In Praise of the Bees Read online

  IN

  PRAISE OF THE

  BEES

  Kristin Gleeson

  An Tig Beag Press

  Published by An Tig Beag Press

  Text Copyright 2015 © Kristin Gleeson

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Other works by Kristin Gleeson

  CELTIC KNOT SERIES:

  Selkie Dreams

  Along the Far Shores

  Raven Brought the Light

  A Treasure Beyond Worth (novella)

  RENAISSANCE SOJOURNER SERIES

  (With Moonyeen Blakey)

  A Trick of Fate (novella)

  The Imp of Eye

  NON FICTION

  Anahareo, A Wilderness Spirit

  “Be Though My Vision” from Early Irish Lyrics by Gerard Murphy

  Cover image St Gobnait by Harry Clarke

  Courtesy of Rakow Research Library, Corning Museum of Glass

  Cover design: Jane Dixon-Smith

  Sign up for my mailing list and receive a free novella

  Prequel to Along the Far Shores, part of the Celtic Knot Series

  http//kristingleeson.com

  To the people of Ballyvourney

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Glossary

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Irish Bee Law:

  Fer in-étet saithe nadbi lais co finnathar maigin i suidigetar: trian do thír frisa suidigetar, trian do fiur doda-etet, trian do lestur oa n-élat bes bunadach doib.

  The man who follows a swarm which is not his and who finds the place where they settle: a third [goes] to the holding where they settle, a third to the man who tracks them, a third to [the owner of] the hive from which they escape and which is their original home.

  (Bechbretha: An Old Irish Law Tract on Beekeeping ed. by Fergus Kelly and Thomas Charles Edwards)

  Mumu, Ireland 590 A.D.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A body lies bleeding and beaten beyond all recognition, in the shadow of An Dhá Chích Danann, mountains that rise out of the earth full and engorged as any woman’s paps, to provide comfort, succour and even hope.

  A farmer and his son discover the body as they lumber along in their cart, the old capall that pulls it, snorting at the scent of blood. These two men are on the track that many follow to lay their prayers in the lap of the mountains, the heart of the mother goddess Anu. The two stop and the son climbs down from the cart. The father is no longer nimble enough for such a scramble among the stumpy trees, rocks and bog that mark this area. The son follows the blood that stains the rush and the golden furze flowers, and finally discovers the body partially submerged in a bog. He can tell only that it is a person and, on closer inspection, that the person lives, because a heart still beats and small breaths are expelled into the cool morning air.

  The son braces himself on the firmer part of the ground. He reaches carefully and drags the body from the ditch and hoists it onto his back. Each movement elicits a deep groan of pain from the body and it echoes along the valley. The father calls out to him from the cart and the son answers with brief words of assurance. He moves forward slowly, the water from the soaked body streaming down his back. Eventually, he makes it to the cart, and with his father’s assistance, lays the body inside the cart, taking care for the lolling head and the limbs that are so obviously broken. They can see now it is a woman, but beyond that they have no clear impression about her identity or status. The cloth of her dress, what is left untorn and clear of blood, is fine enough. Her hair, too tangled and matted with clots to detect any remarkable colour, has lost its covering, if there was one. There are no signs of shoes and her feet are filthy with peat mud, as if she’d walked the length of the province of Mumu.

  They miss the forefinger with its carefully shaped nail in its perfect oval bed. If they hadn’t missed it, would they have understood its meaning?

  The farmer and son decide to take her to Máthair Gobnait, though they follow nothing of the new ways. They know that not only she is a healer; she can shape metal with fire. She is the holy woman of the bees and it is from her bees she gets the honey that provides her healing tool. Her bees are her mouthpiece to her God, humming His praises.

  ~

  She first hears Máthair Gobnait’s voice, low and melodious, instructing the farmer and his son. ‘Lift her carefully, now. Siúr Feidelm, fetch hot water and cloths.’

  She recalls little of being lifted from the cart and placed on the hastily created pallet, because the pain causes a blackness to engulf her from the moment they touch her limbs. It is a blackness she welcomes, a release from all that she doesn’t want to understand or experience. When she wakes again, night has fallen, and the light of a tallow candle hovers over her and a cool, dry hand is on her head. There is comfort there and it quietens the fear that rises in her and makes her flail her arms to beat away her terror.

  ‘Máthair,’ she says, for who but her mother would lay a hand on her with such care?

  ‘Hush, child, don’t try to speak,’ comes the reply.

  The woman’s tones are soothing, but she knows now this woman isn’t her mother and she wants to cry. She needs to release this fear that builds inside her. She tries instead to think of a melody that would fit a voice that is like sunshine. The melody she hears dips low and then rises slowly to a soaring peak, like the mountains so dear to her, the warm mounds of her mother. Oh Mother, come to me now. Hear my pleas. The words echo over and over until it becomes many voices in her head.

  When the music comes again it is a single voice, a voice unfamiliar, yet so pure. Tears come to her eyes and she convinces herself it is the voice’s beauty that brings them. She has drifted into a different world. A world in which she is safe. But still her fears awake. A light, bright and luminous, shines above her, radiating outwards. She tries to raise her arm to reach out to it, but pain, white and searing, keeps it immobile.

  ‘Rest,’ the voice says. ‘Don’t stir yourself.’

  She tries to envelop herself in the warmth and security of the voice and bathes in the light, but all too soon the darkness takes her again.

  ~

  She can hear murmurs, like the hum of bees, their tones low, vibrant and repetitive. The fear is still there, but becomes quieter under the soothing sounds, so she opens her eyes. Sunlight greets her, canted rays that come through the doorway. Against its radiance she can pick out numerous shapes sitting at a table. There are eight of them, murmuring with their heads bowed, lips moving and hands clasped. Fragrant odours of seasoned food wend their way to her, and for a moment, she thinks she too can eat, until her eyes close under the weight of her lids.

  A bell wakes her
the next time; a steady ringing that falls silent when its count is finished. From a distance, she can hear the voice again. The notes soar high, and the voice opens up rich and full like a great eagle stretching its wings. She opens her eyes and sees only the timber beams above, each end marked with a cross. She turns her head and notes the benches and stools near the large centre hearth where a fire burns. A stout woman sits on one of the stools, stirring a pot hanging over the fire. The room is warm and comforting, but still the fear creeps up again.

  When she opens her eyes again, a tall woman is standing over her. Alarm and fear take her all at once. A small moan escapes her.

  ‘Máthair Ab, she stirs,’ the woman says. The woman lays the back of her hand on her head for a moment. ‘The fever, has abated, buíochas le Dia.’ A woman draws up beside her, touches her fingers to her head, chest and to both shoulders.

  ‘That’s good news, Siúr Feidelm.’ It is the woman with the low melodious voice. The woman turns and addresses her. ‘I am Máthair Gobnait, abbess here. I bid you welcome to our house. We’ve feared for your recovery many days now.’

  She bites her lip to stop its trembling and stares into Máthair Gobnait’s kind face. The face is neither young nor old and the head is covered with a dark grey linen cloth which matches the colour of the belted wool gown.

  ‘Many days?’ she says, her voice barely a whisper. She keeps her eyes fixed on Máthair Gobnait’s face, drawing assurance from the gentleness she sees there. ‘I’ve been here that long?’

  ‘You have. You were badly injured when you first came; your body broken in several places and weak from losing so much blood from stab wounds.’

  She inhales sharply and fights the fear that is swallowing her voice and taking her breath. She moistens her lips countless times before she manages to get out the small phrase. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘We don’t know. We were hoping you might shed light on that.’

  She shuts her eyes but can only feel her heart beating faster than before. She cannot bear to think what she would find in the recesses of her mind and opens her eyes again quickly. Looking back into Máthair Gobnait’s face she can quieten enough of her fear to breathe. She shakes her head. ‘Nothing,’ she utters hoarsely.

  ‘May we know your name, then child?’

  ‘My name?’ She allows herself to think a moment. A name could be harmless and perhaps make her more secure, but her racing heart tells her differently. Her family, their allegiance and rank, could all be revealed in her name. She shakes her head again.

  ‘Don’t worry over that,’ the tall woman says. Her face is exceedingly plain, but the eyes are full of compassion. She too wears a grey veil, leather belt and dark gown. ‘You have had a severe blow to the head, and more than likely it causes your lack of memory.’ She gives her arm a gentle pat. ‘It will return in time, along with your health, I’m certain.’

  ‘Until then, we must call you something,’ says Máthair Gobnait. ‘Áine, I think. May your radiance shine forth.’

  ‘A name from the Bible?’ A small gaunt woman comes up beside Máthair Gobnait. Her fingers, skeletal and long, are clasped at her breast, as if in prayer. The tone of her words carries a hint of criticism.

  ‘This lost sheep has been brought into our fold, now. We must act as her shepherd and bring her back to her health and then to her flock.’ Máthair Gobnait’s tone carries no reprimand, but it is firm. ‘Siúr Feidelm, maybe something nourishing would go down well?’

  ‘Of course. And later I’ll apply a poutice of Lus na gCnámh mBriste and a brew honey to knit her bones,’ says the tall plain woman, who she now knows is Siúr Feidelm.

  Máthair Gobnait smiles. ‘Honey is always welcome. As for the rest of us, we can return to our tasks. The day is well under way.’

  They depart and she closes her eyes, hearing only a swish of a hem brushing against a post and a sigh of a breath. She savours the solitude and, just for a moment, her tension and fear seep out of her.

  What seems only moments later, Siúr Feidelm returns with a steaming bowl and wooden mug that she sets down on the ground. She draws up a small stool beside the pallet. Áine (for she must think of herself with some name) makes an effort to raise her head. The tension has returned and some of the fear, but still she makes herself speak.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Careful with your head.’ Siúr Feidelm pushes a small bolster filled with straw carefully behind her head and gently lays her back on it. ‘You are in the Tech Mor of Máthair Gobnait’s community of cailech. You must have heard tell of her.’

  ‘No. I know nothing.’ Her voice is a little stronger and she takes courage from its strength.

  Siúr Feidelm holds the small wooden mug to her mouth and helps her take some sips. The pungent smell of garlic and celery coming from the bowl overpowers the odours in the mug. The taste is pleasant but she finds it difficult to take much.

  ‘No, of course,’ says Siúr Feidelm. ‘You wouldn’t have heard of Máthair Ab if you don’t know your own self.’ She sits back a little. ‘She came from the north to Uisneach, the place of the deer, by Gort na Tiobratán, here in Boirneach, about five summers ago, looking for the right signs. And they were here, the nine white deer, and she knew then she’d found what she sought.’

  ‘She saw nine white deer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Áine looks around her again, seeking that unique quality that would draw nine white deer. Nine, it would have to be that number. It is a number she knows is sacred, though how she knows is a mystery. This woman, Máthair Gobnait, is another mystery and Áine isn’t certain whether to be fearful or assured. ‘Nine deer and all of them white?’ she asks softly.

  Siúr Feidelm nods. ‘Precisely nine.’

  ‘And what was she to do when she saw these nine white deer?’

  ‘What she has done. Begin a community and go among the people offering her help and kindness, in the name of God.’

  Áine nods though she cannot imagine what links nine deer and the urge to begin a community of women to help people of a tuath. ‘Don’t the nobles or even the local king look after the needs well enough?’ She breathes heavily after speaking so long, as much from the tension that still grips her as the effort it takes to speak.

  ‘The king and the lords do their share, but it’s not always enough. The weather and the soil are unforgiving. Máthair Ab gives them food when they need it and offers counsel if asked when there is some dispute, but mostly she tends to the sick and dying. Many come to her with all manner of ailments. I help her with the healing.’

  ‘And you’ve been with her since she came?’

  ‘I came to her the summer following her arrival. I asked my father to let me, so that I might learn her healing arts and her holy ways.’

  ‘Her holy ways?’ Something compels Áine to follow this line of discussion, though she is almost afraid to hear the answers. She is just as likely to be in danger from a holy person as anyone else, she tells herself. That she can identify no specific danger does little to reassure the feelings that constantly grip her.

  Siúr Feidelm looks at her in surprise. ‘She’s a cailech, a woman of God who’s taken the veil. She is the abbess here, as she mentioned.’

  ‘Taken a veil for a god? What god?’

  ‘The Lord God. Are you not familiar with those who follow Christ?’

  She tests the thought for a moment, feels nothing except the fear that simmers, ready to rise at the least cause. ‘I have no idea,’ she whispers.

  Siúr Feidelm considers the statement while she continues to spoon the mixture into Áine’s mouth. Áine can see now how young she is. Her skill with herbs is manifest in the strength and potency of the brew she sips, but her smooth trim cheeks show no sign of weather or age.

  ‘Perhaps you are a Christian, perhaps not, but you’ll find Máthair Ab is a good, compassionate woman.’

  Áine’s mind acknowledges this statement. ‘She’s shown me nothing but kindness and me a str
anger with no memory of my origins. I could be her enemy.’

  ‘She has no enemies.’ The young woman’s words are guileless and spoken with alarming sincerity.

  Áine wonders at this statement but says nothing, so as not to offend her. She shifts the subject. ‘Do you sing in your worship?’

  ‘You heard us?’ Siúr Feidelm’s face brightens.

  Áine smiles weakly and manages a calm answer. ‘I did. There was one particular piece, sung so beautifully by a lone woman. Who composed it?’

  ‘Siúr Sodelb, the one who sang it. She is wonderfully talented.’

  ‘Siúr Sodelb?’ She rolls the name around in her mind and likes the ring it has. ‘She is talented.’

  ‘You are a musician?’

  Áine looks at her. ‘You think I might be?’ Her voice catches at the thought that a fragment of her identity might have so easily been uncovered. Was she ready to know this much even?

  ‘Perhaps. The pleasure you just expressed might suggest it. Máthair Ab felt you had some love for music when she saw the only remaining nail on your fingers was curved. The mark of a harper.’

  Áine glances down at her hand. It is swathed in bandages, no nail or finger in sight. She thinks again about how she came to be this way and the tension returns.

  Siúr Feidelm places a hand over the bandages. ‘No, she had to trim the nail in the end, for fear you might harm yourself. You were delirious.’

  ‘Did I say anything in my delirium?’ She tenses even more, wondering if Máthair Gobnait knows more about her than she indicated.

  ‘You must ask Máthair Ab. She tended you. Set your bones, bathed and packed your wounds with honey and herbs. And she prayed.’

  She suddenly becomes aware of the splints and bandages that envelop her legs, arms and torso. Is there any place uncovered? Any part of her that is whole, undamaged? A roaring erupts in her head.

  ~

  The light still shines through the doorway though the angle has shifted. This time she examines the rafters above her, picks out the sturdy wooden beams that radiate from the centre pole. Their pungent odour speaks of their newness, as does the sweet freshness of the tightly bound thatch laid on them. The walls are stone, carefully laid and chinked against the biting winds that must come to a place named for its rocky hills, rather than the wattle that might be expected of a community of no wealth. But, she reminds herself, this is a holy community, one whose leader is undoubtedly of some consequence if she can command such a place. Her speech and manner reinforce this impression. It is another piece of knowledge for which she has no source or explanation. She sighs.