The Wakening Fire

by Erin O'Quinn

  Mother Sweeney sat with two of her granddaughters, Cara and Orla. Her shoulders were covered by a beautiful lace shawl. Her hair, brushed to dark brilliance, spilled onto the intricate lacework. Her eyes were lively, her cheeks full. What had happened to the sallow, shrunken face I had seen yesterday?

  The MacOwen boys, dressed in woolen léines, sat looking identical, though perhaps they did not realize it. They sat on benches, leaning forward, their knees splayed, waiting on Jericho’s words. Our newly discovered cousins the O’Cahans were sitting back somewhat, talking among themselves with smiles and jests. Turloch’s wife Éva sat next to him on a bench, distractedly stroking his arm as she waited quietly.

  Michael and Brigid were sitting on a bench near Liam and me. Like me, she still wore her deerskin tunic and woolen triús. They sat with their arms encircling each other, wrapped in mutual intimacy, heedless of their surroundings. I wondered fleetingly where they had found to sleep last night. Perhaps, not as inventive as Liam and I, they had been forced to sleep in a communal group of pallets near the fire.

  Of all the room’s occupants, only Brigid, Nuala, and I were baptized Christians and would be receiving the holy mass. I gently touched Liam, sitting close to me on a comfortable couch. Soon, I thought, he, too, would be baptized. And then his cousin Michael—and after that, who knew? Perhaps many of his family would follow in their footsteps. He looked down at me, his mouth playing with the hint of a smile, and he grasped my hand and held it.

  Brother Jericho adjusted his prayer shawl and cleared his throat. “Dear families. We will hear in a little while how the people in this room are blessed by our Lord. And those of you who have been baptized may receive his precious body and blood. But before the mass, I would like to say a few words about forgiveness.”

  I noticed that Cara’s lips were moving at her grandmother’s ear, probably telling her the monk’s words in Gaelic as he spoke.

  “Our daughter Nuala, christened Noella, has told us a story that started forty years ago. It started not too far from here, in the area we call Antrim, home of the Dál Riata, where her high-born father plighted a dowry to a high king of Éire. The story has taken many turns through the years, but the important facts have now come to light, and you all deserve to know those facts.

  “Nuala was pledged to secrecy for fear of her son’s life. But the pledge has been broken by the death of the former high king Niall some ten years ago, though she knew not of his death. And so here is her story.”

  Brother Jericho stood rock still for a while, speaking. And then as he warmed to his subject, he began to pace around the great room, looking into the eyes of everyone in the room as he talked. He told her story, not omitting any details, in spite of the flinches and downcast eyes of his audience.

  “…Thus the family moved here to Limavady, escaping the vengeful curse of the queen’s mother. Aileen bore her husband Owen three more children, in spite of his affliction, and their love remained strong as a cairn until the day she died. Nuala may wish to tell you later the story of how she died at the clootie well, and so I leave it to her.

  “There is also a story behind the holding of the captives. Suffice it to say, Owen Sweeney was not a slave holder nor a committer of debauchery. Other people matter here—to wit, a certain high-born woman who was held here, and her story is her own to tell or to keep secret. But I assure you that your own grandmother can tell you—Owen is innocent of all charges.”

  Jericho was speaking of my mother, one who I was certain would never breathe a word of whatever secret she held. Mama was, above all, a very private woman.

  “What I need to stress is that Owen Sweeney had been slipping slowly into madness for many years. It seemed to happen in fits and starts, and so gradually that it is hard to guess just when he finally broke. But break he did. He begged his mother to say that he did indeed kill his wife, and that he did keep slave, and thus that he deserved to die. I myself stood near the throne of judgment as the high king pronounced him guilty and subject to punishment. And I weep…oh, Lord, I weep to remember that none spoke for him, just as no one spoke for our Lord as he was nailed to the cross on Calvary.”

  Brother Jericho kept speaking. He did not turn his head, although we could all see great tears streaming down his face.

  “Those of you who have studied the godspels know that Christ spoke to his father on that last day, beseeching him to forgive those who crucified him. ‘Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.’ And so I beseech you, as Christ’s apostle Paul wrote to the ancient people of Ephesus. ‘And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.’

  “You MacOwens now find yourselves different people—kin to the high king Niall, he who demanded the Nine Hostages, the most famous king in the history of Éire. Your ancestry should not make you overweening or patronizing of others. But it should serve to remind you that the high born have a certain obligation—to protect and to be humble, as our own high king spoken of by the psalmist David, ‘A father of the fatherless, and a protector of the widows, is God in his holy house.’

  “Dear Friends, whether you be Christians or not, I hope you will join me in uttering our Lord’s Prayer. Simply repeat the words after me.”

  * * * *

  After the unusual service, no one in the room spoke a word. It seemed that every person was sunk into his or her own thoughts. Brother Jericho stood a moment or two looking around hesitantly, and then he removed his prayer shawl and sat at the large table.

  After three or four minutes, everyone began to talk at once.

  “Michael,” I said, to get his attention. “Have you thought of a way to construct a special conveyance for Nuala?”

  “I have. I need to walk about and gather some help and then some materials to build with.”

  “You could start right here in this room,” I suggested.

  He grinned. “Ye be right, Caylith. Look at all the strong lads sitting right here. We should have a way to carry her in just a few hours’ time. When will we be leaving?”

  I looked at Liam. “Sunrise tomorrow,” he said.

  Orla and Cara walked to where we were sitting. “O cousin Cate,” said Cara. “We would like to go with you back to Derry. To help take care of Grandmother.”

  “That would be wonderful, dear cousins. Do you have extra horses? Yes? Then I need to find out where you would stay while you are there. Excuse me.”

  I sat at the table next to Brother Jericho. “Dear Brother,” I told him, reaching out to touch his hand. “I shall never forget your service. Thank you.”

  He flushed. “The Lord’s words are a joy to utter. I deserve no words of praise.”

  “Brother, if Nuala, Cara, and Orla needed a place to live for a while in Derry, where would you suggest?”

  Without hesitation, he answered, “Why, in my own teach. I would sleep with Galen and Sweeney. We need only gather materials for three fresh beds. Right now I am afraid it contains only the hard pallet of a monk.”

  “We are blessed to have you, Brother Jericho.” Before he could object to my words, I stood quickly. “Excuse me. I would speak with Nuala.”

  I needed to find out about my mother’s captivity, and about Sweeney’s late wife. I knew that Nuala would speak to me, but I needed a way to understand her words. “Cara…Orla,” I said, “you have a place to stay in Derry. But I would ask a favor of one of you.”

  Both of them smiled at me with eager eyes. “”You have only to ask,” Cara said, and Orla nodded her willingness, too.

  “I need to speak with Nuala about, ah, female matters. I need a discreet translator, one who will keep her words confidential.”

  “Rely on me,” Cara said gravely. “I will tell no one, not even Lorcan.”

  “Then meet me in Nuala’s chamber, and bring your grandmother.” I went to Liam, who by now was standing near the door. I spoke to him in a low voice, telling him my plans. “Whatever happened with my mother
must not become a matter of idle talk and speculation. But I want Nuala to speak in front of women only, so that she will not feel embarrassed to talk about it.”

  “Cat, I know ye…do the right thing,” he said. “An’ never would I ask ye the secrets.”

  I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his dear mouth. “Go raibh maith agat.”

  “I love ye, darling. Talk to Seanmháthair.”

  Again I pushed open the door whose lintel was gaily decorated in stones and shells. I had a sudden sense of wry irony that this room, once my refuge from a perceived monster, had become the site of my own growing admiration for him. I sat on the bench, and within moments Nuala and Cara entered the room. I motioned for Nuala to sit on the bed, while Cara carefully closed and latched the door.

  I walked to the bed and knelt in front of Nuala. “Would you tell me about my mother?”

  As she spoke, Cara told me her words. “Little Caylith, I am grateful for your help. For restoring my health, for restoring my beloved Owen.” She paused a moment as if remembering.

  Perhaps the story begins the day that Owen and his wife Aileen went to the clootie well. I never knew whether it was her idea or his, that the waters would restore his crippled legs. Once a month, she would see that his cart was fastened to two horses, and they would ride slowly to the well. The grooves became so well worn that the horses knew the path without guidance.

  He told me later what happened. As always when they got to the well, Aileen would soak a piece of old cloth in the well water and then apply it to his legs. Then she would tie the cloth to the hawthorn tree. That has been our custom for untold ages. Even those who believe in no other magic—even they believe that the cloths will draw out the impurities, even while they impart the healing of the sacred waters.

  On that day, Owen insisted on being taken out of his cart. He wanted to lie near the trees, he said. He wanted his wife to—to make love to him. It was a hard task, to remove the heavy cripple from his cart, and Aileen was not strong. She was trying to roll him, or somehow help him out of the cart, when her foot caught a round, wet rock. She lost her balance and crashed forward, striking her head on one of the rocks that lined the well.

  When his sons finally brought him back that day, with their dead mother laid over the back of one of the horses, he was out of his mind with grief. He keened and cried for days on end. At the gravesite, I could not convince him to leave, and he spent the night there, pouring forth his grief.

  His children were terrified, and I blame them not. He kept shouting that he had killed her, and his very aspect was so horrifying that they fled for their own safety. When at last he told me what had happened at the well, I understood why he had shouldered the blame. If he had not wanted to be taken from the cart, he believed, it would never have happened. She would still be alive.

  He would not let me touch her room, except to remove the dust from her belongings. Everything was to remain as it had been the day she died. It was as if she would one day return and be able to find her comb, her mirror, her pretty leather shoes, right where she had left them.

  I am trying to remember how long it was before the ox cart arrived, filled with weeping women. Perhaps six months, perhaps a year. Five women were lying in a cart as if they were sacks of grain, their hands bound tightly in front of them. Owen wheeled his invalid’s cart to the yard and ordered the driver to stand the women next to the ox cart. There were five of them—two very young, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, and two were old, about my own age. One was not yet forty, slender and quiet, not crying. She kept her chin on her chest, and her eyes were closed as if she were praying.

  Owen spoke to the driver, and after a time he drove away. The women remained in the yard. He spoke to one of his hired drovers, who loosened their bonds and guided them to a shieling that stood close to our brugh. And then he wheeled back inside the house, his business finished.

  The night you came to us, that was a very black night for all of us. My son, I think, had fallen in love with your mother. If he was not in love, then surely he was smitten. She was so like dear Aileen—her long, dark hair, her brown eyes. Her hands, so white and slender. He had not been with a woman since the day he—since they went to the well together, two years ago and more.

  He did not force your mother. He went to her, I think, as a supplicant, begging for her kindness. Does that make sense, Caylith? Every day at the same time, someone would bring her into the brugh, her fragile hands loosely bound in front of her, and he would signal for everyone to leave. Then they would go together to his chamber. I would retreat to a place unlit by any candles, praying for his happiness.

  Always, she looked calm. Sorrowful, but serene, as though she were in a different place, in a different time. And when she left him, I saw from my concealed bench, she looked the same—as though she were in control, and he were the captive, with her little hands still bound in front of her. It was as if they had struck a bargain, and she was true to her word.

  Almost three months had passed since she came to us. She and her fellow captives remained in the shieling. I think somehow she had asked for that habitation. They were asked to do light work—sweeping, helping to cook, assisting in the kiln. I never knew why my son kept them at all, except that he was so bound in the ties of your sweet mother that he could not free himself.

  The night you locked yourself in Aileen’s room, he had her brought into the great-room for a few moments. I watched quietly, not hearing what he said. She listened gravely, then seemed to protest. Whatever he said, he was urging her, almost angrily. She nodded, and then she left, but not before he carefully removed the bounds on her hands and gave her something.

  After the door closed behind her, he wheeled his cart straight to my dark bench, as though he knew all along I had been watching him. “Mother,” he said, “my time has come. You are to tell them I killed Aileen. That I kept slaves, that I used them in every vile way.”

  “No,” I told him. “I will utter the truth. You are a good man, Owen. Please! Please come to your right senses!”

  He had pulled his heavy cart so close to me that I was pinned to my bench, unable to move. He spoke to me through clenched teeth, as though to make his supplication more clear. “Listen to me, Mother. All my life, I wanted only two things. To know my father, and to love my wife. I will never have either, and so I wish to die. I have no reason to live.”

  “Owen, what about the love your mother bears for you?”

  “Your love is the one thing I never lacked. And yet my own loving mother has hidden the truth about my father. What am I to think? If you love me, you will do as I beg you. Tell them I am guilty. Let me die by the hand of the high king himself for crimes most vile. Honor my last wish to you. Do it, Mother!”

  He twisted his cart around with one motion of his huge arms, and he wheeled to his room. The door closed quietly. I found a taper on one of the tables, and I began to walk around the great room as if in a stupefied dream, lighting the candles, one by one. Somehow I wanted them to light your way, Caylith, and my son’s, too.

  “And they did, Nuala,” I said gently. “Even now, your candles are lighting the way, out of the dark past. Thank you.”

  I reached down and grasped her slender shoulders, helping her to her feet. When we all three left the bright bedchamber, I felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from me.

  “Cara, I see no reason to keep silent about what happened at the well. I only ask that you not talk about my mother. It is not our story to tell.”

  “You are right, cousin. I will honor my word to you.”

  * * * *

  That night, Liam and I again walked hand in hand to the towering bonfire. “We will awaken very early and leave soon after sunrise,” I told him. “I feel that we need to rush home, Liam. Sweeney needs to be released at last from his pain.”

  “He does,” Liam agreed. “Do ye…have special healing tea for him?”

  Nodding, I thought back to earlier that day, when I went to the c
lootie well with Fergus and Echach. I wanted to see the site for myself. And I wanted to gather certain herbs and plants for a comfort tea. What better place, I reasoned, than the holy well itself?

  When we arrived, I asked the men to show me where they had found their mother, and where their father had been lying. Neither of them had wanted to revisit the place of old sorrows, but they had come almost as a penance. Echach silently pointed to a spot near the well where stones lined the edge. Close to it was a small stand of hawthorn, its barbed branches still adorned with ragged remnants of cloth that fluttered helplessly in the slight wind, looking themselves like crippled limbs.

  I knelt and inspected the rocks. They were laid together closely, like Liam’s work at our own bally trench. On one stone, more jagged than the rest, I saw a faint trace of dark matter, so old that it scraped off easily with my thumb nail. I imagined it was the blood of Sweeney’s wife. I straightened up and asked them where they had found their father. Fergus showed me the spot, no more than a foot away, between the stones and the hawthorn trees.

  I told Liam about it as we walked. Even after we had spread our blanket, we lay facing each other, embracing, while I finished my story. “I began to gather plants to make a ‘gruit,’ a special collection of plants meaningful to the one who will drink the tea. I saw bright spots of yellow gorse, and I pinched off as many flowers as my tunic could hold. I found low-growing mounds of heather, still waiting for its summer flowers, and I removed several stems. The hawthorn tree itself is special, as you know.”