BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland Read Online Free PDF

at her waist, grabbed her arms and raised her tunic to pin them behind her. He flipped her over onto the sweet riverbank grasses.
    His right hand ruined her looped braids to pull her head sideways facing away from him. He did not speak. She caught a sickening smell from him as he lowered himself onto her. He breathed fury, this was no caress. Her fear rose exponentially and she could only voice a strangled scream under his weight. Her muscles spasmed as his knees, clad in rough leather leggings that had been too hastily cured, scraped her inner thighs and knocked her legs apart. His bulk shifted and she felt him pushing to enter her. Bewildered, struggling for air, she convulsed, her insides clamping on him like the intruders’ cruel metal.
    Taunts she didn’t understand sounded from his companions in the shadows, watching his clumsy and interrupted attack upon this woman they surprised by the stream. “Look lads, will you look? He can’t!”
    She sensed his rage at being observed. The bronze dagger rang out of its sheath and Sheela felt his left forearm sliding up to her neck. With a keen instinct she bit deep into his hand as he, half propped on one elbow and wielding his knife, was closing on her neck.
    The sight of his own hand bloodied from her bite enraged him further. He almost took off her head when he applied the dagger.
    They decided not to take her head as a trophy. The murderers fled. They left Sheela sprawled on the grass, red streams flowing out from her body over the tiny white daisies low in the grass. Horror, pain, and fear were frozen on her face. Her lavender eyes, it was later said, resembled infinite pools of the sky upon which they were fixed.
    A lone bird called as darkness and mist shrouded the still figure.
    When the body was found at the next dawning by Starwatchers searching for Sheela, the hideous scene wrote itself indelibly upon their memory. No one had ever done such a deed on their island. They had no word to describe the crime against Sheela. Scouts gathered up her remains tenderly after the elders had seen that place of death.
    At Sheela’s dwelling, Boann waited. She looked up to see Airmid bringing a basket of herbs and soft skins for preparing a body. Airmid shook her head. Her red curls looked out of place in the still and grim space. Gentle Airmid told her, “You shouldn’t do this alone. Let me help.” The body arrived and the two women looked at each other, aghast. The scouts left them reluctantly, one man staying outside the door.
    The women silently set to work. Hands trembling, Boann redressed Sheela’s hair to its state before the murderous attack, after washing it with aromatic water to rid it of the choking smell, the smell of the intruders. Airmid, white-faced, repaired wounds as best she could.
    They chose to dress Sheela in a soft skin tunic bleached in the sun. They added the most delicate overtunic made by Sheela, the knots too fine to be seen at arm’s length. Then the two women wept to see beautiful Sheela lying dead in her garments meant for her wedding.
    The Starwatchers kept the body in the coolness of a small cairn with an honor guard of women and men until the ceremony. After lying in the great eastern mound of Dowth, Sheela’s cremated bones would be interred in one of the smaller mounds to the southeast. The elders delayed the first interment while runners brought the news to other villages, so that as many Starwatchers as possible could attend.
    Hundreds of Starwatchers gathered to mourn. They walked to the Boyne mounds, some traveling for the better part of one sun, and in lowered voices made arrangements to share food and set up shelters. The crowd converged at Dowth mound.
    The horrific deed overshadowed the death itself and skewed the focus of the burial ceremony. The Dagda spoke first in benign phrases about the fragility, the gift, of life.
    “He said nothing of the intruders,” one elder whispered angrily to another.
    Boann spoke briefly.