Priestess of the Fire Temple (20 page)

“I have a camp outside the gates. Will you come there with me?” he whispered into my ear. A hunger that was not for food shone from his eyes.

“Of course I will. I will follow you anywhere,” I murmured.

“We'll take care of Crithid…” Niamh called out. But we were already leaving and past caring about anyone else in the whole world.

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30

A
rtrach led me out of the gates and into the starry night. As we walked we paused from time to time, just holding each other, pressing our two bodies together, not wanting to be separate for even an instant. I felt that I was living a waking dream.

“How did this happen?” I asked. “I saw that spear go into you—I was so sure you were dead!”

“Didn't you hear me calling out for you? I lay sick with a wound for many moontides. I was taken to Irardacht for healing. They tell me that I called your name every day!”

I remembered.

“Yes, you would call out
Aoibhgreíne
, and I could hear you. It was very mysterious. I wondered who was calling me that!”

“We were never really apart, you know. Our spirits and hearts have always been as one,” he murmured gently into my ear, finishing the sentiment with a small nibble. I felt my knees go weak.

I replied with a slow, long kiss that shook the very earth.

When we got to his camp, it proved to be a rough but sturdy beehive structure made of supple limbs and leaves next to a little brook. The nearly full moon shone above, and pockets of white hoar frost glowed in the starlight at our feet. But I no longer felt the cold in any way; it was as if my old body had been shed, and I was suddenly reborn into a new form. And only half of that form belonged to me—the other half was Artrach.

We ducked into the little hut, and before I knew it we were lying on his pallet, our clothes off, and he was kissing my face, my breasts, and my loins. Our desire soon warmed the air of that tiny place.

“I worship you!” he said.

“You are my god,” I answered back. His body was my holiest temple, the place where I had longed to worship but had been kept away from for two long sun turnings.

He suckled my breasts and I was ready for him in an instant. When he entered me it was as if the gateway between the worlds was flung wide open and all the creatures of this world and the Otherworld were crying out in joy together.
Artrach!
And the waves of that sound pounded against my loins in sweetness and fury.

It ended with a sleepy, petal-soft embrace that lasted until dawn.

We emerged from our warm nest when the sun was already high in the trees. Artrach reached down and plucked three blades of dried grass. “Grasp them tightly with your fingers,” he said.

As I held them he plaited a tiny, flat braid.

“Hold out your hand.”

I held out my hand and he tied the plaited grasses around my marriage finger and bit off the ends, planting a kiss on my palm.

“Now you are mine forever. One day soon I will trade these grasses for a ring of pure gold.”

This time we fell onto the bare earth and he entered me again and again, and the ancient oak trees were a solemn witness to our joining.

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31

I
dined with my stepmother as she had requested; it was a sober and cold meal. I could not share the details of my life at the Fire Temple with her because she felt that such things were a waste of time, a silly superstition fit only for peasants. She was concerned with more practical matters.

“It is time you were married again. You are not that old; perhaps a widower will still take you. After all, you do come from a good family,” she speculated.

“Of course we will have to do something about your hair. As ever, it looks like a rat's nest. And your clothing is disgraceful. You are an embarrassment to me when you go about like that. We will have to have fresh outfits made for you and burn what you are wearing now.

“Your brother has made a very advantageous union; he is now joined to the wealthiest family in our district. Maybe he can help you find someone from among his new relations.” She went on to describe in detail the clothing, hairstyles, and jewelry of the women in that clan, by way of inspiring me to live up to their splendor.

I hid my feelings and finished the meal in silence.

I visited my father every day. As far as he and Tuilelaith knew, I was living in the nemed with Dálach-gaes and Niamh, with Róisín as my nurse and guardian of my virtue. But Artrach and I would slip away to his camp each night to live as a handfast couple under the oaks.

“We had better do the yew ritual here, in secret,” I said to him after a few days had passed. “I have spoken to Father Justan about it, and he says that as far as he is concerned, we should do what my father wishes. However, if the abbott, Father Cassius, hears about it, there will be trouble.”

“Trouble? What exactly does he mean?”

“I don't know, but I can tell that Father Justan is scared of something very bad happening—so bad that he says he can have no part in this, and that any consequences will be mine alone if I choose to proceed.”

“Your father is dying; I think we should fulfill his last wish. It's the honorable thing to do.”

And so we agreed. Artrach and I carried a wooden bathtub to the little clearing that we called home, and Dálach-gaes and Niamh helped us to cut yew branches from the inside of the nemed enclosure. We did not involve anyone else.

Niamh had a huge cauldron that she used for making siabainn, which Artrach shouldered into the forest. He hung it on a metal rod suspended across two stout Y-shaped tree limbs at either side of a newly dug fire pit, while I broke yew branches into small pieces and placed them into the cauldron to be simmered. Another large cauldron hung suspended over Artrach's cooking fire, ready to be filled with water for a hot bath.

When everything was prepared, Artrach and Dálach-gaes carried my father into the woods on a stretcher. They convinced the guards that it was for a religious rite and that absolute privacy was needed. When my father was safely in the clearing, Dálach-gaes went back to the nemed and pointedly told the guards that I was a trained priestess and that I was operating on my own.

We first filled the wooden tub with boiling hot water and then added cold water from the stream until the bath was a comfortable temperature. Artrach helped my father to undress. When he was settled into the bath, we gradually poured in the simmered yew, straining the brew through a willow basket.

“Aoibhgreíne.”

“Yes, Father?”

“If I should pass over, I want to be buried at the Fire Temple, with all the proper Druid rites.”

I swallowed hard. This would be a difficult request to honor; the flaith would be scandalized.

“I'll do my best, Father.”

“I know you will.”

Artrach placed an oiled leather tarp over the wooden tub to hold in the heat, and I raised my hands to the sky, singing a magical incantation for healing:

As you make your circuit of the plain of life

May the seven daughters of the sea

And the seven daughters of the sky

Who shape the threads of long life

Take three deaths from thee

Give three lives to thee

May no ghosts injure you

May death not come to you

May your time on earth

Be bright as silver

May your form be whole

May your strength increase

May your grave not be readied

May you not die on your journey

May your return be ensured

May worm not attack you

Nor dark elf, nor fairy host

Nor thief, nor hard black beetle

May no warriors rend you

May you have an increase of time

From the source of all

May you be an invincible fortress

May you be an unshakable cliff

May you be a precious stone for the people

May the grace of the gods be upon you.
14

My father seemed eased by the warmth of the bath, and he gradually began to yawn. We took this as a good sign that he was relaxing into the treatment. But when he opened his eyes I saw that the pupils were dilated and that he was becoming flushed. I had never seen a person in a yew bath before, and I had no way of knowing if this was the standard occurrence.

Artrach had a small harp from Irardacht that the bard Conláed had made with his own hand and gifted to him. He strummed the strings and sang a mystical song about yew trees:

A wheel for a king

A prince's right

Straight firm tree

Firm-strong god

Door of the sky world

Noblest of trees

Vigor of life

A bear's defense

Spell of the wise—
15

But before he could finish, my father began to vomit and then to convulse violently. I rushed to lift off the blanket and pull his frail form out of the yew bath. I found that despite the hot water, his limbs had grown very cold. Then his head lolled back in a way that told me the end was near.

We worked together to lift his near-lifeless body from the water and to carry it to the base of an old oak, thinking that the oak's spirit might somehow revive him and, if not, provide him a strong gateway to the Otherworld.

We propped him up against the oak and tucked a blanket around him for warmth and dignity. Behind the oak the western sky glowed royal purple, red, and orange as the sun set behind the stark black lines of the late winter trees. Steam still rose from my father's form, though his skin was already cool to the touch.

I straightened my father's damp grey locks around his shoulders, using my fingers as a comb, and then centered the golden torque that still circled his thin, yellow-skinned neck. The light of the fire and the glowing sunset were reflected in the golden circlet, brightening his face.

But soon his lips were blue and his body as cold as death.

“He has made a noble ending, despite everything,” I said. “For a Drui, to die at the base of an ancient oak is a very good passing, because the oak is a doorway to the sky world of the gods through its branches and a passageway to the Sidhe realms of the ancestors through its roots.”

“And now at last he can join his beloved Ana; there is some comfort in that,” Artrach added.

We stood together before him in respect, contemplating his life, thinking of his triumphs and sorrows.

“His breath has gone to the gods. Now he can cross the river of forgetfulness, where the waters will carry away all memory of sorrow. Only his wisdom will be left behind, joined into that great stream from which all people may draw, from which the wise ones may learn from the past,” I said.

“Yes, now we can begin to make offerings to him and call on him as a beloved ancestor—” Artrach did not finish the thought because just then we heard a rustling of leaves on the forest floor and the sound of voices—sounds that told us a large group of people was fast approaching through the brush.

And suddenly there were torches everywhere. Warriors, village folk, and the Druid—even my father's wolfhounds—surrounded us in the gloaming. Father Justan was among them. I looked towards him and he shook his head silently, shrugging his shoulders as if to say that he was helpless, there was nothing he could do. Dálach-gaes, Niamh, Róisín, and Crithid looked terrified.

A Cristaide priest stepped forward out of the circling crowd. “Shame! Shame on you! You dare to come back to this kingdom, you child of a sorceress, you offspring of a prostitute! I am well aware of the truth of your birth. Your stepmother has told me you are no spawn of hers.

“You mock us and all the good people of this kingdom. At whom do you sneer and stick out your tongue? You are a rebel, the offspring of a liar! You burn with lust among the oaks and every tree of the forest!

“You have made your bed here like an animal! You have hidden your Pagani ways behind your filthy doorpost. You climb into your brazen bed hidden amongst the trees. We have seen you in your nakedness, rutting like an animal!

“Acknowledge your guilt; you have rebelled against the Lord. You have scattered your favors to false gods under every spreading tree! And you have committed the most unspeakable sin:
you have killed your own father!
”

The crowd gasped. At that, the warriors lurched forward, grabbing me and Artrach, binding our hands before us and twisting the cloth bindings with a stick to make them tighter, so tight that my hands went numb.

“He is not to blame!” I cried. “He was only serving me!”

They seemed to see the logic in that. How could a rustic woodsman with wild russet hair, clad in a green leather tunic and leggings, be the equal of a princess of the royal house? The priest walked over to Artrach and put his hand upon his head as if to bless him, as if he were a wayward child, and said, “My son, why do you consort with witches? The Lord, your god, has forbidden you to do so! These are rebellious people, deceitful as children, who refuse to listen to the Lord's instruction.”

Then the priest turned back to the crowd.

“Let no one be found among you here who practices divination, engages in sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells! This woman belongs to Satan. She carries out Satan's plan! She and those of her kind are murderers! They have rebelled against the one true god!”

Attendants were slapping the king's face, trying to bring him back to life, but it was no use. I could have told them that.

Then a leather hood was pulled over my face and a rope tied to my bound hands. There was the sound of wailing and screaming as everyone realized that the king was truly dead.

“Don't be afraid! I will never leave you!” I heard Artrach call out from somewhere in the distance.

Then there was the vivid pain of being pulled through the forest as I stumbled and fell, pushed and shoved relentlessly up the path to the dun. Finally I was thrown onto my knees on the cold floor of the prisoner's mound, where they pulled off my hood, unbound my hands, and left me alone on the cold cobbles of the floor.

That night the priest came to see me, carrying my cape that had been retrieved from the forest, a measure of decency so I would not perish in the cold. I pulled out the little wooden cross that I still wore hidden under my clothing.

“See this?” I asked. “It was given to me when I was a child, and I have worn it faithfully. Father Justan says it is the symbol of one who gave his life for the people, who redeemed the land and the tribes out of love. He was a great Drui, a sun king who sacrificed himself for the good of all!”

“You dare to compare the Cristos to a Drui? Get away from me, Satan.”

He walked away, leaving me to the cold, dark, and lonely starlight.

I had one visitor that night. It was Crithid, who appeared looking shocked and sad.

“I swore to protect you, and I will do what I can. I bribed the guards with a sét, and they let me come see you just for a moment.”

I was glad of a friend, but looking at Crithid, I felt ashamed.

“I am so sorry. You need to understand that it was not my doing. The Bríg Brigu wanted us to be a pair, but my heart was already given to another.”

“I know that the Bríg Brigu can be hard to resist once she has made her plans,” he replied. We held hands briefly through the bars, and then a guard came to lead Crithid away.

My stepmother, Tuilelaith, arrived at dawn, with my brother, Eógan, in tow. She looked older and greyer than I remembered; her lips were pinched, and her face was white and hard as stone.

“I have nothing to offer you,” she said. “We have simply come here to say goodbye. We would not have come at all except Father Justan insisted. We are only here out of charity.”

Eógan looked taller and burlier than he ever had before; he had obviously been practicing battle skills with the warriors. He carried a large basket of food and drink that weighed over a very muscular arm and began pulling wrapped items from the basket one by one, shoving them under the iron grill. Then he pushed a corked stone bottle between the bars.

“It's your own fault, you know. Whatever happens to you now is your own doing,” he said. His face was sad, weighed with the grief of my father's passing.

My stepmother took Eógan's arm, holding him close as if defending him from a monster. She pointed her finger at me.

“You have probably ruined your brother's chance of ever taking the throne. You are just like your mother was: willful, brazen, and selfish.”

Then they swept away from my cell, their duty to me completed.

Now my world was a frozen wasteland. The warmth and comfort of the Fire Temple with its glowing walls and friendly hearth were but a distant dream, and Artrach's love seemed just a young girl's fancy, a momentary respite in the midst of cruel reality. I had awakened into the real world, a harsh and cruel place. I felt the cold fingers of death reaching for my blood and my life, and a strange numbness began to settle on me. I struggled to settle my thoughts, focusing on my third eye as I had been taught by the Druid. I was preparing to die.

That night Father Justan appeared at my door, squeezing a thick woolen blanket to me through the iron bars.