Sacrifice (19 page)

“It must have been a gang of thugs from the eastern clans,” I said. “They attacked a druid because of the murders of their kinswomen. My grandmother was an easy target.”

“Is there anything left of her home?” Dari asked.

“No. It's just a charred ruin now. They even killed her cow.”

Sister Anna knelt by Grandmother's bed and prayed, then kissed her on the cheek and stood up.

“The western clans will have already heard about your grandmother,” said Sister Anna. “She is highly respected among them. They won't let this go unanswered.”

“Saoirse's Christian clan is just over the plain to the east of the monastery,” I said.

“I imagine it was some of their young men who did this to your grandmother,” the abbess said. “They're probably preparing for battle now.”

“As we said before, a battle between two clans will quickly lead to full tribal war,” Father Ailbe said.

“Yes,” the abbess replied, “and Kildare sits in the middle of the plain between east and west. If it comes to war, it will happen here. We must prepare ourselves.”

“Are we going to fight for the eastern clans?” Dari asked.

“Of course not,” Sister Anna said. “But we are going to defend ourselves. The king will withdraw his men from here to fight if war comes. We must be ready to hold these walls on our own. Dari, go tell the sisters and brothers to arm themselves. I don't want us to kill anyone, but I will not let this monastery be destroyed.”

Dari and Sister Anna left. I sat down next to Grandmother's bed with Father Ailbe and held her hand. She looked so frail. I had lost my father before I was born and my mother when I was a young child. My grandmother had raised me and was the only family I had ever known. The thought of losing her was terrifying.

“Deirdre, there's nothing more you can do for her,” Father Ailbe said. “I promise I'll take good care of her and send word if anything changes.”

“How can I leave her, Abba?”

“I know it's hard, but your grandmother would be the first to say that you have important work to do. Many people are going to die if war comes—and you may be the only one who can stop it.”

I nodded and wiped my eyes.

“I should go to the western clans and try to talk them out of retaliating, if it isn't already too late. They might listen to me. What do you think is going to happen?”

He sighed deeply.

“My child, I wish I knew. It's like the story of Pandora's jar. Once evil has escaped into this world, it's very difficult to get it back under control. War and hatred feed on fear and anger, and there's plenty of that on all sides.”

“Who do you think will win?”

“No one wins a war, Deirdre. But if I had to guess, I would say the king and the eastern clans will be victorious in the end. However, the cost to the tribe will be so great that we may all end up losing everything.”

I kissed him and my grandmother, put my harp in its case, and left my sword in the infirmary. I then hurried from the monastery toward the stronghold of Brion, leader of the western clans.

As I climbed the path and came at last over the highest point on the trail, I saw smoke rising in the valley below me and knew that I was too late. I heard the wailing of women in the distance and started to run. In a large field beyond the forest in the valley, I saw a sight I will never forget. There were perhaps two dozen men lying on the ground, most dead but a few still barely moving. There had been a battle here not more than an hour ago. It must have been one of the eastern clans on their way west to attack one of Brion's outlying farmsteads. But the western men must have gotten word of their plans and been lying in wait for them in the forest.

The dead and dying men were all naked, having been stripped of their weapons, jewelry, and clothing by the victors. A few who must have been the leaders had been decapitated and their heads taken as trophies. Everywhere the ground was stained with blood.

The women who had followed the men on the raid were wives, sisters, and mothers, now mourning the fallen and caring for the wounded. There was no time to feel pity or even think. I quickly ran to help a young man who was still alive. An older woman who must have been his mother was kneeling next to him. He had been stabbed in the chest with a spear and had a large sucking wound. His mouth was full of blood as he struggled to breathe, but there was nothing I could do.
Mercifully, just as I turned to grab some rags out of my satchel, he rolled his head to the side and died with his eyes wide open.

I moved to the next man, who was lying on the ground while a young woman, probably his wife, knelt over him. She was trying to stop the bleeding from a sword that had slashed his right arm just above the elbow all the way through the bone. She had done a good job, but the wound required a new tourniquet that I applied by twisting a strip of cloth tightly with a stick. I had seen wounds like this before and told her I would need to amputate if he were going to live, though I knew he might die in any case. She nodded numbly and began to build a small fire next to him as I instructed her. If Father Ailbe had been there, he could have given the man a sedative herb and used his saw to take the arm off quickly, but all I had was my knife.

When the fire was ready, I staked his injured arm to the ground with a rope, placed the blade in the fire to heat, and told the woman to hold him down tightly no matter what happened. Hoping the man would stay unconscious, I began to cut through his flesh. He awoke immediately and began to scream. Fortunately, the sword had done most of the work for me so that all I had to do was slice through what remained of the tissue holding his arm to his body. He screamed even louder when I took a bundle of burning sticks from the fire and held them underneath the severed stump to cauterize the wound. I told his wife to keep the tourniquet tight, then I moved on to the next man. I tried not to think about the fact that these may have been the same men who had attacked my grandmother.

By late afternoon, the survivors had been loaded onto carts and taken back to the east. There were not enough people to see to the dead, so they were left unburied in the field. Unable to bear the stench of the rotting flesh on a summer's day, I walked about half a mile away and sat beneath a willow tree
by a stream. In the distance, I could hear ravens flocking to the feast.

I wanted to cry, scream, or curse God, but it wouldn't do any good. All I could do was sit beneath the tree and try to breathe. I had sung before kings many times about the glory of war, about Irish warriors fighting to the death in heroic combat; I had always loved the stories of Greeks slaying their enemies before the walls of Troy; but I had never seen the aftermath of a real battle with my own eyes—the dead lying in dark red mud, the broken bodies, the shattered lives. There was nothing heroic about any of it.

I knew now that war was inevitable. The eastern clans would not forgive this attack. The king would have to side against the western clans. Word would have reached him already and he would have withdrawn his men from the monastery by now. He would need every warrior he had in the coming fight.

But there was still one nun in danger of being brutally murdered, still one sacrifice to perform. I knew the killer would not stop because there was war. The war would in fact make it easier for him. Who would care about a single nun when so many men would soon be dying?

I knew then that my place was at the monastery. I was no longer a sister of holy Brigid, but I would not leave my friends to face a killer or an army without me.

I ran back over the hills and through the forest to Kildare, my harp at my side. I could see the brothers and sisters on the walls of the monastery as I drew near. The king had indeed withdrawn his men.

As I got to the gate, Sister Garwen came running to me.

“Deirdre, Deirdre! They're gone!”

“Yes, Garwen, I can see the soldiers are gone. Don't worry. We'll be all right. I'm going to stay here. I can fight as well as any man.”

“No, no, not the soldiers.”

She was so frantic that she could barely speak.

“What are you talking about, then?”

“Riona and Dari. We can't find them anywhere. They're gone.”

“What do you mean?” I shouted. “When did you see them last? Are you sure they're not here?”

I was shaking Garwen to get her to calm down and answer me, but it was no use. Kevin and three of the sisters ran out of the gate. Sister Anna and Father Ailbe were close behind.

“They were here for midday meal about six hours ago,” Kevin said, “just after you left. Then word arrived from the king, withdrawing all the soldiers. There was so much commotion with all the guards leaving that it was hard to know who was going where. We collected our weapons and were all on the walls an hour later, but Riona and Dari could have left before that without anyone seeing them. We've searched every corner of the monastery. They're not here.”

“But how could anyone force them both out of the monastery at the same time in broad daylight?” I demanded.

“We don't know,” said Sister Anna. “The back gate is still chained shut. They must have gone out the front. One of the guards as he was leaving said he might have seen two nuns heading into the woods to the west, but he wasn't sure.”

“Were they alone?” I asked.

“He didn't know.”

“I'm going to find them,” I said.

“I'll go with you,” said Kevin.

“No,” I insisted. “You're needed here. You're the best fighter we have. If anyone attacks Kildare, there are going to be more than just two nuns in danger. I'm going to find this monster myself and kill him before he can hurt Dari or Riona.”

I handed my harp to Father Ailbe to watch for me. Then I hugged him quickly, got my sword from the infirmary, and ran down the path to the west.

It was already growing dark, but I found two sets of footprints leading down a side path from the main trail. The footprints were far apart and deep, so I knew both women were running. I was relieved to see that there was not a third person with them, but I couldn't imagine why they would run off by themselves into the forest when there was still a madman on the loose. And why wouldn't they tell anyone where they were going? I had a terrible feeling that they were heading into a trap.

I followed the tracks for several miles through thick forests of elm and ash until I reached a small clearing. It was night now, but the stars were bright in the sky. I could see the comet Sinann had discovered near the constellation of the Great Bear to the north. Its red tail had grown longer and more menacing in the last few days.

On top of a low hill about a mile away I saw the flicker of a fire. I had been on that hill before. It was a druid temple used by the western clans of our tribe for sacrifices on holy days. The sacred places of the Order were not made of stone like those of the Greeks and Romans, but were walled enclosures of interlacing boughs about the height of a man and perhaps a hundred feet across. They were open to the sky and aligned with the rising of the sun on the summer or winter solstice. There were no stone statues inside, but some temples had rough wooden images of gods and goddesses carved on standing logs. There was always an altar for animal sacrifice on the northern side of the enclosures, but most of the interior was open space for the gathering of worshipers. The first travelers from the Mediterranean world who had visited our island centuries ago found these temples unimpressive and concluded that we
were a barbarian people without any religious sensibility. They associated serious worship of the gods with elaborate architecture and grand marble images covered in gold. For the Irish, it was just the opposite. True religious devotion was a matter of a simplicity of communion between humans and the divine.

I began to run in long strides up the hill toward the temple. When I grew close to the top, I slowed and took my sword from my belt. The single wooden gate to the temple area was shut and there was no sound coming from inside. I walked silently to the gate and eased up the latch. I pushed the gate open just a few inches and saw a small fire burning near the altar. With my sword ready, I entered the enclosure.

I couldn't see anyone at first, but then at the far end of the temple I saw a large wicker cage surrounded by firewood and a person in the robes of a nun slumped on the ground inside. It was Dari.

At that moment I felt something hard strike me on the head from behind. I staggered and struggled to keep my balance, but then I fell on my back beneath the altar. The last thing I remembered was the stars shining in the sky and a figure in black standing over me. Then everything was darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Four

W
hen I woke up, it was still dark. The first thing I remember feeling was surprise that I was alive.

My head was throbbing and I couldn't move. I was sitting tied to a post next to the wicker cage. Dari was still asleep, unconscious, or dead, I couldn't tell which. She had the same calm look on her face as the other victims. I looked around but couldn't see anyone else. I called out to Dari, but there was no answer.