“Treachery somewhere,” said Columba, when he had heard Cormac’s story. “Treachery that has brought bloodshed and loss upon them and well-nigh cost them their leader.”
The holy man had borne Cormac tenderly from the battlefield to the little wattled cote in which he preferred to live rather than in the great hall King Aedh had prepared for him. He had washed the wounds of the youth, and kept constant watch by his bedside.
It was now the afternoon of the second day after the fight. Cormac lay on his bed, and Columba sat at the open doorway.
The little circular dwelling was the simplest of its kind, without furniture, the earthen floor devoid of rushes. There was no convenience for either light or fire. In one corner was the bed of the saint—a stone flag with a smaller stone for a pillow; in another a cup of wood and a larger bowl of earthenware. Cormac lay, warm and comfortable, on a pile of heather covered by a bear-skin. The seat on which Columba sat was of stone; he wore a coarse cassock and hood of undyed homespun wool, drawn over an under-dress of linen; on his feet were sandals.
Cormac’s eyes were fixed on the saint’s face. He felt he could never tire of looking at the wonderful white face and the great brilliant eyes. Nights of prayer and days of fasting had given Columba a strange unearthly pallor and thrown purple shadows round eyes and mouth. The great eyes shone out all the more brilliantly for their dark setting. All that is beautiful in eyes seemed united in those of Columba—they were fearless and bright as a child’s, piercing as an eagle’s, soft as a dove’s; to gaze into them made it easier to understand how Columba could be—at the same time—saint, poet, warrior, and statesman; to gaze into them made Cormac’s difficult story an easy one to tell—he told it as a child would have told its parent, never doubting he would be understood and forgiven.
A favourite horse had come and lain its head on Columba’s shoulder; at his feet was a hound he had saved from a bear; beside the hound was a lamb. A tamed sea-gull nestled its head in the saint’s neck—it had been discovered by Columba, broken-winged on the seashore; he had bandaged the wing and cherished the little creature, and ever since the bird had hovered near him. From the half-closed hand lying on the sack-cloth robe the tiny head and bright eyes of a little wren were peeping. As Cormac gazed at the great man he realised what was meant when men said that Columba lived in a kingdom of love. Yet he was a wild and fearless warrior, too, gaining repute on the isles and mainland of savage Caledonia.
The saint suddenly addressed the young man.
“You are better, my son. Your wounds were slight, though they were many—you will soon be at the head of your bards again.”
Cormac frowned.
“Never again! I will lead men—not cowards and deceivers.”
Columba turned, so that he might face his guest; putting up his hand as he did so to soothe the fluttering bird at his neck.
He seemed about to speak when suddenly a change came over his face. He fell on his knees; his eyes closed—then opened again, with the rapt gaze of an ecstatic. Columba prayed. He prayed with his whole being—with that power of prayer peculiar to those Hibernian saints who did so much in spreading the Faith in Europe, and whose lives bear witness to it for all time. Passionate, almost involuntary, prayer; in which in their communings with their Maker their very souls seemed drawn from their bodies. A state in which prayer was as natural as thought, and from which Columba seemed to derive that almost supernatural power by which he confounded the tricks of the juggling Druids at the court of Brude, the Pictish king.
After a time he asked Cormac softly:
“Will you leave your work?”
“My work?” repeated Cormac.
“Ay, your work—you alone are able to work in that vineyard. Cormac of Fail, my warrior from over the seas, chosen redeemer of my bards, you have a noble work before you.”
“When they told me,” he continued slowly, “of Cormac of Fail, and how he was gathering my bards around him, I hardly dared to believe it. Such news was too good to be true! I had heard of your father—King of Damnonia we called him in the North—and I knew that the son of Griffith Finnfuathairt could lead warriors in a noble cause only—when I heard all this, I tell you that I felt the saviour of my bards had come.” He paused again. “My bards,” he murmured, in a tone of infinite tenderness. “My bards!”
The last words were said to himself, half unconsciously.
“I know the tales men tell of them—how they swagger, and idle, and brag by the firesides of their chiefs—and how bragging leads to brawling, and brawling to worse things. It is true! But it is not given to all men to lead lives of prayer—there are others who must go out into the world and fight; and if they cannot, they will stay and idle at home. All they want is a noble cause—and then we shall have noble warriors and noble men!”
Columba’s eyes flashed, and Cormac remembered the war-like deeds of the saint’s father, Feidilmid. He had come from a race of warriors, the Kings of Conall, bred in the dark wolf-haunted mountains of the North, where life meant perpetual warfare, with beast as well as man. At that time, and for centuries after, Hibernia rang with the exploits of the great Conall Gulban of the same race—he after whom the north-west of Hibernia was named, Tirconnall.
“My son, you have a noble work before you to redeem the youth of Hibernia!” The saint held out his hands in entreaty. “I ask you, I entreat you to give them a trial.”
Cormac’s cheek burnt with pride and shame that the great Columba should treat him as a friend and equal. It was even more surprising than that he, one of the greatest men of the day, and the ruler of forty churches, should live the life of a peasant.
Cormac had pictured him in robes of state in the great chair of a king, with the body guard of a king around him; and on his head the golden crown common to the bishops of Hibernia. Or, if indeed he had thought of him in sack-cloth, as was the custom amongst so many of the saints—he had imagined him as austere, and glorifying in his humility, with ashes on his head and his sack-cloth in rags.
“Take time,” said Columba, “and gather your men about you—then cross the sea to Gwynned—to North Wales, and you will find men there in plenty to unite against the heathen!”
Cormac was silent. A few hours ago he had felt the utmost fury against his late army. They had come that morning before the cote in which he lay and had sung a lament on the late event—a wild Hibernian wail telling of defeat and disaster, of the swift flight of horses pursuing and pursued, of the falling in trenches slippery with blood, of a black bog and hungry war-dogs, of showers of javelins and darts and the loss of gold and silver and fair women. The refrain ran:
“Mead we drank—yellow, sweet, ensnaring!
And under its bane fell prey to the foe—
Raining our red life-wine, in streams, in the valley!”
They sang with mock tears, artfully trembling voices. Cormac, under the care of the man against whom they had conspired, writhed in shame as he heard them.
After a time, under Columba’s pleading, he felt his heart soften to the bards. But, when he thought of Ethne, he grew like stone—for he knew hers was the treachery of which Columba had spoken.
He remained obdurate when, later on, she implored him to allow her to accompany him to Wales. She protested that she was innocent, that she also had been deceived by the bards; but Cormac remained firm in his refusal to allow her to accompany him; he could run no risks in this second undertaking.
He remained, for a time, in the little wattled cote; sharing the simple life of the saint who slept on a stone slab with a stone pillow beneath his head.
Columba helped him to gather soldiers around him; and, by his powerful aid, made all the necessary arrangements for transporting his men to Wales.
“Go, my son,” said the saint, as he gave him his blessing on his departure, “and God help you to restore the lost mother to the maid. But never think that, with the sword, the Saxons are to be conquered. The Cross, and not the Sword, will subdue them!”
They were the prophetic words of one who had spent his life in converting a people almost as savage and invincible—the Picts.