Brigid of Kildare (15 page)

The Lord knows I have given Him cause enough to deny my request. I have not offered Him any reason to think me steadfast in my mission to rout out sacrilege in this hinterland. To the contrary, I have spent night after night in the darkness of the scriptorium, gobbling up the words of secret texts like a child with honey.

Oh, my brother, you should see what I found hanging from the ceiling of the scriptorium in this remote island abbey. I discovered sumptuous renderings of our Latin literature—Virgil, Plato, Horace—in which even you would delight. I unwrapped gilded copies of letters from church founders that would move even a stone to tears. Yet what continues to draw me are those banned Gospels.

Should I even dub them Gospels, though they call themselves such? None is in our canon. None of these have I ever seen before. Are they the writings of “madmen,” as Irenaeus said, or are they truths? I know I should stop my speculations, for I came to excise this heresy.

Yet the Secret Book of John only feeds these conjectures. Purporting to offer a description of the events after Jesus ascended into heaven, the apostle John states that “the twelve disciples were all sitting together and recalling what the Savior had said to each one of them, either secretly or openly, and putting it into books, and I was writing what is in my book.” If these words are indeed John’s, can there be truth in these banned Gospels? Might they contain words from Jesus Christ’s own mouth—recorded by His disciples—that we are prohibited from reading? As soon as these thoughts come into my mind, I try to cast them out, for I know them to be the fuel of Satan’s heretical fire. Yet I find that I cannot purge them entirely; they have become like an opiate to me.

All the more so because the substance of these manuscripts so entices. This very eve, I found myself with moonlight enough to reach the scriptorium safely. I was eager to return to my reading of the Gospel of Thomas, with its inviting first line: “Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.” Who could resist this invitation to immortality? Particularly when Thomas says that the kingdom of God is already here, and not a cataclysmic event or otherworldly place foretold for the future: “the kingdom of the Father is
spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.” He dares to go further, proclaiming that we may find this kingdom by “knowing ourselves,” by looking within to the “image of God” within us all.

Brother, with all this talk of images, you can see how these Gospels, true or not, heresy or not, transfixed me. I was sitting in a blackened corner of the second floor, the Gospel of Thomas in one hand and a candle in the other, when I heard the noise. It sounded like a rustle, and I strained to discern its origin. No swish, no crackle followed, so I attributed it to the wind in the trees.

Since my dark cocoon had begun to brighten with the onset of daylight, I clambered down the ladder. I slid it back to its designated place and settled at one of the tables, with lit candle still in hand. Pulling out a piece of parchment and a quill, I began to list the sacrilegious works I had uncovered, for these books contain certain heresy far beyond even that of Pelagius’s creed or Arianism. I owed this much to Gallienus. Why I did not wait until I returned to my hut to create this report? I do not know—guilt over my interest in the texts, perhaps.

I heard the rustle again. I looked up and scanned the vast room. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I returned to my writing.

“Cannot wait until morning to labor for our Lord, Brother Decius?”

I turned; behind me stood a figure draped in white. I dropped to my knees and said, “Abbess, my apologies.”

“Please rise. Why offer apologies if your work is for His greater glory?”

Recall, brother, I told you these Gaels speak in puzzles and multiple layers of meaning and innuendo. How could I answer her without stepping into one trap or another? My work was indeed for His greater glory, as defined by Gallienus and the Roman Church, though certainly not by Brigid if she knew my true motives. I said the only thing I could: “Abbess, I request forgiveness if my work disturbed your rest.”

She walked around the scriptorium in a graceful perambulation—or the slow stalking of a predator; I could not be certain. “Oh, Brother Decius, I do not rest. Therefore, you could not have disturbed it.”

I seized upon this statement. “Then, Abbess, you and I are alike in that regard. Restlessness brings me here to the scriptorium.”

“Restlessness brings you out of your hut so late at night, does it?” Though her words challenged, her tone was even, bearing no trace of skepticism. I determined to take her words at their most benign.

“Yes, Abbess.”

“Please call me Brigid. If Jesus Christ did not stand on ceremony, then how dare I?”

“Thank you, Abb—” I stopped myself. “Brigid.”

“How are you finding the Abbey of Kild—” I saw a glint of her white teeth as she smiled to herself in the dark. “Cill Dara?”

This tease was Brigid’s first reference to our initial meeting. I wondered if I should mention our encounter and offer further apologies for mistaking her for a common village girl on those plains. And for insulting the learnedness of the Gaels. But my situation was precarious, so I maintained the course of our conversation.

“I find Cill Dara and its people to be a wondrous gift.”

“‘A wondrous gift’…” The tenor of her voice shifted just a grade; how I should interpret it, I did not know. Did she mock me? “High praise indeed, Brother Decius. How is Cill Dara ‘a wondrous gift’?”

“To be so welcomed when I was so outcast is a miracle unto itself. To have the further opportunity to work here in the scriptorium is a double blessing. Cill Dara is so much more than I expected or deserve.”

Brigid grew quiet. In the growing light, I began to make out the details of her face: her strong jaw and cheekbones, her fiercely intelligent green eyes, and the unexpected, almost unwilling softness of her mouth. Brother, you would not find her beautiful in the Roman sense, but her looks arrest. Even more so when her strong character surfaces.

She placed her hands on her narrow hips and assessed me, much as she had on the plains. This time, however, I heard no cynicism or mockery in her voice when she asked, “Truly?”

I answered in an honest confirmation of my assessment of Cill Dara. “Truly.”

The scriptorium door slammed at this very moment. We turned away from each other to watch as Niall, the keeper of the scriptorium, gaped at the sight of his abbess and a lowly monk alone in the hallowed
building before dawn. With discomfort and haste, Brigid and I took our leave. I wonder what words might have passed between us next had Niall not interrupted.

Brother, I am left here in my hut to conjecture whether Brigid accepts my reason for being in the scriptorium. She gave no hint of disbelief, but I cannot suppose she accepted my reason wholesale; Brigid is too savvy for such blind trust. Even if she were a trusting sort, her presence could very well have been the rustle I heard long before I descended from the second floor—the home of the hidden manuscripts. I shall wait until morning to hear her real ruling. For if she comprehends the true nature of my visit to the scriptorium, surely she will eject me from Cill Dara. Or worse. In the meantime, I will pray to our Lord for another chance to prove my worth, to Him and to Gallienus.

Brother
,

Morning came, and I received no word from Brigid. Days passed, and still silence. Oh, I heard her voice at evening Mass and I saw her face at the refectory, but I received no judgment other than the tawdry murmurs of Colum and Eadfrith. Even here, smallness exists where largesse should triumph.

I resolved to abandon any further attempts to visit the scriptorium at night. I knew that if I persisted, Brigid would undoubtedly find me there again. In case God might deem me worthy of a second chance to do His bidding, I could not take such a risk.

Yet I longed to complete my readings of the hidden manuscripts, to answer their call. I yearned to accept the invitation of the Gospel of Thomas. But I knew that I must acknowledge the compulsion as the doing of Satan, and purge all thought of the Gospels from my mind. Still, I struggle.

I plunged into work. I prepared vellum, scraping and rubbing the young calfskin until it became like soft suede. I rendered insular script
for a Gospel of Matthew and gilded a Chi-Rho cross on the Gospel’s cover page while Aidan watched with guidance and approval. In all these acts, I tried to surrender to the Word.

Round and round through my mind, I uttered the Words I wrote: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” In time, I could think of nothing else but the Words, Words that I could hear in my head as though God’s own lips spoke them to me. And when I looked down at my quill, I watched the Words appear on the vellum as if scribed by God’s hand, not my own.

The Words washed over me and through me, and I found myself entering a state of peaceful transcendence as I worked. Brother, I knew I had achieved the “Lord’s magic” described by Aidan. And I knew I would never describe the experience—to Gallienus or anyone else—as anything other than sublime, wrought by our Lord.

This morn, I had just entered this rapturous state when the atmosphere of the scriptorium changed without warning. A quiver of excitement or agitation—which I could not tell—passed through the cavernous space. Similar ripples in the serenity of the scriptorium had occurred before and had yielded no cause for concern—once overturned ink had proved to be the source; another time, a misplaced text. Thus I continued with my work and my efforts to recapture calm.

The unease and sense of anticipation clung to me, though I could see or hear nothing extraordinary. I raised my head from the vellum laid out before me and turned toward the entry. There stood the source of the energy coursing through the room: Brigid.

I looked away. After days of praying for a moment with her, to make certain of her trust, I suddenly did not want to see her. In my time at Cill Dara, Brigid had not once visited the scriptorium while we scribes were working, and I suppose that her appearance seemed an ill portent to me.

My eyes refused to stay averted. I watched as she wandered around the various tables and gazed on the manuscripts in progress, offering gentle compliments as she advanced. I observed as she knelt next to an elderly monk, who had hands so gnarled I often wondered how he painted the gossamer figures of angels that the other monks requested of him. She took his hands in hers and they talked quietly for a time,
after which he kissed her brow. The gesture shocked and embarrassed me; no such intimacy would ever pass between a Roman abbot and his monk.

She stepped out of view, but an instant later I felt her near me. Aidan and I rose in respect, but she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Please sit. I come to watch Cill Dara’s monks labor for the glory of our Lord, not to have His work interrupted.”

Brother, I wondered whether her statement was a veiled reference to our conversation. Its similar phraseology seemed too close for coincidence. Yet her face belied no insinuation.

We settled back into our seats and resumed working, or at least assumed the pretense of work. “On what text do you labor, Aidan?” she asked.

“We are completing the cover page for a Gospel of Matthew, Brigid.” He called Brigid by her given name, as she requested of all the religious folk—indeed, all peoples. The way Aidan spoke her name, however, instilled it with grandeur, almost as if “Brigid” were a title itself.

“May I draw closer, Aidan?”

“We would be honored, Brigid.”

Aidan drew back so that Brigid could study the page on which my brush rested. As she leaned in to examine the sumptuous Chi-Rho cross, unique in its design, I could feel her white gown and loose hair on my cheek. It took all my effort to stop my brush from slipping at the distraction.

“Your work is exquisite,” she said to Aidan rather than me, though I was the one painting.

“Many thanks, Brigid,” Aidan answered.

“Are you pleased with the efforts of the young monk assigned to you? Decius is his name, I believe?” she asked as if she did not know.

“Yes, Brigid. He shows remarkable facility with our script, and he came to us already with an excellent ability with figures and decorative work.”

The two discussed my skills as if I were not present. They reviewed my familiarity with various languages, the fluidity of my brushwork, and, most particularly, my piety. I was surprised to hear commendation from the reticent Aidan.

“Might you spare Decius for several weeks, Aidan?”

Aidan paused before answering. “If you wish, Brigid.” Though he gave his accord, I heard wariness in his voice. As did Brigid.

She explained her request, though her position as abbess meant that she had no obligation. “I am in need of a scribe for a minor abbey matter, and I do not want to interrupt the labors of”—she gestured around the room—“our more accomplished scriveners. I believe Decius will suffice.”

“I see,” Aidan said in understanding. “I functioned well before Decius’s arrival, and I will continue while he is in your charge.”