Red-Robed Priestess

by Elizabeth Cunningham

  Of course it is my beloved.

  As I draw nearer to him, he keeps changing.

  One moment he is as old as I am, as old as he would have been if he’d lived. His resemblance to his brother is unmistakable and yet they are nothing alike.

  The next moment he is the boy who stood poised on this very spit of sand, refusing to leave without me until I forced him to go.

  When I reach him at last, he is as I remember him in the dawn garden. His eyes are so like Sarah’s, yet nothing like.

  I want to touch him, but just as on that day in the garden, there seems to be some separation between us that is at the same time no separation at all.

  “Soon, cariad,” he says. “Soon.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Today I will be with you in Tir nan Og.”

  He looks at me so tenderly, amused and sorrowful at once.

  “Don’t count your death wounds before they’re dealt,” he says.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demand. “I am going into mortal battle.”

  “I know,” he says. “I’ll be with you. I am with you always.”

  “You always say that,” I accuse.

  “Because it’s true.”

  “It doesn’t always help,” I say, suddenly angry.

  “I know,” he admits.

  And I forgive him again for leaving me here alone in my flesh for so long.

  “Tell me something,” I say. “I have an enemy I love. You know who he is. You know him. He intends to kill us all tomorrow. What does it mean to love an enemy in battle?”

  He looks at me for a long moment, and then he smiles a small, secret smile, as if there were a joke I should understand, but don’t.

  “Death is as strong as love,” he says. “Sometimes it is the same as love. Don’t worry, Maeve, you’ll know.”

  I woke in that same dawn light shivering, not with cold but because I knew what I intended to do.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  SINGLE COMBAT

  NOW. NO MORE DREAMING, no more debate, no more staring into wells and screaming at visions. Dawn and low tide were at hand. The air was unusually still, and the sound of the Romans’ final preparations carried across the quarter mile or so of ebb-tide water. You could hear footfalls as the men marched the boats to the water, and the rasp of the flat hulls as they launched. You could hear armor snapping into place, cross bows being loaded, ballistae cocked. All of these preparations smooth and practiced. Now the infantry were loading into boats, and the cavalry were mounting their horses.

  We stood waiting and watching; the black-robed priestesses (and the red one) claimed the front line, an honor no one could refuse us. Just behind us stood the last druids left on Mona in full regalia, masks of feathers and headdresses of antlers, gold torcs ready to flash blindingly when the sun cleared the mountains. Behind them waited the woad-painted warriors, laigen ready for the first round of assault, battle chariots at both ends of the beach ready to bear down on the first foot soldiers. Intermixed were farmers and blacksmiths, brandishing any weapons or implements they could find.

  We were ready. We would never be ready.

  As the first ray of sun shot over the mountains, Ciaran paced a circle and called the quarters; then one last time, he planted his staff.

  “Here now is the center of the world.”

  In the silence that followed, even over the din of the Roman bustle, we heard the last sigh of the ebb tide, the held breath, the subtle quickening as the tide turned again.

  “Call him, Maeve Rhuad,” commanded the archdruid.

  I turned toward the west, lifted my arms, and sang.

  Father, my father, oh my father

  away to the lands of the west

  away to the Isles of the Blest

  do not forget us here

  do not forsake us here

  our enemy masses on the other shore

  over the water our enemy comes

  Manannan Mac Lir, Lovernios

  my father and the son of the wave

  lift up your arm to defend us

  lift up your arm to deliver us

  lift up your arm, the arm of the sea

  bring back the bore that bore you away

  Lovernios Manannan Yahweh Sabaoth

  our enemy pursues us across the straits

  yea even across the Red Sea, cover them

  with your mighty waters, deliver us

  deliver us to our own land,

  deliver us to freedom.

  I sang and sang, other voices rose with me, some high, eerie, dissonant, like birds of prey, some deep and mournful, as if a sea monster sobbed.

  And yet the air stayed unnaturally calm and the tide, still far away, seeped in with no urgency.

  The hazelnut is already safe, I heard Lovernios say, his voice far away, a wisp of cloud on a distant horizon. “The hazelnut of wisdom is safe.”

  “He’s not coming,” I turned to Ciaran. “I am so sorry. He is not coming. The wave is not coming.”

  “No matter, Maeve,” he said with heroic kindness. “It was a bit of a long shot.”

  “Look!” Moira suddenly cried out, pointing across the straits. “Look, over there. Everything has stopped. They’re standing frozen, some with one leg in and one out of the boats. They’re scared of us, our song scared them. Come sisters, come brothers, come warriors, come my combrogos, lift up your voices, shriek and howl your prayers. Sing, for the love of Anu, sing!”

  And we did, each in our own way, some praying, some cursing, some wailing, some raging, some lamenting, warriors beating on their shields as drums. Women, some armed and some not, took up torches and began a dance, weaving in and out among the men. The priestesses joined hands and, singing, waded into the straits towards the frozen enemy forces.

  Then I saw him, a man riding out in front of his troops, a man with a general’s crest on his shining helmet that the sun had just struck. I could not hear him over our din, but his men could. I knew what he was doing as he rode up and down the ranks, one hand on the reins, one hand raised and raised again and again: he was shaming them. Do not fear this rabble, this army of women and fanatics. Shamed, the soldier’s fear was turning to fury. They would avenge their moment of weakness, obliterate the shame by obliterating these strange and savage people who howled and painted their faces to look like animals.

  “Ya-a-a-ah!”

  Their battle cry rose suddenly, thousands of voices, one voice, shooting over the straits, breaking our sound barrier.

  Then it all began.

  The ballistae let loose and stones crashed among our ranks, causing immediate disarray. Next to me, one of the priestesses went down. I turned to pull her from the water, but her skull had been crushed; she was dead. All I could do was to haul her to the beach and hope she would later be buried. When I strode again into the water, I saw the flat-bottomed boats advancing like huge water beetles over the straits, the oars for legs, the helmets of the infantry like a knobby shell. Between the boats, the cavalry churned the water as their horses struggled with cross currents treacherous even at low tide. Here and there a rider went down, or a boat capsized, but still they kept coming. Sometimes it seemed that they would never get here; it was all unreal. Each stroke of the oar or plunge of hoof seemed suspended in its own eternity. And then they were upon us.

  Or their weapons were. As soon as they were within range, the infantry hurled their pila, spears designed to bend when they lodged in a shield, so that they could not be pulled out, forcing the warrior to abandon his shield or fight with it disabled—that is, if he hadn’t already been killed. The air was thick with pila, as rank after rank discharged their weapons, and still they kept coming. At first I could hear the sound they made as they whizzed over my head; then I could hear only the screaming as they found their mark, or the desperate cursing as men tried in vain to right their shields. Then there was the sound of the spears our warriors cast bouncing off the superior Roman shields and armor, though now and then one fou
nd an arm or a leg.

  We priestesses and the druids waded further into the straits chanting and shrieking our invocations, doing our best to unnerve and distract. Now the soldiers were disembarking, forming orderly ranks, like some ruthless mowing machine systematically cutting down our wild, disheveled horde. Their swords were out, quick thrusting swords. Ciaran planted himself in front of one soldier, who ran him through, and moved on to the next kill without a glance. I saw the blood bloom on Ciaran’s white robe, just before he collapsed into the straits.

  Ignoring the chaos around me, I went to him and pulled him out of water that was already red with his blood and the blood of many. Fallen druids and priestesses were everywhere. The boats and the soldiers kept coming, an infestation crawling out of the water onto the beach, stabbing and stabbing. On the sands I saw woad mixed with blood. Our warriors were fighting fiercely, without armor, many without shields, swinging their swords, sometimes succeeding in smashing a helmet or finding a soft exposed spot on a neck. But only our chariots disrupted the Roman formation at all, and the Roman cavalry had now arrived in full force. Our charioteers were under systematic assault from the second round of pila as well as crossbows.

  It is almost impossible to describe battle, because when you are in it, nothing seems sequential. Time gets swallowed up in a horrible immediacy. It is so terrifying that you go beyond terror into some strange detachment. I kept moving bodies until there was nowhere to pile them, and the sand was so slippery with blood and guts, I could barely stand. The battle was almost all on land now. How I had survived the first onslaught I cannot tell you. But I had done enough shrieking and wailing.

  It was time for me to join the battle now in full.

  First, I had to find my beloved enemy.

  It was so easy, I didn’t even have to will it. There I was in the air, my doves’ wings a small flash of white among the crows that wheeled and circled.

  “Go for the eyes, my sisters.”

  I heard Moira speak inside my mind. So not all the Crows had been killed. Or maybe they had shifted shape at the moment of death. Maybe I was dead, too. In any case, I had nothing to lose. The best way to love my enemy in this moment would be to kill him, or failing that, be killed.

  From a doves’ eye view, the battle looked even more hopeless for the combrogos. The Romans had taken their famous saw-tooth formation now, trampling over the dead and scooping up the living to be slaughtered as they went. And there, on the sides, on a bit of raised ground, on his huge horse, was the mastermind, the director.

  I flew to him and alighted on his head, just as once long ago, far away in a dream that was more than a dream, I had fluttered down on the head of my beloved. In love and flustered by my nearness to him, I had lost control of my avian bowels and shit on the poor boy’s head in the Temple porticoes, unwittingly humiliating him in front of his elders. I didn’t mean to do it then.

  I did now. Whether I was dead or alive, real or a phantom, the shit hit the helmet. It dripped down the visor, and the general, who was directing massive slaughter, sheathed his sword for an instant to wipe it away.

  When he reached for his sword again, it was gone. I stood before him with his sword in my hand.

  “Your men don’t need you right now,” I shouted over the din. “They know what to do. Dismount and prepare to fight for your life.”

  Under his bespattered helmet, his face turned pale, what I could see of it. I think he actually began to shake; his armor rattled just a little.

  “I don’t want to kill your horse,” I told him. “He’s done nothing to me or my people, but if you don’t get down and fight me, I will.”

  Still he stared at me, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

  “You’re mad!” he finally said.

  “Yes. Now dismount and fight.”

  Somewhat to my astonishment, he did what he was told.

  “What am I to fight with?” he asked. “You have my sword.”

  “You have a dagger and a shield,” I reminded him. “You’re a trained warrior. You’ll figure it out.”

  He looked at me, perplexed.

  “But I could kill you!” he protested.

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little blood!” I gestured towards the killing ground. “Draw your weapon. You will fight me.”

  “How did you get my sword?” he was still confused.

  Another bit of guano dripped off the visor of his helmet, and light dawned, so to speak.

  “Have it your way,” he said. “But let’s even the odds.”

  Shape-shifting is not something you can see happen. There are no directions, no sequential steps that you could record or teach. It happens and you make a leap into another world, another form. One moment the general stood before me, and the next my eyes tracked the flight of a hawk, rising into the air, seeking the thermal currents. Then I was in the air, too, in my dove form. Evened odds? Hardly, but I had no time to quibble. While he circled, I flew higher and higher, till I was ready to dive straight down, straight for those keen hawk eyes. (Go for the eyes, sister.) He was ready for me, and just the moment before my attack, he twisted on the air and raked my breast with his talons, letting me know he meant business, but not wounding me mortally. I rose and dived again, then dived and rose, as he turned on the air and held the center of the circle of attack.

  Below us the battle went on, methodically, horribly, no one hearing the screaming hawk, or the throaty cries of the outraged, outranked dove. Then the fires started. The groves were being put to the torch. Heat rose and smoke billowed into the sky we had made our battlefield. I could no longer see my opponent, but I could hear him. He was calling me, calling me to follow him out of the smoke, away from the flame.

  When we came to earth again, to our human selves, we were standing under the yews overlooking the straits, far away enough for now from the burning teaching groves.

  “Have you had enough?” he asked.

  I looked out over the straits, red with blood, wreckage and bodies floating and swirling on the tricky tides and currents. I listened to the roar of the fire, tasted the ash on the air. Bitter. Bitter. And this was only the beginning. More devastation would come unless by some fluke I managed to kill the one who commanded this huge trained beast.

  “No,” I said. “Let’s finish this.”

  Somehow I still had his sword. Since I had no shield, he laid his down and unsheathed, not the standard dagger that all Roman soldiers carried as their second weapon, but a ritual blade with a fine point and an intricately carved hilt. The weapon seemed alive in his hand, live as the forms depicted on the hilt: snakes, birds, and bees, from what I could make out. It looked like the work of a Celtic metalsmith; it would be a perfect votive offering to the gods. I could almost see it, spinning through the air, splashing into Llyn Cerrig Bach. Its beauty distracted me.

  “Etruscan,” he told me. “Made with magic. I keep it for special occasions, when I must make ritual sacrifice.”

  Silently I wondered how it would be to die on that blade.

  Aloud I said, “You cheat!”

  And I lunged for him with his sword, so crude, so clumsy an instrument by comparison. He caught my blade and turned me with it, pricking me in the shoulder. I whirled all the way around and brought down the sword for an overhead blow. He stepped nimbly aside and caught my blade on a hilt that seemed much too delicate for this task. I fought on and did my best to use the sword in a Roman manner with quick upward thrusts. These he parried or drove downward, so that I once cut my own knee. Still I kept going, grazing him a few times when my sword bounced off his blade and caught his arm or face. Whenever he found an opening, he pricked me again, up and down my arms and legs, on the backs of my shoulders, almost as if he were making a ritual inscription for his ritual sacrifice.

  “Why are you drawing this out!” I demanded.

  But just then, to my surprise, I managed to find a weak spot in his armor where the shoulder plates met the torso. He sprang back b
efore I could do more than scratch him.

  “Good!” he said as if he were my fencing coach.

  “Don’t patronize me!” I shouted. “Kill me and have done with it!”

  “There’s no art in that,” he answered, hardly winded.

  “This is not a game!” I snarled.

  “Of course it is a game,” he said. “It’s all a game. If you see it that way, you’ll save yourself grief, and your technique will improve.”

  I saw an opening and went for his leg, managing to slash it before he caught and circled my sword, lifting my arm, then drawing his blade just over my breast, which he could have cut off had he chosen to.

  “Next time go for an artery or a tendon,” he instructed. “Now make me sweat a little.”

  Goaded, I managed to do just that. As we fought on and on, I didn’t think anymore. I caught some kind of rhythm and just moved. I discovered I was able to feel what he was going to do before he did it, and his pricks and scratches became less frequent. I found myself falling into a trance, light-headed perhaps from the loss of blood from my minor but multiple wounds. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw ogham, the blood drying in patterns, stems and cross strokes. Insanely, I looked down at my arms, trying to read the secret inscribed there. He should have killed me then. Instead, when I looked back, I found him standing out of my range, near the oldest yew tree, the one where Esus and I had always met, where we had become lovers long ago.

  In one hand, he still held his blade; in the other, what I took at first for a shield, and then recognized as a mirror, a small bronze mirror as beautifully wrought as the blade, a mirror that belonged to the gods. He gazed at me steadily as the mirror pivoted in his hand, back and forth, like a leaf fluttering on a subtle breeze. A slanting ray of late sun found its way into the green world under the yews and struck the mirror, which kept turning, spiraling in and out of light, until at last he held it still.