Last Summer in Ireland

When she smiled back at me, it was such a gentle, warm smile, the smile of someone I felt I had always known. Looking up at her, it was just like meeting someone you know so well in a context where you don’t expect them. Once, in the Ladies at Euston Station I came face to face with a girl I’d been at school with. Instant recognition, but total puzzlement as to how and where we’d known each other.

Here and now, I just couldn’t place this girl. I could give her no name. At the same time, I was absolutely sure her presence was bringing back to me some shared experience I had somehow managed to forget.

She folded her hands together, laid her head against them and closed her eyes. When she opened them again and nodded to me, her meaning was quite clear. I ought to go and sleep. She was quite right. I was absolutely exhausted. But I couldn’t just get up and walk away when she had been so kind to me.

I stretched out my hand to touch her. To my surprise she drew back, a look of concern on her face. After a moment, she bent down, chose a bloom from the bunch of kingcups she had laid so carefully on the ground, and handed the flowering stem to me. Our fingers brushed and she was gone.

I sat quite still, alone in the quiet of the afternoon, the whizz of cars a distant mutter beyond the density of the shrubbery. I stared at the bright golden eye of the kingcup with the single unfolding bud at its side. I gazed around hopefully as if perhaps she might have moved into the shrubbery, though I knew perfectly well she had gone.

I made an enormous effort, got up and walked unsteadily back to the house, clutched the banisters as I climbed the stairs and went into my room. I must have fallen asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.

The heat of noonday burned in a cloudless sky. On the great mound nothing moved but the shimmer of haze above the baked earth which had been worn bare in the preceding weeks by the movements of men and horses. Since the Festival of Beltane it had been fine. Day followed day of warmth and sunshine with only the slightest of showers in the night to settle the dust and bring freshness to the early dawn.

Deara had loved every moment of the unexpected fine spell. After the raw chill of the previous months, the confinement to hut and storeroom, the smoke of fires, the scratch of her heavy wool cloak and the lingering odours of horses and penned cattle, she revelled in the sudden freedom like the wild creatures themselves.

In the first weeks she covered miles everyday, doing the old woman’s bidding with pleasure. Coming back each evening footsore and wolf-hungry for the evening stew, her arms and satchel full of bark and flowers and leaves, she had trudged up the dusty path to the main gate and known herself happy. It was the first time such happiness had come to her. And it frightened her. Surely such joy was not given to mortal kind. Perhaps it was some jest of the gods to make her thus so happy that they might cast her down and humble her.

Now, as she reached the edge of the wood and began the short, steep climb again, she knew joy had gone. Today, the sun was no longer her friend. He, who had warmed her and brought flowers blossoming from the damp earth, was now an enemy, a cruel white eye, who mocked her sadness, who rejoiced at the end to her freedom, who would shine on through the months of her sixteenth summer, whether she were to survive the coming time or not.

She tossed back her long dark hair impatiently and ran a brown arm across her brow where beads of perspiration gleamed on her high, pale forehead. The flowers were wilting already though she had picked them only in the water-meadows beyond the wood. She cradled them in her right arm, pulled her tunic higher within her woven belt and stepped out of the cool shade of the wood.

Perhaps it was too late already, though she had been as quick as she could. Conor had said Merdaine would not see another sunset, and indeed, in the night, when she sat by the bedplace with her, she thought the old woman would not greet another dawn. But she had.

In the first dim light she had stirred and spoken to her, but Deara had not understood. The old woman seemed to be speaking another language, one she had never heard before. The words were perfectly clear, she was not wandering in her mind, like other old people she had seen die, nor was it like the wound fever of warriors when they called to comrades or lovers in their pain. No, Merdaine’s words had meaning and they were meant for her, she felt sure, but she could make nothing of them.

And neither could Conor. She could tell that from his face. Not that Conor would ever admit to such a thing. How could he, a Druid, a King’s Druid at that, skilled in all the knowledges of this world, the other world and the world beyond? How could he possibly admit that he did not understand?

Conor had simply pretended not to hear. He had busied himself with trimming the candles before the God, moving them so that the deep-set stone features took on their most benign aspect. Conor was a great believer in getting the patterns right. Merdaine was not and their wills had often clashed. ‘No,’ Merdaine would say, ‘that is not the way, not for this man, in this place, in this time.’ Yes, one must acknowledge the God and make due sacrifice, she would agree, but not all power lay in the hands of the God, even the mighty Nodons, the deity served by all who sought to heal men by words or deeds.

Deara toiled up the steep slope with all the speed she could manage. The guards on the gate were half asleep, but it was no matter. The air was so still and heavy you could feel the movement of a rider as far away as the river. Beyond the gate she threaded her way between crowded huts and empty cattle pens. Dogs stirred and went back to sleep again as she passed, her leather sandals making almost no noise in the deep dust. She looked neither to right nor left, her eyes firmly fixed on the low doorway of a larger wooden hut beyond and behind the King’s Hall. With a sigh of relief she saw that the door-hanging was still in place. It had not been tied back to let the spirit go. Merdaine yet lived.

Without a sound, Deara entered the hut and knelt by the low couch now pulled out into the centre of the dim room. The candles had burned low, but Conor was asleep, his head hung down on his chest. He snuffled rather than snored, like a sleeping dog hunting rabbits in a dream.

Deara took the old woman’s hand and laid the flowers below it. They were kingcups, broad and gold, the flowers she had asked for when she roused at mid-morning. They gleamed even in the dim light.

Merdaine stirred, her eyes flickered open.

‘Child, you are early back today, you cannot have finished your tasks, why is that?’

Deara looked at the dark eyes and saw in them a look she already knew. A look of slight preoccupation, as if already the eyes were fixed on something else, a person beyond this person, a place beyond this place.

To her great consternation Deara found her own eyes were full of tears. Tears. How could she? When Merdaine had taught her always to celebrate the going, to go herself as far as she might with the departing spirit, both for the sake of the departing one and for her own sake, that she should be wiser when the time of her own going should come to her.

Deara blinked in the vain hope that Merdaine would not have seen. But she knew that Merdaine had always been able to see whatever she chose to see. Even with her eyes closed, Merdaine could see with her heart.

Today the old woman did not rebuke her. Instead, she smiled a strange half smile and closed her fingers round the soft blooms, caressing them gently like something very precious to her.

‘He sleeps still?’ she asked softly.

Deara nodded.

‘Then come close to me and listen. Come, let me whisper to you like I did when you were a child, when you crept to your bedplace and wept by yourself because others had mocked you. Come, for you see true. My work is finished in this place. It will soon be time for Conor to stir himself and do his part. Come now, lie close.’

Deara stretched out on the rushes, her arms above her head, her slim body as close to the old woman as the wooden frame of the couch permitted. Thus she had lain for all her sixteen years, to sleep and to weep, for often the two had come together in that only time in the long, busy day when she might turn her back upon the world, a world where she had no place except as Merdaine’s handmaiden.

She felt the press of the rushes through her thin tunic. They were only a few days old and still had a smell of greenness about them. Like the water-meadows that morning. Tears once again welled in her eyes and she did not know whether it was the memory of all these golden days, now ended, or fear of the future, or the loss of the one person in all the world who had protected her.

‘Do not weep, child.’

Deara had made no sound, no body movement, but Merdaine had put out a thin hand and touched her hair.

‘Listen now, and hold to my words that they may guide you. Your heart is soft and quick to sorrow, but your head is strong and firm. Use your head as a warrior uses his shield. Harden it by use and by discipline as a warrior does, but never think it is the greatest part of you. For that which is weak and soft is your real strength. It will guide you in the darkest ways and in the strangest of unknown places. Remember when Emain is no more, when sword and fire seem masters of all the earth, that light grows out of darkness, that without evil we cannot know good. You are a child of light for you know darkness at noon. You will heal many, and many will speak the name of Emain with love for your sake. But a time will come when Emain will speak no longer . . . its kings and heroes gone . . .’

The voice faded to nothing and Deara felt the hand slip from her hair. She got up quickly and saw Merdaine struggle for breath.

‘Up, child, up.’

Merdaine’s hand jerked imperiously, a familiar gesture of a woman accustomed to being obeyed, now in contrast to the whispered tones of her command.

Deara lifted her to a sitting position and supported the frail body in her arms.

‘Two things more,’ she gasped.

With an effort of will Merdaine drew breath into her lungs. Deara heard the ominous bubble of fluid and knew clearly, as Merdaine herself did, how little time remained. She felt the pain as if it were her own pain, the choking tightness as if it were her own lungs struggling for air, and the urgency as if it were her own need to speak.

‘Gently, Merdaine, gently,’ she whispered, as she stroked the damp grey hair from the old woman’s brow.

‘The Gods protect your gentleness, child. If I have been too hard on you, you will come to understand why it was so. I have taught you all I know of healing and the world. To heal others you must heal yourself first. That will ever take you into danger. But if you have done as your heart speaks then help will come in your sorest need. But you must trust that it will come. Remember that above all things.’

Merdaine paused, her head hanging forward on her chest. Her eyes flickered round the room, taking in the squat, sleeping figure of the Druid, the candles burning straight and sharp, the dark stone eyes of the God. They came to rest on a wooden chest in the shadows. The metal clasp reflected one of the candle flames.

‘Take my brooch to Morrough. Tell him Merdaine asks that he keep his promise. He will make you an offer, or his brehon will. But do not let him frighten you. Whatever he says, make up your own mind.’

Deara felt the tension relax in the narrow shoulders. Something had moved. Something was different. A darkness had passed, though she knew not what it was. She bent to kiss the old woman. She had never kissed her before.

At her touch the half-closed eyes opened. They seemed to focus on her face and yet Deara could not feel sure that it was she whom Merdaine actually saw. But suddenly Merdaine’s eyes were smiling.

‘Have a good journey, my little one, both you and your friend in another time. Here, I give you a parting gift of what you already have. For you both, and for all of your kind, who have love in your hearts, I give you the sign of healing.’

Deara felt the soft touch of the kingcups against her wrist and watched the pale tide gently erase from the familiar face both the brown of wind and weather and the lines of wisdom and experience.

The weight in her arms grew heavy. The spirit had flown like a lark into a summer sky, but the frail body breathed a little and swallowed before it was finally still.

Only then did Deara lay the old woman gently back on the couch and gather up the blooms which had slid from her open hand and scattered across the woven rug. For a moment she cradled the flowers in her hands as she would a newborn child. Then, looking down at the sharpening lines of Merdaine’s face, she said over again to herself, ‘If you do as your heart speaks, then in your sorest need, help will come. But you must trust that it will come.’

She put the kingcups into a pitcher of spring water in the farthest corner of the hut. Then, taking a deep breath, she crossed to the doorway, took up the corner of the door-hanging and standing on tiptoe, tied it up by its leather thongs.

The sunlight, lower now, but still fierce, dazzled her as it poured round her, filling the hut with light. For a moment, she shut her eyes and heard her heart cry out its own farewell. Then, only half aware of what she did, she knelt in the dust to the left of the door, turned towards the west and began to recite in a voice she barely recognised, the welcome to Nodons, the giver of life within life, the bringer of life beyond life.