1 - LEO

The shipmaster asked for him on the prow. It was a cold, cloudy and windy midday sky. Apparently in these regions springtime didn't exist. Leo looked at the surface of the sea: it was as grey as the sky. There were no seabirds to be seen. He was starting wondering what godforsaken place were they going to.

Leo reached the prow and joined the shipmaster, who welcomed him with a huge toothless smile. He was an ugly, dark skinned big man, very sociable and dressed in luxurious clothing. The shipmaster, whose name sounded like something similar to Zazo, pointed at somewhere in the far distance: "Friar, we're 'etting closer". A thin line on the horizon, darker than the sky and the sea, showed the presence of land. "See 'hat?", said Zazo in his horrible accent, "on the left side there's the island you're looking for". The island of Hy, or Ioua in Latin, with its isolated monastery.

Leo had managed to gather very little information about it. During their last stay in this very long journey, at the monastery of Beannchor, he had talked a lot with Father Comgall. The abbot had told him that he knew the founder of the monastery on Hy: he was a monk known by everyone as Colm Cille, that in their language, Leo had been told, meant 'dove of the Church'. He had gone to that far island in a voluntary exile, to atone for some sin he had committed. But Father Comgall had not said anything more than that.

The monastery of Beannchor had left a strong impression on Leo. Cassiodorus had been right in saying that Hibernia was a hotbed of Christianity. "Our monastery is one of the most fecund in Hibernia", Father Comgall had proudly told him. They had talked about the situation of Christianity in these lands and about the nature of the local people, and Leo was now convinced that it had been a right choice to accept this mission. But Cassiodorus had not been right in everything: the traditions and way of living of these people were not at all resembling the Roman ways, not at all. The monastery of Beannchor was big and it was an important cultural centre in that region, but it consisted of several timber buildings, most of them actually in the shape of circular huts with thatched roofs. The aspect of the monastery was indeed very different to what he was used to. People of course dressed in a very different fashion than Romans in Italia. And Leo understood that even in the monastic world they were still retaining some old traditions of the Hibernian pagan beliefs. Nevertheless, that place was crowded with monks and novices that were going to study there for different reasons: some of them because attracted by the examples of famous monks, others in order to escape poverty, others were coming from wealthy families and were sent there because, apparently, it was a prestigious monastery in that region.

Truth be told, getting used to the sounds spoken in Hibernia had been a challenge. It had taken over a month of hard practice, during their journey through the Hibernian monasteries, before Leo could grasp at least the basics of their language. Monks could speak Latin, but it was not their mother tongue and their accent sometimes was really hard to understand, and Leo was also interested in talking with some natives who couldn't speak Latin. The names of people and places were very strange too, with sounds that Leo had never heard. For example, Hibernia was called Ériu in their own language, and Leo couldn't understand why the Latin name for it could be so different from that sound. On the other hand Brother Lucius, his traveling companion, seemed not impressed by the place, but at the same time he was faring much better than him in learning the Hibernian language, and Leo was starting to rely on him when it came to understand and speak with the local people.

Father Comgall had exhorted them to stay at Beannchor as Latin teachers. Leo was pleased, even if eventually he'd have to speak with Comgall about the issue of his own... secret. But one thing at a time. First they had to bring the remaining few scrolls from Vivarium to the last stopover of their mission, the monastery of Ioua. "From what I've heard, it looks more like a small hermitage than a real monastery like ours", Father Comgall had told him, betraying some hubris through his words. Brother Lucius had expressed interest in staying at Beannchor while Leo was completing the last travel to Ioua. Leo had almost agreed, but then he remembered Cassiodorus' instructions: their mission consisted first of all in bringing the scrolls to all the monasteries as planned. Only after that, they would be free to stay in one of those monasteries as Latin teachers.

Now, watching at that thin speck of land on the sea, Leo was wondering how a monastery (or even a small hermitage, according to Father Comgall) could exist on those lost lands. He tried to look harder in that direction, but he couldn't see any shape resembling a building. A slap on his shoulders startled him, as Zazo (or whatever was his name) burst into laughter: "Friar, you can't see nothing from here! Those hermits live in some sort of caves, hahaha! You people from Roma 're used to very different stuff!".