There are so many stories about me in France, I can’t keep them all straight, and most of them flowered well after my time. In the middle ages, at least five of my corpses were discovered, and the buying and selling, hoarding and venerating of my relics became big business. If I were to be resurrected bodily on judgment day, I would have a time of it, getting myself together, literally. One thing still makes me sad. The Cathars, a heretical sect of Gnostic bent, believed Jesus and I were lovers, despite their dim view of the flesh and procreation. And when they defied papal authority on that point, Pope Innocent III (so-called) had them massacred in 1208. Though the carnage happened more than a thousand years after we arrived, I still wonder if we did not plant the seeds for it, for I did wander with Mary for a time telling the story of Jesus, my lover, the lover. Love incarnate. No doctrine of despising the flesh ever came from me.
Nor am I responsible for the business about the sacred bloodline. Before Sarah left us, I asked her if she wanted to be part of the story I would tell, to be known as the daughter of Jesus. We were walking together along a cliff path near Massilia, gathering lavender and thyme as we went. When we came to a particularly breathtaking view, we sat and rested, our legs dangling over the edge.
“I am glad to be my father’s daughter. And your daughter,” she added. “But I do not want to be part of the story.”
I did not ask why, just waited to see if she would say more. And at last she did.
“People would expect me to be something I am not. They would follow me. They would want to touch the hem of my garment—except I’d rather wear bricae.” (A Celtic invention, and the origin of the word britches.) “Anyway, they would want me to heal them or teach them or lead them. They would want me to be like him or else to have a child to carry on his line.”
I bit my tongue. What about my line? What about yours?
“I know I blamed you before, but now I think you were right to hide me away from the ecclesia, Ma. No one’s blood is better than another’s. Isn’t that something my father taught? Sometimes I wonder how he feels about being worshipped, don’t you?”
I nodded. “I remember he once said: Why do you call me good? Only God is good.”
“You told me he didn’t even take credit for the healing he did,” she said.
“Your faith has healed you. That’s what he always said to people. But Sarah,” I hesitated, but then decided to go on. “Whatever it is, that power to open yourself—I call it the fire of the stars—you have it, too. You helped to heal Paul of Tarsus. You restored his sight. On both sides, you come from a lineage of healers and seers.”
“And warriors,” she reminded me. “Don’t forget your mothers.”
“They taught me the healing arts along with the warrior arts. They thought it was important to know both.”
“It is,” she agreed. “But whether I am a warrior or a healer or both, I still don’t want people trying to worship me—or control me. And if I have a child, I don’t want that for her either.”
“Would you like to have a child?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Sarah looked away and seemed disinclined to answer.
“Maybe someday,” she said at length. “But not in the way most people do. I don’t want a husband. I want to stay with my friends. Maybe one of them will have a child and we’ll all help take care of her. Like all your mothers took care of you.”
“You mean she’ll be headstrong and spoiled rotten.”
“It worked for you.”
I decided to take that as a compliment.
“Ma,” she said after a moment. “Alyssa and I and the rest, we’ve decided to head east tomorrow. One of Joseph’s friends told us about some open marshland where there are wild horses no one else has been able to get near. We might make a life for ourselves training horses or maybe we’ll just live with them, drink mare’s milk, like the old-time Amazons. When we are settled, even if it’s only temporary, I’ll send you word.”
I knew she had to go, but I couldn’t speak for a moment.
“Will you give me your blessing, Ma?”
She turned to me and cupped my cheek in her hand.
“Always,” I said, and I drew her into my embrace.
Sarah and the pirates, who were fast becoming horse whisperers, settled in the Camargue, a wild flat country of huge skies where land and sea keep shifting their boundaries, a place where thousands of birds feed and nest, rich in grazing for wild and domestic herds. One May, when the weather was particularly fine, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and I set out in a small boat to pay Sarah a visit. Also traveling with us was Maximinus (whose basilica houses my alleged skull), a Romanized Gaul whom Mary B had thoroughly converted and—though she tried to deny it—utterly charmed. If anyone died in his arms, as the legend goes, it was Mary B, not me. Despite the ruling of the second Vatican Council that Mary B and I are not the same person, people continue to think so, just as Nicodemus predicted. Though Maximinus and I supposedly share a crypt, I am telling you, he was Mary B’s late-life love, not mine.
Joseph had not stayed long in Gaul, having business in Pretannia. But the four friends of Jesus, as we sometimes called ourselves (I preferred it to apostle) had been wandering for more than a year, founding ecclesia wherever we went. Mary B was an excellent teacher and Martha proved to be an admirable administrator and appeared to be having the time of her life. Lazarus never said much, but gave everyone such a sense of comfort and peace that quarrels or disputes seldom arose or were resolved by his mere presence. I continued to be a healer, and with Mary B’s official sanction, I put my bardic training to use at last. Though we were still in the oral tradition, Mary B did appoint herself my editor. Gradually the stories became set pieces, and felt less like my stories and more like the story. I didn’t and don’t hold it against Mary. I hardly noticed it was happening at the time. I just felt more tired than usual and wondered if I was getting old. At my insistence, with Lazarus’s quiet backing, we finally agreed that the trip to the Camargue would be a complete holiday from ecclesiastical business.
Now I will tell my version (definitely mine) of a story in which I am not supposed to figure at all—the arrival by boat of Les Saintes Maries de la Mer, whose church still stands a stone’s throw from the beach. The Maries in question were supposed to be Marie Salome and Marie Jacobe, aunts of Jesus, refugees from persecution and/or missionaries. In some stories Sarah is with them as a servant—in others she is on the shore, queen of a local tribe, who actually taunts them till she later (of course) converts.
Now come with me.
There’s a high wind blowing across the marshes, and the surf is up. Our landing is likely to be rough. Martha and Mary are queasy and Lazarus and Maximinus, struggling with the oars and sail. As we flounder, Sarah comes galloping down the beach on a mare with a mane the color of moonlit sea foam. I stand to get a better look at my daughter.
“Sit down!” shouts Mary B. “You’ll capsize us.”
Sarah is also shouting. I can’t hear her over the wind, but I know what she’s saying.
“Calm the waves, you old weather witch!”
“You calm the wind, you young weather witch!”
And suddenly we both burst into gales (literally) of laughter.
“Not funny!” barks Martha. “Behave yourselves, both of you.”
I spread my arms palm down over the waves. Sarah on the shore turns and lifts her arms to quiet the wind. In a moment the surf laps gently as a kitten, the swells calm. You could set a cradle on them with no fear for the baby.
“You can row her in now,” I say to Maximinus. “I’ll meet you on the shore.”
And I step out of the boat and begin to walk on the water.
“Show-off!” calls Sarah.
And she slips off her horse and runs to meet me.
We did have a restful ecclesia-free holiday, (though Mary B grumbled that if I didn’t want to proselytize where the hell did I get off performing impromptu miracles like walking on water). W
e stayed with Sarah and the pirates in their wheeled village. They had crossed lightweight tents with Celtic-style chariots and painted them to blend in with their surroundings.
“We move around some,” explained Alyssa. “And we like to be able to vanish when the need arises.”
Though the former pirates had adjusted to life on land and were mostly self-sufficient—trading in horses, hunting, and gathering other wild food in the marshes—they kept their martial skills honed for occasional raids on rapacious merchants or Roman garrisons if occupiers offended against the local populace.
But our time with them was peaceful. It was May. The marshes and the meadows were bright with wild flowers. An extraordinary variety of birds were in various stages of mating and nesting. The pirates had attended Beltane gatherings earlier in the month, and they had traded for wine, grain, oil, and other foods they didn’t grow or gather themselves—including olives and figs from the other end of the Mare Internum. The mares were in milk, and though most of it went to their own foals, we sometimes drank it warm mixed with mead.
During the day, we were welcome to follow the pirates on their rounds, if we chose, tending horses, building or repairing chariots. Or we could just laze on the beach, swim when it was warm enough. Every evening, whether our fare was simple or rich, felt like a party. We sang, danced, and told stories. Sometimes we just lay quietly and watched the stars till we fell asleep.
It was a good life, and Sarah seemed happy, though now and then there was a restlessness or remoteness about her that reminded me of her father. Like him, she would sometimes take off by herself. Her friends did not question her comings and goings. And it dawned on me with a kind of relief that I did not have to either. Sarah had told me we would not lose each other again, and I came to understand that, no matter how far apart or separate we were, it was true.
Towards the end of our stay, the pirates held a festival for all their neighbors in the Camargue, a new yearly tradition and a wise one, as we had discovered ourselves at Temple Magdalen. Better to have your neighbors look forward to your annual barbeque than wanting to barbeque you. The other marsh dwellers were mostly less-than-Romanized Gauls, who kept cattle, and the day’s festivities included games that brought me back to my youth, including chariot racing and caber-tossing. I delighted Sarah and scandalized Martha by joining in the latter. On the druid isle, I had caused a near riot in my youth by competing in the caber toss with the warriors of the Pretannic Isles. But this time, though I did not do too badly, no one competed for my hand in marriage. As for Sarah, she came in second in a chariot race, despite being a newcomer to the sport. Her grandmothers would have been proud.
In the late afternoon, during a lull between games and the feasting to come, Sarah and I walked together up the beach away from the crowds. The sky was a soft blue, a bit of moisture in the air but no rain, the breeze scented equally with blossom and sea. From time to time cormorants would lift from the marsh and fill the sky with the motion and sound of their wings. Sarah and I walked, content not to talk, now and then bending to pick up a shell or a rock. Sometimes she ran ahead, racing along the scalloped edge of the waves. When we came to an inviting piece of driftwood on a spit of sand, we sat down on it together and gazed out at the sea. I thought of how water flowed between places and times in my life that in my memory sometimes seemed disconnected.
“You could stay,” said Sarah, her words startling yet somehow seamlessly part of everything. “You could stay here with us.”
I placed my hand lightly on hers to let her know that I had heard her. Even as I kept staring at the horizon, I tried to picture it, myself here with Sarah and the pirates, one of them, but not quite, finding ways to make myself useful. Maybe taking care of the children when they had some. But I couldn’t quite see it—the picture remained flat, distant.
“We need some elders. Alyssa was just saying that. We would take care of you.”
An elder. I supposed it was true, but I did not want to be a generic elder. I was Sarah’s mother. I was myself.
“Sarah,” I said. “Did you see me toss the caber today? I may be getting old, but I am not entirely decrepit yet. Though I can think of no one I would rather be surrounded by than you and the pirates, when it comes to pass.”
“But not now?” she pressed, wistful, relieved.
“I don’t think so. I think…”
I did not know what I thought; it wasn’t a thought really. More a longing for something I could not name. It disconcerted me, and I tried to shake it off. What more could I want than what I had? My daughter nearby, my friends around me. After all we had been through, all we had lost and left behind, we had made a new life for ourselves. We were safe. We were even happy. Weren’t we? Wasn’t I?
“Do you want to know what I think?” said Sarah.
Was it really a question? Could I say no?
“I think you are a storyteller, who is sick of telling her story, and now you don’t know what to do with yourself. You don’t even recognize yourself.”
When a blow goes home, you can feel it in your whole being. It rings, it resonates. It might kill you, it does kill you, and yet there is a rightness to it. I wanted to strike back, but I had no weapon. I was disarmed.
“Come on,” Sarah said, merciful after her ruthless stroke, sparing me the embarrassment of any feeble denials I might have attempted. “We ought to be getting back for the feast.”
She rose to her feet and gave me her hand. We walked down the beach arm in arm. I thought perhaps she held me to keep me from flying away and scattering on the wind, for I felt empty and fragile as a blown egg. We hadn’t gone far before we turned, our mouths gaping, wordlessly asking each other: Do you see what I see?
Where there had been only marsh grass stood a town, almost a city to my eyes, full of white buildings, one particularly high and huge, with two towers clanging with bells. From this town poured a vast procession heading towards the sea, thousands of people dressed in colors so bright a Celt might feel drab. Their hair and skin was as dark as Sarah’s. The women’s necks and ears flashed with gold. Men on horseback led the parade. Others played stringed instruments. At the head of the procession, seeming to float above the crowd, rose the statue of a goddess, resplendent in an ornate white dress, gown, robe, veil, many more layers than Isis ever wore on her most solemn feast day. I could just see the statue’s face. Her skin shone black.
I knew I had seen this statue before.
The crowd processed solemnly, joyously, straight into the sea, the adored statue presiding over all.
“Vive la Sainte Sara!”
They chanted over and over.
“Sarah,” I clutched her hand. “It’s you. That statue is you. I saw her in a dream. It’s you!”
“Vive la Sainte Sara. Sara la Kali!”
“How can it be!” she shouted above the din.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we’re seeing into another time or world.”
“No, I mean, I would never dress like that.”
“You might not have any choice about it.”
“Sara, vive la Sainte Sara. Sara la Kali.”
I looked at the people, who gazed at their Sarah with such love, some with tears streaming down their faces.
“Vive la Sainte Sara,” I whispered.
“Sarah! Hey you, Black Sarah!”
The town and the crowd disappeared, and there were the pirates and all the people gathered for the feast.
“Come help me turn the spit,” Alyssa called.
Sarah will find her own people, Ma had said.
And so she had, and so she would.
Or they would find her.
Late that night, exhausted and replete, I curled up in the cart I shared with Mary B and Martha. They were already asleep, their soft breathing mingling with the sound of the waves on the shore and the wind in the marsh grass. As I closed my eyes, I saw again the dark statue borne aloft, carried by the adoring multitude to the sea.
In my d
ream I am in the cavernous place I dreamed of long ago, standing before the statue, holding a wreath woven of the wildflowers that grow in the marshes. I place it gently on her already-crowned head, and I hear a sound, a low almost musical humming sound. Bees, I think. There are still bees in the flowers. And then I see her, stepping from the shadows, coming to stand beside the dark statue.
Ma.
“Do you see?” she asks before I can reach for her, touch her. “It is as I told you. Sarah will be worshipped. Do you see?”
“I see,” I try to answer but my voice is barely a whisper.
“This is her place,” Ma speaks, whether aloud or silently I don’t know.
And the darkness becomes larger, as vast as the night sky over the Camargue.
“This is her place.”
And the sea murmurs, the dark waves lapping around our feet.
“This is her place.”
I close my eyes and no longer see the statue, but I feel Sarah’s presence all the more strongly.
“People will seek her and find her here, as they will find me in Meryemana. Where is your place, Mary of Magdala?
Temple Magdalen. I try again to speak but no sound comes out. I try to picture it, I try to go there. It has been burned to the ground. There is nothing left, nothing but the smell of roses, the smell of fish, the sound of water.
“Where is your place, Maeve of Tir na mBan?”
I see my mother’s island, woman-shaped, rising from the sea, moving in and out of mist, in and out of time, in and out of this world and the otherworld.
“Where is your place, Mary, the beloved of my son?”
I am my beloved’s and he is mine. His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me. The banner over us is love. Where else would my place be?
“The place where your people will seek you, the place where your people will find you.”
Bright Dark Madonna Page 45
