Magdalen Rising (24 page)

In the days to come I made an honest effort to do as Nissyen said, and to my surprise, I succeeded. Esus had distracted me from my studies; now my studies distracted me from him—or from his absence. He continued not to be at the yew grove, and after a time I stopped looking for him. I was willful, yes, but not stupid. I got the message. I had tried to force the hand of fate and gotten my own hands slapped instead. It was fate's move now. I was tired of having secondhand arguments with Yahweh, while Esus tried to second guess him. I was going to leave Yahweh to the Mórrígán. Let them duke it out.

Still, I did not take Nissyen's advice in entirety. In what little spare time I did have, I began to compose the poem I'd sketched for Nissyen, the story that I am telling you now. I discovered that I loved words. I loved something besides him, and I loved that love in myself. So although I could not admit it at the time, Esus's thwarting of my will (as much as my desire) had a bracing effect on me.

Then one fine morning while our form was outside eating stirabout, Viviane sat down next to me, without greeting me by word or look. Nor did I acknowledge her. We were not exactly on cordial terms. Branwen had just left my side to go to the trenches, so I assumed Viviane had something nasty to say to me alone. I could have ignored her and flounced off, but I was curious. She had not approached me for any reason since the day of our brawl.

“He wants to see you. The Stranger.”

“Esus?”

“Who else?”

“Did he say why? When did you speak to him?”

In spite of myself, I turned to look at her. She did not look back, just shrugged with supreme indifference.

“Ciaran asked me to give you the message.”

That explained it. She certainly wouldn't do me any favors. Ciaran of the blue-black hair was in Esus's form. Viviane still managed her trysts with him, despite the omnipresence of the Crows.

“Is that the whole message?” I pressed.

“That's it. He didn't say where. He didn't say when.”

He didn't need to, and I was glad he hadn't. I didn't want anyone, certainly not Viviane, to know about our meeting place under the yews. I waited for Viviane to stalk off so that I could give myself over to exultation, but she continued to sit next to me, eyes still fixed straight ahead. It occurred to me that perhaps I was supposed to say something.

“Thanks for bringing me the message,” I managed.

She gave a curt nod of acknowledgment and remained where she was. I considered getting up and going off to look for Branwen, but I decided against it. Viviane was the one who had parked her carcass here. It was up to her to move, not me.

“I'd be careful if I were you,” she said at last.

“Careful of what?”

“Of having anything to do with the Stranger.”

“Why do you keep calling him the Stranger?” I demanded. “You know his name is Esus.”

“So he says. Or so everyone has chosen to call him. It's dangerous to be named for a god.”

“Well, lots of people are,” I pointed out. “It's hard not to be. There's so many of them, almost as many gods as there are people.”

Did I detect the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth?

“And It's not always so easy to tell the difference between them,” I added.

“That's more or less my point,” Viviane said, getting to her feet just as the conversation was getting interesting.

Well, I wasn't going to feed her self-importance by pressing her further.

“Whatever,” I shrugged.

My show of indifference goaded her. Besides, like all human beings, she had an overpowering instinct to mind other people's business.

“Ciaran says he talks too much. He argues with the druids constantly. And when he listens, he listens too intently. No one really knows who he is or what he might do with our secrets. The druids took a big risk letting him in, and they know it. Count on it, the Cranes are watching his every move. And if you get up to anything with him, the Cranes and the Crows will be watching yours. Oh, well.” Viviane tossed her head. The ends of her hair flicked my face. I hoped she'd wrench her neck someday showing off that showy hair. “Don't say I never warned you.”

“Oh, go sit on a sea urchin,” I said.

But Viviane was already walking away. It's debatable whether the last word of this charming exchange was hers or mine. In fact, I did not doubt what she said about the Cranes and Crows watching Esus, and probably me as well. But it did not particularly disturb me. Notoriety, special status, these were to be expected, no more or less than Esus and I deserved.

Then suddenly the full import of her message hit me. Esus wanted me! A sudden rush of energy brought me to my feet. I bounded toward Branwen, who was on her way back from the latrines, and nearly knocked her down with the exuberance of my embrace.

W
HEN I ARRIVED AT the yews that afternoon, Esus was already there, sitting under the trees, gazing out towards the straits. A strong wind soughed through the thick branches, and he did not hear my approach. Instead of rushing towards him, I found myself hesitating, not out of shyness, exactly, but a kind of awe. It is not often that you glimpse someone in solitude. He was waiting for me, yes, but he was alone, not battling wits with druid or rabbi, not sparring with me. He was simply there, with himself. Or maybe he was not alone. Maybe his invisible god was visiting him, hissing commandments in his ear. Maybe that's why the lines around his mouth, the set of his jaw looked so tense.

Quietly, the sound of my movements covered by the wind, I stole towards him and sat down beside him. He turned and looked at me for just an instant, a look I couldn't read. Neither of us spoke. Then, without warning, he laid his head in my lap. His yarmulke slipped off.

At last I had license to touch his hair, and I was lost in the wonderment of it. I cupped both hands over his head and felt the hardness of bone beneath his thick, springy hair. Though I had never seen a human birth, somewhere within me I heard the words: he's crowning; the head is crowning. Then, for the first time since leaving Tir na mBan, I felt the fire of the stars burning in my own crown, streaming down through my hands into him. He stiffened and sat up, drawing apart from me.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said in confusion, not knowing how to explain.

And it was true. I was not doing anything; something was happening, using me, willy-nilly, to accomplish its purpose.

“Your hands are like fire. You put fire in my veins,” he accused, his eyes smoldering, not with anger but intensity.

“It's just something that happens to me sometimes. Usually when I touch someone. One time I eased the pain of Fand's broken ribs. Are you in pain, Esus?”

He ignored my question.

“Did the old woman, the Cailleach, teach you to do that?”

“No one taught me. I told you about the first time, that day I ran away from my mothers to the secret valley. Remember? I was looking at my reflection in the pool. My hair looked on fire. Then I could feel it, the fire starting in my head, flowing through my whole body, especially my hands. It felt as though rivers of fire were streaming from my fingers. I held my hands over the pool. The water rippled and changed. That's when I saw you.”

“You are a witch.” He stared at me, with those eyes, black and bottomless as the sacred well.

I did not understand what the word witch conjured for him. For me it was more or less synonymous with the word woman, with my mothers. Esus was regarding me as though I were something utterly alien to him, even dangerous.

“Oh, come off it,” I snapped. “Whatever it is—my mother's called it ‘the fire of the stars'—it's only natural. I mean it happens naturally. It's like wiping someone's tears or staunching the bleeding from a cut.”

“Natural,” he considered. “Natural. Like a storm or a flood or a bolt of lightning.”

“Or like sunlight,” I countered, “or soft, soaking rain. Not everything natural is destructive.”

I was on the verge of citing Yahweh's fondness for floods and plagues, but I thought better of it. Something was troubling Esus. He had laid his head in my lap. I didn't want to fight with him now.

“Viviane said you wanted to see me,” I prompted.

Talk to me, I pleaded silently. Talk about the geis, that invisible boulder inching its way towards some awful edge, some irreversible fall.

But he was still staring at his hands, palms cupped, his alarm changing to curiosity.

“The fire is flowing through my hands now, just the way you described it. Feel.”

He held his hand out towards my cheek. I closed my eyes. Even before his skin connected, with mine currents of hot, swirling gold washed over my face. Strangely his touch left me feeling calmed, cooled, as if I had just bathed in a clear spring.

“Will my hands feel like this all the time?” he wondered.

For the moment, his tension was gone. He leaned back against the trunk of a tree. He looked tired.

“With me it comes and goes,” I said. “I haven't felt the fire for a long time, until just now. You still haven't answered my question. Are you in pain? Are you hurt in some way?”

He looked at me for a long time without speaking. I sensed some inner argument was going on. It troubled me that he didn't trust me enough to confide in me without hesitation. I tried to rouse my indignation, but I couldn't. His gaze had the effect of making me look at myself through his eyes. Right now, what I saw didn't look so good. I'd laid a
geis
on him, because he wouldn't do what I wanted him to when I wanted it. Before that, he'd found me brawling and smeared with ‘menstruous' blood. Then there were our Otherworldly contacts. I'd shit on his head in public, and, in one of his more private moments, I'd spied on him, however unintentionally. A case could be made that I was a walking natural disaster.

“Esus, about the other day,” I began. It was not easy. Fluent as I was in several languages, I could count on one hand the number of times I'd apologized. “About the geis. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did that to you.”

“Oh, that's all right.”

We both knew it wasn't, but ‘that's all right' seems to be a universal response to ‘I'm sorry.' Somehow it sounds so much more forgiving than ‘I forgive you.'

“I'm sorry, too,” he added.

He didn't say for what, but I nodded and we sat in silence for a while, the comforting, comfortable silence that comes when both people let go of the need to be in the right.

“But something's bothering you,” I said. “Has any disaster befallen you?”

“I don't think it has anything to do with the
geis,
Maeve, if that's what you're worried about.”

“Then, what is it, Esus? I know something's wrong.”

“I am afraid, Maeve.”

He spoke so softly. It seemed to me that everything—the air, the trees, even the shifting currents in the straits—stilled to hear him. I did not know then how hard it is for any man or boy—Celt, Hebrew or other—to say those words: I am afraid. But I knew he was choosing to trust me.

“There's going to be an initiation rite at the festival called
Lughnasad,”
he continued. “While everyone else is playing games, singing, feasting, hearing stories—”

“Or telling them,” I interjected. “Our form has to perform. If we're not up to scratch, we fail the first term and have to begin all over again.”

“Well, our form, along with some of the chief druids, is going to be performing a three-day rite. It starts right after the opening session of arbitrations, which we're all required to attend so that we can observe druid law in action.”

“Who is being initiated?”

“Me.” The starkness of that solitary word was eloquent.

“Only you?”

“Only me. Remember, I've skipped almost a dozen years of preliminary training. Everyone else has already been initiated into the first degree of mysteries.” He paused, and then he said again, “I'm afraid.”

“Well,” I hesitated, feeling my way as if I were walking in the dark trying not to stumble. “I think that's the idea. You're supposed to be afraid. An initiation is some kind of ordeal or test, but I know you'll pass.”

“I know, I know,” he gestured impatiently. “That's not what worries me. You don't understand.”

Those three words could sting me like no others.

“I've had my initiation into manhood among my own people,” he went on. “It's like what your form has to do on
Lughnasad.
You stand up and recite a whole section of the Torah from memory. You prove your knowledge and learning. The initiation rite at
Lughnasad
is nothing like that.”

“What's going to happen?”

“I don't know,” he shook his head and stared at the ground. “The druids don't exactly spell things out. With them everything's a mystery. Everything's a secret. How else could they keep a hold on so many squabbling tribes? People think the druids know something they don't know, control things that ordinary people can't control. I haven't been here long enough to figure out whether they really do possess secret knowledge or whether they're just masters of illusion. I have a feeling I'm about to find out.”

“They haven't told you anything?”

“I don't even know where it's going to be. Not officially. Some of my friends have dropped hints. They're not supposed to say anything directly. It's against the rules. But I think I know.”

Suddenly I knew, too. Bryn Celli Ddu. The Mound of the Dark Grove, the heart—or perhaps more accurately the bowels or womb—of
the druid college. Of course it would happen there. The mound was reputed to be ancient. The trees surrounding it were as old—or maybe even older. No one knew. When the druids came to Mona, they had recognized the power of the place and had appropriated it for their own purposes. Bryn Celli Ddu was strictly forbidden to everyone but druids and initiates. Naturally, breaking that taboo was on my mental ‘to do' list, but I'd been too busy sneaking off to the yews—until now.

“I get the feeling that this initiation involves some sort of enactment of death,” Esus went on.

The summer air suddenly felt cold on my skin. All my hairs stood up. Viviane's warning sounded again in my mind: It's dangerous to be named for a god. Did Esus realize that the
Keltoi
called him by a god's name? “Uncouth Esus of the barbarous altars,” the Romans would write of this god. Esus's victims hung from trees, dying of ritual wounds.

“Death?” my lips form the words, but I could not summon enough breath to make a sound.

“Not actual death. I'm not afraid I'm going to be killed or anything like that. It's a symbolic death. You come back changed. You're reborn.”

“Oh,” I cried. “I know what's going to happen. I just realized. I've been through it. I've already been initiated.”

“You have?” He sounded both relieved and disgruntled.

“Yep,” I preened. Neither of us was above a little cosmic sibling rivalry.

“Where? When?”

“On Tir na mBan when I first went to stay with the Cailleach. But I'm not sure I should tell you any more. It might be against the rules.”

He made the sort of rude nonverbal response my smugness deserved.

“So don't tell me. I'm not worried about what's going to happen. That's not it at all.”

“Esus,” I said, remembering that he'd trusted me with his fear. “I was only teasing. I'll tell you anything you want to know.”

He shook his head. “No, don't tell me now. The rule makes sense. Besides, even if you told me every detail of your initiation, it wouldn't tell me anything about mine. It's different for me.”

I bit back my automatic response: No, it's not. We're the same. I asked gently, “What is it, then? What frightens you?”

“Maeve.” He reached for my hand and gripped it hard. “I know you won't understand this, but I'm afraid....I'm afraid I may go so far away
from the God of my forefathers that he won't be able to find me. Or I won't be able to find him.”

He was right. I didn't understand, and I hated it that I didn't understand. I hated his god. I wished Esus
could
get away from him.

“The
Keltoi,
the druids, you, Maeve, you worship the earth as if it were...as if it were, well, a goddess. I find your people's stories very confusing. This
Lughnasad
festival seems to have something to do with your god Lugh dying, becoming a seed in the womb of the earth mother. It's death, marriage, and rebirth all at once.”

I did not see what was so confusing about that. It told the story of the grain. The shining beauty of the god who made the strength of the sun into food. When the god was cut down, he became the seed falling into earth so the grain could rise again. What could be simpler?

“If I enact this rite, I will be breaking the First Commandment.”

“The first commandment?” I repeated. Esus had recited the ten primo geasa for me, but I couldn't recall them. I had a much better memory for Hebrew stories.

“ ‘I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt where you lived as slaves. You shall have no other gods to rival me.' ”

“But he didn't say anything about goddesses,” I pointed out.

“It's implied, Maeve,” he said impatiently. “Goddesses are even worse. They demand all sorts of abominations and fornications for their worship.”

It sounded good to me. The mystery was that anyone worshipped Yahweh.

“Until now on Mona I've been listening and learning and observing, but as a Jew, Maeve. I've been a stranger in a strange land, as many Jews have been before me, but I have kept his commandments. I have not abandoned the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses and Aaron, of David and Solomon. But if I perform this rite, surely the Most High will abandon me. And if I refuse—”

“He won't abandon you.”

My voice sounded harsh, raw as an oracular raven's. I spoke against my will. Esus dropped my hand and turned to me with a startled look.

“He will not abandon you,” something compelled me to go on, “any more than he abandoned Jonah in the belly of the whale. Do you think that there is anywhere that he is not?” Drat him, I added to myself.