The Burning Time

by Robin Morgan

  Helena looked at her.

  “We will help each other, I think … Alyce,” she said.

  Arms entwined, the women slowly mounted the steps one by one to where the children lay sleeping—children innocent as yet of what extremes the human heart could bridge, what atrocities it could devise, what transcendence it could conceive.

  They were children still, their youthful dreams vivid in anticipation of the Brigid Sabbat approaching in the month of Feabhra. Brigid, they knew, was the Goddess of poetry, and healing, and fire. So there would be poems and lays chanted aloud, and flutes and tambours played, and woven briar garlands with tiny white candles blazing in them for everyone to wear at the dancing. Long tables would be set in the Great Hall, laden with the Sabbat feast. Ice on the wells would be broken and fresh water hauled up to be brewed for ale.

  The Druids had called this festival Imbolc, and in England they called it Candlemas or Ladyday, but in any name the catkins and snowdrops would soon be in bud. Whatever it was called, the children knew it for what it was: the Festival of Returning Light, the celebration of finding at the center of darkness an invincible radiance, the holy-day at which people of The Old Ways call forth the rising of the midwinter sun.

  EPILOGUE

  THESE MANY YEARS have I been blessed to breathe the air and quaff the water, to tread the earth, to warm myself beside the fire.

  These many years have I been blessed to learn the great legends and pass them on to those who will come after. Folk arrive, young and old, from all points—the far reaches of Britannia, even from the Continent—to listen to the great Tale Spinner pour into their ears stories to sober or gladden their thoughts. Yet this is the first tale I have committed in writing to parchment. It belongs to us all, yet is such a personal story that until now I have lacked both will and skill to set it down. But I am old now, and have at last learned how to be myself without effort. It is time to entrust these words to writing, so that the tale may outlive the teller.

  I wince when they call me Spellbinder, for I know the enormity of my failings too dismally well. I know I am merely an old woman who plays with words, an old woman with aches and creaks galore—though able to kick up a small Morris Dance nicely enough when no one can see to chide me that I should rest. So I marvel that they marvel—visitors, pilgrims—at what they call my wisdom, my perception, the store of my knowledge.

  I laugh to myself, aware that mere age accounts for most of it. Almost eighty turns of the Year’s Great Wheel have I seen spun now—even the change to a new century two years ago. What others mistake for wisdom is the simple accumulation of experience: repeated lessons that even the stubborn ones, like myself, eventually manage to learn—but not easily, never easily. Why should any lesson of worth be easy? If it were, would we value it?

  That accumulation of experience is all any of us truly knows. Although in my case there was also the manner in which I was raised—growing up under the wing of one who taught me everything she knew and was still learning lifelong: Alyce Kyteler, my adoptive mother. From the first, she had confidence in me. She swore I would surpass her in learning, and because I believed what she said—she did not lie to me—I came to believe that, too. When I was yet a Maiden, she named me her heir in every way, ensuring I would inherit all that was hers—her books, lands, fortunes, skills, memories, friends. And responsibilities.

  I have beloved memories of Alyce, who was called by many “The White Haired Witch.” I have memories of her love and her gentleness—despite the shadow of sorrow, like a sheer ribbon of darkness streaming from her, that pervaded my childhood. And I have memories of how she changed after Aunt Helena arrived and stayed to live with us. Alyce told me once that when she had been young, she had cared greatly how she was regarded by others, though she admitted she would never have acknowledged it at the time. But now, as an old woman, she had become more interested in being the observer, and less and less willing to be observed at all. Old now myself, I understand what she meant. But I still like to recall watching her transformation after Aunt Helena’s arrival. The sadness shadowing her eyes never quite vanished, but now she blazed such warmth and energy, such mirth. A great Crone she became, embracing her many summers with both arms, seizing age with both fists. How her green eyes would flame with anger at injustice. Yet how tranquil her voice could sound, when I would ask her to sing me to sleep as she had done when I was but a little girl.…

  I am glad she lived so long—long enough to witness the return to England of her old adversary, the former Bishop of Ossary, Richard de Ledrede, who was sent home from France in disgrace. I am glad she lived to witness the ostracism King Edward III pronounced on the Bishop, tantamount to solitary confinement under house arrest, since his land had been confiscated and no one in England would have dealings with him. He lived long though, alone and poor, and his death was the subject of much talk. It was said that he ended his own life, that there were self-inflicted wounds, which to their way of belief would mean he had deliberately damned himself beyond any hope of mercy, for eternity. The priest who attended him in the final hour would say naught of the wounds. But in his distress he did tell others that the Bishop had sent him away, refusing the last rites of their faith. He said the old man spat out the communion wafer, laughing wildly that he had lost his appetite at last. Then, the priest said, he began ranting that he was tired of waiting, that as the second Saint Patrick he had earned the right to go somewhere beyond bargaining. He raved on, boasting that he had drowned Saint Francis in a fountain in broad sunlight while the larks chanted their approval. The priest said he was quite mad. Mad or sane, that was his wretched end. Still, I believe it required considerable restraint—plus respect for the Law of Threefold Return—for Alyce Kyteler personally not to arrange an even more dramatic fate for Richard de Ledrede.

  She died, in the fullness of her seventy-two summers, almost the same month he did. But such a different death! She slid from this consciousness smooth as a spoon through fresh curds, with a look, a smile, and a sigh. I was at her side—together with my sister, Dana Galrussyn, who was the Healer tending her in those last days, and Dana’s mother, Aunt Helena. Alyce was surrounded by her other adopted children, too, and her Familiars, and her strays—human and animal both—and the many in these parts who had come to love her. Whatever else we Irish may say about Britain, the English respect eccentricity.

  Alyce was always insistent that the human heart and mind were slowly maturing, that we ourselves were sacred, that we were the Goddess and the God, if we would only recognize that. She always said things would improve—though she usually added cynically that things would also relapse before they improved further. Such faith she had in cycles and in spirals!

  I wish she had lived to see the changes in the world. True, some it is as well she never knew. Such as the Inquisition’s increasing power on the Continent. Such as King Edward’s passing. Such as a second Richard coming to reign here, eager to revive the war against the Irish. Happily, he has now gone. Though it is still too early to tell about this fourth Henry. And Alyce would have grieved over news of the Black Death in Europe, and would have raged that the fools who had killed cats and let rodents breed unchecked should be held responsible for their savage ignorance.

  But she would have delighted in other news. She would have celebrated the peasant uprisings across the Continent. She would have been especially amused at the confounding of her old enemies, now that the Church seems to be turning on itself. How she would laugh at three popes reigning simultaneously, scrambling in contention for power from competing thrones in Rome, Avignon, and Pisa! How pleased she would be to read the reports my own couriers now send me from Europe—reports of new cosmologies and scientific theories, bravely being put forth even in the teeth of persecution!

  Were I a younger woman, I might climb upon that broom they claim we ride and journey all the way to Italy, to partake of this feast for the intellect. But it is just as well that Alyce and Petronilla, my granddaughters, ha
ve gone in my stead, to learn what they can and carry it back here to the Isles—this despite the clucking father-hen worries of fussy Sean Fergus, my son. Still, I must be fair: Sean, himself a homebody Greenwitch, did find the courage to let them go, with his paternal blessing.

  But all such little chronicles are postscripts to the story. They are like the afterbirth that trails a newborn babe from the womb. The story is the babe, and that have I now safely delivered.

  So have I set down on these leafs the tale of my other mother, my mother in blood—birth-blood and death-blood—Petronilla de Meath, she who was also The White Haired Witch.

  Often did Alyce and Aunt Helena speak to me of my mother. The Tale I have set down here is spun with their yarn. It is spun with something else, too, something eternally lost and endlessly familiar—the weave of memory. I have no memories of Erin, the land I long for, mourn for, and never shall visit, even though now I could. I treasure the wee pouch Alyce gave me when she died—filled with Kilkenny earth, still faintly fragrant after so many years. But my mother’s blood has soaked that earth, and never shall I return there.

  Of my mother, I have few memories. They are dimmed by time and worn by use, for I cherish every one.

  Far, far back, the sound of her voice, higher and lighter than Alyce’s, singing me to sleep.

  Thin childish arms wrapped round me in a willed, fierce strength.

  Church bells pealing.

  A whiff of marzipan. A taste of gingerbread.

  And a dream I had once, and almost still have sometimes—wherein she kneels in a dark wood and reaches for me, but does not touch me. She speaks to me, then, wordlessly on the wind, of how much she loves me. But that is not a proper memory, merely a dream.

  Therefore have I set down here, that it may enter the Lore of the Tuatha de Danaan for all time, the true Tale of Petronilla de Meath—the first person to be condemned to death in Ireland for practicing The Old Ways, the mother who loved me more than her life, the shy warrior who found her defiance, the Neophyte who initiated herself into her own Powers at the last.

  In her name and to her honour, to endure for so long as stories are remembered or the magick of ink on parchment remains, these words I set down in my own write, and mark with my Seal, time out of mind by Wiccan reckoning, in the year Christians number 1402.

  Sara Basilia de Meath

  High Priestess of the Craft of the Wise,

  Tale Spinner of the Seannachai,

  Lore and Legend Keeper,

  Lady of Kyteler Manor, Midlands, England

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Burning Time is based on historical fact. The story of Alyce Kyteler and her circle comes to us from records of the time, demonstrating three elements always found in witch persecutions: the attempt by a conqueror’s religion to colonize, demonize, and eradicate older, indigenous belief systems; economic motive (since the accuser profits by being awarded the accused’s properties); and misogyny—fear and hatred of the female. (A more extensive Author’s Note, a Glossary of names and terms, and a full Bibliography of works consulted for The Burning Time can be accessed at www.mhpbooks.com)

  Christianity’s arrival in Ireland in approximately the fourth century C.E. gave rise to a unique Celtic Christianity: a syncretic mix of Roman Catholicism with indigenous Pagan beliefs practiced by the majority of people calling themselves Christians. This was not uncommon throughout the British Isles; as late as the early fourteenth century, the Bishop of Coventry openly admitted to being an observer of the Old Religion, or The Craft. Consequently, it was considered shocking when, in 1324, Dame Alyce Kyteler (sometimes written as Kettler or Kettle) of County Kilkenny was charged with heretical sorcery—the first person in Ireland to be persecuted as an observer of The Craft. Formal charges were brought by Bishop Richard de Ledrede, an Englishman ordained as a Franciscan. He arrived in Ireland from the Papal Court—based in Avignon, France, from 1309 to 1378—with the blessings of Pope John XXII, who authored papal bulls commissioning inquisitional campaigns against sorcery, and declared St. Francis’s doctrine of Christ’s poverty to be heretical. Bishop de Ledrede’s mission was to ferret out witchcraft in Ireland using Inquisition procedures—including torture to exact confessions and the naming of others—that was already in use in Europe.

  The peasants were mostly helpless. Alyce Kyteler was not. She and the Bishop engaged in quite a personal war. Of those accused with her (see below), the fates of only two are known for certain.

  William Oultawe, Alyce Kyteler’s son by her first husband, was imprisoned for nine weeks and fined. He was then allowed to recant and receive Church sacraments, on condition that he make a pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, and pay for the re-roofing in lead of St. Canice’s—today St. Mary’s—Cathedral in Kilkenny Town. (Modern Kilkenny residents still wink at the witchly irony that this penance caused the too-heavy roof to cave in, as described in Chapter XVII.)

  The records also show that Petronilla de Meath, a member of the Kyteler household, was flogged six times. She confessed to sorcery and all charges of the Bishop’s court. Once certain Kyteler had made a successful escape together with de Meath’s daughter Sara (sometimes listed in the records as Sara Basilia), she named Kyteler—but only Kyteler—as an accomplice. Refusing to name any others, she scorned the sacraments of the Church, and was declared apostate, excommunicate, and damned. She was burned alive at the stake in the marketplace of Kilkenny Town on November 3, 1324—the first person ever to be executed for witchcraft in Ireland.

  The Burning Time in continental Europe and the British Isles lasted approximately 600 years, peaking in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but persisting well into the eighteenth century and the “Enlightenment.” In Ireland the last witch trial was held in 1711, in England in 1717. But in Germany the last person accused of witchcraft was executed in 1775, in Spain 1781, in Protestant Switzerland 1782. Catholic Poland burned alive its last witch as late as 1793 (the year George Washington held his first cabinet meeting). Ideological-political battles between the Reformation and Counter Reformation literally fed the flames, with newly minted Protestants competing with Catholics for the most fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.

  The result was widespread slaughter. A short sampling: in 1482, in Constance, France, 48 women were burned; in 1507, in Calahorra, Spain, 30 were burned; in 1515, in Geneva, Switzerland, 500 accused witches were executed in a single day; in 1524, in Como, Italy, 1,000 were killed; in 1622, in Würzburg, Germany, 900; in 1670, in Mohra, Sweden, 70 women and 15 children were executed and 136 other children between the ages of nine and 16 were sentenced to be whipped together at the church door every day for a year. In Germany, the sixteenth century saw witch burnings almost every day; complete villages were “cleansed” of women, girls, and cats. In 1586, only two women were reported left alive in an entire Rhineland district. Whole convents were indicted and sentenced for harboring “rebellious, learned women.” The children of victims were especially suspect, suffering incredible cruelties: as late as 1754, Veronica Zerritsch of Germany was compelled to dance in the warm ashes of her executed mother, then was burned alive herself, at age thirteen. Some scholars, focusing on the continental persecutions between 1550 and 1650, conservatively estimate the number hanged or burned at 60,000. Others, charting the entire 600-year span of The Burning Time in Europe, estimate that between eight and nine million persons were massacred. It is impossible to know for certain. We do know, however, that although men were also accused, tortured, and killed, the vast majority of victims were women and girls.

  A few more words on fact and fiction in this book.

  The Song of Amorgin quoted in Chapter VI dates back to 1268 C.E.; this version is, according to Robert Graves, an English translation from the colloquial Irish, itself translated from the Old Goidelic. The Song of The Running Seasons in Chapter VII is a variant of a shape-shifting lay dating at least to the eleventh century, in turn based on a theme prevalent in classical Greek poetry
; a modern English version survives as The Ballad of The Coal Black Smith.

  The advice quoted in Chapter XII—Wiccan guidelines for secrecy, ways to survive interrogation and torture, even endure death by fire—is authentic. The text has been passed down for centuries, and is thought to have originated in a European country in the grip of witch persecutions. The guidelines are quoted in numerous works.

  The various recipes and herbal medicines are accurate, drawn from the period, and based on Wiccan sources. Wiccans have always been sophisticated herbalists. In fact, the recipes are so effective that I have omitted proportions and, in some cases, ingredients, when a hallucinogenic or possibly dangerous mixture might result.

  The two healer-women denounced by the Bishop in Chapter II—Jacqueline Felicie de Almania, and Belota—are named in French trial records of the day. Bernard Gui, mentioned in Chapter XIV, authored The Conduct of the Inquisition of Heretical Depravity and from 1307 to 1324 was Chief Inquisitor of Toulouse, where he condemned a long list of accused heretics.

  Dana Galrussyn, Sean Fergus/Father Brendan Canice, Maeve Payn, Father Donnan, and Lady Megan are all purely fictional creations of the author.

  Not so the others.

  In 1577, Hollinshed, in his germinal Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Ireland—Shakespeare’s historical source—wrote of the Kyteler trials. The trial record, as edited by Thomas Wright (London, The Camden Society, 1843) is, according to the medieval scholar Dr. Margaret Murray, the earliest source to give the full names of those accused:

  Proceedings Against Dame Alyce Kyteler

  County Kilkenny, Ireland, 1324

  1. Dame Alyce Kyteler

  2. Alyce, wife of Henry the Smith

  3. Annota Lange