Magdalen Rising (32 page)

A
RE YOU FEELING BETRAYED? Are you saying to yourself: Hey, wait a minute! I thought this story was supposed to be funny. I thought this was a
hysterical
novel (as distinct from strictly historical). Trust me, it is. But remember: hysterical doesn't just mean hysterically funny. Hysteria is derived from the Latin, which is in turn derived from the Greek, for womb. (I told you those Romans were derivative.) Hysteria was believed to be caused by disturbances in the uterus—another Greco-Roman word, same root.

According to Freud (Freud? Does she have to bring Freud into a novel set in 9 CE?), hysterics suffered because of their repressed sexual fantasies. They had those crazy notions about their fathers, remember? Or sometimes their fantasies fixated on their uncles or respectable friends of the family. And they had nightmares too terrible to remember, too absurd to be real. You're fantasizing. It's just a dream. Don't be hysterical. You're hysterical! Lie down. Take it easy. Lie down on the couch and stay there.

Contrary to the image you may have of an hysteric as a Victorian woman alternately shrieking and fainting, the symptoms of hysteria as a clinically defined neurosis include “a calm mental attitude” interspersed with episodes of hallucination, sleepwalking, and amnesia. It is the calm that may be misleading, a deadly eye-of-the-storm calm. Think of the calm as a disguise that cloaks the disturbed uterus. The womb remembers, even if the mind forgets. The womb remembers and does not forgive the disturbance of rape.

For a long time after that night at Bryn Celli Ddu, which I could not remember at all, I was very calm. I somnambulated through my days and slept as though I were drugged every night. Sleepwalkers can be a danger to themselves, but I seldom left the confines of Caer Leb even on the finest autumn days. The skies were full of migrating birds. Wandering bards and warriors began seeking places to winter. People and animals scurried about gathering nuts, seeds, and berries, growing fur,
weaving warm cloaks, storing fat. Amidst all the bustle, I stayed as still as I could.

When the first dark moon time came, I was sick at my stomach and passed only a little very pale, thin blood. I told the Crows that I had had my bleeding early. There had been blood, I remembered, when I was still with Viviane at the Crow's hut. I'd had a terrifying dream on the night of the full moon, and I'd woken to find I was bleeding. No wonder I'd had a nightmare. Bleeding at the full moon was a sign that I was badly off balance, out of kilter, out of sync.

The Crows took my word for it and attributed the early bleeding at the full and the pale blood at the dark to the lingering effects of strain. That was also how they explained my listlessness. I know, because I overheard them conferring with Nissyen, who, like Branwen, was alarmed at the change in me. Nissyen still had charge over the first formers, though he, too, was on probation. I was inside our hut, laboring under the stone, when the Crows and Nissyen held their conference just outside the door. Maybe Nissyen overestimated the insulating properties of the plaid around my head. Or maybe he wanted me to overhear, hoping to stir me in some way.

“Yes, Nissyen, we have noted her lackluster appearance. We are concerned. But consider, she may be going through a necessary phase, a preliminary to great change.”

“Her behavior till now has been undisciplined, to put it mildly,” said another Crow. “She's put the whole experiment at risk. She could not go on as she'd begun. She knows that. I'm inclined to agree that this withdrawal into herself signals a chrysalis phase.”

“I don't know,” sighed Nissyen. “I'd like to put it to down to an attack of good behavior, a heartfelt effort of the young reprobate to reform. The cocoon is a useful metaphor, as metaphors go. But to me she seems more like a sick horse. A high-spirited mare may need to be trained, but if she becomes docile and indifferent, you haven't gained anything, you've lost a fine horse.”

“Why must men always compare women to horses?” grumbled a Crow.

“Your sister here was just comparing her to a caterpillar. Take your druthers,” said Nissyen. “Any metaphor you care to choose, there's something wrong. It would take more than being put on probation to work such a drastic change in the girl.”

“I don't suppose for one minute that academic probation has anything to do with it,” said the Crow who had spoken first. “Are you forgetting that she pulled a young woman back from the brink of death? She is headstrong, a youthful fault, but we believe she has the makings of a potent healer.”

“It is a dangerous time when the power first comes,” cautioned one of the Crows. “Maeve Rhuad is untrained, untried. She had to respond instinctively, instantly to Viviane's plight. More power came through her than she was prepared to receive.”

“How can that be?” objected Nissyen. “It did come to her, and she knew what to do with it. How can that be what's made her so quiet and empty?”

“Think of what happened to her as if she had been struck by lightning. A fire raged through her. She gave herself to it and saved Viviane's life. But that doesn't mean she won't be charred and hollow inside. In our experience, the greatest healers often go through a period of life when they are sick almost to death. We believe some of them actually do die for a time. But if they survive—”

“If?” Nissyen moaned.

“—as we believe she will, then they are able to cross the boundaries of the three worlds. They can learn to open themselves at will to the fire. Maeve Rhuad may be such a one. Give her time, Nissyen.”

“It seems I have nothing else to give,” said Nissyen, uncomforted by the Crows.

The sadness in Nissyen's voice almost touched me. I heard it the way you might hear someone calling to you from a distance or over the sound of high surf or wind. I heard it, but I didn't fully acknowledge that I did. And anyway, it was too late for any voice to matter. After a moment I stopped listening, turned my face to the empty wind, and kept on going. Nowhere.

Branwen did not press me to tell her what was wrong. Instead she watched over me and stayed close to me in much the way an animal will who senses grief or trouble. Her devotion was silent and undemanding, and I see now that I took it so for granted that I hardly noticed it. I also took more comfort from it than I knew, especially at night when we slept curled together for warmth.

Of all the people I encountered on a daily basis at Caer Leb, Viviane was the only one who confronted me directly enough to cause a hairline crack in the bland smoothness of my calm. She intercepted me one day
as I returned from one of my increasingly frequent trips to the latrines. Holding my elbow in a firm grip, she insisted we take a walk and have a private talk.

“I want to know what's eating you, Maeve.”

I glanced at her. She did not look so much concerned as cranky. Once I would have snapped: what's it to you? Or: mind your own business. Now I just shrugged and considered the sky, the gathering clouds fat with rain, the birds flying low seeking shelter.

“It's the Stranger, isn't it?” she persisted. “You've quarreled.”

“Don't talk about him.”

The words spat themselves out, sharp and stinging as sleet. I didn't know why. I just knew I could not think of him. I could not bear it.

“I will so talk about him,” Viviane asserted, “whether you like it or not. Whatever happened or didn't happen between you two, I think it's time you got a grip. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to you for saving my life. Eternally.” In fact, she sounded very cross about it. “But I am tired of the Cranes and the Crows and everyone else talking in reverent whispers about your marvelous feat and the toll it's taken on you. It's getting on my nerves, and frankly I don't believe saving my life has anything to do with why you're behaving like a deranged cow! Look at what
I've
been through.” Viviane shifted effortlessly from scorn to self-righteousness. “I almost died, and everyone in the whole college knows why. Can you imagine how humiliating that is? But I'm not going to pieces over it. Life goes on. I'm not the first woman to make a fool of herself with a man, and neither are you. So just what is your problem?”

We'd reached the embankment where we'd sat that night of the full moon, the night of the dream and the blood. I didn't want to be here. I turned to go, but Viviane still had hold of my arm. She dug in her nails.

“Answer me, Maeve!”

“The Stranger has nothing to do with it.” A shiver went through me. I had never called him the Stranger before. But it was true. He was. “He is nothing to me.” Someone had told me that. Someone who knew. “I am nothing to him.”

“Oh, really? Then why does he still go to the yews everyday to wait for you? Don't kid yourself, Maeve. Everyone knew your little secret.”

There was a roaring in my ears. Earthquake, tidal wave, fire burning at the root, raging underground.

“He goes there to study.” Each word came out carefully, separately. “That's all. That's all he ever did.”

It was calm again. I took small, cautious breaths. I didn't want to disturb the air.

“You,” said Viviane, releasing my arm at last, “are even sicker than I thought.”

In fact, I was sick at my stomach much of the time, not violently, but a lingering queasiness clung to me. Picture it as a ground mist, faintly green, hovering over a swamp. After awhile I grew accustomed to this condition and couldn't remember ever feeling any other way. By the same token, most people stopped remarking on my remoteness, though Nissyen continued to brood and did not take as much satisfaction as he might have in my improved academic performance. Learning by rote was easier in my somnambulant state.

Q: Where did you come from? What is your beginning?

A: I come from the great world, having my beginning in Annwn.

My responses to the catechism in Elementary Cosmology class were toneless and correct. I brought the same detached attention to the
Tales of Voyages and Frenzies
that made up the curriculum that term. Committing to memory other people's words and tales suited me just fine. According to the druids, memory is the mother of all learning. That meant she belonged in school, not wandering about at will.

As soon as the harvest was gathered and stored, the rains began. It had not been a very good harvest, I heard people say. Not long after
Lughnasad,
a freak hail storm had flattened much of the barley. Several fields of oats had inexplicably moldered, despite mostly fair weather. Though I was too cocooned in my calm to take much notice of the general concern, it crossed my mind that the Cranes and the Crows could have learned a thing or two from my mothers about climate control. Now sheets and sheets of rain billowed over the island, turning flat Mona into a sodden bog. People spent more and more time inside. The huts stank of damp wool. Experienced harpers and neophytes alike cursed as they tuned and retuned their warping instruments.

Despite the rain, I often quit the hut and sat on the embankment watching the clouds collide with the mountains. I liked to imagine myself dissolving, being taken up into air and scattered in tiny, misty droplets. Another full moon came, though thick clouds obscured it. I went through the motions of the dance with the others, but nothing in me rose to answer the moon. When dark moon time came, the skies cleared. I
went out alone before the night of our blood rites and picked berries in a thicket near the straits. The birds had taken most of the berries, but I found a few, enough for what I felt compelled to do. Lifting my tunic, I crushed the berries on my thighs and smeared them with the juice.

You may be thinking: She must know, if she went to all that trouble to make it appear that her period had come on time. But if you suppose I understood my condition at any conscious level or that I was capable of making any cause and effect connections, you would be mistaken. I only knew that if I did not go through all the motions, including the involuntary ones, I would attract attention I did not want. Crows would descend on me in flocks. I would be prodded and poked and picked apart by sharp beaks and eyes. I did not think I could bear it. So I kept my secret safe, even—or especially—from myself.

The weather remained clear after the dark of moon. The new moon, slender and bright in the glowing west with the evening star as companion, troubled my calm with its loveliness. When everyone went out to greet the moon with hymns,
“Hail to thee, thou new moon, jewel of guidance in the night.”
I stopped my ears with my fingers. I slept fitfully that night, rising time and again to go to the latrines. It was during my third visit to the trenches that it happened. I was squatting, vaguely amazed at the strength of my unspent stream, when I heard a voice.