The woman at the hut, the one with the child who had been ill. When last I saw her – what had she been holding? Was it her child? Why was it so quiet?
I started to walk back up the hill to the monastery, barely acknowledging the greetings that came from everywhere and everyone, large and small. I walked faster. I must speak to Colman, I could not attend the resumed Synod. I started to trot as I looked at the sky again. The shooting star had died away but I remembered it, remembered the dying fall. I broke into a run. A Fall like Lucifer.
A Fall like - Oh, God, let it not be so, let it not be so -
Ieuan.
I knew, I knew it with my heart and my soul and all my being. Ieuan, Ieuan, Ieuan. Ieuan was at the dark heart of the evil in Strathclyde, trying to resist the invasions - he had offered to help me to resist the Romans. His hope had gone and despair had led him to -
I was in the velvet darkness which was neither comforting nor welcoming nor rejecting of me but allowed me passage through the black that twinkled with light as I tore silently through the dark, seeking one essence, one being out of all the millions that were around me, some of which inclined towards me but I rushed past them with total intensity.
I looked deeper, deep into the Otherworld, the realm I inhabited in my Sight. There was the fire. Beyond it lay my heart’s desire, I knew - but not now, not yet, not yet - and there was stone, a face of impenetrable rock which spread in all directions and to the ends of the Universe and beyond. There was no way past, no way through. I searched for an eternity until I found the door. I knew this was the place and didn’t consider why: I considered the door. It was massive, bolted and bossed and sealed with iron. There was fear in me: beyond the door lay madness, or I thought there was. I remembered a door beyond which there was madness. Was this it? I hesitated. My fear was in my memory. This was the door behind which madness lay - but not my madness.
The door was closed but it would never be locked against me again. It could not be. I pounded on it with hands like hammers and it fell into splinters at my feet, shards that melted into nothing and I looked into the room.
There were children everywhere. Children split from ribs to groin whose sightless eyes were bloody gashes that wept blood that fell onto the floor and collected into pools and gathered into lakes and their sightless eyes stared at me. They were stacked on shelves, piled into cupboards, piled on worktops and stuffed under benches and there were hundreds and thousands of them and the hooded figure in the room and in the glade that had threatened madness but had deceived me because this was not my madness it turned and I saw its face and it was the face of my friend and blood was dribbling from his mouth and down his chin and he tried to conceal it but I had seen it and I KNEW all that had happened and the face of my friend was old and the price he had paid had drained the life force from him and I could see through the face as if it were muslin to the beast that the face had sheltered and concealed which grinned at me ravenously and extended a claw to me to gather me in
I started up the hill again, back towards the monastery, to the infirmary and the source of the cold evil I had detected and had ignored.
You don’t understand, the voice that had been my friend’s called. I took a swig from my bottle of medicine.
I walked faster.
Now you understand, said Padhraig, sometimes you take so long to see, but now you understand
I broke in to a run. I was in both worlds, in Whitby and elsewhere. I knew where Ieuan was, he could hide no more. He had put up a concealing spell, which had distracted me all the way from Dumbarton, through Lindisfarne, to Whitby, to here. But in the end he had been distracted. The effort he had put in to saving Cedd had weakened his defence, and now it was useless. He could shield his thoughts no longer because I had broken the door behind which madness lay. But not my own madness, though my head whirled and screamed at me in confusion, not my own, that was a deceit and a veil behind which the truth lay.
It was getting colder as I got nearer to Cedd’s sick bed, and now I knew why: he was still trying, desperately, to keep me out. I sprinted into the infirmary and down the corridor, thrusting monk and nun alike out of my way. The door at the end burst open and Ieuan was there, facing me, knowing that I knew and looking for escape, gathering himself for a burst of Power which I could prevent if I could just get to him in time. I reached for the knife at my belt, it wasn’t there but my bare hands would be enough and I ran towards Ieuan with my hands reaching to stop him in whatever he would do and Ieuan looked straight at me and threw a handful of dust into my face.
Before I could stop myself I breathed in a lungful of the powder that Ieuan had thrown. It blocked my nose, filled my mouth, raced into my lungs and started to choke me. I stumbled and fell to my knees, fighting for breath, feeling the gritty stuff choking me. I shoved my hands into my mouth and tried to scrape it out, it was everywhere, between each crack in my teeth, I reached my fingers almost into my throat to drag it out, it was choking me and the more I shifted the more seeped in from my cheeks, my teeth and my lips, I fought to breathe and every breath sucked more in. I couldn’t breathe at all. I tried, I tried, I tried and my throat sucked in and my chest heaved and there was fuzz before my eyes and I was suffocating, I was panicking, I was getting dizzy as my head demanded air
Be calm. Dispel the illusion.
I calmed my brain, deliberately and without trying to take a breath that would not come, not yet. I thought of the clear air of the hills above the monastery, the wild air of Iona during a storm, the quiet air of Lindisfarne on a spring day, I concentrated on the air of the hills at Whitby. I could pick out the buzz of the bumblebees and I smiled, and I was calm and breathed naturally, in and out, in and out, without strain or impediment. The spell was broken.
I was on my hands and knees and there were people about me. I took a deep breath and stood up, looking around for the adversary, who had been my friend. I was surrounded by confused monks and nuns; some of them were rubbing various parts of their bodies which had been bruised as I’d pushed them out of the way.
“Where’s Ieuan?” I demanded.