The Seventh Tide by Joan Lennon Read Free Book Online

a bard. Devin was not an impressive sight. He was short and wiry and ordinary-looking, more like an underfed farmer than a poet and speaker of truths.
    The brothers were nervous about him, though.
    ‘How did he know we were coming?’ they whispered among themselves.
    ‘They say he has second sight.’
    ‘ I heard the animals speak to him,’ another shrilled. ‘Birds, especially – they tell him what they see.’
    He’s a sorcerer ?! thought Adom.
    It was hard to believe, especially when you saw him next to Columba, with his great height and his imposing beak of a nose and his charismatic, hooded eyes.
    Adom blinked. Had he just seen the little man slap the Holy Father on the back ?!
    There was no time to wonder, though. Brother Drostlin found plenty of things for Adom to do, getting the curragh hauled up above the tide line and their gear to the Bard’s hall, and then helping to see that everyone was fed and cleaning up afterwards. It had been a long, hard day and Adom was dropping in his tracks by the end of it. All he wanted in the whole wide world was to lie down and go to sleep…
    … until Devin stood up.
    The moment the Bard opened his mouth all Adom’s tiredness was forgotten. Along with the others, he was immediately spellbound, frightened and inspired and soothed by turns, and laughing till he got side-ache at the ribald bits. The Bard could make his listeners feel anything he wished. Adom saw to his astonishment that even Columba went where the stories took him!
    When the tale-telling was over, Adom’s head was whirling. And then, as the company lay down to sleep, one more astounding thing happened. Adom and the brothers clustered close to the fire but Columba set himself further off, away from the comforting warmth, with his head on his pillow of stone and only the thinnest of cloaks over him. When Devin saw this, he tutted audibly, marched over and, without a by-your-leave, tucked a warm woollen blanket around the saint.
    And if that wasn’t amazing enough, Columba let him!
    Next morning, Brother Drostlin woke up cross. He didn’t like Columba suddenly going off on ‘adventures’ again,and he didn’t like being forced to rub his sanctified shoulders with peasants, and he didn’t like change. These were not feelings he was going to share with the Holy Father, of course, but that was no reason he shouldn’t pass on his discomfort to someone else…
    Which was why Adom found himself trudging back down to the shore. He’d been in trouble from practically first light. By mid-morning he’d acquired a cuffed ear and a stinking bucket of ox tallow, with orders to reseal the seams of the curraghs ‘for the safety of the Holy Father’. Adom had no desire to be responsible for the drowning of a future saint, or of himself for that matter, but the picture of Brother Drostlin going down for the third time had a certain appeal.
    Adom sighed pitiably (which is hard to do when you’re trying your best not to actually breathe), turned, tripped on a stone and almost glopped tallow all down his front.
    Idiot ! he chided himself, since Brother Drostlin wasn’t there to do it for him.
    He made the rest of the journey with due care and attention, not stopping till he reached the edge of the trees. Here he paused for a moment and looked out over the bay. The curraghs were still safely there, long upside-down humps on the pebbles. The tide was well out –probably on the turn – revealing an expanse of mud and seaweed-encrusted rocks, with the river snaking through in its own little gully. The sky was clear and there was a brisk wind from the water.
    That’ll help with the stink , thought Adom approvingly, and he was just about to start off again when he saw something else. Partway between the curraghs and theriver there was a wet, dark shape. It didn’t look right for a rock or a tree stump. A seal ? wondered Adom. A beached baby whale? Meat ?!
    He was already running forward, the bucket forgotten and a hefty