Confessions of a Pagan Nun Read online

  This evening is the twentieth in our cycle, when Saint Brigit herself comes to protect her flame. Tomorrow evening we will start our cycle again, with Sister Luirrenntending the sacred fire, the light that must never go out. All praise to Saint Brigit, raised by druid, healer of the sick, who fed the hungry and hung her cloak on a sunbeam to dry. I pray to Saint Brigit to consider the soul of the infant. I am asking all the sisters to pray beside the little grave and add more stones. I would weave evergreen boughs among the stones and touch the cross with my lips, serving whatever gods will take the tiny soul to warmth. This damp night comes with wailing, as though the infant cries out to me, pitiful and small from its unkind chamber beneath the ground. The cloth around my feet is cold and wet and my fire is small. But I thank God that I am alive without any cough or festering sore.

  1. Ollam: the highest form of druidic bard.

  2. Aimsirtogu: the age of choice: seven for a boy, fourteen for a girl.

  3. “But for this reason I boldly say my conscience does not rebuke me, neither now nor about future things.”

  4. Ceallurach: cemetery for unbaptized children or suicides.

  5. Copog phadraig: common plantain, used to return strength after blood loss.

  6. Anamchara: confessor or authority on cleansing the soul.

  7. “God come to my assistance.”

  [ 3 ]

  I HAVE SPENT these last weeks transcribing the Epistle of Saint Patrick, who asks that sinners endure grueling penance with the shedding of tears. I have written his words in Latin and in the language of this land, so that the priests may read them to those who are not scholars. And who among them will not already know how to shed tears? All the tears I have shed have tasted like the skin of my mother and Giannon the Druid. I could put them in copper cups, but they are like the waters of the sea, vast and deep but unable to quench any thirst. One can only drown in such waters or take from them fish to eat. The fish in my tears are so small that only a fairy could make a meal of them.

  To continue my own history, which may be of some use to other scholars and sinners, I now take up my life at the last Fair of Tailltenn before my mother’s death. Here I began my apprenticeship with Giannon the Druid. He sat with other aes dána in the oak grove, and I went there as soon as my mother had left me to attend the council. I had anticipated his presence at the fair and so had brushed my cape and clasped it with a brooch as though I were a chieftain’s daughter.

  It was Giannon’s habit in those days to announce, “I have news,” and gather about him a crowd of people. I joined the others to watch him pull objects from his leather bag. These items had power that fascinated me. He displayed scrolls covered with marks that were dark and magical and shaped like worms in various positions. Giannon was able to look at them and speak their message. He gave out the news from places I had never seen, nor would ever see. The chieftain of a lake tribe had died, and his sons were now fighting one another for his authority. In another place, a Christian man named Taillcenn—the name the druids gave to Patrick—did battle with astrologers. Many in the crowd spit at the name of this Christian, and others had no interest in him. A woman asked if the druids’ magic was greater than that of the Christians, a question I have heard asked many times since. Giannon looked at me as though I might have the answer, and I covered my eyes with my hair and looked away. I did not understand why he looked to me, since I had no knowledge of the Christians beyond rumors and the warnings given by the chieftain’s bards. Giannon said to the woman, “You must get this knowledge for yourself. It is better to know than to be told.”

  One man, a grandfather known for his strong legs that allowed him to pull a plow as though he were two young men, requested that Giannon put down on a scroll a story he was going to tell about the passing on of his wealth of pigs to one of his kin. I came very close to watch Giannon take out a stick and a tablet coated with wax. He made marks in the wax and read them back to be sure of their accuracy as the grandfather told his story and referred to certain laws. Giannon smelled like a perfume made of wax, honey, and smoke. I rested my head against his back and closed my eyes to hear the words he spoke inside the cave of his body. Others touched his hands and stroked his face, as they did with all the druids.

  I whispered into his ear my desire to learn his skills in making marks and reading them. I spoke the words that cannot be unspoken, “I devote myself to you as my teacher.” I said these words three times for all the realms. He made no answer; I touched his forehead with my cheek and ran to my mother. My mother was hard with me concerning Giannon and said that I should not satisfy myself with him and should find myself another druid to be my teacher.

  We stayed that night with other travelers at the fair who slept together beneath the poles and skins set up for the games. I looked often for Giannon, but he was not among the druids who drank nenadmín1 and told stories of the creatures and magic they had seen. I asked one druid, a woman with tangled hair and dark circles around her eyes, of Giannon’s whereabouts, but she spat and told me that he was most likely in the woods by himself.

  At dawn I wandered out into a cool fog to refresh myself after a night in the realm of dreams, still with part of my eye looking for Giannon. In the movement of a slender tree I thought I saw his gesture, but he did not appear. I was finally distracted by a troupe of gleemen. The oblaire2 called out to the early risers, those who had not been put to sleep by cider, to witness the talents of his troupe. He himself, stick thin with a forked beard, was a juggler and cleverly used clay balls that had been dyed orange. The woman with him was a contortionist and could put both her feet behind her head when seated. There were also another juggler, younger than the oblaire, and two young brothers, musicians. One, an idiot, played the drum, and the other played a little trumpet, making tunes and insulting noises. When the troupe began their entertainment, the younger juggler continuously tossed three daggers into the air at once as the woman carried him on her shoulder. They marched about to a noisy clatter of drum and trumpet, causing dogs to bark and leap at them. I laughed loudly with the others and forgot for a time about Giannon. If such a fair were here now, I would go to it, covering my face like a leper so as to be disguised, and watch the games and gleemen without a care. May God forgive me. I loved to watch these gleemen, whose talents gave them freedom and admiration. They seemed carefree, like the aes dána, but not shackled by social obligation or serious ambition. If I were to be at such a fair now, though, my laughter would become still and tears come out of my eyes, for the faces I would remember and want to see would not be there, no matter if I stayed forever to find them.

  Soon the oblaire held up his long hand, the fingers like winter twigs on a large oak tree, and asked the crowd to quiet itself and the dogs. The woman bent over and dropped the young juggler on the ground, which caused the people to laugh and the dogs to bark again. She then stared at the oblaire with her hands on her hips and her large chest heaving like waves on an angry sea. I thought by her look that she would box the man’s ears. He then gave a speech, of which, I sensed, she already knew the substance and which she did not well like. The oblaire walked as he spoke, making a jingling noise where bells were sewn onto his clothing. The breeze sometimes pulled the two prongs of his gray beard.

  He began with a question: “Who among you has not heard of Jesus Christ the Son of God?” Several people made a gesture of pushing him away and shook their heads. Some moved on to other entertainments, for the noise had woken all the fair’s attendants and a game of hurling had begun. The trumpeter blew a crude note as the juggler pinched some women in the audience on their backsides. Those still attending the gleemen laughed as the oblaire, sensing the tastes of his audience, abandoned his sincerity and pulled out an enormous wooden cross worn under his short jacket on a leather cord. With this he pummeled the offending trumpeter on the head as the musician ran around lifting his knees high and making the sounds of chaos on the trumpet, sounding like pigs who are being kicked. I laugh even now as I
write, so that I must sound mad to anyone passing by my clochan. There is compassion in the gleeman’s merriment, for he gives it like a gift to all who see and laugh, though they be toothless and weary from sewing and culling. Sometimes I wish the priests’ sermons were touched by the gleeman’s wit instead of being draped in funeral cloth.

  We all laughed until our eyes were wet. And then I saw two tonsured men wearing smaller replicas of the oblaire’s cross stand back from the crowd and speak together with amused mouths. The oblaire saw them as well and, kissing the cross, returned it to its concealment against his skin. The crowd unraveled, and then I saw Giannon moving away, though I had not known he was there at all. His sleeves were pushed up and there was sweat on his arms so that I knew he had been hurling. I walked to him slowly while my heart beat like a gleeman’s drum.

  He turned around as though he had seen me through the back of his skull and said, “If you will be my apprentice you must not speak your own opinion for nine years. After nine years you may give judgment on one matter, and after the tenth year another, and so forth, until twelve years have passed and you have given judgment on three matters. And then, if I sanction your opinions and you have learned three hundred and fifty tales, you may call yourself a druid and pretend whatever powers you want.” I stood still in front of him, waiting for his demeanor to gentle and there to be a smile on his freckled lips, but I had found the surliest teacher in all the land. I said to him, “If I have opinions I will not speak them. But I will have them.” And I do not know if this was an adequate response, because a man approached him, a druid well known for his satires, and took him away by the elbow while frantically imploring his cooperation in some effort.

  I soon saw my mother, who had been weeping and would not say what the council of women had discussed. She held my face in both her hands and said, “You are beautiful to look on. Always know that your face is in my eyes, daughter.” She told me never to forget that I was strong, even when I had to hide my strength from those who would hate it. Then a wind came up and wove our skirts together, and I thought to myself that I wanted to leave the fair and to cling to my mother’s hand and wipe the tears from her face with my own hair. I told her of the agreement of apprenticeship I had entered into, fearing that it would darken her face more to hear of my allegiance with Giannon, but she only held me closer as the wind entwined our hair, binding us more into one being.

  The fair had taken on an agitated and solemn tone. A black air descended over the games and feasts. An argument between hurlers erupted, and one man pushed the other on the ground and kicked him with sickening force so that no one found joy in the games any longer. While my mother bargained with a cloth seller, I looked for the gleemen, thinking to go behind a tree and show my breasts to the younger juggler. I wanted rumor or witness to come to Giannon with the news that Gwynneve inspired lust. But the gleemen had vanished. I will remember that fair as the one at which my mother became infested with worms that attacked her abdomen and could not be driven away though I would have taken them into my own body for her. I wonder how many others had their bodies entered into by worms at the Fair of Tailltenn in the year of the tonsured attendants.

  THIRD INTERRUPTION

  I RECORD THIS EVENT the day after it occurred. On that day, I was tending the garden, bent over with my skirts tied, trying to ignore the terrible hunger that caused me to remember the strips of meat my mother stirred into her porridges. I visited the infant’s grave and found it molested, the stones dislodged and tumbled down from the cairn. The wooden cross that Sister Aillenn had erected was unearthed and crushed, by what I cannot say, though its fury battered the cross to splinters. I called two other sisters to see the damage, and they, being frightened, sought out Sister Luirrenn. When she arrived like a storm cloud, we waited as the wind pushed our robes and the day grew dimmer and chilled. We determined that the desecration had occurred some time in the night when it had been Sister Aillenn’s turn to guard the flame. Sister Aillenn was found in the chapel praying, and when told of the destruction and asked if she had heard any sounds during her watch, she threw herself on the hard-packed floor and screamed. She bit her own hands until Sister Luirrenn asked for help in returning her to her clochan. I noted then that the blue of the distant mountains was the color of a sorrow that is far away but always visible.

  The bestial mangling of the child’s little tomb has disturbed the atmosphere of the convent and caused the abbot to speak to the whole community concerning demons. He has told us that the desecration is the work of demonic forces, drawn to the corpse because it is unbaptized. I do not sleep well thinking of this. I am frightened for the infant and for myself, for I have not been baptized, though I said that I was when I first came here almost six years ago. I am a miserable liar and beg God to forgive me, but I cannot say this in the confession of faults. I do not know why I have not done so simple a thing as to have water poured upon my head. But I am, perhaps, as wicked as King Loeguire and doomed to hell, or I am the victim of demons. I do not like to think about this matter. I have asked God to tell me in clear signs when I am to be baptized and by whom, for now it must be done in secret. But I say that whenever I determine to have the rite performed, I will feel the blood of my mother and Giannon pour over my head instead of water.

  And now Sister Luirrenn has asked to see my transcription of Saint Patrick’s Epistle, and I have given them over to her. A great wind howled as she took a codex and several scrolls with her. Before I let the door’s covering fall, she turned and asked me, “Do you, little Gwynneve, still write undisciplined narratives?” I answered that I did not, which was another lie I have told this woman whose skirts I would kiss for all of eternity for taking me in when I had no shelter. I remember well her hands lifting me up and smoothing my hair as she told me that the convent was my home and she my mother. But these lies I do not repent to the abbot, and therefore they cannot be forgiven. They weigh on me, and I know now that, though words offer limitless freedom, one can be shackled by them when they are lies, as though heavy chains around the ankles weighted each footstep.

  Sister Luirrenn gently said to me that to be a scribe was to hold a sacred office. Written language, she told me, was holy; words recorded that were not the words of God or of one of his saints would burn through the parchment and create a blackened path to hell for all those who write or look at them. I did not bother to ask her about the philosophers whose Greek we transcribe and whose words came long before Jesus’ eyes opened in the stable in Bethlehem. When Sister Luirrenn speaks of hell, her speech does not sound familiar, but more like the speech of the abbot, whose influence I am beginning to regret and fear. I took her hand, and feeling childish with the shame of my lies, I implored her to help me on some religious matter. I asked her if she understood how there could be both hell and the feast of heroes under the ground. Was hell below or beside the feast? Her toothless mouth trembled and she said to me in whispers, “Do not speak of the feasts of Dana or of any of those demons. Do you not understand that the old gods came from hell and pretended to be heroes?” I believe that she should be taken to the Glen of Lunatics.

  During the recitation of midnight prayers, the nuns faltered as Sister Aillenn came to her place, for in the rush light we saw deep shadows on her face and neck and realized quickly that they were horrible wounds. I know that the monks on the other side of the curtain must have wondered at the interruption of the psalm and the small gasps that came instead of the Latin. I am in a state of confusion and wish that God could give me peace. Even now Sister Aillenn’s moans come to me in my clochan. I will return to the history that I have begun, which is a distraction from the disturbances of this place.

  I admonish myself and all who read this not to be ignorant on any matters of which knowledge is available. Do not be afraid of the truth, and forgive me for my weak lies.

  1. Nenadmín: crabapple cider.

  2. Oblaire: leader or elder of a troupe of entertainers.

  [ 4 ]
/>   MY MOTHER AND I walked together on the road away from the fair. We did not speak until the path became confused with a felled tree and streams of mud, and we consulted each other on the true course of the road to Tarbfhlaith. We greeted travelers who came from behind us and seemed confident in the way, though my mother hid her face when three tonsured men passed us. I wanted to speak to her of Giannon, whose smell was in the air around me like a clear smoke. But my mother’s attention was not on the world around her, and she finally admitted to having a large dread. She told me that she feared that great losses were soon to come for the whole land. She said that these losses had nothing to do with drought or feuds between túaths, but with feuds between believers. She said, “The Christians and their tonsured messengers want to separate the souls of the people of this land from the earth they walk on.” When I asked her what purpose they had in doing this, she said that there was a suspicion that a person for whom the Christians spoke—a high king, perhaps—wanted the land, and that to take the land they must first separate it from the souls of the people. I said to her, “That cannot be done. How can one’s soul not be attached to what is in one’s eyes and against one’s feet from birth until death, like a cradle, or the arms of a mother, or one’s own skin?”

  She did not answer, and so I said, “There are few Christians, only a small handful, who denounce greed and vow themselves to poverty. What is there to fear? They have made protests against the cruelty of sacrifice and feud.” She responded, “Do not forget that they also denounce fornication and that the few are growing. Though I do not have knowledge of what the council of men discusses, it is no doubt more full of praise for the new cultivating methods and tools of the Christians than concern for our souls.” She said, “Ah, how I fear the creed that scolds harmless pleasure.”