Have you enough food here?”
“When someone remembers to bring us something,” I said, and then realized there was no “us” anymore; there was only me.
“I will see that they remember.” He looked around the area of my tiny settlement with the bothy, the fire ring, the sheepfold below and the forest above. “You will be lonely here,” he said.
“I am a slave,” I told him. “Slaves do not get lonely.”
He smiled. “I will remember that.” He wished me farewell then, but I gave no response.
I watched him until the slope of the mountain took him from view, then went to tend the sheep. It was not until I brought the flock back to the fold that night and set about making a meal from the remains of the food in the leather bag that I first missed Madog’s presence.
As the days passed, his absence became an ache which grew stronger every day. I had not realized how much I had come to depend on the old shepherd. Now that he was gone, not only had I to do everything myself, but I had to do it alone. I missed his quirky companionship. I also missed talking to him. From Madog I had learned all I knew of the Irish tongue. Moreover, I had seen how my presence had forced him to recover his failing powers of speech. Without someone to talk to, I realized that, like poor old Madog, I might soon lose all I had gained.
Day after day I sat out in the rain and wind watching the sheep, gazing into the mist at the dumb creatures wandering around on the mountainside. And though my body was shivering in the bone-aching cold, my mind and heart were very far away. As the days passed, I could feel myself beginning to slide into loneliness and despair. How long, I wondered, before my sanity began to suffer? How long before I became as Madog had been when I first saw him?
I talked to the sheep, yelled at them; I hated them and vented my anger and frustration on their dull, witless heads. When one of them wandered off, I did not look for it. When one of them died, I did not care. I simply hauled the carcass back to the bothy, took the pelt, and gorged on the meat until I grew sick.
My clothes, little more than flapping rags, failed to cover me, but I did not care. By day I sat on the mountainside, picking lice from my filth-matted hair and beard. At night I dined on putrid meat, picking maggots from gobbets of flesh before searing them in the flames. My fingernails grew long and hard like claws, my skin tough as leather. Some days I roamed the mountainside roaring with rage like a caged beast; other days I lay by the fire, whimpering and whining like a beaten dog.
In my misery I imagined I could feel madness circling me like a wolf: wary yet, but soon, very soon, to attack.
Then, as winter began to ease its icy grip and the weather softened toward spring, I heard about the boru—the annual tribute levied by High King Niall.
I returned with the sheep one day to find two men waiting at the bothy. They had brought me some provisions and said they wanted to count the sheep. “There are the sheep,” I replied. “Count them how you will.”
One of the men drew out a length of rawhide rope and, while the other told out the number, tied a series of knots and double knots in the rope. The first fellow took out a second rope, already knotted, and held it up next to the first. Both men studied the ropes in silence, then looked from one to the other with expressions of such desolation that I could not help asking what catastrophe they saw in the knots.
“There are fewer sheep than last year,” the man replied.
“There will not be enough for the boru.”
I did not know what he meant, so I asked, and the secon
d man replied. “King Niall is king of all kings in Éire,” he said, “Niall is Aird Righ, yes? And King Miliucc, his subject lord, must pay him many cattle each year.”
“Yes,” added the second man, his mouth squirming as he spat out the words, “and every year greedy Niall wants more.”
“Tribute,” I said. “Teyrnged.”
The man gaped in ignorance, but his companion said, “The high king’s demand is too great. There will not be enough left for us, and we will grow hungry.”
“Some of the sheep are near to lambing,” I suggested.
“We will send someone to help you,” said the first man. “To lose even one lamb would be a shame.”
As he spoke, an idea formed in my head. “When must the payment be made?” I asked.
“Just after Beltaine,” he replied. “It is always the same.”
“And where do you take the cattle?”
“We take them to the high king’s ráth at Tara.”
The two left me then, and I sat down to think; for I saw in this the shape of my salvation. When Miliucc departed to take his cattle tribute to Niall, I would be among the herders. And once we were far away from this accursed mountain, I would make good my escape at last.
FOURTEEN
I BECAME DILIGENT. MY neglected sheep were my sole obsession. I led them out early and brought them home late, taking them to the best pastures, moving them from place to place so that the land did not become overgrazed. I watered them, pampered them, guarded them day and night; I even talked to them, praising their excellence and sagacity.
When the day came to deliver the boru tribute to High King Niall, I wanted to be among those making the journey, and my unstinting care of the sheep would create this singular opportunity.