Enoch's Device Read Free Page A

sharp whistle followed, cut to a mere chirp by the crack of Dónall’s staff.
    The heavy alder stave glanced off the Frank’s helmet and crashed down on his shoulder, driving him backward. Dónall sprang from behind the oak and swung the staff again, catching the Frank behind the knees. Arms windmilling, the soldier went down hard on his back, the sword slipping from his grasp. He looked up at his attacker with a stunned gaze.
    “Why are you here?” Dónall asked.
    “Because the bishop wants you dead,” the man growled.
    Dónall drew back on the staff as if to strike again, and the man flinched. Rain pelted his face, thinning the blood till it looked like wine. “Why?” Dónall demanded.
    The Frank grimaced. “Because of something you possess.”
    Dónall drove his heel hard into the Frank’s rib cage. “ What, damn you!”
    “The book,” the Frank gasped. “The one you stole from Reims.”
    Dónall’s eyes grew wide. “No,” he muttered under his breath. And bellowing with Irish rage, he slammed the staff downward, smashing it into the man’s jaw.
    Dónall breathed heavily as new and troubling questions arose in his mind. He knew what he must do.
    For now, he would hide. Then he must go back to Derry.
     

CHAPTER THREE
REVELATIONS
    T hat night, the bishop’s soldiers rousted the monks from their sleep, searching for Dónall among the cells. The soldiers were in a surly mood. Ciarán, who shared a cell with Niall, had to hold back his friend, and they watched in silence while a broad-shouldered Frank, with the monks’ beer on his breath, invaded their home.
    Though the cell was round like a beehive outside, inside the mortarless stone walls it was a single small, rectangular room with nowhere for anything bigger than a rat to hide. And yet, the Frank lingered, scanning every inch of the candlelit cell, and making the two junior monks lift their straw pallets just to prove nothing was hidden underneath. The whole time, the Frank fingered the pommel of his sheathed broadsword, while outside, the mastiffs filled all of Derry with their barking and baying.
    “Go back to bloody France, you piss-drinking bastard!” Niall yelled after the Frank stepped back outside. The soldier whirled about, hand on his sword hilt, but Ciarán breathed a relieved sigh when it became clear that the Frank did not understand the Irish words. The Frank shot Niall a wicked grin before turning away and striding to the next cell.
    “Are you looking to get us killed!” Ciarán hissed.
    “Bloody Franks,” Niall said. “There’s a hundred of us and only twenty of them. We should make ’em leave!”
    “I think Abba hopes to avoid a fight with the Roman Church. And besides, we can’t fight mailed swordsmen. We’re monks, not warriors.”
    Niall scowled and shook his head. “This is wrong. We should take a stand. Saint Columcille would’ve fought ’em.”
    Ciarán clapped Niall on the shoulder. “Well, it’s our bad luck he’s not here. Now, get some sleep.”
    Niall grumbled a reply, and Ciarán had to listen to him complain until the bell rang for Nocturns, when the monks gathered in the oratory for the next holy office of prayer.
    The bishop and his priests did not attend the vigil, but rumors quickly spread that one of the Franks was found in the woods, half conscious with a broken jaw. Ciarán could not help but wonder whether Dónall was the cause, for though he was no warrior, he was big and strong, with a temper that could flare like a birch-bark torch. Ciarán prayed that his friend was safe for the night. With luck, he had fled to Aileach, where his cousin ruled as king.
    When the monks returned to their cells, Ciarán could not sleep. The bishop’s parting words still haunted him. Ciarán knew that his mother had sinned in the eyes of the church by abandoning her vow of chastity and having a child out of wedlock, but that was a far cry from the bishop’s claim of heresy. And Ciarán’s father was just a