Tim Severin - Odinn's Child

The proceedings went briskly. The treasurer recounted the charges against me, how I had joined the monastery, how I had betrayed their trust and generosity, how I had disappeared one night, and the next day the library was found broken into and several holy and precious ornaments to a Gospel book had been torn from their mountings. Earlier some pages had gone missing from an important manuscript, and I was suspected of being responsible for that theft as well.

'Has any of the stolen material been recovered?' the marshal asked without much interest.

'No, none of it. The culprit disappeared without trace, though we looked for him widely and carefully. It was only yesterday, after an interval of two years, that he was seen here at the festival by one of our people and recognised.'

'What penalty are you seeking?' the marshall enquired.

'The just penalty — the penalty for aggravated theft. A death penalty.'

'Would you consider some sort of arbitration and a payment of compensation if that could be arranged?' The question came from the marshal's left, from one of the brithemain. The question had been addressed to the treasurer and I saw several of the Christians stir and come alert. Their hostility was obvious.

'No,' replied the treasurer crisply. 'How could the wretch possibly pay compensation? He has no family to stand surety for him, he is a foreigner, and he is obviously destitute. In his entire life he could never repay the sum that the loss represents to the monastery.'

'If he is so destitute, would it not be appropriate to forgive a pauper for his crime? Isn't that what you preach — forgiveness of sins?'

The treasurer glared at the brithem. 'Our Holy Bible teaches us that he who absolves a crime is himself a wrongdoer,' he retorted. To the marshal's left I saw the churchmen nod their agreement. They looked thoroughly pleased with the treasurer's response. No one asked me a single question. Indeed they barely glanced at me. I knew why. The word of a runaway novice counted for nothing against the word of a senior monk, particularly someone with the status of the treasurer. Under both Church law and brithem custom, the value of testimony depends on the individual's rank, so whatever I said was of no import. If the treasurer stated I was the culprit, then it was useless for me to deny it. For my defence to be effective, I needed someone of equal or superior status to the treasurer to speak for me, and there was no one there who appeared willing to act on my behalf. As I had known from the beginning, it was not a question of whether I was innocent or guilty, but of what my sentence would be.

'I find the culprit guilty of theft of Church property,' the marshal announced without any hesitation, 'and order that he should suffer the penalty as sought by the plaintiff.' He began to rise from his chair, clearly eager to close the day's hearings and leave for his supper.

'On a matter of law . . .' a voice interjected quietly. I could recognise Eochaid's voice anywhere. He was addressing the marshal directly and, like everyone else, ignored me completely. The marshal gave an exasperated grimace, and sat back down again, waiting to hear what Eochaid had to say. 'It has been stated by the plaintiff that the accused is a foreigner and that he has no family or kin in this land, and therefore there is no possibility of compensation or restitution for the theft. The same criteria must surely apply to the court's sentence: namely, any individual without family nor kin to guide or instruct him in what is right and what is wrong, must — by those circumstances — be regarded as having committed his or her crime out of a natural deficiency. In that case, the crime is cinad o muir and must be punished accordingly.'

I had no idea what Eochaid was talking about.

But Brother Mariannus clearly did know what the brithem had in mind because the Treasurer was looking wary. 'The young man has been found guilty of a major felony. His offence was against the monastery of St Ciaran, and the monastery has the right to carry out the appropriate sentence,' he said.'If it is the monastery which is the injured party,' Eochaid replied calmly, 'then punishment should be carried out in accordance with monastic custom, should it not? And what could be more appropriate than allowing your own God to decide this young man's fate. Is this not how your own saints were willing to demonstrate their faith?'

The treasurer was clearly irritated. There was a short silence as he searched for a retort, when the marshal intervened. He was getting bored with the continuing discussion. 'The felon is judged to have committed a cinad o muir,' he announced, 'He is to be taken from here to the nearest beach and the sentence to be carried out.'

I thought I was to be drowned like an unwanted cur, with a stone about my neck. However, the following day, when I was brought to the beach, the boat drawn up on the shingle was so small that I could not imagine how I would fit into it as well as the person who was to throw me overboard. The tiny craft was barely more than a large basket. It was made of light withies lashed together with thongs to form an open framework and then covered over with a skin sewn of cowhides. The boat, if such a flimsy vessel could be called that, was in very poor condition. The stitching was broken in several places, there were cracks and splits in the leather cover, and the thongs of the basketwork were so slack that the structure sagged at the edge. It looked as if its owner had abandoned the craft on the beach as being totally unfit for the sea and that, I gathered, was precisely why it had been selected.

'We'll have to wait for the wind,' said the senior of the two monastery servants who had escorted me. 'The locals say that it usually gets up strongly in the afternoon and blows hard for several hours. Enough to see you on your way for a final voyage.' He was relishing his role. On the half-day's walk to the beach he had lost no chance to make my journey unpleasant, tripping me up from time to time, then jerking viciously on the leading halter as I struggled to get back on my feet. Neither Abb Aidan nor the treasurer had thought it worth their while to come to the beach to witness my sentence being carried out. They had sent the servants to do the work, and there was a minor official from the marshal's court to report back when the punishment had been completed. Apart from the three of them, there was just a handful of curious bystanders, mostly children and old men from the local fishing families. One of the old men kept handing a few small coins from one gnarled paw to the other, his lips moving as he counted them again and again. I guessed he was the previous owner of the semi- derelict little boat, which, like me, had been condemned.

'Are you from the settlement outside St Ciaran's?' I asked the older servant.

'What's that to you?' he grunted disagreeably.

'I thought you might know Bladnach the leather-worker.'

'And so what? If you think he'll show up here by some holy miracle and sew up the boat before you set sail in her, you must be even more optimistic than Maelduine sailing for the Blessed Islands. Without his legs, Bladnach would really need a marvel to get here so briskly.' He laughed bitterly. 'You would have thought he had suffered enough without losing his daughter as well.'

'What do you mean, losing his daughter?'

He shot me a glance of pure loathing. 'Don't think your antics with Orlaith didn't get noticed by her neighbours. Orlaith got pregnant, thanks to you, and there were complications. She ended up by having to go to the monastery for treatment, but the hospital couldn't help her. Both she and the baby died. Brother Cainnech said there was nothing he could do.'

His words sickened me. Now I knew why the servant had been so vicious to me. It was no good protesting that I could not have been the father of her child.