Confessions of a Pagan Nun

by Kate Horsley

  I have seen that the Christian philosophy of the bishops compels people to turn away from the earth and toward heaven. It encourages a view of earth as a place of degradation and temptation and spreads this view of our one mother to include all mothers, whose wombs are considered unclean. And it seems curious to me that those who condemn this earth and its goods most vehemently and greedily amass those goods. The monks who preach and practice poverty are exceptions to the priests and converted chieftains who instead practice fierce and jealous acquisition. Then these rich men confess and say certain words to garner absolution for the sins they committed in order to become wealthy. But they keep the wealth. The chieftains who used to know the earth as their wife now use her as mistress. I fear that the cleverest means of power will be for the Christians to use their wealth to own the weapons and war beasts that will give them dominance over the distribution of grain and land. This, I have heard, has already happened in Britain, where the priests have armies to mete out their doctrines and have made the people so dependent on them that they give portions of their harvests to them. It is no mystery that the Pelagians and others who say that a man can speak directly to God without a priest have been discovered floating in lakes and sleeping with axes in their skulls. Power does not willingly give up its place to truth, though I thought it would. I did not understand. May God and all who read this forgive me if my words are heresy. I still love the power of words. They dispel my loneliness. They soothe my fear of uselessness.

  But I say that wind and water or fire and worms can overcome any words or theory, and some priests would do well to be humbled by this fact. They would do well to look away from their manuscripts and icons from time to time. But I understand their need to dwell on miracles, codes, and saints. With me it is not so much piety as loneliness that makes me beg the hero Jesus or Brigit or any god or saint to appear to me so I can believe and feel protected, even if they do not tell me for what purpose the world exists. How sorely I need to feel that words and stories do not disguise chaos and disaster but hint at some comforting wisdom. How well I understand the true torment of hell as being eternally kept from seeing the face of God. I already know this punishment, but it is, I confess, perhaps an exile of my own doing. How thorough the loneliness! How tiresome the self-pity! I wish that I could thoroughly believe in some creed. I wish that I was ignorant enough to know one truth and discard all others.

  As time passes and the abbot lies with his legs spread to comfort his wound, I have been forgotten here. There is neither punishment nor absolution concerning my suspected devilry. I have become invisible. Only Sister Aillenn came to tell me that the abbot has risen from his bed and, though he walks slowly and winces often, hears confession and gives sermon in the chapel. She touched the pages on which I make marks, staring at them and saying that they look like worm trails. She said that she took my place guarding the flame when it was my turn to do so. Such news made me suffer and tempted me to walk in the night hoping not to be seen. I went to the dwellings of the laypeople, where I saw the woman whose infant was buried here, and she hid her face with her hair. So pitiful was her sorrow and shame that I promised to give her comfort and speak well of her in my prayers to Brigit. She has no living child and her husband has taken a young woman as his wife to bear him children. I combed her hair. I saw also the monk who has taken my place as gardener, and I was stricken with rage. I saw him as a fool in a frayed hat and unruly beard.

  Restlessness abides. I feel like the horse who smells the storm though the sky is blue.

  One more night of sleep and I will make a plan to move on, for in the end I am a pagan or heretic more than one of these Christians, and I see no reason for the authority of the men called bishops and popes other than the hats they wear, as foolish as the hat of the mute gardener. I should not use this place and these good women any longer. The abbot may well know that I am a weed amid the flax, and he, unlike my sweet sisters, will not suffer imperfection.

  LAST ENTRY

  I AM OLD TODAY. And I am just born. I am a bird, or a fox, or a bowl, or a knife. These words say it, but they cannot make it so. I can tell you that I have flown this night and seen the face of God and that it looked like the moon almost full. I can tell you that I have grown as small as a piece of threshed grain and fell through a tiny hole in a sieve and that a mouse will eat me soon. Words can say these things, and that is all. The word is not made flesh except in some tale. And what rod do you use to measure the truth of words? What fé4 to lay against the words and see that flesh fits them? Use your own organs and senses as fé.

  I have time to write many truths, including what has happened here at the Order of Saint Brigit on the holiest of nights. I have time and opportunity to do no other thing but transcribe scriptures, prayers, letters, and truths because my ankles are chained by irons to a heavy stake that has been pounded deep into the earth in my cell. In this way has the nun Gwynneve finally been made an immovable servant of God. I could begin to wail, a beast on its tether whose night screams would call out either pity or hatred. Such screams, like the ones I heard from Sister Aillenn’s cell, always come to us at night from a distance or from behind a wall or from inside a neighbor’s dwelling. One listens or one covers one’s ears, perhaps praying that the tormented sounds stop. And when they do stop, the world is silent and hangs its head. There is no purpose in wailing unless one is a child who must be found by his mother. I am not lost. My mother is lost. She is lost in death as we all are when we travel there, even in our thoughts.

  The accusations against me grow hideous. It is said that I have hidden things in my body in unclean orifices and that I entice children and demons to extract them and engage in foul orgies. It is said that I have lust for corpses and the ability to transform myself. Where is the reason for this? For if I could transform myself, would I not grow wings and fly far away? I would turn my swollen ankles into birds’ legs and hop through the doorway. Bending and then lifting in an exquisite moment of release, I would feel the spread of my beautiful black wings and the freedom of the vast sky.

  My imprisonment began a few days before the twentieth night of the cycle of Brigit, when I made many prayers to many gods and spirits, flinging supplications out like feed for pigs. And whichever god consumed whichever prayer, I wished him to be pleased and give me comfort and grace and power over my fears. I was sick with a need for godly hand or voice as proof that my soul did not drift in empty space. When I looked out at the frozen mud and heard the psalms coming from the cold chapel, I felt the chill of emptiness and silence beneath all things, as though the world were a woven carpet slung over black ice. I had evil visions of the toothless gap in Sister Luirrenn’s mouth and of the bloodied indentation between the abbot’s legs. I saw, in this horrible mural, the thread of blood on my mother’s lips, the bruises on Sister Aillenn’s arms, the corpse of the stranger who had frozen to death in the forest as he leaned against a tree for rest. And I saw the refusal to give affection, so many times witnessed and felt, as hard as a blow from an oaken club. I was afraid of the evil done in this world, by seen and unseen hands. I was afraid that the lesson I would finally learn was that truth is weaker than greedy power, and that death is the highest power, which causes even an infant to swell and stink. Punished for my hubris in calling myself the teller of truth, I would be shown that I was indeed small. These fears turned to terror, and I could no longer sit and wait in my cell.

  Having no sign of intervention from immortals, I went straightaway to the abbot with an appeal, still addicted to my belief that any man will finally honor the truth and reward integrity. Did it not occur to me that for a man to recognize and reward integrity he must first have it himself? Such was my pride, to think that all people of intelligence believed what I believed. I was a fool whose clever mouth spewed forth the chains that would bind me, learning the power of words in a new way. For this abbot wanted control, not wisdom or honor. I went to him both as a child and a warrior, switching roles like the gleeman wh
o paints one side of his face with the mask of a hero and the other with the mask of a hag so that he may play either role by simply turning his head.

  I first told the abbot with humble supplication that I wanted to be with the other nuns again before leaving the convent to lead a humbler life. I wanted to eat my meals with my sisters and serve God and Brigit by attending the flame on my assigned night of vigilance. The abbot was still pale and moved stiffly. His mood was cold, and he said that I was an arrogant woman whose head was held too high. He said that I was not humble but aggressive with my talents and that the people in the lay houses came to me for things for which they should seek help from God through a priest such as himself. He said loudly, “What foul actions were started when the woman brought the dying infant to you instead of having it baptized! These old ways clutch at the Church’s throat like a mad crone who will strangle it if her hands are not torn away and she is not impaled.” I made a terrible error then. I felt my anger and wore it like a chieftain’s cloak. I became clever and thought to check him in the battle he had begun. I told the abbot that I knew who had taken the infant and why, and that I did not want harm to come to her but was following Christ’s example in protecting the meek, who shall, it is said, inherit the earth. He asked me to tell the person’s name, and I said I would not, for it would do no good to bring harm to this person but would be better to pray for the person’s tormented soul. He said that sin must be absolved officially, not by a withering pagan woman such as myself. In anger, I asked him, “Has your sin with Aillenn been officially absolved?”

  He did not strike me or grow pale or red. He smiled and said nothing. He moved his legs together as though feeling the absence there and receiving confidence from it. The anger drained from me, and I felt instead a pity that was firmer than the anger. I saw then, as I should have seen before, the immense and mysterious damage that this man must have suffered in his life. I saw in his face and in his self-mutilation a surrender to confusion so horrible and so human, so potent in all of us, that I had to understand him. He is like a comrade who has fallen beside me in battle. His weakness can be pitied but must not be ignored. One cannot pretend that such a man is still able to lead us. It is noble to pity a man who is cruel because he is weak, but it is idiotic and dangerous to allow him to have power. I said to him without anger, “You should go from here. If coming has caused you to mutilate yourself, then your coming was an error.” He spoke then, saying, “We will play this out, you and I. We will play this out. See what you can do, Gwynneve. I have heard of your visions, of your madness in seeing fornicators, and of the visions you record on parchment. See what you can do, perhaps renouncing your visions and burning your parchments, and bringing the demon who took the dead infant for punishment.”

  I left feeling a weakness in my legs. And soon after, when I was in my cell, Sister Luirrenn came in with the chains. She read from a scroll, “Sister Gwynneve, you have been accused of defiling graves and consuming human flesh, of consorting with demons and performing pagan rituals with other women, whose ignorance of scripture has made them your victims.” I did not argue or struggle against the chains, and I saw that she wept as she secured them to my ankles. The other sisters gathered outside my cell and peered in to see my degradation. But they wrung their hands and called out blessings to me, some in the name of Christ, some in other, more ancient names. Sister Aillenn came to sit on the floor at my feet. I only said to Sister Luirrenn, “Please, Mother, do not take my writing tools.” Am I not still a child? Forgive me.

  At that time my ankles were chained to each other so that I was able to walk with small and awkward steps. I was afraid at first to go out in the dark, but there were comforts left on my threshold from the garden and from the afternoon meal, indicating that there were those who loved me. I stood in the doorway and watched the backs of the people who furtively left these gifts, some from the lay dwellings. The woman whose infant had begun the trouble came close to the doorway and stood away from me as though afraid. The smell of manure came from her even at that distance. She hid her face with her hair and threw a small bundle of hemlock at my feet. I looked long at the delicate white flowers and dark leaves that hide so well the painful but quick death inside them. With this pretty poison death seduces the melancholic warrior. I do not know whether she gave this to me as vengeance or mercy. Wafting about my door was also the old monk who does not speak. And soon I came to know that he was Giannon, though I had certainty of nothing and desire for everything. He turned to me briefly at dusk on the night of Saint Brigit and looked into my eyes. And when I spoke, saying, “Giannon?,” he nodded and went away before the water in his eyes could spill over and before I could feast on his appearance.

  Here then seemed to be the sum of my wishes. Of all those who were dead to me, whom I prayed to see again, Giannon was the one I had wanted most. Though my ankles were bound and I was chained as a devil, I felt as though my head had burst open and birds were flying freely from it to the sky. Here was a man, my twin, come to life, resurrected after many years. I could not conceive of it without many hours of breathless pacing and talking to myself. But there were questions enough. Why did he not speak to me? Why had he been here for many weeks and not revealed himself to me and told me what he hoped? I wondered what maimed condition he had been left in by his captors, or if his spirit had been somehow mangled so that he had little reason or will left. Would I rather that he were dead? I sat still for so many hours that the one good candle I had left to me became a mound of wax, the wick drowned.

  This was a bitter night. I had always thought that, were Giannon ever to come to me, he would guide all my actions and free all my sorrows. I had to remember instead that love was not easy with Giannon. And even with this man who understood my strengths, I was always alone. Perhaps this is the knowledge I had refused to put in my mouth and swallow since my mother had died. This is the wisdom that Giannon had always made plain to me and that he still represents with his great silence—that I am Gwynneve alone. Well I should know this lesson, for I have sat beside the dying and understand the limitations of any companionship. There is a place on the road where the solitary nature of the human journey becomes clearly seen. I have never been able to go with a woman, man, or child after his last exhalation. But clearly I have been fascinated with this common transition, this slipping away and its universal heroism. I have danced with death as a woman who wears veils over her eyes so as not to be recognized by her partner, for he may come to where she sleeps and make demands that are hard. The truth may be too brilliant a light, too vast for words or other mental geometries. Perhaps our solitary walk with mortality is indeed only a portion of what is real. Perhaps we are like leaves on the top of a beautiful tree that have no concept of the size of the tree and the manner in which it is attached to the earth. But can we not have some comfort in our ignorance—a vision, a voice? Cannot the small and insignificant Gwynneve be like the saints who saw figures come from another realm and heard their blessing from glowing mouths? I wanted to see Brigit for myself, the mother saint, the protector who came herself to tend her flame, passing from the ephemeral realm into our midst, never blemished, never aged, never muted and diminished as Giannon was.

  I am neither ignorant nor rebellious concerning the rule that forbids any human to spy upon Brigit on her night. But I also believe in the unlimited depth of her compassion. It is something I want to feel directly. To know that the thing to which we pray is not emptiness—is that not what our child’s soul begs for? I do not want to be a martyr. I want to be Gwynneve with a deeper faith. Then I will go from here. Then I will do penance, not by punishment but by living more freely and more simply.

  The night of Brigit’s visitation was free of wind and had only a little dampness, which came from the ground in a low and gentle fog. I could see around me clearly by the light of the moon and stars, which were not muted by cloud. I wrapped cloth around my ankles so the chains would not make harsh noise. Still I had to go slowly and
with little motions. The darkness and silence in Sister Aillenn’s clochan seemed watchful and awake. I looked behind me many times and saw no one follow. The chapel was empty, and the flame moved and writhed as though it wished to leave its dish and greet me. Long it took to push the door open and then to close it, for it is a heavy door and full of moans. I turned and studied the chapel, the altar where the flame burns, the hall of benches where nuns’ places are separated from monks’ by rugs hung on ropes. And I thought, What need will we have of such a separation when all the monks have castrated themselves and all the nuns despise their own bodies?

  The flame went low, a sad thing throwing grasping shadows on the stone walls. I thought to replenish the oil myself but prayed to Saint Brigit instead, saying, “You must come. You must let me see you.” I sat on the first bench, my ankles sore and tired of the chains. I kneeled and prayed, using the words of the psalm that begins, “The Lord is my shepherd.” And I waited. A pebble fell on the floor. A sound like wings came from a dark corner behind me. I will confess that I was afraid, for it occurred to me again that the spirit of a saint or warrior may be a thing made of elements a human cannot survive. The very sight of it may cause the eyes to melt or the flesh to peel from the bones. Perhaps my fear swept the air of any spirit wanting to appear, for then there was silence, and much time went by.