Regardless of your impertinence, I will allow you to continue your religious teachings here. As far as the slavery issue is concerned, we will just have to deal with that when we finally clash. I have told you what my terms are.
And I mine.
If I find you have violated them there will be dire consequences. I leave that decision in your hands. You may leave, Loegaire says, but after a second of consideration he speaks again.
I will provide an escort to take you back to where you were found. It would be a shame to bring you out all this way and then have something happen to you.
It would be, Coirpre says with a smile.
Go get him an escort, Loegaire says.
As you wish, sire, Coirpre says.
Oh, and one last thing, Padraig, Loegaire says.
What is it? Padraig asks. Coirpre grimaces.
The time of fires comes soon. In my lands, the lands in which you dwell, there will be only my own fire. You will do nothing to impede it or compete with it or you will face my displeasure.
As you say, Padraig says.
The escort is not the same men as those who took him to the camp in the first place. There is none of the urgency in the return home and at several points Padraig even has to insist on their resuming so that he is returned according to his own schedule, the king’s being already satisfied.
His foreignness openly traded at this point, he suspects, the men speak in their native tongue until they realize his fluency. They then switch to a tongue of mutters and halfwhispers. All of them are disheveled and several of them are variously wounded, superficially, and he thinks that his clothes and clean appearance do nothing to ingratiate him with the men. He is not their king nor one of their king’s men, and yet he was at the battle and is untainted by blood and dirt and sweat.
Fourteen
Padraig’s escorts leave him at the hill overlooking Dairine’s religious community. They are morose throughout the journey, thinking only of the looting that their comrades are engaging in while they are away guarding some troublemaker. Padraig is relieved that they let him complete the journey on his own, their silent anger making the whole affair unpleasant. There is also the prospect of being back among his own people, away from the king and his ominous threats and the malicious Coirpre.
As he gets closer he is spotted by the laborers and Dairine comes out to greet him.
Padraig, she says. You’re returned to us. I prayed for your safe return, but I feared the worst.
I’m surprised, too, he says. The king is not what I expected.
I’ve known his kind before.
You’ve met him?
Once, she says. I told you that I am from one of the better families of this place. We have our connections. He is like a thousand who have come before him and a thousand who will follow. They give lipservice to their dynasty, but really only care about now.
The oakseers encourage them in this, I think, Padraig says. Between their gods and their corporeal rewards, they don’t understand the possibilities of heaven, of unification with God.
Perhaps, she says, shrugging. He let you go, though.
He was impressed with me, I suppose. Or not. Maybe not impressed with me, but content that I was not what he feared. I’m not sure which. At any rate he left me to my own devices.
What did he want?
To see if I was dangerous to his reign.
Are you?
That depends on him. It seems that for the time being he decided that I was not. Good news for me, at least for now.
I suppose it is, she says.
It allows me to continue my work. All I need is for my work to be far enough along that it makes no difference whether I live or die. Then it won’t matter what happens to me; I can change this place and my own death will do nothing to stop that change. It is a longer game than the king’s, I think, but it will be worthwhile in the end.
You must be tired, Dairine says.
I am.
Go rest.
I can’t rest, Padraig says.
Why not?
The time of the resurrection approaches. What the Jews called Passover. Soon we’ll celebrate the resurrection of Christ after his Crucifixion. There are preparations to make.
Surely our community can help you with your preparations.
Padraig smiles.
Of course you can help, but still there is much to do and there will be much to do on the day itself.
What will we need to do?
There will be worship, of course, but also I think I have something special planned outside of our normal liturgical celebration.
And what would that be?
We will have a fire. A bonfire. I will gather the faithful and unfaithful alike around it and I will teach to them so that more can be converted and the converted may grow in their faith.
Dairine’s face loses its color as she regards Padraig.
When is this- what is it?
The Paschal season. What I think you would call Caisc.
And when it is it celebrated?
This year it will be on the Lord’s day, in a fortnight or so.
Dairine’s expression does not improve.
What? Why are you looking at me like that?
Your, our, celebration would fall at the same time as the time of the great fire.
What of it?
Only the druids or the noble may light the great fire. What you do will be seen as antagonism toward their ways.
They will see what they see.
So you do it on purpose?
If you say so.
I thought you said the king found you not to be dangerous.
I do believe it.
So why do this?
Because he is wrong. He saw weakness where there is strength. A servant cannot serve two masters.
You will turn him against us.
Padraig’s face darkens and he nods impatiently.
Enough. I have traveled far and I need to eat.
Of course, Dairine says, a hint of anger in her voice. Follow me.
They walk toward the cluster of buildings forming the center of the walled community. Padraig looks at the men and women at work.
Your progress comes so quickly, he says. In just the time I have been gone, so much has been done.
It has, she says. We should be finished ahead of schedule.
What you are doing here will serve as a model to all who wish to live similarly, he says.
It isn’t one of our meal times right now, but we can bring you something from the kitchen if you give us some time, Dairine says, pointing to the newly erected kitchen sitting some ways off from the other buildings.
That will be fine. Do you have quarters prepared for me?
We do. Past the well over there is the granary- if you walk past it you will find the building you will stay in. You are welcome to stay as long as you want.
Thank you. Bring my food when possible. Please.
Padraig follows the path Dairine indicated and admires all the work that has gone into the construction of the community. In their different quarters, separated by the communal buildings in the center, the religious go about their days, men and women risen out of their former lives to create something new in his adopted home.
In the distance, over the half-completed walls, clouds gather.
Fifteen
They stand on the hill around him. It is here that he has lit the fire. The sun has set and the fire sprawls its light across their faces. In the light, Padraig is something come in from the desert, an ancient wanderer anachronistically set into this land of pagan greenery.
The fire burns, he says. The fire burns in honor of the Risen Christ whose season is upon us. The fire burns in defiance of those who would have it not burn. Those who would stifle what I hav
e come to you to say out of their own stubborn fear and this fire before you is a thorn to them. They who would quell the fire within you. They who see the life inside you and cower in fear, clinging to their dead things and their dark spaces and the impotent corpses they worship. Man is a weak and powerless thing and yet they worship that which has no power over man, whether stone or corpse or demon. You though may know the power of the one true God.
It’s said that your God is three, someone says.
He is not my God but the God, and he is one and three. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All are one and each other and yet they are distinct.
I don’t understand, the same one says.
It is like a clover, says another. The one leaf branches into three divisions.
It is not, Padraig says. The clover is one. Its shape, the three branches of one shape, are not one in three but one.
Like water, then. Ice and liquid water and the steam that rises from water over heat or from the morning sun over the icy loughs, says another.
Again, they are not, Padraig says. They are one as all men are one, all of us sharing together our essential humanity. Unlike humanity, however, all that one of the Person does the others do, so that we may say that they are united in operation. But lest this unite them unrecognizably, let us reflect on that they are each unique in their cause. The Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten, the Spirit proceeds, so that we find in the end the truth of their triune relationship.
The crowd looks on as he speaks. The fire crackles. The embers are dancers beneath a lake of flame.
Why have I come to you? Padraig asks.
To speak riddles, one says.
The only riddle is why living men would worship the unmoving dead, Padraig replies.
It is said your God is dead. Killed. What use have we of a dead god?
He’s not dead, but the Risen Lord. He allowed himself to be killed so that he might provide us with eternal life in His Loving Memory. He, who didn’t deserve to die, died so that we might continue onward.
Deserve to die?
For our transgressions. We all in our lives cause displeasure to Our Lord through our sin. Since our sin is the reason we must die he has provided us a means to continue on after death.
We continue on already. Upon our death we may go with those in the mounds.
You deceive yourself. Those in your earthen graves are nothing more than deceivers, demons, in league with our great enemy. You would be slaves to those who seek to control you and lead you to your ruin. I offer you the loving friendship of the one true God. I have seen with my own eyes your barbarisms. I have lived among you more than you know and I know of what your supposed gods command and in what esteem they hold you. My God, the God, asks only for obedience and love, obedience following love. This is less even than your powerless false gods. God does not require your children or your slaves or your livestock. He doesn’t rejoice in your death, doesn’t want to hasten it with spilling your blood. He has spilled His own blood so that you might live with Him for eternity.
So you say, another speaks, crude clothes almost hiding his tattoos. And you are strong enough with your words here in the light of your fire surrounded by many. You are strong enough to speak out against those who could undo you. But let us see how strong you are when you can’t hide in the night from those you attack with your words. There is, not far from here, one of our supposed false gods. The blood of many has been spilled in his honor and whole armies and kings have been undone in his presence. Show us your power over such a being if you are so mighty. Let’s see your bravery on the Plain of Prostration.
I know of the abomination you mention, Padraig says. Your bloody, crooked god. You speak with your arrogance thinking even one as terrible as he would have any power here, but his power is nothing compared to that of the true God. Using only my staff I could smite him in the name of my Lord.
Let us see you do it then, the man says.
In the name of God, I will, Padraig says.
The challenge is out of his mouth and it hangs in the air. The people watch him and wait for him to give a sign of his intentions.
Where is this place? he asks the crowd. I have heard of it before, but have never visited. I would see this false idol so that it may be destroyed.
It’s near here, someone in the crowd says. Over that hill and across the plain, the same one says while indicating the direction.
Then let us travel there. You will all be witnesses to the power of God.
Padraig sets out first in the direction of their god, and behind him the crowd follows.
They gather in the field, around the stone and bronze figures which guard the rock in their midst, inlaid in gold and silver. It sits hunched and bearded in the style of those who worship it, its figure carved into the stone. Crossed arms accept those offered to it. As soon as the thing is in sight the people grow quieter, readying themselves for the presence of their terrible idol.
There is a cold breeze. The wind whips his hair around like torn cloth. Tigernmas, he thinks. It has been centuries but anniversaries ignore years. Only days are important. He wonders if this was the weather when the four thousand died. Would he die? Undoubtedly. But here? Now? His crozier in hand, he bends to inspect one of the sentinels. Idols. The weather reminds him of a day long before.
The crowd’s patience is now gone on this plain of death and blood. His followers moved behind him as if to provide a shield. There are jeers now from those who would stop him, but he ignores their taunts. Their words might as well be lost on the wind. He is old enough now to know the proper time for things. Soon, but not yet. He kneels in the grass in front of the idols. It is not the kneeling of the supplicant, for it is not done in their fashion. His allegiance is to one greater and it is that One to which he offers his voice. Man is weak. Man is subject to failure. If he is to do this thing, to achieve his purpose, he cannot proceed alone as mere man. This is the place that takes men, the Hibernian plain of Moloch. Like a rain drop unaided, he is worth less than a remark. With the storm behind him he can be a torrent, and so he gathers his strength.
He no longer fears death--for what is there to fear in martyrdom--but he recognizes that his first introduction to their land was in shackles and there is nothing preventing him from being returned to shackles. Though he is free, there is no law to assert his freedom; he is free only in that none have tried to take him by force. He suspects that all that has kept him from their malice is that he has been among them so many years and appears to be one of their own, though of course he is not. Their customs have become his customs and so while the one thing that separates him from the natives, from the natives of the old way, is this vast gulf of belief, it is somehow excused just short of violence and servitude because they can’t bring themselves to harm one of their own. Even his accent has become indistinguishable from the voices now shouting at him. Part of him finds it funny, the assimilation.
He feels as though he could fall asleep there on the field with the crowd shouting. It is a dangerous notion, but he still considers it and it is not the crowd’s noise which keeps him awake but the stillness within. So different from his first trip to this country.
The rain begins to fall from the sky and neither the crowd nor Padraig moves, even though it soaks their clothing and wets their hair. It mixes with the soil and soon streams of it run under their feet. It is not a summer drizzle but full-fledged storm and it will linger in that place.
At last the time for prayer is ended and Padraig stands. The people stop speaking, silenced by the suddenness of his movement. He raises his crozier in front of the stone before him. With a swift strike the crozier descends and strikes the blasphemous rock. There is a cry from the crowd as though watching a child struck by a cruel parent and then this too is silenced. The stone cracks visibly and the whole block is halved as its top lazily slides from the bottom. Briefly an
angry whisper comes from the cracks, but with a wave of the crozier and a prayer upon Padraig’s lips it is silenced. There is no sound now but the rain, and Padraig lowers his arms to his side.
The mud, red and life-filled from countless sacrifices, bubbles up from the soil around his feet and the feet of the crowd and they all, believer and unbeliever alike, take a step back from him as he continues to stare down the rock he has smitten.
You see then, he says. This horrid thing to which you have sent your sons and daughters is nothing even to a man, much less our everliving God. Bow before it, those of you with wisdom, and the wicked among you flee.
A great many of the crowd do drop to their knees among the pulsing mud and there they offer up prayers of contrition and adoration to the One who allows a mortal to act thusly in his name. Several hesitate for a moment then too drop with the rest of the crowd. Others depart, though none slowly, though some offer half-muttered curses to Padraig as they depart, and there is the lingering promise of retribution among those who do not join the new believers on the ground.
Sixteen
My king, Coirpre says, supplicating himself before the throne of branches.
The king sits comfortably with a girl of the court sitting by his feet and a servant attending with a basin for drinking. His mouth remains smiling at the girl as he hears Coirpre’s voice, but his eyes dart to the man and are without joy.
What is it that you bring me, Coirpre?
Woeful tidings, my king, and dark times for your court.
I wonder sometimes if you have anything other than woeful tidings, Coirpre, Loegaire says.
Many dark omens have come in the recent weeks, and I do not control what I have seen. Also, Coirpre says, hesitating, Also there is news brought to me.
News of what? Loegaire asks, clutching at the woman.
News of the man Padraig, the Christian.
It had better be something more than your same complaints. No need to retread that territory. I don’t want to hear anything else about it, you yourself were there when I told him that he could practice his worship in my land. More chatter will not change my mind.
The Fire in the Oaks: A Novel of St Patrick's Confession Page 18