Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  “They?”

  “The druid boys,” she said.

  “There are druid girls now, too,” I reminded her.

  “Hard to tell unless you lift their tunics.”

  We cackled. I suppose you would have to call it that.

  “I have things to tell them,” I said, “urgent things to tell them. Will I remember?”

  “When the time is right,” reassured Dwynwyn, “when the time is right.”

  Time wheeled over the island, the sun hurrying west each day a little sooner, the nights bristling with stars and frosts. Then there came a day, when summer seemed to let out its breath one last time, slow and soft. The wind rested in the grass, and the tidal pools were still. I was lying on the side of a hillock, soaking the sun into my tunic. I heard their voices from a long way off, geese, I thought, but hadn’t the geese all flown away? No, the sound came from girls, girls laughing and talking. I sat up and saw them walking down the beach, their sandals in their hands. Every now and then they broke into a run or stopped to splash each other.

  “Your first customers,” Dwynwyn said. “Don’t be too easy on them. Put on a good show.”

  Despite gaps in my memory, I could vividly recall tiptoeing around the island with the other first form girls till we came upon Dwynwyn sitting cross-legged and barefoot by her cauldron. She had worn a black cloak over the red tunic, all the more dramatic with her white hair. But the day was warm, so I sat uncloaked, my hair wilder than Dwynwyn’s, my feet, despite or maybe because of all my travels, still quite shapely, I thought. I waited for the girls to find me.

  When they did, standing in a semi-circle at a safe distance, I tried to beetle my brow and glare at them ferociously, but I found myself distracted. They were so young, was I ever that young, young as babies, young almost as Lithben. But they were clearly girl-druids in the making, wearing the same green tunics we had, green for their greenness.

  “What have you brought for my pot?” I demanded.

  These girls were better prepared than we had been. We hadn’t known the custom, which elicited disparaging remarks from Dwynwyn about the detrimental effects of over-education. When I had proffered some hazelnuts from my pocket, her remarks had been memorably crude.

  “Hazelnuts!” she’d scowled. “What? Not a fish or a rutabaga for an old woman? Something to slide easy down the throat? I suppose you expect me to crack all those nuts, hard as they are. Hard as a young man’s head, though with more wisdom inside. Hard as a young girl’s heart, though with more sweetness inside. Don’t give me that dewy, doe-eyed look. Of course you have hard hearts. All hearts are hard till they’re broken. Then they’re a bloody mess! Though not bad tasting if you cook and season them properly.

  “Save your hazelnuts for the Samhain fires,” she’d said. “Though for all the good you’ll get of them you might as well stuff them up your pussies and let them pop there. Such a waste of wisdom.”

  I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to make such a colorful speech. The girls dutifully, if warily, approached me with barley and oat cakes, leeks, rutabagas (Dwynwyn’s favorite vegetable) a hunk of salted pork, a bowl of late blackberries, a basket of apples, some hazelnuts thoughtfully shelled, a jug of mead (praise goddess) and a dripping piece of wild honeycomb that left the bearer’s hands quite sticky. A red-head, the girl licked her fingers as delicately and discreetly as possible. I tried to restrain my inner Dwynwyn from smacking her lips and forgetting all about her guests.

  “That will be acceptable,” I informed them. “Now I suppose you want to consult those slippery little sods about your love luck?”

  They all nodded, still speechless.

  “Come then,” I rose to my feet with impressive agility; the necklace of skulls tinkling merrily, so to speak.

  I wondered if the girls had made this trip on a dare from older initiates. Well, whatever Dwynwyn would have done, whatever the eels had to say (and come to think of it, I didn’t know how to interpret eels’ movements) I intended to put the best spin on their fortunes I could. I led them to the well. We gathered round the dark water, shadowed by rocks, churning with the restlessness of the eels, and the subtle ebb and flow from the underground channel to the straits. The girls cast glances at me, waiting for some kind of instruction, but I only gazed in increasing horror at the pool.

  The straits, red with blood, the smell of smoke, and over the sound of wind and battle, the heart-shattering wailing of women.

  When the sound stopped, I looked around me, and all the girls had gone away, except for one, still standing poised to flee but riveted on me. The red-head, her hair as red as mine had been, as red as Boudica’s, her boldness stronger than her fear.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You screamed,” she said. “And screamed. The others all ran, but I had to know. What did you see?”

  “You’re a brave one, colleen,” I avoided her question. “What is your name?”

  “Maeve,” she said. “I am from Hibernia, and I am named for Maeve the Brave, Queen of Connacht.”

  “So am I!” I exclaimed before I could think. “And did she name you herself?”

  The young Maeve took another step away from me.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “I thought your name was Dwynwyn.”

  “Oh yes, well, it is, I suppose. Or was. Or will be,” I answered, feeling dazed, almost seasick from riding the heaving swells of time and identity.

  Young Maeve stared at me with wide eyes the color of dusk sky; in the fading light her bright hair still glowed.

  “Today is Samhain,” she said. “We brought you the last berries picked yesterday, the last apples, the last honeycomb. What did you see between the worlds?”

  I opened my mouth but closed it again; the scream was still in my throat.

  “Run, Maeve,” was all I could manage, “before the tide comes in. Go with Bride’s blessing.”

  I watched Maeve disappear over the hillock. Then out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of red hair in the well, but as a face cohered, it wasn’t the girl’s. It was Boudica’s, watchful and strained, waiting.

  “Tell them,” I heard Boudica’s voice clearly now in memory. “Tell the druids how it is with us here.”

  “It’s time,” said Dwynwyn. “Go.”

  I went to fetch my own grey cloak. I climbed the hillock and looked east where the full moon was rising. Maeve had just made the tide. I could see her running as fast as she could down the beach. Cold waters rushed in, cutting off the island from the mainland. I might be able to cross on Macha, but as I pondered, the wind suddenly rose. And before I knew what was happening, I rose with it, my doves’ wings brushing the edges of my vision.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  THE RETURN OF MAEVE RHUAD

  IT WAS NOTHING new for me to find myself in the form of a dove. I had made this very flight from Dwynwyn’s Isle long ago when my father tried to kill me. Or was it long ago? It is hard to think when you are flying; really there is only wing beat, heartbeat, wind that is with you or against you. The wind was with me this time. I rode it, I rowed it like a stream. It carried me over the sands, then shifted and bore me inland where I saw it toss the crowns of the great trees of the teaching groves, till it quieted and set me down at the edge of a wide empty field ringed with ancient beech and oak.

  I stood in the shelter of a beech, adjusting again to my human form, wondering where I was, when I was. I touched my face, still worn and lined, so I concluded I had not traversed time. I was not sure what to do next; whether I should try to find my way to the college and look for someone I knew.

  “Just wait,” said Dwynwyn. “Watch.”

  And so I did, for what seemed like a long time. Dusk deepened into full night, the moon sailed into the open sky. By its light I could see that a bonfire had been laid, and waited, ghostly in the moonlight, for a torch to bring it to life. Chill crept up from the ground, though I felt warm enough in the red tunic and my grey cloak. Still I
could not help thinking with longing of the feast I’d left behind on the island. I wished I hadn’t flown away so hastily.

  “It’s hard to fly on a full stomach,” remarked Dwynwyn. “You’re an old woman now; you don’t need much food to keep you going.”

  “You’re one to talk!” I retorted. “When did you ever think of anything but filling your pot—and your belly?”

  “Hush now,” whispered Dwynwyn. “Pay attention.”

  It felt as if the trees had heard her, too, as if they had woken suddenly from some dreaming state and now leaned in a little closer, waiting for what would happen next. Then from the opposite side of the clearing, a procession entered bearing torches, chanting words I could not quite catch, but by the light of their torches I could see that they wore masks and headdresses. Feathers abounded, and there was one impressive rack of antlers.

  The faculty of the druid college of Mona in full regalia.

  Beeches are the most accommodating of climbing trees. I accepted the low slung branch the tree extended to me and climbed high enough to get a good view.

  The druids ringed the still unlit pile of wood, the first circle, the inner circle, always closest to whatever mystery was at hand, fire, water, stone, or blood. Then the students of the college followed. I spotted Maeve, her hair orange in the full moonlight, and for one disorienting moment, I thought it was my own younger self, flanked and supported by Branwen and Viviane after my breathless flight and narrow escape—and the sudden almost incomprehensible knowledge that I carried my father’s child. But young Maeve was not me. I had seen her running back in ordinary human form along the sands. I was here to help her, I remembered. I was here to warn them all. It was not too late.

  Now the rest of the combrogos flooded into the field: warriors, chieftains, farmers, metal workers, not as big a gathering as Lughnasad and Beltane when winter weather did not threaten. But enough representatives from enough tribes for every word said this night to travel, just as the flames of the Samhain fire would travel to every far-flung hearth, uniting the combrogos. For now that mass of people was as silent as the trees, more silent, for their limbs did not sway and creak or whisper the words of the wind. Then the antlered one, the archdruid, no doubt, stepped forward and ignited the blaze. The wood caught quickly, flames towered like waves, sparks flying into the night, holding their light till they seemed to turn to stars. A human roar competed with the roar of fire. Drums pounded and pipes wailed.

  The archdruid lifted his arms, as if with his staff he conducted the sound, served as its conduit to the Otherworld, and then he lowered his arms and sound ceased again; even the wind subsided, and the flames, still bright, burned more softly. With his staff in hand, he slowly circled the fire, stopping to call the quarters. When he came back to center, or as close as he could without standing in the fire, I had a view of him in profile, and I was able to hear his voice.

  “Here now,” he said plunging his staff into the earth, “is the center of the world.”

  I felt disoriented again. I did not recognize the man’s voice, or rather I did, vaguely, but it was not the voice of the archdruid, the voice that still sounded so vividly in my memory pronouncing my sentence of exile beyond the ninth wave.

  “Of course it’s not him,” Dwynwyn said. “The wily old coot died more than ten years back. Of a bad cold!” This fate seemed to amuse her. “He had a terrible case of laryngitis; couldn’t make any deathbed pronouncements. There’s justice for you. I outlasted him.”

  I thought she would burst into a playground taunt any minute.

  “Only one Crow lady still left at the college,” Dwynwyn added grudgingly, “tiny, a dry stick of a woman. Next strong wind will take her.”

  “Really? Which Crow?”

  “Don’t ask me. Never could tell them apart.”

  We students hadn’t been able to either; they hadn’t wanted us to, really. They were a collective entity, like a cluster of rocks or trees. Still, I was glad there was one left. I hoped it was Moira, the one who had distinguished herself through kindness to me after Boudica’s birth.

  “Who is the archdruid now?” I asked. “Why does his voice sound familiar?”

  “That would be Ciaran under that rack of antlers, of the formerly blue-black hair. What a nuisance he was for the eels in his youth, all the girls in love with him.”

  One of my classmates now in charge of the college? It was shocking to think he was old enough. But then Ciaran was actually several years older than me; he’d been in ovate studies when he and Viviane had run off for their trysts in the moonlight, the fruits of which had almost killed Viviane, would have killed her, if I hadn’t halted one of my own escapades to save her life (for which she was eternally grateful and resentful). I wondered how Viviane felt about Ciaran being archdruid.

  “She fought him for the succession,” supplied Dwynwyn. “Wanted the job for herself. Terrible controversy, many undergarments in a wad over it. She finally deferred for the sake of the college and of course the combrogos.”

  “How noble,” I murmured.

  “It’s worked out,” said Dwynwyn. “He respects the hell out of her. Truth to tell they’ve been a bit of an item again since she went through the change.”

  I felt a twinge of jealousy, that Viviane and Ciaran were still here together where they’d always been when I had lost Esus so long ago, then lost him again so long ago. But it passed quickly. They were in no enviable position, as I must soon let them know. When, I wasn’t sure. Ciaran was still addressing the crowd, though I hadn’t been able to follow him, with Dwynwyn gossiping in my brain.

  “You haven’t missed anything,” muttered Dwynwyn. “Some things don’t change. The druids are still full of gas. But pay attention now. Your cue is coming.”

  The archdruid, as I might as well call him, fell silent for a moment. Taking up an unlit torch, he touched it to the fire, ignited it, and raised it, and then he chanted:

  Spark to flame

  flame to hearth

  hearth to heart

  the combrogos stand as one

  the combrogos stand as one.

  As the flame moved from torch to torch, people took up the chant, turning it into a song; the pipes and the drums added deeper wilder notes, and my hairs stood up along my arms. I had never heard this chant when I was a student. Roman invasion then had been only a threat; now it was fully established in the east, making its way west, battle by battle, tribe by tribe. This chant was a call to resistance.

  “Tonight,” the archdruid spoke again when the chant had risen and fallen again to deeper silence, “is the holiest night of the year. The veils between the worlds are thin. The dead can bring messages, and the unborn can speak. We can ally with spirits of the earth that the Romans cannot conceive, for they are strangers here. This soil did not feed them; this earth does not cradle the bones of their dead. I call now upon the spirits kindly to our cause to speak, speak to us, speak through us. Come to our aid.”

  “Go on,” whispered Dwynwyn. “That’s you.”

  “I’m not a spirit,” I protested. “Am I?” suddenly not so sure.

  “You’ll get a better audience if they think you are. They never listened to me when I was alive. Now go on, you old Grey Hag, go.”

  I slipped down from the tree and made my way towards the crowd, regretting the lack of a staff of my own. It would have made a helpful prop, better than elbows for pushing people out of the way. I had to make do with theatrical muttering.

  “Make way for the Grey Hag. The combrogos have called for me, make way.”

  Something about me must have been convincing, maybe the grey cloak itself, for people did as I said and soon I stepped into the pool of light around the fire and faced off with the archdruid, who, considering he had just invoked me, seemed a bit flustered. I expect he would have preferred to channel (and edit) any Otherworldly messages himself. And here I was about to upstage him.

  “Woe!” I astonished myself by saying. “Woe unto the inha
bitants of the Holy Isles, even unto the druids of Mona, I say woe!”

  Where had that come from? Even as I asked myself, I knew, and underneath their masks, I sensed the druids turning pale. They knew, too. Most of them had been there the day Esus had fallen into a fit and prophesied doom. Surely his words sounded in their memories, as they did in mine.

  Yea, the day is coming when the Menai Straits will run red. Black-robed priestesses will stand in the turning tide and shriek their curses, yet devastation will come. A great host will ford the waters. Blood will spill. The groves will burn. The heavens will turn black with smoke, and the earth bitter with ash, and the druids will be gone forever from Mona mam Cymru.

  “Um,” I stalled. “I didn’t quite mean it that way.”

  Surely I had come to prevent, not predict.

  The archdruid took a step closer to me, surreptitiously lifting his mask a bit, which skewed his antlers. He grabbed hold of his headdress just in time to keep it from sliding off.

  “Who are you, spirit?” he addressed me sternly. “Make yourself known to us, if you have business with the combrogos. Or else be gone from here, return to your own side of the veil.”

  Right then, I’ll just be going, part of me wanted to say, but then a voice cried out.

  “It’s Dwynwyn.” Young Maeve pushed her way to the fore of the crowd, as recklessly as I had done many times at her age. “I saw her today. She looked in the well. She had a vision.”

  “Dwynwyn?” I could hear the archdruid frowning. “Dwynwyn is dead or, er, at least departed from the tidal isle she used to call her own.”

  “The veil between the worlds is thin,” I retorted. “Spirits will be spirits.”

  “There was smoke, smoke from her cooking pot,” Maeve insisted. “We went to see her. We saw her with our own eyes. She was going to tell our fortunes, but instead she screamed and screamed.”

  “That will be enough now, Maeve.”

  I thought he was dismissing me, until he signaled a priestess to get my first form namesake to pipe down. Then, before I knew what he was doing, the wily old coot, as Dwynwyn had called his predecessor, whistled up a sudden breeze, just strong enough to blow back my sheltering grey hood and reveal my hair and face for all to see.