Magdalen Rising (18 page)

“I
THOUGHT YOU HAD THIS all arranged!” I whispered to Fand and Boann.

“So did we.”

The three of us turned around halfway and peered into the crowd. There was King Bran, still standing alone, looking perplexed and aggrieved.

“Come on, lads. Speak up! You gave me your word.”

Silence.

“So that's what your word is worth. You'd let me down. In a sacred oak grove. In front of the druids. Have you no shame? You'll be selling your scummy hides to the Romans next.”

“Ah, Bran,” one man whined. “Don't hold us to it. We didn't know. You didn't tell us that they were
them.”

That may sound impossibly obscure, not to mention ungrammatical. I believe they were objecting to the Otherworldliness of my mothers and me. I don't know if twentieth century minds, overlaid with celluloid conventions (the good guys vs. the bad guys) can grasp what the Otherworld meant to my contemporaries. It was in no way seen as demonic. It was simply Other: shining, beautiful, dangerous. Most Celts had a healthy respect for the Otherworld that included a wholesome fear. By wholesome, I mean a fear untainted with hatred, judgment, or moral revulsion. Of course, heroes tended to be fatally attracted to perilous adventure in magical realms. (It's their job description.) But your average Joe Celt would just as soon leave well enough alone. So you can't really blame these men, who would walk cheerfully into battle or fight to the death over a cut of meat, for being afraid of faery women from an enchanted isle.

But of course I did blame them. I was furious. And (I have to admit) my fury had a competitive edge. Half the crowd had stood up for
Esus.

“It appears then,” began the grey druid, “that the case is—”

Suddenly I rounded on the crowd.

“Are you men or are you fish bait!” I roared.

It was the first thing that came into my mind. I'm not sure what prompted that image. Maybe it's that appendages flaccid (and I had not seen one in any other state) reminded me of the juicy worms Boann would set me to gathering when we turned the earth for planting. At dusk we'd all go fishing from the rocks. As soon as I spoke, I could just picture those worms, dangling from a jagged hook, dancing in the current. So, apparently, could the men I'd challenged. More than one placed a protective hand over that tenderest of parts. I'd evoked, too, those treacherous, watery realms from which dangerous women rose to lure unwary men. Fish bait! I could hardly have touched off more masculine fear if I'd tried. Nice going, Maeve.

“By Anu!” It was Big Mouth again. “This red-headed hussy has balls.”

This was the first time I'd received this form of masculine approbation. I assumed he was referring to the spherical perfection of my breasts.

“I'd stand up for her,” he declared, getting to his feet.

“I'll just bet you would!” someone whooped.

Everyone snickered and guffawed. I didn't get it.

“If I could, that is,” the man amended. “But I've got a nephew to stand for. Sister's son. Know what I mean?”

And it was the first time, but certainly not the last, that a man declared his admiration for me, but scuttled sideways when it came to backing it with something hard—cash or other.

I looked at the druids again. It was easy to read the nose ogham this time: “Does that count as warning number three?”

Greybeard signed wearily. “If you're not standing for her, then sit down. And don't open your mouth again or I'll have it sewn shut. It remains clear that there is inadequate support for this candidate.”

“But you are forgetting,” said Fand. “There are nine of us on...where we come from, that is. We two stand for the Nine.”

“Nine and one makes ten,” observed the druid.

You see, numbers were important to us. They were not just abstractions drifting unmoored in empty space till you needed them to balance your checkbook or figure out your taxes. They were the unseen substance of relationship. You ignored them at your peril. As I've noted before, ten either takes you over the top or back to square one. In this instance, ten didn't cut it. We needed twelve. Four threes. Three fours. The solidity of four combined with the magic of three. Far more than
twelve had stood for Esus. But apparently that was acceptable. His support entered the infinite category (stars in the sky, grains of sand) while mine—

Suddenly, Foxface rose to his feet. Was he standing for me? He opened his mouth.

I never found out what he would have said. At just that moment, a wind sprang up in the still Grove. A seeking, circling wind, with a low, sobbing note in it. Think of a sea monster mourning. Full of damp, the wind went for the bone, reminding you that flesh was flimsy stuff, temporary shelter at best. Yes, that wind made us all feel like fish bait. Foxface sank down again, huddled within his cloak, staring into the crowd.

Following his gaze, I turned and saw
them
walking towards the druids. The crowd parted to let them pass. I say them, but until they were almost in front of me, they appeared to be one entity, not exactly human. It was as if a piece of the blackest night sky had fallen into our midst, or the darkness of sea, fathoms deep, had risen and taken form. As they neared us, I saw that the great black shape had three heads.

“What an entrance!” murmured Fand, impressed.

“And how!” said Boann.

The wind subsided as suddenly as it had begun. Three women in flowing cloaks stood beside us. In my mind's eye, I saw the golden cliffs of Holy Island and the black bird-women keeping watch. I was certain that they now stood beside me. They carried with them the smell of the sea, the hint of secret places hollowed out of rock.

“What business have you with us, Sisters of the Night, Wings of the Raven?” The grey druid's tone was respectful but not exactly welcoming.

“If you had been watching the signs, Brothers of the Sun, Wings of the Crane,” answered the priestess in the middle, “then you would not need to ask that question, nor need us to answer it.”

Both spoke in the solemn tones of high seriousness. For all that, the druid and the priestess were ranking each other as nastily as any sibling rivals.

“There are signs and there are signs, and there is watching and there is watching,” said Greybeard. “There is knowing and there is asking and there is speaking so that you may be understood.”

Translation: Of course
I
know.
I
know even better than
you
know. But you're the one who barged in here, so get to the point.

“Brother, if you have observed the signs, then declare what the cranes' wings have spoken in the sky.”

Translation: I bet you don't know diddly squat.

The druid took a deep breath, stretched out his arms, and rolled his eyes, stalling for time as he shifted into oracular mode. It wouldn't do to admit that he had missed a major augury. Before he'd managed to compose a message cryptic enough to cover his ass, I beat him to the punch.

“Maeve and Esus!”

The druids and the priestesses and my mothers united in scowling at me. I guess it's bad form to read your own portents.

“Say then,” said the druid, ignoring my gaffe, “that there have been signs. And say that these signs have been noted. Say, too, that there is as yet no saying what these signs may portend.” (Translation: Just because you think you saw her name in the sky doesn't mean we have to admit her to our college.) “And finally, since you are here, say why. Is it your intention, perhaps, to take this over-mothered, strangely-fathered maiden into your own keeping and to your own place?” he concluded hopefully.

Oh no, I thought. Anything but that. However impressive these priestesses were, hadn't the druid himself just said that I was over-mothered? If I was going to be packed off to a tiny island with the priestesses I might just as well have stayed on Tir na mBan.

“Listen, you druids,” said the priestess, “before you came to the Holy Isles, we were here. We sang the stones into standing and brought the dance of the sky to earth. We conversed with the green world and received the secrets of the serpents. The bones of these isles are our bones, and we know the way between the worlds. You've drunk from our holy wells. You've sucked at our tits and grown fat with knowledge, forgetting its source. You have stood up proud against the sky and cast us into your shadow, naming us Sisters of the Night. Remember, night births the day. Day does not belong to you, nor can night contain us. You have taken our wisdom to enrich yourselves. You have claimed the power to counsel kings. Your words are stronger than weapons. It is time for you to offer your teachings to us and ours. And so you have agreed. Do you renege so quickly? Are your mighty words meaningless?

“We agreed that all candidates who meet the requirements regardless of, er—”

“Gender,” supplied the priestess to the right of the central one.

“Not that all of us think coeducation is wise,” added the one on the left.

“—would be eligible for admission,” continued the druid. “But this candidate before us, to begin with, her lineage—”

“Is as ancient as the earth and sea,” interrupted the central priestess.

“Yes, well, we've already more or less agreed to make an exception on that requirement. But she still lacks the necessary support. Only ten people stand for her.”

“Have you not understood what is plainly before you, 0 Wise Ones?” A little sarcasm here.

“And what might that be?” More than a little weariness.

“We stand for her.” All three priestesses spoke, and then again. “We stand for her. We stand for her.”

A slight pause for counting.

“Thirteen.”

A little shiver ran through the crowd. The wind that had accompanied the three stirred just a little, as if it were a dog at their feet, quiet now but ready to spring at their command. Thirteen is the number of the last moon of the year, the moon of
Samhain,
where end and beginning meet. Thirteen is a powerful, Otherworldly number; it skews everything, throws it off balance. Yet it is unwise to despise thirteen. The druids at least had more savvy than Sleeping Beauty's parents who did not invite the thirteenth fairy because they had only twelve gold plates.

“Very well.” The grey druid bowed to my triple goddess mothers. “The second requirement is met. Now for the third requirement—”

Oh, shit.

The crowd shared my dismay. A collective groan arose. The sky began to pale towards dawn.

“You have our permission to keep it very brief,” the druid instructed me.

Since I had prepared nothing, I did the next best thing: I went with the first idea that came into my head, and the crowd was treated to my own special rendition of “Queen-Maeve-of-Connacht-Takes-a-Leak.” The druids, including Foxface, listened with an unnerving lack of expression. But when I'd finished, my pal with the ruined cloak huzzahed and whistled, and I received a modest round of applause.

“Dear Candidate,” the Grey druid yawned, “you're in.”

Did you notice the absence of “delighted to inform you?” I did. Where was the rejoicing? Fand and Boann beside me seemed stunned.
My triple goddess mothers gave me an inscrutable look, then turned away, billowing out of the Grove as if they were a cloud formation on the move.

I turned back to the druids. The Grey one signaled for the orientation crew, then began conferring with the other druids in nose ogham, probably about whether or not to call a breakfast recess. Only Foxface was still intent on me. I could feel it. I risked a discreet look at him. Our eyes met for the briefest moment. Then he looked away abruptly.

One of the students tapped me on the shoulder. As I turned, both Fand and Boann cried out.

“Little Bright One. O Maeve!” They sounded as forlorn as I felt. Strong arms and salty kisses. Then I was led away blind into one of the bleakest dawns I've ever met.

M
Y FIRST TERM AT the College on Mona began in the Time of Brightness. That's what May and June are called on the Coligny Calendar, which the druids invented. Whatever their faults, in their own time of brightness the druids held time and space in the palm of their hands. The ogham, the key to all stories, all lore, all law, are encoded on the hand. Free from the need to grasp weapons or common tools, the druids could contemplate the wonder of the hand. They found the whole cosmos dancing there in that warm, cupped space. (Don't your hands naturally curve when you let them?) Look at your own hands now. Maybe you'll glimpse what they saw: a sacred geography, plains and promontories, swirls and whorls echoed in Celtic metalwork, roads and riverbeds, and blue rivers under the thin crust of skin. See how the empty hand holds the shimmering air.

Everyday the sun lingers longer, drinking the mist and clouds, till the sky is a soft, naked blue. Look at the light-charged air; breathe the heady sweetness of hedgerows blossoming with whitethorn and wild rose. Feel the touch of sun and sea wind on bare legs and arms. And then, picture this:

I am lying in a dark hut. Here the Time of Brightness never arrives, and the warmth of summer lags a month behind. I mean it's cold in here. I am lying on the earth floor instead of on skins because I am not supposed to be comfortable enough to fall asleep. Only my head and face are warm, and they itch because they're swaddled in a thick wool plaid. To top it all off, I have a large stone on my stomach, an oversized paperweight, you might say, though I hardly feel light enough to scatter on the nonexistent breeze. In fact, the air in here is stuffy, since heavy blankets cover the door.

Have I been very bad, you are wondering? Is this some proto-Dickensian druidical punishment? No. Although I cannot claim to be a model student, my present circumstances are shared by all my classmates. Believe it or not: this is study hall.

Why do people assume that only pleasure distracts? You see, the idea of the darkened room and the swaddled head is sensory deprivation, which is supposed to help you memorize – and, in time, compose—poetry. But my senses are not in the least quiescent. They are aggrieved, and I can scarcely concentrate because of their complaints. I can't even heave a sigh, because it's impossible to take a deep breath with a study stone smack dab on your solar plexus. Why the stone? I suppose it could have a centering effect. Literally. As for me, I have an irresistible urge to wriggle.

“Settle down, Maeve Rhuad.” The voice of Nissyen, the druid on duty, penetrates the layers of plaid. “Remember: memory is the mother of all poetry, so latch onto that tit, and give it a good suck.”

For some reason, that image works, helping me to focus as the swaddling plaid and the study stone have not. I picture a huge breast, blue veins branching like tree limbs. Another apt image. Poets carry a silver or golden branch, depending on their degree of accomplishment. Each cluster of stories is the branch of a great tree. The branch itself divides into smaller branches and twigs. The tree keeps growing, and the poet grows with it, learning one branch after another, and perhaps extending the branch, however infinitesimally, with a new song or story.

Right now we are learning the ogham alphabet, which I already know. That is, I know how to read ogham carved on stone or stick or winging across the sky. But ogham are not just letters. Each one corresponds to a tree, a bird, an animal, the string of a harp, a color, a branch of stories. Look at your hand again and see it as that great, deep-rooted, sky-touching tree. With all the ogham and their complex, multiple meanings stored there, your hand becomes a living Library of Congress.

For a time I forget my discomfort and silently sing over my lessons as earlier that day our ogham instructor sang them aloud over us. The word for teach in the old Celtic languages translates as to sing over. And so I sing the series of questions and answers which lie at the root of the tree.

Q: How many divisions of ogham are there, and what are they?

A: Not hard. Four: B, five; H, five; M, five, besides diphthongs.

But I don't suppose you want to do my homework with me. No doubt there are other things you want to know, such as what has become of Esus. Was he, too, laboring alongside me under the stone?

He was not.

To my dismay and outrage, the druids had placed him in the second form with those studying to attain the status of ovate. Ovates presided over that branch of druid learning that had to do with divination and healing, ritual and sacrifice. You might have supposed that the druids would instead have required remedial studies, considering that Esus did not have full command of even conversational Celtic. But no. Esus had amply demonstrated that he had the equivalent of a bard's training in his own people's literature and law. In their wisdom, the druids had decided that Anu had not called Esus to the Holy Isles to be a Comp Lit major. At his own request, Esus had an ogham tutor, but for all intents and purposes, he was majoring in magic.

To add insult to injury, not only did Esus and I attend separate classes, but the second form students were housed at Caer Idris more than a mile away from the bardic students at Caer Leb. Since we had been admitted to college, I'd seen Esus only in passing. I didn't get it. The signs that our fates were linked were so clear to me. How
could
there be more barriers between us?

The one Appended One I wanted was still out of my reach. But ironically, there was no dearth of appendages in my daily life. I was surrounded by them. All seven of us were. (Yes, seven. If you want to know the numerical significance, I believe the druids chose to admit seven female candidates, because seven is the number of stars in the Pleiades. A pleasing number, magical enough, but not as formidable as nine.) The seven female first form students were an experiment in coeducation, and the druids had decided to make it a radical one. We were not given any special treatment. We lived in the same hut with the rest of the first-year students. We ate, slept, studied, and played with our male classmates. We even used the same latrines. And so we seven were stripped of any mystery or allure seclusion might have lent us. Such familiarity between the sexes bred not contempt but a sort of brother-sister incest taboo. But no, taboo suggests forbiddenness and restraint. The atmosphere of our hut was anything but restrained.

To our delight, the druids had not been so wise in their choice of our dormhead, or, as he called himself, our nursemaid or even our foster mother. Nissyen was very old with lovely white hair as soft as thistledown. Sometimes he would allow us to comb it or to sculpt it with lime. I would liken him to a benign dog surrounded by impertinent kittens, except that most of us, with the exception of Branwen, far outweighed him. He was little and brittle and joked that he had to carry stones in
his pocket to keep the wind from blowing him to the Cambrian mountains. It was plain, even to us, that the other druids considered him a lightweight. We loved him.

In his haler years, Nissyen had been a wandering bard. About whether or not he had completed the full course of nineteen years of study, he was evasive. When his feet wore out, he returned to Mona and charmed his way into a job “by not threatening anyone's importance,” he explained. Because he was not a player in the intrigue and politics that riddle every institution, the V.I.D. s (Very Important Druids) tended to underestimate him. He delighted in knowing the inside story and had formidable powers of observation. You have heard people wish they could be a fly on the wall? Nissyen did more than wish. When he needed to bring us into line, he would dangle tidbits of information in front of our noses the way someone training a dog offers a biscuit as a reward.

“Three Crows blew in last night,” he hinted one evening.

We were in the midst of our post study hall roughhousing, playing a no-holds-barred game of something resembling blindman's bluff. When Nissyen spoke, we tumbled to a halt at his feet.

“Yes, three great flapping black Crows.”

Nissyen liked to speak in code. “Crows” was his term for the black-robed priestesses of Holy Isle. Cranes stood for druids.

“Why are
they
here?” I was perturbed. I had not forgotten my triple sponsors. Were they keeping tabs on me?

“Getting on for the dark of the moon,” Nissyen observed. “The Cranes are in a flap. There'll be some feathers flying, black and white, before the moon is fat again.”

“Does anyone know what he's talking about?” complained Bryan.

Seven of us had a fair idea, but we weren't saying.

“Not that it's just a black and white matter. There are plenty of both feathers on each side. There's them that say boys will be boys and girls had better be boys, too. And there's them that say seeing as how women's mysteries are mysteries, they ought to be kept separate and secret.”

“Mysteries?” scoffed Lieu. “There's no mystery about these young, wet-nosed—”

“Now, now, Lleu.” Nissyen wagged a finger at him. ”Your own mother was a woman, I'm thinking. Show some respect. And then there's some Crows with suspicious minds as believe this women's mystery business is a Cranish plot. Keep women out of class for a few days
every cycle of the moon, and they'll soon fall behind. Then someone will say as how the great experiment has failed. Women are unsuited to be full-feathered druids. Now I have a solution to this dilemma, but does anyone ask old Nissyen? They do not.”

“We do. Tell us!” we clamored.

“I say make women's mysteries a requirement for everyone. Hang the bloody rags from the trees and augur from 'em.”

By now the boys had caught on and were protesting that Nissyen was a dirty old druid and their
tuaths
hadn't pledged good gold for them to study bloody rags. The girls were blushing, except for me. I didn't quite get it. No one on Tir na mBan had ever used a rag.

“I'm serious,” Nissyen insisted. “Don't you think it's a shame to waste good, fresh blood? Why, if my idea caught on, we could do away with all that nasty stabbing and disemboweling.” He scraped his throat, and we all moved out of range. Nissyen had been known to spit for emphasis. “Myself I never did have the stomach for entrails reading. Catch me playing ovate! I'll stick to prosody, which I'm sure you'll agree is bloody enough. Now everyone into bed, and I'll sing you to sleep.”

The Crows and Cranes alike assumed that the seven of us would bleed on schedule. Just as my mothers had predicted, our cycles that first month were skewed. We staggered our bleeding like some wounded she-elk lurching through the forest. I went first, and I blazed quite a trail.

I had never before bled alone, and I was blue. The homesickness I'd fought off more or less successfully swamped me when my flow began. Nissyen saw how it was with me, and obligingly dozed off—or pretended to—when I slipped out from under my study stone one afternoon and went off to be alone. After wandering aimlessly for awhile, I came to an outcropping of sun-drenched rock in a sheltered glade. Without a second thought, I cast off my tunic and tossed aside the moss I'd used to staunch the flow. (I hadn't wanted to borrow someone else's cloths.) Now I thought of my mothers romping on the beach with red thighs and fingers, rock painting and face painting, and I had a good cry. When I was done, I stretched out on my stomach, and, lulled by the mothering warmth of the rock, I went to sleep.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a long, straight seam of darker rock running through the large, flat, lighter stone. I knew at once that it was perfect, just perfect, for forming the stem of ogham. Naturally, I pulled myself to a crouch and dipped my fingers in
the original inkwell. You don't need to be told what I wrote, do you? As I carefully made the lines of the ogham along the stem, I was absorbed and content, feeling linked in this act both to my mothers and to the one whose name I inscribed with my own. I scarcely noticed the approach and retreat of several sets of footsteps. I was just completing a second coat when a shadow fell across my handiwork.

“Maeve!”

It was Viviane, the other redhead among the seven, the one who had gained admission to the college so effortlessly. The way she pronounced my name, she might as well have greeted me with a dagger's thrust. I looked up at her rabbit-blue eyes. (Yes, I know rabbits don't have blue eyes, but if they did, they'd look like Viviane's.) You could argue that her blue eyes with that russet hair (hers was a shade more decorous than mine and smooth as water) resembled blue sky paired with autumn leaves. Okay, she was beautiful. Usually. But at that moment, her face was mottled with fury and shame. We were on trial, the seven of us. We'd been warned that anything one of us did would reflect on all the others. Viviane did not like what she saw.

“No wonder the Romans think we're savages,” she hissed. “Do you know how many people have seen you? Except, of course, they were too embarrassed to look. What's wrong with you! How can you—”

“How can I what?” I turned back to my inscription, attempting to treat her presence as an annoying but insignificant interruption.

“Are you shameless or are you just stupid!” Her voice rose. “Look at you! Naked, with your thighs all bloody!”

I put a final dab on the last letter and turned to look at her again. She really did look like a rabbit, the way her nose was twitching.

“And your fingers!” Viviane's lip curled in disgust. “You're no better than a baby, playing in its own, its own—”

She could not bring herself to say it.

“Shit!” I roared, hurtling to my feet. I'd had enough. “Shit! Is that the word you want? Shit! You're calling the sacred blood of the womb
shit
?”