Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  “We have heard and seen enough for tonight,” announced Ciaran. “Away to our dreams and in the days ahead we will continue to divine and deliberate in council. Maeve Rhuad, it is a long way back to Dwynwyn’s Isle. The college will offer you hospitality for tonight.”

  “Take him up on it, honey lamb,” Dwynwyn spoke up again. “It’s hard to shape-shift after a long meeting with the druids.”

  “And after tonight?” I asked.

  “Don’t push it, Maeve.”

  He sounded as tired as I felt.

  I spent the night with Branwen and Moira at Caer Leb in a hut they shared with some of the girl students (radical co-education had been modified since my day). I woke when it was still dark, confused for a moment about where I was—or rather when. My life felt as if it had collapsed in on itself. I had come, not quite to the place of my beginning, but damn close. I was Maeve Rhuad again, and I longed for Esus. Our younger selves were so vivid here. It was hard to believe I could not slip away from Caer Leb to meet him under the yews. It was hard to remember all the long years without him and the brief, brilliant years with him. How could it be that the unborn child he valiantly offered to claim as his own was now an angry queen befriended by his own grown daughter, whom he’d never met in the flesh? And how could I have left both these daughters behind? But here I was with time sitting on me like a study stone. What lessons were mine to sing over? What poem might I make at last?

  “Dwynwyn,” I spoke to her in my mind. “Are you there?”

  But she was silent; my head felt empty as a scoured skull with the wind blowing through it. Maybe she’d gone back to haunt her island. Or, the thought struck me, maybe she was just gone; now that I was here…to take her place.

  “I’ll be with you when you need me, cabbage.” Dwynwyn spoke, but her voice seemed to be coming from somewhere far away. “You’re a big girl now, Maeve Rhuad. An old woman, to be precise, though you’ve still got the fire in the head—and in other places.”

  Even at that distance she managed to cackle lewdly.

  “Wait,” I said. “No one asked me if I wanted to take your place.”

  “Haven’t you learned yet, pigeon pie? Life really doesn’t care what you want. Neither does death.”

  And she was gone again. A little dawn light seeped under the plaid. I got up quietly, clutching the necklace of skulls so that it wouldn’t rattle, and went out to greet the day.

  Outside in the chilly air, I knew what age I was. Moreover, my wing pinions ached. I stood gazing east over the straits, which looked not red but rosy and silver, peaceful, the tides coming and going, minding their own business, indifferent to the plots of human beings.

  “Maeve Rhuad.”

  I startled. I hadn’t heard Moira come up behind me, silent as the shadow she appeared to be.

  “Come walk with me awhile before the whole college wakes up. I’ve got an oatcake for you.”

  That was thoughtful of her; she looked as though she herself never ate at all.

  “How is it you are still alive?” I asked.

  And she laughed, or I think she laughed, a sound like a tree branch rasping in the wind.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That didn’t come out quite as I meant it.”

  “I am too old an old Crow to be offended,” she smiled. “Yes, I know you girls called us old Crows. And quite right, too. We were very old even then; we are beginning to suspect we are immortal.”

  She sounded a little wistful, I thought.

  “Dwynwyn was very put out that you outlived her,” I said. “I think that’s what she was going on about. She predicts your demise with the next strong breeze.”

  Moira’s laughter creaked again.

  “Dwynwyn was always so hostile to the druids, and so competitive with us. She needn’t have been, though I suppose she enjoyed having something to be cranky about. She thought we sold out to the druids; she never understood what we did—or what we are.”

  I wondered if anyone understood. I remembered the first time I saw the black-robed priestesses standing on the cliffs of Holy Island, the western tip of Mona, an island unto itself. Their sleeves whipped into wings by the wind, they looked like crows indeed as they watched my mothers bring our boat about to make for shore. Then, at the interminable admissions procedure, they had blown in on a damp wind to secure my acceptance by standing surety for me. Later, when the presence of girl students proved more disruptive than the druids had bargained for, three priestesses came from Holy Island to tend to our peculiar female needs and natures, in other words to keep us in line—with questionable success in my case.

  “Where are the other two?” I asked. “I’m sorry I never knew their names.”

  “It’s all right,” said Moira. “We hardly knew our names ourselves. Names were only for the convenience of others. My sisters went back to Holy Island when the girls in your form became full-feathered druids qualified to teach. I am the only one who chose to stay.”

  “Why did you?” I asked, curious.

  She stopped walking and turned to look at me, so crow-like, with her eyes bright and beady, her head cocked to one side.

  “It is your fault,” she stated, though without apparent bitterness. “I got caught up in your story. It made me…more human.”

  “But my story, my story here, that is, ended so long ago,” I said.

  “Ah, but it didn’t,” she contradicted. “It hasn’t. And there was your daughter, coming to us at just the age you did. Coming back. Surely you have not forgotten. I was there when she was born. I held you while you pushed her into this world.”

  I took the tiny Crow lady’s tinier hand, so frail but so strong.

  “I have not forgotten,” I assured her. “And I have not forgotten that you went against orders from the druids and told me my daughter would foster with the Iceni, a wealthy tribe, you said, known for their horses and their strong beautiful women. I carried that comfort with me all over the world. And how could I ever forget that you stood up for me at my trial.”

  “I would do it again, Maeve Rhuad. I would do it again. But there will be no need.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  I looked at her face, getting lost in its ancient geography, the ritual inscription of tiny lines crossing tiny lines and then the deeper caverns, river beds made by her bones and hollows.

  “The time of trial is at hand; we will all be tried. All of us together. ”

  We fell silent then, silent enough to hear the tide pause before it turned, silent enough to hear the wingbeats of a flock of curlews scattering themselves across the brightening sky.

  “Will you give Branwen and the other druids a message for me?” I asked at length.

  “I will,” she said.

  “Tell them, when they need me, they know where to find me.”

  She nodded. Then releasing my hand, she turned and began to walk back up the hill. After a few steps, her black sleeves billowed into wings.

  Or maybe it was just the wind.

  In case you are wondering, I walked the seven miles back to Dwynwyn’s Isle. I had tried raising my arms and flapping a few times, but shapeshifting, it seemed, was only for emergencies. At least in my case. Perhaps if I hadn’t gotten kicked out of school so soon I might have been more adept. Oh, the wasted opportunities of my youth. The walk was not unpleasant, the day was cooler than yesterday, but the sun was bright. My trek would have been pleasanter if I hadn’t remembered the taboo about picking berries after Samhain, but I did remember. And Anu knows between druids and Roman troops I had enough trouble without arousing the ire of the Fomorians. I was cheered on by the thought of all the edible, drinkable gifts the girls had brought me and dismayed when I reached my tiny tidal isle to find I’d have to wait for low tide.

  Worn out, I wrapped myself in the cloak and lay down for a nap in the dry, sun-warmed sands. I woke to find Macha, who’d been foraging on this side, ready to take me on her back across the waters to our tiny isle, our home now unti
l the time of trial.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE MOTION OF TIME

  WHEN YOU LIVE alone, more out of doors than in, you understand that time is motion, heavenly bodies moving through space, the sun, moon, and stars hurtling past, the tides following the moon. Under a huge sky, you know the world is round, everything is round; everything is spinning. I had lived alone in my cave for three years, but I felt the motion of time more keenly on the island. In my cave, I could forget or remember as I chose. There was nothing I had to do, nothing I had to know. Now I could not escape knowing that the druids’ time on Mona was running out.

  As the days grew shorter and colder, I spent more and more time curled in my tiny cave in a state between sleeping and waking, almost always dreaming, dreams so vivid I believe I left my body and went traveling in both space and time.

  One night near the longest night of the year, I dream Jesus and I are walking together along the shore by the Sea of Galilee. Where Temple Magdalen should have been there are only the wild roses, the spring that I first found there, and the ruins of the tower.

  “Where did it go?” I cry out. “Who destroyed it?”

  “I am showing you what will be.”

  “Why must it be!” I demand.

  “All things rise, all things fall. Not one stone will be left on stone and yet the stones will sing. Look.”

  And he points across the water, which has become the Menai Straits full of Galilean fishing boats.

  “Cast your nets to starboard!” Jesus calls across the water. “I will make you fishermen.”

  For suddenly I see that they are not fisherman at all. They are Roman soldiers rowing their flat-bottomed boats closer and closer. General Suetonius rises to his feet and steps out of the boat, and the two men walk across the water to meet. I am close enough to see their faces, one helmeted and shaven, one with wild hair whipping on the wind. But they are brothers; it is undeniable. I want to tell them. I think: if only they know, everything will be all right. I step out onto the water, but I sink immediately. The tide is so strong, I can’t swim against it. And the water turns red and roils around me.

  At last Jesus comes back for me. He picks me up and carries me as if I were light as a child, over water, over mountains, until he sets me down on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Temple of Jerusalem, the beautiful gates shining golden as the tree of life, as Sarah’s eyes.

  “This Temple will fall, too,” he says. “Tell the druids everything is in the hazelnut. Tell them, Maeve, and then they will know what to do.”

  Then he leaves me, as he did before, walking across the valley towards the beautiful gates.

  “Let me go with you this time!” I call after him.

  He turns and smiles with such tenderness that I can hardly bear it.

  “Your time is near, Maeve. But not yet. You still have to learn the song of the stones.”

  I woke just before dawn to the sound of pebbles on the shore being rolled by waves. When the tide went out, a young man, a second form student, crossed to my isle with a summons from the druids of Mona. I was called to their counsel. They wanted, the young man said, the benefit of my wisdom. I don’t know if he understood why I laughed.

  I rode Macha to the college, thinking she could use a supplement to her diet of wild grass. The sheep with their strange horns like Celtic knots decided to come along, too, so I had quite an entourage when I rode into Caer Leb. A phalanx of druids and a crowd of curious students greeted me. As soon as I dismounted, some first formers took Macha off for a luxurious session of grooming and a bucket of hot mash. The sheep followed her and were, I understood, to be fed some hay. As for me, I was handed a cup of hot mead and led off to refresh myself in Branwen and Moira’s hut. Viviane, who had her own quarters with the more advanced students, came along with us.

  “So,” I said when I was seated before the fire with a bowl of leek and barley stew. “Have the druids decided not to off me or exile me? Is it official?”

  “Not as official as I’d like,” Viviane frowned. “We made no formal ruling, which I had hoped we would in case there are other cases like yours.”

  The law was Viviane’s first concern. She didn’t like loose ends, especially ends tangled with ambiguity.

  “But there will be no other cases like Maeve’s,” Branwen pointed out. “Maeve is Maeve, and now she has also taken Dwynwyn’s place. Dwynwyn was always beyond the jurisdiction of the druids. Isn’t that what the archdruid concluded?” She deferred to Viviane’s more intimate knowledge of him.

  “More or less,” admitted Viviane, still disgruntled. “But no one has found a law triad to fit the case; no one has made a pronouncement. Ciaran is pragmatic to a fault. What it comes down to is you’re the least of our problems. He doesn’t want to spend time and effort on your case.”

  Very sensible, in my opinion, but I did not say so.

  “My handsome young escort told me that my wisdom is in demand,” I said instead.

  Viviane snorted, not very delicately.

  “It is obvious that you have sources of information,” Viviane conceded, “in this world and in the Other. We want to know more about what you know. You have a chance to make yourself useful, to make up for all the trouble you’ve caused.”

  Trouble I caused! I almost protested before I remembered that the Roman invasion of Pretannia was my fault—or could be argued to be.

  “But I don’t know any more than I’ve already told you. I don’t even know that much for certain, but it makes sense that the Romans would attack Mona. They know the druids fund, feed and direct the resistance.”

  “True, true!” Moira agreed, sounding very owl-like.

  “What we don’t know,” put in Branwen, “is what to do about it. We want you to sit in council with us on the longest night, Maeve. We want you to divine with us, to dream with us, to make a way out of nowhere.”

  The four of us sat quietly for a time watching the fire. Viviane had nothing to add and no dispute. Outside the wind picked up and circled, and the walls of the wattle and daub hut, made of willow, mud, and dung, shivered like any living thing. We all moved a little closer together, and Moira began to sing in the same pitch as the wind.

  A way out of nowhere, a way

  the path of the sea, the path of the moon

  the path of the bright sun over the earth

  the path of the birds, the path of the wind

  a way out of nowhere, a way.

  “The night before he died,” I said, when Moira’s song subsided, “Esus told us, I am the way.”

  “What do you suppose he meant by that?” Viviane asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he meant the way out of nowhere, the way you go when you can’t turn back, when you won’t turn back.”

  Branwen reached for my hand. “At least we’ll be together. I am glad for that.”

  The shortest day dawned. The druids gathered mistletoe and the bards who would fill the night with stories practiced their tales and songs. The air was loud with the sacrifice of pigs for the feast. I had no tasks to perform, nothing I needed to oversee, so I stole away, for the first time since my return, to the Yew trees where Esus and I used to meet in that other lifetime that seemed so close.

  So often, things seem smaller when we return to them years later. Not the yews. They had grown and the grove had spread, the branches rooting and rising again, resurrection after resurrection. I ducked under branches, traveling further in till I came to a very old tree, mother of many, the one that had sheltered Esus and me on the shortest day long ago, the day my unborn child had quickened. I had reached for Esus’s hand and placed it over my womb. “Who went in unto you?” he’d demanded to know. And we fought until I finally screamed the truth I barely comprehended myself. He held me close till I quieted. Then at last we became lovers, and the cold winter world grew warm and green around us. We did not know till later, too late, that my father had seen us, that he had conceived that day his plan to sacrifice E
sus.

  Now I sat in a lap of roots and leaned back against the tree. There was no snow on the ground that was still soft here under the shelter of the branches. I picked up a stick and scratched ogham in the dirt, the same ones my beloved had written in the dust of the Temple of Jerusalem the day he saved me from stoning. Maeve and Esus. I traced the ogham over and over, as if I could conjure him, conjure our youth, make time reverse, as Esus had once expressed it, like a tidal river.

  “Are you sorry now that you didn’t run away with me when I asked you to?” I spoke aloud.

  I had asked him that day, begged him, but he’d refused. He told me we had to stay for the sake of justice, for the sake of truth, that we could not let my father get away with what he had done to me.

  “But no one will believe me,” I had argued.

  “Is that the measure of a truth?” he’d asked.

  “I was right,” I said again to the silent grove. “They didn’t believe me.”

  A wind found its way into the sheltered branches.

  “They believe you now, Maeve,” said a voice, his voice, my voice, the voice of the wind.

  “They believe I am to blame for everything,” I said. “But I would do it again, cariad, I would save you again. That’s all I know of truth.”

  I dug our names deeper into the dirt.

  “Cariad,” his voice tender and amused, “how about this time I save you?”

  “Save me from what?” I asked. “Save me for what?”

  This time only the wind answered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  IN THE DARK

  THE LONGEST NIGHT had already been going on for a long time when the archdruid gave the signal for the druids to withdraw from the revels. He led us by torchlight away from Caer Leb on a path that wound with the Afon Braint in the direction of the deepest, darkest of the groves, forbidden to the uninitiated.