Sacrifice

by Philip Freeman

  Grandmother started toward the abbess, but both Father Ailbe and I held her back.

  “How dare you!” hissed my grandmother.

  “Get out, Aoife!” shouted Anna. “Go back to your sacred groves and brew up some way to bring Grainne back to life if you can.”

  Grandmother stormed out of the hut, slamming the door behind her. There was a long, painful silence before Father Ailbe spoke.

  “Deirdre, can you tell us anything else that might help us find the killer? Any details about the killing that might point to some particular druid or group within the Order?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m sorry, Abba, but Grandmother told you as much as anyone inside the Order can reveal to non-druids. I’ll do anything I can to help you find the killer, but I can’t betray the secret doctrines of the druids, not even to you.”

  “Sister Deirdre,” said the abbess. “When you stood here a few months ago after the theft of holy Brigid’s bones, I warned you that I would not accept your disobedience again. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, Sister Anna,” I said with my head bowed.

  “And yet here you are again keeping secrets, refusing to answer questions that involve the death of a sister of yours in the fellowship of Brigid, someone who was murdered in the most terrible manner.”

  I remained standing in silence.

  “I must go now,” she said, “first to tell the members of the monastery that Grainne was murdered by one of your druids, then to send word of this deed to King Dúnlaing. But I want you to consider where your loyalties lie. No man or woman can serve two masters. I have indulged you these past three years as you have tried to be both a druid and a Christian nun, but you must choose which side you are on.”

  She left the hut and walked to the church to ring the bell for assembly. I remained standing in front of her desk, with Father Ailbe beside me.

  “Abba, we should go to the church with the others. I want to say a prayer to Brigid to watch over the soul of Grainne.”

  We walked out the door and made our way across the monastery yard with the other brothers and sisters. The spring day that had started out so bright and beautiful had turned dark and cold, with rain pouring down from the heavens.

  Chapter Four

  The shock of the sisters and brothers after the abbess made her announcement in the church that evening was heartbreaking. There were gasps of disbelief at first, then moaning and weeping, and finally looks of anger among a few as they turned to stare at me.

  I wasn’t hungry and didn’t want to talk to anyone at dinner, so I remained in the church after the others left so that I could pray and think. After perhaps half an hour, Sister Macha entered and cleared her throat.

  “Deirdre, I’m sorry to bother you, but Sister Anna would like to see you in her office right away.”

  “All right. How are you doing, Macha? I’m sorry I talked you into leaving Armagh and coming here to go through this terrible time with us.”

  Macha had returned with Dari and me when we had visited the monastery of Armagh in Ulster a few months earlier. The nuns there were treated almost like slaves, laboring at menial tasks for the abbot and denied any kind of education. Macha was already making great progress in learning to read and write.

  She managed a weak laugh.

  “Don’t be sorry at all, Deirdre. The last few months here at Kildare have been the best of my life. There’s plenty of sorrow wherever you go on this island.”

  I left the church and went across the monastery yard to the cold stone hut of Sister Anna. It was small, but served as both her office and sleeping quarters. I knocked on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Sister Anna was sitting at her desk, finishing a letter. I stood in front of her and waited in silence until she was done. She wrote with her left hand, her right arm hanging useless at her side as always. The deep scars on the right side of her face were illuminated by the light of the oil lamp on her desk.

  “This letter is to King Dúnlaing,” she said at last. “I’m sending it to him by messenger this evening. I called you here because I need your help, Sister Deirdre. I’m sure the king will conduct his own inquiry into the death of Sister Grainne, but I’m not prepared to wait for him, nor would I fully trust his results. Kings often care more about politics than discovering the truth. I therefore have a task for you. You recovered the stolen bones of Brigid last winter after I put you in charge of that investigation. Your success in that venture recommends you for another. In addition, you are uniquely suited for this new commission since you are, as you so often remind me, a druid. I want you to investigate Grainne’s death yourself, using your knowledge of the Order. But I need to know first that I can trust you. Will you place the needs of this monastery above all other considerations?”

  I had been expecting this and on the way over from the church had been considering what I should say to the abbess. I took a deep breath.

  “Sister Anna, I am both a druid and a nun. I see no conflict between the two. I worship Christ and serve the church while respecting the ancient traditions of my people as a bard. I am honored that you have asked me to find the killer of Sister Grainne. I will use all my skills and training as a druid to find the man who committed this vicious act. It is as much an offense to the druids as it is to any Christian. I believe I can do this without betraying the vows I took to either the Order or to this monastery. But please do not ask me to reveal to you or anyone outside the Order any secrets of the druids.”

  She tapped her stylus on her desk several times before she spoke.

  “You put me in a difficult position, Sister Deirdre. I need your expertise to solve this crime, but I also need your obedience. As you may have noticed through the years, I do not like or trust the druids. I have always maintained good relations with the Order for the sake of this monastery, but I am not like Brigid—or you. I do not believe we can all work together for a common spiritual goal. We share many values with the druids, but in the end our ways are not compatible. There is either one God or many, one path to salvation or not, one life followed by judgment or endless reincarnations as the druids teach. Christ either died to redeem the whole world or he didn’t. I confess that my feelings about the Order are colored by my own experiences, but I cannot change who I am.”

  I knew it was not my place to ask Sister Anna about her personal life. She was a deeply private woman who never talked about her past. She was from Britain—several of the sisters were, but they had all left their homeland of their own free will to come to Ireland and follow Brigid’s path. Still, I had to know.

  “Sister, what do you mean when you say your feelings are colored by your own experiences? Why do you feel this way about the druids?”

  The abbess scowled at me.

  “That, Sister Deirdre, is none of your business.”

  “Yes, Sister Anna, you’re right, of course. It’s just that my grandmother once told me that you know more about the ways of the druids than most.”

  “What did she tell you?” she asked angrily. “How would she know anything about my past?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me anything more. I had the feeling she herself didn’t know much, perhaps just bits of a story she had heard long ago from some other druids.”

  Sister Anna looked at me hard, with anger and pain in her eyes.

  “Do you really want to know, Sister Deirdre? Perhaps I should tell you, just so you can learn the truth about the druids you so honor and protect.”

  She rose from her chair and stared out the window for a long time. I heard a dog barking somewhere in the distance. At last she spoke, her voice cold and empty, not even turning toward me, as if she were talking to the growing darkness.

  “I was born on a small farm on the western coast of Britain near the old Roman town of Luguvalium. My baptismal name was Anna, though my father always called me Blodeuyn, which in my language means ‘flower.’ He was a giant of a man, but he was always gentle with me. My mother wa
s the disciplinarian in the family. She worked hard to keep us alive every winter when the north wind blew down from the land of the Picts. I had two sisters and an older brother who helped on the farm, just as I did. I was the youngest. My most important job was to feed the chickens and collect their eggs each morning. We never had much, but we were happy.

  “The Irish raiders came in the spring, just after the seed was in the ground. They slipped into our farm quietly at night and surrounded the place before we realized what was happening. Somehow my father awoke and knew something was terribly wrong. He roused everyone and told us to stay hidden while he and my brother took the two rusty swords we kept in the house and rushed out into the yard. There were perhaps a dozen pirates waiting. They laughed at my father and brother standing there determined to protect us from so many of them. They changed their minds when my father skewered one through the heart with his sword and threw another against our low stone wall, breaking his back. The remaining men rushed my father and brother, hacking them both to pieces as we watched from the window.

  “The men burst through the door of the hut and grabbed my mother, my sisters, and me and tied us with ropes. After they had stolen what little of value they could find, they raped us, taking turns while the others ate what food we had. I was ten years old. The last thing I remember before they marched us to their boat was the sight of my chickens bound by the feet and hanging over the shoulders of one of the raiders as he carried them away.

  “I barely remember the miserable trip across the Eastern Sea and I don’t know where we landed, though it must have been somewhere on the coast of Ulster. We were herded into a pen with other female captives to wait for the auction that would come the next day. I clung to my mother and sisters, but they were in no shape to provide me comfort. The raiders had been particularly hard on my mother, probably because she was older and wouldn’t bring them much of a profit. She had grown sick on the voyage from Britain and burned with a fever. By morning she was dead.

  “I was sold to a druid who pulled me away from my sisters as I begged them not to let me go. I never saw them again and don’t know if they are still alive somewhere on this island. I hope for their sake they are not. I will spare you the details of my captivity since you know how slaves are treated in your homeland. They are the lowest form of life, a class beneath contempt, given no more respect than a dog, often less. I did as I was told or was beaten. I was frequently beaten anyway. I learned to keep quiet and tried to be invisible as I performed the most menial chores around the farm, often grinding grain on the quern for hours until my hands were raw. They even took away my name, calling me only cumal, which I thought was a name itself until I learned it was just the Irish word for a female slave.

  “My master was a respected member of the Order. He frequently entertained high-ranking guests at his farm. I was a pretty girl then, so he often gave me to his visitors—most of them druids—as entertainment for the night. Over the next ten years, I was pregnant several times but thankfully never carried a child to term. Why would I have wished a living soul to be born into such a life? I prayed at first to God to free me as he had freed the Israelites from captivity in the land of Egypt, but there was no escape. Even if I could have fled, I would have been an élúdach, a runaway slave. Where could I have gone? According to your laws, even a king could not help me if he found me on the road, not that he would have wished to in any case.

  “One autumn, my master took me with him when he officiated at a religious ceremony not far from here. He used me on such trips to cook his meals and to provide ‘portable recreation,’ as he called it. On the road he met a druid friend of his, and the two sat down to have a drink of honeyed wine. His friend kept looking at me in a way with which I was all too familiar and soon asked if he might have a few minutes with me. My master was glad to oblige and told me to take off my clothes and accommodate him. I don’t know why, but something in me snapped at that moment. I shouted that I would rather sleep with one of his stinking pigs than give myself to another of his friends. He rose up red-faced and angrier than I had ever seen him. Not only had I dared to disobey his command, but I had shamed him in front of his companion. He grabbed me and began to hit me with his fists, then took an iron shovel from the back of the cart, beating me on my arm and face and breaking both my legs. When I fell to the ground, he kicked me again and again. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up hours later in a ditch beside the road. My master had left me for dead. As I lay in the mud, I prayed that God would let me die. A farmer and his family passed by in their wagon, as did a group of druids, hurrying to some sacrifice, no doubt. No one gave me a second glance.

  “Then as the sun was setting and the cold was beginning to creep up my limbs, a sure sign of the end, a small woman appeared, wearing a strange hat. I thought she must be an angel come to take me to heaven, but she dragged me from the ditch into the dry grass and wrapped me in her cloak while she built a fire. She bathed my wounds and tried to feed me some broth, but I was only strong enough to take a little water. She lay beside me all through the night, sharing her warmth and keeping me alive.

  “I don’t remember how I got here, but two days later I woke up in this monastery with the same small woman at my bedside. It was Brigid, who continued to care for me with the help of the handful of other sisters she had gathered in those early days. It took months of nursing, but eventually I was able to walk again. My druid master never tried to find me, since he assumed I was dead, though I doubt he would have wanted me back in any case with these scars on my face and my useless arm. I stayed here with Brigid and have thanked God every day for the kindness she showed me when no one else cared.”

  Tears ran down my face as she finished. She glanced at me, then turned away.

  “Don’t look so shocked, Sister Deirdre. My story has been repeated many times on your island. Even Patrick was a slave among your people, though against all odds he escaped and made it home. In Britain, slaves can at least work hard and buy their freedom, but according to your druids such an act would offend the gods, causing the cows of the land to be barren and the fields to yield no fruit. So yes, my child, sinner that I am, I do hate the druids and all they represent. Your precious Order ruined my life. I was a flower once, but now I am only a shadow of that happy girl.”

  She continued to stare out the window.

  “You may keep your druid secrets for now, Sister Deirdre,” she said at last. “Begin your investigation. But if I believe you are withholding any information from me that will help us find the killer of one of my nuns, I will expel you from this monastery forever.”

  Chapter Five

  I couldn’t face anyone else that evening, so I left Sister Anna’s office and went immediately to the small fire temple surrounded by a tall hedge on the far side of the church.

  We all called it the fire temple, even though it was formally known as the Oratory of Holy Brigid. The monastery had been founded fifty years earlier as a religious community for women and men to live out the Gospel together by serving others. But long before Kildare was a church, it had been a sacred place of gathering for the women who served an ancient Irish goddess, also named Brigid, who watched over the special concerns of women. The priestesses of the goddess kept a perpetual fire burning in her honor at this same stone temple, much as the Vestal Virgins once did at their sanctuary in the Roman Forum before a Christian emperor extinguished it. By the time our Brigid arrived at Kildare, there was only one aged druid priestess left, who tended the sacred fire every night. Brigid promised her that the fire of the goddess would never go out if the sisters of Kildare were allowed to build their monastery there. The priestess agreed and left the fire temple in the care of Brigid, who kept her word. Though some of the bishops of Ireland had sought to extinguish the flame as a pagan abomination, Brigid proclaimed that the fire would now honor Christ as the light of the world. When she was still alive, I once asked her if she really believed this. She pulled me close and whisp
ered that it never hurt to have a goddess on your side.

  The nuns all took turns in the fire temple, for no man was ever allowed to enter that holy place. I was glad that it happened to be my night to tend the flame. I spread my blanket on the warm ground next to the fire and placed two logs from the woodpile into the hearth at the center. I loved the peace and quiet of the fire temple. It was a wonderful place to think without being disturbed. Of course, there was the night two years ago when a man burst in, shouting that he had leaped over the holy hedge while I was tending the flames, and he proceeded to blow on the fire so hard that I was afraid it might go out. It was old Finbar, a poor fellow lame in one foot who had lost his mind some time before and had come to live with us at the monastery. I finally calmed him down and got him back into bed, but the story later spread that he had been driven mad and made a cripple because he, as a man, had dared to enter the sacred precinct of the fire guarded by women.

  But the night after my conversation with Sister Anna, I wasn’t expecting any guests. I stirred the embers and thought about the dark events of the day.

  Why would anyone, especially a druid, want to kill a kind and gentle woman like Grainne? Our people had never persecuted followers of Christ. Any missionary coming to our island hoping to become a martyr was disappointed. At worst, they would encounter polite indifference from the local people—more likely an invitation to dinner from a friendly druid who wanted to discuss the larger questions of spirituality. One disappointed zealot told me it was impossible to convert a people who were always finding points of agreement between their faith and yours.

  But there was no doubt that the murderer was a druid. There was simply no one else who would have the knowledge needed to sacrifice a victim in the way Grainne had been killed. And no druid would ever divulge secret teachings to someone who was not a member of the Order, even under the most extraordinary circumstances. I knew several druids who had become devout Christians and even priests, but they would never discuss the sacred doctrines they had learned with those who had not been initiated.