Torpeist ended his new tale as we came in sight of the next stone for my penance. I wished to hear more on the consequences, and quickly asked, “Was he right, your Ailell?”
“Not my Ailell, I assure you. Yes, he was right—the treaty had crumbled. Actually it had worn away, eroded in many areas, this last one being very minor in comparison with the incident at Mac Datho’s. Ultimately, what came about occurred because Maeve blamed Cú Chulainn for the loss of the Brown Bull in the táin. Quite irrationally, too, I might add. The two bulls—Ailell’s and her stolen one—had been penned together at Cruachan, and had destroyed one another out of the unremitting hatred they bore one another. Nothing rewarding has ever come from that kind of ungoverned evil, no matter whose system of belief we’re speaking of. I came to think that in a way their hate bled into the world, like seeds on the wind blown to fertile ground. Maeve and Cú Chulainn were like those two bulls—she the red one that refused to be led by anyone; he the dark and brooding bull of Ulster. Their rancor towards each other transcended legitimacy.” He glanced up from his reverie. “Ah, but I’m keeping you from your new prayer, and I must shut up before I interfere further—we must get you back by vespers.”
He was grinning, practically smirking or so it seemed, so I answered coldly, “That’s right, we must.” His smile went flat. I had neither resorted to anger nor played along, and he had nowhere to go with his amusement. That was the moment when I understood at last how to deal with Senchan Torpeist’s jaundiced observations.
This played in the back of my mind while I rushed through my penance. When I got up again, I told him, “You think that because you’ve seen so much of this world that you know all the ins and outs of people. Nothing left to surprise you, is there? You poke fun at our order because you think we’re fools, observing our rituals and conversing with a God you know nothing about and care nothing about.”
He shook his head. “Not because you’re fools,” he replied, “but because many of you are arrogant enough to assume that you know precisely what your god’s will is even though by your own admission there are countless factions like your Pelagian one, all at odds with one another, some even resorting to bloodshed to sort things out. Because you think to tie the world up in the tidy ribbon of your faith—which you do, not through reason, but by rejecting anything that does not correspond tidily within it. That sort of pomposity deserves nothing but scathing abuse.”
Here again I did not resort to anger; I did not even rise to the bait. I considered what he had said before concerning Pelagius, of the dichotomy of upholding his views and the edicts of Rome as if balancing each, one hand against the other. And I thought: Who does truly know You, Lord? Who as intimately as he pretends? Which of us can say we’ve seen the light itself? Perhaps only those possessed by geilt. Perhaps in their madness they know You not at all. It seemed to me that Pelagius’s attack stemmed from reason, from his contemplation of that which is ordained sacrosanct. I asked myself, Is it presumable that Faith without Reason is empty, meaningless and, worse, false?
I returned to the stone again, knelt, and repeated my penance. This time I attended to what I was saying, to what meaning the entreaties held. Your forgiveness if my thoughts blaspheme. As yet I cannot tell if that is so. The hardest questions are those for which no answer is found.
After that, we continued across the isle together but in isolation, each shrouded in his own thoughts. I could not have expressed mine to him in any case. At the next two sites I prayed in silence and Torpeist kept his distance. Then, as we moved on, he spoke up abruptly. “You realize,” he said, “that these doorway slabs you’ve got stuck in the ground aren’t the only holy stones your order possesses.”
I stopped, stared at him in dismay. “What can you possibly be talking about now?”
He said nothing, just shifted back and forth from one foot to the other; no doubt he did this because his hips ached, but it made him look like a small child with a secret he was proud of.
Suddenly, I saw what he meant. “The Cursing Stones.”
He said, “Them and no others.”
I should have known they would have some meaning for him. The five spherical stones were remnants of an earlier period, so the legend went, here before the monastery was erected. Molaise had found them gathered on one of these stone slabs and had felt the holiness of them, which was why he had selected this site for our home. The crosses inscribed on them were ostensibly his work, too, although not even the Abbot took that seriously. But they were supposed to be able to absorb the evil in one’s thoughts and desires, and many of us had gone to that altar to speak to the stones of anger or troubled thoughts. I’d seen Brian there dozens of times, walking backwards around the altar, chanting and counting the knots in his belt. Obviously the ritual had produced no effect in him, as he continued to sneak to the steamhouse to steal a glance at the women. I had used the stones once, but I saw no magic in them.
“The stones do nothing,” I said. “They’re useless.”
“As Cursing Stones, yes, they’re only symbolic. It was you monks who engraved your crosses on them. The more ancient use for those nine stones is something else again.”
“Your senility is showing. There are only five stones on the altar. For nine, you’d have to pile them up.”
“There are only five there now. I know of four more . . . without crosses on them.”
“Where?”
“Why should that matter to you, Fergil? You don’t believe they have any power, anyway.”
In defiance, I replied, “That’s right, I don’t.” I left him and continued on to the last site on my journey. The swollen sun floated upon the water. I could see the long silhouettes of our currachs—the brothers out fishing for our supper. As I walked on I could nearly taste the savory white flesh of their catch, and I thought that, for all the hardship of our life here, we had our gifts, and we earned them. We appreciated what we had that much more because we had worked for it. Soon enough, I would be a fisherman, too. After I had finished my time in the scriptorium . . . after old Torpeist died. This realization acted strangely upon me. I discovered that I did not wish to see him dead. Glancing back, I watched him climb a flower-strewn hummock. He walked crookedly, his hip obviously inflamed. In that moment I tried to memorize the way he looked—the ragged beard, the deep lines in his face, and even the mischief in his eyes. Then I looked out to sea again. The image of him hung in my mind, overlying the bright red strip of sparkling water, the sun at its end. He came up beside me and studied the same view, or at least pretended to.
“Are you going to tell me about those stones?” I asked.
“Eventually. It is a great truth abides in this, and truths cannot be told, they can only be revealed. Later. I’ll show you, later.” Then he pushed on, leaving me there, my thoughts a massive conflict. Now, however, Lord, I seem to be getting used to it. I wonder if that can be seen as spiritual growth.