Haven

by Emma Donoghue

Genres: Medieval; Action & Adventure

Synopsis

The highly anticipated novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Pull of the Stars and Room

'This is Donoghue at her strange, unsettling best.' - Maggie O'Farrell, author of Hamnet
'Combines pressure-cooker intensity and radical isolation, to stunning effect.' – Margaret Atwood via Twitter

In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks – young Trian and old Cormac – he travels down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. Their extraordinary landing spot is now known as Skellig Michael. But in such a place, far from all other humanity, what will survival mean?

Haunting, moving and vividly told, Haven displays Emma Donoghue’s trademark world-building and psychological intensity – but this tale is like nothing she has ever written before . . .

One of The Times Books of the Year 2022
One of Easons 'Favourite Book of the Year 2022'.
The Irish Times 'Books to Look Out For in 2022'.

Pre-order Learned By Heart, the dazzling new love story from Emma Donoghue.

Release date: August 23, 2022

Publisher: HarperCollins Canada

Print pages: 304

Sample

Monastery

TRIAN’S STOMACH GROWLS. He’s not twenty yet, still growing, and always hungry.

The first fast-day after Easter, and the hall is crammed with more than thirty monks and their Abbot, as well as the families who serve them and work the land. Even the Abbess is here, though not her nuns, who dine in their quarters at the other end of the double monastery. Also half a dozen strangers, come to Cluain Mhic Nóis to study with one of the celebrated teachers, or for a few months or weeks of respite from the grasping world.

The Abbot’s led the congregation in saying grace in Latin, and is eating already. Trian gestures to his neighbour to help himself to roast swan and onions from their platter. Then Trian spoons what’s left onto his own trencher. He makes himself chew slowly, and rations out his ale in sips. The rich meat’s gone down all too soon, and then he lets himself eat half the round of three-day-old bread, saturated with savoury juice.

His red-faced neighbour downs another cup of ale, belches, and looks sideways at Trian’s remaining bread.

Trian pushes it towards him. Sits still and tells himself that he’s had enough, Deo gratias, thank God.

Chatter, argument, laughter; the hubbub of Gaelic rises and fills the hall like smoke. Out of the corner of his eye Trian catches a shape looming in the doorway: the stranger called Artt, who walks along the wall now, away from the Abbot’s table, and lowers himself onto a bench at the back of the hall.

Trian’s fascinated. This Artt has the bearing of a warrior king, but he behaves like a scrupulous monk working out a long penance. It’s been a fortnight since Trian took the boat across the river to ferry this man over to the monastery, carried Artt’s meagre possessions to the guest hut, washed his broad feet (cracked nails, a sign of hard travels), and brought him food, and Trian hasn’t dared address a word to him yet.

Of course the monks have shared every scrap of information and hearsay. Scholar, priest, hermit, Artt is the most famous visitor to Cluain Mhic Nóis in the six years Trian’s been here, and possibly in the half century since its founding. From a clan of judges in the West, fostered out to a holy man at the age of seven—as soon as Artt knew more than his master, he sought out another, and another, but outshone them all. Now in his prime, familiar with many tongues, the sage is said to have read every book written, and has copied out dozens. Artt can work complex sums in his mind and chart the tracks of the stars. One of the band of solitaries who’ve been carrying the light of the Gospel from Ireland across a pagan-gripped continent, this soldier for Christ has converted whole tribes among the Picts, the Franks, even the Lombards.

Still, Artt looks to Trian as fresh as if he’s just returned from the Land of Youth. Brown-haired, grey-eyed, the man is as brawny as some hero who can toss with one hand a boulder twice the size of his head. Artt’s single blemish—the blackened stump of the little finger on his massive right hand—is rumoured to be a mark of God’s favour: proof that he’s done the impossible by surviving the plague.

Now Artt is sitting with his trencher dry in front of him, shaking his head no matter what he’s offered. As Trian watches, Artt breaks off a piece of the bread and chews it. He ignores the ale flasks and fills his beaker with water.

At the top of the hall, a monk is speaking into the Abbot’s right ear, their eyes on the honoured guest as the boy refills their cups with wine.

The Abbot smacks the table. When the noise quietens, he calls out, ‘Brother Artt, are none of our dishes to your taste?’

Artt answers in his deep, melodious voice. ‘Thank you, Father. I keep the fast.’

‘As do we all, every week, to mark the day our Lord Christ was put to death.’ The Abbot smiles stiffly at the heaped remains on his platter. ‘Don’t waterfowl count as fish, since they feed only on fish and weeds?’

Artt’s sharply incised lips press together. ‘By custom more than by logic.’

Too little air in this stifling hall. Trian feels sick, thinking of how greedily he gulped down his own portion of swan, and still longs for more.

The Abbot’s flushed now. ‘Will you take eggs or cheese, then?’

Artt sips his water while the whole community waits. ‘No thank you.’ The silence stretches. ‘Nor butter, milk, nor whey. Whatever comes out of an animal is of the same nature as its flesh.’

The Abbot’s jowly face shuts tight.

If one of Trian’s brother monks said such a thing, it would be insubordination and earn a beating. But this Artt is a living saint, and can’t be wrong, can he?

Then is the Abbot wrong about the rules of fasting?

But for Trian to judge his own master would be disobedience, so he’d better turn his thoughts aside this minute.

Maybe Artt’s come among them to stir up their souls, he tells himself; to inspire them to live more cleanly.

The Abbot gestures almost violently to Cormac, a few places away from Trian: ‘Entertain us, Brothers.’

The humped old monk is on his feet at once, lyre in hand, and nodding to the other musicians. Trian’s already pulling his pipe out of the narrow bag that hangs from his belt. They all hasten around the tables into the middle of the hall, blocking the Abbot’s view of his guest. They wait for Cormac to pick a tune—something familiar and cheerful—then hurry to find their unison.

*  *  *

Hours later, Artt lurches out of sleep. He finds himself on his feet, one hand pressed against the wattle wall. The other visitors are still snoring, but his heart is going so hard he feels he’ll never sleep again. His dream, so close he can taste the salt on his lips.

He throws on his sheepskin cloak over his nightshirt. He remembers to get the little roll of painted linen out of his satchel before he leaves the hut.

Halfway between Nocturns and Vigil, Artt would say by the way the fat moon sits on the tips of the yews guarding the church. He turns the other way, seeking out the Abbot’s quarters. It’s the most handsome building after the church—all in wood, with a carved lintel. When Artt bangs on the door, a yawning servant comes to turn him away.

‘I’m aware it’s the middle of the night. Rouse your master.’

The groggy whimper of a child, several rooms back; a light voice, protesting. Artt steps to one side, for fear of laying eyes on the woman in her nightclothes. It’s not strictly against the laws of the Church for an Abbot to have a wife—Better to marry than burn in lust, the apostle Paul conceded—but it disgusts Artt. Like most abbots, this one comes from the clan that gave these lands, so clearly his concern is to maintain his kin’s grazing rights as much as to govern his monastery. Artt believes monks should be ruled by one committed to the way of Christ, who spends his days praying, fasting, and working, and his nights alone.

Wrapped up in furs, rubbing his swollen lids with a hand that’s never done manual labour, the Abbot appears in the doorway, holding up a taper.

Artt cuts off the tetchy greeting. ‘Father, I have had a dream.’

‘Couldn’t you tell me about it in the morning?’

‘A vision,’ he clarifies. ‘An island in the sea. I saw myself there. As if I were a bird or an angel, looking down on the three of us.’

‘Three?’

‘I was with an old monk, and a young one.’ The Abbot shows no sign of understanding him. ‘The dream is an instruction to withdraw from the world. To set out on pilgrimage with two companions, find this island, and found a monastic retreat.’

The Abbot’s mouth opens and shuts, a fish gasping. ‘Artt, Brother—’

Through his teeth: ‘I saw it. I was there.’

‘On this, ah, island? Which is…where, do you believe?’

‘Far away, in the western ocean. Away from everything.’ Artt holds up the map in his hand, and lets the linen unroll. The letters HIBERNIA float beside the jagged silhouette that resembles an oak leaf or a wolfskin.

The Abbot peers at it, bringing his flame close. ‘Where’s our abbey of Cluain Mhic Nóis?’

Is he ignorant, or are his eyes weak? ‘Here, in the very middle of the country, halfway down the Sionan, our greatest river.’ Artt points to the heartland. ‘Our men of God who go into the wild places—since there are no deserts in our Hibernia, of course, many establish houses in forests or glens, or on lake islands.’

‘Indeed, isn’t Ireland a byword for such holy hermitages?’

His host’s smug tone sticks in Artt’s craw. Standing there swaddled in embroidered linen, reeking of Gaulish wine. How many times the Abbot must have recited Christ’s call—Sell all you have, give it to the poor and follow me—without ever hearing it.

But Artt hasn’t come here in the middle of the night to preach to the Abbot, only to get his permission. He pushes on. ‘Those who hate the world most have to go even farther to escape its seductions, right out to sea.’ He moves his finger to the right. ‘See, in the waters between us and Albion? Blessed Nessán and Colm Cille each landed on his allotted rock there.’

The Abbot nods at the familiar names.

‘Then this large island off our north coast,’ touching a dot on the map, ‘sainted Comgall’s claimed that one for God. But it is in the great ocean on our western side that the water’s most richly seeded with refuges.’ Artt taps to the left of Hibernia with one nail. ‘The blessed Ríoch discovered his here, for instance, and Macdara to the south of him. Farther south again, holy Éanna, Brecan, Senán and Caomhán—they set up their monasteries among the isles of Aran, like beacons on the frontier of Christendom, manned only by the best fighters, keeping the devil out by the power of prayer.’ Artt’s finger slides down that coast. ‘For all my researches, I haven’t yet learned of any monks south of there,’ he admits. ‘But there must be more islands that way. Empty ones, even less tainted by the world’s breath. That’s where I’m to go, with one old monk and one young one, and the message of my dream tonight is that I must waste no time.’

The plump lips purse. ‘Three men—that’s few, Brother. Twelve would be more usual, like the apostles. When holy Ciarán settled on the site of what would become this blessed foundation’—the Abbot gestures grandly at church, hall, library, scriptorium, dormitories, workshops, shelters for livestock—‘he had eight with him.’

Stone-faced, Artt quotes the Lord: ‘Where two or three gather in my name, I am there.’

A small sigh. ‘In your dream—did you recognise this pair of monks?’

He nods. ‘The first was the hunched fellow with the dented head, who played the lyre tonight.’ Artt’s seen him all over Cluain Mhic Nóis, doing repairs, tending the plots, slow-moving but dogged.

The Abbot’s mouth turns down in surprise. ‘Cormac? He was a late convert. Nobody knows his years.’

‘A pious man?’

‘For all I know.’

But the Abbott should know; a master is supposed to look into the naked hearts of his men.

‘He can certainly turn his hand to anything. I suppose he’d be useful to you.’

Artt wonders cynically if the Abbot will be less willing to spare him a monk with a life’s worth of work left in him. ‘Also the gangly, red-haired one, the piper.’

‘Oh, Trian? He’s a strange boy all right.’

In the guest hut, Artt has watched this Trian rush to meet needs before they’re mentioned. Earnest-looking, not one of those messers with their shoves and jokes. A ciotóg, of course, an awkward left-hander; some call that trait the devil’s mark, but Artt doesn’t blame the young man for his misfortune. He noticed that Trian ate only half his trencher tonight, giving the rest to the fat fellow beside him. ‘Strange how?’

‘Hard to say. Nothing bad,’ the Abbot assures him. ‘A bit of a daydreamer.’

But Artt has to trust his heaven-sent vision.

The Abbot puts his head on one side. ‘For such an uncertain voyage, wouldn’t you be better off choosing strong, seasoned men of middle years?’

His anxiety sounds genuine. But would he really be ready to give up such men? Besides, the decision is not Artt’s. ‘It’s God who’s chosen these two.’

‘And if they refuse? I must tell you, I won’t compel any of my sworn monks to leave.’

They won’t refuse. Artt knows it in his bones.

*  *  *

As the monks in the church sing Vigil, later that night, Cormac sways. Vigil’s the hardest of the six holy hours, for him; the rags of sleep cling to his legs, his tongue, his mind. He takes a big breath of the rich beeswax scent and straightens up.

His shoulder twitches; he glances down at the seam and picks out a louse. When Cormac first came to Cluain Mhic Nóis he found himself scratching all the time, and tried various preventives to keep the pests out of his bedding and clothes. Gradually he came to understand it as part of monastic life, like the bells. God’s messengers, some of the brethren call the lice; once you make your peace with them, the bites hardly itch.

Cormac feels watched, somehow.

Across the golden pool of light from the candelabra, their famous guest has a hawk’s gaze fixed on Cormac.

He drops his eyes. What awful error could he have made, to draw down on himself the attention of this extraordinary man? Maybe it’s just his almost-bald, bockedy skull; strangers often stare. He buries himself in the prayer.

When Vigil’s over, they all file out, yawning, under a sky still diamonded with stars. Cormac heads towards the cell he shares with just one other old-timer, looking forward to the luxury of his straw-and-chaff pallet, sheets and blanket and pillow, a few more hours of sleep before dawn.

A heavy hand grasps his shoulder. The holy man.

There’s no doubt in Artt’s bass, sonorous tones, only authority, and an urgency that speeds Cormac’s pulse. He begins as if taking up a previous conversation. ‘In our country, Brother, lovers of Christ have been called not to the red martyrdom of violent death so many on the Continent of Europe have endured, but to the pale martyrdom of world-renouncing.’

Cormac nods helplessly. Why is the visitor preaching arcanely, to him alone, in the middle of the night?

‘The fact is, Cluain Mhic Nóis has lost its way.’

He flinches, to hear that put so baldly.

Artt’s wave takes in the starlit grounds all the way to the palisade that rings them. ‘This monastery has sat on rich land so long, safe from starvation and raiders, that its brethren have lowered the shield of perpetual prayer. Greed has crept in, and laziness, and spite, and lust.’

Cormac can’t deny a word of that. He’s seen monks come to blows, and suspected some of fornicating with the women or each other. But the thing is, he has lived so many years that the varieties of human weakness have lost their power to shock him.

‘Will you leave this place behind and come with me, Brother?’

The question makes Cormac stare.

‘Sail to the west in search of a far haven where we can live purely,’ Artt asks, ‘working and giving glory to our Maker?’

Picked for such a mission, at Cormac’s age?

Then again, he remembers, the most celebrated of travellers, holy Breandán, lived past ninety, and voyaged till the very end.

Cormac hasn’t felt discontented at Cluain Mhic Nóis, only bored, on occasion. He’s assumed this is the effect of a routine, undemanding life. Or of old age itself; a certain slackness in the rope. Suddenly to be invited to join a brave band venturing into unknown waters…He tries to speak, but finds his throat too dry.

Artt’s voice goes deeper: ‘What I must know is, are you strong enough in faith?’

He hasn’t asked if Cormac wants this. More a command, then, like that of Jesus to the fishermen: Come, follow me.

Cormac swallows. It doesn’t occur to him to refuse. ‘I think so.’ Then, more firmly: ‘I believe so. I’m tough old meat.’

A rare smile lights Artt’s face like the moon through cloud.

Excitement prickles in Cormac’s soles.

‘Your Abbot tells me you were baptised only fifteen years back.’

He nods, sheepish; he was a wizened apple among the harvest offerings. ‘Before that I worked our kin’s land.’ He gives himself a moment to find the words. ‘I had a wife and three children by her. The next time the plague came, I lost them all.’ He glimpses the tangle of those small limbs, creamy skin spotted blue-black. Their daughter had just taken her first steps.

‘But you survived.’

‘It so happened the infection never touched me.’ After that he hung around as an uncle to his brothers’ children, a ghost at the feast.

‘Don’t credit happenstance,’ Artt rebukes him. ‘God in his wisdom saw fit to spare you, so you could come to Christ.’

‘That happened only many years later,’ Cormac admits, ‘and by accident.’

One thick eyebrow jumps.

Cormac’s fingers go up to the little crater above his left ear. ‘A slingstone stove my head in.’

‘In battle?’

That seems too grand a word for it. ‘Well, we were disputing with another clan. The blow sent me out of my senses. But my brother’s wife had heard the Christians had strong medicine’—he almost said magic—‘so my people brought me to Cluain Mhic Nóis. A monk called Fiach, he saved me.’ Gone now, along with most of the folk Cormac’s ever known, all his elders and many far younger.

‘How?’ Artt asks.

‘Cut the scalp and peeled me like an apple. With a hand drill he bored holes until the smashed piece came right off. Then he sewed the skin back over the hole, and poulticed me with herbs, and prayed till my fever broke.’

‘You were quite well again?’

‘Better than before, in fact, Deo gratias.’ Cormac makes a cross on his forehead. ‘Wits a bit sharper and memory roomier.’

‘See what the Lord can accomplish? I was a stone lying in the deep mud,’ Artt intones, ‘and he who is mighty came and in his mercy lifted me up.’

Cormac nods. ‘I told this Fiach I owed him my life, but he said he was Christ’s bondman, so now I too belonged to Christ. I was baptised and taught to read, and took vows.’ He remembers sending word to his kin to divide up his fields and cattle.

‘You were preserved so you could join my pilgrimage,’ Artt insists.

Might all that’s happened to Cormac have been leading to this? ‘May I ask…why would you want me?’ He glances down at his gnarled knuckles, the pearl swellings around his fingernails. ‘I had skills and powers in my prime, but these days—’

Artt cuts him off. ‘I care nothing for your skills or powers.’

Cormac looks away, embarrassed.

‘God put you in my dream.’

That disconcerts him. ‘And how many of us do you mean to bring?’

‘Two.’

It hits Cormac then, the full honour of it. In the twilight of his days, he has heard the call to arms; his Lord has need of him.

*  *  *

The rising sun’s sharp in Trian’s eyes as he st. . .