Haven by Emma Donoghue

Author:Emma Donoghue [Donoghue, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

Next morning, the spring light blinds Trian as he stands chewing a rubbery tangle of dillisk from the seaweed he’s hauled up the cliff for Cormac. He’s considering the sails hanging from the rock over their most valuable goods; is there a way he can weigh them down with stones at the bottom so they won’t flap?

‘Brother Trian.’ The Prior’s at his side.

Trian swallows the seaweed, choking a little.

The Prior brushes the sail aside and digs their holy chest out of the pile. It looks unmarked. ‘Today we begin the sacred task of copying.’

Trian blinks. ‘Already? I mean — before we’ve built our monastery?’ Surely they’ll need a dedicated hut to work on the precious manuscripts?

The Prior’s gesture takes in the whole sweep of crags and sky. ‘This is our monastery, composed not of stone buildings but of our little family, our faith, and our works. And what could be more urgent than copying the Bible?’

Trian makes himself nod.

‘Every day now the light lasts a little longer, which is a clear sign we should be using it for its highest purpose. Time to up and wage war on the devil with pen and ink, Brother.’ The Prior lifts a thick leather pouch out of the chest. He takes out the Psalter and kisses its wooden covers before he opens it. ‘This book here is a great sword of the spirit. Do you know its lineage?’

Unsure what that word means, Trian shakes his head.

The Prior touches one fingertip to the black markings on the first page, the elaborate initial capital letter of the psalm. ‘Since God guided my hand, I think it no boast to say that my lettering was well done here. I was the humble midwife only — every codex is the child of the mother manuscript from which it’s copied, as calf to cow.’ He goes on, reminiscent: ‘The one from which I took this was itself written out long before my time, in a Coptic refuge at an oasis in the desert mountains of the Red Sea.’

Trian’s thrown by the image of desert mountains. Made of sand? ‘You said — oasis?’

‘A life-giving spot in the wilderness, where God reveals an unexpected well.’

‘Like this Great Skellig, then?’

‘Only much hotter and drier,’ the Prior tells him. ‘The Egyptian psalter I speak of was the calf of a codex made long before, in Constantinople, known then as Byzantium. The Byzantine book was smuggled into the desert by Melchite monks fleeing the persecutions of the Persians.’ He smooths the Psalter tenderly. ‘The text of all these copies is holy Jerome’s own revision of the Latin version of the Septuagint, which he corrected against the original Hebrew.’

Their master speaks as if of absent, beloved kin. For himself, Trian wishes he was still down on the shore, fishing.

The Prior fingers the page, making a rasping sound on the vellum. ‘And now this calf, grown to a cow, will bear her own calf, on this lofty island, and so the light of Christendom spreads in glory.

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