The battle of Caldbeck 1066

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It was my understanding that the Paulicians and the Bogomils were quite different - that the Paulician's primary point of difference with orthodox theology was in Christology. They were, IIRC, adoptionist - i.e. that they believed that Jeshua bar Joseph was ADOPTED as the Son of God, rather than being 'begotten/of one substance with the Father'. (Basically, as I understand it, that the co-eternal Logos became fused with a human Jeshua, possibly at the start of his ministry).

Knowledgeable as always Dathi.

The adoptionist doctrine is the only sure thing we know about the Paulician belief system. Whether they were influenced by Manichaeism or not is a point of academic debate. Even if their doctrines owed something to Manichaeism, it might be stretching it to call them dualists. It's really difficult to be sure on this point given their texts were mostly destroyed.

I've chosen to make them pretty fiercely dualist, but if they weren't I've still got the Bogomils to do the job for me. It may even be that Job Pescod has made a mistake, and overestimated their dualist tendencies.

(I love blaming my mistakes on figments of my imagination, drives my wife mental though)
 

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Mhari Ni Sidhe - Part 1

The great north-easter raged on, and the Mhari Ni Sidhe raced before it, like a damned soul fleeing Odin’s hounds. Torquil Mac Ivarr brushed his drenched grey hair back from his eyes for the fiftieth time that day, picked up his bucket and again began to bale. He whispered a prayer to the virgin, then called out with his mind to Mannanan, king of the fairies below the sea, as his grandmother had taught him to do in times of peril. Around him, a crew of forty five Manxmen were performing similar incantations to Virgins, devils, saints and the fallen gods of two half-forgotten religions. The prayers had no effect on the wrath of the storm, but it seemed somebody must have been listening, for against all the odds the Mhari Ni Sidhe’s mast stood firm against the battering of the gale, and the taut square-rigged sail kept her flying on towards the setting sun.


………………………………………………………………………..

Three Weeks Earlier

The Mhari Ni Sidhe sat low at anchor in the river Dee, laden with steel, weapons and honey, and Torquil surveyed her with pride. A 21 metre Cunar Mor, capable of carrying 30 tons of cargo, she was perhaps the finest ship that sailed from Dubhglas, and therefore, to Torquil’s mind, the finest in the world.

Looking over to the stern, where young Taidgh was stowing a couple of spare steering oars, and smiled, and called out to the youngster in Norse.

“Taidgh lad, she’s a beauty isn’t she? You’ll be up seeing Thor’s sparks in this fairy chariot!”

Taidgh looked up startled and cried back a mangled Norse version of “What skipper?”. Torquil sighed. The island was changing, when he’d been a lad no Manxie bairn would get to an age where he was fit to crew a Cunar without speaking good Norse. He wondered what his granddad Eirik Stormguard would have made of it; the old bugger hadn’t had two words of Gaelic to rub together, or at least he had pretended not to when Granny Naiomh got to nagging him. But since the Dubliners had thrown the Norwegians out, there was less and less Norse spoken this side of the Mull of Kintyre. Any road, the lad would pick Norse up on ship soon enough.

He tried again in Gaelic, “I said you’ll be seeing Thor’s sparks in this beauty, Taidgh!”

Eamonn’s face clouded over, his ginger eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

“Thor’s sparks?” Then, as a flash of understanding crossed Taidgh’s face and Torquil realized he’d made a terrible mistake. “You mean the Northern lights, skip?”

Torquil and the thirteen other men who were on the boat at the time spat and then crossed themselves, almost in unison. The eyes of the crew all turned to Torquil, Taidgh looked round him in uncomprehending alarm.

“You remember I told you there were words what don’t get said on a ship?”

“Yes, skipper, but… but some of them was Norsey words.”

“Yes, they was, and you just said one of them you daft little bastard.” Torquil shook his head. “Hoy him over lads.”

The two men nearest Tadgh grabbed him and pulled him to the side, lifting him over the rail and dumping him into the murky waters of the Dee. The men looked on with concern as the youngster surfaced spitting half of Chester’s shite then made to swim round the stern.

“Swim to bow, Tadgh,” shouted the pilot Joan Mac Suibhne, “You’ve to swim all the way round the boat or Skip’ll not have you back on it.”

As the lad struggled round the boat, choking on foul water as he went, Torquil managed to keep a look of good natured amusement on his face. After all, the last thing the lads needed was to believe they had a Jonah on board. But this was a bad start to any journey, never mind a perilous crossing of the Icelandic Sea.

“If that little bollocks calls a pig anything but sooey, on board my ship,” He promised himself, “He won’t live to see Orkney, never mind bloody Greenland.”
 
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The Mhari Ni Sidhe - Part 2

The Mhari Ni Sidhe’s voyage began with a warm May southerly wind pushing her northwards past Galloway and the Mull of Kintyre. A good start to the journey was taken by the crew to mean that Taidgh’s break of the Geas, the list of taboo words every Manx sailor learned by heart, had been expiated by the skipper’s quick imposition of the cleansing ritual.

They sailed on through the Hebrides, giving other boats a wide berth. The Hebrides were populated by a mass of clans, tribes and warbands, engaged in a byzantine game of feuds, betrayals and shifting alliances. The Norse-Gaels nominally fought for control of the islands in the name of the Kings of Scotland and Norway, but since the fall of Dublin the Hebrides had become a series of self-contained statelets answerable to Bergen and Perth only in theory.

Torquil had little fear of attack, the Kingdom of Man and its English overlord had long since made it known that piracy against its northern fleet would be punished swiftly and disproportionately. If the capture of Arran hadn’t made the message clear enough, King Connail MacHarold’s burning of Tiree had rammed it home in a way the Hebrideans wouldn’t soon forget. But Torquil was a clever captain, and followed a distinctly Manx philosophy; biggest profit, smallest risk. The seal-fuckers were unpredictable and poor, and he would avoid them until at least the latter of those two facts changed.

Once the isles were cleared, the Mhari Ni Sidhe headed past Norwegian Sutherland and Orkney, and up to Yell in Shetland, where they stopped for a couple of day’s rest. There they took on five ewes and two young rams, which could be got for a good price at on the island, and sold for a fortune to the Greenlanders, who prized hardy Shetland sheep above all others.

The arrival of the southeasterly Iceland-wind from Denmark cut short the crew’s rest, as Torquil rushed his men back on the boat to take advantage. Within three days they were not more than a day’s sail from Eirik’s strait (1), and the grizzled Manxman was well pleased with his luck. They could be in Greenland within a week, four weeks to Greenland was as fast as any Manx boat had ever made the journey.

Then the storm came.

(1) The sea between Greenland and Iceland.
 

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Mhari Ni Sidhe - Part 3

The storm had lasted five days, longer than a northeaster had right to last in summer. Torquil sat, comparatively dry, watching his men bail and fret round the mast. Manx Cunars had no fixed cover, but an oiled sailcloth, propped with poles, could be set up at the stern to provide an area of cover for the sailors to rest in. Torquil saw Peel Ardal pat Connail Gair on the shoulder and walk towards him. He was surprised it had taken so long.

The rangy congenial Peelman ducked under the sailcloth and sat down on the bench next to Torquil.

“Wee word captain?”

“Sure enough, what’s on your mind Ardal?”

“Awful storm this captain… not a natural sort of storm at all.” Torquil said nothing. “The mast could be gone at any moment,” Ardal and Torquil both touched the wooden bench with their right hands. “Then where would we be?”

“Nowhere good and drifting, Ardal, nowhere good and drifting.”

“God and the saints forbid it! Well, me and a few lads have got to talking.”

Ah yes, thought Torquil, At times like this, won’t the lads just get to talking.

“And it seems to a few of us that back in the Dee, there was a few words got said that shouldn’t get said on any boat. And what with this being such an unnatural storm, well… some might say the two situations would have something to do the one with the other.”

“And what would a few of the lads have me do about that, Ardal?”

“Well, young Taidgh is a nice enough lad, but… well, we gave him the swim in river water did we not? Surely only sea water can wash away jinx words?”

“Well now, if we gave the boy a swim in this storm, Ardal, would he not die?”

“Now, Torquil, it’s only certain ones who can decide who lives and who dies from a swim, if a certain fella decides he wants the boy for his own crew, well… that’s the way it has to be.” He shrugged, almost apologetically

Torquil tipped his head to one side, as if considering the matter, leaving the crewman waiting a good minute.

“Tell you what Ardal, let me try a wee something. Would you bring me the good Spanish sword from under the second bench?”

The Peelman left confused, then returned with the fine Castillian blade. Torquil unwrapped it from its seal skin binding and hefted the sword in his left hand, testing its weight. A good blade, and it should be, for what he’d paid.

“Send me Taidgh, Ardal.” Ardal looked concerned.

“Now, skip, you’re not…”

“Send me Taidgh. Now.” The Peelman walked off, cowed, leaving Torquil alone with his worries.

“You called for me skipper?” Taidgh’s voice was trembling. He had the look of a lost soul, green from the constant rise and fall of the boat and terrified. It seemed the lads had been none too discrete when they’d got to talking.

“How about you, Taidgh. I hear your old man was a farmer by the Big White Fella? (2)”

“That he was, skip. Till he died last winter.”

“Well, you’d know how to handle the devits (3) then? It’s good devit country by the White Fella.”

“That’s right skip.”

“So why don’t you go get the big devit na curn(4) and take it to the bow.”

“Skip, moving a devit na curn on a rocking ship isn’t easy, I’d have to wrestle it, we might both go over the side.” Torquil fixed the youngster with a stare.

“Still, Taidgh, I’d do it just the same.”

Torquil watched the lad stagger across the rocking boat to amidships and pull the terrified ram from its pen. An epic struggle then ensued, as the young Manxman, holding the ram by its horns and neck, wrestled it to the prow over a wet slippery deck full of working men, who Torquil signaled not to help. It took Taidgh a good five minutes to manhandle the terrified ram to the bow, when he had accomplished the feat Torquil picked up the Castilian sword and strode across the rising and falling deck to the prow. Arriving next to a nervous Taidgh, the captain turned to address the crew, he had to shout to be heard above the wind.

“Men of the Mhari ni Sidhe, we find ourselves in peril on the sea. I stand before you to beseech the King Below the Waves to aid us in this darkest of hours. “ Torquil turned left slightly, directing himself towards the raging grey waves. “Great King, after who our island is named, take pity on us humble sailors. We beg you forgiveness for any offence we may have given you, and any trespass we may have committed against you. To show our good faith, we offer you these gifts two.”

The captain span round with the speed of a striking snake and plunged his sword into the chest of the struggling ram. He picked up the bloody ram by two legs and slung it into the sea.

Everybody looked at Taidgh. Torquil held the sword aloft, high above Taidgh’s head. The boy was knelt down in front of him covered in blood and weeping softly.

“Now the second part of our sacrifice, a Kingly gift for you, great sea-lord.”

The crew held their breath as Torquil drew back his arm and, as they reached the crest of a great wave, hurled the sword over the side of ship. Eighty six eyes followed the sword as it cartwheeled through the air and landed, hilt first in the foamy ocean.

“We pray, King below the waves, that the blade Talspeid (5) will draw the blood of your enemies. Now, we beg you, allow us to continue our journey in peace.”

Silence, broken by Joan the pilot’s voice.

“The love of God! Did you see the hand? He only bloody caught it!” Bless you, Joan, you terrible lovely liar, thought Torquil.

“Aye, a great green hand…” Agreed another. Torquil strode down the gangway to the bow, leaving the blood-soaked youngster kneeling in the rain.

An hour later the wind began to drop, and by nightfall, the northeaster had become a fresh but friendly breeze.


(2)Sailors’ speak for Snaefell on the Isle of Man. The word “Snaefell” is taboo aboard a Manx ship.
(3)Taboo avoidance for “sheep”. From Welsh “Devaid”
(4) “Horned Devit”, ram.
(5) The sword was ontained through Cornish merchants, its name comes from Cornish “Tal” meaning bright, and the loanword “Speid” meaning “sword-blade”, from Castillian “Espada”.
 
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Mhari Ni Sidhe - Part 4

The pilot Joan Suibhne came up to the captain, who was hauling up a fish basket from the sea. There were three cod floundering there. Incredible! The sea was swarming with cod.

“How about you Torquil.”

“How about you.”

“Fine. Can I be asking you why you’ve gone off your fucking head?” Joan said this between a hiss and a whisper, so nobody should overhear.

“That’s a strong question, Joan. Why would you ask it?”
Joan tugged at his beard in frustration.

“Because despite the wind dropping enough for us to lower our sails without this bloody boat sinking, we are still being blown out to the ends of the Earth. Jesus wept, we must be west of Greenland now, and a damn long way to the south. How do you propose us getting back there by sailing in the wrong fucking direction?”

“Ah, Joan, there’s been a change of plan altogether. Since we’re in the neighbourhood, we’ll be having a wee look at Vinland.”

“Dear God,” Joan looked like he’d seen a black dog digging in a graveyard, “We don’t know where Vinland is, we might already be south of it.”

“We’re not south of it you fool, have you not heard of the Vinland river? The Greenlanders say it’s bigger than any river in the old lands. You need a lot of small rivers to make a river that big, so I’ll say that Vinland goes as far south as you like.”

“I told you that myself you fool! When we were drinking in Gloucester five years ago…”

“So you admit it’s true?”

“Oh it’s probably there, but I’m not so sure I want to sail blind off the edge of the world to prove myself right.”

“Well, it’s a good job you’ve a captain to make the right decision for you isn’t?

Joan shook his head in exasperation, and made to leave, before turning back to Torquil, and saying :

“Oh and well done with the boy, you fucking eejit. I wouldn’t have liked telling his mam he went over-board.”

Torquil smiled, that was as close to praise as you got from Joan Mac Suibhne.
 
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