Magdalen Rising (21 page)

“Yeah, right.” I'd attended Foxface's lectures, too. “Romans don't practice human sacrifice. What about those, what do you call them, crucifixions? What about those gory, gladiatorial games?”

I felt a shudder go through Esus. He knew a lot more about the Roman executions and entertainments than I did.

“True enough,” he said. “Far be it from me to defend the Romans. But just because they are cruel and depraved and hypocritical into the bargain doesn't justify human sacrifice for other peoples. Have you ever seen a human sacrifice?”

“We didn't do things like that on Tir na mBan,” I said hastily.

Then it was my turn to shudder as I remembered the skull in the well. That was one tale my storytelling mothers had never told.

“But don't your people have some kind of blood sacrifice?” I asked, remembering the smell of blood in the Temple.

“Burnt offerings and sin offerings. Of animals.” He made the distinction, a little defensively, perhaps. “People used to bring their own animals or their own grains, from their own land, from their own hands, from Israel herself. Now, more often than not, the priests find some reason to reject any animals people haven't bought from the Temple marketplace. Most people find it more convenient to buy their offerings on the spot. But then, if they are rich, what have they sacrificed but coins? And the poorer peasants from the countryside can't afford to buy costly sacrifices.”

I sensed his mind was far away from Mona now, back in that world where I had first glimpsed him, brooding over things I had no way of understanding. How could I? I had no concept of commerce. I had never seen a coin. I did not know what poverty meant. But it puzzled me that people had to go to such lengths to shed blood. If blood was an important element in sacrifice, why not go to the source, the fount that renewed itself with every turning of the moon?

“Do you know what Nissyen said? That's our druid, us first-year students. He said if we augured with women's blood, maybe we wouldn't have to have stabbings and disembowelings. It would solve a lot of problems. When we bleed on Tir na mBan, we have parties on the beach
and paint the rocks. Maybe that doesn't seem like blood sacrifice to you. But as Nissyen says, why waste good blood?”

A squeamish silence followed.

“Is that what you were doing....that day?”

He had a problem. I didn't understand it, but I suspected it had something to do with the six hundred geasa. And suddenly it dawned on me that the argument I'd overheard in the Temple about the stain on the bed and whether or not the women were clean or unclean was about blood, women's blood. Menstrual, monstrous, menstruous blood.

“Well, sort of,” I said. “But Viviane didn't approve. She thought I was being
primitive.”
I mimicked her voice. “Listen, Esus,” I touched his arm. “There's something you don't seem to understand. I am as much a stranger here as you. I left my people behind, too. I tell you we're the same.”

He smiled at me and shook his head. “Maeve, whatever else we are, the same we're not. Maybe we're both strangers. Maybe we both stand out from the crowd a little—”

A little?

“But you come from a place I can hardly imagine where only women live. You inscribe names with your....your
menstruous
blood!”

(So he had recognized his name that day!)

“While I come from a place where men thank God every day they were not born a woman, and women with their blood on them are considered unclean. Men don't even come near them then. By the way, you're not....”

What, can't you count? I wanted to say. But I didn't want to staunch this flow of information. I merely shook my head.

“What's more, you tell these strange stories of gods and goddesses, as if they were as familiar as your next door neighbor. What am I saying? You said your
father
was a god. Whereas we do not even pronounce the name of the Most High. Sometimes I think God is punishing me, exiling me among idol-worshipping, pig-eating gentiles, gentiles so gentile they don't even know they're gentiles.”

He was right about that. I didn't know what he was talking about.

“Then other times,” he went on, “I think there are things I was meant to learn here, powers I was born with that need to be harnessed and disciplined. Maybe the druids do know something the rabbis can't teach me. Besides, to be honest, I've been thrown out of most of the Hebrew schools in Galilee at least once.”

“For what?” I was intensely curious.

“At the time, I refused to understand the reasons. But while I was on shipboard, I had some time to think things over. We were at sea for a long time. On board ship, everyone has to pull his weight. You have to accept the captain's authority. If someone's a troublemaker, first time there's a storm, he's overboard, especially if he's a stranger in strange circumstances.”

“But what did you used to do that got you into trouble?”

“I always had a smart remark at the ready. It was hard not to. I learned things more quickly than other people. A lot of the time, I thought I knew more than my teachers did. I used to dispute just for the sake of disputing, just to waste time. Also I have to admit, I used to enjoy scaring people. I knew how to make storms on a clear day. I don't know how I knew, I just did. I liked tornadoes especially. Once I tore up an orchard of old olive trees. I'm sorry about that now. Also, I learned how to put people into trances, so that they would lie down and scarcely breathe. Rumor had it that I was striking people dead, then raising them. The truth is, I was showing off. They weren't really dead. But the whole performance was pretty dramatic. And, well, you know how people are.”

In fact, I didn't. I'd never had a large population to terrorize.

“All kinds of wild stories spread about me. Crazy stories. Like the one about how I turned some children who wouldn't play with me into a herd of goats. I am supposed to have changed them back again, of course, but a lot of people were a little afraid of me, including my brothers and sisters, even my half-brothers who are older than I am.”

I was beginning to think Esus was right about how different we were. He came from a crowded world where he was evidently accustomed to throwing his weight around. You could even make a case that he was—or had been—a spoiled brat. I may have been the adored only child of eight mothers, but it had never been within my power to overwhelm them with a little weather magic.

“On Tir na mBan goats were my playmates,” I told him. “And pigs and horses and other animals. It didn't occur to me to change them into children. I'd never seen another human child, until the day I saw you in the pool.”

“What do you mean you
saw
me?”

“Just what I said.”

“Maeve! Come on. Tell.”

“How badly do you want to know?” I gazed nonchalantly at the straits.

He was nonplused. I bet no one had dared treat him that way before. Just let him try to impress me with his little tricks. Then I felt his hand on my cheek. With a gesture that was somewhere between a caress and a command, he turned my face toward his. There were those eyes again.

“You cannot entrance me,” I informed him, not at all sure that he couldn't.

“I wouldn't even try,” he said. “Please, tell me what you know. You seem to know more than I do.”

From his own account, he had quite possibly never made such a statement before.

“All right,” I said. Just to look at his eyes brought back that day at the pool so clearly. “I ran away to a secret place on Tir na mBan where I was not supposed to go till I was initiated.”

“Initiated?”

“Until I had my first blood.”

This time he didn't blanch at the mention. Clearly, I was a good influence on him.

“Only I didn't know that then,” I continued. “I just wanted to find out what my mothers were keeping secret from me.”

“Mothers?”

“Yes, I have eight. That's another story. Do you want to hear this one or not?”

“Go on. I promise I won't interrupt again.”

And so I told him, as best I could, about the valley between Bride's Breasts, the sacred pool with the hazelnut trees surrounding it. I spared him no detail, trying to make him see what I had seen, feel what I had felt. When I came to my vision of him, he interrupted again.

“Are you sure it was me?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

“You saw my face?”

“More.” I admit it, I started to giggle, like the teen-aged girl I was.

“Where was I? What was I doing?” He sounded skeptical.

I laughed harder, leaning against him for support.

“You were in some dry, hot-looking place with lots of buildings,” I gasped between bursts of laughter.

“Hilarious,” he said dryly. “Sounds like Jerusalem. We go there for the feast of Pesach.”

“And you....” I was laughing too hard to speak. “And you were.... taking a piss.”

“This is a joke?”

“No. No, I'm serious.” I finally got a grip on myself and took a deep breath. “You have no idea how amazing it was. I'd never seen one before, you know. Not on a human being.”

I didn't need to look at his face. Embarrassment was emanating from him in hot waves.

“Don't you remember anything about it?” I asked. “I could swear that for a moment you saw me, too. You looked straight at me.”

“I have lots of visions,” he said crushingly. “I couldn't possibly keep track of every single one.”

We were both silent for a time, seething companionably.

“There's something else I've been wondering about,” he said. “When the druids asked me why I was here, you said: ‘Anna sent him.' How did you know about Anna the prophetess? Did you see that in the pool, too?”

Now it was my turn to be embarrassed.

“No. I have dreams sometimes....” I said vaguely.

He nodded. He knew all about clairvoyant dreams. They figured prominently in the stories his people told.

“So you dreamed what Anna said to me.”

“I'm not exactly sure.” I decided to come clean. “I tried to tell you about it that first night at Llyn Cerrig Bach. Listen, Esus, if it wasn't just a dream, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to shit on your head.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you were ever a bird, you'd find out. Birds have no control over their bowels. None. I just got flustered, and....”

I trailed off, aware that he still wasn't following me. I'd left out something vital.

“I was the dove,” I confessed. “You know, the dove that shit on your head and embarrassed you in front of all those people. Unless....Maybe it was only a dream?” I added hopefully.

“It was not a dream,” he said slowly.

I turned to look at him. He was staring at me, not exactly with horror but maybe with horror's next of kin.

“And believe me,” he added. “It was way beyond embarrassing.”

“I'm sorry,” I said again. “I swear I didn't do it on purpose.”

“You know, it's a good thing you don't live in my country. You'd be accused of sorcery. Some people believe it's unlawful to allow a sorceress to live.”

A shiver went through me.

“Well, what about you?” I countered. “With your tornadoes and striking people dead and changing children into goats.”

“Thank God I was not born a woman.”

“What's that got to do with anything?” I demanded.

“You see, I was born a man,” he explained. “I might grow up to be a prophet or a healer. I might become a great leader who will free the people from Roman rule. I might be....” His tone changed and he spoke with mock seriousness. “I might be the Messiah. Who knows? People take a wait-and-see line with a boy.”

“Why not with a girl?” I honestly didn't get it.

“It's just different,” he said.

“Now I know why Anna sent you here,” I said. “You've got a lot to learn.”

“From you, I suppose.” I could hear his smile.

“Could be.”

Then we were silent again. It was a different silence from the first one, when we walked beside the shore carried along by a dark, wordless current towards inexorable, treacherous whitewater. Now we'd ridden our first rapids together, and we rested in a sweet flow of silence. The moon drifted west to set in the Shining Isles of the Otherworld.

Esus did not know about the Otherworld. A different land had fed him; different stories formed him. All right, Esus. I spoke to him silently as I turned west to look at him. So we are different, as different as day and night. But listen, don't day and night meet again and again, one turning into the other? Isn't that how the world is made and made new? Face it, Esus. Face me.

Then he turned to me.

Do you want to know why people laid aside their fishing nets to follow him? Left husbands and wives, mothers and fathers? Think of looking into a sky full of stars on a clear night. You wonder at that unknowable vastness. With Esus, it's as if that gorgeous mystery is looking back at you, wanting to fathom you.

“We'd better go, Maeve” was all he said.

He took my hand and we scrambled down the cliff, back along the greying shore where low mists swirled over mud and rocks, exposed by the ebbing tide. When we came to the turning for Caer Idris, he dropped my hand.

“I go to the Yews in the afternoon sometimes. To study,” he said.

He seemed about to say something more, then he changed his mind. Before I could think of what to say, he took the path and soon disappeared among the thick trees.