Despair, renewed with the morning, washed over me in black waves. I had been to Byzantium, and beyond. I had beheld wonders of unrivalled wealth and power. I had served Arab potentates, and endured the life of a slave. I had loved a Sarazen princess-Christ have mercy, had I been a better man, I would be married now! Oh, Kazimain, forgive this wretch of a fool.
Truly, I had partaken of life unimaginable to the simple brotherhood of the abbey. And now, here I was, once more among the monks of Kells, and nothing had changed-save myself, and that not for the better.
I lay on my straw pallet in the pearl-grey light of dawn, staring up at the bleak stone ceiling of my cell, drowning in the futility that whelmed me over and pulled me down and down into the depths of hopelessness. I pressed my eyes shut to stay the tears, but they leaked from beneath my eyelids anyway and rolled down my cheeks.
How could I brave the day? How could I brave the innocent interest my every word held for those who had remained behind? How could I brave the endless, ignorant questions and satisfy the credulous, ignorant curiosity? What was I to do?
I remained in my cell until after the bell for prime, and then went to Ruadh's hut. He was not there, but I went in anyway and sat down on the floor to wait until he came. As I waited, I looked around at the bare stone room with its narrow windhole in the wall and the thin straw sleeping pallet on the floor, the leather bulga hanging by its strap from the wooden peg above the pallet, the shallow basin of water at the foot of the bed, the iron candletree, the stone shelf with its small wooden cross-everything exactly as I remembered it, exactly as it had been the day I had gone away.
The room spoke a lonely psalm to me, a hymn of desolation and barren futility. I felt like running out again, but presently heard footsteps approaching. A moment later, Ruadh entered the room.
"There you are, Aidan," he said, crossing to his chair-as if resuming a discussion that had been diverted by a temporary interruption. "When I did not see you in the hall, nor at prayers, I thought I might find you here."
"You always know me better than I know myself," I told him.
"I always did," he said, and smiled. He folded his hands in his lap and gazed at me for a time, smiling to himself. "Welcome home, Aidan," he breathed at last. "It is good to see you again."
"And good to see you, secnab," I said.
"Is it?" He lifted an eyebrow inquiringly. "The expression on your face tells a different tale." He paused, but when I did not deny it, he continued, "I have been talking to Brynach. He says it was your decision to bring the book home with you."
"Did he say what led me to that decision?"
"Yes," Ruadh answered, "but I would hear it from you."
"The pilgrimage failed," I told him, and all the bitterness I felt came surging up once more. "There was nothing to be done."
"He said you spoke to the emperor alone."
"I did, yes. What else did Brynach tell you?"
"He said you saved their lives."
That day, once so full in my memory, now seemed remote. I shook my head slowly. Here, in the unvaried simplicity of the abbey, my former life was already dwindling away to nothing.
I looked at Ruadh-my anamcara, my soul's good friend-for many years he had patiently listened to my dreams and confessions, guiding me, prodding me, helping me in any of a thousand ways with his wise counsel. He knew me better than any other, but even Ruadh would never understand more than the tiniest fragment of all that had happened. How could I tell him-where could I begin?
"It was nothing," I said. "Anyone else would have done the same."
We talked a little more-mostly about the abbey and resuming my duties in the scriptorium-and when I rose to leave, Ruadh walked with me outside. "It will take time to return, Aidan. You must not expect to come back as if nothing happened."
Over the next days, I avoided talking about the pilgrimage. When anyone asked a question, I replied with vague, dismissive answers, and eventually the brothers stopped asking. Life in the monastery went on, after all, and what was done was done. I resumed my work, and the daily round. The work I had once viewed with such pride and delight was dry tedium to me now, the very scratch of the pen set my teeth on edge and the words I wrote held no meaning. Prayer became merely a way to escape the scriptorium; and though I knelt in the chapel with all the rest, I never opened my heart to God.
How could I pray? I knew God for what he was: a monstrous betrayer of souls-demanding honour and worship and obedience, demanding life and love, promising protection and healing and sanctuary. And then, when need was greatest and the longed-for sanctuary required…nothing. In return for years of slavish devotion, he gave nothing, less than nothing, in return.
Each day as I knelt in the chapel, listening to the simple brothers speak their prayers, I thought, Lies! All lies! How can anyone believe a single word?
Thus, the wounded animal that was my heart sickened and began devouring itself in its misery. I sank further and further beneath the weight of malignant grief. When Brynach and Ddewi departed to return to their abbey in Britain, I did not see them away or say farewell. Dugal chastised me about it later, but I did not care. I was a world of woe unto myself, and the days passed unnoticed and unheeded.
One day I rose to see that winter had come again to Kells, and realized I had not been aware of the season's change. The greyness of the land and sky was the greyness of my own benighted soul. Standing before my cell, I looked out across the muddy yard to our little church and recoiled in disgust. After the glittering splendour of Hagia Sophia and the towers of the Great Mosq, our rude stone structure appeared a mean, ill-made thing. I looked around at all the places I had once thought sublime in their humble simplicity, and found them coarse, ugly, vulgar, and repugnant against the glowing reality of all I had seen and done in Byzantium.
I realized then, to my horror, that the shining verity of my memory was swiftly receding, replaced by emptiness, by a gathering gloom of shadows moving in an ever-increasing void. Soon there would be nothing left-soon not even the shadows would remain, and the darkness would be complete.
Oh, but once my memories had pulsed with the blood-heat of life. In desperation, I forced myself to recall that once I had walked with kings and conversed in languages never heard in this land. Once I had stood at the prow of a Sea Wolf ship and sailed oceans unknown to seamen here. I had ridden horses through desert lands, and dined on exotic foods in Arab tents. I had roamed Constantinople's fabled streets, and bowed before the Holy Roman Emperor's throne. I had been a slave, a spy, a sailor. Advisor and confidant of lords, I had served Arabs, Byzantines, and barbarians. I had worn a captive's rags, and the silken robes of a Sarazen prince. Once I had held a jewelled knife and taken a life with my own hand. Yes, and once I had held a loving woman in my arms and kissed her warm and willing lips.
Would that I had died in Byzantium!
Death would have been far, far better than the gnawing, aching emptiness that was now my life. I bent my head and moaned for the hopelessness of it. That night, I went for the last time to my confessor's hut.
77
I can stay here no longer," I told him, hopelessness making me blunt.
"Sure, you surprise me, Aidan. I thought you had left us long ago," Ruadh replied, then motioned me into his cell and bade me sit. Lowering himself into his chair, he pressed his hands together and asked, "What did you expect to find?"
His question, like his placid demeanour, took me unawares; I had to ask him to repeat himself, for I was not certain I had heard properly.