Standing beside him, I looked up to see that indeed the shaft had opened out into a wide crevice whose top, if there was one, was somewhere far above us, lost in the darkness our feeble lights could not penetrate. 'There is much silver here, I think,' he observed. 'We will get a-'
'Listen!' I hissed.
'What is the-'
'Shh! Be quiet!'
We listened for a moment, holding our lamps high in the silence.
'There is noth-' Gunnar began.
'There it is again!' I insisted. 'Listen!'
The faint echo of the sound I had heard was already fading, and the sound did not come again. 'Did you hear it?' I said.
'It was water dripping,' Gunnar confirmed.
'Not water,' I replied. 'Singing-someone was singing. It sounded like Irish.'
'You are hearing things,' he answered, placing his lamp in a notch someone had carved. 'It was water dripping. Come, let us find some silver or we will not get anything to eat today.'
We worked through the day, and though I listened intently all the while, I never heard the sound again; nor did I hear it the next day when we returned to the shaft. Three days later, however, the pit overseer made us go to another shaft, near where some others were working. The veins here were so interwoven that there were many connecting rooms and corridors, and sound travelled easily, if confusingly, from one to another. We had just found a good place and had begun working, when I heard the singing again. Gunnar allowed that he had indeed heard something, but that it did not sound like singing at all. 'More like crying or weeping,' he said.
I became so agitated, that I upset the lamps and spilled out most of the oil. 'Now we have to fill them again,' I sighed, for it meant a long crawl back to the primary shaft.
'Then we must hurry,' Gunnar reminded me, 'or we will be scratching our way in the dark.'
We left our tools and made our way back to the main gallery and the oil tub. Two other slaves were standing at the vat when we got there, so we waited our turn. As it happened, the pit overseer appeared just then, and began shouting angrily at us. I suppose the sight of four slaves standing idle offended him; perhaps he thought we were trying to avoid work, for he ran at us, uncoiling his whip.
The lash caught me around the throat before I could dodge away; I was yanked to the ground. The guard, under whose less suspicious eye we had been filling our lamps, ran forward and began striking the others with his wooden stave. His first blow struck Gunnar, who fell down beside me clutching his head. The other two slaves, in a clumsy attempt at protecting themselves, pushed the guard aside. Seeing they had overcome him so easily, they kicked him a few times for good measure.
This action made the overseer livid; he began cursing and shouting like a madman, and striking wildly with his whip. The other two slaves, seeing the furor they had caused, ran away, quickly melting into the shadows while Gunnar and I rolled on the ground, writhing under the lash. I heard people shouting, and saw that a number of nearby slaves had come to investigate. I pushed myself up on hands and knees, and, with Gunnar beside me, tried to scramble out of the way of the whip and its crazed wielder.
Unfortunately, this action was seen as trying to avoid further punishment. The overseer, in a spitting rage, renewed his frenzied attack. I felt the lash rip across my shoulders-once, twice, and again. Pain lit my vision with crimson fireballs. I rolled on the ground, tangling with Gunnar, to whom I was chained at the ankle. We could not move fast enough to avoid the whip.
Each stinging lash tore at my flesh. My eyes filled with tears and I could not see. I began shouting for the whipping to stop. I shouted in Greek, I know, and in Danespeak. I cried out in every tongue I knew and begged for mercy.
And miracle of miracles, my cries were answered!
For all at once I heard a shout that sounded like, 'Cele De!' The whipping instantly ceased: abruptly and in mid-stroke, the whip went taut and the slave master's arm froze. There came an odd cracking sound and, in my somewhat confused vision, the furious Arab seemed to rise from the floor to hang in the air.
He hovered above me for a moment, his bewildered face growing round and red; he gasped for breath, but could not breathe. Suddenly, the slave master flew sideways through the air and I did not see him any more. The instant he disappeared, another face swung into view above me-a face which for all the world looked like someone I knew.
Still squirming in pain, I gaped, gulping air to keep from passing out. A name came to my lips. I spoke it out.
'Dugal?'
45
Dugal!' I rolled to my knees, straining up at him. 'Dugal, it is myself-Aidan! It is Aidan here.' I lurched towards him. 'Do you not know me, man?'
Dugal stared at me as if at a monster risen from the bowels of the earth. 'Aidan!' he cried, leaning closer. 'Sure, I knew it was you! I heard you cry out and I knew it must be Aidan. But…but, you-' Words failed him.
'The same and no other,' I replied, and made to stand, but my legs would not hold me and I fell again. Tears came to my eyes and I wept like a child to see my dearest friend once more.
Dugal gave a shout of triumph so tremendous that the whole mine reverberated with the sound. In one swoop, he raised me up and enfolded me in a fierce hug. The touch of his hands on my raw shoulders made me cry out in pain, whereupon he dropped me to my feet again.
'Dana!' he cried. 'Christ have mercy, brother, what are you doing here?'
'Dugal, I can hardly believe it is you,' I said, dashing tears away. 'I was certain you were killed…the battle-I saw you fall.'
'That I did, but the blow was never fatal.' He beamed at me with such joy, it warmed my heart to see it.
Gunnar, still lying on the ground, climbed to his feet to stand beside me-as we were still chained together, he had nowhere else to go-and he gazed at Dugal with an expression of slightly amazed admiration.
'This is Dugal,' I told him, 'my brother monk from Eire.'
'I remember him,' replied Gunnar.
'God bless you, Aidan,' murmured Dugal, gripping my hands tight in his own. 'And here was I thinking you were lost forever. Oh, but it is a fine thing to see you again.'
'And you, Dugal.' I hugged him to me, feeling the solid flesh and bone beneath my clasp, as if to make certain that it was no mere phantom. 'Ah, mo croi, I have so much to tell you, I cannot think for wanting to say it all at once.'
We fell silent, just looking at one another. Dugal's hair and beard, like my own, had grown long and shaggy. I had never seen him without his tonsure, and long hair made him look more like a Sea Wolf than a monk. His clothes, like mine, were little more than filthy rags, and he was powdered with rock dust head to heel, but had he been covered in mud with a beard to his knees, I still would have known him as my own reflection.
There came a shout from some of the slaves looking on across the way. Gunnar prodded me in the side and said, 'I think our trouble is not finished yet.'
Into the pit rushed five or six additional guards; the Arab with the wooden stave led the way, pointing to us, and to the pit overseer still lying crumpled on the floor where Dugal had hurled him. Before we could move, the guards seized us by the arms and dragged us out of the pit and into the bright sun outside. It had been many days since I had had the full light of a noonday sun in my eyes, and it was a fair few moments before I could see.
I stumbled over rocks and fell, pulling Gunnar down with me; we rolled and writhed, regaining our feet only to fall again as the guards dragged us down the hillside. Battered and bruised, cut in a hundred places, we were finally brought to a huge chunk of stone which surmounted a heap of jagged rock shards discarded from the mines. At various places, iron spikes had been driven into the stone to which chains and shackles had been affixed to iron rings. The three of us were chained to the rock and left to bake and swelter in the heat.
