Dunlaing called for Brocca to approach and she fell at his feet.
“In my greediness, I have sent out a royal order restricting Brigid from spreading her faith in my territory. I now regret that decision, one that was made selfishly and not for the good of the people. I was deceived by Ardan, aye, ’tis true, but I am responsible for this terrible decision. I’m afraid it gave Ardan the influence he sought to control her, and it sent her into exile. My servant searches still for her.” He pointed his words at the ground. “The false god I had been warned about was not Brigid’s God – ’twas Ardan himself. I fear he believes he is a god, and by fearing his powers, some of us believed it too.”
Brocca bent her face toward his voice. “Brigid? Do ye believe she still lives?”
There was silence. The poet touched her shoulder.
Finally, the king cleared his throat and spoke. “I have had no word that she does not. Truly, woman, if her life had been taken, all my kingdom would be buzzing with the news. The people love her for her charity.”
The poet spoke. “Listen to his wisdom, Brocca.”
She thanked the king and accepted the poet’s invitation to stand.
King Dunlaing’s voice softened. “There is hope that Ardan may be discouraged. My spy has retrieved Ardan’s golden sickle. Ardan believes it’s central to his power, but here it is.” Brocca heard others gasp and knew that the king was holding the druid sickle in the air. She couldn’t believe what she heard. First her daughter was separated from her, and then she was forbidden from carrying out her mission. A curse. Could that be what Ardan had referred to when he left her on that island? Had he been trying to force the curse? She remembered what the poet had said earlier. Ardan sought power for himself. He must have deemed Brigid a threat.
Brocca’s mind whirled with thoughts, and she felt as though an undertow would pull her away. She covered her face with her hands. Oh, God, I remember the prophecy. Brigid will be either a blessing or curse to Ireland. Please let her be the blessing ye intended her to be.
“Has yer spy checked for Brigid at the Cell of the Oak?” a voice from the back of the room called out.
She knew that voice! The guard who had saved her from Troya. The lad must be a servant of God, maybe even an angel.
“Come,” King Dunlaing ordered.
The voice moved closer. Brocca heard the clanking of his spear against the stone floor. She scooted to the king’s side to allow the guard to approach.
“I heard she has returned to her settlement where she lives among believers. She feeds the poor, but not by miracles. I hear she has not broken the king’s order.”
Brocca rose to her feet. “I must go to her now.”
The king’s silk robes rustled. He was standing. “Wait. You shall be reunited, but please, allow me this chance to make amends. I will visit her myself first. With no royal bodyguards or kingly robes. I want to speak with her as a fellow believer.” The poet strummed a new tune and sang about the king’s conversion. Brocca nodded and heard the king’s silky garments whisk along the floor and out the door.
Chapter 30
“… the mirth of the wicked is brief, the joy of the godless lasts but a moment.”
Job 20:5
There was no fire, no sound. Where were they? Surely he’d scared that simple-minded man enough to keep him from fleeing with Brocca. Ardan kicked at the sand on the beach. The small craft was gone. That man was going to be sorry.
He gathered all the driftwood he could and sparked a fire with his special rock. The gods will hear of this.
In a rage, Ardan marched to top of the highest hill. A few wild goats grazed there and he snatched one, tying its feet together with the leather straps pulled from his shoes. Satisfied that the animal would make an excellent sacrifice, he started downhill. A small shack caught his attention and he went inside. The place was abandoned, but footprints in the dust, and ashes scattered about, told him someone had been there recently. Where were they now?
After he returned to his sacrificial fire, he remembered he had no golden sickle. A darkness gripped him. He feared the gods would not accept his sacrifice. And if he didn’t please them, Brigid would get her mother back. And if she got the source of her strength back, well, all her power would slip out of Ardan’s clutches. He planned to tease Brigid with her mother, let her see Brocca but then snatch her away until Brigid agreed to share her power with him.
He fell on the beach and panted for air. The sun dipped below the horizon, but still Ardan stayed there, holding on to his goat. A strange smell made him rise just as the sky turned black. Off in the distance, a large sailing vessel rose and fell on the waves. Fires burned onboard, the source of the awful smell. He stood and pulled a dirk from his waist bag. Ardan feared no one. He was dressed in his druid clothing, holding a sacrificial animal. The intruders would respect him and perhaps give him passage to the river where he’d travel back to King Dunlaing.
He waited. A drunken chorus drifted to his ears. He didn’t understand the language. The boat thumped against choppy dark waves. “Oh, gods!” Ardan called out. “Aid yer servant Ardan. Give him power over those who approach.”
His pulse pounded in his neck. The ship neared close enough for him to see the crew’s faces lit by the onboard fires, and he shivered. Raiders!
Ardan dropped the goat and ran, trying to remember the way to the shack. Scraggly bushes scratched his legs and without their laces, his leather shoes fell from his feet. The chanting strangers came closer, their voices filling his heart with terror. He reached the shack and fell into its darkness. He stumbled. There was a hole in the floor and he fell into it.
Ardan awoke aboard the smelly ship. His legs and hands were bound, and he sat with his back against a wooden crate. He squinted his eyes in the sunlight. They were out to sea. His head hurt, but other than that, he was whole.
“Ah, you have come to your senses.” A man stood over him, shadowed with the sun behind him. His words carried a strange lilt and his Irish was broken. He was a foreigner.
“Where are we?”
“On a boat. Have you never sailed?”
Ardan gritted his teeth. His mouth was coated in sand. “My father was a fisherman.”
“We’re going to the land of… ” The man paused, seeming to look for the right word. “I believe you call it the land of the Picts. That’s where we’re off to, man.”
“I’m a hostage?”
“Could say so. Though you are more important than all that.”
Ardan spat dirt from his mouth. “I’ll say I am. I am King Dunlaing’s royal druid.”
“Are you, now? That means nothing to these men. You are the keeper of the treasure.”
“What treasure?”
The man offered Ardan a drink from a gourd. A charm dangled from his neck. “The treasure that was for many generations kept on that island.”
“I saw no treasure.”
The charm was a cross. Ardan had seen it before on Christians.
“Well, that does not matter to these men either. They found you in the place where the treasure was supposed to be so you are now a hostage.”
Ardan squinted. His head ached. “Are ye a hostage also?” “Definitely not. I am sent by the church to convert these people. Because I speak your language, I am assigned your care.”
Ardan stared at the wooden cross pendant. There was a silver figure of a man stuck to it. He didn’t know what it was, but on the beach he had cried out for help. Brigid wore a similar cross. Perhaps her god was the one he should pray to. He pointed to the man’s pendant. “Tell me more about this god ye serve.”
Chapter 31
“Because of God’s tender mercy, the light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.”
Luke 1:78–79, New Living Translation
The sun’s rays summoned the mist, and the morning dew settled like glittering jewels scattered
across a green carpet when they came for Brigid.
A stiff gale whisked its way into the meeting house she shared with her sisters in the Lord, propelling four visitors through the door. Brigid nodded, though they spoke not a word. Pulling her cloak around her, she followed them to a wee stone house. The four men, small in stature, left her standing outside while they scampered off, east, west, north, south. They vanished so quickly she feared what might be inside.
The door wailed and creaked, leaving no chance she’d enter unnoticed. At first the single room appeared deserted, but then a faint call drifted from the damp walls.
“Water, lass? A wee bit of water for my parched lips?”
The droning came from a mat in a corner, opposite a lone pantry. A stool was positioned beside the ill fellow, but clearly those who had cared for him had handed the task off to her. Brigid removed her cloak and stepped closer to have a look.
The man lingered at death’s door.
She spoke softly. “Aye. Water for a thirsty soul. I’ll return.” Brigid took a small wooden cup from the cabinet in the room and donned her cloak once again. She left the house to fetch water from the well and heard the man’s soft wails floating to her on the brisk air like a whisper. It wouldn’t be long before he succumbed. The cool water from the well would be the last he’d taste, replaced by the blazing fires of hell, if she didn’t help save him before he died. But she could not disobey the king’s order and hope to see her mother again. What could she do?
Brigid scooped a cup full of water from the well’s bucket.
The water of life, she thought.
Walking back to the minuscule house, she thought about the men who had fled from the sick man’s door. It was common for pagans to abandon their dying brothers. What a pity for the departing to be abandoned.
The bleakness of the situation was heavy, yet it was a burden she bore gladly. Had she been there when her Lord died on the cross, she would never have left him. Not having that opportunity, Brigid would serve the sick and hungry as though she served Jesus himself. Serving – it was the only thing left to her now.
She whispered a prayer. “Do not hold their abandoning against them, Lord. They were frightened, for sure.”
The sick man had probably been delirious with fever, causing his clan to believe he’d been possessed by an evil spirit.
He might be yet.
Brigid quickened her pace. She heard a small voice whisper in her ear. Hurry now. That fellow, a pagan, would be doomed for all eternity if Brigid didn’t minister to his soul. But she couldn’t carry him to heaven herself. He must take up his cross. She’d have to think of something to urge the poor man to come to Jesus on his own.
The sweet smells of the peat fire greeted her when she returned. But as she closed the door, shutting out the misty breeze, she noticed a putrid odor. The smell of impending death.
She hurried to the man’s side. “A drink, sir?” Brigid drizzled a few drops into his mouth. A stream ran down his chin, and she wiped it away with the shroud-like linen sheet covering his fragile body. She didn’t know the man, but yet he seemed so familiar. There were many like him – pagans without hope. The hours of the man’s life dropped off like petals in a windstorm. She kicked at the reeds covering the floor, trying to form words that would speak to the man’s heart yet not betray the promise she had made. The thin reeds, scattered in the room to add cushioning to the dirt base, gave her an idea.
She gathered a few and sat on the three-legged stool beside the pagan man’s mat.
“What is it that yer making?” He tried to raise himself onto bony elbows.
“Oh, not much. Here, let me boost yer head with a pillow.” The straw-filled sack crunched softly under the man’s thin white strands of hair.
His eyes, dim and cavernous, strained to see what she had in her hands. “Please, tell me what it is yer doing with that grass?”
Brigid ignored him for the moment and twisted the reeds until she formed an odd-shaped square with four stems sticking out in all directions.
“Oh, just passing the time, and as I worked with these reeds, I started thinking about the cross Jesus died on.”
The man licked his cracked lips. Puffing out his cheeks like a piper, he let out a breath. A nearly toothless grin crossed his creased face when he spoke. “Why was he killed?”
“They thought him a king who would someday rule over them all. They didn’t want him to have so much power.”
“Was he a king, then?”
She paused, weaving a bit more before answering. “A King he was. But ah, not the kind they expected.”
“A kind king he was?”
“Kind, gentle, forgiving. But fierce when people broke God’s laws knowingly.” She continued weaving the reeds, back and forth, her hands trembling when she remembered how little time she had. Was someone listening outside the door? Ardan perhaps?
The old man raised a bony finger. “Why would they kill a man like that? Did he try to escape? Did he not have friends to rescue him?” The man seemed to have been given a reprieve, fortified by a hunger to hear about Jesus.
“Aye, he had many followers. But he went to his execution by his own free will, telling his friends, ‘He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.’”
The man drifted back to lie on his mattress and stare at the rafters.
Brigid followed his gaze to two doves scurrying back and forth, making a nest. Some die, others are born. God’s plan.
The man rubbed his thorny whiskers. “Aye. ’Tis true. I have seen that myself.”
She held the finished cross up for him to see. “That’s not the entire story.”
“Nay?” His eyes grew large as bird eggs.
“I have not told ye the best part.” She leaned in close. “I said he went willingly, remember?”
“Now why would anyone do that? Every man wants to save his own life. Was he a wee bit deranged, then?”
The question made Brigid chuckle. “He was God’s Son.”
The fellow bent his wooly brows. “If he was the son of a god, woman, why did he not save himself?”
“The best part. Now we’re getting to it.” She laid the cross on the man’s chest and gripped his pale hand in hers.
“He took our punishment – for all our sins. Yers, mine, those who lived back then, and those who have not yet been born.”
“And yer god accepted his blood sacrifice? For all them people?”
“Aye.”
“How do we get that for ourselves?”
Brigid sighed deeply. Perhaps her message had reached his heart in time. But now what could she do to lead him? She glanced at the door. Even if no one was listening there, she could not break a promise. She would not tell this man to accept Jesus, but she’d tell him how it was done. Perhaps that would be all right. “Ye pray.”
“To yer god?”
“Aye. The One True God. And ye ask him to forgive ye for all yer wrongs and accept ye as one whom Jesus died for.”
Tears streamed down the old man’s face. “What happens then?”
“Then he takes ye to heaven to live with him when it’s yer time to go.”
“Let me see that cross ye made.”
She held it up, allowing the sunbeams from the window to glow through the spaces between her weaving.
“Is heaven a good place? Better than here?”
“Ah, man. ’Tis a far better place. Ye won’t be sick there or sad or lonely.”
“Jesus is there?”
“Aye. Those who accept him will be there with him.”
Brigid thought she’d have to pray with the man, and she was prepared to, realizing that obeying God, not man, was her true duty, but to her surprise he folded his hands around the cross she made and uttered his own awkward but sincere offering.
“Ah, God. I just heard ’bout yer Son. I want to be with ye when I die. Please take me to heaven and accept Jesus’ sacrifice in my place for all the ill I’ve done. Thank ye for letting him die fo
r me.”
“Aye.” She agreed. Tears streamed down her face.
Brigid sat with the man the rest of the day, only rising on occasion to fetch more water. The man accepted baptism and Brigid’s prayers, and she no longer feared giving them. King Dunlaing could arrest her if he wanted. There was surely another way to free her mother.
The old one seemed at peace and asked no more questions. The cool breezes of evening squeezed their way through a crack under the door, and the man inhaled deeply. Then, sighing, he pushed the air back out of his weak lungs. He did not take another breath.
With the help of her sisters in the Lord, Brigid buried the man under a grove of ancient oaks near her home. She left the cross entwined in his fingers, but she wove another to place on top of his stone-covered grave. When she turned to leave, she saw a man approaching.
Brigid reached out arms she hoped would offer comfort. “Are ye related to the departed?”
“Nay. I must speak to ye, Brigid.” He lowered his cloak and she recognized his sapphire eyes.
“King! What are ye doing here?” She glanced around, expecting to see armed men who had come to take her away for violating the king’s order.
“I have not come as king.” He smiled and reached for her hand. “I have come as a fellow believer.”
Brigid gasped and held a hand to the wooden cross around her neck.
“I have rescinded the royal order. There are no restrictions on your work, Brigid.”
Brigid’s knees shook. “Oh, thank ye, King Dunlaing! I must find my mother now.”
“She is at the castle.”
Brigid raised her cloak above her ankles, preparing to run toward the horses, but he blocked her way.
“One moment. Do ye know who it is ye’ve buried today?” “Oh.” She made the sign of the cross over her chest and turned to the mound of dirt speckled with stones. The reed cross still rested on top. “We would have sought a burial tomb, but the man was poor and sick. A pagan – at least he was. He accepted the Lord before departing. His family abandoned him during his last hours.”
Brigid of Ireland (Daughters of Ireland Book 1) Page 28