Confessions of a Pagan Nun Read online

  I interrupted the women, who looked at my pack with curiosity and amusement. I asked them where and when the council of women was to meet. One, whose face was lined as though spiders had made webs on it, cleared the phlegm from her throat with a hard sound and said, “There is no council of women here. It has not met for four years. Not here has it met, not where it could be known who was meeting.” Her lips curled up in a smile, but I could see in her eyes that she was not merry. The women then began a conversation about the council of women, which I listened to well, and they asked me to tell them a good story. I told them about the Glen of Lunatics, where the geìlt3 of Leinster went. The old woman said that I was a good ban-druí,4 but she mixed her admiration with pity and looked with agitation at one of the women in the group who wore a cross around her neck. The woman who wore the cross put her fingers into a pouch on her belt and brought out a silver circle, which she pressed into my hand. She said, “This is for the story you entertained us with.” That was the first screpull5 I ever held, and I liked well the picture on it, which was of the head of a man. The women laughed when I held the coin up and turned it about in the sunlight. The old woman said, “You can trade that for cheese, or bairgen, or cloth.” Now she grinned and seemed merry even in her eyes. Since then I have seen many coins and heard them jingle in men’s pockets.

  The monks around the oak tree called out to the people of the fair to be baptized. The women nodded their heads to me and moved on. Then I saw that one of the monks had a face I had seen before. I filled up with excited happiness when I saw that it was the face of Mongan, the monk who had come home one night with Giannon many years before. I went up to him, and he saw directly who I was and embraced me. Here I put down my pack of scrolls in the dust at the feet of these monks and held the hands of the one I knew. He looked behind me, and I knew that he expected to see Giannon. My tears fell as they had when I heard the music of the harp, for I had hoped Mongan had good news about Giannon. And now here in the world of trade and conversation I felt very keenly the absence of the man whose companionship I had thought to have all of my days. It had been easier to endure his absence in the silence of our home, broken only by the rustlings of creatures and breezes and the near and far howling of wolves. For it seemed a blasphemy to me that men and women continued to laugh and bargain when Giannon and I had been separated, causing me a deep sorrow that I felt the world should share.

  I pulled Mongan to the edge of the woods and, still holding both of his hands lest he dissolve like a twilight vision, told him of the night that Giannon had disappeared. He was silent then, but still we clutched one another like children in the wind. I asked to stay some days with him, for I suddenly felt the weakness of my spirit.

  In those days, the monk Mongan told me of the comfort he received from Our Lord Jesus Christ. He prayed for me and for Giannon. I heard prayers and scriptures in his circle of monks and was well liked for my desire to learn Latin. The night when the vendors packed their leavings and drank all the mead and cider that remained, I listened to Mongan’s advice. He said that he understood well from Giannon and from observing me that I had great talents in reading and writing. He told me plainly that Christ, who suffered for the weak by being affixed to wooden beams like the skin of an animal put out to dry, loved me well and had given me these talents to be used in his service, to comfort the souls of the people of this land. He showed me a picture of Christ on the cross, a light around his head and deep sorrow and patience in his eyes. I asked, “And this man rose up in his tomb like a man stretching after sleep?” And he answered, “Yes, with the wounds from his suffering still on his body.” He told me also that the Christians had in their possession a number of scrolls and manuscripts as I had never dreamed could exist, with writings from places that took many fortnights to reach by land and water. God provided the men and women who served Him with an infinite amount of parchment and ink. Mongan’s words became a vision to me. I was lifted beyond my own story to hear of places beyond even Britain, of which I knew a little, and to hear of places bigger than a chieftain’s lodge, full of parchment and tablets on which the words of many dead men were written and could be read. All this I wanted to tell Giannon.

  I added to my pack some of the scrolls the monks had and returned to Giannon’s hut to see it changed only by cobwebs and the teeth marks and droppings of mice. I waited still for Giannon to return, but another year went by, during which his garden became ragged and chaotic, and the wolves came near at night and I wept with them for the hardships of the world. I tried to find signs in the patterns of clouds, in the direction of the stars that arced across the sky, in the hum that sometimes came at night and made the world tremble. I read the ripples in the pools and dared to kneel as the monks had knelt and asked for the voice of their god to speak to me. To what was I to be devoted? What was the more solid vision—this god who stood up from his sepulcher or Giannon’s return? Was there no other thing more real or more present to occupy my existence? How many times had I hoped for things beyond my small power to acquire, such as the comfort of my dead mother or the growth of a child in my womb? Was my wish to be a druid, free and unattached to chieftain or túath, another wisp of straw to be blown from my small hands? I had seen at Tailltenn the position druids were now given in the land and wondered if they would take up their place again. I calculated the possibility that the tonsured men would leave so that I could have the privilege I had thought of when I first determined to be Giannon’s apprentice. But I had seen the number of monks increase and the derision they received decrease. Each túath in turn converted, though I had heard that in remote areas, the pagans still went to the stone rings. I had seen chieftains’ warriors accompany the tonsured men and stand guard beside them.

  One devotion stayed with me, and it was to a power I had in my own hands and my own head. The power of words seemed worthy of complete faith and did not betray or trick me. Words were visible, the stones with which all stories and laws were built. All stories, whether about the great battles of Cuchulain or the great miracles of Christ, relied on words. I was sure of their strength and value as I could be sure of nothing else. They had been a solid and tangible part of my life, reaching back into my mother’s purse of pebbles and back further through the tales of my ancestors. I had no need to plead with gods or mortals to make marks as long as there were sticks, or my own fingers, as long as I had a voice that could form the sounds either to others or in my own head. I acknowledge the source of my talent as bigger than my own insignificant self. I also believe that I was meant to use my words for truth telling and not for some political purpose or to raise my own position. I pray that my truth telling be understood as a service to God and that He will forgive my confusion and ignorance.

  Giannon metamorphosed in my mind into a spirit whose influence I could sometimes feel like a breeze on my neck. I heard his practical advice and considered that I might be valued as a bard with the many scrolls I possessed, both pagan and Christian. I would offer knowledge as others offer meat or wine. I might even find a boy or girl as stricken with a love of knowledge as I was and teach what I knew. I chose to travel south, though I was afraid of the wildness there. I chose to go in front of the wave of Christians to where a druid’s skills were not scorned or challenged. My purpose in traveling to the south was also to look for Giannon or any news of him. I reasoned with hope.

  In those times omens came with the strength of a mallet on the head. I was followed by a decrepit she-wolf from Giannon’s dwelling, all the way to the woods that edged the túath of Tarbfhlaith. Her sad but protective presence matched the ruin of the túath that I had been born into, a ruin so thorough that the remains of my own father’s home was a hill on which grass grew. I had been gone many years from that place and reasoned that it had stayed as I had known it, that the children would still be children and the number of pigs neither more nor less. I wanted to have peace one time in the place where my child’s body had been filled with storms. I wanted to serve what
kin I had their cups of ale and their meat before I left on my solitary travels. But I saw no human and only a few wild pigs, who fled into the woods when I stepped near them. I saw only what humans had made and left, a few remnants to show that this had been a dal.6 The pens and huts had long ago fallen, and grasses grew around the wood they had been made of. The paths of mud between the huts were carpeted with grass and thistle. There was no boat at the lake and only two poles still standing to which boats had once been tethered. A thrush sat on the very tip of one of the poles and spoke to me in its language.

  I picked up a bas-chrann7 as though I might strike it on an invisible door and be let into the chieftain’s hut. I could see the boundaries of the bàdhum8 and the green and lush grass there, fertilized by the manure of cattle long gone. I sat inside a dabhach9 that was perched on a mound. I rested my arms on its edges and looked over the túath of Tarbfhlaith, which was no more. I then realized that what men fight for is not permanent. When or why Tarbfhlaith was abandoned I did not know. But I have heard since that a plague overcame the place and killed the majority there, including the chieftain and his kin. I cried for my older sister and lay certain plants on the mound where our dwelling had been, in case her spirit and those of her children were there. I thought of the face of my younger sister, who would have been a young woman and whose whereabouts I know nothing of even to this day, though I try to believe that she left Tarbfhlaith unharmed by the plague. And I wondered then if either druid or Christian were to blame for the ruin of Tarbfhlaith, or if it be attributed to the power that is beyond all doctrine and ritual. What power that is I cannot say, nor do I believe that there is a name for it. It occupies the place where my beloved words cannot go, where they fall like pebbles in the ocean.

  I learned regret in the ruins of Tarbfhlaith. I regretted that ambition had ruled my heart instead of affection for my kin. And with the lesson of regret came the gratitude for having life still to move my lips and limbs, and to speak kind words to and embrace those I may not see again on this sweet-smelling earth. I learned that I cannot wait to love what is in my presence, for it or I may well be gone tomorrow. To some, such as Giannon, this lesson poisons the heart with bitterness. But such bitterness has no value and is, in fact, cowardly. For bitterness risks nothing.

  So began in lonely circumstances my Baile Shuibhe.10 I had no kin, no companion in gleemen or husband, druid or monk. The decrepit she-wolf stayed with me for a season, and I believed that she was my mother overseeing my journey, though now I am told that we do not return in other forms but have only one incarnation. The wolf, having become more frail than fearful, ate from my hands, and I gave her what I could without starving myself. I spoke to her, and she listened and looked into my eyes. I wept against her fur, clutching her thin body that stumbled in its effort to let me lean against her. She lay one morning panting, her eyes gazing at death, and I held her and stroked her fur. I told her she had been a fine wolf and that she would soon be free to perfect her soul in another form. At the edge of winter the wolf died, providing me with a warm skin. I let her body empty itself of her spirit and then took the warm skin to wear as a cloak. The need to survive dominated all other ideas and philosophies. I do not hunt well, but my smallness allowed me to hide and my knowledge allowed me to frighten other animals with fire or curses. I sometimes chased wolves away from their kill and ate good meat cooked over a fire. In loneliness I spoke to animals and trees, as my mother had done, and I saw the living spirit in blades of grass and felt the affection of the rain on my face. Perhaps I was mad. But I lived thoroughly, seeing and hearing and feeling and tasting for my mother and Giannon and for the wolf as well, and for the drowned oblaire and for all those whose death or suffering had smothered their senses. And while fulfilling my obligations to the dead, I looked for my place in the world.

  When I was in the mountains, I cut the boughs of evergreens to cover myself with in the night. I tried to stop thinking of my longing and dread, quieting my thoughts by watching the clouds change form, but in every place I stayed I left signs of my devotion to the two I had loved so strongly. I will not dwell on the tedium of this time in my life. These years are full of the repetition of the procurement and consumption of food, though I will tell of the instances when I had more revelations and learned of the lands to the south in those times.

  I came sometimes to a túath, but none so wealthy as to want knowledge more than help with sowing and grinding. The druids in those parts traveled from túath to túath and were often themselves herdsmen, having no great halls to languish in while entertaining chieftains. Indeed, the chieftains in those parts were set apart from all other men by no clear costume or power, but by small things such as owning a horse or wearing a brooch. I told my stories and was generously fed, but could not stay long in one túath without being pressed to become a man’s wife or servant or to move on. Few had heard of the Christians other than rumors of Pelagians. In one place I found a ring of stones where human sacrifice had recently occurred. A boy’s bones, it was said, had been crushed to fit inside an urn and buried in the center of the circle. The people who knew of this stone circle looked away or hid their faces with their hair when I asked the identity of the boy and the significance of his martyrdom. I wondered if he were their Jesus Christ who died for their suffering and was in heaven preparing their way to Paradise. But a boy whose bones are crushed and put in an urn has little chance of getting up and walking about again. In that place I felt some danger and moved on.

  Once I traded my ability to transcribe law for a pair of goats. Then I was a herdsman and a nomad. I fed from the milk and cheese the goats provided and gave what I did not need to others who were hungry. When the female was old I slaughtered her for meat, kindly telling her first, as is pagan custom, that her life was of great value and that it would be used with gratitude. In our ignorance, the people of this land thanked the animal whose meat we ate and not God, for it seemed that the animal made the greater sacrifice.

  I traveled as herdsman for several years, during which time the scrolls became a burden to me and I burned them for fuel. There were times of illness and rough challenges. Once a bear knocked me down from behind and sat on me, breathing on my neck with breath that was warm and foul as though the beast had had its own feces as a meal. It left me unmolested, but I dreamed that night that it spoke to me and said that I had best go north again. I left those remote and wild parts with visions that I still return to for comfort. Those lands rumble with a large beauty of varying colors and heights. I cannot see that any religion is true that does not recognize its gods in the green wave of trees on a mountainside or the echo of a bird’s song that makes ripples on a shadowed pool. Even in the quick snap of a hare’s neck and the gleam of living in the eyes of the fox whose mouth is full of the hare’s fur, there is God, even though He is not understood. This land is full of holiness that I cannot describe. Brigit knows this. Brigit to me is the wisest of all the saints. She knows the value of ale and the comfort of poetry.

  TENTH INTERRUPTION

  SAINT BRIGIT protect us from suspicion and chaos. All manner of drama has occurred here that claws at the peace I begged to join. I would rather be in the southern woods where moss grows thick over stone pillars and reeds shudder as fish swim between them in dark pools. But I can only travel there in words and recollection, for my legs ache too much now for wandering. And I am tired when I think of days of hungry solitude. The times I have loved most were days and nights of repeated and unremarkable peace when I made a good broth and saw Giannon’s stained shoe step onto the threshold; or when I watched the goats graze on grasses glowing with the light that exists in every blade. A tiny translucent spider once made a web between my fingers while I slept, an act of trust performed by a tender creature who wanted nothing more than to sustain itself. I knew when I awoke not to move my hand too carelessly, even before I saw the tiny presence there. Now there is more complication, and I have been unwise. I mean no harm to any soul, but I am sometime
s careless with my opinions. My words have pricked the ears of people who resent and want to silence them. I feel sick and compelled to leave this sanctuary, may Brigit help me. And where will I go?

  I have bitter sorrow for the abbot, who has been bedridden for three days. On the first day of his affliction he sent a young monk to me who requested transcription of the Book of Revelation, in which it is written, Foris canes et venefici et impudici et homicidae.11 I have heard that this monk took the parchment with the ink not yet dry to the abbot’s sickbed, where the abbot underwent surgery performed by another monk, who butchers our meat. This surgery, Sister Luirrenn has told me, is of the worst and most unspeakable kind, and I now suspect with strong conviction that this place has a foul madness in it, and that indeed every god, even the new one, weeps for our misguided and unnecessary agonies. Mimicking Origen, our abbot has castrated himself, and he says it is to ensure his own purity. We all pray for him, Sister Aillenn with a quiet piety that is unusual in its serenity. She looks at me above her clasped hands, and when our eyes meet, she shows me her strength. The nuns do not speak of this act or their opinion of it, and I am sick with the thought of it and have beat my own breast to think of it and of the thing of which he has accused me, as though darkness and mutilation are his creeds.

  On this, the third day after his martyrdom, I was called to come to the abbot where he lay. His face was most pale, and I think he will die. His lips were white and dry as he spoke to me. He said that he had had many visions as he lay in fever and pain. God had come to him in many forms and with many voices, some low and some as loud as the thunder that quickly follows lightning. With persistence, God has told him that among the sisters there is a witch so foul that she eats the flesh of infants. He closed his eyes and said to me that three times it was I who had found the grave molested and finally empty. He said also that he knows that I go with laywomen to the woods to perform rituals and gather plants. Fiercely and on my knees I begged him to hear me and know my innocence. I begged him to search my cell and find no evil accessories there, nor any sign of demonic practice. He spoke with detail of the foul act of eating the infant’s corpse; imagining the white grave worms in my mouth, I fled from him.