Brigid of Ireland (Daughters of Ireland Book 1)

by Cindy Thomson

  “In the hearts of some men.” “Men?”

  “Aye. Some women also perhaps. But ye’ve nothing to fear from washing the filth from ye in the river. God created the river. ’Tis not evil.”

  Aine smiled, revealing a simplicity that only children possess. The lass was beginning to trust her. Brigid watched as the child lumbered off toward the water.

  “Careful, now. Do not wander too far off.”

  “’Tis not deep, Miz Brigid. Up there I can see a place to cross.”

  The ford. Praise the Lord. They’d made it.

  The habitation could be seen through the trees, but as Maire said, one had to look. The series of buildings built from fallen trees looked at first glance like shelters for pine martens or weasels. They so blended into the landscape that Brigid wondered what the monks were hiding from. There were so many people who needed to know about the love of Jesus. Why had God’s people obscured themselves in the woods?

  “My uncle’s name is Cillian. He reads words out of marks. Mother said he’d teach me. I need to stay with him, Miz Brigid – so I can learn. Please don’t send me back to my mother yet.” “Ye mean he writes?” Brigid longed to learn also.

  The lass, her brown hair still damp, shrugged her shoulders. “I believe so. Anyway, he’s going to teach me.”

  “Cillian. Aye, ’tis as yer mother told me. Said I’m to put ye into his service for a time. Is that what ye want, child?”

  “Aye. To learn to speak those marks and to… write, as ye said. My mother says I can become wiser than any druid. Says my uncle has God’s words on parchment.”

  The rude huts were only paces away. Brigid was not sure how to introduce herself. The monks would not be expecting her or this child. She had no choice, nowhere to go. Surely men of God would not turn them out.

  Just as they were about to approach some men huddled in the center of the settlement, Brigid stopped short. “They might be praying. Let’s wait.” She pulled Aine over to a pile of chopped wood. They sat and waited. Minutes passed, but the men did not move.

  Aine leaned in to whisper. “How much longer?”

  “I don’t know, little miss. Prayers can take as long as one… ” A gray blur of fur streaked in front of them. Without warning a wolf leaped into the clearing. His eyes were wild and spittle dripped from his long white teeth. Aine let out a scream and the monks faced them and gasped.

  Brigid pulled the lass behind her and held out a hand toward the animal. “There now. What have ye come looking for? Has a hunter scared ye?”

  “Woman!” a monk shouted. “Are ye so crazy as to talk to a wolf? Philib, man, fetch the spear.”

  “Nay. There’s no need.” Brigid kept her eyes on the animal. “He’s frightened, that’s all. Can ye not see that?” The wolf lowered its eyes to the ground and stepped toward her like a camp puppy. “’Tis fine now, wolf. Yer safe here.”

  “Safe? Are ye mad?” The monk who had spoken earlier stood with the others near a fire. He reached for a torch to light, all the while keeping his eyes on the wolf.

  “Someone’s hunting him. Hide him in yer dwelling.” The monks looked at each other.

  Brigid stared at the one who seemed to be in charge. “Ye’d better do it now before it’s too late. If the wolf feels cornered, he’ll tear us all apart.”

  “Do as she says,” he ordered.

  The men held open the pelt door of one cloister, and the animal ducked inside.

  The one called Philib waved his hand in front of his chest. “Now what?”

  Hoofbeats held off the answer. Four riders emerged from the woods with painted spears. “Seen a wolf?”

  “I’ve seen many,” the head monk answered.

  The men rode off in pursuit of distant howls. As soon as they were out of sight, Brigid released the animal. He disappeared as quickly as he had come.

  The head monk marched up to her. By his thinning hair she judged him to be in his fourth decade of life. “Now I must ask, young woman, who are ye to have such rapport with the creatures of the wild?”

  Aine answered. “Kind Brigid. She’s bringing me to my uncle Cillian.”

  The monk knelt beside the girl. “And ye’ve found me, Aine.”

  Brigid and Aine were treated to a fine meal of boiled beef – a gift from a visitor, they were told.

  Cillian poured ale and then reclined on a straw mat. Other monks busied themselves with manuscripts in their private dwellings. “My sister vowed the day that little Aine was born that she’d send the girl to me for training. Seems that day has finally come.”

  “I was sick, uncle.” “Oh?”

  Brigid explained. “She had sores, boils. It was pitiful. Her mother sent her to ye to hide her from her father.”

  Cillian reached for Aine who scuttled to his side. He brushed back her nearly-dry golden-brown tresses. “I see no marks at all.”

  “Brigid prayed for me, uncle. On our trip here. There were terrible hungry people who pulled at our cloaks.” Aine went on to detail their adventure as though she were a bard with a harp entertaining a crowd with legends and song. That one had the gift of storytelling.

  Cillian cast Brigid a long look while speaking to his niece. “Seems this young woman has healing gifts from our Lord along with the ability to tame wild animals.”

  Aine giggled. “Aye, she does. Can she stay, uncle? Ye can teach her to read marks, too.”

  “I’d be pleased. We’ve got an empty dwelling suitable for ye both.”

  Chapter 7

  “You never miss the water till the well runs dry.”

  Old Irish proverb

  Brigid took the opportunity to ask a question when she helped serve the evening meal. “Why have ye hidden yerselves here?”

  Five men ranging from Cillian’s middle age to as ancient as the oaks sat around a rock that served as an outdoor table. They didn’t eat from a communal bowl. Brigid thought the monks had odd manners.

  Cillian didn’t look up while he heaped stew prepared from yesterday’s beef into each monk’s wooden bowl. “How old are ye, Brigid?”

  “Sixteen springtimes, I’m told.” “Doesn’t yer mother remember?”

  Brigid had no desire to talk about her mother. She hoped her travels would bring her to mother’s doorstep one day, but the details were too painful to relate to strangers. “My mother is not with me.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “I’m sorry to hear that. Where are ye from? If ye do not know why we have concealed ourselves, yer certainly not from nearby.”

  “For most of my years I lived with my father up north. In the territory of King Dunlaing.” Brigid cut a loaf of brown bread and followed behind Cillian, serving each man a slice that Aine topped with a dollop of honey.

  Cillian sat with his brothers in the Lord. “I’ll tell ye, Brigid, since yer too young to know.”

  One of the brothers gulped down his food and stood. “I care not to hear it again.” He hurried to his hut.

  Cillian followed him with his eyes. “’Twas not so long ago there was a raid very near here.”

  Brigid was curious. “A raid?”

  “Not of cattle, mind ye, but of workers for the Lord.” Cillian ate, slopping his bread into the stew the way Brigid had seen Dubthach do.

  “Two of my brothers were killed as they gathered peat for the next season’s fire.” He swallowed hard and reached for his ale.

  Brigid stretched out her hand to comfort him, but he pulled back sharply.

  “They seek to kill us, those devils! The kings are powerless against druids who evoke evil spirits.”

  Brigid sent Aine off to ready their sleeping hut since she’d eaten earlier. Children should not hear such terrible talk. The monks were probably not used to caring for children.

  After the wee one scampered off with an armload of fleece for covers, Brigid whispered, “But God is more powerful than druids.”

  Cillian’s eyes spread wide, his nostrils flared. “Don’t speak of things ye do not understand, las
s. Ye may have grown into a woman, ye may think yer wise, but ye’ve never been through the worst.”

  He had no idea. What could be worse than losing your mother?

  He was quiet for a moment, and then, after he finished his meal, settled into a slump like a hibernating bear and told the story while she ate. “The brothers were opening a new peat bed. Hard work, that, riding the bog of grasses and such. They’d been laboring most of the day not too far from here, just to the east. Takes a short time to walk there if yer donkey’s not in a foul mood.” He gazed at the clouds overhead. “’Tis a bog soiled by blood now. We won’t go there. We use wood we cut from the forest to warm us through the winter.” He scratched his orbed belly through his brown linen cloak – the color of a peat bog. He smelled like one too, earthy and damp.

  Cillian’s voice grew louder and tight. “Druids in robes, looking like winged gulls, swooped in, waving swords like warriors. Curse those druids! ’Tis not their role to take up weapons.”

  “You saw them?” Brigid had heard many tales about the cloaked men pagans called priests, poets, and prophets, but she had never laid eyes on one.

  “Nay, not me. But Philib, the brother who left as I began to tell ye ’bout it, witnessed the whole attack.”

  “How awful.” Brigid wondered how witnessing such unprovoked violence would affect someone. Now she understood why they hid.

  “Did ye send for the king? Did ye have the druids arrested?”

  The remaining monks gathered up the dishes and disappeared from the dining rock. Cillian stood and looked down on her, making her uneasy.

  “Ye may be sixteen springs, soon to be seventeen since the winter’s now breaking, but ye know nothing of the world, miss.” He slapped his foot on the rock and withdrew a small knife from the leather laces of his boot. “This is justice, should I ever see another druid. No king will stand up to those devils. They fear their curses. They should fear God.”

  “But the Bible says justice is the Lord’s.”

  He rammed the knife into the dirt next to the dining rock. Brigid gasped and knocked over her wooden bowl of broth.

  She hurried to wipe up the spill with her apron, but he held her back.

  “Listen to me, little lass. I am the Lord’s servant. If he wishes to use me to enact his justice, so be it.” His voice seemed to shake the branches above their heads. Was he really hiding? Or was he lurking in the woods, hoping for an opportunity to avenge the monks’ murder?

  She turned away from his angry expression. “I… understand. I do.”

  Brigid hastened to her sleeping quarters where Aine slept secure under fur blankets. Lord, why am I here? This man is no better than Dubthach. He says he’s a Christian, but he seeks revenge for his own pleasure. Are Aine and I safe here? Is it worth staying here just to learn to write?

  Soon Brigid had her answer. The poor, the lonely, the hungry, had found her. And she now had something to give them. She was living with Christians, so it seemed, and a worker for the Lord always gives to the poor.

  “Here now, “ she said to a fellow. “Take these eggs to yer wife and let her cook them over the fire. Tomorrow I’ll fetch ye some cream from the monks’ dairy.”

  The poor soul’s face was covered in grime, but his eyes were sprite and excited. “’Tis so kind of ye. The monks rarely give away their food. Only twice a year on feast days.”

  “Feast days?” She could barely believe what she heard. Did the monks follow pagan feasts? Perhaps they were not what they seemed.

  The beggar blinked. “Aye. Ye know, the Christian feasts? The celebration of yer god’s birth and death. Falls on the breaking of winter and the breaking of spring. Well, thank ye again.” He crept under the brambles surrounding the monks’ gathering of log huts and then disappeared down the road near the river, in the direction Brigid and Aine had come from.

  The pagan feasts occurred at the times the fellow described as Christian feasts. Dubthach had allowed the pagans working for him to build large fires and celebrate in their own way. Sometimes they wore repulsive masks and drank ale far into the night. Their chants drifted into the window of the maidens’ quarters where Cook and Brigid retired.

  Cook had never let Brigid witness the pagan rituals, although once she spied Dubthach scurrying out to join the dancing, singing, and drinking. She had been curious, but Cook insisted that Christians should never take part.

  Brigid wondered how Christians celebrated such feasts. She returned to her chores. Since she was an experienced milkmaid, Cillian allowed her charge of the monks’ dairy in return for food, shelter, and occasional instruction in writing. She freshened the rushes scattered on the dirt floor of the dairy. The monks thought such comfort inappropriate for an animal shelter, but Brigid believed in making all God’s creatures comfortable. Besides, she thought of the place as her home.

  She finished the task and contemplated the beggar’s words. Christian feast. He’d said something about the Christian God’s birth and death.

  The door flew open and Aine entered, looking bright and alert in the new dress Brigid had made her. In the months they’d spent with the monks, the little lass had grown enough to need new garments.

  “’Tis time for instruction, Miz Brigid.”

  Brigid hung her broom on a peg on the back of the door. This was worth all the trouble. “What do ye think we’ll learn today?”

  Aine lifted the lid of a butter churn and stuck in her finger. “I expect we’ll be copying words from a book by Luke. Uncle says that has the story of the Lord’s birth.”

  Oh, joy! Maybe she’d get the answer she was looking for.

  Despite how gruff the head monk was, he was an excellent teacher. He seemed to delight in reading the Latin words to his scribes as they labored to copy text. He would pause and instruct the girls how to write down the stories in Irish. In this way Brigid learned both writing and, best of all, reading the Latin text of the Scriptures.

  “I’ve been wanting to hear ’bout our Lord’s birth.” Brigid shooed Aine from the cream and nudged her out the door. “Seems like a long while since I heard the stories at Glasgleann.”

  They entered the scribes’ room like spiders to avoid distracting the men who wrote. Brigid loved that hall, the only building built outside the tangle of oak trees. It sat on the riverbank with a row of windows strategically placed high on the wall to take in the expanse of sky left unobstructed by trees, thanks to the river. Sunlight burst through the windows and danced at their feet.

  “Over here.” Cillian waved them toward a shrouded monk who sat hunched over a tilted table. He moved his quill so deliberately that sometimes it seemed as though he was doing nothing. They watched for a time, taking in the beauty of his scratched marks.

  “I’ll read it to ye first, so as ye’ll know what ye’ll be writing later,” Cillian explained.

  Brigid gulped. The privilege of what they were doing was lost on Aine, who dropped to the floor and squirmed at her uncle’s feet, but Brigid understood. Stories were passed on from generation to generation by listeners who in turn went on to tell the stories again. Druids, priests, monks, and common people all educated, inspired, and entertained others in that fashion. Brigid was sure that the pagan feasts included storytelling. And so far, all that she had learned about Jesus Christ her Lord came from the speech of others. Now she was learning to read the recorded texts for herself.

  Brigid recognized some of the Latin words as she followed Cillian’s reading of the monk’s work. She even jumped ahead: ut cognoscas eorum verborum de quibus eruditus es veritatem. “So that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught,” she translated aloud.

  “Brigid! I’m amazed ye learned so quickly.” Cillian was staring at her with his lower lip drooping.

  “I am so sorry if I’ve disturbed… ”

  “No matter.” Cillian beckoned the monks back to their work.

  From that point on, Cillian, finding Brigid a rapid learner, gave her special attention.
She was allowed to visit the monks’ transcription hall daily. She learned that events important to Christians were being celebrated at the time of pagan feasts so that Christ’s teachings would be heard.

  The man no longer frightened her. She began to understand Cillian’s mission. He stayed close to the people, gained their friendship. Let them discover for themselves the miracle of Jesus by observing him.

  “I never asked these men to stay here with me,” he told Brigid one day. “They came because they chose service to God. We have become a kind of clan here. After I returned from a journey to Rome, I brought manuscripts for my own study. They wanted to examine them, and before long we produced all these pieces.”

  Brigid had counted the cubbyholes in the walls – twenty-one. Each compartment held four or five rolls. Each roll could cover a dining table. Yet Cillian told her the monks had only been transcribing for a few years.

  “They have begun copying them a second time,” he told her. “One day, when it’s safe, I’ll return to my Christian brothers across the sea and borrow more manuscripts.”

  Brigid thought the mission these men were undertaking was more valuable to Ireland than they probably realized. God had given them the desire to transcribe for a reason. Just like the biblical writer Luke said, “So that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.”

  She decided to dismiss Cillian’s outburst on the day she met him as out of character. He had probably just been upset remembering the slaughter of his brothers.

  Brigid became so comfortable in her new home that she began to think of it as hers. And just as she had done in Glasgleann, she gave away what she could to the poor. God continued to provide, just like he always had, and, unlike Dubthach, Cillian tolerated her charity.

  After two springtimes passed, Brigid realized Aine would never be going home to her mother. The fact didn’t seem to bother the girl. She loved her uncle and he doted on her.

  Still, Brigid missed Cook and the others. And the longing to find her mother never left, some days rising within her like a hunger that hadn’t been satisfied for days. She had mastered the art of reading and writing, at least with the manuscripts in possession of the monks. The day was coming, she knew, when she’d need to move on in order to find more challenging work, and, she hoped, God would direct her path to her mother.