Brigid of Kildare (3 page)

The second call for boarding crackled over the speaker. Reluctantly, Alex slipped the pictures back into the envelope, zipped up her bag, and slung it over her shoulder. Leaving New York behind her, she boarded the plane.

The plane took a sudden dip in altitude, jolting Alex awake from a surprisingly deep sleep. She slid open the window shade and gazed out. The plane hovered at the cloud line, a nether place between sky and earth. Until it took another dive.

They plunged through the cloud layer and entered a world of blackened skies. Alex stared down at the dark chop of the Irish Sea and waited for the first sight of the coast. One more cloud strata, and she saw it. Huge jetties darted out from the craggy shore, braving the rough force of the sea. An incongruous blend of tidy white housing developments and rugby pitches and the crumbling remains of stone structures—both lavish and humble—decorated the shoreline. She loved coming here, and not just because it served up such a rich array of ancient artifacts.

Finally, finally the airplane touched down, and the landing bell rang with a soft ping. The tired passengers launched themselves into the aisles and reached for the overhead compartments. After working her way through immigration and customs, Alex got into the car waiting to take her to Kildare.

The car wove through Dublin’s packed morning rush hour, a far cry from the few workaday cars that had trickled into the city center when
Alex had first started coming to Ireland years earlier, before the days of the Celtic Tiger. Once clear of the city and its sprawling suburbs, they entered the verdant terrain of most Irish-American fantasies. Sheep and horses dotted the lush countryside, especially when they approached the famous Curragh Racecourse, and the villages provided charming pubs aplenty. But Alex knew that the fantasy—if it had ever really existed—began to disappear when the Irish economic boom changed the traditional landscape.

The car pulled in at an orderly, picturesque town square, which announced itself as the center of Kildare. The driver, who’d been chatting amiably throughout the ride, pointed to a weather-beaten limestone church sitting on a rise above the square, calling it Saint Brigid’s. From her window, Alex studied the church’s massive central tower, which rose above an impressive nave with double defensive arches, and its attractive green, containing one of Ireland’s famous round towers of disputed sixth-century origins. She remembered reading about the on-site remains of Saint Brigid’s Fire House, thought to be a pagan sacred fire structure Christianized by Brigid herself.

She’d started to gather up her things when the driver said, “Wait a second, luv. Do you want Saint Brigid’s Cathedral or Saint Brigid’s Church?”

Alex was perplexed. “I don’t know.”

“Ah, it’s a common enough source of confusion.” He pointed to the imposing structure she’d been examining through the window. “That’s Saint Brigid’s Cathedral. It actually sits on the land Brigid developed, but it’s run by the Anglicans. The Church of Saint Brigid is around the corner, and it’s run by the Catholics.”

Her client was a convent, so Alex guessed: “I believe I need the church.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go, luv.”

He drove around the square and down a small hill. Alex thought how the distance between the Anglican church and its Catholic counterpart was short in length but long in grandeur. The Catholic Saint Brigid’s bore the familiar hallmarks of post–Vatican II architectural overlay—with none of the majesty and historical punch of the cathedral.

Alex gave the driver instructions to drop her bags at the Silken Thomas Inn and got out of the car. Immediately, she drew her coat around her like a protective blanket against the cool drizzle and wind. The harsh weather made her glad that she’d worn wool slacks, a sweater, and boots.

Before she even reached the church’s front doors, an older woman wearing the unmistakable black garb of a nun raced out onto the street to greet her. Sticking out her hand, she shook Alex’s hand with a firm grip. “Sister Mary Kelly.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sister Mary. I’m Alexandra Patterson.”

“Good to meet you, Miss Patterson. I’ve been waiting for you. Let’s talk while we walk, all right?” she asked, but she didn’t wait for Alex’s response before marching off. “Do you know much about our Brigid, dear?”

Alex’s work mandated that she have at least a decent grasp of most saints’ biographies. She had found, however, that if she allowed her clients to share their stories first, she learned more about the speaker and the pieces she’d come to assess than if she admitted her knowledge from the start. “Just a bit.”

“Good. Where to start, where to start. The Brigidine legends just abound, liberally, and often incorrectly, mixed in with historical facts, of course. We believe she was born in the middle of the fifth century. Her father was pagan, and her mother Christian, but Brigid embraced Christianity from the start. Some say Saint Patrick himself baptized her.” Sister Mary paused in her words but not her walking, clearly awaiting a reaction.

“Really?” Alex obliged.

“Really. Well, her father wanted her to marry, but Brigid would have none of it. She was determined to become a nun, and after taking her vows, she traveled the countryside, converting people as she went. Eventually, she settled in Kildare and built an abbey right here in town. Although our church is not built on the site of her abbey—the Protestants absconded with her actual lands some time ago, so the abbey remains are found at the Anglican Saint Brigid’s Cathedral.” Sister Mary sighed. “Brigid’s one of the great Catholic saints, and she helped Christianity take hold in Ireland.”

“So I understand,” Alex said. Sister Mary seemed to want validation.

“Bet you wonder why we’d even consider selling her precious artifacts?”

“There’s no need to explain, Sister Mary. Our clients have their reasons, and that’s not our business or our concern.”

“Ah, but I should tell you. I
need
to tell you.” She broke from her brisk pace and looked at Alex. “People are always demeaning Saint Brigid and her very real miracles and contributions by trotting out the fantastical legends about her—that she turned water into beer for her visitors, or hung her cloak on a sunbeam, or made animals do her bidding. Whether you believe the old tales about Brigid’s miracles or not, we want the people to know that early Irish Christianity had at least one very impressive woman: Brigid. So we’re selling the relics as a necessary measure to combat patronizing talk about a formidable Catholic saint. To ensure that the message is properly delivered and widely disseminated, we need to do it ourselves.”

“And you need money for that undertaking. Hence the sale of the relics.”

“Exactly. Money that Rome isn’t exactly clamoring to hand over to our Order of Saint Brigid. Even though Rome’s got money aplenty for other projects.” Sister Mary nodded with satisfaction. “I can see I won’t have to explain things twice to you.”

Sister Mary led them into a small, nondescript building adjacent to the church. The quiet weekday morning found the church community center empty and peaceful, though postings on the bulletin boards showed it to be a bustling neighborhood hub for the older set, at least. Reaching for the jam-packed key ring at her waist, she unlocked one of the front doors and motioned for Alex to follow her inside.

The center had that musty, institutional smell that immediately conjured up Alex’s childhood trips to the Sisters of Mercy convent, where her aunt lived. As a child, she’d been scared by the convent’s dark wooden images of Jesus on the Cross, the saints, and the Virgin, but as a young adult, she’d grown intrigued. She’d begun to see sacred images as imbued with a sort of power. Not religious power, nor miraculous properties: the secular nature of her childhood home—Protestant father
and Catholic mother turned Christmas Christians—made her too skeptical for such belief. No, she began to believe that the images held historical mysteries that she could draw out. And since grad school, she’d built up a track record proving just that point.

The nun continued talking as she unlocked her office door. Alex liked the tenacity and bullishness of Sister Mary; no passive, “will of God” religiosity for her. “The relics have been kept by our order for well over a thousand years. We don’t know for certain the exact year Brigid entrusted them to us, but our oral tradition tells us that we have protected the pieces since at least the ninth century, when a Viking fleet of thirty vessels sailed up the river Liffey to raid the Abbey of Kildare. We buried them deep in the root system of the famous oak tree at the center of the abbey.”

Alex waited while the nun genuflected before a small Madonna shrine in the office’s back corner; then she sat in the indicated chair on the visitors’ side of the desk. As soon as it was seemly, she whipped out her notebook and began scribbling down the artifacts’ provenance. “How long did your order hide them under that tree?”

“The abbey was attacked by the Vikings at least sixteen times before the year 1000. They took anything that looked valuable—covered in precious metals or stones, that is—and destroyed the rest. Since the Vikings were largely illiterate, that meant burning the countless manuscripts stored at the abbey after they ripped off the ornamental covers, among other things. So, for safekeeping, Brigid’s artifacts remained under the abbey’s oak tree until the final defeat of the Vikings, around 1014. At that time, our order determined that the relics could be safely used in the Mass and displayed as an emblem of the Celtic independence and triumph over the loathed Vikings. And we did, for over a century, at least.”

“Until what year?”

“Until Ireland was defeated once again in 1172. That time, the English conquered us.” Sister Mary didn’t bother to conceal her typical Irish dislike of the English. “We had tried to reassert our autonomy against Rome when we refused to pay its tax, ‘St. Peter’s penny.’ As punishment, Rome offered us up to King Henry II, making him Ireland’s tax collector and setting the stage for later English control.” Sister
Mary seemed to hold a grudge against Rome as well, not a view Alex typically heard spoken aloud by a nun.

“Even under the English,” she continued, “our order stayed in control of the abbey’s female community, but the men came under the direction of the English bishops of Kildare. With so many English at the abbey, you can understand if we didn’t trust the relics to be out and about. So we hid them again.”

“When did your order bring them to light?”

“Not for a good long time. As I’m sure you know, in 1532, Henry VIII, who was also king of Ireland, broke with the Catholic Church. Ireland became a battleground between native Irish Catholics and the English forces—again. Kildare’s own ruler Silken Thomas renounced Henry VIII’s rule, and he was hanged in 1537. By 1539, Henry had dissolved all monasteries and confiscated their goods. Even if he hadn’t, the English stole our lands and goods whenever possible and destroyed relics and sacred images.”

“So you kept the relics in hiding?”

“Yes. In fact, by 1540, our order itself was forced to go into hiding. The abbey and the convent were in shambles, and the Catholic persecution under way. We unearthed our relics and left the abbey, setting up a quiet, almost invisible community for ourselves in the remote countryside outside of Kildare. We stayed there until the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Brigid—an early version of what you see before you—was built, in 1833, and we were invited to participate in its community in the mid-1800s. We renamed ourselves the Order of Saint Brigid at that time.”

“Did you finally exhibit the relics then?”

“No, we’d waited nearly seven hundred years at that point; we could wait until it was completely secure. In 1921, when Ireland became free from Protestant England, we celebrated by using the relics again for sacred occasions. Over time, they had really become emblems—not just of Catholic Christianity but of Irish independence. In some centuries, they represented freedom from outside political forces and in other centuries, freedom from the church.”

Alex was impressed, and not just because the order had managed to keep premedieval sacred artifacts in the same hands for over a thousand
years. Assuming that the provenance research bore out that claim, of course. “Your pieces are true witnesses to the history of Catholicism in Ireland, Sister Mary.”

Sister Mary turned a steely gaze on Alex. “Indeed, they are—and witnesses to the Irish struggle for independence as well. You can see that our order has risked much to protect these relics, for over a millennium. The decision to sell them is not one we take lightly.”

Alex’s clients often felt the need to justify parting with such valuable items, but she could understand Sister Mary’s compulsion to do so. Even though she had tried to assure the sister that such explanation was unnecessary. “Of course not; I’m sure it was a difficult, even painful, determination. But our firm can assist you in placing them with an individual or institution that will respect and honor the integrity and importance of your pieces—a place that will tell their stories fully and truthfully.”

“That is what my Vatican friends tell me. That’s why I picked you and your firm.”

“You will not be disappointed to have placed your confidence in us.”

“I certainly hope not, Miss Patterson. I don’t want to be answering to God for my choice.”

Alex wanted to steer away from the religious course the conversation was taking. Talk of belief and faith always made her uneasy, a fact her boss found amusing, given her chosen line of work. “Do you have any written documentation of the relics’ history?”

“No. The history has always been passed down verbally from keeper to keeper.”

“ ‘Keeper’?” Alex had heard the phrase used in connection with Irish museums—they termed their curators “keepers”—but never outside that context.

“Yes, the keeper. Our order selects one of our members to head up the care of the relics. Our most recent keeper, Sister Augustine, became dangerously sick four weeks ago after serving as keeper for nearly five decades. The order chose me to succeed her, and Sister Augustine passed on the history to me while she was still able, although she was grievously ill at the time. And so she remains.”