Magdalen Rising (25 page)

Esus gazed at me in wonder, and no wonder: I wasn't myself. I was starting to feel cranky and a little queasy. I recalled how Queen Maeve
of Connacht had turned green around the gills when she uttered her prophecy over me. She was right. It was extremely disagreeable.

“But if I break his commandments,” Esus anguished.

“He still won't leave you alone,” I said crossly. “Jonah was disobeying orders when he got swallowed. Your god could have just let him be digested and serve him right.”

“That is true,” said Esus slowly. “But I don't want to disobey his orders. The trouble is,” he lowered his voice and leaned closer to me, as if he could make an aside that Yahweh wouldn't catch, “I don't know what he wants. Is he testing me? If he is, am I supposed to refuse the rite or go through with it? Maybe there is something I am meant to learn here that I can't learn any other way. I wish I knew why he called me here. If he did.”

You came here to find me, you hopeless idiot, I wanted to scream. How can someone so smart be so stupid?

“Anu said,” he began.

I smiled to myself and did not say: you mean Anna.

“ ‘Leave all you know. Step outside your world. When you come back, you will see your people with new eyes. You will love them with a new love. You will find beauty in the despised. You will find secrets in the cracks between the stones.' ”

“ ‘The world is a big place, Yeshua,' ” I continued. His Hebrew name felt so tender and sweet on my tongue, tears thickened my throat. “‘And small, as small as a mustard seed, as small as a hazelnut.' ”

“What do you think she meant by that?”

He looked at me hungrily, almost humbly, as if I were the source of all knowledge and wisdom.

“It's all right,” I said slowly. “This rite is all right for you. You'll learn what the seed knows.”

O plant yourself in me, Yeshua, Esus. Let me surround you.

I didn't speak those words. He had turned to me again and buried his head in my lap. Suddenly I felt calm and strong and certain. Yahweh would not abandon him, more's the pity, but neither would I. I would be there with him, keeping watch by the Mound of the Dark Grove.

Though I had never been there, I knew how to find the Dark Grove. All I had to do was follow Afon Braint, the river that runs all through the college like life's blood. As soon as I left Esus, I did just that. Picking up the thread of the river a mile and a half further in from Caer Leb, I
walked east towards Bryn Celli Ddu, the late shadows lengthening before me. I wanted to case the joint, stake out some cover for myself, maybe explore the fabled mound where, rumor had it, human bones lay in a silent huddle. And I wanted to make sure of the way, so that I could find the Mound, night or day, when the time came.

For a while, the river ran through planted fields and grazing meadows, now and then a copse. Gradually, the trees and shrubs grew more densely, and the air around me was damp and green. Yet the moment I entered the Dark Grove itself, I knew it. The very air surrounding the wood, riddled with protective charms, gave resistance. As you know, I was an old hand at trespassing. I held my breath and wriggled through the invisible wall, just as you might squeeze through barbed wire, taking care not to let it catch your clothes.

Once inside the Grove, I stood still, waiting for my extra senses to waken and tell me which way to go. The wood was uncannily silent, as if the trees, almost all gigantic oaks, held their breath and suspended their judgment while they waited to see what I would do. The prevailing winds moaned in the distance. Everything and everyone seemed far away. I looked up at the forest roof, the leaves so thick I could not see the sky. The last light caught the highest branches, and they glowed green, high, high above me. Except that I could breathe, I might have been gazing up through fathoms of water at sunlight rippling on the surface.

No wonder I felt dizzy and disoriented. If I'd had any sense, I would have turned and run back to Caer Leb. Instead I turned to my left and began to walk slowly away from the river into the wood. I followed no path, but so little light found its way through the leaves, there was practically no undergrowth. Despite the growing darkness, I did not stumble, yet it seemed every soft, bare footfall reverberated. Then, through the spaces between the trees, I saw the mound rising in the midst of the dark grove, an earth swell, a fallen moon gleaming in the half-light, round and smooth and unmistakably secret. I stopped mid-step and stared.

At that moment, a murder of crows came screaming into the wood, racketing into the branches above me. You wouldn't have to be a superstitious Celt, reading omens or ogham in every flap of a bird's wing, to believe that these Crows were sounding the alarm. Imagine being a burglar in the middle of a heist hearing the wail of a siren. It was like that. My heart started to pound and my legs shook so badly it didn't matter that I couldn't decide whether to run or to hide. I couldn't move. Then as suddenly as they had come, the crows took off again, their cries
fading into the distance. The dark grove was silent again, except for a faint stirring among the uppermost leaves—and the sound of footsteps behind me coming closer and closer.

Was it ordained from the beginning of time that I should be in this dark grove, turning, endlessly turning, to find Foxface walking towards me, closing the ground between us, as if he had been following me forever? His face gleamed white. Even in the half-light I could see the red of his hair and beard.

“You.” He stopped within a few feet of me. “You.”

The word was both accusation and identification, and in a horrible way it sounded more intimate than if he had spoken my name. He was more than angry. He had that haunted, almost hunted look that had fleetingly crossed his face during admissions and that I had seen again when he glimpsed me in the tree. Then he had not confronted me. It had seemed as though he'd persuaded himself that I was an apparition. Maybe if I kept still, he would delude himself again. After all, it was twilight, one of those dangerous times, when the Otherworld and the ordinary one get mixed up together. I could very well be a vision, except that I had seldom felt more fleshy. My cheeks burned, my palms sweated, my knees trembled, and there was a strange heat and swelling between my legs. I hoped I wouldn't piss myself in front of the enemy, as Queen Maeve put it. But was he my enemy? And if he was, why? Suddenly I wanted to know. So I blew the only cover I had.

“Yes, it's me,” I said brazenly. “What do you want?”

The sound of my voice snapped him out of his trance. I was no longer a dangerous being, strayed from the Otherworld, but a female first former breaking the rules big time. And he was no longer the dreaded figure from my nightmare vision, but a Very Important Druid, which, under the circumstances, was bad enough.

“What are you doing here, young woman?” He addressed me sternly, impersonally, masked now with authority.

“My name is Maeve Rhuad.” For some reason I wanted him to know that. “I am exploring.”

“This grove is forbidden to all but initiates. Surely that has been made clear to you.”

“I am an initiate,” I asserted.

“That is not possible,” he informed me. “You are a female student. You are, therefore, in the first form. You have not completed one year of study. You are not even a candidate for initiation. Your presence
violates this grove. You have committed a serious offense against the entire College.”

His face and tone were grave, concerned, not for me, but for the College, its rules and standards. No doubt he was about to tell me he would be forced to report me. I had to make my case now.

“Lovernios.”

“You know my name,” he observed.

“Who doesn't know Lovernios? I have heard you speak about the Roman question. And...and I agree with you. A client king is no better than a slave!”

My blatant use of flattery and diversion embarrassed me, and I realized that I didn't want him to fall for it. I didn't understand it then, but I wanted him to be a great man, larger than life, worthy of my fear.

“How gratifying to know that first-year students heed my warnings.” His tone was as dry as last year's leaves. For a moment he looked bleak and abstracted. “But that is not the matter at hand.” He focused on me again. “You claim to have been initiated. I know you have not been initiated by this College. Who initiated you? By what authority?”

“Is it the druids' power and authority that makes the initiate?” I challenged. “Or is it what the initiate sees and knows in the darkness?”

“When and where did you enter the darkness?”

“A fox should know that there is more than one passageway into the earth.”

I knew I was provoking him. I couldn't seem to stop myself.

“Answer me,” he spoke softly, watching me intently, as a fox might watch a rabbit's hole. “Answer me.”

“A door opened in Bride's breast. I climbed down into the chamber beneath her heart” I felt like I was talking in my sleep, forcing sound through a silent barrier.

“Bride's breast. What do you mean by Bride's breast?”

“Mountains,” I mumbled. “On Tir na mBan.”

Without warning he lunged for me, seized my hair, and yanked back my head. He brought his face close to mine. His pupils dilated so wide, the red-brown rim almost disappeared. I could see my own face reflected in those empty pools, and suddenly I was back inside my nightmare vision: my face turning into his, his face turning into mine. I bit my lip to keep from screaming.

Then, just as suddenly, he released me. I stumbled backwards and almost fell.

“Run, Maeve Rhuad,” he said.

He looked and sounded as terrified as me. You may think I'm crazy, but I felt a strange pity for him. He seemed so trapped, a fox caught in a cruel, biting snare. I reached out my hand toward him.

“Run!” he shouted. “Run!”

He was almost pleading with me. I cast him one questioning look. Then I turned and ran away from Bryn Celli Ddu as fast as I could.

THE FESTIVAL OF
LUGHNASAD
marks the beginning of the harvest season. The weather is still fine for traveling, and the tribes gather to hold games of skill; to make or dissolve trial marriages, and to present claims to the druid court. Everyone honors Tailtu, Lugh's foster mother, who died of exhaustion after clearing the land for planting. (Come to think of it, there are a number of tales of exhausted goddesses. Some things never change.) Lugh and his foster mother are among the gods who are friendly to the human tribes and want to feed them. At
Samhain
the harvest ends, and then everyone is under a collective geis not to pluck even one remaining berry. After
Samhain
the fruits of the earth belong to the Old Ones who are the earth itself.

The
Combrogos
took passionate delight in this balance of the human and Otherworld, dark and light, female and male, opposites, not opposed so much as matched, partners in a ceaseless circle dance. At
Lughnasad
the games were balanced by legal hearings; the riotous festivities, by the mysteries of initiation in the Dark Grove. And to bring it to a personal level, the first-form students were both having a holiday and facing our first real test as bards-in-the-making.

Branwen and I were a pair of opposites, too, she dark and quiet and studious, and me—well, you know about me. On the morning of
Lughnasad,
Branwen wanted to stay at Caer Leb and practice the performance she would give that evening, but with the blessing of King Bran, who had come to Mona for the festival, I prevailed and dragged Branwen off to the first century Celtic equivalent of a county fair.

Merchants and traders filled one huge field near the College with their wares, all manner of metalwork: weapons, jewelry, and torques so massive you'd have to have god-like strength to wear them. There were displays of weaving as well as raw wool for sale. One whole field was fenced off for cattle, mostly to be sold to traders from Gaul where meat was not so plentiful.

Now I must tell you an ugly truth. Not far from the cattle pens were captives. I did not even know what I was seeing at first when I looked at the chained groups of people, mostly women, Hibernian by their accents.
Their hair looked tangled as bramble bushes. There was a fierceness about the women, especially the small, dark ones, that reminded me of my mothers. I tugged at Branwen's sleeve.

“Why are those people chained?”

“They were probably taken in a raid. Don't stare at them, Maeve,” she whispered, pulling me along. “You'll shame them. They might have been free people once.”

“But what's going to happen to them?” I still didn't get it.

“They are most likely for export. Or they might be traded here for cattle. One
cumal
is worth three cows.”

Branwen's tone was flat and matter-of-fact. I could tell she did not like to talk about it. Branwen had grown up amidst cattle raids and wars that she was powerless to prevent and had learned to accept things that were unacceptable. I was shocked. Growing up on a mythic island in the care of Otherworldly mothers had not prepared me for human harshness.

But I was young and, if not callow, I have to confess I was easily distracted. We spent a few of King Bran's coins on barley cakes and a flask wine from Gaul. The transaction was a wonder to me, since, of course, we had no coins and no buying and selling on Tir na mBan. It seemed a dubious kind of magic. There were also vendors selling cheeses, pig knuckles, and fresh fish roasted over a fire. Our bellies full, we walked on towards the playing fields where there appeared to be several ballgames going on at once with enthusiastic onlookers shouting encouragement—and even detailed instruction, none of which made any sense to me. My mothers and I had played games on occasion with a ball made out of a stuffed pig's bladder. Their approach to sports, as to life in general, was anarchic, the competitive aspect being each one outdoing the others in inventing new arcane rules at the spur of the moment. I had my own sure-fire strategy. I'd wait until the inevitable arguments reached a certain pitch, then I'd grab the ball and run, with my mothers laughing and shrieking in hot pursuit. If I made it to a standing stone without being tagged, I won.

Now Branwen and I watched some two dozen or so players chasing a ball with long sticks. Most of the time, I could not see the ball, the players swarmed so thick around it, but I was terribly aware of the sticks, and I noticed that the players were all boys. So I concluded that the stick had something to do with their appendages, perhaps acted as an
extension, but I could not figure out the object of the game. The players mostly seemed to be bashing each other's shins.

“They're playing hurly,” Branwen explained. “There are two sets of players, and each one is trying to get the ball to go through one gate or the other.”

She gestured and I saw, in essence, what you would recognize as prototypic goal posts. At that moment, the ball, flying clear of obstacles, sailed through one set of posts. The players and the crowd went wild, and several fist fights broke out. Not having any stake in the outcome of the game or the brawls, Branwen and I wandered on, pausing here and there to watch other displays of chance or skill. In addition to foot and chariot races, there were more stationary competitions: dice games and a tournament of
fidchell
—the Hibernian board game played by the heroes at Tara. The
fidchell
players were mostly older men; no doubt they'd had enough barked shins and sprained limbs to last a lifetime and now preferred to match wits instead.

In any space not taken up by some sport or game, there was music and dancing. More than once Branwen and I were grabbed indiscriminately and whirled into wild reels. The scent of male sweat, the dizzy spinning from one pair of male arms to another, made me drunker than the strong Gallic wine. For most of the day, I wallowed in the moment, heedless of my own pending ordeal, almost—but not quite—forgetful of Esus's.

Part of me kept an eye out for him. I saw several from his form, including Ciaran of the blue-black hair who wandered aimlessly and alone through the crowds, his usual ease of manner missing. But I didn't give Ciaran much thought. Esus, I assumed, must be preparing for his initiation. I didn't give him much thought either. I wasn't thinking, on what turned out to be the last day of my innocence. I was having fun.

Just after midday, Branwen and I arrived at one of the farthest fields. A large space had been cleared for some event, and a crowd was gathering at the edge. A couple of burly-looking men, each the equivalent in mass to three slender students, were arranging logs on the ground in order of size.

“I know what this is!” I clapped my hands with pleasure.

“Step right up and get in line for the caber toss!” one of the men bellowed to the crowd. “Try your strength and skill. To the winner, a vat of the best Gallic wine. Step right up!”

I didn't need the lure of a prize. I loved caber tossing.

“Maeve! What are you doing?” Branwen grabbed my arm.

“I'm getting in line for the toss.”

“But, Maeve, caber tossing is only for men. Can't you see?”

“On Tir na mBan, caber tossing is only for women.” I pulled free of Branwen's grip and joined the line.

“Maeve!” Branwen called after me. “You're not on Tir na mBan anymore. We're not supposed to make spectacles of ourselves. You can't afford to get into trouble today.”

“Oh, I won't.” I waved away her fears. “Stay and cheer for me, Branwen. I'm going to win. Just you watch.”

Some of you may not know what caber tossing is in these decadent days of bridges. Bridges? By Bride's breasts, some of your bridges have eight lanes and four levels. You have bridges not only across rivers but across bays, bridges to what used to be remote islands. It takes the challenge out of travel. It used to be a great adventure crossing a gorge or ravine with sides so steep you could never hope to climb down, much less up. Faced with such a prospect, what did you do? No, you did not plant hemp, wait for the harvest, twist a rope, macramé a bridge, and take turns trying to lasso something solid on the other side. Not in the prehistoric Holy Isles. No, you'd find a good straight tree and, begging its pardon, cut it down and strip it clean of branches. That's a caber, what you call a telephone pole these days. You'd lift that great stick with the palms of your hands, balance it against your chest, and run. When the momentum is just right, you toss. The caber goes end over end and comes to rest right across the ravine—that is, if you're any good at caber tossing. Of course it's not every day you have to cross a treacherous gorge, so it pays to stay in practice. Besides there are few things as exhilarating as tossing a caber and watching it fly.

So I stood in line with the great, hulking men, some of them warriors with fantastic spikes of lime-sculpted hair. There was some exclaiming over my intention to compete and quite a few hairy, over-sized hands patted my back and tweaked my curls. When the official in charge saw that I was serious, he laughed and said, “Sure and let the colleen try her luck.”

“Skill,” I corrected him. I had never before encountered male condescension, and I was feeling a bit miffed and all the more determined to make a good showing.

I ignored the increasingly large and titillated crowd and gave my attention to appraising the technique and timing of those who went
ahead of me. Each contestant was allowed three tosses, and each toss was judged on three counts: the size of the caber; the distance of the toss; and how straight the caber landed. The perfect toss would find the caber pointing straight ahead of you, at what you'd call twelve o‘clock. Most of the men made good tosses, erring no further from the mark than one or eleven o'clock.

As my turn drew nearer, I began to feel nervous. I was so unaccustomed to the feeling that I hardly recognized it and dismissed the agitation in my stomach as the result of too many sweetcakes. Still, I could not help noticing what you no doubt realized from the beginning: their massive arms gave the appended ones an undeniable advantage over me in this sport. I could not hope to win on the first two counts, but I was determined to excel in timing and angle.

Now, my turn was next. With each breath, I narrowed my concentration. I don't mean that I shut out the crowd. I mean I concentrated, literally. Everything in my field of vision, the field itself, with all its roiling energies, I took and made into one tiny radiant point that I contained—and that contained me. As I stepped out before the crowd, the air around me was living gold, all sound, all motion and commotion melted into the silent pulsing of that light.

That's what it looked like from my point of view. If you were standing in the crowd, you would see a young woman with hot, orange hair and a short, green tunic, somewhat the worse for wear, slit way up the sides. Although she's got a husky build, she's a good head shorter than the shortest of the men, and her nicely fleshed upper arms are sticks in comparison to theirs. The only thing she's got that's bigger than what they've got are breasts. These are causing quite a stir among the men.

“Her paps are bigger than the paps of Anu!”

“Now I ask you, where's there room to rest a caber between those two luscious faery mounds.”

“I wouldn't mind resting my caber between them, I tell you.”

And maybe you would have joined in the laughter as the girl, waving away the officiator's offer of the smallest caber, chooses one two sizes larger—though not the largest. (Am I foolhardy? Yes. A fool? No. I know my strength.) But when the girl spreads her thighs and bends her knees, walking her hands down to the base of the caber, then balancing it as calmly and deftly as mother might lay a baby against her shoulder to burp it, you fall silent, amazed at how softly the huge caber seems to rest on the slopes of her breasts.

As a matter of fact, my breasts helped me balance the caber by keeping it centered. With caber tossing, as in many other arts, balance is the key. Slowly, I straightened my legs and came to a standing position, the caber leaning almost lightly against me. I paused for a moment, letting the caber become a part of my body, my very own enormous appendage, then I ran, gathering momentum with each step.

It's a strange thing, but carrying a weight can make the earth feel springier, as if you sink in more and bounce back accordingly. The earth gives you a gentle, little shove to get you off her back. As I ran, the caber felt lighter and lighter. It's at that moment of near weightlessness that you toss the caber. If you hit the moment just right, you feel as though you're flying with it, end over end through a spinning sky. Then, after that second of suspended gravity, comes a resounding thud and a bone knowledge that needs no eye: the caber has landed dead on.

I looked at my caber lying on the ground straight and true, and I let the sound of wild cheering penetrate the pulsing light around me. If crowds in general gave me a buzz, being the center of an admiring crowd hit my blood like a shot of neat whiskey. Remember one of the meanings of my name is “drunk woman.” I was drunk that moment with all the pleasures of drunkenness and none of the hindrances. I could taste my triumph all the way to my toes, my world bright and liquid with melting boundaries. I was drunk as a honey bee deep in the heart of a trumpeting flower.

Now listen, all of you who think modesty is a virtue and that those of us who love the limelight are self-infatuated fools, give me a break. Give me this moment. I was a virgin. I didn't know then about the fickleness of the human herd, how quickly cheers can turn to curses, accolades to stones. All moments pass. That doesn't mean a moment can't be perfect while it lasts.