The Fire in the Oaks: A Novel of St Patrick's Confession

by James Corkern

  ​It’s the same name, she says.

  ​I was told her story long ago by someone I knew, he says.

  ​Maybe what you have told us is just more stories, Dichu says.

  ​It isn’t.

  ​I like what he said last night, Etain says.

  ​Do you? Dichu looks at Padraig and then back to Etain. He strokes his beard.

  ​I do, she says. Think of it, Dichu. Our life right now, however long we live and however much we enjoy it, is on both sides surrounded by darkness. Like a little bird flying through our barn during a storm, the inside is safe from the weather. But as soon as he leaves the barn he’s again into the storm and lost from sight. It seems to me like Padraig promises us to show us what lies beyond the barn. And it sounds so wonderful. No more of the sacrifices.

  ​Perhaps, Dichu says. You don’t touch your food though, Padraig. Are you trying to insult us?

  ​Why would I be trying to insult you? You’re my host.

  ​Then eat our food, unless you have a geis, a taboo, against it.

  ​I have something like what you would call a geis. I haven’t yet celebrated the liturgy and I cannot eat before I do.

  ​What is this liturgy? Dichu asks.

  ​The celebration of God’s sacrifice. When he sacrificed his Son, in which we participate, beyond time. It’s the bloodless sacrifice of remembrance which will replace the bloody paganism of this land.

  ​Your god sacrificed his son? Dichu asks.

  ​He did, Padraig says. He didn’t take the sacrifices of his people’s children, but provided his own.

  ​Can we watch? Etain asks.

  ​You can if you wish, he says.

  ​What do you need for it?

  ​I have wine and I will need some bread and a suitable place to perform the ceremony in.

  ​Will our home not work? Dichu asks.

  ​It won’t, Padraig says. This place must be consecrated to God for this purpose. So once it has been used it will be unsuitable for anything else. I wouldn’t want to take from your home from you.

  ​What about the barn? Etain says after a moment.

  ​But we won’t have the barn anymore, Dichu says.

  ​We can make do, she says. Many people don’t have barns. And we can always have one built if have the need later on.

  ​The barn would do, Padraig says.

  ​They file from the house and watch him as he goes about the process of consecrating the barn, the place that will be his church. Oisin laughs as Padraig walks the barn and seems to talk to himself, but his parents hush him and the three of them watch in silence.

  ​Once he has finished he tells them that he will celebrate the liturgy and that they are welcome to watch though they may not fully participate. He says he will explain to them at points what is happening. They watch its progression silently as he orients himself away from them. In the barn he has built an altar and it is at the altar that he performs his rituals and he seems to sing to the sky. Dichu sees the sky is blue and clean that day and stands over the earth and the things in it. Padraig consecrates the bread and the wine and he tells them to bow and explains to them at the appropriate point that this is God himself presenting himself to them and those who are worthy eat of him and that he is joined with their spirit. For those who have ever only seen their gods consume, they are transfixed by the reversal.

  ​When he has finished they gather in front of him and all the defiance has gone out of Dichu’s eyes.

  ​We wish to follow God, Dichu says.

  ​And you will, Padraig says. And He will reward you for your obedience. We will set this land in order.

  ​Just tell us what we must do, Etain said.

  ​You say you are a chieftain, Padraig says, turning to Dichu.

  ​I am.

  ​Are there those you may rely on for military support?

  ​There are.

  ​Good. We’ll have need of them, I think. We will gain converts in the same way that you have decided to join me here, but there will also be those who oppose our work. Not only will there be enemies, but also there are horrible practices in this land. The sacrifice, the slavery. There are things which must be stopped. It’ll require violence in some cases, I think. It will help our cause if we can defend ourselves.

  ​I’ll be able to raise some to help. Though you will have to convince them. They are my men, but that doesn’t mean I have the power over them to make them fight for a God they do not believe in.

  ​I understand.

  ​What of me? Etain asks.

  ​Don’t fear Padraig says. God’s army isn’t one only made of warriors. Beyond here there are whole communities of people, woman and men, who live only to serve God. You will be able to serve God through aiding in my work, through helping those who need help, and any other ways we can think of to perform our mission here. Even young Oisin I think will be able to serve a purpose.

  ​What would you have me do? Dichu asks. What can be done now?

  ​I need for you to send for those men who you think will be most loyal to you. Soon everyone must bow before God, but be sure for now that you call upon men who you think will be open to receiving His word. We don’t want any of the oak-worshippers, the truly devout ones, to undo our plans before we can get them ready.

  ​I’ll send for them, then, Dichu says. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.

  ​Good, says Padraig. Now let us pray.

  ​Nine

  ​Padraig looks outside into the rain as it falls much as it has for the last three days. He is in the barn, Dichu’s barn, which is no longer a barn but the beginning of Padraig’s mission. All that would mark it as a barn has been removed from it and all that remains is the stone, which Padraig intends to decorate in the style of the churches on the continent. Another time he might even imagine what he could do with such a building, but he watches the rain.

  ​He watches the rain and listens to the murmuring behind him. Behind him Dichu talks with those men he considers to be reliable. They have been murmuring for some time and Padraig is growing bored with the rain. He only hears bits and pieces but he worries that his task may be even more difficult than he had anticipated.

  ​At last he can bear it no more and he walks back to the circle where they are talking.

  ​You’ve gone mad, one of them says to Dichu.

  ​He hasn’t, Padraig says. He has seen the truth of the one God and requests that you join him in bringing the truth to this blighted place.

  ​You say he has lived among us, the same man says still to Dichu. But he still isn’t one of us. He speaks the language and he mimics our appearance but he stands against our culture.

  ​Your culture, Padraig says. You stand at the fringes of the civilized world and you don’t even know it. Your most powerful chieftain is a peasant in the rest of the world. Your high kings are provincial tyrants. You offer your own kind into bondage and sacrifice to great demons of your own creation while you live like animals in the mud, and you dare to talk to me about culture.

  ​How dare he speak--

  ​Before the first of your miserable chieftains dared to call his lowly hill loftier than the identical ones around it, the Lord was there. Before your ancestors crawled away from the great hordes which drove them from a proper habitat to this place, the Lord was there. Before the pieces of wood you call gods or the mounds of dirt you call your otherworld were ever formed, the Lord was there. He stared into the darkness that proceeded all things and it was through his own power alone that all that is came to be. So how dare I speak? How dare you speak to me. He destroyed empires one hundred times as great as your greatest king and He did it before your ancestors paused long enough from their violation of sheep to take note of one another and procreate.

  ​A great cry goes up among the men. Dichu steps between them and Padraig before any of them can move further. He pushes Padraig back and motions the men to sit. When he and Padraig are near the door he speaks, but still plac
es himself between his guest and the room.

  ​What was that? he asks.

  ​I don’t have time for their petty troubles.

  ​You must have patience with these people. You’ll be lucky if they ever follow you now.

  ​We’ll find others.

  ​We won’t. Not if you turn them all away with insults. These are proud people whether you think they deserve their pride or not. What you are telling them is different from anything they’ve ever heard before and it is only natural they’re skeptical. You will get yourself, us, killed before we ever get started.

  ​But they are so tedious.

  ​Tedious to you because you are being impatient. These things take time. You came to me and you have me and my family with you. We are your people now. But you didn’t come to my door with insults and comments about my ancestors. Ancestors I share with these men, I might add. You talked to me of your god, of God, and you made me see that a wondrous new king had come to our land.

  ​Fine. Fine. You are right.

  ​Let’s try to smooth things over. Remember, we need them.

  ​We need them, Padraig says.

  ​The men still grumble among themselves when Padraig and Dichu return to their group.

  ​We’ve heard enough of him, one says to Dichu.

  ​I’m sorry my friends, Padraig says. I spoke harshly when I should have been more understanding. As our great God forgives us our transgressions we must learn to forgive one another. He in his perfection is able to forgive our wickedness and so we must follow however imperfectly in his example.

  ​What do you want to tell us, foreigner? the initial naysayer asks.

  ​In my time here in your land I have seen the sacrifices. Not all of them, and only to a smattering of your so-called gods, but the ones I have seen haven’t left my memory.

  ​You speak of the burnings, one says.

  ​I do. This can’t be the way you want your people to live. What a price to pay, and for what? A harvest? Protection from a tribe which is offering sacrifices of their own to counter yours?

  ​The oakseers are a convincing lot. And unlike you they are natives. Not some foreigner come to change our ways.

  ​Perhaps. You say they are the same as you and yet your own stories contradict this. They are the driven outcasts of those who would fail to rule this place, returned from the north with their witchcraft and trickery. That you would call such a people your own. Well. They’re convincing, as you say.

  ​You think they’re not with us?

  ​Of course they’re with you. As the cuckoo is with the nest of the bird it dashes onto the ground. In your own histories you come from across the seas, close to the land our Lord visited as man and God. Do you think your people, so close to the holy land, worshipped at the feet of dark magicians warped by the lands of ice and snow?

  ​We’re not what you say that we are.

  ​I don’t believe that you are. I think you are a people of the sun and you have been robbed of that by robed charlatans who would deprive you of the light.

  ​What do you mean?

  ​In the sacrifices I have seen, what shape is always present? What is drawn into the dirt? It is always this, Padraig says, tracing his finger through the dirt of the floor of the barn and scratching into it a crude sun.

  ​It’s the sun.

  ​What of it?

  ​When do you perform your sacrifices? In the dead of night, as far from the sun as possible. You may claim to worship the sun but all of your ritual hides you from it. You flee from its light like all the crawling things.

  ​But this is what I would bring you, Padraig says, drawing his finger first down and then side to side across the circle. I would show you that God is the light of the world, a light beyond what the sun could ever hope to be and made apparent through his presence as Christ on earth. Through Christ I bring to you the light and drive from this place the worship of the dark. Let the sun’s rays once again onto your faces. With your help we can cleanse the land of its sickness and heal the whole of your people.

  ​Why should we think your Christ can do this thing? one of them asks. Where are his exploits? How many men has he slain? Why should we follow someone who doesn’t even defend his own life?

  ​You think that he’s no warrior, Padraig says. How wrong you are. It is like saying a benevolent king has no might because he is not drenched in blood, his wars for conquest being long over. He led the armies of heaven and threw out the deceiver Satan. Which of your chieftains accomplished such a thing? Even upon his undefended death, as you call it, he stormed the dwelling of the dead and ripped asunder time.

  ​We have our own stories.

  ​You may have them but none of them are as grand as that of God incarnate. You looking upon the Son of God as weak is like an earwig thinking you weak because you don’t smash it under your foot. If you spare such a creature’s life are you weak? Is your compassion or even your disinterest a lack of ability?

  ​The men murmur and this time they sound more favorable in their conservation.

  ​You know how I feel about the gods, Dichu says. I agree with Padraig. He is foreign, but he has brought to us another way. He’s lived among our people. Are we not ourselves from another land? Do our own stories not speak of our people coming across the seas, inhabiting this land?

  ​Again the men murmur their assent.

  ​And who did our ancestors take this land from? Dichu asks. From the things we now bow to, the things we offer our children to for their favor. What madness is that? That we should through our own strength inherit this land only to become enslaved by the darkness we took it from. What sense does it make?

  ​Padraig looks at Dichu and the assembled men. Where there was fear and anger there is now a different sort of anger, anger not at him and his foreignness, but at the new enemy Dichu has given them.

  ​This man, Dichu says, has come to give us our freedom. He sees that we have the power within us to be free of our oppressors. Padraig has shown me that our land is held captive by these false gods and their vile servants, and through his message we may be liberated. It’s time we were free.

  ​Ten

  ​The man yawns and scratches. Spitting, he looks out at the twilight sky and the still-dark plains, and then by a boulder he relieves himself. He is passed his middle-age and relieving himself is not as easy as it was and he mutters curses until he is finished.

  ​He notices that his fellow raiders haven’t yet risen and he curses them, too. They have far to travel and the longer they wait the less progress they will be able to make. Less progress means less payment, or payment with less frequency which amounts to the same thing. The men, women, and children bound and sleeping in a huddle in the center of the camp are not awake either, though he suspects some of them didn’t sleep at all during the night and are watching him now through slitted eyes.

  ​He hears some rustling nearby and turns to look at the grass. He sees nothing. He catches movement in his peripheral vision. He turns to investigate, but whatever was there is now gone.

  ​Looking around the camp, he notices a figure crouching behind one of his fellow slavers. The man has a wild look which is only enhanced by the smeared mud and plant material on his body. Like something crawled out of the bog, he stands threateningly behind the unaware slaver. There is a knife in his hand.

  ​The man’s cry of warning turns into a rasping escape of air through his teeth as something slams into him with such force that he stumbles. He looks down. There the wooden shaft of a javelin protrudes from just to the side of the center. He shuffles around to face the source of his attack before another catches him only inches from the first and he falls to his knees, and the grass seems to swarm toward him.

  ​As the man dies, the hidden attackers surround the raiders’ camp and Padraig watches their work from the trees. By now many of the raiders are reacting, the assailants no longer having the element of surprise. The slavers try to form a circle, cryin
g out to each other in the midst of the bloodshed. They point to potential targets as they spot the wild men flitting from cover to cover. But the attackers’ aim is true and their javelins are plentiful and they manage to dispatch those who remain with little trouble. The last of the raiders gazes wide-eyed on the dead around him and reaches for one of their weapons. He takes only a step before a javelin pierces through his abdomen, his hand pulling his body through the soil before a club comes down upon his skull and finishes him. The sun reddens the sky above the slain and there is not among them one of Padraig’s men.

  ​Padraig, Dichu, and several men approach the camp now that it is deemed safe. The captives’ ropes are cut, their arms and wrists and legs are rubbed, and the prisoners stretch themselves while staring at the warriors.

  ​My people, Padraig says to them. Don’t be afraid. We aren’t here to take you from those who would sell you into servitude. We’ve come to set you free.

  ​Free, one of the men repeats.

  ​All of you are free. You are slaves to no one. You owe us nothing. We have set you free so that you may know that the one true God has come to your land. The old ways are dead. They displease Him and will be struck from the earth.

  ​The true God? another asks.

  ​Don’t worry, Padraig says. He smiles. The True God will be explained to you further once we have traveled from here. We will need to leave this place and go to where it’s safe. You’ll have time to learn about us once we’re there.

  ​I don’t want to go, one man says. He is thin like a starved dog and looks like old moss.

  ​We must go, Padraig says.

  ​You said we are free now. If we are free then we don’t need to go with you. We’re free to go where we want.

  ​Padraig looks the man over. Some of the other slaves, some of the other former slaves, are looking between the two of them. None of them move in any direction. Padraig smiles.

  ​Of course. None of you have to go with us. You’re free to do what you want. We only offer you the safety of our stronghold and the ability to learn about God- He who will drive the darkness from this place and deliver your people, as He delivered you today. Those of you who wish to go with us are welcome to do so. Those of you who wish to take your chances in the wilderness are also welcome to do so. I can’t imagine these dead men had many friends and we can hope they had little family, so you have a good chance of escaping even without our help.