"Baker,_Kage_-_The_Fourth_Branch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

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The Fourth Branch
by Kage Baker
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Copyright (c)1999 by Kage Baker
First published in Amazing, Summer 1999

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction


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When my name was Eogan, I lived in the community at Malinmhor, having gladly embraced my vows for the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I thought I had the best of the bargain. No heavier tool to lift than a pen cut from the quill of a gray goose, and the beauty of the red and green and yellow and black inks was a pleasure for my eyes, and how smooth were the sheets of fine white calfskin waiting for me! And how sweet to refresh myself with the Gospel that I copied, there in the little Scriptorium, when I could still believe in it!
What a world of grace fell away from me when that pagan man came among us, three weeks before Beltane in the five-hundred-and-seventh year since Christ's birth.
But no blame to him, poor man; God knows he had the worst of it. The truth is the trouble started well beforehand, but I knew nothing of it, happy and alone as I worked. So blinded with the beauty I made by day, that I never noticed the frightened faces when I joined my brothers and sisters for supper in the refectory of evenings.
And we didn't speak aloud much -- it was a monastery, after all -- and I wouldn't have believed in the trouble, had anyone explained it to me. If our community lay in the shadow of the high bare hill Dun Govaun, what harm in that? No rational Christian had anything to fear from a mound of dead stone. If pagans had feared the place in the past, if they'd told stories of babies carried off or folk seduced by small demons -- well, they were pagans, weren't they? At the mercy of darkness, as we brothers and sisters in Christ were not. Though I remember being awakened by the screams of a brother in his nightmares, I do remember that much now; but it signified nothing to me at the time.
Well. When the pagan came, it was neither by day or night but in the long hour between when the light had not faded, and when we neither fasted nor fed but sat at table with our meal not yet begun, and our brother the Cook had just brought out the oat-kettle, and Liath our Abbess was neither silent nor speaking, for she had just drawn in her breath to lead the grace. The pagans believe such in-between moments make doorways into the next world, you know.
In that unlucky moment the door opened and the Porter led in a young man in very fine clothes, perhaps too large for him.
"This is the guest Christ has sent us, who comes requiring meat and shelter for the night," said the Porter, and he withdrew to his duty. The man stood surveying us all with a pleasant face; and from the dust on his rich garments it was plain he'd traveled far, and from the harp he bore, slung in its case on his back, plain his profession of _fili,_ of chronicler after the manner of the heathens. I thought he looked too young, to have learned so much lore as those people are required to know.
"A blessing on this table," he said, and our Abbess, scenting a pagan, corrected him:
"_Christ's_ blessing on this table, and all here."
"Oh, by all means," he replied mildly, and smiled at the Abbess.
He dined, then, with us, and revealed that his name was Lewis, that he was indeed a pagan well-trained in his craft of relating the old histories, and had come to offer us a bargain: he would tell us all the wonder-tales he carried in his head and songs of the old pagan heroes, in return for food and lodging. Our Abbess looked across at me with the eye of a cat after a mouse, for both she and I collected these tales avidly (though we did not believe them at all).
So the bargain was made, with the understanding that the pagan should observe no pagan rites whilst among us, especially on the old feast day that was three weeks off, but attend Mass daily instead. To which Lewis agreed, readily, without anger. After dining he was shown the bath-house, and then the guest-house, and he took his leave of us for the evening with the urbane manners of a king's son, which we thought he must be.
When it grew light next day he met me in the scriptorium, for the purpose of fulfilling his end of the agreement, and settled himself on a stone seat. He took his harp from its case, and frowned to himself as he tuned it. I will record here that Lewis was small-boned, high-browed, with fine clean-shaven features and fair hair, though it did not curl. His eyes were just the color of the sky in that twilight time in which he had come.
When he had tuned the strings to his satisfaction, he said to me:
"Brother Eogan, tell me first what tales you have collected thus far, from other travelers, so I waste no time in repeating them. Have you _The Cattle-raid of Cooley_?"
"Yes, in good truth, we have."
"Have you _The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel?_"
"Yes, in good truth, we have."
"Would you mind awfully if we switched to Latin for this?" he inquired in that tongue. "It'll go quicker."
"Fair enough," I replied in the same language, and we conversed in Latin after that.
"What about the Finn MacCool stories? Any of those?"
"Well, we did get a couple of songs about him from an old man who stayed here last winter," I told him, noting that my red ink had sat too long and giving it a shake to mix it. "I don't think his memory was very reliable, though."
"Ah! Well, _I've_ got the complete cycle. Sounds like a good place to begin, wouldn't you say?" He grinned and fished a horn plectrum out of a pouch at his belt.
"Let's hear it!" I replied, and poised my pen over the lovely white page. God, how I've missed writing, just the physical act of moving the pen, making the ink flow! But let's go on with the story.
He had hours and hours of material on the Fenians, material I'd never heard before as well as the two stories the old man had given us (and as I'd suspected, the poor old thing had garbled them badly). I myself was born Christian, and since my parents were zealous converts, they'd always frowned on any of us children listening to the old pagan stories. I knew all about Patrick and Moses and Noah, but I could never hear about Cuchulainn or Deirdre until I became a monk. Ironic, isn't it? Anyway, Lewis relayed the whole story to me, all about Finn growing up in the forest because evil King Goll had killed his father, so the boy was raised in secret by a pair of druid women, who conjured a wolf-spirit to be his protector. Spellbinding! Lewis was a good storyteller, too: he had a very mobile expressive face, elegant gestures, and a nice light baritone. My pen just swept across the page.
We didn't even take a break until I got a paralyzing fit of writer's cramp just after the part where Finn calls his father's ghost from the Land of the Blessed and the old chief gives him advice. I got up and walked back and forth in the narrow stone room, swinging my arms, while Lewis took the opportunity to pour himself a cup of watered mead from the pitcher we'd brought.
"Well!" He sipped and held the cup out to the light. "My goodness, who's your Beekeeper? That's great!"
"A former pagan," I admitted. "Nobody else quite gets the formula right, I must confess. You see, that's part of the Abbess' plan, here -- there's so much that's worth preserving in Eire, so much wisdom, such traditions, so much great literature! If only it wasn't _pagan, _you see. Not that I expect you to agree with me on that point, of course, and no offense intended -- "
"No, no." Lewis waved his hand. "Quite all right. I understand perfectly -- "
"But these wonderful stories, for example! I think it's absolutely criminal that the druids didn't bother to write any of them down. You must realize that in another generation or two they'll be completely forgotten, don't you? And, though we won't be the poorer for losing our false gods, it really would be too bad to lose Finn."
"My thoughts exactly." Lewis nodded. "That's one of the reasons I'm here, to tell you the truth. I can see the writing on the wall, and while my profession doesn't really encourage me to write on it myself -- so to speak -- there's nothing to stop me telling everything I know to you Christian fellows who can. In fact ... " He set down his harp and leaned forward. "In fact, I have rather a daring proposition for you."
I stopped pacing. "It's not something sinful, I trust."
"Oh! Not at all, at least not by your standards. Look, it's simply this: I'm a bit more than a simple bard. I have some religious credentials as well, in my religion I mean. I was trained for certain rituals I'll never be able to perform nowadays, with so few of us left."