Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  The druids looked at me in confusion, for they all knew Dwynwyn by sight. I did not have that theatrical mantle of white hair. I also had two matching eyes, whereas Dwynwyn had a cloudy one that wandered.

  “Take off your cloak,” Dwynwyn urged. “I love to see them flummoxed.”

  Since it was quite warm this close to the fire, I took her suggestion. The red tunic looked even redder by firelight, and the necklace of skulls gleamed. I gave them a provocative little shake.

  “You are not Dwynwyn’s spirit.” The archdruid tried to sound authoritative but failed.

  “Actually, I am afraid I am, or the next thing to it. She seems to have gotten lodged in my skull. She talks all the time.”

  “That is not true,” objected Dwynwyn. “I only speak when I have something important to say.”

  I didn’t bother to relay that remark to the archdruid.

  “I called for the spirits of the land. But you…appear to be incarnate.” Again he sounded more uncertain than he might have wished.

  The combrogos sensed it; a murmuring began that could easily get out of hand.

  “Is that a problem?” I asked.

  “It depends on who you are.”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am,” I jumped in before he could ask me my name and lineage.

  I had not been able to pick out Viviane or Branwen in the masked circle, but surely they were here somewhere. If Viviane hadn’t outed me, I must still be persona non grata on Mona and be in enough danger that she felt bound to protect me.

  “It only matters what I know. Hear me, my combrogos.”

  I grabbed the reins from the archdruid and turned to address the crowd.

  “Atta, girl!” crowed Dwynwyn.

  But suddenly I felt at a loss. What was I to say? You’re in danger from the Romans? They already knew that.

  “Long ago, and not so long ago,” I began, “a young stranger walked in your midst, a stranger sent by the gods, a stranger you tried to send to the gods, because he told you truths you did not want to hear. He told you that when you buy and sell each other, Rome has already won. He foresaw the end of the druid college at Mona.”

  The crowd was quiet now, a dreadful eye of the storm quiet.

  “I have seen it, too,” I said more softly, but everyone heard me. “I have seen it, too.”

  “We will hear more of this,” the archdruid said to me in a low voice. “In council. You must not sow fear in the hearts of the combrogos. Speak words of courage to them. Now!”

  A command performance, if ever there was one.

  “Long ago and not so long ago,” I said again, “far away and as near as my heart, that young stranger went to his death, the god-making death. I have seen him in Tir nan Og. I have stood with him at the world’s heart under the tree of life, the golden tree with leaves that shine with their own light.”

  I held out my hands towards the druid’s staff and felt the fire of the stars flowing through them. I heard the crowd draw in its breath as they saw the tree, so huge, so bright, the fire paled. Then I saw something more wonderful still: my beloved standing under the tree, looking even younger than he had that morning outside the tomb, young as a boy, as the young stranger Esus. He held out his hand and beckoned to me to come and stand with him under the tree.

  And I did.

  I could not see the crowd anymore; I could not hear the roar of the fire. But I could feel the earth cool and damp with dew; I could smell the sweet, spicy air.

  “Maeve, cariad,” he spoke, to me or within me; it didn’t matter. “You are in trouble with the druids again.”

  I could hear the laughter in his voice. I wanted to laugh, too, but the joy was so deep it welled up in a different way.

  “There’s nothing to fear, Maeve.”

  Then he was gone again and the world hurtled back as a tiny woman in black stepped forward, her ragged wings unfurling as she raised her arms.

  “She has returned. I have lived to see it. Maeve Rhuad has returned!”

  I stepped forward and embraced her; it was like holding a feather.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the druids conferring in their secret code, forming ogham by placing fingers on the bridge of the nose. It seemed there was general consensus. The archdruid began to disperse to the crowd.

  “My combrogos, powerful messages—and messengers—have come to us tonight from beyond the veil. Away to your own hearths now, to your own tasks, be they humble or heroic. And we to our work of discernment and divination. May the Mighty Ones be with us and protect us all.”

  Before anyone could object the druids started up the chant again and the drums and pipes carried the crowd on its way.

  Spark to flame

  flame to hearth

  hearth to heart

  the combrogos stand as one

  the combrogos stand as one.

  And I was left alone with the entire faculty of the druid college for the first time since my trial.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE DRUIDS OF MONA: REPRISE

  “WHAT IN THE THREE WORLDS was that all about?”

  The archdruid pulled off his antlers and mask and ran his hands through what was left of his hair, sweaty and plastered to his skull. I had to bite my lip to keep from giggling at the sight of Ciaran of the blue-black hair nearly bald. At a signal from him, the others doffed their masks, too. It seemed I was in with the in crowd. Or maybe they were just tired and cranky, wishing they could be heading for their beds instead of dealing with me. I glanced around the circle. Viviane was scowling ferociously, and Branwen was beaming.

  “What was what all about?” I asked.

  “Sit down, everyone,” said Ciaran. “This could be a long night.”

  When we were all seated cross-legged on the ground, the archdruid turned to me.

  “Maeve Rhuad, if that is who you are, perhaps we should establish your identity first, or your identities. You have claimed more than one.”

  He made it sound like a criminal act, but then on Mona I was a criminal.

  “I am Maeve Rhuad,” I stated. “I am also called by some the Grey Hag, which is a more accurate description of my appearance. And Dwynwyn does talk to me. As you see, I have inherited her tunic and her… accessories.” I rattled the skulls for effect. “Is everything clear now?”

  Across the circle, Viviane frowned at me even more deeply and shook her head slightly. Was she warning me not to be cheeky with the archdruid or did she think I was flirting with her old/new beau?

  “Perfectly,” answered Ciaran.

  He was still so suave. I found myself remembering the time he and Esus had come upon Viviane and me brawling over my rock-painting with menstrual blood. He had restrained Viviane and Esus had exposed himself to horrific uncleanness by restraining me. I found myself blushing decades after the fact.

  “Just as it is perfectly clear that you are here in the Holy Isles and on Mona unlawfully. You were exiled and excommunicated for life.”

  I am afraid I shrugged, rolled my eyes (subtly I hoped) and stopped just short of saying, So? What are you going to do about it? Facing authority figures I had last seen when they were teenagers was having an odd effect on me.

  “Pardon me, Archdruid,” Viviane spoke up, “I am afraid that is not perfectly clear from a legal standpoint.”

  My jaw almost dropped. Viviane was going to stick up for me? Against her boyfriend?

  “Speak on, esteemed brehon.”

  I understood. This formality was their secret love language. Later tonight they would tear each other’s tunics off.

  “As I recall” (and everyone present knew Viviane’s recall was perfect) “when your predecessor pronounced sentence on Maeve Rhuad, he used these words: Having broken the laws of this college, which are the laws of life, having meddled in high mysteries, having willfully endangered the combrogos, you shall from this moment forward be excluded from all our rites and sacrifices. You shall furthermore be exiled from the shores of the Hol
y Isles and sent beyond the ninth wave, there to meet the judgment or mercy of the sea.”

  I must admit, it was chilling to hear those words again, even in Viviane’s voice.

  “Precisely. An unambiguous sentence of excommunication and exile,” said Ciaran.

  “You are overlooking the fact that your predecessor left final judgment to the sea,” argued Viviane. “The sea ruled in her favor. We have debated this question before without conclusion, because until now no one has ever returned. Now we must decide what to do in a case that is in fact without precedent.”

  This really was shaping up to be a long night. An argument like this one could go on for days, for weeks, for years. I had to distract them from this legal quagmire that could suck us all down while, back at the fort, General Suetonius’s troops hammered away at their flat-bottomed boats and each breath Prasutagus took brought him closer to his last.

  “It doesn’t really matter what becomes of me,” I spoke before the Archdruid had time to make a considered reply. “I didn’t come here to ask you to reverse my excommunication or my exile. For all I care, you can put me out to sea again or kill me three times over or just pound me into the pit. As long as you listen to what I have to say first. I came here with a message.”

  “I thought you already gave it,” said the archdruid. “You prophesied doom, did you not?”

  “She also showed us the tree of life,” Branwen defended me. “She brought us all to Tir nan Og. She and the Stranger. She and Esus.”

  “Who is long dead, if I understand Maeve Rhuad correctly?”

  Ciaran actually sounded sad; Esus had been in his form. They had been friends, I remembered.

  “Who is long dead,” I acknowledged. “And who lives. He has become a Mighty One.”

  “Is your message from him?” Ciaran asked. “Will he intercede for us, even though he is the one who condemned us, who foresaw our end so long ago? Even though we tried to kill him?”

  That was a count against the college, I might have said, but Jesus had never held a grudge against the druids for attempted murder by triple death. Still, even though his followers were always invoking his authority and praying for his intervention, I had never felt comfortable speaking for Jesus or telling him what to do. I decided to dodge the question.

  “My message is from Queen Boudica,” I stated.

  “Queen Boudica!” The archdruid was taken aback. “You have seen Boudica?”

  “Yes, I have seen Boudica, my daughter, to whom you druids lied shamelessly—and shamefully. And by the way do I look like a silkie to you?”

  I was getting a little hot under my red tunic. I might be a returned convict, but I had grievances of my own with the druids.

  “Maeve,” Viviane spoke up. “You know none of us here concocted that story.”

  “But you all perpetuated it! You all knew the truth.”

  There was an awkward moment during which I hoped the druid faculty examined its individual and collective conscience.

  “Whether we were right or wrong in sustaining a deception deemed necessary by my predecessor,” resumed Ciaran, “we are not on trial here.”

  “Neither is Maeve Rhuad,” spoke up Moira. “A court has not been convened. Let us hear the message she has crossed the Holy Isles to give us.”

  “Proceed,” nodded Ciaran.

  “Queen Boudica asked me to tell you how it is with her and with the Iceni.”

  And as the moon fled the clearing, and the cold tightened our circle, I told them everything I could about the Roman procurator bankrupting the tribes by calling in the loans, about the conscription of young men, and the warriors in hiding, about Prasutagus’ illness. I told them about everything but the desperate compromise in his will, which he had made me promise to keep secret.

  “She asks you to send help,” I concluded.

  There was another silence. It settled in my stomach like something heavy and unwholesome.

  “What kind of help?” Ciaran asked at length.

  I supposed Boudica wanted warriors from the free western tribes to stand with her when Prasutagus died, to protect her claim—or her daughters’ claim—to her land, but in point of fact she hadn’t spelled it out.

  “She just said, send help. Figure it out for yourselves!” I said suddenly exasperated. “She will soon be a widow with two young daughters and a meager army! Aren’t there warriors at your command? Could you give her family asylum here, if they had to flee? She trusted you once. She revered you. She left Mona against her will; she made the best of a bad situation. She married a king who promised to stand with her against disarmament. She led a rebellion. It was no fault of hers that he made a bad bargain with the Romans in the end. But she will be left with the debt. Could you not send gold at least?”

  The druids controlled the gold route from Hibernia’s Wicklow Hills to the rest of the world. In my youth, I’d seen votive offerings—torcs, mirrors, weapons, whole chariots—tossed into a boggy lake. The druids could just go trolling for it if they ran short, though I supposed it would be considered bad form to steal from the gods.

  “Maeve Rhuad,” said Ciaran, “perhaps word has not reached the eastern tribes of the heavy losses to the Ordovices and the Silures. They have been beaten back to their borders. To the north the Deceangli are now under direct Roman control. The western tribes have never fully recovered from the defeat and capture of Caratacus.”

  I glanced at Branwen, who kept her face impassive at this mention of the defeat that destroyed her brothers. But I could sense how much pain she concealed.

  “As for gold, it has all gone to the border tribes to keep them in arms. We would of course offer Boudica such asylum as we can provide, if she wishes to return here, if she can make her way through the occupied territories.”

  Now I was silent. They knew and I knew that Boudica would fight first and that her chances of slipping through enemy lines were nil.

  “I am sorry, Maeve Rhuad,” Ciaran said at length. “I had hoped for a different message from Boudica. We thought, at one time, she might be able to unite the eastern tribes against the Romans and that between us we could drive the Romans out.”

  I felt an odd little shiver run over me, a sense of déjà vu that I could not keep hold of.

  “She tried,” I said sharply. “Her husband was never of the same mind. I told you: they’ve been estranged for some time. She lives in the old way, refusing all Roman luxuries. She’s kept faith with Mona. What have you ever done for her?”

  Ciaran looked at me for an uncomfortably long moment, as if weighing some decision—about me.

  “The truth is, Maeve Rhuad, ever since the capture of your foster father, King Bran the Bold, the druids of Mona have sensed a fissure in our stronghold, in our power to protect the combrogos, one my predecessor sought to seal with the quinquennial sacrifice.”

  That you prevented, he did not say. But the words, unspoken, charged the air and stirred the old guilt I’d never quite let go. It’s your fault, guilt whispered: the Roman invasion, all the death and suffering and oppression to this day and yet to come. It is all your fault.

  “Archdruid,” protested Branwen. “On behalf of my father, whose name you have invoked, I must object—”

  “It’s all right,” I interrupted. I could not bear for Branwen to defend me. “I did stop that sacrifice. If what you imply is true, then it is fitting that I am here with you now, to be of what use I can, to share with you whatever end awaits. That is, unless you would prefer to sacrifice me. I’m quite willing.”

  The archdruid let out a heavy sigh.

  “It’s not a quinquennial year,” he pointed out. “And besides, as I recall, you were rejected as a sacrifice before. Now you are a criminal or at the very least an excommunicate and returned exile. Sacrifices must be perfect, without blemish in body or character.”

  Just like at the Temple of Jerusalem, only there the rules applied to doves, goats, and bullocks.

  “Have it your way,” I shrugged.


  “Now about your prophecy of doom,” the archdruid resumed, as if it were merely by the by. “The Menai Straits running with blood and all that—”

  “I didn’t get that far,” I interrupted. “All I said was Woe unto the druids of Mona. But it jogged your memories. It was Esus, the one you called The Stranger, who made that prophecy. And you remember, you all remember it perfectly.”

  I paused, wondering at my own insistence.

  “But you said you saw it, too, this end. And the girl said you shrieked instead of telling those silly fortunes. Come clean now, if you want to help. Tell us what you saw.”

  I nodded. There was no point in fighting with the druids. That was just a distraction, just a way of trying to hold on to a past that was already gone, a way of avoiding a future that looked unbearably grim.

  “I did see it when I looked in the well of eels, the Menai Straits red with blood just as Esus described it long ago. I did shriek, just as I will when that day comes.”

  No one spoke for a time.

  “Must it come?” said Viviane at last. “Maeve, must it?”

  “I don’t know. It is so hard to say with visions.” Though too many of mine have come to pass, I did not add. “Perhaps it is only a warning. But there is something else I must tell you that is not a vision at all. You know there is a new governor?”

  “Yes,” said Ciaran. “He has a reputation for ruthlessness. Maybe that is just as well; there will be no temptation to bargain with him.”

  I felt a little sick as I remembered my attempts to do just that, and I feared, if they knew, the druids would not regard me as a diplomat.

  “Well then,” I went on. “It should hardly surprise you to hear that the governor is spending the winter building boats. Flat-bottomed boats.”

  To my relief, no one asked me how I knew, though if they had I would have told them. I sensed a shift in the atmosphere. All our self-importance, all our defenses were falling away. We were just people, once young, now old, who might have to face death together.