Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  “And there are also differing opinions about whether an exile, innocent or not, can return. You ought to know how long the druid memory is, Maeve. We may have lined faces and white, or grey, hair.” Bitch, I thought. “But forty-five years is just a blink of an eye. And the Roman invasion and occupation are still a dire threat to the last of the free combrogos in the north and west.”

  “I see,” I said, and I did or thought I did. “Then if you are not here to enforce my exile, why are you here? If you just wanted to see me, why did you insist that I go on an Otherworldly hike to find you? Why did you greet me in masks?”

  Branwen looked pained, but as seemed to be her wont, Viviane answered first.

  “It was my idea. Branwen didn’t want to. Even though we were not sent in an official capacity, I felt it was important for you to understand what you may be up against. As for these masks, they do not conceal who we are; they reveal our true nature, our authority.”

  “Our authority, maybe.” Branwen was a poet and not one to stand by when she felt words were being misused. “But no one mask can reveal someone’s true nature. This one does not reveal mine. I am sorry, Maeve. I suppose you could say we were testing you, and that is not right among friends.”

  “Did I pass the test?” I immediately wanted to know.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  Branwen and Viviane contradicted each other at once.

  “Never mind,” I said before Viviane could go on about my failure. “If the druids didn’t send you as ambassadors, then who did? Who knows I’m here?”

  “I should have thought that would be obvious,” said Viviane. “Didn’t she appear to you, too?”

  “Dwynwyn,” I guessed at once.

  Dwynwyn, who had long ago prophesied over the three of us and predicted our fates with a fearsome degree of accuracy. Dwynwyn, who had told me I had chosen my true friend and my true enemy well. Dwynwyn who had just prophesied that I would take her place “when the terrible things happen.”

  “But isn’t she…hasn’t she,” I began. Time and timelessness were so confusing.

  “Died,” finished Branwen.

  “Or disappeared,” said the precise brehon. “Gone but not done meddling. Dreams and visions, not my favorite mode of communication but necessary sometimes. She told us you were coming and where to find you. She more or less ordered us to come here and meet you.”

  “But Maeve, she didn’t tell us anything else,” Branwen said. “There is so much I want to know. Where have you been all these years? We didn’t even dare to believe you had survived! Did you ever find Esus? I remember that day we first found Dwynwyn on the island, she said you would be a great lover. Do you know now what she meant, Maeve? Can you tell us?”

  As Branwen spoke, Viviane opened a covered basket and laid out a feast of meats, dried fruits, and more barley cakes. She brought out a flagon of mead and poured us more to drink.

  “We have all night,” Branwen added.

  I gazed at Branwen, my first friend in the world, and my vision began to blur with tears. I had just buried Joseph, the only friend who knew where I had come from and where I had gone, who had given his own tomb to my beloved. And I was very likely the only one in the Holy Isles who could tell Branwen how her own father’s life had ended. Where to begin all these stories, how to be sure not to lose any thread?

  “Begin at the beginning,” Viviane commanded.

  “Begin anywhere you like,” countered Branwen, “and you will end up where you need to go.”

  And so I began with the story of the Rex Nemorensis, the brave escaped slave who became the King of the Wood and guarded the tree of the Golden Bough with his life. I told the story of how his foster-daughter, herself far from home, an exile and a slave, found him there.

  “And these are the exact words he spoke to me, Branwen.

  “‘And so I am a king again, Maeve. It is a strange fate, guarding a Holy Tree so far from the Holy Isles. Yet here in her embrace, I know I am not so far. When you see my Branwen again and my sons, tell them I am free and a king. Promise me, Maeve Rhuad.’

  “I never knew I would have a chance to keep my promise, Branwen,” I said, holding her hands. “He would be so glad if he knew.”

  “He is glad,” said Branwen fiercely. “He does know. And my brothers know, too, for they are with him in the Isles of the Blest.”

  “Oh, Branwen. Your brothers, too? Oh, Branwen!”

  I hadn’t known Branwen’s brothers well. Bran had boasted only Branwen had the brains to become a druid. His sons were warriors, like him.

  “They were with Caratacus in his last battle against the Romans.”

  “Caratacus, the son of the Catuvellauni king?” Lectures from school on the Roman question stirred in my memory. “I thought the Catuvellauni were pro-Roman.”

  “Cunobelin, the father, was friendly to the Romans, but when he died, his sons wanted to reclaim the southeastern territories for the old ways. They forced out the king of the Atrebates who fled to Gaul—and then went to Rome and pleaded for intervention on behalf of the Roman-friendly tribes. Not long after that, the Romans launched the invasion.”

  Then perhaps the invasion was not all my fault? I felt ashamed at the feeling of relief that came over me in the midst of a story that could only be tragic.

  “Early in the fighting, the older son, Togodumnus, died at a terrible battle at the River Medway. That lost battle was the beginning of the end for the southeastern tribes. Caratacus fled west to the mountains to join forces with the Silures. My older brother, king after my father, welcomed him. My brothers also persuaded the Demetae, Ordovices and Deceangli to join the alliance. They knew the mountains and used the terrain to their advantage in ambushes and raids. They were so successful that the Roman general Scapula vowed to exterminate them, the Silures in particular,” she said with bitter pride. “He almost succeeded.”

  All too easily, I could picture those wild mountains, the decimated villages, the stubborn, starving survivors.

  “Caratacus made a terrible mistake when he decided to risk meeting the Romans in pitched battle,” put in Viviane. “The druids of Mona advised against it, but Caratacus was tired of playing cat and mouse. He wanted to rout the Romans once and for all. His forces lured the enemy to a rock fortress. They thought they could slaughter them by raining down missiles. But the Romans, attacking from two sides, took shelter under their shields and kept climbing and climbing straight up the precipice like huge beetles. Our forces couldn’t hold them back. They were shattered, and the ones who did not die, fled.”

  Viviane spoke with her jaw clenched.

  “Caratacus escaped,” Branwen took up the story again. “He fled to the Brigantes only to be betrayed to the Romans by their queen Cartimandua. They took him to Rome to be paraded there, just as they did my father. Only the emperor was so impressed by Caratacus, he spared his life and invited him to live in Rome. He lives there still, so we have heard.”

  And likely went to banquets as a celebrity noble savage, I did not say. I could hear all the judgment in Branwen’s voice painstakingly reserved.

  “But thanks to you, Maeve, now I know. My father died a king.”

  “And his sons after him,” said Viviane, “and his sons after him.”

  We were all silent for a time, listening to the fire hiss and crackle, watching the changing patterns of light and shadow on the wall. I felt the weight of all that tragedy and turmoil settling into my bones, becoming inextricably linked with my own life.

  “Now tell,” said Viviane at length, “how you came to be enslaved, and if King Bran’s prophesy about you and the Stranger ever came true. What did he mean about the living tree and the dead tree and you and Esus changing places?”

  I looked at my friends and a wave of weariness stole over me. I felt as though I were drifting away from them again on that tide that had taken me beyond the ninth wave. I had words now to be my oar and sail, but they felt so heavy.

  “
I wish I could dream it to you,” I said.

  “You are tired.” Branwen was immediately concerned. “Of course you are. How could you not be? And here we made you climb the Tor on top of everything else you’ve been through. You must rest now. There is no need to tell the whole story all at once.”

  “I’m afraid there is need,” Viviane disagreed. “We can’t stay in Avalon for long. We have to be getting back. The more we know, the more we can help, or advise her, anyway, always supposing she’ll listen to us.”

  “Viviane has a point, Maeve,” Branwen conceded. “But maybe you can dream to us. Let’s lie down and curl up together, like we used to when we were first formers, and Nissyen would tell us stories to quiet us down, remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” I said. “I remember everything.”

  And at that moment, it was true. As soon as we lay down together on a pallet covered with soft, worn plaids, the words and memories flowed dreamlike, one turning into the other, and I took Branwen and Viviane on the long strange journey of my life. At times I think we did dream together, for when it was over, I felt refreshed, cleansed, as if my life had washed through me, carried me, and I had landed safely on this shore at last.

  “Now,” I said. “Your stories, your own stories. Tell.”

  “We are trained to tell the stories of the combrogos, Maeve, not our own,” Branwen said, quickly, too quickly, I thought.

  “Our stories were laid out for us long ago,” agreed Viviane. “You lasted only a year at your studies. We stayed the full nineteen, and then went on to serve the combrogos according to our different abilities.”

  Viviane was certainly making the druid life sound awfully dull and dry. What about festivals, trials, sacrifice, scandal, intrigue?

  “No lovers?” I pressed. “No children?”

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned children. I had been the one to find Viviane hemorrhaging from an abortion. She had been the first to guess my pregnancy and had helped me to hide it. We’d had a literal blood bond, since our first brawl when I smeared her with my menstrual blood.

  “The druids are the mind of the combrogos,” said Viviane. “Not the flesh.”

  The same metaphor my father had used when censuring me for arousing warriors to fight over me after I wantonly entered the caber-toss. Behavior unbecoming a druid-in-training.

  “I like to think of us as worker bees,” put in Branwen. “We don’t have a life separate from the hive.”

  I sat up and looked from one to the other.

  “I love you, but I have to say I think you are both full of shit. And more specifically, I think there is something you are not telling me.”

  That was it; that was what was bothering me.

  “Just as there is something you are not telling us,” countered Viviane, also sitting up and looking as cross as a cat that has had its fur rubbed the wrong way.

  “What do you mean?” I protested. “I just told you the story of my whole life, and, unlike you, I didn’t leave out the juicy bits.”

  “You didn’t tell us why you’ve come back to the Holy Isles.”

  “I didn’t?”

  I thought back over my story and realized I had left out a few juicy bits, such as my escapade the night before I crossed the channel. Of course, I had told them about Sarah, from her Otherworldly conception to her running away and our reunion in a prison in Ephesus. They knew Sarah was here with me and had kept vigil with me over Joseph. But I had not told them that Sarah and I had come back to find her, the misbegotten child of the misbegotten child, stolen by the very authorities Branwen and Viviane now represented.

  “I think we know why, Viviane,” Branwen said.

  “Maeve must say it,” Viviane insisted. “We must talk of it.”

  “Her, you mean,” I said. “My daughter. We must talk of her. Yes, I am here to find her, if I can.”

  I stopped myself from saying: my daughter Sarah insisted on this quest. It bothered me that it might be true.

  “But I don’t even know what name she is called.”

  As distinct from the name I had spoken into her ear for the few moments I had held her.

  Viviane and Branwen exchanged a look. Then they turned to me.

  “Boudica,” they both spoke the name at the same time. “She is called Boudica.”

  Boudica? How could it be? Boudica, the name, the secret name I had given her.

  It meant victory.

  Boudica, my daughter, alive.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BOUDICA

  “BOUDICA.” I SPOKE HER NAME out loud for the first time since she was born.

  Suddenly I felt dizzy, disoriented. Where was I? How many lifetimes had passed?

  “Get her something to drink,” said Viviane. “I think she’s going to faint.”

  Branwen was already on her feet, and in a moment she knelt beside me, one arm around me, while she held a cup of honey wine to my lips. Viviane fetched a barley cake and a hunk of sheep’s cheese.

  “Eat,” she ordered.

  I obeyed and for a moment I thought of nothing else but the dryness of the crumbs, the sharpness of cheese, the warmth of the wine in my blood.

  “I’m all right now,” I said. “Tell me about her, about Boudica. The Crows told me she would be sent to foster with the Iceni in the east. That’s the only thing I know.”

  “She did foster among the Iceni,” began Branwen.

  “And now she is their queen,” said Viviane.

  For the first time Branwen looked seriously peeved with Viviane. She, after all, was the bard. Viviane might be a brilliant brehon, but clearly she had no idea how to tell a story.

  “Go on, Branwen,” I pointedly took sides.

  Viviane shrugged, then tossed her hair in that irritating way she always had.

  “It was Beltane, as I am sure you remember. The visiting tribes hadn’t dispersed yet. There was some concern that no one would want to take a misbegotten child of a misbegotten child. But the druids reminded the combrogos of the prophecy about the great hero to spring from this line who would make a stand against the Romans. Do you remember that, Maeve?”

  How could I not? The memory was seared into my mind. It was my father who had made the prophecy on the very day he had tried to kill me and extinguish the misbegotten life I carried. He had broken from his predictable script and spoken in anguish and against his will.

  “The child’s lineage presented a problem, of course,” Viviane couldn’t help but point out. “Especially the maternal line.”

  “What about the paternal line. It wasn’t considered a problem that a man raped his own daughter?” I demanded.

  There was an awkward silence until Viviane took it upon herself to break it. Never one to shirk from an unpleasant task, our Viviane.

  “Lovernios was an important druid who served the combrogos well. You came from, well, no one was ever really sure whether or not to believe your story, your claim of divine descent. You fell in love with the Stranger and defied the druids for his sake. Then you disappeared—”

  “Most people do when they’re sent out with the tide beyond the ninth wave. Are they—are you—denying that I was exiled?”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” said Viviane. “The point is, they decided it was best to downplay your lineage.”

  Branwen took my hand and looked me in the eye, which was brave of her, considering what she had to say next.

  “Maeve, in the story you are portrayed as a beansidhe, or, in some versions, a silkie, who seduced Lovernios with magic, bore a child, and then vanished. Lovernios went mad with grief and walked into that tidal bore hoping to find you in the Land under the Wave.”

  I looked at my friends, incredulous. What a stupid, hackneyed, unconvincing plot! Any bard should be ashamed to recite such a pack of tired lies. Why would anyone believe it at all?

  “But people knew!” I burst out. “Maybe they didn’t know everything. No one knew everything, except Dwynwyn. But people knew abou
t Esus and me. They knew I was on trial for stopping the sacrifice.”

  “No, Maeve,” countered Viviane. “Most people at the college knew something, but the visiting tribes can’t have known much. Your trial was not public, as I am sure you remember.”

  “But the Iceni family who fostered my daughter took her away before my trial, before anything had been settled, before that ridiculous story could have been concocted.”

  “I don’t know all the details of what they told the family at the time, Maeve,” said Branwen. “We were only first formers. I believe that the foster mother had lost a daughter earlier that year, and only wanted to fill her arms with a child. It was the foster father and his tuath who had to be persuaded that they were not taking in some child born under a curse.”

  “And you must understand that Lovernios’s reputation had to be preserved,” insisted Viviane. “More than any other druid before or since, Lovernios commanded the respect of the warrior kings and rallied the tribes to unite against Rome.”

  “Oh, I understand, all right,” I said. “Someone had to be sacrificed for the good of the combrogos, and I had stolen one sacrifice already. I owed them.”

  “Not just the combrogos, Maeve.” Branwen sounded almost stern. “There was the child. What would you have wanted for her?”

  What would I have wanted for her? What would I have wanted for her? No one had ever asked me.

  “She means,” Viviane jumped in, “would you have wanted your child to grow up knowing that she was the child of rape and incest, not to mention of a criminal and exile. Isn’t the story better? Isn’t it better to have a father who was revered by the combrogos for his leadership and wisdom?”

  “Wisdom!” I snapped. “Falling in love with a sea mammal and drowning himself? And how about being the child of a wicked seducing mother who abandoned her? That’s a pretty story. But I did not abandon her. I did not abandon her. How dare they, how dare you!”