The Burning Time (25 page)

“Holy Saint Francis, help me.… I know I have fallen away from my youthful reverence. But I have given all in a greater service, to the Church. I have been obedient. I have bargained with Hell to preserve the idea of Heaven. Are not my labours worth s
omet
hing? I denounce false gods every day! … Blessed Francis, have I—have I fallen into idolatry? Have I sinned against God by loving the Church too much?
Mea culpa, mea maxima
—but
how
can I be idolatrous? The Church and God are one! I am God’s scholar, God’s voice in different tongues, God’s steward! Why then do I go unnoticed, as if I were God’s serf? Intercede for me, Blessed Francis, that I may be
noticed
—and … and awarded this small payment for my loyal service: victory tonight, victory over this woman!

“And you, Blessed Saint Patrick. You see how I have fought infidels and apostates to sustain your mission here?
Grant me, Holy Patrick, the body of this foul witch!
Give her into my hands!
Ad majorem Dei gloriam!… In nomine …

Mumbling the last words and crossing himself, he struggled to his feet, wove a few steps, shuffled back to his chair, and half fell into it. He desperately longed to go to bed. But rest was out of the question.

He would wait—though in the dizzy haze of righteousness and brandy he was no longer sure for what. Ah yes, for word about the pursuit of his prize, the witch. But something else … recognition. Yes, of his
merit
, yes! He refused to be ignored. Even if the Church abandoned him, he would not go quietly. At least
God
would not be ungrateful,
God
would notice.…

But that would mean—no, cannot be—
No
. Oh then how—no. Cannot.…
But that would mean that the Church and God were not the same thing after all …

He closed his eyes to shut out the pain in his head.

It didn’t matter.

He would wait.

For what he had paid for dearly.

For what was owed him.

If he was God’s serf, he would wait, for as long as it took, to be noticed.

“What
is
it, my dear?” Alyce finally asked gently, “Petronilla? Cannot you tell me? Is it simply that you are afraid?
I mean, not
normally
afraid the way everyone else is now, but afraid the way you used to be when you first came to us—
consumed
by it?” There was no answer, so Alyce went on. “We are all afraid, you know. Certainly
I
am. All I am doing is holding on—being afraid for just a few moments longer, then a few moments after that, moment by moment—which others mistake for courage. In times like these, anyone who is
not
afraid is demented. But my child, we cannot let fear churn us up so that it immobilizes us. That is where the
will
comes in, the concentrated will. You remember:
‘Chant the Word and let it free. As my Will, so mote it be
…’ ”

Petronilla sat holding the flask, not drinking. Finally, she spoke.

“
… ‘An it harm none.’
Aye. T’is that I mean. The harm. What if I
want
some of ’em harmed? Like Donnan? Or the Bishop? What then? Ah, t’is such a stew in my mind, m’Lady,” nodding her head toward the distant silhouette of the Wexford church, “All my days I be wanting to please ’em—that was
all
I be knowing. Such a knowing—t’is not what a body can forget. Might be no one can ever unlearn it, sure not in a year and a day. And oh, I
do
fear ’em—ye canna know how much. T’is many mysteries ye know, Your Ladyship, but this I be knowing in some way you canna: them and their power. T’is a knowing I wear tucked inside my skin. Just to think of ’em, I can feel myself quaking—and shamed by the quaking. But I be feeling more than myself. I be knowing what
they leave behind when they pass through lives like mine in their grand processions on the way to their cathedrals and their noble courts. Not just the cruel ones or the ones who judge us or the greedy ones with ice shards cold as diamonds hanging from their hearts. But the ones who just … dinna
care
. Aye, they just dinna care. The ones who be believing folks like me are naught. The ones who be not noticing who gets crushed under the hooves of their sleek horses.…” Her voice dropped to whisper. “Sometimes, in my dreams, or even awake—I think I be actually
seeing
all who have perished. Those you told us of, too—folk accused on other shores. Ach, such suffering I see! Those who be tortured, those who canna speak or who be forced to lie, who be beaten, chained, dying.
I see ’em
. I see ’em hunger and sicken and freeze. I see ’em thirst and despair.”

“Perhaps you have the Sight, Petronilla,” Alyce murmured, regarding her student with new respect. “Like the seers. Like some of the bards and poets. Perhaps that is your strength. You must give it your attention, whatever it is. T’is a great lesson.”

“Ach, another lesson, is it,” Petronilla said dully.

“I know,” Alyce laughed softly, “Wearying, eh? But everything can teach us something. The only question is whether we are open to learning what—”

“—so when I see it, all this suffering …” Petronilla’s voice deepened and her pale face flushed and darkened, “then I
be—changing. Then I be wanting to
slaughter
the men who do this. Then I be longing to see other sights, to see
them
suffer, to see their surprise that a body so low as me could make ’em suffer, to see my own hands gloved with their blood—feel it sticky and red and warm, smell it, even taste—”

“Hush, oh
hush
, child. Do not say it. Do not
think
it. Remember: “
Do what thou wilt, an it harm none. For the Law of Three will return to you what you send against another thricefold
.” Alyce made a wide flinging gesture with both hands, as if casting away the thought. “I deflect these thoughts that haunt you! I cancel them, cancel them,
cancel
them!”

But Petronilla was not finished.

“Ye may think me truly daft, I know. But there be something even worse than the fear and the hatred I feel for them. For I also … I be
part
of them,
part
of their world—and they be part of me. I can
feel
them waiting for me. Mayhap I be not meant for Initiation into The Craft. Mayhap I be meant to stay with what I grew up on, what I always trusted would save me. Christian mercy, Christian forgiveness.”

“But Petronilla, you have done nothing,
nothing
, to
require
forgiveness! Quite the opposite! You have—”

“Ye canna see it, m’Lady, but I have such
—hate
in me! Rich, thick hate. I
need
that mercy, I crave it. Ye be talking about power and about will. But there be no power in
me
. T’is—all
outside
me, power belonging to God or Christ or the
Blessed Virgin. Or The Great Mother. Or the Green Man. To some body or spirit other’n me. But me … there be
naught
in me. I be empty. And I be so tired of trying to—what you say, be myself—when I got no self to be.”

The older woman reached for Petronilla’s hand, gripping it tightly.

“My daughter,” she said hoarsely, “that is a lifetime’s task, learning to be oneself. Petronilla, hear me. If you want to return to Christian ways, you should do so. All I ask is that you not feel yourself
driven
to a decision, especially now, at this time of crisis. Please, please, trust
yourself
. Trust what you have known all your life, yes. But also trust what you have learned this past year, too. To conceive power in the spirit of The Goddess is for a woman to discover that spirit also in herself, you see? So acknowledge your fear—yet
keep faith with your own power
. And believe me when I tell you that your strength springs not from hatred. It comes from love, Petronilla. I see it in your every act. Not a passive love, either: a
fierce
love.
‘By naught but love may She be known.’
Remember? So hearken to your own desire. Then you will come to understand what it is you most long to do, were born to do,
must
do. And you will find you have the courage to do it. This is my sole wisdom, my sole mystery, the secret that guides me when you assume, wrongly, that I am not afraid.”

Petronilla looked down at their entwined hands, barely listening.
Clenched together this way
, she thought,
two women’s hands are still only the size of one man’s fist. How innocent Her Grace is really
, she mused, and felt for the first time as if she were the elder of the two. But she did not say that.

“I will try to trust myself. Ye be teaching me much,” she said instead, “Ye be like an
amchara
to me. I canna say …” She could not continue. The women huddled close, hands clasped, with no need to speak.

“So now. Ye go and rest awhile, m’Lady.” Petronilla managed a wan smile.

“Very well. But wrap yourself warmly while you sit sentinel,” Alyce replied. Then the maidservant watched her mistress enfold herself in a quilt, curl up beside the sleeping children, and fall instantly into a deep slumber.
Like Sara
, Petronilla thought again,
like a wee innocent child
.

A wind sprang up, rustling the pine boughs, releasing the scent of resin in the cold air. But once it passed, the forest seemed to hush itself, densifying its darkness around the visitors.

Petronilla de Meath, alone in her wakefulness, walked to the hill’s crest and sat on a rocky promontory, hunching against the chill, drawing her cloak tightly around her. She scanned the night sky, trying to draw down strength from a moon obscured by storm clouds, its glowing face hidden from her sight as if veiled in mourning for the dying year.

There was a sudden scream. Startled, she spun around to see a rush of black wings as a raven erupted in flight from a nearby juniper branch, screeching as it flew.
The Badb, the Macha
, she thought with a chill at the spine, naming the crow shapes of The Morrigan,
the Battle Crow who flies at Samhain to pick the bones of warriors soon to die
. Then she remembered. There was no Sabbat Ritual, and no Initiation, but it was still Samhain Eve, when the membranes between this world and the Otherworlds tremble at their sheerest and most permeable. It was the night of death and birth.

Here was no birth.

Here was only cold, silence, emptiness. The dark.

“Great Mother of All,” she began, “and Holy Mary, Mother of God,” lowering her eyes in shame at the double address.
Ye be trying to have it both ways
, she thought, harshly condemning herself.
Coward. Ye still be trying to please everybody
.

“Mother of—” she began again.

Then she stopped.

There it was.

She felt it even as she saw it.

A lifetime of tension shattered inside her, beginning in a trickle and swiftly flooding outward as if freed by the bursting of a dam. This was the certainty for which she had been waiting all these years. Unsurprised, she stared in recognition.

It was real. It was vivid as each nightmare, every waking vision, each foreboding, every dread.

There, well below the hill’s crest, crawled a caterpillar of torches borne by at least fifty men-at-arms, their tunics in the fireglow clearly bearing the crest of the Bishopric of Ossary.

Petronilla blinked twice to make sure it was not another vision like all the others that had flickered through her over the past days.

But these men were real.

They were inching closer.

The column was winding its way up the road directly to where the fugitives had made camp.

IN THE ETERNITY
of a few seconds that followed, Petronilla sat utterly still, numb. She opened her mouth, but could make no sound. She tried to stand, but her body wouldn’t move. She had once seen a hare rapt with terror, paralyzed, its eyes huge, watching its death advance in the shape of a nobleman’s hound.

Then, suddenly, involuntarily, her body did move. It began to shake uncontrollably.

She glanced back to where Alyce and the children lay sleeping, then swung her gaze again to the marching column of armed men—but in the blur between, one image lodged on her sight: the little stone church, bleared with moonlight diffused by the scudding clouds.

Slowly, an expression of comprehension blossomed across her face.

“If I trust myself,” she breathed, so low she could barely hear her own whisper among the shushings of the pines, “really trust
myself
—then what I choose to do … I be not caring how it looks. Not caring what anyone thinks.
Anyone
. If I really …”

She staggered to her feet and hastened, stepping lightly so as not to crack twigs underfoot, to the sheepskin bed. All was motionless, everyone sound asleep.

Still, even with so many others near, she could recognize her own child’s breathing, distinct from the rest. She followed its soft, even cadences to where Sara lay. Unable to see her in the dark but unwilling to risk waking anyone by groping for the little form, Petronilla crouched at the edge of the makeshift bed. There, helpless, unable to touch her daughter, she knelt on a cushion of pine needles, drinking in the rhythm of this sweet childish breathing—steady, delicate, fragrant as music.