left-hand side were lines of text, beautifully written in black on the ivory-coloured vellum, and dominated by an initial letter densely surrounded by dots of red ink. The letter was decorated with red-brown plait-work picked out with touches of blue and gold. Hanna looked at the text over Cassie’s shoulder. ‘That’s part of Psalm Eighteen. The second verse, I think. The Lord is my rock and my fortress. Look at the pictures on the opposite page.’
The right-hand page had a single line of text enclosed in a painted frame of flowers entwined on a trellis of twigs. All of the rest of the space was taken up by illustration. On each side was a tower on a rock, drawn so the viewer seemed to be looking at them from below. One was rendered entirely in burnished specks of gold and, radiating from its painted stonework, streaks of golden light encircled the building. On the opposite side, the second tower was unrelieved black and surrounded by weeds growing up through the rock. Both towers had narrow windows and crenelated ramparts from which tightly packed armed soldiers peered down. Bending closer, Cassie could see that the dank weeds round the dark tower had crimson and purple flowers and the soldiers on its ramparts had forked tails and goats’ horns on their helmets.
Across the top of the page a chain of dancing animals pranced along on their hind legs, accompanied by a band of birds playing pipes and drums. There were hares in hoods and jerkins, with leather boots on their feet. Cats were dressed as fine ladies with long, streaming veils. Six hedgehogs stood on each other’s heads, to be tall enough to join in the dance. There was a lumbering bear and something that looked like an elephant, and hounds in hats, with bows and arrows slung across their backs. Tumbling down each margin, on either side of the towers, was a series of little pictures enclosed, like the central text, in a flowering trellis. Birds’ beaks and glittering eyes poked out between the twigs. The flowers, outlined with dots of gold leaf, combined the four seasons of the year. Marsh marigolds jostled with mistletoe, and irises with rose hips, and the pictures they framed appeared to be random vignettes. One showed a monk working at a high lectern with a white cat curled around his feet.
Cassie turned to Hanna. ‘Isn’t there a picture like that in one of the kids’ books in the library?’
‘You’re thinking of The White Cat and the Monk. That story’s based on a marginal poem in another medieval manuscript. I expect that most monasteries with libraries had cats to keep down the mice.’
The thought of children’s books had produced another connection. Staring at the two towers, Cassie asked if Hanna knew a book called Elidor.
‘Well, yes. It’s a children’s classic.’
‘And doesn’t it have a dark tower in it, and a tower of light?’ She looked at Brad. ‘You said the tower at Mullafrack made you think of The Lord of the Rings. But when we met, I’d been thinking of Elidor. I had it when I was a kid, but I didn’t read it properly.’
Hanna nodded. ‘Well, the names of the towers in Elidor originate in early Irish storytelling. And Tolkien said The Lord of the Rings has some of the same influences.’
‘Jack said The Lord of the Rings influenced Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.’
‘That’s the way storytelling works. Ideas and images influence and modify each other.’
‘But where do these towers in the psalter fit in?’
‘Well, the monks who made it may have known the early Irish stories about the Tuatha Dé Danann. They were a mythological race who carried treasures to Ireland from four magical fortresses, one of which, called Findias, radiated light. But, obviously, those stories were pagan. For the monks, the tower of light would have signified the Christian Heaven, and the dark tower full of devils would have been Hell. Ultimately, in both traditions, they’re symbols of good and evil.’
‘Is that how they work in the other books as well? Modern ones, I mean.’
Hanna laughed. ‘You’ll have to read them and make up your own mind. Symbols can be fluid, and different people see things differently. Anyway, life’s too subtly shaded to be summed up as black and white. Even the Christian monks knew that: for all their orthodox symbolism, nuances creep in. There’s nothing pious about those dancing animals – or the way the cat appears in another picture down in