Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  “Now you’ve done it, Mother of Sarah!” Bele and Alyssa protested as one.

  “I need to speak to the general,” I said. “It’s important. Trust me.”

  “You’ve given us no choice.” Sarah was furious.

  After days of trailing along after everyone else, I took the lead, urging my horse down a zigzagging path to the valley floor. On the other side of the valley, the general also began his descent. As I rode, the noise roared in my head again. There was a stench in my nostrils and bile in my throat; my eyes burned. But if I could just deliver the message, maybe I could stop it, whatever was coming. When I reached the bottom of the hill, I dismounted.

  “I want to speak with him alone,” I said handing the reins to Sarah. “Wait here.”

  Then everything was quiet again, as the general, too, dismounted, leaving his men behind. We walked towards each other at a deliberate pace, coming to stand face to face in the middle of the valley. There was no protocol for such a meeting, so we just stood for a moment, looking at each other, maybe both of us wondering how we kept straying into each other’s story, as if some incoherent dream insisted on inhabiting waking hours.

  “I have a message for you,” I broke the silence.

  “Speak,” he said.

  Just that one word, but his voice was so like my beloved’s that it hurt, and I forgot everything else, just searching his face for a trace of the boy I had glimpsed on the moonlit cliffs.

  “Are you all right?” he asked after a moment.

  For an instant, the sounds rose around me again, closer, more distinct this time: clanging and screams. I saw him look around, wide-eyed, his hand on his sword hilt. Then the sounds subsided again, and he looked back at me, accusing.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  “I am not doing anything,” I told him. “But you heard it, too, didn’t you?”

  “What is it you want with me?” He refused to admit anything.

  “I have a message for you,” I repeated.

  “So you said,” he was curt. “Stop behaving like a mad prophetess and just give it to me.”

  “When you disembarked at Rutupiae,” I began, “you were greeted by an official, the procurator,” I paused so that he could hear the words I did not speak: your son. So that he could hear that I knew.

  “Catus Decianus,” he said, his voice neutral, but his face was closed; he was warning me off. “Well?”

  I took a step closer to him, so that he would understand my words were only for him, close enough for my body to remember how much it liked his. His body seemed to remember, too, and he bent towards me. If only we could just be our warm bodies, without our haunted pasts and futures.

  “You asked me to see for you the day before we sailed,” I reminded him. “When I saw the man who greeted you, Catus Decianus, I recognized him. Here is my message for you: don’t trust him. Keep a close watch on him. He is going to betray someone.”

  The general drew back from me abruptly and his hand went again to his sword. Well, fine then, let him kill me. I still had to warn him:

  “It might be you.”

  I closed my eyes and waited for what he would do. I could hear the sounds again, but they were coming from a long way off. Or maybe I was a long way off. Far away, higher than the crows and vultures that circled.

  At the same time, close by me, a man’s breath came short as he struggled to regain control of himself.

  “Is that all?”

  Was that all? I opened my eyes and searched his face. It wasn’t just his voice that was like my beloved’s. There was something about the shape of his face, the mouth. But Jesus’s mouth never lost its sweetness, even when he was angry or in pain. The general’s mouth was resolutely grim as though to smile would be an affront to the rest of his face.

  What manner of man is this? I asked my beloved silently.

  The least of my brethren, I heard again, as I had that moonlit night.

  Who is he to me then, why is he in my path?

  You know, I thought I heard. You will know.

  Then the general spoke again.

  “Answer me,” he commanded.

  “If I did, would you listen?”

  His face registered more surprise than anger. He was not used to being spoken to this way. Most people in his world were his subordinates and would not dare to question him.

  “You didn’t listen when I told you not to come to this country,” I went on. “Will you listen now, if I tell you to leave?”

  In the background, I could hear our horses stirring. My mare whinnied to me. By contrast, the soldiers’ mounts held themselves as still as the riders, all of them in suspended animation for as long as this man willed.

  “Did you follow me here?” he demanded.

  If in doubt, answer a question with a question. A tactic Jesus had used, too.

  “No, I just happened to be passing through.”

  It was the truth, but to my own ears I sounded evasive, like a bad liar.

  “Then give me leave to wonder how urgent your message can be, or how much credence I should give it. By your own account you have made no effort to deliver your warning.”

  “I was called to an old friend’s deathbed as soon as I disembarked.”

  Why did everything I say sound made up? The general kept his face expressionless, but I could tell he was skeptical.

  “My condolences,” he said perfunctorily. “Where are you going now?”

  He didn’t say: and just where do you think you’re going? And by the way, it is within my power to stop you. But I could hear the implication.

  “I am searching for my daughter.”

  I might as well try the truth again. It might throw him off track better than a lie

  “The one you left behind,” he said, “the reason you are here.”

  An unexpected gentleness in his tone brought back the night on the cliff, when neither of us knew the other, except as someone who had suffered terrible loss.

  “Where are you searching?” he asked.

  Don’t tell him anything. Not anything. The voice in my head was not Jesus’s this time but Sarah’s. She was thinking to me from only a few feet away. I must remember to tell her, she didn’t need to think so loud.

  “Do you remember what you pledged?” It was my turn to answer a question with a question.

  “Let us say for a moment that I don’t remember.”

  “That if I agreed to use the sight for you, no troops under your command would ever interfere with me or my women.”

  He glanced over my shoulder at my companions and his lips twitched. Apparently their no doubt glaring countenances amused him. He better keep that smile to himself, if he didn’t want to end up with an arrow in his back.

  “I have never broken that pledge.” He paused for a moment. “Will you think I am interfering if I offer you a night’s hospitality at the fort?”

  Sarah would have a cow was my first thought. And my second was why had he shifted so abruptly from curt to courteous? What did he hope to gain? But my third thought was strongest: Night was falling, and I wanted to get away from this valley. The silence was almost as bad as the din in my head had been, an absolute desperate silence that made my ears hurt.

  “Will you give me your word of honor that this hospitality involves no lock and key and that we can leave at first light with our horses watered and fed?”

  “I will,” he said. “Follow my party. The fort is less than two miles from here. We have guest quarters suitable for women.”

  I did not bother to tell him that my women could rough it as well as any of his soldiers and far better than any Roman civilian.

  “I have to consult my party,” I told him.

  Because I am no general, I did not add, but a long-suffering (and suffered) mother whose daughter is about to have a major snit. Or so I feared. Much to my surprise, I met with no resistance. The three of them had apparently anticipated this turn of events and come to an agreement.


  “If they are foolish enough to let us inside, we might as well case the joint,” Alyssa summed up their strategy.

  “But you are not to tell him anything, Mother,” added Sarah vehemently. “Not anything.”

  “I heard you the first time, Sarah.”

  “Swear!”

  “Sarah!” Bele was shocked. “It is not nice to ask your own mother to swear an oath.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” I said. “I swear I won’t tell him anything. I’ve already evaded him quite skillfully.”

  “That’s probably why he wants to have another crack at you,” said Alyssa.

  “Let him, then,” I shrugged. “You underestimate my talents, all of you. I am the only one of us who ever lived in Rome. And as a whore and a slave, I know how the information game is played.”

  Sarah, as unpredictably as the general, lightened up and actually grinned at me.

  “In that case,” she said. “Find out all you can.”

  Thus, I decided (in perhaps a very liberal interpretation) that I had my daughter’s blessing for what I did that night.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LOVER OF THE WORLD

  I AM IN the whores’ bath at The Vine and Fig Tree with Dido and Berta, my sister whores. They look as young as they did when I first knew them, Berta all blonde and blowsy, Dido smooth, regal and black. But I am not young; I wear all my years of wandering and weather. I wonder if they even know I am there or if I am a ghost visible only to other ghosts. Then both turn and gaze at me, serenely without judgment or even curiosity.

  “Once a whore always a whore,” says Dido.

  “Whore’s deal,” says Berta. “Do you remember how we seal it, Red?”

  “Of course, I do,” I say.

  We all dip our fingers into our vulvas, then press the tips together. Then Berta and Dido turn to me and begin to run their fingertips over me. Wherever they touch me, roundness rises again, breasts, belly, and thighs. They touch me with light, deft, swirling motions. The mist of the bath becomes a sea mist; waves break on a shore, light turning the spray to gold. My mothers are here, too, all the women of my life are here, anointing me, mothers, whores and priestesses.

  At last I stand alone in the center of this circle of women, and I look down at my naked body. All the patterns their fingers have made have turned blue. Woad, I think, they have painted me with woad. I look like Queen Maeve of Connacht before her battle with Cuchulain. Battle, it suddenly hits me. They have painted me for battle.

  Then Queen Maeve herself steps into the circle to face me, my mirror image, both of us red-haired, woad-painted, in our prime.

  “Sovereignty,” she whispers. “Fuck for our sovereignty.”

  When I woke up I did not remember for a moment where I was. I was so used to sleeping outside, the thickness of the darkness surrounding me was disorienting as was the softness of the couch. Then my eyes adjusted, and I recognized Bele, keeping watch in the entryway of our chamber, as we had agreed to do in turns.

  “Guests or no guests,” Sarah had insisted. “We are in a Roman fortress. One of us will keep watch, and we’ll all keep our weapons at hand.”

  The general had not insisted that we disarm or Sarah never would have accepted his hospitality. I felt for my dagger now, still in its place on my belt. The sword I had laid aside, and whatever Sarah would have said, I did not intend to take it with me to the latrines.

  “Go back to sleep, Mother of Sarah,” said Bele. “It’s Alyssa’s turn to relieve me.”

  “I’m just going out to relieve myself.”

  “Can’t you do it in the piss bucket?” Bele whispered. “Your daughter would not want you wandering around the fort alone at night.”

  “My daughter doesn’t want me to do anything without her supervision,” I answered. “I want some air. Besides, the fort is practically empty except for the general and his staff.”

  He had explained to us at dinner that the fort was only used when a campaign was being waged. Otherwise, it just had a small defensive guard to keep the fort in readiness.

  “That makes it less safe,” grumbled Bele. “No one to help you if you get into trouble.”

  “I won’t get into trouble,” I assured her.

  Despite a long life that included exile, capture, slavery, near crucifixion, not to mention witnessing the arrest and crucifixion of my beloved, I had never quite overcome my lack of fear or my perhaps unfounded assumption that I could handle anything or anyone.

  After I had used the fairly sophisticated latrine (no mere ditch), I decided to take a turn around the perimeter of the fort before going back to our quarters. I could always justify my midnight ramble to my companions by saying I was taking the opportunity to gather information. But the truth was I felt restless, stirred up by the dream, so vivid that I could feel a sort of sensual echo of the women’s touch.

  It was a dark night, no moon, and the attention of the sentries on the watch towers was turned outward to the plain surrounding the fort. Barefoot and in a dark cloak, I passed unnoticed. Though there were sentries posted in every direction, I discerned that only every other tower was manned. Unlike most Romans, who lived in cities where the only landscapes they could see were stylized frescoes, I had never liked living behind walls. Temple Magdalen had been walled for safety, backed by a hill of caves, but I had spent many a night on our tower, gazing out over the Sea of Galilee, watching the reflection of moon and stars and the lanterns of the fishing boats going out before dawn. Out of homesickness and force of habit, I found myself scaling the ladder to stand on an empty tower. From there I could hear the river and just discern its dim gleaming. Across the plain rose the ridge, a black wave swallowing the stars, the ridge that hid the valley where something terrible had happened or would happen, unless someone stopped it.

  Me.

  The thought struck me like a blow, and I grabbed hold of the wall to steady myself.

  Then I heard someone climbing the ladder. I turned and he was there before me dark as the ridge, with his own hidden places full of horror. As I faced him, I felt the woad swirling on my skin, cool and burning at once. I was painted for battle.

  Once a whore always a whore.

  Fuck for our sovereignty.

  Neither of us spoke. I could not see his face clearly, but I could feel his presence, the unsettling familiarity of it. I knew what I had to do, what I wanted to do, what I might never have the chance do again. I unclasped my cloak and spread it out on the tower floor. Then I unbuckled my belt and stripped off my tunic, my flesh puckering in response to the cool air, my beautiful round woad-painted flesh, bright and dark as night.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  I drew him into my arms.

  All mountains tumble to the sea.

  Sometimes lovemaking takes you so deep inside the body that you fly out of it. It is like death. Your whole life unwinds. You can be in any time or place. You can become any animal or bird. You are the fire, the water, the earth, the wind. Only your lover is with you, only your lover holds the thread that can bring you back.

  It was like that, and I cannot tell you more. If you have been there, then you know.

  “Who are you?” he asked again when it was over and we lay back in our bodies, in the chill night, on the hard floor.

  “I am the lover of the world.”

  It seemed to me that Dwynwyn’s long ago prophecy still held, though my beloved had gone before me, and I had been alone for so long.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  We were lying on our sides facing each other, touching but no longer entwined. There was an edge to his voice; I knew he would not remain open to me much longer. What good did it do to fuck someone’s brains out if you left a vacuum? All at once I knew what I had to do: tell the story of the lovers of the world, as I had when Mary of Bethany dragged me around southern Gaul until I ran away to my hermit cave. To put it crudely, I was going to proselytize.

  Leaving out the location and circumstan
ces of Dwynwyn’s prophecy, I launched into my narrative, my gospel, if you will. You might think that telling your present lover about a past lover (and not just any lover but the one you love before and beyond time in all the worlds) would not go over well, but the general seemed fascinated by Jesus. I wonder if he somehow sensed what I suspected, that they were indeed brethren, that Jesus was somehow his other, his opposite, his long-lost mirror image. But when we got to the part about the feeding of the five thousand, and how Jesus fled the crowds refusing to be made king, the general interrupted.

  “I am willing to suspend disbelief about the miracles, the multiplying loaves and fishes. I am not a stranger to sorcery. But why would this Jesus of yours refuse a chance to unify and lead his people, especially when his cousin had just been executed at the hands of a Roman puppet king?”

  I had been doing my best to make this scene particularly compelling, this moment when Jesus turned his back forever on armed struggle. My momentum was broken, and I found myself unprepared to answer a logical and inevitable question.

  “He probably knew he couldn’t win,” the general answered himself, regretful and scornful at once. “No rabble can win against a trained army. In the end, he would have lost face, or gotten himself killed along with a lot of other people. But what a chance he had. That would have been a real miracle, better than loaves and fishes, better than turning water into wine for a bunch of guests who were already soused.”

  He rudely dismissed our wedding miracle. But I decided to let it pass. No one who hadn’t been there could know what that night had been like, especially not this man, this career soldier who not so secretly wished he’d had that same chance: to be a warrior king, a hero of a defiant people, worthy of a bard’s song, instead of just a lackey for a bureaucratic empire. He was sitting up now. In a moment, he’d be on his feet and pacing. In a moment, I would lose him altogether.

  “That is not why he refused,” I countered, though many people at the time saw it just the way the general did, including some of the disciples, notably Judas. “Where he wanted to go, where he wanted to lead people, he could not go with an army.”