Confessions of a Pagan Nun

by Kate Horsley

  Still on my knees, I thought of my circumstance. I felt the sharp presence of the chains around my ankles and what they meant. This was no game. The man who had put them there had taken a blade to his own body. There was a desperation in him that infected the place. He seemed to want to carve away all solid forms to get to the spirit, like the Roman philosophers who cut up the body to find the gland or organ that is the soul. These Romans were corrupt, and it is no mystery that the people of that empire ran to Christ as their savior. They had been beset for years with worship of mortals as the result of emperors declaring themselves and their concubines to be gods. Christ liberated them. He purified and simplified the divine. He replaced Caligula’s whims and Hadrian’s obsessions with the simple belief that there is the one God who knows the suffering of every man. Still there lingered the philosophies of those who preferred to attend to theories and ideals rather than suffering.

  Plato and others who declare the existence of ideals are like lunatics who remember things that never happened or existed. They have created their own delusions, perhaps for entertainment, or to distract themselves from the knowledge that in order to act upon what is solid, they must develop compassion and courage rather than philosophies. The philosophers who now control the Christian cult and condemn Pelagians as heretics love the ideal as a measure by which to judge those who do not agree with their authority. Whoever reads this, do not be told what to do to receive grace. You know in your heart, unless your mind is sick. And if your mind is sick, then make a country where all the people have sick minds and kill each other over philosophies and hallucinations.

  I long for the times when a man’s head was severed because another man wanted what he had. Here is a direct motive. I had thought that the love of Christ would make us kinder and less likely to smash skulls. But now I see that we will be asked to smash skulls for Christ. The bishops who love power will surely love a motive so easily manipulated to suit their needs. I have read many powerful men’s contradictory ideals and assertions of what Christ meant for us to do and think. If the abbot wants me dead because I am capable of ruining his influence with my knowledge and my ability to speak and write it, then he can use his version of Christ to kill me. He can summon an ideal and show my sin against it. All he needs is his status and the fears and ignorance of others. There is plenty of all three.

  After hours of such meditation and agitation in the chapel, I stood, unsteady because I had forgotten that my ankles were bound. Then I knew that I was not alone. I listened without breathing, and I heard breathing that was not my own, which came from behind the rug that separated me from the monk’s side. There was someone there, on the other side. The flame sputtered and I crossed myself. Impeded by the chains around my ankles, I walked forward, staring hard at the flame, until I was beside the altar, and I turned to face the benches on the monk’s side. The figure sat in the dark and did not move or speak. I asked, “Are you human?” And it did not answer. I whispered, “Brigit?” And the figure bent forward to put its head upon its knees.

  I saw then that he was a monk, and when he looked up at me, I knew that it was Giannon. I asked, “Why are you silent?” I was trembling so that I had to sit beside him. He held my head against his chest, and I could feel the tremors of his weeping. After these many years, I said first to Giannon, who was my soul’s twin whom I had thought never to meet again in this realm, “I have learned to read and write in Latin. I have transcribed parchment from all over the world, the words of men whose bodies are dust. I have learned what emperors and philosophers and scholars have concluded and what they believe and how they mean to order this world.” I was his student, reporting to him as though I had done what was assigned only yesterday, and now I could be done and go on to another task. I wanted to be done. I have seen enough at this place. The flame grew small, and we both looked at it, fearing that even our breath would extinguish it.

  I asked, “To what place can we escape?” He still did not speak. I said, “I have written about my life. I have written about the times before and after we lived together. You must read it, for now I think that I was writing it for you.” He leaned back, his beard trembling, and closed his eyes but still held on to my hand. I whispered, “What happened to silence you? What has happened all these years? Look how old I am, how my hair is turning gray and my flesh is drying. What has happened to us all these years? Are you still a druid? Are we still druids, Giannon, bards and poets who are free to go from one túath to another without enemies? Who are our enemies now, Giannon? And why do we threaten them?” His silence made my words seem as worthless as water pouring over the rim of a cup already full.

  Brigit’s flame grew dimmer. I whispered, “I came here to see her, to touch the divine and know it existed.” And then the flame went out and we were in darkness. I stood up, and we were black forms in the empty chapel. I stared at the place where the flame had been. When I spoke at last, I said, “Let us leave this place, this region. Let us go and never return.” Giannon looked up at me then, and I saw the empty, tongueless cavern surrounded by trembling lips and unkempt whiskers. I held his hands tightly and he grasped hard, a weary, broken man who may have been witless. He did not move away, and I remembered when we were so young and he did not embrace long. He kissed my hands, weeping with a noise in his throat that was not human. And I felt a cool peace fall through me like water. I had no words for it. At that time the flame came back, bursting up with a round and hollow sound like a drum being beat. And its light was wild. It was a pagan flame. And in its light I could see the face of Giannon. He was an old man, far older than I. His eyes were shrunken into his head and filled with the milk of old age. His face was a map of years and valleys and streams. He trembled, his head moving in small and constant circles. He was, after all, a mortal man, and I knew that not he nor anyone would rescue me.

  I then told my old and weary friend that there were parchments in my clochan. I revealed the hiding place among bundles of cloth that no Christian man would touch, for it was used to catch the blood that comes out, infrequently now, from my womb. And so I asked that Giannon take these parchments when I am gone from here if he stays behind. I asked that he read them, for I want some soul in this world to think on what I have seen. I said to Giannon that now that I had finished my training I was allowed three opinions, according to the rules I learned from him many years ago. So I told him then my three opinions, having gained the privilege to give them. He sighed and I spoke, saying, “First, bairgen is best when eaten with cream. Second, morning air is more finely perfumed than evening air.” I waited, and then an opinion came to me in a woman’s voice that I did not recognize as my own. But I believed the words and spoke them: “Third, receiving kindness is the only comfort for suffering. Giving kindness is the only method of forgetting suffering. The creed is of no concern, and the act may be so simple as to seem insignificant, such as the kindness of the sun drying my leggings, or of a hand offering cheese, or of a voice saying, ‘I will stay with you.’ ”

  A few breaths after I had spoken, the rug that separated one side of the chapel from the other was torn aside, and we saw there Sister Luirrenn with round and fierce eyes and spittle coming from her toothless mouth. I knew at that moment that everything had changed, that everything in this land and the world had changed. Sister Luirrenn did not seem wise to me anymore. Giannon stood unsteadily, unable to act with any force as Luirrenn and a monk with thick arms led me to my cell, where they drove a stake into the ground for the purpose of attaching my chains to something immovable. Then the abbot fetched the smith from the settlement below, who ran to my clochan with his glowing iron. While he did his work, the smith asked to be forgiven, for I had been to his home one or two times to give his family bread after his pigs drowned and to hold his child when it died of a fever. Now I only move in the circle allowed by my tether. I was a tamed wolf; now I have gone feral, not to be trusted. I say, Why not put me back into the wild? I am dangerous only when I am urged to be what I am
not.

  I have asked about Giannon, still calling him the monk who does not speak. Sister Aillenn spies on him, for she has grown calmer and does not scream at night. She is cunning and has found that her reputation as transcendent saint or deranged specter allows her to go about freely. She has found that Giannon, too, is shackled but allowed to work in the garden, for he is considered harmless, an ineffective old man who is mute. The abbot has come tonight and promises to dig in my cell to discover the bones of children I have buried in the floor after my satyr’s feasts. He asked to examine my feces. I remain, like Giannon, silent, wordless in his presence. There is no other recourse but to let him play out his mad attempt and to believe that the sisters, even Aillenn and Luirrenn, will not let harm come to me as a result of false and obscene accusations. Then will Giannon and I go away together, carrying my scrolls, for now I know that my life is ordinary and that it will continue so that I will be an old woman and attend to Giannon when he dies. I will hold his hand and tell him stories about the heroes, Mebd and Cuchulain and Jesus Christ and Brigit.

  I see from my doorway that Sister Aillenn has enticed the wild mare to touch its nose to her hand. She stands outside with her hair free and strokes the beast’s neck. The stallion is at a distance below them on the hill, and I can just see his head, which he tosses in agitation to see the risk the mare is taking. I think he will find that the seduction is not from human to horse, but from horse to human, and that soon Sister Aillenn will be one of them. Oh, I am glad that there are small freedoms in the world, even if they exist only in the imagination. I am glad that I have stored in my mind certain moments and that I have let myself feel the tickle of an ant on my skin and smelled the perfume of a great storm in the mountains. Praise God for these things. May people protect them and be grateful for them.

  Let all who read this know that I am no witch. Let all who read this beware of Christians and druids who claim to put words to that which cannot be named. Use words to please, to instruct, to soothe. Then stop speaking.

  1. Cumal: unit of bargaining equaling three milk cows or a certain amount of land.

  2. Ballcin: cup or vessel made of wood.

  3. Gonomil, organmil, morbumil: a chant to kill worms.

  4. Fé: stick used to measure a person’s grave.

  EPILOGUE

  I HAVE NEWS that should be known.

  In the Order of Saint Brigit during the second year of the authority of the abbot named Adrianus, Gwynneve born in Tarbfhlaith was taken from her clochan with her ankles shackled. It should be known that she was moved by procession through the small settlement that surrounds the abbey, where people were instructed to throw stones upon her as she walked. Her beauty was great, though she no longer had youth. Her deportment was proud. Those who met her eyes stood still and let their stones drop to the ground beside their own feet. The day was full of light. Though there were many clouds, they were held away from the sun. It should be known that there was fear in Gwynneve’s face, which she did not try to disguise, but which did not make her stumble. Thus it happened.

  There is more to this news.

  A monk named Haldrynn walked behind her and beat upon a drum while announcing that she had caused unnatural deaths and consumed infants. It should be known that one woman among the laypeople ran along with the small procession, pounding her own chest and pulling her own hair. This woman claimed that the nun Gwynneve was innocent, and that she herself had exhumed her own infant in order to give it a sacred burial with pagan methods. She said that it had been her sin to love the newborn greatly and to have looked too deeply into its eyes and should not have attached herself to its frail spirit. The abbot and his cohorts told the woman to silence herself or have her other children taken and buried alive. Thus it happened. It should be known that also in the procession was Sister Aillenn, who leads the nuns since she has been given the position of mother in place of Sister Luirrenn, who has taken ill and requests that her duties be given over, though it should be known that she protested the abbot’s choice of successor. Thus it happened.

  There is more to this news.

  The nun Gwynneve was made to sit upon the edge of the old well that is two Roman miles north of the abbey and just within the woods of Firfhlaith. The sun was above the top of the rowan tree that bows over the well. It should be known that the nun Gwynneve was then pushed backward into the depths of the well by the abbot and his attendant, Haldrynn. No cries came from within the pit, which is said to be as deep as ten men are tall. The woman who had run beside Gwynneve called down to ask if she were suffering, but there was no answer. Thus it happened, and I wept to see it.

  Gwynneve of Tarbfhlaith, scribe of the Order of Saint Brigit, lived over forty years in this incarnation. I, Giannon the Mute, have taken her place as scribe at this place, protector of codices and parchment. Her life is presented in her own words on codices that will hereafter be sealed and protected. She has not included in her own words what reputation others have given her, some of it false and much of it true. It has been said that Gwynneve transformed herself as a druid into a wolf and moved about in wilderness and túaths as such a beast, bringing both blessing and disaster. These tales relate also her battles with spirit entities, including the altercation with a Formorian incarnated as a bear who sat upon her and would have killed her had she not conjured a spell against it. Thus it is said to have happened.

  It should be known that she has herself been inaccurate by excluding the acts that gave her the reputation as a saint, a reputation refuted forcefully by the priests and abbots who pronounce who is saint and who is sinner. Gwynneve disliked hunger and fed those who suffered it. For some time when she was a goatherd, she supplied several túaths with milk and cheese when they had been stripped of their goods by rivals. Her greatest fame was as one who attends the deathbed. Her strength was in accompanying a woman, a child, or a man to his final breath. Gwynneve did not turn away from the stench or writhing of death. She was known to say, “I will stay with you.” Thus it happened.

  There is more to this news.

  In her own death, Gwynneve was not false. She said once as she walked to the well, “I am afraid,” and then, as she sat on the stones around the well, she addressed the abbot gently, saying, “I wish I could live more.” Finally, she said to those who stood around, unable to cast their eyes on her face, that she wanted to be given poison in case she did not die from the fall into the well, and in case there was not water enough to drown her at the distant bottom. The woman who had run beside her said that she would fetch hemlock and throw it down to her if she did not die quickly and suffered wounds and starvation. It should be known that this same woman and others have been seen throwing sprigs of white flowered hemlock into that well and calling down to what lies in its dark and narrow distance. It should be known that all who go to this well add their tears to its waters. It should be known that all who call out Gwynneve’s name beg for forgiveness and for help in understanding and overcoming suffering. The answer is always silence.

  GLOSSARY

  Aes dána • Druids and their companions.

  Aimsirtogu • The age of choice: seven for a boy, fourteen for a girl.

  Aisling • Mystical vision or dream.

  Anamchara • Confessor or authority on cleansing the soul.

  Bàdhum • Place where cows are kept.

  Baile Shuibhe • Frenzy of Sweeny, who went in search of peace of mind by developing an animal familiarity with nature.

  Bairgen • Cake speckled with currants.

  Ballcin • Cup or vessel made of wood.

  Ban-druí • Female druid.

  Bas-chrann • Small wooden log used as a knocker.

  Bean sidhe • Woman of the fairies.

  Birer • Watercress.

  Ceallurach • Cemetery for unbaptized children or suicides.

  Cele dé • Servant of a god; nun.

  Cíorbolg • Comb bag for women.

  Clochan • Beehive-shaped cell made of stone.<
br />
  Copog phadraig • Common plantain, used to return strength after blood loss.

  Corpan fedilfas • Denial of food to the body for spiritual discipline.

  Crem • Wild garlic.

  Cumal • Unit of bargaining equaling three milk cows or a certain amount of land.

  Dabhach • Two-handled tub.

  Dal • Land where a tribe exists.

  Editorulgatu • Common Latin version of the Bible, based on a translation by Saint Jerome.

  Fé • Stick used to measure a person’s grave.

  Fidchell • A game like chess.

  Finna • Royal bodyguard.

  Fled co-lige • Feast of the deathbed.

  Fortúatha • Of the alien people.

  Fraechoga • Woodberries.

  Geìlt • One who goes mad and flees from battle. Gonomil, organmil, morbumil • A chant to kill worms.

  Im noin • The one meal served at monasteries, in the afternoon.

  Nenadmín • Crabapple cider.

  Oblaire • Leader or elder of a troupe of entertainers.

  Ogham • Stone on which words and marks were carved, sometimes to mark a grave or place of significance.

  Ollam • The highest form of druidic bard.

  Sciathlúireach • Protective prayers from one of the books of Saint Patrick.

  Screpull • Silver coin.

  Tanag • Hard cheese.

  Tánaise • Next in line to be chieftain or kin.

  Teách Duinn • An island southwest of Ireland where the dead are said to gather.

  Túath • Tribe made up of one or more kinship groups or clans.

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