Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [158]
By mid-November Osgar had made a good start on the drawing and painting of the capitals, with more than a dozen completed by the end of the month, and when the abbot had inspected the work he had pronounced himself pleased; but the abbot had nonetheless made one complaint.
“Every year, Brother Osgar, you seem to take longer to complete each illustration. Surely with so much practice, you should be getting more proficient, not less.”
“The more I do,” Osgar had answered sadly, “the harder it gets.”
“Oh,” said the abbot, irritably. It was at times like this that he found the perfectionist calligrapher tiresome and even rather contemptible. And Osgar had sighed because he knew that he could not explain such things to any man, however intelligent, who had not practised the druidic art of design himself.
How could he explain that the patterns the abbot saw were not the result of simple choice or chance, but that often as not, as he worked upon them, the strands of colour would mysteriously refuse to conform to the pattern he had first envisaged. And that only after days of obdurate struggle would he discover within them a new, deeper, dynamic pattern, far more subtle and powerful than anything his own poor brain would have been able to design. During these frustrating days, he would be like a man lost in a maze, or unable to move as though caught in a magic spider’s web, trapped within the very lines he drew. And as he came through, each discovery revealed to him new rules, layer upon layer, so that like a ball of twine that is slowly growing, the artefact he was making, simple though it seemed, had a hidden weight. Through this exhausting process, from these unending tensions, were the elegant patterns of his art constructed.
And of nothing was this more true than the fourth of the full-page illuminations. He knew what he wanted. He wanted, somehow, to echo that strange spiral which the old monk had copied from the stone and shown him up in Kells. He had only seen it once, but the strange image had haunted him ever since. Of course he had seen trefoils and spirals in many books; but this particular image was haunting precisely because it was subtly different. Yet how could you capture those swirling lines when their mysterious power came from the very fact that they were wandering, indeterminate, belonging to some unknown but profoundly necessary chaos? Every sketch he made was a failure, and common sense, especially when he was labouring under such lack of time, should have told him to give it up. Something conventional would do. But he couldn’t. Each day he puzzled over it, while he continued with the rest.
Fortunately, when the prince’s messenger was shown the partly completed book, it was already clear that it would be handsome.
“I will tell the prince it is in hand,” the messenger said, “but he won’t be pleased it isn’t finished.”
“You will have to work faster, Brother Osgar,” said the abbot.
The siege of Dyflin was raised at Christmas. Brian and his army retired southwards to Munster. No attack upon the ramparts had been made by the besiegers and no one had come out to fight them. When the men of Dyflin saw the Munster king depart, they congratulated themselves.
In early January, after Brian had departed, Morann decided to leave the O’Neill King of Tara for a while and pay a visit to Dyflin. He was not surprised to receive a summons to attend the Dyflin king and his council in the royal hall. They welcomed him cheerfully. “We all know you were under oath to Brian,” the king reassured him. They had numerous questions about the Munster king and the disposition of his forces, which Morann answered. But the craftsman was surprised by the air of truculence he detected in some of the younger council members.
“You might as well have stayed with us, Morann,” said one. “Brian came to punish us, but he’s had to give up.”
“He never gives up,” Morann replied.