Brigid of Ireland (Daughters of Ireland Book 1) (15 page)

“He did not return to claim a cup of gold I offered. He sought information ’bout us.”

Surely the old man was a bit paranoid. “How do ye know he’ll not return? What makes ye think he wants information more than bread?”

“I know ye think me a foolish man, Brocca. But hear me out. I felt the wind speak to me, saying, ‘Hurry. Hide the lass.’ ”

“Brigid? Hide Brigid?”

“She was the only lass with me, woman. Danger and fear swept over me like a March wind.”

Brocca could not escape the possibility that God himself had sent his Spirit to protect Brigid. Bram must have sensed it.

“And the writing, the ogham?”

“I must return to the clearing at midnight of the Samhain. See for myself, I must, this one it speaks of, and discern the future. Other druids will be there to do the same. If evil is present, I must bring good to battle it.” Bram’s voice cracked. He was old, older probably than the rocks.

“Nay. Yer not strong enough, Bram.” She called him by his name, cherishing the friendship between them. “I’ll go.”

At last Brocca entered the hut where Brigid was waiting. Her tears flowed freely. The girl’s footsteps rushed at her and her arms encircled Brocca, the embrace she so longed for.

“Oh, maither! I’m so sorry for the way I behaved when I first saw ye. ’Tis just that I’ve waited so long and… ”

“And I was not what ye expected. Don’t worry, child. I am still the maither who has loved ye since I first felt yer movement in my womb.”

Brocca’s daughter cried loud enough for Brocca to hear her pain. Brocca lowered herself to the ground, urging Brigid to sit with her.

“I am not the same, maither. I am grown. I have seen and learned many things. Still, all I ever wanted was… ”

“Shh, now. Aye, ye’ve grown. And thanks to Cook.” “Do ye know her?”

Brocca was stunned that Brigid hadn’t realized the connection. “Aye. She’s been yer protector all these years – the condition allowing Dubthach to take ye from me.”

Brigid was still. The news must have surprised her. Brocca heeded Bram’s warning to let the girl come to her in her own time, ask questions when she was ready. The silence stood between them like an unstirred pool.

At last Brigid spoke, and she asked about the woman Brocca trusted most in the world. “Cook came with me from Munster, and my father made ye return to the druid’s service?”

“That’s right.”

“Why would Bram sell Cook? He only owed Dubthach one slave.”

“He didn’t sell her. She was free.” Brocca reached out to touch Brigid’s cheek.

The lass didn’t turn away. “This makes no sense.” The muscles in Brigid’s cheeks tightened.

Brocca took Brigid’s hands into hers. “I will explain it all to ye, darlin’. Bram gave Cook her freedom so she’d be able to watch over ye.”

“But she isn’t free. She’s a slave in my father’s household.” “She is, but she went willingly. Dubthach, being somewhat greedy, welcomed her as a servant. Truly, he had no other choice.”

“Ye don’t know that cruel man like I do, maither. He’d not take anyone in lest it suited his purposes.” Brigid rose.

“Please, sit down.”

“Nay, I’m going to… tend the fire.”

She had built a roaring flame from wood rather than turf. The fire crackled – Brigid was feeding it more fuel. Brocca thought to correct her, but then realized that the process of building the fire allowed Brigid time to contemplate all she was hearing.

Brocca raised her voice to be heard over the popping firewood. “No one understands how cruel that man is better than me. He whisked away my only daughter when she was but five springtimes old.”

Brigid whispered. “Aye, I’m sorry. Ye must hate him.”

“I did for a long time. I’d watch ye from a distance at the Christian gatherings.”

Brigid dropped back down to Brocca’s side. “What? At the seashore? Ye were there when I first heard Patrick? Why did I not know?”

Brocca stroked her daughter’s hair. It was long and smooth as silk. “It was all arranged. Cook was to come care for ye; Brian was to give me messages concerning yer welfare. And in return, yer father allowed these things to avoid a curse.”

Brigid leaned into her. Her damp hair smelled smoky. “Everyone knew things I didn’t.” She sat up straight. “A curse?”

Brocca laughed. “Bram pretended to threaten him with a curse on his cattle and boils on his skin.”

Brocca thought this truth would amaze her daughter, but Brigid’s tone turned bitter. “Why did he not threaten him with a curse if he did not return ye to me?”

Brocca reached for Brigid but her hands came up empty. “’Tis the druid way of things, daughter. And, the truth is, it was God’s way too.”

Brigid’s voice escalated, seeming to rise to the roof hole with the flames of the fire. “It was not God’s will to separate us! And what of this druid’s code? ’Tis meaningless.” Brigid kicked the dinner pot, sloshing venison stew over the dirt floor. “Oh, I’ve ruined the meal!”

Brocca gathered the broom she knew was in the northeast corner. “No matter. I was not hungry anyway. But perhaps ye’d like to return to the main building to get more.”

“Let me do that.” Brigid reached for the broom.

Brocca held up her hand. “I’m used to caring for myself.” Brigid took the broom from her hands. “Now that I’m here, maither, I’ll do yer work. I don’t know why we were separated by foolish pagans, but I’ll make up for it.”

Brocca returned to the fire, soaking in the comfort and searching for words that would help her daughter understand their situation. “Bram may be a pagan, daughter, but he’s wise.”

The swooshing of the broom ceased and Brigid joined her. “How can a pagan be wise? He may be kind, but he does not accept Christ’s teachings. He clings to the old way of things. He speaks to gods he believes to be in the forest and in the wind. He reads mysterious druid writing but will not share its secrets with me. Oh, maither, I have learned to read and write marks. Stories are being written down instead of just shared near a fire. One day all will know what Patrick taught even though he has died.”

Brigid’s last words hit Brocca like a rockslide. “He has died?”

“Aye. I heard the news from some Christians I met while making my way here.”

Brocca’s eyes moistened. “I am so sorry to hear he will not be preaching to the lost. I myself had hoped to hear him again this year at the seashore.” She smiled. “And I thought that was where I’d see ye again, darlin’ Brigid. But then the accident. Bram would not allow me to travel.”

Her daughter’s smooth young hands gripped Brocca’s palms. “Was it a horrible accident, maither? Do ye prefer not to speak of it?”

“I will answer whatever ye ask of me, daughter. ’Twas horrible, but I have no more pain.”

Brigid sighed, her breath sweet like apples. “How… what happened?”

“An accident. No one meant for it to happen. The maids were mixing herb potions for healing. I was curious since I have never done this. I was looking over their shoulders when the concoction exploded like waves hitting rocks. The hot liquid splattered into my eyes. When the pain eased, my sight did not return.”

“I’m so sorry, maither. And I regret I was not here to help ye. I do not understand the arrangement. How could it be wise for us to be apart?” She paused and pounded her fists together. “Cook once told me that my father’s old wife, Troya, sent ye away.”

Brocca gasped. “Cook told ye that?”

“Aye, though she did not want to tell me. She made me promise never to mention the woman’s name at Glasgleann. Why, maither? What concern is she to us?”

How could Cook do this? Tell Brigid about Troya’s existence? Bram had warned everyone at Glasgleann to be careful about what they revealed to Brigid. She felt trapped. How could she avoid telling her daughter what evil lurked in the shadows, waiting to pounce on her like a wolf on a hen?

Brocca sighed. “There is much we must discuss, darlin’. But now I am tired. We are together. Yer safe. Bram’s demons seem not to have arrived this eve. So, shall we sleep, daughter?” Brigid agreed, and Brocca was pleased to avoid Brigid’s question for the time being. She would pray silently for wisdom, and hope that God would show her how she would attend the druid ritual on the Samhain in Bram’s place, explain to her daughter about the dark woman Troya, and plan for the day when Dubthach would come looking for them, accusing Bram of being a false druid and claiming an honor price for all he had lost in their arrangement. Those events were as inevitable as tomorrow’s sunrise and she must prepare, somehow.

Chapter 15

“In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs.”

Sir John Pentland

The next morning the house of Bram moved off the crannog. Apparently, he believed the danger had passed and whoever had been following them was pursuing no longer. Brigid was pleased. Now she could see the dairy for herself and take up her mother’s work.

Brocca led her to the small stone building. It seemed familiar. “Have I been here before, maither?”

“Well, not this particular one, but Bram’s former dairy was nearly identical. Ye’d sit on a stool in the corner and question me while I worked. Ye’d say, ‘Why does the cow give us her milk? Why does it take so long to make butter?’ My, ye were curious. But I hear ye were a fine dairymaid at Glasgleann. I guess those questions helped train ye even at a young age.”

Brigid spied a child-sized stool in the corner of the dank dairy and supposed it had been the one she had sat on many years ago. She just wished she could remember.

The following day’s preparations for the Samhain began in earnest. While the pagan members of Bram’s household gathered firewood and prepared special feasts, Brigid went about the day’s chores as though it were no special season.

Brigid’s mother had not answered all of her questions, but there’d be time for that. Right now Brigid’s head ached from all the troubling new information. She’d need to sort it out later, but for now she was glad of the distraction of the festival. Bram’s servants had been staring at her and whispering, and now at last that had ceased.

“Ye can come with me if ye like,” Brigid told her mother, “but I’m doing yer chores in the dairy. Yer so thin and weary. I will get the work done quickly so we can help the others cook.”

Brocca agreed to wait for her at the outdoor fire, waving a slender arm in her direction. Brigid’s mother’s hair lacked luster, much like the women’s in the forest. Hadn’t she been fed well?

The druid’s dwelling was not in a clearing as most estates were. His home blended into the woods like part of the wild landscape. Pagans worshipped trees, believing gods lived in them, and Bram probably held some kind of belief that kept him from cutting down any wood. A pagan carpenter at Glasgleann had once told Brigid that he would only work with wood from fallen trees. He wouldn’t cut any down. Bram probably held the same superstition.

Dodging first one oak and then another, Brigid made her way to the stone entry door of the dairy. Finding it slightly ajar, Brigid entered. While she went about her mother’s tasks– milking, sweeping the barn – Brigid thought about how Bram had been surprised to hear about her willingness to take her mother’s place. Just as she was pondering that, he appeared in the barn. Deciding that he was supervising the work, Brigid joined some maids making butter at one end of the sun-dusted dairy.

He ambled straight for her, tapping his walking stick on the dry packed ground. “Why indeed would ye slave for me, child?”

“Not for you, but for maither.” Brigid ignored him and focused on her work. She removed the creamy curds from her butter churn and placed thirteen piles on a table board, as she always had at Glasgleann.

Bram hovered over her work. “Lass, most of my servants set aside the extra for themselves. Is that what yer doing with that large pile in the middle of twelve smaller ones? Ye cannot take more than yer share just because yer doing the working for yer mother, ye cannot.”

Brigid paused, brushing a loose strand of hair from her eyes, trying to weigh how to react. The old man’s question was potentially insulting. She fought the urge to shoot back a rude remark of her own but instead raised her eyes toward heaven. Perhaps he meant no insult. Bram didn’t know any better.

Brigid pointed to the piles of butter. “There were twelve apostles of my Lord. The thirteenth pile is for Christ. There are twelve people who will come to buy yer butter today, but that large pile is neither for me nor my mother. I will not deprive my God of what is rightfully his.”

The druid approached to examine what she’d removed from her butter churn. “My dear, ye got all this out of just one churn, did ye?”

“Aye.”

The druid glanced over at the other maids’ work and saw that they had not produced as much. He eyed the workers who delivered wooden containers to the maids who in turn filled them with the fresh butter. “We never had such bounty before, Brigid. Yer mother has told me ’bout this god of yers, and I believe we ought to give back to his children. Just as he’s given to us.”

Brigid helped load the wooden vessels onto a wagon, intending to go join her mother at the cooking fire.

“Wait!” Bram called after her. “I have another task for ye.” Brigid sighed. Her arms throbbed from the butter churn- ing. She turned around. The druid retrieved the largest butter container holding the ample share – Christ’s portion.

“Take this out to the road. Feed the poor. And take a cow, too. Keep it for yerself.”

Bram’s generosity swept away Brigid’s voice. He urged the vessel toward her. “Please. I want ye to take it.”

She smiled, searching for words.

Bram’s winter eyes sparkled like ice crystals. “’Tis Christ’s portion, not mine.”

Brigid sucked in her lips as tears filled her eyes. He understood. Her mother, a Christian, had reached this druid. Such things
could
be done.

Bram tottered after her and they reached the fire together. Brocca turned when they approached, seeming to recognize her master’s footfalls.

He tapped Brigid’s mother softly on the arm of her cloak. “Brocca, yer daughter has worked long enough for ye. Done the labor of several maids in just one morning, she has. I must reward her.”

“Reward the work of a slave?” Brocca’s faint eyebrows arched.

“She is a free woman, and so too shall you be.”

Brocca jumped to her feet. “What are ye saying, Bram?” “I’m giving ye yer freedom. I’ll make it official tonight by

sending a messenger to declare such on my behalf to King Dunlaing.”

Brigid stepped between them. “Dunlaing? Why not the king of Munster?”

“The agreement at yer birth was made under King Dunlaing. He and his ruling class of druids will judge your status.”

Brigid helped her mother sit down and then joined her.

She twisted the hem of her tunic between her fingers. “Bram, what if they won’t allow it? I mean… what if they have reason to… dislike me? Will we need to be present when the request is made?”

The old druid sat with them on the ground, handing the butter container to a servant for safe-keeping away from the fire. “Brigid, I am sure that yer actions have been virtuous, but the judgments of others is not always wise, nay. Man’s thinking cannot always be trusted, but ye need not fear that. There is little ye understand of druid ways.”

In the firelight, Brigid noticed the wrinkles on the druid’s face and the milky color of his hair. His time to walk on earth could not be much longer. She feared her problems unfairly weighed him down. What he said made no sense.

He seemed to read her mind. “I am old, very old. I hold in my memory the teachings of elders the younger generation never knew. Dunlaing’s advisors understand, they do. If I say a thing must be done, they’ll do it.” He chuckled. “And if I threaten a laird with a nasty curse, everyone believes it will come to pass.”

Brocca laughed too, but Brigid couldn’t help but be concerned. She asked again, “Will my mother and I need to gain audience with King Dunlaing, druid?”

Bram waved her off. “Nay. The messenger is just a formality, but I must see to it nonetheless.”

Brigid took her mother’s hand in hers, vowing to God that the king would never find her or her mother in the wilderness of Ireland, at least not if she could help it. Brigid embraced her mother, drawing in the aroma of charred wood and peat that had seeped into her hair. “We shall live together as freewomen. Bram has also given me a cow so that we may survive.” The twig-like figure in Brigid’s arms shook. The shaking gave way to weeping and the weeping erupted into laughter.

Brocca composed herself. “Bram, I will not forget my promise to ye. I will still go to the druid stone tonight on yer behalf.”

Bram turned Brocca’s face toward him. “No need. I can make the trip.”

Brigid put her hands on both of their shoulders. “What are ye two talking ’bout?”

Bram patted her hand, and then drew it down to her side, keeping their fingers locked. “Yer mother, although she believes in only one god… ”

“The True One,” Brocca interrupted.

“The True One,” Bram continued, “yer mother is trained as a druid.”

Brigid dropped his hand and gripped her mother’s shoulders, gazing into eyes echoing her own sea-green shade. “What does this mean, maither?”

The servants stopped working. Everyone was silent. They all knew things she didn’t.

Brocca whispered into Brigid’s hair. “‘The meaning is that I understand these beliefs and can use them to teach the truth.” She turned to Bram. “I will still go.”

Brigid smiled. Perhaps in that company only she and her mother really understood. “Maither, Bram has allowed me to give butter to the poor. Will ye help me find them before ye must do this task ye promised?”

Bram laughed out loud, “It will not be hard. Follow the smell of the fires. They prepare food to appease the gods tonight and leave it outside their doors.”

Brigid took her eyes off her mother for a moment and turned to him. “But I thought they were starving.”

“Aye, perhaps. But better to have a rumbling tummy than to allow the Others to enter yer house looking for food.”

Of course. The Samhain.
She had forgotten about that belief. Cook had never allowed Glasgleann’s maidens to follow the tradition, and when everyone woke up the morning after the Samhain unharmed and without bad dreams, Glasgleann’s young women grew to trust Cook and the True God a little more.

Brigid held her mother’s hand and the two of them paraded down a dirt path toward the distance black flumes of the pagan fires. Her mother was freed. The two of them were off to minister to pagans. It was even more than Brigid had hoped for. God’s love was for everyone, and now she felt free enough to take his love to the darkest corners of Ireland. If only they didn’t have to participate in the Samhain before leaving Ennis Dun.

“Maither, do ye think Bram has become a believer?”

Brocca squeezed her tight. “He may be close. ’Tis so hard to amend old superstitions.”

The day was overcast and biting. Brigid’s woolen stockings needed mending. She had neglected them far too long. Thankfully, her leather shoes were still in good shape, because the festival marked the end of the warm months.

Brigid examined her mother’s clothing as they walked. Her long tunic was trimmed in red embroidery. Her shoes bore no holes, and unlike Brigid’s stockings, her mother’s appeared new. “Maither, yer garments seem to be in fine shape. How is it that Bram provides for clothing but does not feed ye well?”

“Not feed me? Why would ye think that?”

“Yer as thin as meadow grass. I’ve seen ye eat no more than a field mouse since I’ve been here.”

“Well, ’tis true I’ve had no appetite of late. But now that my daughter has been restored to me, I’m sure my health will return.”

Brigid squeezed her mother’s hand. She pushed away the thought that her mother’s body might be invaded by some sickness.

Bram was right. The smell of smoke did lead them to the downtrodden. They approached a large outdoor fire and Brigid smelled roasting boar. “Why do they do this, maither? Cook for the gods and not feed themselves?”

“’Tis their way. Perhaps our gift of butter will sweeten their meager meal of bland bread.”

“Welcome, Brocca!” several people called. “Who’s the fine lass ye’ve brought with ye?”

Brocca explained about their gift of butter, her newfound freedom, and the reunion with her lost daughter.

A gangly man nodded to a woman. “Let’s celebrate the news.”

The man’s wife produced a bronze wine flagon with a base of twisted metal.

“Maither?” Brigid whispered into Brocca’s gray-speckled copper tresses. “Are these people truly in need? Wine is a king’s drink, usually taken in merchant ship raids. Why would the poor have it?”