glimmering water. With the last notes soaring into the night, we wrapped ourselves in our cloaks and slept on the shingle under the stars.
We awakened at first light to mist and low cloud. The wind had changed during the night, and now came out of the east in a low gusting breeze. The pilot and Mael stood at the water's edge, wavelets lapping at their feet, scanning the sky and talking. Cadoc joined them, exchanged a word, and then called out: 'Rise, brothers!' he called. 'The day is before us!'
While Clynnog and Ciaran-either side of the coracle-guided the bishop, the rest of us broke camp and waded back to the ship. Once aboard, Fintan took the tiller and signalled Connal to raise the anchor. The others plied the long oars and began turning the ship.
'Let us help them,' suggested Dugal. 'It will do us good to learn the seaman's craft.'
He took up an oar and put it in my hands, then found one for himself. Dugal stood on one side of the ship, and I on the other. Clynnog showed me how to work the long-handled blade back and forth in the water. 'More like sawing wood,' he told me, 'and less like stirring porridge, Aidan. Long, easy strokes. Do not turn your wrists so.'
Slowly, the boat turned in the water and we began moving back out of the little cove and into the open sea once more. Once well beyond the rocks, Fintan called for the sail to be raised; the heavy fabric shook itself once, twice, caught the wind and filled. The ship slipped smoothly into deeper water, and we were away.
The pilot steered a course parallel to the land, moving south along the coast. The morning passed in a damp haze of mist and fog which clung to the cliffs and obscured the hills, leaving little to see.
We broke fast on barley bread and fish left over from the previous meal. I carried some back to Fintan at the stern, who put me to work holding the tiller while he ate. 'We will make a seafarer of you yet, Aidan,' he chuckled. 'Just hold fast and keep an eye on the sail.'
'Gwilym said we were to put in at Ty Gwyn,' I said.
'Aye,' answered the pilot, breaking bread. 'Supplies.'
'Is it far?'
He chewed thoughtfully. 'No great distance.'
Fintan seemed content with this answer and disinclined to improve on it, so I asked, 'How far then?'
The pilot ate his bread as if contemplating the deep complexity of my question. Finally, he squinted up his eyes and said, 'You will see.'
Fintan's prediction proved faulty, however: I never did see the abbey called Ty Gwyn.
9
The wind sharpened, backing to the southeast and blowing steadily harder throughout the morning, churning the slate-grey water into stiff, jagged peaks that slammed against the prow and sides as if to drive us ashore. Consequently, our squint-eyed pilot was forced to put the ship further out, away from the coast, to avoid coming too near the land and being blown onto the rocks.
The sea swelled, lifting the ship high and holding it, before pitching it sideways into the next furrow. I found this rising-swaying-falling motion more than I could endure, and retreated to the back of the boat where I might grit my teeth and moan.
By midday, the wind had become a howling gale, piling the black waves high and spraying white foam over everything. I sat hunched in my nest among the grain sacks, clutching my stomach and desperately wishing I had not eaten the fish. Dugal, seeing my misery, fetched a stoup of water from the vat lashed to the mast. 'Here, Aidan,' he cried. 'Drink this. You will feel better.' He shouted above the wind and wave-roar, for even as far from land as we were, we could still hear the terrible thunder of the water tearing itself upon the rocks.
Placing the stoup in my hands, he watched me raise the wooden vessel to my lips, spilling most of the contents over myself due to the violent motion of the ship. The water tasted like iron on my tongue. I shivered at the taste; the shiver became a shudder and I felt my stomach churn inside me. I made it to the rail just in time to spew the ill-favoured fish back into the sea whence it came.
'Fret not, Aidan,' Fintan advised. 'It is for the best. You will feel better now.'
This promise seemed especially remote, however, as I fell back onto the grain bags, drooling and gasping. Dugal sat with me until he was called away to help the sea monks strike the sail. This, I understood, would make the ship less easy to steer. But, as Mael explained, 'It is take down the sail, or lose the mast.'
'Is it that bad?' I wondered, feeling innocent and helpless.
'Nay,' replied Mael, frowning, 'not so bad that it cannot yet get worse.'
'You mean it can get worse?' I wondered, apprehension stealing over me.
'Aye, it can always get worse. Sure, this is no more than a summer's breeze compared to some of the storms I have braved,' he told me proudly. 'I tell you the truth, Aidan, I have been shipwrecked four times.'
This seemed to me a dubious boast for a seafaring man, but Mael appeared most pleased with it. The pilot called him to take the tiller just then, and I watched as Fintan grappled his way along the rail to join Brynach and the bishop at the mast. The three conferred briefly, where-upon the pilot returned to the helm. Dugal had seen this, too, and went to where Brynach and the bishop stood with their arms about one another's shoulders to keep from falling over.
They spoke together, whereupon Dugal returned to where I sat and said, 'We cannot put in at Ty Gwyn. The coast is too treacherous and sea too rough to stop there now.'
'Where, then?' I moaned, not really caring any more where we went.
'We are making for Inbhir Hevren,' he told me. 'It is a very great estuary with many bays and coves, and not so many rocks. Brynach says we can find shelter there.'
Any sight of land had disappeared in mist and cloud wrack long ago. I wondered how the pilot knew where we could be, but lacked the strength or will to ask; it was all I could do to hold to the sacking and keep my head upright.
I clung to the grain bags and prayed: Great of Heaven, Three-One, Evermighty, who delights in saving men, hear my prayer and save us now. From torment of sea, from dolour of waves, from gales great and terrible, from squall and storm deliver us! Sain us and shield us and sanctify us; be thou, King of the Elements, seated at our helm and guiding us in peace to safety. Amen, Lord, so be it.
Night drew on quickly and the gale, rather than abating, increased; as if drawing power from darkness, the wind mounted higher. The ropes, taut against the storm, sang mournfully as the mast creaked. Our tight little ship was tossed from trough to peak and back again, and my stomach heaved with every rise and fall. The grain sacks provided some stability and all who were not needed to keep the ship afloat gathered there to huddle together.
The last light failed and Fintan announced: 'We cannot make landfall in the dark. Even if we could see the estuary, it would be too dangerous in this storm.'
'What are we to do?' asked Brocmal, fear making his voice tremble.
'We will sail on,' the pilot replied. 'Fret not, brother. The ship is stout. We can easily ride out this storm.'
So saying, he returned to his tiller, and we to our close-mumbled prayers.
Through the long darkness we prayed and comforted one another as best we could. The night wore on and on, endless, gradually passing to day once more with little alteration in the light. Day or night, the darkness remained heavy as the waves towered over us on every side.
All that dreadful day we looked for some evidence of land. But night came upon us once more, before we found even the smallest suggestion of a coastline or shore. We huddled in the bottom of the boat, clinging each to the other and all to the grain sacks. Bishop Cadoc, cold to the bone, shivering and shuddering, offered a continual litany of psalms and prayers of deliverance. The men of Eire are a seagoing tribe and we have many invocations of an oceanic nature. The good bishop knew them all and spoke them twice, and then said as many more that I had never heard before.
From time to time, one of the muir manachi would take a turn at the tiller, but our helmsman shouldered the
