Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

Cormac was trying to process all he’d just heard. “I’m sorry, Robbie, I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.”

“Hang on, I’m not done. This is all something to do with Benedict Kavanagh, isn’t it? We do get the news here, you know, everyone’s talking about him turning up in a bog out there.”

“I can’t really say anything. It’s an ongoing investigation.”

“The reason I ask is that after he was sacked from the library, your man Gwynne went back to work for his old tutor, Priest, and apparently they put together the definitive work on the handwriting of the ninth-century philosopher John Scottus Eriugena. Everyone knows Eriugena was Benedict Kavanagh’s main subject.”

“Yes.”

“So all this about Gwynne is something to do with Kavanagh after all, isn’t it?”

“I am sorry, Robbie, but I still can’t tell you anything.”

“Don’t you at least want to know what the book was?”

“What book?”

“The one Gwynne was supposed to have pinched. It was a revised edition of Deeds of the English Bishops by William of Malmesbury.”

“Is that significant?”

“Well, William of Malmesbury was one of the preeminent sources of information about Eriugena, although most people took the stories as apocryphal. There’s a great one, though, about Eriugena having dinner with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Bald, where the emperor posed him a question: ‘Quid distat inter sottum et Scottum?’ —What separates a sot from a Scot? And your man shot back, ‘Mensa tantum’ —Only a table. Cheeky wee bastard.”

Cormac couldn’t help smiling at his friend’s enjoyment of the legend. “Listen, Robbie, I can’t thank you enough.”

Everyone at the dining table was absorbed in passing plates and filling bowls. Paella and salad tonight, fresh greens fragrant with garlic and the tang of fresh blood orange. No one said a word about Niall’s absence, and Cormac could only assume that they knew what had happened. And that someone at this table might be willing to let an innocent man go down for a crime he hadn’t committed. A strange wave of apprehension surged over him. He ought to get Nora and his father and Eliana away from this place right now, tonight. But he couldn’t do it—he couldn’t abandon Niall.

It was almost as if Nora was reading his turbulent thoughts as she tried to make conversation. “Cormac and I have just been reading up on the history of Killowen. Easy to be overshadowed by the monasteries at Clonmacnoise and Birr, I suppose. Still, the monks at Killowen had their own thing, didn’t they?”

Martin Gwynne looked up from his salad. “What did you find about our monks?”

“Just that they were known for their work as scribes, apparently,” Nora said.

Martin Gwynne said, “Oh, indeed. They saw it as their sacred duty to copy every book they could get their hands on.”

Nora considered for a moment. “Do you mean they copied absolutely everything, word for word? Never changed or embellished anything?”

Gwynne smiled. “Well, there were mistakes, obviously. They were human. And they certainly added glosses and annotations in various editions. But you have to realize the significance of the ‘faithful copy’ to these men—and women, too; there’s plenty of evidence of female scribes, but that’s another discussion. The notion of a ‘faithful copy’ was absolutely central to the worldview of a scribe. You’ll find that even books that were badly damaged were copied out exactly, with blank spaces left where they were illegible.”

Nora pressed on. “You know, all those stories you hear about hedge schools, about ordinary Irish people reading old Latin and Greek texts, right up through the eighteenth and nineteenth century, are they really true?”

“Well, there was certainly a great tradition of scholarship in Ireland,” Gwynne said. “History and poetry and writing of all kinds have always held a vaunted place in Irish culture—Welsh culture, too, going way back. When Christianity came, and with it the great wave of written language, the Irish weren’t particularly interested in censoring content, even if the monks writing down the old stories thought they were a load of pagan rubbish.”

Cormac’s gaze wandered across the faces around the table. No particular reactions to what Gwynne was saying, but the man was apparently just getting started. Only Tessa Gwynne’s expression said she’d heard this all before.

Gwynne held his wineglass in front of him. “Imagine living in a time when the written word was so special—every book was an individual work of art, unlike any other in existence. Not like today, when all we have is mass-produced, so-called content, and—God help us—‘physical books.’ Imagine stumbling upon a unique collection of words and ideas and images so fantastic that it was worth spending months or even years of your life copying it out so that others would be able to share in and appreciate its splendor.”

Cormac decided it was time to show a little of his hand, despite Shawn’s earlier warning. “You know, I’ve always been intrigued by handwriting,” he said. “Such an intimate thing, really. It’s amazing how much of one’s personality comes out in the act of writing.”

Gwynne was enjoying himself now. “I couldn’t agree more—almost akin to the unique qualities of a human voice, or a fingerprint. For me, the act of writing has always been a kind of out-of-body experience. It starts with the spark here”—he pointed to his temple—“but then the head, the hand, the pen, and the ink all become one in the act of writing. Of course, all forms of creativity are a way of dipping one’s toes in the essence of the divine.”

Cormac glanced over at Anthony Beglan, whose head was bent over his plate. Sylvie poured herself another glass of wine. “What do you think of that, Lucien? The divine , Martin says.”

The Frenchman dismissed her question with a glance. “What do I know about the divine? I’m only a fromager . Although one thing I do know—a crottin is as close to heaven as a man can get.” He lofted a small plate of goat cheese for all to see.

Cormac couldn’t catch Shawn Kearney’s eye. The woman knew something, or at least had her suspicions. He was conscious of Nora watching him as well, no doubt wondering what he was at. He wasn’t quite sure of that himself.

Perhaps warmed by wine, Martin Gwynne began to wax on again about the scribal arts: “We tend to think of the monks’ copying as rote work, but it wasn’t. Each copy was distinct, a permutation, a way for the writer to put his own signature and stamp on the work, adding his own interpretation, his own embellishments and flourishes.”

“It’s the same in traditional music,” Cormac said. “The individual embellishments may be subtle, but they’re peculiarly individual.”

“Just so. You know, in the days of copying by hand, books were precious, even magical, but they were meant to be read and handled, studied, and above all, argued over! It was only much later that they were turned into artifacts of veneration, objectified like saints’ relics, used only on special occasions.”

“I suppose you’re talking about book shrines?” Cormac asked. He saw Shawn Kearney’s head jerk upward, and he could feel the tension around the table shift. “Nora and I were reading about a shrine associated with this place and the family that was supposed to have kept it—”

Claire Finnerty stood abruptly and said, “There’s blackberry crumble with cream for dessert. Who’d like some?”

As Martin Gwynne approached the front door an hour later, Cormac asked quietly, “I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to look over those photos?”