The Apple and the Thorn

by Walter William Melnyk; Emma Restall Orr

  “Why did you send her away?”

  “Don’t ask such questions, Eos.”

  He sighs, “Vivian, you are a complicated woman.”

  “We are complicated, Eos.” And I add, “Both you and I.”

  In the moments that follow I wonder what it is we are to talk of: the issues that have made my belly churn and my head hum like a swarm of hiving bees, or the pain in my heart that I see in his eyes. I close my eyes, seeking guidance, and hear my grandmother’s voice,

  Vivi, you are human, find your humility ...

  I open my eyes to see her sitting by the fire, her eyes wet with age and tears, and her smile serene with empathy.

  Go on, she whispers.

  I breathe in deeply, with acknowledgement, and turn to the tinner. He is gazing at me, filled with tenderness and uncertainty.

  “Eos,” I murmur, “I have not behaved with honour.”

  “Honour.” He gazes into the fire, but his mind is not with the flames; I feel his soul close, his breath in my heart. That he senses the poignance of my words moves me deeply. He does not speak, but instead remains close. For a while he closes his eyes and I watch his tenderness beside my own as we sit in silence.

  Then quietly, he speaks the word again. “Honour. What is honour, Vivian, but the proud attempt of the mighty to preserve their way of life.”

  “It is more than bloodshed, Eosaidh.”

  He looks into my face, “I know. But perhaps it is not honour we should be seeking. It is understanding.”

  “Nothing should be done without honour,” I whisper. “But I do seek understanding. I wish deeply to understand you.” For a moment, our eyes meet. A log slips on the fire and he reaches to steady it, allowing me to find my voice again. “Yet with such violence, so many now pouring through these lands ... Eosaidh, it was the druids’ gathering at Llw Ffynnon, a few days ago at the moon’s quarter. They gather at the wells with the councils of the local tribes, and I sat through such stories of fighting. The tribes are imploding, destroying themselves from the inside, splitting with the stress of fear. So many are dead, Eos. And news from the south,” I look up into his eyes. “It won’t be long.”

  “No, not long. Even now Vespasian is in Exmoor and drives toward Cornualle.” He looks to the covered doorway as if, through it, he might see the advancing fires of Roma’s ant-like invasion. “As long as he stays to the south, we have some time, at least.” I wonder for a moment how he knows this, who he has been meeting without my knowing, but I set aside the fear knowing that to raise it again will bring only conflict between us.

  I sigh, “Eos, I do seek to understand you.”

  His face expresses only gentleness, “What can I say to guide you?”

  “Your god, Adonai: where does he come from?”

  For a moment he gazes at me, with a frown through which he struggles to find his words. “He comes from nowhere. He is from everlasting to everlasting.”

  They seem to me words repeated from the mouths of his people’s teachers.

  I shake my head, “Eos, your words are without meaning.”

  “They have meaning to me,” he says.

  I look into his face, “Are you able to share that meaning?”

  For a while he thinks hard, rubbing his beard, then shrugs, “He is the eternal one of Heaven.”

  “Heaven?”

  “Yes, Vivian. But we met him at a moment in time, in a very earthly place. Sometimes we call him Immanu-El: God Who Is With Us. For we were slaves in the far land of Egypt, and he brought us out.”

  “I have heard saphers speak of Egypt - ”

  “Saphers?”

  “The traveling priests,” I say, but his face is still blank. “Do they use another name in Cornualle? They are traveling thinkers, they talk of ideas ... ”

  “Ah, philosophers,” he nods, understanding.

  I quell a surge of impatience, “But what is Heaven?”

  He laughs, placing his hands on his knees and rubbing away the stiffness. “I am a tin merchant, Vivian, not a theologian!” But seeing I don’t lay aside the question, he thinks for a while, and says softly, “Heaven ... I think, heaven is the eternity in which Adonai dwells, the mountain top from which he comes to his people in their need.”

  “So heaven ... is the open skies?”

  “The open skies and beyond the skies. It is upon the crest of the far hills and in the valley of springs. Heaven is where God dwells. The skies are his throne, the green earth his footstool. I remember the lad saying to me once, ‘Uncle, the kingdom of heaven is within you.’”

  He searches my face, wondering if his words are making sense to me. Yet in his eyes, he reveals too that they make little sense to him.

  “But Adonai dwells in the silence as well,” he adds. “In truth, though, for many years he has been silent to me.”

  “Silent or silence?” I ask.

  “Silent.”

  He pauses for a long moment, his eyes downcast, and my frustration at not grasping his meaning is deflected by this wash of desolation. When finally he looks up and gazes into my face again, the empathy in my heart rises through me like a flood. “Silence I could understand. There have been nights on the sea, or moments in the depths of the mines, when I have come face to face with the mystery of the silence of God. But that silence was alive with his presence. In the years since the lad’s death I have been searching for meaning, and Adonai has been silent to me.”

  Perhaps, I wonder, you were no longer able to hear.

  For a long while we sit without speaking, and our minds are in different places. As he remembers his murdered kin, my soul slides through the deep water of wondering without words. Yet, as I rise to the surface, I still have no clear sense of his Adonai.

  “Forgive me, Eos, but I hear no answers.”

  He frowns, seeking words once more.

  But it is I who speak, “You have no idea who he is, do you? I hear you speaking only the words of your teachers, but they are poetry describing something that you cannot yourself explain. He is everything and yet he is nothing. What is he made of? This is mystery to those who live their lives with hands in shit and barley, but you, Eos,” I shake my head, “not you, dear soul. Your mind is awake! Yet in your words I hear you tell of an imaginary chieftain. Is this Adonai? The high chief of your people?”

  “No,” he sighs, rubbing his beard with the roughness of his hand. “He was, once. ‘Adonai, God of Hosts’, we called him. Leader of the the heavenly legions, deliverer of Israel. But it has been a long, long time since Adonai has brought his hosts to our aid. All the hosts are Roman now, and the chieftains speak in Latin, not Aramaic. Even here, in far-flung Cornualle where my family has been dispersed for generations, the Roman hosts are coming.”

  I smile with a sadness at his wandering soul that would confuse Conualle with these islands of the marsh, so far from Conualle. But he turns to me, with no realization of what he has said.

  “The lad did not call him ‘High Chief’. The lad called him Abba, Poppa. He would gather little children around him, hold them on his lap, and say,’This is what Adonai is like, he is like our Father. He is our Da.’ Vivian, it would have moved your heart to tears to see the compassion in his face, the gentle way he held the little ones.”

  “I know,” I whisper. For a while again we find silence. His heart is full and I watch the tides of his emotion as they wash through him, gazing into the glowing embers of the fire. When I break the stillness, it is to ask him to attend to it. He stretches his legs, apologizing for not having done so before. And we smile at each other, with a tenderness I am relieved to share.

  When he sits again, pulling his robes around him, I ask the question that is troubling me.

  “Eos, he is father to his children, your Adonai. That I can hear. Yet who is your mother?”

  The father I can understand, the raw power of a father’s rage, blade-sharp and ever distant. That I could feel in the temple of sand, in the emptiness and straight stone-hew
n walls, in the oppression of being watched by one who judges. This is a father’s role. But there was no giving of the mother in that place.

  He looks deeply into my eyes and something moves over his soul, a recognition that makes me wonder what he has seen.

  “What do you see, Eos?” I whisper.

  He looks down, then again into my eyes, and the fire’s light sparkles in his own, wet with rising tears, but he does not turn away. “I saw Miryam,” he murmurs, gazing into my face, “the lad’s mother, my niece, that day when I cut his body down. The way she held him, so tired and with such love, holding his broken body. In your face, I saw Miryam ... ”

  “The lad’s mother,” I say softly.

  “Vivi,” he whispers, “I will show you what you have been searching for.”

  Chapter Six

  The Cup of Enaid Las

  (Eosaidh)

  It is hours before dawn, and I have not slept. Sitting on my cot in the darkness, I pull my sleeping furs close to keep off the chill. It is sometime in the first week of the Roman month of Aprilis, sacred to Venus. That fact, and the bright light of a moon approaching the full flooding through the open door, tells me without a calendar that it is the approach of the Passover, when we Iudde crossed over from slavery to freedom, from death to life. It is the lad’s passover as well, for it was at this time, so they say, that he, too, crossed over from death to life. On my lap, wrapped in a sheepskin, is a small box made of the acacia wood of Iudea, tied with a leather strap. A few moments ago I drew it out from under the cot, where it has been since I built this hut two months ago. In the box, packed in sheep’s wool to survive the journey, and wrapped in a fair linen cloth, is the cup. Only I have set eyes upon it in all the years since that last meal, but with the rising of the sun this day, I will show it to another.

  As I remove the sheepskin covering, the scent of acacia fills the air. I am amazed at how it has lasted all these years. I untie the strap, and slowly lift the lid. Outside there is the silence of the night; the moon climbs in the sky, framed now in the open doorway. A shaft of moonlight falls across the cot, bathing the old box in its cool brightness. Almost with reverence I pull back the soft fleece and fair linen, and there, absorbing and recasting the moonlight, lies the cup. Made of translucent glass, its rich, cobalt blue color is the shade of the deep heavens. Gently, I lift it from the box, and hold it quietly in both hands. The image of the waxing moon shines within the bowl, diffusing through the glass so the entire cup seems to glow a royal blue. The glass is nearly like a scrying bowl I once watched Vivian use. As I gaze at it I remember, and images form in my mind. . .

  ~~~~~

  We were in the upper room of my home in Jerusalem, gathered with the lad and the Twelve for the Passover meal. As the supper was ending, he poured fresh wine in the cup, and raised it above his head giving thanks to Adonai. It caught the light of the oil lamps as it does the moonlight now, and reflected it back to us as if it were a giant sapphire. The lad spoke: It is as if this wine is my life’s blood, poured out for you and for everyone, for the forgiveness of sins. From now on, whenever you drink wine, remember me. Then he drank deeply, and we passed it from hand to hand, each doing the same. There were many of us there that night, yet the cup held enough for all. I remembered the words of Torah, For in the blood is the life. He was offering us his life. No greater love, he had once said, does a person have, than to lay down his life for his friends.

  In all the years since, those words have echoed in my heart. No greater love. No greater love. The next day, on a Roman cross outside the city, he died. Now, holding the cup in the moonlight of Affalon, that love comes flooding back into my being, and I think I understand. It is a human face the lad has put upon Adonai, and the tenderness of a human heart.

  “Uncle Eosaidh.” It is a solid voice, and not of my imagining. I look up, and there he stands, in the doorway, framed by moonlight. He is not a day older than when I saw him last. These fifteen years have aged me in spirit as well as in body; so much older, so much more tired. But he has not changed. I should be afraid, but I cannot be. How can I fear one so close to my heart, even if he is no longer of this world?

  “Uncle Eos,” he says, “You have kept it.”

  Instantly I stretch forth my hands, offering him the shimmering blue glass, but he makes no move to take it. “The cup has passed to you, Uncle,” he says, “It is yours to bear now.”

  Holding it again close to my breast I say to him, “I wish to share its presence with the Lady of Affalon.” The Lad smiles. It is a knowing smile, and I wonder at its meaning. “I have kept it safe all these years,” I tell him, “and have shared it with no one. Yet I cannot help feeling that its destiny is with many.”

  His countenance turning serious, the Lad says, “Uncle, there are many sheep and many different folds. There are many trackways to the Green Pastures. Each is the path of Life. Yes, take it to the Lady, and she will show you more, though the work of this cup is nearly done.”

  Perhaps it is the slow shifting of the moonlight through the doorway, perhaps it is more than that. The soft glow of light in the blue bowl of the cup begins to grow. Brighter and brighter it becomes, until the light in the cup fills the room with its brilliance, blinding me to all else. I can no longer see the Lad, but still I hear his voice.

  “I am the Light of the world. All who walk in love’s light are my friends, and I am theirs. Bear this light, Uncle. It will not fail you.”

  Slowly the brilliance fades to the soft glow of moonlight infusing the blue glass. The lad is gone. A white hart walks slowly past the doorway, pausing to look in at me, for a moment enchanted by the blue glow, and then moves on. I wrap the cup again in its fair linen, place it in the soft fleece, and close the acacia lid. It is time to go.

  Last night we arranged to meet at the Red Spring, early, before the others arrive in search of healers and seers. As I set out across the meadow, I glance over my shoulder at the east slope of Wirrheal. Near the top is the thicket where I sheltered from the storm my first day on the island. One thorn tree stands tall above the rest. Its crown seems to glow with the ghostly white of the first blossoms of May, but it is only the moon in the bare branches. The sky is showing first light in the east; dawn is coming.

  Thorn staff in my right hand, the acacia box clutched under my left arm, I turn towards the valley of the springs. The moon begins to fade above as I enter the valley, following the brook up the steady incline to its wellhead source. A gentle mist has begun rising from the marshes. I cannot see her in the new light, but I know Vivian waits for me at the well. I enter the small grove of ancient yews that surround it, and she is there, leaning on her staff. Gwenlli sits quietly on the rough-hewn bench near the wellhead, a basket on her lap with a stoneware pot that steams gently in the cool air. Vivian sits beside her, and Gwenlli offers her a small earthen cup of hot tea. She touches Vivian briefly on one shoulder and the two women exchange looks I cannot hope to understand.

  I lean my staff against one of the yews, set the box down on a mossy stone, and stand looking at the Lady of Affalon. Memories of last night’s vision come flooding back to me. Vivian, Miryam, and the Magdalene. I, who have never married, have had the friendship of more than my share of mysterious and powerful women. It occurs to me that I have understood none of them, though I have respected and loved them each in the depths of my heart. Each of them carries within herself some measure of the power of the cup, each of them a bearer of life in the world. Only days ago I would not have thought of such a thing, yet now it seems so clear.

  It was the Magdalene who first spoke to me of such things, on the boat, on the way to Massalia. The night was new, and the Evening Star shone brightly in the western sky, across our starboard bow. I was sitting on a coil of rope watching the star rise and fall above the waves with the pitch of the boat.

  “She is beautiful,” said a woman’s voice behind me, and I turned to see the other Miryam, the Magdalene, watching the sky as I was. “Aphrodite she
is called by the Greeks,” she said, “By the Romans, Venus. She is the goddess of Love.” The Magdalene sat on a cask of olive oil across from me. “Mostly, she is simply a woman. Men forget that even ordinary women are bearers of life.” I smiled. Sarah, her own young daughter, was asleep in the cabin. “Sometimes I think she is Asherah, she who walks on the sea. My own name, Miryam, comes from her. It means ‘Star of the Sea.’”

  We sat in silence for a time.

  “You have brought the cup with you,” she said at last. I did not answer. “It bears his life within it, you know, even as I did. Even as little Sarah does, sleeping below.”

  “We all bear his life,” I said, but I did not know the meaning of it.

  “Yes, in different ways we all bear his life,” she answered. “Care for the cup, Joseph,” she said, “and I will care for Sarah.” I suspected her meaning, but I did not ask. To this day I am not certain whether she, too, was a vessel for the lad’s life. That moment was so many years ago, and I have not heard from the Magdalene, or had word of Sarah, since. Suddenly I can feel the ache of age in my bones.

  Gwenlli speaks again to Vivian, and I am awakened from my dream. “Forgive me Vivian, my mind was wandering. It seems you remind me of so many women.”

  Vivian stands, taking a step towards me, and searches my eyes, seeking the vision from which my words have emerged.

  "I am a woman, Eosaidh. Do you now begin to glimpse understanding of what that means?"

  If Vespasian himself were to stand before me and roar “I am a general, man! Do you know what that means?” I would not hesitate to answer. But now I am silent. Again I see the Magdalene on the boat to Massalia, holding little Sarah in her arms. Then, suddenly, she is Vivian, lifting a glowing cup of cobalt blue glass.

  “No, my Lady,” I say, “I do not understand at all. Can you help me?” For a moment she gazes at me, deeply, into my eyes.