Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  I had walked this way before. I had trespassed here before.

  “Branwen,” I whispered. She was walking just ahead of me, and she turned and paused so I could catch up with her. “We’re not going to Bryn Celli Ddu, are we?”

  The Mound of the Dark Grove is the poetic translation, a burial chamber built thousands of years before the druids arrived.

  “We are, Maeve. That is where we spend the longest night. We are reborn with the sun.”

  Death (symbolic or not) and rebirth, everyone’s favorite rite.

  “But I am not an initiate,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, Maeve,” said Branwen. “If you are not, no one is.”

  I supposed that was true. Druid or not, I was the only one who had actually resurrected someone from a tomb. Somehow that knowledge did not make me feel any better about approaching the site just outside the mound where I had conceived a child by rape while my beloved, undergoing his own initiation inside the mound, foresaw his excruciating death to come.

  “Isn’t life just jolly,” I muttered to myself, aware that with this fit of irreverence, I was fending off dread.

  “What was that, Maeve?” asked Branwen.

  It dawned on me that no one, not even Branwen, knew that the Mound of the Dark Grove was where Boudica’s story began. Who knew how it might end?

  “No matter,” I said.

  And we walked on in silence while a waning sickle moon sliced through the twisting branches.

  It had been a full moon night in summer when I approached the mound before, a bright roundness rising from the dark grove. Now, with the trees bare and the moonlight dimmer, the mound was more like a different shaped darkness, and the shadows of the trees were more a blur than a tangle. As we filed towards the entrance, something made me look to my left, and I swear I saw him there, tall, bright-haired, frozen.

  My father.

  I stepped from the line and let the others pass me.

  “Maeve,” Viviane spotted me. “What are you doing? Come along.”

  “Just give me a moment,” I said. “I’ll follow.”

  The mound swallowed up the druid faculty and I faced my father’s ghost alone. I cannot say that we spoke. He never even moved. And yet I swear he was present, and his presence was one of grief so overwhelming I thought I might drown in it.

  Make a way, a voice inside me said, make a way out of nowhere.

  And in that thin, cold light of the darkest night, I made my hands into a cup and let the wave fall through my fingers and melt the frozen ground. I bent and touched the soft, wet earth.

  “Be at peace, Lovernios,” I said aloud. “It is finished.”

  And I turned and followed the others down the narrow passageway into the heart of the mound.

  It was pitch dark inside. I moved carefully to avoid stepping on anyone, and found a place to sit nestled between warm bodies on all sides. If the chamber had been lit, I might have felt claustrophobic. Jesus’s tomb had been palatial compared to this. But as it was, all of us pressed together, it seemed like children playing a game in the dark. I am not the only one who felt that, for among that august body, with no one much under forty, there were quite a few giggles and even now and then a guffaw as we all got settled.

  Then the archdruid’s voice rang out, calling the quarters and proclaiming at last:

  “Here now is the center of world.”

  Instead of his planted staff, the center was a stone standing in the middle of the chamber, a stone I sensed rather than saw. I felt us all quieting, deepening, taking on the qualities of the stone. The only sound was our breath, almost inaudible as we caught each other’s rhythm, so that soon we were breathing as if we were one body.

  “We know the danger that is almost certainly coming to our shores,” the archdruid said at length. “There is no need to debate it. The question before us is how shall we face it? Let us listen for answers in the silence. In the holy darkness, let our inward sight be clear. When words come, let them be words of wisdom and power.”

  The silence spread over us again: fallen leaves over the earth, snow over leaves, stars over stone. Time got lost in the darkness; the confines of space that held us close together dissolved. We were sitting inside the vast womb of night, waiting for words to be born.

  “We must fight,” a man chanted rather than spoke. “We must fight. We must face down the geis laid upon us against druids bearing arms and go bravely to our doom.”

  The silence bubbled into words like a pot coming suddenly to boil.

  “Let each voice be heard,” said Ciaran. “Let silence fall around each speaking.”

  And it did fall, a loamy silence that absorbed any agitation and anger and restored calm before the next voice rose.

  “We must defy doom,” sang another voice, a woman this time. “Defy doom and never break our geis. Let the Romans come and we will stand. We will defeat them with our power. We will call the gods to our side. We must keep faith, keep faith with our ways.”

  The silence now was like a river, bearing us along on a strong current.

  “The Romans’ ways are not our ways, their strength not our strength. They are a fire raging, a wind driving. We are water and stone, secretive, enduring. We must fight according to our nature.”

  Again the silence, a pause between breaths, a wind stilled.

  “We need not stand alone, not alone. The Romans work to turn the tribes one against another. They did it in Gaul; they are doing it to the east and south. We must gather the tribes that are left, call them to stand with us as one people.”

  In this silence unspoken words sparked and crackled.

  “So that we can all be slaughtered as one, all at once?” someone burst out.

  And the fire caught.

  “Ask warriors to die for us who refuse to bear arms!”

  “Why not? Whose wealth supplies their arms? Whose laws unite them? Who remembers their lineages, their stories? We are the head, we are the mind. Without us the combrogos are lost.”

  “That’s exactly why they want to destroy us. Not just exile us, drive us underground. Destroy us.”

  Talk became a conflagration, words leaping and singeing the walls, the air becoming scarce.

  “Silence,” the archdruid called out. “We are druids, not panicked rabble. Listen, listen more carefully, listen more deeply.”

  The renewed silence was a relief, at least to me. It was tempting to let go, to sink down into it and not return. To let it all become a dream. For a time I drifted between waking and sleeping. That’s when I heard Esus’s voice.

  “Everything is in the hazelnut.”

  “Did you hear that?” I spoke for the first time. Esus’s voice had been so distinct, as if he were here in the chamber with us, his voice echoing off the walls.

  “Hear what?” asked the archdruid. “Speak, if a message has come to you for us.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is for you. I remember now. I dreamed it before. And now he is telling me again.”

  “Who? Who is speaking to you?” several voices clamored now.

  “Esus,” I said. “The one you called the Stranger. He said: Everything is in the hazelnut. He said, Tell the druids and they’ll know what to do.”

  The silence that followed was clearly perplexed.

  “The hazelnut will tell us what to do about a Roman attack?”

  Rumination followed as druids searched their voluminous minds for poems, law triads, stories, for an interpretation of this pronouncement. The longest night would never be long enough to exhaust the possibilities. I didn’t even try to follow the nuances. I closed my eyes again, though it was hardly necessary in the darkness. I slipped into the dream again.

  Esus and I are on the Mount of Olives, the Temple is burning. Soldiers swarm in the Kedron Valley, and the air is full of wailing and smoke.

  “All temples fall, Maeve,” he says again. “You’ll have to tell them, if they can’t figure it out for themselves. It’s all in the hazelnut.”<
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  And all at once, I understood.

  “My combrogos.” My voice cut through the cacophony. “Why did the salmon eat the hazelnuts from the well of wisdom?”

  “Why, because they contained all wisdom and knowledge, of course.”

  “What does the skull of a druid contain after a full cycle of training?”

  There was a brief, appreciative silence.

  “Knowledge and wisdom!” everyone chorused.

  “My combrogos,” I said. “In the lands where I have lived in my long exile, there are huge buildings full of scrolls where Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and other peoples store their knowledge and wisdom. If anyone put a torch to these buildings, their knowledge would be lost. The same thing will happen to the combrogos if the druid faculty is hacked to pieces by Romans swords, not to put too fine a point on it. Or perhaps they would take you captive and crucify you, that is, if there was anyone left to gape on you. I am sure you are all brave enough to face such a fate—but do you want that fate for the wisdom and knowledge inside your skulls?”

  I could sense my deliberately graphic description was having an effect.

  “Since, as we have all agreed, that this is exactly what the Romans intend,” resumed the archdruid, “how is this, uh, message instructive?”

  “Wisdom and knowledge,” Dwynwyn snorted, speaking in my head for the first time since Samhain. “When it comes right down to it, they’re not very bright.”

  “Here’s what I think Esus means, and why none of us has thought of it before, I don’t know. It’s so obvious. You’ve got to take your hazelnuts,” here I rapped sharply on my own skull, “and go. Long before the Romans get here. Begin now, in ones and twos, in small boats, so that even an advance scout would not suspect an evacuation, but go.”

  The murmuring now held notes both of excitement and consternation, but I could tell the idea had caught their attention.

  “Where? Say we follow this plan, where would we go?” someone raised his voice above the others.

  “The answer is obvious,” Dwynwyn spoke up again. “They’re just not thinking clearly. Tell them.” To my surprise I did.

  “You must not all go to one place,” I said. “Some will go to Hibernia, some to the remote isles of Caledonia. west and north, to the places the Romans haven’t gone and may never reach. The youngest students must be given the choice to return to their families. The other students must choose teachers to accompany. The teachers must gather again in threes, so that all the branches of wisdom will root and rise in a new place, just as the Yew trees spread their branches and root.”

  No one questioned or protested; I sensed they were as astonished as I was by my sudden authority.

  “See on, Maeve Rhuad,” the archdruid said. “Say on.”

  “In this way,” I continued, hardly knowing what I would say next, “in this way you will defeat the Romans. They will come; they have already come, and one day they will go. Later they will come again in another form, but the wisdom preserved will rise again and go underground again and rise again. And so it is and always will be.”

  I did not know then that I spoke prophetically of the coming of the Roman church; that my old nemesis would conquer, that I would be cast a penitent whore, that the church would build houses in my name and enslave women in the guise of reforming them. I could not foresee the church and all its abuses of the people, of women, of children. And am I to blame for that second invasion, too, because I saved my beloved’s life long ago on the Island of Dark Shadows?

  “There is wisdom in this plan,” the archdruid spoke again. “But here is what I wonder: if the Romans come and find the place deserted, will they not pursue us? Invade Hibernia which they have left alone till now. Can we bring such danger to our combrogos to the west?”

  Voices rose again in consternation. My head began to ache. I buried my face in my hands. I was suddenly so tired. If only it could be over, if only whatever it was could be over.

  “They will not find Mona deserted,” a voice spoke, a voice insubstantial as smoke, light as feathers. “The priestesses of Holy Island will stay to meet them, and welcome to stand with us are the oldest of the old, any druid or any other who has passed along all his wisdom, or anyone who cannot bear the hardships of the journey nor has the will to make a life in a new place.”

  A depthless silence followed as if we had all fallen headlong into a deep well and were falling still.

  “What of the combrogos who make their living from this land, what of the warriors?”

  “They must choose,” said Moira. “To go to a new place or stay and die. They must understand that death is almost certain. To stay is human sacrifice not chosen by lot. To stay is to give blood to the ground, to the sea, to give life to those who must live. To stay is to go to the Isles of the Blest and live among the Mighty Ones.”

  Now a wailing began.

  “Let us all stay!” someone sobbed. “Let us all die together.”

  “No!” the archdruid’s voice rang out. “Maeve Rhuad and our sister from Holy Island have shown us the way. Tomorrow we will begin the task of discerning which of us must go and which stay, according to our responsibility to the combrogos and not our desire for life or death. Others may choose, but the druids must be chosen carefully, each for his particular task. If anyone dissents from this plan, let him speak now.”

  No one did. Eventually the sobs subsided and the silence settled again. We moved even closer to each other, arms wrapped around whoever sat in front of us, head resting against the breast of the one behind. The pounding in my head eased. It would be over soon. I had no doubt of my task. I knew exactly where I would stand. I think I dozed off then. We all did, till the sun, reborn, shot its first ray down the passage grave and we rubbed our eyes and rose, stiffly, again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  OVER THE RIVER HARD TO SEE

  I STAYED ON at Caer Leb to be of what help I could as the druids set to work at once with great efficiency and discipline deciding who would go, in what combinations, when, and where. There was some debate about what messages should be sent to which tribes or if they could be dispatched at all, given the treacherous condition of the mountain passes in the winter. If word of the evacuation got into the wrong ears, the plan could be ruined; on the other hand, the druids felt the closest tribes should be warned of the coming attack and choose for themselves how to respond. After heavy losses in the last years, the Ordovices and the Silures did not have enough warriors for an open battle, but if the general’s army came through the mountains, they could pick off some troops by ambushing them. There was no discussion of going further east into occupied territory. The tribes under Roman rule no longer sent their children to the college; ties were already weakened. If I wanted to get a message to Boudica and Sarah, I would have to go myself.

  “Maeve Rhuad,” said the archdruid when I brought my concern to a meeting in the archdruid’s hut some days later. “You are of course free to go. You wear Dwynwyn’s mantle now and have no need to petition us. But since you have brought the matter here, I will make bold to express an opinion.”

  He was getting almost as longwinded as his predecessor, I noticed.

  “You probably wouldn’t survive the passage through the mountains. If you wait till Spring, it will be too late.”

  “In other words,” Viviane decided to translate, “you’re stuck here.”

  “Unless she comes with us to Hibernia,” said Branwen wistfully.

  I shook my head.

  “Maeve Rhuad,” resumed Ciaran. “Far be it from me to volunteer anyone for human sacrifice, but I rather thought that was what you had in mind. And a very suitable and, dare I say, poetic end it would be.”

  “Do you think so?” I personally thought that was carrying aesthetic appreciation too far.

  “I do,” he said. “A sacrifice stolen, a sacrifice—”

  “Enough!” interrupted Branwen; she was rarely angry, but now her usually pale cheeks were actually red. �
�You said yourself Maeve Rhuad is not under our jurisdiction. She has suffered enough, if any of you cared to know her story at all. Because of Maeve, my father died in peace. I don’t want to hear one more word about poetic justice from anyone, not anyone!”

  A respectful silence followed her outburst.

  “Thank you, Branwen,” I said at length. “It’s not a particularly noble decision on my part. It makes sense, that’s all. It’s just my daughters, I wish—”

  My voice broke as I took in fully for the first time that I would likely never see them again in this life.

  “They would understand,” I added after a moment. “I just wish I could tell them.”

  “Oh, Maeve Rhuad, silly girl,” said Moira, the only one old enough to call me that. “Why climb mountains and brave blizzards. Send your spirit out, girl. Send your spirit. They are your blood; you carried them both beneath your heart. One was born here, and here you met the other’s father. Send your spirit to them. They will hear.”

  Isis knows, Jesus knows, my spirit was more than willing, but in my flesh I wept.

  I did not try to reach Sarah or Boudica while I was still at the college in the midst of all the preparations for evacuation. I stayed longer than I intended, relishing my friendships, the comfort of sleeping next to Branwen just as I had in my youth. But after the morning festivities of Bride’s day, unusually subdued because so many had already left, I rode Macha (laden with supplies for us both) back to Dwynwyn’s Isle, my isle for a little while, the sheep trailing after me, one with two new lambs. Spring was still hidden under the ground, but that ground was softer, and so was the air. Spring was starting its journey north, and it would not be the first Spring of my life to bring sorrow or sacrifice.

  I found my cave remarkably cozy and dry, and I had an ample supply of dried driftwood and seaweed for a fire (though by the time I struck a spark from my flints, I’d already worked up a sweat). I had root vegetables and dried fish ready to be made into stew and, best of all, I still had a keg of red mead. At sunset I sat down to an ample meal and the comfort of warmed drink. The waxing crescent moon drifted down the west with Venus huge and brilliant close by, just as they had been when I was sent beyond the ninth wave in my tiny coracle. I sang the song to the new moon that my classmates had chanted into the night, the song I had sung to Sarah when she was a baby, the song I would have sung to Boudica. The song of the young moon, the daughter moon.