Magdalen Rising (28 page)

“Only the most barbaric ones.”

That was code for human sacrifice. In those days, the idea of human sacrifice was part of everyone's consciousness, whether deep or near the surface. But usually the whole subject was politely avoided, the way Victorians avoided the subject of sex (while secretly indulging in pornography) or the way people in your time, until very recently, avoided the subject of money, especially if they were sitting on piles of it.

“Who are the Romans to decree what's barbaric and what's not? Are their so-called gladiatorial games civilized? All those simpering citizens, who've never faced battle, sitting on their fat asses while men slaughter each other for their amusement?”

The debate wore on for quite a while, and I use the word ‘wore' deliberately. Anyone who's ever been embroiled in controversy knows that the same passionate arguments repeat and repeat, slowly wearing each other away like grinding stones. As you know, this debate has never been resolved. Rome after Rome has risen, swallowing up smaller peoples, imposing an oppressive, often brutal peace, suppressing old beliefs and customs with a bland monoculture. Inevitably, the tensions become too great. The center, no matter what the political system, cannot hold. The empire breaks apart. There is an exhilarating moment or two of freedom. Then the tribes remember their old enmities and war with each other ruthlessly. Meanwhile, who is remembering the old songs and stories, the steps to the harvest dance, the remedies, the recipes?

Now Bran was speaking again. His throat was thick with tears and his voice the more powerful for speaking through them.

“I am growing old. I admit to the recklessness of my youth. Call it savagery if you will. Druids, I beg you, call me to submit to the discipline of some great vision. Let me be ruled, not by the steel of Rome, but by a wand of living wood. The
Combrogos
fight like the children of one mother, but we are hers. She gives to us and we give back to her our most finely crafted works of gold, silver, and copper, her substance, shaped by our hands, our art.

“But do you know what she is to Rome, this land, this lady of sovereignty? To them she is not alive. She is a carcass to be plundered. Call me to account if you will. Condemn me for my crimes, but do not sell the sacred body of Anu into bondage. Do not let our mother become a Roman drab.”

King Bran's speech was like a mighty vessel, plowing through the waves, leaving a turbulent wake behind. Voice on voice rose, some in rage, some in passionate accord. Foxface remained still, his arms outstretched, palms towards the crowd, containing and calming the chaos. The sun slipped from view, and the ash grove turned grey. But Foxface's hair and beard held their color in the diminished light, and the western sky was streaked with red fingers, as if Anu had smeared it with moon-blood.

Then, when everyone else was quelled and even Bran and Borvo had sat down, one person stepped out from the crowd and stood before Foxface.

It was Esus.

Twilight is a dangerous time. It is the
Samhain
of the day. It is a dangerous time for time itself. Twilight is time's fault line. Past or future can open like a fissure in a rock. Foxface knew the dangers. He knew he was facing a danger that made the debates that went before mere squabbles, as Bran had said, between the children of one mother. I could see his jaw tense in anger, but I could also see in his face a truthful acknowledgment of the power that stood before him. Not a moment too soon, he motioned Esus to speak, thus preserving the illusion that he had some control. He might as well have said to a volcano: Go ahead. You have my permission to erupt.

“Woe!” Esus' voice tore the air. “Woe unto the inhabitants of the Holy Isles, even unto the druids of Mona, I say woe!”

He was speaking slowly in his accented P-Celtic. No need for me to hop down from my tree and translate. But if the words were Celtic, the rhythms were pure Hebrew in finest prophetic tradition.

“For you have sold your own kin into slavery, even your own brethren into the land of oppression as the brothers of Joseph sold him into Egypt.”

Murmurs arose. “Not I. Not I. Only King Borvo has made a pact with Rome.”

But I knew. He had seen the captives in their pens. He had not been able to forget them as I had. He turned from Foxface and began to pace among the crowd, confronting one person after another. Remember, he was a fifteen-year-old boy, slight, dark, not overly tall, a stranger in a strange land. Yet, though there were muttered protests, no one questioned an authority that seemed to grow with every step he took.

“Do you not deal in
cumals?”
Esus demanded. “One woman being equal to three cows? Do you not trade your captives for wine and fine goods? If the body of your sister is not sacred to you—”

“My sister? I never sold my sister,” a man objected, but I could tell Esus's words were hitting home.

“—then you are already slaves, and your mother Anu is a childless widow. For even so do the Romans buy and sell human flesh. In Judea the Romans impose heavy taxes. Then they hire thugs and thieves to
rob the people. When the people cannot pay the tax, they are sold into slavery—”

“Well, that's hardly the same thing as taking captives in an honest raid,” people muttered, but Esus went on, relentlessly.

“Roman peace,” he spat the words, “is for the rich, for the sycophants and hypocrites, the puppet kings, and the Sadducees.”

“Now you're talking!” someone shouted.

“Just as freedom here is for the rich and mighty. Verily, verily, I say unto you, freedom that can be bartered and sold, won and lost as in a game of dice is no true freedom. You quarrel with one another over Roman rule, and you do not see: Rome has already cast its shadow on your countenance. Rome is not a place. Rome is not an army. Rome is cruelty and idolatry and slavery. Wherever these flourish, Rome is in your midst. And so I say unto the
Combrogos,
hear the words of the living God—”

Suddenly, he stopped. A stillness overcame him, an eye-of-the-storm stillness. Even in the dim light, I could see a greenish cast to his face. He looked as though he was going to be sick any minute.

“Repent,” he croaked in a voice to rival any oracular raven's. “For the day of the Lord is at hand. Yea, the day is coming when the Menai Straits will run red. The black-robed priestesses of Holy Isle will stand in the turning tide and shriek their curses, yet devastation will come. A great host will ford the waters. Blood will spill. The groves will burn. The heavens will turn black with smoke, and the earth bitter with ash, and the druids will be gone forever from Mona mam Cymru—”

Without warning, Esus crumpled and fell to the ground. Before I could even get down from my tree, a swift flock of mixed Cranes and Crows swooped down on him and bore him away. Foxface remained where he was. Stern, unshaken. Even in the midst of my fear for Esus, I could not help admiring him.

A
RE YOU SOLD YET, or shall I say converted to the concept of our cosmic twinhood? Just look at the two of us. Within the space of a few hours, we'd both managed to make public spectacles of ourselves. Wait a minute, you say:
He
was acting out of profound moral conviction, while
you
were merely acting out. Now listen, I'm not going to let you get away with writing me off as an exhibitionist while exalting him as a prophet. It comes down to the same thing: neither of us could stay out of trouble to save our lives. To lay on him a
geis
of danger and destruction was an act of sheer redundancy.

Foxface contained the crowd with the stillness of his bearing until the old Archdruid formally dismissed the court. People began to file silently out of the grove, their festival mood flattened by the prophetic words that hung in the air like heavy smoke. Because the flow of traffic was in the opposite direction from the one the Crows and Cranes had taken with Esus's limp body, I struggled against the stream, ducking and dodging, with no other plan in mind than to reach Esus. Just as the crowd began to thin and I might have been able to run, I saw Branwen, sitting alone and sobbing. There was no way I could walk on.

“Branwen!”

When she heard my voice, she looked up, then got to her feet and ran to me, flinging herself into my arms. I had never seen her so upset. All her tense watchfulness was gone. She was beside herself.

“There, there,” I murmured meaninglessly, stroking her long braid and rocking her. “It will be all right. Everything's going to be all right.”

“No, it isn't!” she said, drawing apart from me. I'd never seen her angry before. “How can you say that? Father has lost his case before the
Combrogos.
There's nothing to stop the Romans from tearing us apart, piece by piece, tribe by tribe. And the Stranger!” (Even Branwen called him that.) “What he said! What he saw!” She shuddered.

“But you're all right, Branwen,” I insisted. I needed to find Esus.

“No!”

She spoke with such force that I wondered for an instant if Esus's vision had shown Branwen not just any future but her own future. A future she could never forget. Then I dismissed the thought. I did not want to believe it. Besides, the present was too pressing. I had no time for the future.

“Branwen,” I almost pleaded with her. “I've got to find Esus.”

In an instant, Branwen got hold of herself; then she took hold of me. The strength of her grip surprised me. She was so small. But then, small, wiry people are often stronger than they look. What's more, she'd grabbed the arm Foxface had already bruised.

“Ouch, Branwen. You're hurting. Let go.”

Gentle little Branwen held on tight. “I am not going to let you get into more trouble today, Maeve. I saw Lovernios's face when he marched you away. He was livid. You simply can't afford to draw any more attention to yourself.”

“Branwen!” I tried to yank myself free. “I've got to go after Esus. I've got to find out if he's all right. He might need my help.”

“What on earth could you possibly do for him that the Crows and the Cranes can't? The Crows are seers and healers. They'll know how to treat someone who has collapsed in a trance.”

“But what he saw was horrible! They might punish him, they might—”

“Maeve,” she reproached me. “They are not like the Roman emperors who pay people to flatter and kill those who speak the truth. If his vision was true...If his vision was true—” She broke off and began to weep again, releasing my arm and covering her face with her hands.

I could have turned and left her. Instead I just stood there feeling helpless and uncertain for perhaps the first time in my life. I didn't like it.

“Branwen!” It was King Bran's voice, sharp with anxiety, coming to us through the twilit gloom. “There you are, thank Bride. I've been looking all over for you. Why didn't you follow me out of the grove? Ah well, I've found you, and in good hands, I see. There, there, love.” His voice softened as he saw her tears. With one arm, he drew her to him. With the other arm, he gathered me in. “Both my girls safe. That's all that matters now.”

He held us close, this big man, with his manly bosom just made for soul-rocking. I nestled closer and breathed that heady male scent of sweat and musk. Bran had the wisdom and kindliness not to mistake
my pleasure in his body for anything other than what it was: sheer sensual trust. I rested against him and let go my plan for immediate pursuit of Esus. I would wait until after I'd told my tale before the
Combrogos,
then I'd go to the Dark Grove as I'd planned.

“Hush, Hinny, hush now,” Bran crooned to Branwen. “Save your tears for the crying time. And now both of you, come along. You need to be carefully fed. Enough to strengthen you, but not enough to give you indigestion. For there's nothing worse than a poet with gas.”

With that, he bore us away to the feasting and fed us as tenderly as a mother bird.

Surely you remember. Past lives or no past lives, this scene is engraved in your genes. Storytelling is an essential human act, what we did when we discovered we could use our tongues for more than tasting sweet and bitter, salt and sour, for more than licking wounds or other tender, throbbing bodily parts.

It is night. There's a fire answering the cold fire of the stars. We are sitting in circles within circles. Children curl into laps. People lean back against each other or against rocks or trees. A hush falls, and a human voice, singing or chanting, speaking or whispering, rises from the darkness of the body and makes its invisible miracle with the air. In the flickering light, in the connected minds of the listeners, images form. Worlds and lives come into being. Film is a mere technical re-creation of this old, old magic. So come. Join the circle. Tonight I am one of the magicians.

I was not the first storyteller of the evening. At the great festivals, a whole cycle of stories was told, beginning with
Invasions,
what the Celts have instead of creation stories. The first formers were responsible for recounting
Conceptions
and
Births.
Between
Invasions
and
Conceptions,
there were quite a few
Battles, Cattle Raids,
and steamy
Courtships.
Many seasoned and famous Bards performed before us. If you think essay exams are bad, imagine having to stand up before a huge audience and follow the act of the first century equivalent of a movie star.

Branwen was the first of our form to recite, and her performance was a shock and a delight. This shy shadow of a girl had an electrifying stage presence from the moment she stood and somehow fixed each person with her huge doe eyes. As she told the tale, Branwen embodied Arianrod, the proud woman who kept her cool even as she stepped over
King Math's magic wand, casually dropping the twins Lieu and Dylan from her womb (thus utterly failing her virginity test).

Others from our form followed. I noted, with petty satisfaction, that Viviane's rendition was lackluster to say the least. She could not have looked any paler and still been alive. Who would have thought, after her confident recital at admissions, that she would have developed stage fright? I congratulated myself that I did not feel in the least nervous about my own performance. It was going to be a breeze. I told myself it was best not to over-rehearse and gave my mind to more important matters, such as how I would conceal myself when I staked out the Mound of the Dark Grove. But when my name was finally called, I was so startled my cool abandoned me completely.

“Maeve. Maeve Rhuad. Maeve Rhuad, daughter of Manannan Mac Lir.”

“That's you!” Nissyen hissed in my ear. He pulled me to my feet and gave me a little push.

I found myself standing in the center of the circle, staring out at hundreds of expectant faces bathed in flamelight, so different from the anemic bluish cast of television. Here I was, the next scheduled entertainment. If I didn't please, no one would simply tap the remote and change the channel. Nothing so benign as that. I stood in silence, but there was nothing deliberate or dramatic about my wordlessness. My gaze was not in the least enigmatic but plainly panicked as I ransacked my mind for the first line, the first fact about what's-his-name's conception.

Today I could tell you all about Lugh's mother Etniu whose father Balor of the Evil Eye imprisoned her on Tory Island in a crystal tower to prevent the conception of a grandson destined to slay him. (Impregnable towers, remote islands, Arianrhod tried those methods, too, and the moral of both stories is: No contraception works 100%.) That night I could hardly remember Lugh's name, though you could argue that Lugh is my foster brother, Manannan Mac Lir having taken him into fosterage after Balor failed to drown him along with his two brothers. You see, Lugh was a triplet; Etniu went Arianrhod one better. But I had never met Lugh—or my father for that matter. At that moment, Lugh meant less than nothing to me, and he didn't seem to be intervening to help me out of this scrape. Nor did Manannan Mac Lir or even Bride, who was supposed to watch out for poets.

I was on my own.

The crowd was getting restless. I wondered: what
did
the
Combrogos
do to poets who wouldn't put out, to female first formers who failed their first finals. (Say that five times fast.) I took a deep breath and opened my mouth.

“The Pleiades shone bright on the night Grainne of the Golden hair walked alone on the shores of Tir na mBan.”

Zap! The words Tir na mBan hit the crowd, casting them instantly into an altered state of consciousness, even the druids on the examination board. (Foxface, to my intense relief, was not among them.) I warmed to my task. They wanted a tale of conception? I could deliver. They wanted the birth of a hero, with mystery, danger, and prophecy into the bargain? Not a problem.

So I stitched together the best elements of my mothers' many tales of my Otherworldly conception, tossing in a few fresh details of my own. When I was firmly implanted in my mother's womb, I invoked the Pleiades again and launched into a parallel tale of Miriam, a virgin of Galilee (virgin births were a popular theme) betrothed but not married to some old fart (another common feature of conception tales). In short, I decided to throw out Esus's patrilineage entirely and give a conception worthy of a Celtic hero.

In my account of my own conception, Manannan Mac Lir ravished my mother in the form of a seal—or silkie, if you think that sounds more poetic and less kinky. So for Esus I thought: okay, some kind of bird. (Celts consider birds to be oracular, remember?) That would make for a pleasing balance: one fathered from the sea; the other from the sky.