“Cathal, that wert a monk, which is the true thing? Is it Christ, or the gods of our fathers?”
Silence. Three oaks away a woodpecker thrust its beak into the soft bark, tap-tapping, tap-tapping.
“Cathal, is it death you are having, there in the dark and the silence?”
Mûrta strained his ears, but he could hear no sound. Over the woodlands a voice floated, drowsy-warm and breast-white—the voice of a cuckoo calling a love-note from cool, green shadow to shadow across a league of windless blaze.
Then Mûrta that was a singer, went to where the bulrushes grew by a little tarn that was in the moss an arrow-flight away. He plucked a last-year reed, straight and brown, and with his knife cut seven holes in it. With a thinner reed he scooped the hollow clean.
Thereupon he returned to the oak. Diarmid, who had begun to eat of the food that had been left with them, sat still, with his eyes upon him.
Mûrta put his hollow reed to his lips, and he played. It was a forlorn, sweet air that he had heard from a shepherding woman upon the hills. Then he played a burying-song of the islanders, wherein the wash of the sea and the rippling of the waves upon the shore was heard. Then he played the song of love, and the beating of hearts was heard, and sighs, and a voice like a distant bird-song rose and fell.
When he ceased, a voice came out of the hollow oak—
“Play me a death-song, Mûrta mac Mûrta mac Neisa.”
Mûrta smiled, and he played again the song of love.