Saint Brigid's Bones (5 page)

Sister Anna waved me away.

“Yes, fine. I can scarcely separate the two of you anyway.”

I bowed again and went out, almost forgetting to close the door behind me. I was terrified. How could I find such a small bundle of bones? It seemed like an impossible job and I had no idea where to begin.

Who had something to gain from stealing the bones? I first went to the church and prayed. After that I talked briefly with Brother Kevin, who was outside the carpenter's shop. Then to help me think, I went back to the sleeping quarters and retrieved my harp. Normally I would have gone straight to Father Ailbe's hut and poured my heart out to him, but it would be at least a week until he returned from Munster.

I set off on a path leading through the fields south of the monastery. When I reached a small rise, I looked back at Kildare and could see the church shining in the sun. It was perhaps a hundred feet long and half again as wide. I'm sure it was nothing compared to the churches in Rome or Constantinople
that Father Ailbe had visited, but since I was a little girl it seemed like the grandest building in the world to me. It was made from solid oak boards fixed against an oak frame and painted with a lime whitewash. Even the roof was made of overlapping oak planks. The oak tree was sacred to the druids, but it was perfectly permissible to build with it. It was the most sturdy of woods and naturally resistant to rot. The monastery took its name from the church, built by Brigid when she had first established the settlement fifty years earlier. She had wanted to name it for the Virgin Mary, but from the start people had called it
Cill Dara
or Kildare—“The Church of Oak”—and the name stuck.

“Admiring the view, Deirdre?”

I turned and saw Roech, a nobleman of King Dúnlaing. Roech owned the land to the south of the monastery and was a close friend of Dúnlaing's sons Illann and Ailill. He was also a cousin of mine on my father's side. He was a lean man with a bulbous nose who loved hunting, gambling, and bedding as many women as he could threaten or buy. I grew up thinking he was a disgusting lout and hadn't found any reason to change my mind.

“Yes, Roech, I'm admiring Brigid's church. A shining beacon of holiness to those who dwell in its shadow, don't you think?”

He snorted.

“Holiness is for women and fools. A man's business is to fight for his king, increase his herds, and sleep with a different wench every night—two if he can find them.”

He laughed at his own joke. I was unimpressed.

“Well, Deirdre, in any case it sounds like your church won't be around much longer. With the bones of Brigid gone missing and, I hear, a certain church across the Barrow burned to the ground, I think King Dúnlaing will be taking back his lands soon enough. Such a pity. I always enjoyed hearing you nuns sing as I walked by.”

“And what would you know about the missing bones, Roech?”

A silk ribbon only a nobleman could afford. A warrior running away in the darkness. The clues so far pointed to a man like Roech, especially one who had always despised Brigid and her monastery. If we couldn't pay our rent to the king and lost our lands, Roech stood to benefit greatly.

I leaned in close and fixed him with an icy stare. It was a trick I had learned from my grandmother to throw a man off balance. He jerked back and almost fell down.

“I don't know anything about your moldy old bones. I'd grind them into meal to feed my pigs if I could find them. Brigid never did me any favors.”

Roech had once tried to blackmail a beautiful young woman into sleeping with him after entrusting a valuable brooch to her father for safekeeping. He sent one of his own men to secretly steal it in the night, then said that if the brooch wasn't returned to him in three days he would take the man's daughter as his slave in payment. The family was frantic and came to Brigid for help. She prayed with them, then went to see one of Roech's shepherds whose wife she had once healed. He finally told her what his master had done and where he had hidden the brooch. When the day came for Roech to claim the girl as his slave, Brigid was there at her family's home and handed the brooch to him with a smile. Roech stormed away cursing Brigid for meddling in his business.

“Oh, such an unfortunate attitude, Roech. I'm sure Brigid is praying for you even now as she looks down upon you from heaven.”

He glanced up quickly, then back at me.

“Spare me your Christian prayers, Deirdre. I don't need you or Brigid to help me. Things are changing, you see. Things are going to be different soon.”

Roech acted like a small man with a big secret. He was probably just bluffing, but something in his words made me wonder.

“What do you mean things will be different soon?”

He seemed to realize he had said too much.

“Nothing. I mean nothing.”

Before he could walk away, I moved in front of him and addressed him in the formal manner of a bard.

“Roech, son of Lóeg, as a bard of the ancient line of Amairgen, I call on you to tell me what you know. If you fail to do so, I will curse you with the power of my druid blood and the magic of women.”

He began to shake and back away as I continued, one palm stretched out toward him and the other raised to the sky.

“You will be enchanted and bound. The great will become small, the straight will be crooked, the seeing will be blind. Your fields will bear no fruit, your cows no calves, your women no children. Your bounty and your manhood will shrivel like a bean left on the stalk in winter. You will die without a name and be forgotten.”

He screamed and turned to run, shouting behind him as he fled.

“I know nothing! I know nothing!”

Sometimes it was fun to be a druid.

But now I was worried. If Roech knew of some plot to ruin the monastery, that probably meant King Dúnlaing's sons were involved. They had been scheming for years to take back the lands of the monastery, though Roech's cocky tone made me think that this time it was something more.

I
walked for half an hour past Roech's farm to a small spring-fed well. It was the most peaceful place I knew and I had often come here in the past to think when I was troubled. It had been a holy place for women since ages past and was still frequented by those seeking help or healing.

There beneath a canopy of trees was an altar dedicated to a goddess whose name was long forgotten. Visitors would often leave an offering or tie a piece of cloth to the tree above the well as a kind of prayer. Brigid herself had come many times. When I was a girl, I once asked her how she could pray at a pagan shrine, but she only smiled and said the whole world was sacred to God in heaven. After she died, so many Christian women had begun to visit the place that soon it became known as Brigid's Well. There was even a small stone cross next to the altar of the goddess.

The water from the spring flowed into a creek that I followed to the home of my grandmother. She was a wise woman of sound advice, though I didn't listen to it often enough. Her house was in a clearing surrounded by oak trees beneath a small hill. Although it was off the main road, there had been a constant stream of visitors to her door for as long as I could remember. Like her mother and her mother's mother before her back to the beginning of time, I suppose, my grandmother was a druid skilled in prophesy and visions. She also had more common sense than anyone I had ever met, with the possible exception of Brigid. Often when someone came to her looking for answers, she didn't even need to sacrifice the chicken or rabbit they had brought. She would just sit down and talk with them, listening carefully to what they said and didn't say, then tell them what they should do. People were so grateful for her help that she developed a reputation all over the island as a great seer. She travelled frequently around Leinster and the other provinces to preside at rituals of birth, marriage, and death, often with me beside her before I became a nun.

I had lived with her in that house from the time I was an infant until I got married. My father had died just before I was born while he was fighting with King Dúnlaing against the Uí Néill along the Boyne River. My mother had moved back home with me after his death even though she and my grandmother often argued. She had dark red hair like me and was beautiful enough to attract suitors from the whole province after my father died. She sent them all away so that she could live a quiet life on our farm with no man to rule over her.

I wish I could remember my mother better. I have an image of her in my mind holding me in her arms and telling me stories before I fell asleep. I also remember her holding my hand as we walked through the wet spring grass to look at flowers. But mostly I remember her and my grandmother arguing.

Much to the annoyance of my grandmother, my mother never had any interest in being a druid. To make matters worse, she had become a devout Christian as a teenager and attended worship regularly at the monastery. I had been baptized there and later instructed in the faith by Father Ailbe and the sisters of Kildare. My mother had died of a fever just before my fourth birthday. On her deathbed, she made my grandmother promise to raise me as a Christian. To her credit, my grandmother kept her vow and didn't try to turn me away from the faith.

As I approached the home I had lived in for so long, I saw the smoke coming from the hole in the center of the thatched roof and smelled roasted chicken, my favorite dish. I knocked on the door, then entered the cozy hut. My old bed was on the right, while my grandmother's was at the far end of the single room. There were dried herbs and a smoked ham hanging from one of the rafters. The cooking cauldron was at the center of the hut over the fire and next to it was my grandmother.

“Well, look who's come to visit at last. I thought I would die alone some cold, dark night without ever again seeing the face of my only granddaughter.”

I kissed her on the cheek and took off my cloak.

“Grandmother, it's only been two weeks since I was here. You know I would have come sooner but I was across the Barrow River at Sleaty.”

“Yes, I heard about the church. But it seems to me you have greater troubles now, since Anna has put you in charge of finding Brigid's bones.”

I looked at her in surprise. She was shorter than me, barely up to my shoulders. Although as healthy as a yearling horse, she was over seventy now, with silver hair and a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“Is there anything you don't know? I met with Sister Anna just this morning.”

“Oh, my dear, the spirits tell me many things. I also spoke with Brother Kevin a little while ago when he stopped by. He filled me in on everything.”

I remember a family friend once said that the secret to being a successful seer was to be an irrepressible gossip.

“What am I going to do, Grandmother? Those bones could be anywhere by now.”

“The first thing you're going to do is have some supper. I know the monastery has fallen on hard times, but I don't think they're feeding you enough. You're as skinny as a newborn calf. Come help me with dinner.”

It was good to be busy while we talked. Conversation is so much easier when you have something to do with your hands. The main meal in my grandmother's house was always eaten in the afternoon, as in most homes. Our food was simple, mostly bread, butter, cheese, and milk, sometimes mixed into a porridge. We ate meat more often in the winter, usually chicken or salted pork, but it was not a large part of our diet until after the first frost. My grandmother made a wonderful relish of garden vegetables and honey that we always ate with our bread.

That afternoon, I churned the cream to separate the butter from the buttermilk, then strained, washed, and pressed it while my grandmother prepared the loaves.

No one could make bread like my grandmother. The day before she had dissolved a pinch of yeast in warm water and mixed it with a handful of barley flour for leavening. She kneaded it briefly, then shaped it into a ball. She placed this leavening into an earthenware pot and pressed her thumb on top of it to make a small indentation, then poured water into the hole. After this she covered the leavening with a lid and let it ferment in a warm place near the hearth until the next day.

When I arrived, she went to her pantry and brought out a large jar of barley flour as well as her precious supply of fine
flour made from wheat, a difficult grain to grow properly in cool, wet Ireland. When offered a cow or gold for her services as a druid seer, she would often request wheat flour instead. She told me one milk cow was enough for an old lady living alone and that good bread flour was more precious to her than gold.

She had sifted the wheat and barley flour together in equal amounts with warm water, then placed the dough on a wooden board to work. After she had kneaded it, she worked in the leavening and put it into a clay pot to rise. The smell of yeast soon filled the air.

When I had finished with the butter, I pulled the silk ribbon out of my pocket.