As each mouthful made its way from vessel to lips, the spoon shaking with some violence in Ardal’s hand, I stood still and quiet by him. I saw how much it hurt him to swallow; I knew how desperately he was working not to fail this simple challenge.
“You’re doing well, Ardal,” I said when he was nearly finished. “Feeding yourself may seem a little thing, something a child could do. But it’s not; it’s another step toward being yourself again. It takes not only bravery, but strength and hope. Perhaps you’ll start to remember soon.”
“I’ve never seen it before,” said Gull, coming to sit on the opposite bench. “A man losing his memory entirely, I mean. I’ve seen them get confused for a while after a blow to the head, but that doesn’t last so long. On the other hand, what’s happened to him—Ardal—is not so different from how it’s been for a good few of us here, over the years. We move on, things change, and certain parts of our own story get shut away inside us. For a lot of us, the past has a line drawn across it. Before is something we don’t look at often.”
The soup was finished. “Good work, Ardal,” I murmured, taking the spoon from his fingers. Fang snapped at me.
“Deiz, nann!” Ardal said, and the dog subsided, growling. Gull and I both stared at him.
“Given Fang a new name?” Gull asked quietly. “Deiz, is it?”
Ardal looked at us. “A better name than Fang, I think,” he said. “It means day.” He smiled.
Whether or not Snake would be pleased to find his dog renamed when he returned home was neither here nor there. Ardal had just taken a huge stride forward. Gull and I exchanged grins of delight.
“Seems your Irish is much better than we thought,” Gull observed without emphasis. “I wonder, now . . . I don’t suppose you remember a lad called Corentin, Sibeal, who was with us here a few years back. Ardal puts me in mind of him. There’s something of the same look about him, and something in the accent, too. Corentin hailed from Armorica, close to Gaulish territories.”
Ardal had dropped his gaze; the long lashes shielded his eyes. If these names meant something to him, he was not saying, not yet. We must tread delicately.
“Gull, you mentioned men here not wanting to think about before, ” I said, changing the subject. “Before what? Before coming to Inis Eala?”
“For some.” Gull looked down at his hands, strong, damaged, telling a tale of their own. “For others it’s earlier. Death; loss; war. A deed that’s best forgotten. For me the line got drawn when I met the Chief. When I recall the time before, I don’t think of what happened so much. I remember how it felt to be on the brink of giving up and to be bodily hauled back. He taught me hope. Funny thing was, he didn’t learn it for himself until your aunt Liadan brought him out of his own dark place. That was a remarkable time, Sibeal. Still gives me chills to think of it.”
“How did she do it?” Thanks to Ciarán, I knew more of this story than most of my sisters did. Bran and Gull had both been imprisoned and tortured, and Liadan, flouting convention as she so often did, had rushed to their aid. Bran had been very ill afterward, locked inside himself. My parents did not speak of those events. Unlike other parts of our family history, which formed part of our after-supper repertory of tales, this story had a blanket of silence over it.
“How did she bring him back?” echoed Gull. “She had all of us tell the Chief stories. We spoke to him of how he’d found each of us when we were at our lowest and given us another chance, another life, a better one than the wretched thing of before.”
“Why don’t you tell that story tonight?” I suggested. “How you and Aunt Liadan saved Bran from his enemy, I mean. I know Ciarán helped you.”
Perhaps my voice had changed when I spoke this name, for Gull smiled.
“Think a lot of that fellow, don’t you?”
“I owe him more than I can say. He’s not just my kinsman, he’s my mentor. My teacher. And far more.”
“Must be a lot more, if he’s convinced a young woman of your age to commit herself to a spiritual life. Are there other females among these druids of yours?”
“Three.”
“Young? Old? What kind of woman chooses that path?”
“They’re all quite a bit older than me,” I said. There would, in fact, be a gap of some thirty years between me and the youngest of them, but I did not tell him that. “It’s not so much a matter of choosing, as of being chosen.”
“Mm-hm. These women druids, they take a part in teaching you, do they?”
“They are not scholars like Ciarán or my uncle Conor. Ciarán teaches all the young druids. Conor has particular branches of study that he shares with me.” After a little I added, “Last time I told Ardal a story, it was about my choice of a spiritual life. He won’t want to hear all this again.”
“I wish to hear,” Ardal said.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Gull said. “Your vocation has been a frequent topic of conversation among the young men of Inis Eala since your arrival, Sibeal. Shortage of marriageable women here, you’ll have noticed. When Liadan visits, she’s generally treated as something close to a goddess. Evan and Cathal are considered remarkably fortunate to have wed two of her nieces. When a third niece appears, young, comely and not spoken for, it’s natural for the men to debate whether she should be following her mentor into a life of self-denial and prayer, or taking the kind of path your aunt did. Of course, Liadan wasn’t simply choosing to wed and have children when she stayed with Bran. When she took on the Chief, she took on all of us, a ragtag mob of the dispossessed, all desperate for a share of the magic she carried within her. It wasn’t just Bran who loved her; it was every last flawed and disreputable one of us.” He put his chin on his hand, remembering. “Sibeal, when the lads here talk about your choices, they wonder why you wouldn’t want a chance to live a full life and make some fellow happy.”
“You shock me, Gull. I can’t believe the men have been talking about this.”
“It’s all perfectly respectful. I don’t suppose any of the fellows thinks he’d have the least chance of diverting you from your vocation. When you’re in your gray robe with your hair plaited up tight, you look severe enough to scare the boldest away. But they can dream. Lot of dreams here on the island.”
I had nothing to say to this. I sat without speaking for a while, watching the steady movement of Ardal’s hand against Fang’s white hair. A druid was always learning; the journey was lifelong. My feelings on Gull’s speech were decidedly mixed. It seemed to me I had just learned several things, some of them quite unexpected.
“What do you think is the best kind of story, Sibeal?” Gull’s deep voice was like a soft cloak, comforting and warm. “The true kind, or a tale of marvels and magic?”
“A wonder tale can be truer than true,” I said. I had learned, during my time in the nemetons, that the deepest kind of truth can be found in the strangest and wildest of stories. One may not meet a fire-breathing dragon on the way to the well. One may not encounter an army of toothed snakes in the woodshed. That does not make the wisdom in those tales any less real.
“I am no scholar,” said Gull, flashing a smile. “And I am no druid, as you well know. But I grew up listening to some of the oddest tales of all, tales from a hot southern land where serpents lurk under stones and the sky rains red dust. It was a land rich in spirits and omens. If we are housed here long enough, the three of us, I will tell you stories of that realm. Tonight I will give you the tale you asked for, Sibeal. Only . . . ” He hesitated. “I’m not certain how much you already know. There were dark matters in that time, the early time of Bran’s friendship with Liadan. I don’t think your father wished certain details to be spread abroad.”
I stirred the fire with the iron poker. The embers shifted and settled. “Because of Ciarán, I know most of the story,” I said. “Others here on Inis Eala must know it, too, since many of the island men were there when you rescued Bran. At least, that’s what I have heard from one source or another.”
/> “As to that,” Gull said, “there are many rescues in the family story. You added another, Sibeal, when you plucked Ardal from the grip of the ocean. It was, in fact, our second encounter with this mentor of yours, that time when Bran escaped from a certain place of incarceration.” Gull glanced at me, then at Ardal, his eyes glinting in the firelight. “Ardal, you haven’t seen much of this place where you’ve ended up, brought in half drowned as you were. You’ll have gathered from the talk around you that men come to this island to learn specific kinds of fighting. Sibeal’s cousin Johnny runs a school of combat, highly specialized, highly organized, based on principles of discipline and control. And excellence. It’s a place like no other. That’s why so many want to come here, indeed far more than can be admitted.
“But it wasn’t always thus, and the folk who live here weren’t always employed as tutors in warcraft. Many of us were outcasts, existing beyond the margins of ordinary society, without homes or families to go to, without a direction to follow save that of survival. And the Chief, the man who founded this place and who brought us all together into a community with a spirit and a purpose, was just another miscreant fleeing the authorities.” Gull thought about this a little, his dark gaze moving from Ardal to me as he folded his mangled hands on his knee. “That’s not quite accurate. A miscreant, yes, in some folk’s eyes at least. An outlaw, yes. A mercenary—that, too. But the Chief was never just anything. He was always more. Born to lead. Born to inspire. Born to make a difference. Some folk have that quality, no matter how great the disadvantages that are put in their way. He was one of those.
“Well, he picked up the rest of us one by one, got us out of our own hellholes, gave us hope, showed us how to be men again. We became known as the Painted Men: the Chief’s skin markings were part of his identity, and the rest of us got our own in turn, each choosing an animal to pattern himself on. My black skin hardly shows such marks. I got my name from the feathers I used to wear in my hair, back in the old days. I liked the idea of the seagull, there was a freedom in it that appealed to me. I came a long way to reach this island; I left a lot behind.”
Gull did not look sad. Perhaps those things, those people were too far gone now, in miles and in years, to bring tears to his eyes anymore. I knew, from Muirrin, that he had lost his entire family in a bloody massacre before he first met Bran. It had taken an immense effort on his Chief’s part to drag him out of despair. Over and over, Bran had done this kind of thing to assemble his original band of followers. And, of course, once they learned how to hope again, they learned how to help one another. It was a remarkable story.
Ardal was watching Gull closely, his eyes intent.
“Back then,” Gull went on, “we were a motley band of warriors. We had skills. We knew how to work together. But as men we still had much to learn. There were a lot of broken pieces of us to be mended. And he—the Chief—was more broken than many, for all his outer strength. He’d been hurt as a child, and he’d hidden that deep.
“There came a time when he and I were betrayed to an old enemy and taken prisoner. This fellow thought he could play on our particular weaknesses to get what he wanted.” Gull shot me a glance; I think he was not quite sure whether I knew that the enemy in question had been my mother’s own brother, Eamonn. “He knew the Chief had a terror of confined places, and that he feared the dark more than anything. So he shut him up in a hole under the floor with barely room to breathe and none to move. I was luckier: thrown in a dungeon and strung up by the wrists. Trouble was, each time the Chief was taken out of his little cubbyhole and subjected to questioning, and each time he refused to talk, I lost one finger.” He held up his maimed hands. “We had a code, the Painted Men. We never gave in to that kind of pressure. I knew the Chief wouldn’t talk to save me. This fellow wasn’t going to keep his word anyway. He wanted the Chief dead; once he’d had his bit of fun, he’d dispatch him without a second thought. Our captor had a double grudge. The Chief had bested him in battle. And he’d taken his woman, or at least the woman this fellow believed was his intended. Matter of pride. We were never going to be released alive.”
Although I knew the story from Ciarán, it was still shocking to hear it told. The passage of so many years did not make it any less cruel. If the precise details of what Eamonn had done to Gull and Bran had never been known to my mother, she had surely been aware of her brother’s love for Liadan and his jealous hatred of the man who had taken her from him.
“Well, there I am,” Gull said, “in this fellow’s fortress, strung up with my arms fair breaking out of their sockets and my hands somewhat the worse for wear after a little butchery, wondering how we’re going to get out of this one, when in walks Liadan accompanied by a guard with a torch. She’s come all the way from her own home on a hunch, a sudden concern for Bran’s safety. What agreement she’s reached with our captor I have no idea, but suddenly she’s giving orders and someone’s cutting me down—gods, that was the worst pain you can imagine, the feeling coming back to my arms—and then we’re off to find the Chief. Somehow this young woman, about the same age as Sibeal here and of very similar appearance, has bargained to get the two of us out of that place. Just to make the tale all the more astonishing, I should tell you that she has a little baby with her, in a sling on her back.”
“That baby was Johnny,” I said. Ardal looked at me in surprise. “Yes, the same Johnny who now leads the community here, and who’s come to speak to you once or twice. He is the eldest of Bran’s sons.”
“Bran being the Chief,” Gull explained, “though Bran was not his real name, but one Liadan gave him, since she wouldn’t use the other. Well, we found him, and a sorry state he was in, unconscious and cramped from being stuffed into a hole not big enough to house a scrap of a dog like Fang there, let alone a fully grown man. Liadan couldn’t carry him. I was hardly better placed, my arms aching, my hands in bloody rags. But I was all the help she had.
“It so happened that the fortress in question was located in the middle of a swamp, a place where one wrong step meant sinking into mud over your head. There was a causeway, but we weren’t offered the use of that. Instead we had to make our way from one clump of foliage to the next, a stride, a leap, an act of blind faith. Liadan had the child on her back; I had the Chief across my shoulders. Our captor was a man who enjoyed games. To be fair, he said, he planned to let us progress a certain distance before his archers began using us for target practice.”
Ardal murmured something that sounded like an Armorican oath.
“It was late in the day,” Gull went on, his eyes going distant as if still, so many years later, he saw the scene with terrible clarity. “The light was fading. Liadan was a slight girl, not tall; it was hard for her to jump from one safe purchase to the next. I was nearly spent. If ever there was a time to abandon hope, that was it. But he’d always given us hope, each one of us in our own darkest moment; he’d always told us that it was worth going on, that we could find a solution, that we simply needed to be the best we could. And there was this girl, with her little child, who’d shown the courage of a seasoned warrior. I’d no choice but to match that. Still, things were looking grim.
“Just when we’d reached a point where there seemed no way on, help came. First there was a light, moving across the surface of the bog toward us. As it came closer, I saw that it had the form of a bird, a raven. That was an eldritch thing; gives me goose bumps just thinking of it. As it passed, beneath it the foliage of the water plants began to weave itself together and to flatten out, making a kind of pathway. We didn’t stop to think too hard. The raven reached us, turned, and headed away again. We followed. Liadan sang a lullaby. The baby quieted. We walked on that mat of woven fronds, not questioning how it was all holding together or whether it could bear our weight safely. I glanced back once or twice as we went, thinking that if we could use this path, so could our pursuers. But the path was vanishing even as we crossed it; nobody would be following us this way.
“I hardly had the strength to feel relief, only the will to put one foot in front of the other, to keep the Chief balanced across my shoulders, to set aside the pain in my hands. So we crossed over the swamp, and there he was, waiting on the other side: your Ciarán, Sibeal, though he was not a druid back in those days, more of a sorcerer, I think. The flame-shaped bird turned into an ordinary raven and settled itself on his shoulder, and he greeted us. And out of the dusk, one by one, stepped forward our own men, ready to take us to safety. I’ll tell you something, those ragtag warriors with their beaten-up faces were the most beautiful sight in the world.
“That, of course, was only a small part of the story. The Chief was sunk in darkness; Liadan brought him light. She healed him, body and spirit. But we all played our part, Ardal. As he lay locked in his nightmare, we all found something of hope in our past, something he had given us, and we spoke to him of that. We reminded him that he was not an outcast, a wretch, a piece of rubbish thrown on the scrap heap, but a man of worth and goodness, a man whose courage shone from him, a man who always thought of others before himself.” Gull’s white teeth flashed in a sudden smile. “All this is his doing: this island; this school; this place of community and purpose. Though, of course, he’s left it in his son’s hands. The Chief and Liadan, they’ve moved on. Sometimes, when Bran visits Inis Eala, I get the feeling he’d rather still be here. Still, a man does what he’s called to do. And that’s the end of my story. Liadan saved Bran from captivity and death. Sibeal rescued you from the sea. But for her, you’d have perished that night. They’re exceptional folk in the Sevenwaters family. Johnny carries on his father’s traditions here, which means you can trust him, and you can trust me. If there’s something in the past that you don’t want to remember, something difficult, just know that if ever there was a place where a man can make a fresh start, Inis Eala is that place. As long as you tell the truth, nobody will judge you.”