Enoch's Device Read Free Page B

commoner, some charming Breton she had met during a pilgrimage through Brittany and France, who had left her before either knew that she was with child. Yet more troubling was that this bishop from Blois should even know who Ciarán was. Certainly, the bishop had lied, just as he had lied in accusing Dónall. But why? These questions heaved and churned in Ciarán’s mind like an angry sea, causing him to toss on his straw pallet until the bells chimed again for Matins, the holy office observed between midnight and dawn to mark the moment Saint Peter denied Christ for the third time.
    He slept no better after Matins, but by Terce the sun had risen, and while Ciarán suffered through fitful dreams the rain had gone, and now the sun shone bright on the green hills of Ireland. After observing the holy office, Ciarán and Niall, along with a score of their brethren, returned to their work in the scriptorium—until an hour before Sext, when another ship arrived at Derry.
    *
    A bell signaled the ship’s arrival, all but emptying the scriptorium. Ciarán and Niall joined their fellow scribes heading down the clover green hill toward the riverbank. Passing the oratory’s moss-speckled roof in the shape of an overturned boat, they met another score of monks streaming out of various workshops. They passed the round tower and arrived at the banks of the river, where sunlight shimmered like quicksilver on the water.
    The newly arrived vessel moored next to the bishop’s ship was an Irish curach, with a narrow wood-framed hull covered in black ox hide, and a single mast with one weather-stained sail. No fancy pennants adorned the curach’s masthead, and rather than a crew of soldiers, six rugged Irishmen were busy unloading chests and barrels with the help of their burly, black-bearded captain, whom all the monks knew as Merchant mac Fadden.
    Ciarán smiled when he saw mac Fadden’s ruddy face, burned by the wind and sun from his constant journeying across the Celtic Sea. The captain had long served the monastery by transporting books between Derry and abbeys in France, continuing a practice started centuries ago in the days of Saint Columcille, when Irish monks and their quill pens saved countless written works from the Continent that otherwise would have perished at the hands of the Visigoths and Vandals. Ciarán always loved the arrival of new books, and this morning it was the only thing to brighten his day.
    “What do you have for us today, Merchant?” asked Brother Áengus, a lanky senior monk who served as the scriptorium’s provisioner.
    “Some fine books from Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” Merchant mac Fadden replied. “Several nice Psalters, a few epistles, a copy of the Lives of the Saints and one of that history book by Herodotus, and the cream of the crop: a complete Bible in Latin, just like Saint Jerome would’ve copied it. It fills a whole chest, though, and may take two stout lads to move it.”
    “Splendid!” Brother Áengus said, clasping his hands together like an eager child.
    “Oh,” Merchant mac Fadden added, “and a book for Brother Dónall.” The old captain scanned the collection of monks who had gathered at the pier. “Now, where is he?”
    Several of the brethren looked away, and Brother Áengus ran his fingers nervously across his chin.
    “He’s gone away for a while,” Ciarán said, stepping up.
    “That’s too bad.” Merchant mac Fadden reached into the nearest chest and took out a rather ordinary-looking book, bound in dark leather. “It’s from a Brother Remi. Real odd bird, that one, and very anxious for Dónall to have it. Said it was urgent.”
    “I can hold it for him,” Ciarán offered.
    “That’d be good, lad.” Merchant mac Fadden gave Ciarán the book, then squinted past him. “Now, who in the world might that be?”
    Ciarán turned around. Striding toward the riverbank was the bishop with a half-dozen of his soldiers, followed by one of the black-robed