Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [161]
He noticed a difference the very next morning. Was there more sun in the scriptorium that day, or had the world grown brighter? When he sat down at his desk, the vellum before him seemed to have acquired a new and magical significance. Instead of the usual, painful struggle with an intricate pattern, the shapes and colours under his pen burst into life like the bright new plants of spring. And more extraordinary still, as the day progressed, these sensations grew stronger, more urgent, more intense; so utterly absorbed was he that by the late afternoon he did not even notice that the light outside was fading as he worked, with a growing fever of excitement, immersed in the rich and radiant world he had entered. It was only when he felt a persistent tap on his shoulder that he at last broke off with a start, like a man awoken from a dream, to find that they had already lit three candles round his desk and that he had completed not one but five new illustrations. They almost had to drag him from the page.
And so it had continued day after day as, lost in his art, in such a fever that he often forgot to eat, pale, absentminded, outwardly melancholy yet inwardly ecstatic, the middle-aged monk—inspired by Caoilinn if not by God—now in the abstract patterns, verdant plants, in all the brightly coloured richness of sensual creation, for the first time discovered and expressed in his work the true meaning of passion.
Late in February, he began to trace the great, triple spiral of the last full page, and stretching it out and bending it to his will, found to his astonishment that he had formed it into a magnificent, dynamic Chi-Rho, unlike any that he had seen before, that echoed on the page like a solid fragment of eternity itself.
Two weeks before Easter, his little masterpiece was completed.
She was not expecting him; and that was what he intended. Harold was counting on an element of surprise. Though the real question was, should he be going there at all?
“Stay away. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.” That had been Morann’s advice. Twice since he had gone to see Caoilinn, the craftsman had let her son know that Harold would be visiting him on a particular day in Dyflin. It would have been easy enough for Caoilinn to come in from Rathmines and encounter the Norseman, seemingly by chance, on the quay or in the marketplace. Indeed, her son, who was quite ready for his mother to move out of the house, was anxious to help. But she had neither come, nor sent any word at all to Harold. And though, originally, Morann had hoped to see a reconciliation of the lovers, he had now changed his mind. “Find another wife, Harold,” he counselled. “You can do better.”
So why was he going? In the months since her rejection of him, the Norseman had often reflected upon the subject of Caoilinn. She had hurt him, of course. Indeed there had been times when, thinking about her contemptuous treatment of him, he had clenched his strong hands in rage and sworn to himself that he would never set eyes on her again. But in his generous way, he had still tried to understand what might have caused her to behave in such a manner; and after learning more of the details about her husband from other people familiar with the household, he had formed a shrewd idea of what might be in Caoilinn’s mind. He made allowances; he was ready to forgive. But he was also mindful of the inner contempt for his own feelings that her behaviour had shown. Morann had let him know of his visit to Rathmines. As he thought about the matter