Confessions of a Pagan Nun Page 7

  The woman in the troupe said sharply to the oblaire that the Christians had new ways and that the oblaire, according to them, would burn forever in eternal flames that needed no wood or peat for not renouncing his ideas and deferring to the rituals and instructions of the tonsured men, who spoke to God for the lowly. I told her that I had seen these eternal flames and the men who tended them to the west. I explained that indeed they did need wood and peat. The younger juggler told me that those were not the fires of eternal damnation but fires to clear the land, set by the monks of Saint Patrick to increase the size of the sowing fields. I asked him if the spirits of the burned trees and scorched earth would flee as the flaming animals had and do mad mischief to show their rage. I was afraid then of my mother’s warnings and how death had shut her mouth. I was confused as to what held power and how power was used. I regret that I am still unsure when the night is long.

  I slept sometimes in the arms of the woman when I was mired in grief and loneliness. The younger juggler was small like me, and sometimes I wanted the large softness of the woman’s comfort. The gleemen wanted to teach me a skill, but I could not juggle even two clay balls. I showed them the marks that I could make and how they could be kept and read. But there was no profit in this art for a gleeman; instead, there was danger in doing the work of druids without their sanction. I was therefore simply a companion to the gleemen and contributed no useful talent except in a sin I confess here. For being small and quick, I was able to enter the túath at night and return with what we needed to make a meal when honest attempts had left us hungry. I have confessed this transgression many times and ask God to forgive me. But even Our Lord Jesus Christ urged a man to use his talents.

  I traveled with the gleemen to two fairs, confessing my hope of finding Giannon. I sorely wanted to know more words and advance my abilities to make marks. I hid my face with my hair and wandered about the games and feasts, stopping to listen to the druids. I saw tonsured men push the druids to the ground, but I saw no kin or other face known to me at either fair. I did not hear of Giannon until the coldest season, when the trumpeter and his brother returned from some honest trade in the túath of grain growers and told me that Giannon was there, on his way to his home. The younger juggler studied my face, and when I turned to look at him, I could not speak. I knew that it was a mean season for a wife to leave a man, for he would feel the cold sharply, but I prepared to go, packing scroll, cup, and dagger. When I was ready to part from the gleemen, the younger juggler had gone to hunt wild pigs, taking the half-wit and his brother with him. I walked northward heavily, telling myself the two stories I knew of the Formorians so I would not feel the whole of my regret. I was still weak in attaching myself to mortals and had not yet learned to avoid the sorrow of separation.

  SIXTH INTERRUPTION

  SAINT BRIGIT, mother of God, sweet mother whose skin shines with grace and light, be with me. I have guarded your flame this night, and as the sun comes up in heather blossom clouds, my duty is done. I am filled with love and gratitude for your constant presence and protection. Terror sat in my empty stomach this long night, and I am glad that I have done my duty. Though my face was heavy with weariness and the rain made a steady lulling noise, I did not sleep but stayed vigilant. Was it you, beloved Brigit, who rattled the shutters as though you were the wind? The noise becomes so large in the empty chapel, lit only by your flame. Was it you who danced like a dark maiden against the walls to soothe my loneliness? For I confess that I am very lonely at times.

  Once when the night was still and the rain gentle, I heard knocking and a voice calling out, and I was afraid to move. I have been infected with thoughts of demons, and though in the day I do not think them solid, at night I can imagine their open mouths and twitching fingers. I pray to have no fear and wish, dear Brigit, that you or Our Lord Jesus Christ would come before me in a form so clear that I could not doubt it. My doubts oppress me, and as I write my own insignificant history, in order to set down events and ideas concerning great changes and suffering, these doubts grow like thistles and sting me. I feel now another power of words, which is to reveal things to the very person who writes them. And I am afraid of what is revealed and the emotions the words dislodge and send tumbling down upon my head. Dear sweet Brigit, whose eyes are love and whose touch is healing, comfort me and let me know what is true.

  [ 7 ]

  GIANNON’S home was a configuration of branches, stones, and mud. A dome and a shed of these materials leaned against one another like old drunken warriors at a banquet. All around these structures was a variety of grasses, blossoms, and bushes that I had never seen before. Drying herbs, jars on tethers, and staffs of yew and oak hung on the sides of his dwelling so that it reminded me of Giannon himself when he traveled beneath a tangle of druidic accessories. The clearing with its gardens and dwelling was empty of human life, though a ragged gray wolf scampered into the woods from there. Some might say that the wolf was Giannon transformed, but I only had the sense that the wolf was hungry and weak, for the past winter had been fiercely cold.

  I entered the dwelling and found the inside also strung with dried plants, jars, and staffs. There were shelves on which a chaos of boxes and jars sat along with feathers and scrolls and dust. The only furnishings were a table, a small bench, and a bed made of straw covered with the skins of bear and fox. More scrolls, codices, and tablets sat upon these furnishings, as though the originals had multiplied in some orgy when their master was away.

  I walked carefully through this strange chamber, afraid that all of Giannon’s belongings and the dwelling itself were capable of collapsing into a dusty pile of rubble. And I believed that a druid’s dwelling could likely be set with spells from which I would emerge transformed into a beetle or bee. I waited for Giannon outside, until the world grew dim and I could see wolves running along the tree line beyond the small clearing in which Giannon’s home nested. Finally I saw Giannon approach as a moving and dark form emerging from the trees. I stood, so I would not startle him, and he nodded and entered his dwelling without speaking my name. I waited to follow him, and when I did, I found him in his bed and a wax candle lit upon the table. I lay down beside him. That night we warmed each other but did not become husband and wife. And in the morning when I awoke he was laboring devotedly in his garden. As I watched him there, bending to disappear into the reeds and emerging again as from a lake of grasses, I felt cold, for he had no words nor glances for me. I remembered and grieved the death of my mother as though it had occurred the night before. I was a child, with a child’s fear of loneliness.

  I was old enough then to be a mother myself but had used the ways now outlawed by the Church of keeping a child from growing in my womb. These ways have been banished and so violently punished that the knowledge is lost to most women and unspoken by those who remember. The Christians say that a man must choose his wife and plant his seed in her and know that what he sows is his and not another man’s or the result of a covenant between a woman and a demon. These are the new laws. But then I was a pagan, and I had not wanted any child but Giannon’s and thought it right to create a human being from my own desire. Then I was pagan and believed that the only demons who could plant a seed in a woman’s womb were the men who drank ale and mistook their daughters for their wives. May God forgive me for my ignorance.

  For many weeks I slept beside Giannon and worked beside him at the table, learning new marks. But though he held my hand in both of his to keep me close, though he touched my face to show his affection for it, and though he laughed with me, he did not lie on me or push himself against me. I spoke with him about my sorrow and longing for my mother; I told him that I had had two husbands before him. There was no secret that I did not tell and that he did not understand. And he began the process of showing me every skill that he knew, holding no secret to his bosom, having no jealousy concerning his powers. Our heads were close over manuscripts by candlelight until the morning star appeared and we stretched our backs befo
re having a short and deep sleep in a still embrace beneath the skins.

  One night I asked if he did not want to have me as his wife. This I whispered into his ear as we lay together in darkness so thick that we could not see each other. He finally asked if I wanted to be his wife, and I told him the truth— that that desire had become larger than any other. I tasted the skin of his shoulders and lightly bit his neck. Instead of turning to me with passion, he made noises of agitation, as though an insect had gotten beneath his clothing. He moved away from me, and a sorrow that I have never known before or since spread through me like blood dropped into a cup of water. I could not move and believed that Giannon the druid had performed a spell that was killing me. I spent that night in the darkness outside, cold to the core of my body.

  After this night of dark aloneness, I went into the woods many times to perform rituals with the aim of getting help from the fertile powers of nature in waking Giannon’s lust. These were days of great restlessness, and I well understood Eve’s determination to awaken some desire in Adam, even if it be desire for forbidden fruit. After I had been with Giannon for four months, I told him that I wanted his child, and then he parted my legs and made me his wife. On this night I believed that his soul had entered mine and created an intimacy with roots so deep that I would never be cold or thirsty or hungry again. I was unable to tell the difference between his pleasure and mine. And when we rested, I wanted to stay always beside him and say more things than we had said, revealing more and probing our histories and ambitions together for many different lifetimes. I believed then in the transmigration of souls, and I vowed to live every incarnation beside Giannon. But he rose quickly from the bed, compelled to tend and nurture his garden as soon as there was light enough to distinguish one blade of grass from another. It conjures sadness in me even now to remember those days, for I had hopes that were never made solid but which always seemed sweet.

  Giannon often traveled, and the distance between us was filled with private efforts, his tending to the news and needs of many túaths and my studying the scrolls. Sometimes there were visitors who came, men and women of mysterious intent. When they saw me there instead of Giannon, they stayed and let their eyes wander over all the items in the dwelling. When Giannon received them, they whispered to each other and parted solemnly. Giannon did not like conversation and gave only small morsels of information about his adventures away from our home. When I asked to accompany him, he told me that I had to wait until I knew the primary stories and could present myself as an advanced apprentice. Soon I deduced that Giannon had some encounters with Christian clergy. Of these matters he was particularly secretive, but he learned Latin and brought seed to his garden which he called by their Latin names.

  I did not swell, and Giannon grew agitated at the futile effort to place a child in my womb. He did praise my intelligence, and he also came to me with joyful eagerness when his work in the garden produced thriving new plants. Let me say here that I was never mistreated by Giannon, and only once do I remember a blow from his hand. It came one night when I asked him for that which he did not want to give. Anger is the sin that plagues me most, and I am loathe to be shamed for my desires. When Giannon mimicked me with clever imitation of a woman’s whine, I tried to strike him. He felt only the breeze of my hand as it passed his face, and in quick response he struck the side of my face. In the dark we were silent, both of us ashamed.

  I never had any doubt of Giannon’s respect for me, though our methods of working were not the same. I brought passion and impulse to all that I learned, or I did not learn well. He had discipline and a careful pace. After we had been together for two years, he asked me to help him transcribe laws and histories on the scrolls. He also listened with respect to my intuitions about the spirits of wild plants and animals. But he wearied quickly of conversation involving my fears and complaints. He became angry sometimes when I lay beside him or touched his face; he winced as though he were being preyed upon by an unsavory and inept predator. When he shunned me, I felt my mother’s wild spirit in me and raged like a caged bear. I learned to like solitude when he loved it; but I never wandered far from a sorrow that grew in place of the child we never had. May God forgive me for my self-pity.

  There was one night when a storm raged between us and he said that he was not like other men. He did not have lust for women as other men did. He said powerful words, as destructive as his satires. They entered me like spirit blades because I loved the mouth from which the words came and the tongue that moved to say them. I loved the eyes and knew the soul behind them. I loved the hands that could make people and histories and beauty appear on a piece of parchment. I became full of shame that my body was too small or my features too plain to arouse him. I wished that my hair was the color of raven feathers, shining blue when sunlight flowed over it, instead of the color of rust on an old warrior’s sword. I wished that I had the grace and discipline of a chieftain’s daughter who rode tall horses and could not want a man as a husband before ten wanted her. I wished that I were as compelling as Mebd of Connacht, who cohabited with nine kings, who all loved her well. Then Giannon would untether his passion and grace me with it. At that time, I did not know that the love of God is greater than the love of humans, though still I wonder if humans are not the vessels from which we drink God’s love. But then I am an ignorant pagan, only late in my life surrendered to the new religion. And still I say, because I am weak and blasphemous, that if Giannon had given me full affection before we were roughly parted, and if I had lost my shame, perhaps I would not have lain on the threshold of the Chapel of Saint Brigit and asked to be embraced by the Christian Church, allowed to share its worldly knowledge. Must we suffer, as the Greeks have said, in order to be led to a greater wisdom than the one we would have settled for?

  Giannon himself encouraged me to accept the Christians and listen to their lessons. He knew well how sacred words and knowledge were to me, and he admitted that the monks knew many languages, that there were many words and lands and methods and stories in the world that the monks studied and recorded, more than any druid knew. One noon when he had been gone for many months to bury a chieftain’s daughter in a túath to the west, he returned with a companion. I heard men’s laughter when I was bent over a tablet, writing from memory the story of the prophetess Scathach, who trained Cuchulain to be a hero. While thinking upon her technique of severing an enemy’s arm from his body, I was startled and frightened to hear men’s laughter, for Giannon did not often make sounds of merriment, and he rarely welcomed company. I came out of the dwelling to see him walking up the hill to our home beside a man who had his hand on Giannon’s shoulder. The two of them conversed and laughed. What made my brow gather in wonderment was that the man with him was tonsured. He was a Christian monk with merry eyes and a frame almost as small as mine, named Mongan.

  I nodded a greeting, being struck mute, and prepared some porridge. Giannon had brought the ale that was given to him as payment for his part in the burial. We three sat outside, the monk and Giannon discussing the plants in the garden. The monk was young, hardly a man, but full of knowledge and skill. He had with him an editorulgatu.1 He taught me about the conversion of Brigit by Saint Patrick and told me of some of her miracles, including the conversion of water into ale. I opened my palm to him and challenged him, saying that his kind made soot out of soil and harassed the druids. I asked if his kind did not lose their senses when they cut their hair, and he asked if I did not worry that the pork I ate had been some druid in transmutation. We made many jokes that are now dangerous, for in those times there was not so much fear of contradiction, but a love of discourse. Our talk was passionate and friendly, and we drank to Brigit until I was howling like a wolf beneath a half moon. Giannon said that I was a bean sidhe.2 I do not remember clearly any other events of that night, except that Giannon did not lie beside me, and I had one aisling3 after another. Between visions of flaming candles falling into deep crevasses and rings of stone sinking into
the ground, I heard the laughter of the two men. I also dreamed that Mebd brought me the severed arm of a man, and when I held his hand and kissed it, he became whole and his eyes were those of my mother.

  SEVENTH INTERRUPTION

  THESE DAYS ARE FULL of foul mysteries and dim intentions. The infant’s grave was defiled again. This time, the stones seem to have burst from their pile. They were strewn about, some as far away as twenty paces, and the cross was thrust upside down in the center of the mound. Sister Luirrenn and I stood as though turned to stone beside the little grave, and she asked if I had heard any violent noises while I watched over Brigit’s flame. I told her that the wind had been strong and made the shutters knock against the walls. The persistent perversion has created a silence and fear among us all. And there has been an accident among the laypeople who live around the convent, adding to the dread. A man’s foot was crushed and torn from him by a wild pig he had wounded. He was brought back to his home by his brothers, one of whom had himself lost three fingers in a boar hunt two years before. We are all praying for the man’s recovery, and more for his soul, as recovery is not likely. I have seen his face, and its pale trembling I have seen in other faces when death was near. Death grins at us and defies our faith and hope. The woman whose infant died and whose grave has been defiled is my shadow when I go among the lay dwellings. She whispers to me. She tells me that she knew the danger of looking into her infant’s eyes and seeing its soul as a part of her own. Now she says that she is not whole, but a ghost herself. I hold her firmly and say that I feel her solid form and warm flesh, and that I will pray for her child’s soul. She says that she does not want my prayers, and she spits on my cloak. But then she kneels and kisses my feet. She asks while sobbing, is it better to think that the infant, whose smile was broad and wise before it took sick, has gone to heaven, or that he has become another child somewhere, smiling into the face of another woman? She asks, if the child goes to the Christian heaven, will he remain an infant, or grow to be a man whom she will not know if she goes to heaven as well? The abbot calls her questions madness. I see their wisdom and grasp her hands, which are stained with the same black dirt that is beneath her ragged nails. I told her to hide her hands from the other sisters and the abbot, who calls women witches when they do not please him.