Magdalen Rising (13 page)

S
O THIS ISN'T YOUR idea of how you'd dispose of your disposable income? Down votive wells, earth shafts, into sacred springs and lakes? And if you are thinking that the druids helped themselves to these soggy sacrifices on the quiet, you're wrong. What went down did not come up. The Celts were banking with and on the gods.

Of course there may have been a worldly as well as Otherworldly aspect to this ritual, not so different from your own practice of conspicuous consumption. You buy a Mercedes Benz at least in part so that other people know you can. Therefore, murmurs of awe and envy followed a Brigante chieftain as he drove a bronze-fitted war chariot along the crowd's edge towards the waiting druids. The chariot was drawn by a beautiful mare, so sleek and black that she looked like a horse-shaped piece of night. Behind the chariot processed tribesmen and women, some wearing helmets plated with gold. One strikingly handsome woman was cloaked in a mantle of her own heavy, black hair, one white streak running through the length of it. She carried a huge, bronze-backed mirror swirling with delicate, asymmetrical designs. I could imagine her placing it in the Lady's fingers.

The drum beats built in intensity as the procession of Brigantes drew nearer the druids, then ceased abruptly when they finally came to a halt. The ancient druid stood still with his arms spread in a gesture of receiving, but his eyes seemed unfocused on the foreground.

Three other druids stepped forward to make an appraisal of the offerings and, no doubt, to file in their archival memories precisely who had given what. Flanked by two others, one grizzled, one the skinny druid who'd made announcements, stood the druid with the fox-red beard. Foxface, I named him. His fellow appraisers made their assessments of the chariot and other offerings quickly, as if the examination was a mere formality. But Foxface refused to be rushed. With his eyes narrowed, the loose flesh beneath them puckered into folds. He looked older and more severe. It unnerved me to think of him turning the full force of his critical attention on my bracelets and torque. At last, he nodded. The whole crowd let out its breath. I felt flooded with vicarious relief.

But wait! There seemed to be some dispute about the horse. After she'd made her offering, the woman with the streaked hair had slipped through the ranks to the chariot. While the druids were busy appraising the mirror, she had apparently undone the horse's harness. Now she held the horse's reins while her kinsmen exhorted her, and the druids conferred in a triple knot. One large man made a lunge for the reins. The horse reared and screamed, and everyone backed out of range—except the woman. When the horse's hooves plunged back to the earth, she flung herself on its back. Her voice rose above everyone else's, ringing through the air that had suddenly stilled as if it, too, wanted to hear.

“I told you, arseholes!” She spoke in P-Celtic but with a strong Hibernian accent, which meant she was not a Brigante by birth. “This mare belongs to the goddess Macha! And when Macha wants her, she'll whistle. Till then she's in my keeping. No fecking way am I going to see her throat slit to make the Brigantes look good. Or to please Our Lady of the Bog. What do you know about the Lady anyway, you druids. You
men.”

She spat the words. Then, without warning, she charged the druid trio, grabbing the bronze mirror out of Foxface's hands. She held it over her head and brandished it, scattering shards of refracted light through the crowd.

“See? I am giving her my grandmother's mirror, who had it from her grandmother, who had it from Goibnu, Brigid's own smith. If that's not good enough for the Bog Lady, then feck her, too. And she'll receive it from my own hand or not at all.”

With that, she turned her horse and galloped towards the water's edge. A moment later, we heard a smacking splash as the mirror went in broadside. I waited for her to ride back to her kinsfolk. Instead, she urged her horse forward into the water. All around me people began to exclaim and speculate until the white-bearded druid raised his arms and spoke.

“The Lady has taken the mare and the mirror and the woman into the bargain. She will not be cheated of her due.”

Not yet under the full sway of druid authority, I thought differently. Surely the woman with the comet streak in her hair belonged to the Otherworld and could come and go through veils of water at will. In the silence that followed, I thought I heard a horse whinny in the distance. It dawned on me that there might be a simpler explanation.

Before any of us could give the matter much thought, the archdruid (for so he was) lowered his arms, now with palms down—a gesture I was to witness again and again that night—signaling that a sacrificial offering was complete.

I'm afraid I must tell you that, after this dramatic beginning, the rite became as routine as passing the collection plate in church or standing in line for a communion wafer.
Tuath
after
tuath
came forward to offer riches. Once they were pronounced satisfactory, the druids carried them to the lake, then—
splash
! The drums followed the same pattern: escalating beat for the procession, silence for judgment, then something like a circus drum roll for a high-dive act as the goods were given the old heave-ho. Over and over: the same motions, the same gorgeous junk presented, the same conclusion. Even Foxface's eyes glazed over after a while.

I was not used to sitting passively through long rituals. I was also exhausted after the day's sail and the excitement of arrival, but, of course, I could not possibly admit that to myself. I just stared and stared, widening my eyes to keep them from closing. Do you know how it is when a repeated word loses its meaning and becomes mere sound? It was like that with the scene before me. The torches became blurs of light; the faces and figures, not human, just arbitrary arrangements of meaningless motion; the gleam of jewels and weapons, erratic flashes of brightness. Light, dark, mass, space: I had stumbled upon the principle of abstraction. In another moment, I slumped to the ground, fast asleep.

I don't know how long I slept. It could have been ten minutes or two hours. When I opened my eyes—

He is there, my brother, my other. He is standing beneath the tree of golden leaves. His eyes are dark as the earth is dark. His skin is dark with the brightness of gold shining through. But something is wrong. His mouth, his beautiful, tender mouth is frowning in a way that closes the rest of his face. Suddenly I know. He is missing me. I am meant to be standing with him under the tree of golden leaves, with the snakes—I see them now—twining in the branches above us. The male and the female. Trembling, I rise to my feet and take a step towards him.

Then someone yanked my cloak, and I came all the way awake—or what the world calls awake. Who is to say that what I had just seen was any less real than what I saw now?

He was indeed standing in the center next to the carved staff, my own Appended One. At last, it seemed, we were in the same place at the
same time. I could barely contain my joy and might have rushed forward, except that now I could also see the four druids, the three appraisers and the ancient one, standing behind him debating with another man. The newcomer was wearing a tunic in a shade of hot blue—which you might call neon—trimmed with gold braid. He didn't look like a warrior. If he were, he would have been fined for his overflowing belly. His arms and neck could not have supported one more ounce of gold. He was so bedecked that I swear if there was an ornament for the asshole he would have been the first to sport it.

“Maeve!” someone hissed, yanking so hard at my cloak that I had to bend my knees or lose my balance. “What on earth do you mean by running off without telling us where you were going!”

Fand and Boann had found me. Each latched on to one of my arms.

“Ssh! Please!” I pleaded. “I've got to hear this!”

The argument surrounding my foster brother escalated. Their voices rose; my hearing sharpened. Foxface, I later learned, spent much of his time addressing large crowds. His were the first words I caught.

“It is not customary to make the Great Sacrifice except at dire need, and then only in a Quinquennial year, which this is not. Nor can such sacrifice be made on the spur of the moment. There are procedures that must be followed.”

“The burnt piece of barley cake and what not,” put in the concave druid helpfully.

“Not that we don't appreciate your generous offer of this fine young man as the supreme sacrifice,” the grey-bearded druid hastened to add.

Sacrifice! What sacrifice? But I knew, and so do you. So here we are. My cosmic other and me. The first time we manage to get ourselves on the same patch of earth and he's a candidate for human sacrifice. Should that have been a warning to me? Unbidden, the image rose of the pool in Bride's valley; I remembered the skull I'd held between my hands and fought a wave of nausea. I had to keep my wits about me.

I searched my foster brother's face to see if he understood what—and who—was at stake. Either he was holding himself aloof or he didn't know the language. Then again, maybe he was drugged. I waited, crouched and ready to spring to his defense.

Now the archdruid began to make slow, ruminative noises, as if he were bringing something up from the deep, digestive recesses of himself, rolling it around in his brain, chewing it with his teeth to activate
its juices. Before he could make whatever profound pronouncement he was readying, the man in hot blue lost his temper.

“I say that's what's wrong with druidism today!” He appealed to the crowd, making the most of center stage while he had it. And whether or not his sacrifice was accepted, he'd gone the Brigantes, with their war chariot and escaped mare, one better. “It's gone all wishy-washy and namby-pamby. All form and no substance. All gloss and no guts. All bluster and no blood. All sauce and no sacrifice.”

Foxface was getting seriously annoyed, but he didn't interrupt the man. No doubt, like everyone else, he was curious to see how long Hot Blue could sustain the alliteration.

“All dithering and no death. All bondage and no bodies. All chopped liver and no chopped heads.”

He hesitated, confused by his own conclusion. Anachronism has that effect.

“But can you present a reason,” demanded Foxface, “other than the satisfaction of your own blood lust, why this sacrifice should take place now?”

“Why? I should think you could tell me why. That's your department, you druids. Me? I'm just a humble merchant. You don't think things have gone from bad to worse? Who am I to tell you? Maybe it's okay with you that we have to pay toll to the Romans on all our goods going to Gaul and beyond.”

Now Hot Blue had everyone's attention, especially Foxface's. I didn't know it then, but Foxface was considered the foremost expert on the Roman question.

“Maybe you don't mind that there are spies everywhere trying to find out the secret locations of our gold and tin mines. Here in the Holy Isles we pride ourselves on our independence. Oh, how much fiercer and cleverer we are than the conquered tribes of Gaul. But I tell you, the Romans don't have to send armies to invade us. They've already bought us. Even now, in the South, there are whole settlements of Roman merchants. Not only do we tolerate them, we mimic them! Some of us are so worried about not looking like savages and headhunters, we're getting downright Romanized. As if the Romans didn't hunt heads, just like everyone else, before they got so sissified with their cities and their swanky sewer systems. Why, the Romans don't know how to take a good honest shit in the woods anymore. And pretty soon we won't either. Is that what you want, you druids!”

Hot Blue had the crowd eating out of his hand. Shouts of “Hear! Hear! Tell it like it is!” erupted when he paused for breath.

“I say we're neglecting our gods, that's what. Now our gods may not know much about so-called civilization, but they know what they like. Time was when it was routine to offer a dozen slaves at a time to the Old Girl. How do you think our grandfathers and great grandfathers beat back Julius Caesar? If the gods are gonna fight on our side, I say we gotta feed 'em.

“And as for oracles, sure you've got your raven croaks and your crane wings, your scattered bread crumbs and your magpies. But when was the last time you plunged a bright blade into a man's flesh and marked how he fell? When was the last time you read the entrails? These are our traditions, and we're losing them. Mark my words, the gods notice. And they're getting hungry.”

To my amazed horror, the man's argument did not sound as absurd to everyone else as it did to me. I mean, I may not know much about sacrifice, but even I could see that Hot Blue was wearing his weight in gold. None of his wealth appeared to be on offer. Just someone else's life. What a bargain. But the crowd, the big, jolly holiday crowd I earlier joined so happily, was now striking up a Celtic rendition of “Gimme that Old Time Religion.”

I had to do something. I shook myself free of my mothers and got to my feet. Over a deafening chorus—“If it's good enough for grandpa it's good enough for me!”—I shouted at the top of my lungs in Aramaic:

“Yeshua ben Miriam! Get the hell out of here! Now!”

He heard me. I called again as he looked around for the Aramaic-hollering voice. Our eyes met. For a moment everything else disappeared, all sight, all sound. There was only him, me, the bright air between us.

Then—