Her County: Part 2

PART 1

I walked on all throughout the next two days, resting on the first night beneath a heavy, drooping willow. Exhaustion and the lulling, lapping sounds of a nearby stream sent me quickly into slumber so deep I only awoke late into the morning, losing much of the day. I was hungry, but if I was to fish then I’d only be finished cooking it on the spit when I’d need to rest again, so I followed the stream, thinking I may come to a township of some kind.

Throughout the day, walking up from the bank to avoid slipping and falling onto the sodden dirt, I was kept company by a procession of chatting ducks, bobbing beneath the steady current, fluttering their tails as they snapped and jolted for cretins, by serene swans, gliding upstream, effortlessly cutting across the current, and by zipping dragonflies, hovering above the stalks of reeds and the scum of algae. It was a pleasant day, and I nearly forgot about the churning pains in my stomach.

Nearly.

By the time the sun began to set, the stream, once glittering in speckled light breaking through the trees, was now quickly becoming dark, hastened even further by the wet rocks lying in the shallow bed. Looking ahead, I could see the stream was deeper along the edges and further on. This shallow bed must have been an ait at some point, submerged by the waters. And by good fortune, some trout were floundering upon the rocks. I speared them with a split branch, and cooked their flailing scales over a fire. As night fell, and the embers glowed, charring the discarded bones and crispy fins, blackening the gaping heads staring up at me, I drifted off to sleep, hugging my knees, with the smoky aroma encapsulating my dreams.

…

It was hazy, but I remember a strange vision. A figure. Dark green. Long, like a creeping shadow, growing. It came closer yet grew no clearer. They were humming a wordless tune, yet it seemed so familiar, almost comforting, like a lullaby I vaguely remember. From its shapeless form, a boney appendage, like a hand, held itself out for me to take.

...

It took several sloshing splashes from the stream before I fully stirred and realised someone was near. I didn’t startle. If they hadn’t attacked me, they must not have noticed I was there. My eyes were wide open as I lay still on the littered earth. The embers were gasping; the last red stars pulsed with dying breaths, fading into the ashes. I listened with my one exposed ear, flinching as I heard the smack and crackle of breaking rocks upon one another, and the creak of wood. There were more sloshes from the stream, accompanied by a voice of a man, low, gravelly, and bitterly muttering.

“Dies in the middle of the night, and they drag the putrid thing up to me! Drinks himself into the ground and suddenly it’s my fault!”

The voice groaned before the sloshing returned, growing loud until there was another smack of rocks. I flinched again.

“No silver, no ring, no blade on him. They must think I’m stupid if I couldn’t see he was robbed blind. Could have at least bribed me to keep quiet. But oh no, why treat me like a man? But who can I tell, they think to themselves. Rightly so, but still.”

Footsteps squelched up the bank, accompanied by the groan of wood and the turning of a wheel.

I laid still and carefully listened until the sounds were just far enough for me to get up. I squinted in the darkness. The moon was waxing but the sky was cloudy. Hazy highlights could only help so much. The man was too far in the distances to make out, but the heavy cart, stacked with rocks from the stream, dug into the earth. I followed the trail.

I don’t know for how long I followed the man and the cart for, but dawn was breaking by the time we came to a wide, inky blue field, dyed in early light. As the dull darkness lifted, I found the man was closer than I had thought, and grey mounds of rocks were sprouting around us, like a court watching as tributes enter before their king, the biggest, and largest of the mounds, a hill of thousands of rocks and slates. I kept my eyes upon the man, who huffed heavily as he continued to push his cart before him.

“That horrid... monstrous... ill-mannered woman! ... And she leaves me like this! ... She could save me... And now look at me!”

The cart dropped and shuddered, like an overworked bull. I stopped, watching the man as he unwound and threw over the reins to the front, walking around to the other side.

“Ah, still, it could be worse, I suppose. I could be you.”

I slowly, silently, crept around the opposite side of the cart, to see who the man was speaking to, as he busied himself with picking up the tossed reins. Just before the cart, lying on the ground, limp and slump, was another man, much older and dishevelled, his gaping, slackened mouth exposing what few blackened and decayed teeth he had left, his thinning hair weakly brushed by a gentle breeze.

The man I had been following walked away from the cart until the straps were tight and strung in the air, shaking with plucked anticipation. The wooden cart, struggling against the massive weight of the rocks, groaned and whined as the man pulled the straps over his shoulders, aching with each step he dug into the dirt and every inch he claimed, pulling the far side of the cart forward, tumbling the smallest of the rocky shards out onto the feet of the elderly man. It was only just before the cart was overturned, burying the older man beneath a thundering rumble of jagged rocks, that I saw his back rise and fall, and his eyelids flutter, opening into pathetic slits, giving me a glimpse of reddened, unfocused eyes snuffed out by the drowning cascade of what was now his grave.

I couldn’t help but gasp, robbing the man I followed of his accomplishment. As he whipped around and spotted me. I was still staring at where those eyes once were when he called me.

“Who are you!”

I didn’t respond, still staring at the crushing rocks.

“I said who are you, boy! What are you doing here!”

Finally, I faced him. The man was much younger than Fincath, or at least seemed to be. He was about the age of my uncle in the monastery, only greyed around the temples, with a cushion of stubble on his still plump face. I would have guessed he was in his forties, maybe his thirties. He was much cleaner than the former king. His tunic was a powdery grey, and his feet were bare but wide at the end of his thickset legs, and his eyes, alert and bright brown, stared directly at me beneath his furrowed brow.

“Answer me, boy! You’ve no business here!”

“I am sorry, sir. I did not mean to startle you. I am Pól, I am an apprentice scribe for Clonard Monastery.”

“Clonard? Are you here for the Oughter Ard monks?”

“Is this Oughter Ard?”

“We’re just outside it. These are the monastery’s grounds. I’m the grave marker.”

“Oh! Are you Dubhthach?”

The man lifted his head, eyeing me in silence, passing his gaze up and down my body, then onto my satchel, and finally returning to my eyes.

“How do you know my name?”

“I was told to find you, by the king of Leinster.”

“The king of Leinster? You’re mistaken, lad. Why would King Cholmain be looking for me? And why would he send a scribe... especially from another kingdom?”

“Oh, not King Cholmain. His father, Fincath.”

Again, Dubhthach stared at me, straightening his head, filling the silence with what I imagined were racing thoughts and dawning realisation of what this all meant.

“I know why you’ve come... you’re looking for her, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Are you on a pilgrimage?”

“Um... of sorts, sir, yes. I have heard about her miracles and---"

“Miracles? You think what she does are miracles?”

“Do... do you know her, sir?”

“Know her? I used to own her!”

“What?”

Dubhthach grinned, slowly approaching, looming over me. Only now was I able to fully appreciate how tall he was; slim and stretched, like a candle stick. He only stopped when I stepped a few paces back. He laughed, amused by my anxious retreat.

“I am Dubhthach Óg Dubhthach, son of chieftain Dubhthach of Leinster, and my older sister was Brigid NÍ Dubhthach, the so called saint of Kildare!”

Dubhthach turned around and sat down on the rocky mound burying the old man, wriggling his body and shifting rocks aside to form a groove.

“I can tell you stories, boy. Stories that’ll prove to you the missionaries who came here were wrong. They filled our heads with stories of God and angels, messiahs and miracles. But they never speak about the demons. That’s what my sister became.”

“W-why would you say that? She is to be anointed as a saint. Her story will be the stuff of legend.”

“Her story? Oh, believe me... Pól, was it?”

“Yes sir.”

“Believe me, Pól. Those tales you hear, of this wondrous, Christian abbess, this healer, this saint... that’s not her story. Her story started about fifteen years before I was born, long before my father met my mother. Her mother was a slave girl he took for his own. They say she was a druidess; a pagan priestess. They say she communed with Badb, the goddess of battle. Consummating with druidess, especially one who could decide the tide of war, well... it was a relationship of convenience for a chieftain like my father. Not for the slave, of course. But that all changed when my sister was born. It was a difficult birth. Her mother lost too much blood. Brigid was baptised in the blood of a pagan, and this was, contrary to appearances, a blessing from Badb; a sign she would be unstoppable.

“My father didn’t see it that way. By the time I was born, she was already promised to hundreds of men as a wife. Chieftains. Kings. Clerics. And they were all struck by misfortune. Death. Disease. Poverty. The daughter of a chieftain, you understand, would have fetched a handsome dowry, especially in youth. But as she aged, and became marked by omens, that boon shrank ever smaller. I remember her being... strange, even then. She would leave home in the night and be missing for days, then return with scrolls and indecipherable ruins. I think she was meeting up with druids, teaching her. Women aren’t supposed to be educated; it makes them difficult to marry off. I was about your age when my father died, and my sister, despite being my elder, became my burden to sell off. The last of my father’s land was sold off to another chieftain, and we left to travel south. I had hoped news of my sister hadn’t reached the suitors this far. By then, she was closing in on her thirtieth year; far past the age to be sold off. Women are only good at two ages; in youth and in motherhood. If they are too old for either, they are considered hags. My only hope was to sell her off to an elder, someone old enough to either already have sired heirs or know better than to try. That was when we met Bacene.”

“Who was Bacene?”

“Bacene was...”

Dubhthach opened his mouth but closed it again quickly, pursing his lips together. He looked off to the side, then to the other side, gazing at the rock mounds. He stood up, onto the tips of his toes, scanning the area behind the mound he was sitting on. Flattening his feet, he looked back at me and beckoned to follow as he began to walk off, stopping at every other mound, inspecting them for some detail I wasn’t aware of, before hurrying off again, muttering to himself.

“Mmm... The basalt ones are there... Was this? ... Yes... And this was where... No, the pyre was back there... So... I was around here when...”

Dubhthach stopped, staring off into the distance, scanning lines of bulging cairns, until he pointed triumphantly at one about nine rows away, speeding towards it at a hastened pace, throwing his beckoning hand over his shoulder without looking back. I hurried but he was resting, leaning upon the mound of sandstone, before I reached him. The mound was flatter. In fact, many around, I only then realised, were flattened, most likely by time and the elements. How long were these corpses rotting beneath their cairns, dried and decomposed by crevices of air, skittering instincts, and the odd small rodent, I wondered. Dubhthach nodded to himself, satisfied, seemingly, he had found what he wanted to show me.

“This is Bacene. Shortly before King Fincath took the throne, he would have fought for his father, Garrchu, against some savage Picts from Alban. Bacene was a strong man in his youth. They say he walked into the very waves of the sea to meet their ships and drown them all before they even hit the shore. I doubt that’s true. No story ever told is true if it wants to last. In either case, whatever he did, he and what few came back alive were hailed as heroes and given land, grain, and stock to keep them in good standing for years to come. By the time we met him, he was a man of some sixty odd years. He was a tall man. So tall his back was bent into a hump, and the staff he’d beat the cows, pigs, and maids with would hit the ground to support him to his fullest height. He’d do this if he wanted to scare you, remind you of the tales, true or not. His striking blue eyes gave him a crazed aura.

“I’d taken to bringing my sister to the square in Oughter Ard, about two more hills from here if you take the trails the monks have cut. Every month, just after the full moon, the market opens, and you’ll find all sorts going and coming. You’ll have livestock for sell, you’ll have fishermen travelling this far in with sloshing barrels of crabs and mussels, maybe some seaweed for the peasants further west, and then you’ll have people like me, desperate for a bride price.”

“A bride price?”

“Whatever offer you’d barter for. Past a certain age, when girls become women, it’s rude to expect a decent man to pay a full dowry for his wife. So, you do the right thing and you hear the offers. Ideally, you’d still like some silver, but in the market you’d take what you can. Depending on the day, you wouldn’t want to be standing in the cold or the heat or the rain just to get nothing when you could have accepted a sow at the beginning of the day.”

Dubhthach picked up one of those jagged stones, turning it over in his hand, rubbing the surface with his flat thumb. He stared into the dusty sunset tinged stone. His eyes flicked shakily amongst the small pores, as if he was locking eyes with a memory.

“Bacene was there every market day. He’d come up from his plot further south. This was before my sister went to meet Fincath, so her county would have still been part of Leinster. He travelled up with farmhands and maids. Bacene, by this point, had fathered three sons and at least one daughter, but only the girl lived passed childhood. She was sold young. Bacene had spilt his seed and his own wife died during a bad winter years before. He was in no mood and at no age to marry again. But being a lord meant many of those maids were as much for him to do with as he wanted. I saw him on a few occasions go up to young men, promise them board and work on his lands, but only if they were married themselves, and married young. Some men enjoy humiliating other men like this. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Pól? Do the brothers explain these things?”

“He was a sinner.”

“No, Pól. He was just a man. There are only two types of men. Good men and men. Ha! That’s what Brigid used to say. She was always quick. Anyway, Bacene would come and his servants would flog his cows, and pigs, and chickens, and some stocks of wood. But the bull was Bacene’s pride and joy. Gorm, he called it, because the light would shine on his sleek coat and send waves of dark blue rippling across his hulking frame. And the scurs, they were---"

“The what?”

“What?”

“What are scurs?”

“S-scurs, boy! Scurs! Like horns. Do they not teach you in the monastery?”

“I’m sorry. They do, it’s just... we’re transcribing all day.”

“What good is writing when no one can read? Anyway... the scurs, like horns, they were unique in that they came straight out, right from the dome. Now they weren’t long, but you don’t want to be running in a field with a bull that can inpale you AND headbutt you at the same time. Gorm was his stud, you see. The servants would take the other livestock, but Bacene would come in and parade Gorm on a slack tether, and behind them would be the latest litter of calves, stumbling in their wake. They weren’t for sale. They were what you might call “a demonstration”. Gorm was a breeding bull, and every month Bacene and Gorm would come in, and Bacene wouldn’t sell. He kept saying he didn’t hear a bid high enough. Really, Bacene liked the attention. He would stand there across from me and Brigid, drink and chat all day, and mock us. No matter where we stood, he’d either seek us out or follow us just so he’d be opposite us, and I’d call out- ‘a fine woman, educated, and of noble blood! A literate woman! She can take orders and commands well. Good for keeping house!’ And then Bacene would shout out something along the lines of ‘I have a dead cow, but I don’t mind letting you keep the difference.’ And all those simpering idiots, the ones who adored Bacene for his legend, would laugh and try to mimic him.

“I got flustered one time and swore at him, told him to shut up. That wasn’t a good idea. I was too young to know better. Too young not to be stupid. They laughed harder when one of those eejits tossed a slab of mud into my face. Looking back on it, sometimes I think it might have been Gorm’s. In either case, Brigid, who had stood there for days and days, silent, never responding to Bacene’s jeers, never raising her head, had enough.”

I waited for a moment, letting the breeze brush over the silence, until I was sure Dubhthach needed prompting.

“W-what did she do?”

“... My sister was... a strange woman. She cared for me in my childhood. She was like a second mother, especially when we were orphaned. Yet I was expected to sell her off, like she was a talking, walking pig, for no other reason than how we are born... We had a... strained relationship... brother and sister, loving in blood, but kept apart by laws. I was expected to treat her horribly, simply because she wasn’t my brother... I can’t blame her for what she did. All men should be women, if only for a day, to learn how cruel we are.”

Dubhthach pulled away from the sandstone in his hand, staring into my eyes. Without looking away, he carelessly tossed the rock back onto the pile.

“My sister walked up to Bacene and said she had an offer for Gorm.”

“An offer? For the bull?”

“By the time I had picked myself up from the dirt and wiped away the sludge, a crowd was forming around them, with Bacene’s men howling with laughter. I can still remember, as I pressed my hands on the ground, I felt a subtle tremor. I saw Bacene’s staff, a fire blackened ash stick, with the knobbly, bulbous head coated lazily in iron, hit the ground, digging into the saturated, soddened mud as he pushed himself upright, towering above all. The market went silent. Even the animals watched. Bacene looked down upon Brigid. How she looked up at him I couldn’t tell, her back was to me, but going by the livid scowl upon his face, I can imagine it was a look of defiance. And we all heard her say ‘I have an offer for your bull... one no man can ever match, even if they were to give you a king’s fortune’... That silence was broken by Bacene’s horrible, wheezing cackle. Everyone started laughing too. Sure, she was only a women, they probably thought. He said to her ‘what’s your offer?’ And she said... ‘my eyes.’”

“Her eyes?”

“She said she’d give him her eyes for Gorm. The laughs died away, and the market was silent, all turning back to Bacene. This man, who’s seen battle, who was haunted by the screams of those he slaughtered, turning wicked in age, struggled to force out a scoff to save face. He must been scared for the first time in his long life. But he had an audience. Of drunks and maids. He raised up his hand, snarled back the snot from his nose, and spat into his palm before offering it to my sister to seal the deal. The market chuckled again. They didn’t think she’d snort back her own phlegm, anoint her hand, grab Bacene’s with her right hand... and then plunge her left hand into her eye socket.

“The air was filled with the squelch and fleshy grinding of skin and scratching fingers stretching her stringy nerves before snapping them with a pluck. The onlookers began to scream in horror, and a man coughed up a gobful of vomit into his shaking hands as Brigid moved onto the other socket. Poor Bacene... I was still on the ground, just as shocked as everyone else, but I still managed to look at his quaking knees and see a yellow trickle patter onto his clenched, crusty toes. He tossed his staff aside and tried with all his might to wrench his hand from her. Imagine the fear he must have experienced, to shrink under his humped back, brought down, and desperately trying flee from a young woman gripping his hand as she tears out her own eyes. She held out those two, blood stained orbs. And do you know what she said?”

I shook my head slowly, my breath quivering and fogging as I watched Dubhthach smile.

“‘A deal’s a deal.’ But Bacene just cried. He cried, and screamed, and tugged, and wailed, and soiled himself some more. And in the flurry, men and women and cattle were running into one and another, trampling over each other. I clambered under a table for safety, and turned to watch as Bacene knelt, grabbing hold of Brigid’s cloak, and called out something to her. I couldn’t make out what it was through the commotion, but I saw Bacene, finally able to free his hand, slap both palms to his own eyes, and screamed in agony, keeling over into the mud with a wet splatter. And Brigid turned around, and smiled at me, with new blue eyes grown in her skull. They were Bacene’s eyes; forfeited for reneguing on their deal. And that was the last time I saw my sister.”

I waited until Dubhthach stood up straight again, massaging his weary eyes, before speaking.

“Where did she go?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“But... I have to find her.”

“There are other ways to ruin your life, lad. Have you not heard what I said? She’s not someone you go looking for. She strikes fear into men, men who have survived wars and invasions. I’m here, burying the dead because they think I’m cursed having a sister like that. I was a boy when I came here, carting stones for cairns. Look at me! I’ll break my neck doing this and I’ll be lucky if someone gives me the same treatment. The monks here toss me stale bread and a bucket of water, and they only do so much out of Christian duty. You saw that king back there on the edges of this county! Reduced to tilling a field full of rocks. I envy him. At least he doesn’t have to go looking for them. We’re all cursed just knowing her, stuck in a past none of us can escape. Do you think you’ll fare any better meeting her?”

“Please, sir, you don’t understand. I MUST find her! It is God’s will.”

“And people wonder why there are still pagans on this island... You’re not going to stop until you find her, are you?”

“... I will find her. With or without your help.”

Dubhthach stared, sniffing back a trickle of mucus seeping out, as he mulled me over. Once again, he beckoned me to follow him. Thankfully, the walk wasn’t as long this time, as we came to a sudden drop on overlooking a valley. Dubhthach looked at me and then pointed off into the distance at another stream, which seemed to curved off from where I had been before I started following him this morning.

“See that there stream? Follow it. It’ll continue on down the hills and feed into a river. It’s still early, so you’ll get there before dark. Wait at where the two meet and you’ll find a young girl collecting water. Ask her for her father, Lugair. Ask him and his... ‘wife’... about Brigid.”

“A young girl? What if she’s not there?”

“Trust me. One of them will be. He’s enough to spare. Do what I say, and you’ll meet my sister. There’s a path down on the right of this hill. And Pól...”

Dubhthach placed a hand on my shoulder, pushing me down a little without effort. He looked deeply into my eyes with his own tired, saddened, brown ones.

“I never got to thank her for defending me that day... She deserved a better brother than me. If you find her... Tell her I’m sorry.”

#HI