Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [166]
With the damp breeze catching his face, Osgar was suddenly reminded of the day he had crossed these mountains, so many years ago, when he went to tell Caoilinn he was joining the monastery. For a few moments he felt exactly as if he were that same young man again; the sharpness of the sensation surprised him. He thought of Caoilinn now, and his heart was racing. Would he see her?
Yet there was danger down there on the Liffey Plain: he was approaching a battlefield. Would he be able to deliver the book to Brian and withdraw to safety, or would he be caught up in it?
Tomorrow was Palm Sunday: the day of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. A day of triumph. He had ridden into the Holy City on a donkey; they had strewn palms in His way to signal their respect, sung His praises, called Him the Messiah. And five days later, they had crucified Him. Was that, Osgar wondered as they crossed the mountains, to be his own fate? Was he about to descend from this deserted place, have his praises sung on account of his little masterpiece, and then perhaps fall to a Viking axe? There would be irony in that. Or, it even occurred to him, might he happen to encounter Caoilinn and meet his end heroically after all, saving her from a burning Dyflin or a Viking marauding party? A surge of warmth accompanied this vision. He had failed in such a business once before; but that was long ago. He was another man.
And indeed, in a way, Osgar was a changed man. The little book of Gospels was a vivid masterpiece. There was no doubt that King Brian would be delighted with it. The passion for Caoilinn that had produced it, that had driven his work for three months, had left Osgar in a state of elation. He had a compulsive desire to do more, a sense of urgency he had never experienced before. He needed to live in order to create. Yet at the same time, he also knew with a tiny warmth of certainty that if he were suddenly taken from this mortal life, he had now left behind a bright little jewel that, in the eye of God also, he hoped, seemed to make his uneventful life worthwhile.
They passed over the high mountain gap, taking the way that led north-west. By that nightfall they would have descended the slopes, skirted the Liffey’s broad basin, and crossed the river by a small monastic bridge a dozen miles upstream from Dyflin. The day was pleasant, the April sky remaining unusually clear. It was past midafternoon when they emerged on the northern slopes and saw below them and to the east the wide magnificence of the Liffey estuary and the huge sweep of the bay laid out before them.
Then Osgar saw the Viking sails.
It was the whole Viking fleet, strung out from the northern curve of the bay, past the Ben of Howth, and away into the open sea where, finally, they became indistinct in the sea mist. Square sails: he could see that those nearest were brightly coloured. How many sails? He counted three dozen; no doubt there were more. How many fighting men? A thousand? More? He had never seen such a sight before. He stared in horror, and felt a terrible, cold fear.
There were no palm trees in Dyflin, so on Palm Sunday Christians went to church with all kinds of greenery in their hands. Caoilinn carried a sheaf of long, sweet grasses.
It was a strange sight that morning to see the stream of worshippers, Leinster and Dyflin people, Celtic Gaedhil and Nordic Gaill, carrying their greenery through the wooden streets, watched by the men from the longships. Some of the warriors from the northern seas were good Christians, she noted with approval, for they joined the procession. But most seemed to be either heathen or indifferent, and they stood by the fences or in the gateways, leaning on their axes, watching, talking amongst themselves or drinking ale.
It had been