“There was no time. I did not believe I would see the lad again.” I look out over the marshes to the open water. “He could see, Eos. I knew he would find depth in the teachings of your people, that he would see within them and become a priest to your tribe, but words spoken to the people don’t provoke change. The rebel’s words may be precious to a people under siege, but once angry rulers have spilled that rebel’s blood, the people quickly forget. Your boy’s words had more power than most, yet what we saw in him was simply a great deal more blood spilled as a result.” I shake my head, “So much death.”
“I was there, my Lady. I saw the death of which you speak with these old eyes. With horror I saw the many deaths that followed. And now, too, I feel the death that rises up in the Mendydd, and among the tribes to the south where the same Romans who killed those of my blood now destroy those of my adopted land.” And with gentleness in his great arms, he draws me towards him, and wraps me in his strength. I close my eyes, letting him hold me, barely able to recall letting anyone do the same. For a moment his head touches mine and I feel him breathe in my scent.
“I have tired of merchants and soldiers and kings, Vivi,” he says, quietly. “I loved a woman once only in these long years, and it has been long since I have felt the touch of her tenderness upon my face.” There is a long pause, and the world is quiet around us. “Yes, I have longed for the one you call Mother. I have seen her in the lad’s young mother, in the Magdalene, and now, in you, who are also Mother to the lad.” His words shimmer in the air, held by the spirits of this sacred place, and though I try to listen, they sink into my body before I can grasp them. I hear him whisper in my mind, Why do you let me hold you, Vivi? I open my eyes and I do not know.
“The cup, Vivi,” he says, and I look up into his face, “it is more than just the glass from which it is fashioned, isn’t it?”
I wonder how much he can understand of what I say.
“It is a cup of rebirth, Eos.”
Chapter Eight
Whitethorn and White Linen
(Eosaidh)
For the third time I try to reset the axe head on its ash handle, and for the third time I fail, dropping it on a toe and wincing in pain. I utter an oath of disgust. I am annoyed. At myself. Eosaid, you fool! You are an old man. It is all this May sun can do to warm your bones of fifty-seven summers. Yet my mind keeps wandering to images of the Lady of Affalon when I ought to be concentrating on my work, like a youth addled by springtime!
A full cycle of the moon has passed since we traveled to Croth Ddraig Las, and it is once again at first quarter. She hangs high but dimly in the sky, a ghostly presence in the waning afternoon sun. I have wasted most of the afternoon here on the slope of Wirrheal, under the branches of the great thorn. But the scowl on my face is belied by the chuckle deep in my heart, for the time has not been wasted. That it could be, I learned from Pilate when a tin shipment was late arriving in Jerusalem. “You are wasting my time, man!” he shouted at me. He was a haunted and hurried man. So much to do, and so little time in which to do it. It seems such is a Roman trait, or at least a military one. I look off to the south, and imagine I can hear Vespasian shouting the same thing to his lieutenants. On the Isle of Mist it is not possible to waste time; there is no time to be wasted.
So here I sit under the thorn, its overspreading crown of white blossoms above me, the axe head forgotten. Occasionally a blossom drifts down and lands softly in my hair, or upon my shoulder. I think briefly of the thorns crowning the lad’s brow, and wonder how these here can be so beautiful. The cry of a kestrel startles me, and I look up to see the bright white feathers under its wings flash against the blue spring sky. Nearby, in the branches of the thorn, a pair of wrens look for a nesting place, their warbling song giving thanks for the coming of the warmer weather.
Below, in the meadow that lies between Wirrheal and the marshes, Fianna is leading her young charges home from an excursion around the island. They have been looking for spring herbs, and had stopped at my resting place to gather young whitethorn leaves for teas. Young Elwyn made a face and stamped her foot when I told her I knew the tree was good for heart ailments. I suppose I should have let her tell me herself. I will never understand women, I am afraid, even the youngest ones. Will I ever hope to understand the one who, in these days, causes such a disturbing ailment in my own heart?
~~~~~
In my mind I drift back to that moment when she lifted herself from the cauldron. She did so with difficulty, but I could not bring myself to help, her leggings and cloak lying beside us on the grass. I looked the other way and pretended to be immersed in thought. You old fool! I said to myself. You’re an old man, and an old fool. And I studied the copper embedded in the rock until she had tied on her boots again. She had given the cup to the lad, the cup that had been fashioned for her own son! She had seen his vision, and known his need, and given it to him those many years ago. It is a cup of rebirth, Eos, she told me. I thought about the tales from Galilee, and the old Cornualle myths, and wondered if the dead could truly live again.
I stepped forward, taking her in my arms, drawing her close. Her head rested upon my shoulder, just below my chin. I could smell the scent of moss and bracken in her dark hair, feel the fragile strength of the marsh reeds in the frame of her small body. Slowly, the world began to spin around us, and I was transported into a time and an embrace from many long years ago. For a moment I sensed the joining of youth. But we are grown old, and the world has changed, and this embrace held a deeper meaning than youth can bear. She was warm in my arms as the world turned and dissolved around us. With part of my mind I was surprised that she allowed me to hold her. But mostly I melted into her being, and felt the loving presence of life stirring within us.
As the moment passed I looked into her face. “The cup, Vivi, it is more than just glass, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Eos. It is a cup of rebirth.”
In the sound of her voice I knew the cup was, in the world, a sign of the mother. Vivian is herself the cup, as is Mary who bore the lad, and the Magdalene, who brought young Sarah into the world. Gently, with reverence born of deep love, I bent and kissed her forehead. She looked at me with a heartrending union of love and pain in her eyes for the space of a moment, before the spell was broken.
With a sigh she said, “They will be waiting for us, Eos, at the willows, Creyr and Fianna.”
She was still holding the cup.
I looked from her dark eyes to its blue brilliance and back. “It binds us each to itself and to one another,” I said. “We can neither of us claim it now. Yet when you first saw it you were about to break in pieces. Why was that so?”
“For its task was complete,” she answered simply, “Else why would it have returned to its source? The law bids me then release its soul back into the water.”
I thought it strange that in the midst of such mystery she would speak of law.
“I still do not understand, Vivian,” I said, “What was its task, and by what law is the Lady of Affalon bound?”
For a long time she looked silently into my face, wondering, I suppose, how what seems to her so simple appears to be so hard for me to understand.
“I could not remove the current of death,” she said. “His life was set upon it. I searched with the seers of the island, I spoke to others after you were gone, but it was agreed that nothing could be done. If sufficient power had been found to pull him from the current’s flood, the force would only have changed its direction, spinning into itself, causing yet more devastation, and in a manner that seemed even less comprehensible. Do you understand, Eos?”
I did not understand, but I nodded my head, that she might continue.
“We sent the cup with him, hoping against hope in its power of life. To some here it seemed pointless, for what effect could it have on us if the boy's presence amidst his people, in lands far away, generated tribal wars within the empire of Roma? And even I began to doubt as the years passed by.” She t
urned away from me, looking over the blue cauldron at the presence of the great, old oak. I can remember the singing of the water as it filled the silence. “I began to wonder,” she said, looking at the oak and not at me, “whether my visions had been affected by what happened between us, between you and me.”
I drew her close again, with one hand gently cradling her head against my shoulder.
“The task of the cup was to serve its keeper, to offer its power,” she said.
We were silent for a long time. The day was ending, and light was beginning to fade.
At last I said, “From that time on, Vivi, his life was changed. He became love itself, and though he died violently on a Roman cross, it is said already that in love he defeated death, and offers life to the world.”
Vivian sighed deeply. “Perhaps then, we changed the rivers of history, with the Enaid Las, because of that day we spent together.”
Perhaps we did.
I should have spoken more of that day, but instead I asked her about the law. She had been so distrustful of the laws of my people written in their parchment scrolls. Yet she had said the law bid her destroy the cup.
“It is the law of nature, Eos. A song is held for a purpose within its container, and then it cries out to be released that every whisper of its soul can find a new song, a new life and a new purpose. The work of the seer is to know nature’s laws and serve them.”
I thought perhaps I understood. God and Torah, after all, do not exist above or apart from the world, but within and among all that is. Even our own prophets had told us the law was to be written on the soft flesh of our hearts, not on tablets of stone. I let this gentle thought sink into my own heart. A peace spread through me from her words.
“Then the cup’s task is not complete, Vivi,” I said. “For it must serve the ages. If the lad’s death is to weave love and not hatred into the history of the world, Enaid Las must continue to serve those who will follow.”
She pulled away from me abruptly and searched my face. Through some magic of that place trust had been shared. Yet I seem always to be losing her trust. Again, in my spoken words, some thread was pulled or broken.
"Follow him? No, Eos. Its task is done. His task is done. Breaking the cup will free him! Do you not see? He is still bound to it, and it to him. Each flush of magical renewal spills out the waters of death. One does not replace the other, Eos. They are ever tied together. We must break this soul cup."
Thinking she did not understand me, I tried again. “Vivian, perhaps his task is not done. Perhaps his offering of the cup that night in Jerusalem was not the end of his mission, but only the beginning.” I left her side and began to pace, partly from excitement, partly from the frustration of explaining Jerusalem to Affalon, partly from fear of losing the precious moment we had just shared. It was all coming apart again.
“Vivian, the Lad was not the Messiah. That much is clear. He did not liberate Jerusalem from Rome. The gift he offered that night was not freedom, but life. Those who follow will not be following him as though following some great leader. They will be following the path of life.”
She looked at me as though I was as dense as the marsh mists, and in truth I had no real confidence in my own words. I came back to her. She was still holding the cup. In that moment I realized as important as the cup was to me, the woman standing before me was more important still.
“Vivian,” I said softly, “I do not understand the ways of Affalon, nor the ways of soul cups. The cup is precious to me, but it is yours and you understand its magic. Tell me what you must do. I only wish for the lad’s death to have meaning.”
I paused, thinking to make one last attempt to preserve the cup that had held his life's blood. "Could we hide the cup, Vivian? Could we place it somewhere in secret where it would never again be poured out, but where its presence would anchor the time and space of the world to its gift of life?” I did not understand how she could let it go; she did not understand how I could cling to it.
Then she smiled at me "Would this not capture a moment and hold it, would it not deny its freedom to live, to change and grow?" She reached out and gently touched my face with her hand. "I know you need his death to have meaning, for without it the brutality would be too much to bear. This precious cup washed his life with hope, and with a great flood it gave hope through the days of his dying. Its magic lingers, that power of hope, of life ever renewed, allowing those who loved him to see his spirit guiding them on. But hope that is not allowed to change becomes a terrible curse, Eos. The soul of this cup sang of life rising out of death, because that was his path. Now, Eos, now it is time for you to sing of life."
She looked so tired. Her eyes closed with a quiet sigh, and she was silent, sitting by the edge of the cauldron. She placed the cup gently on the grass, and gently I placed it back in its box, wrapping it in the linen and wool. The sound of the lid closing was the only sound in the wood. Even the bubbling waters were silent. It was beginning to get dark.
“Come, Vivi,” I said, “darkness falls. Creyr and Fianna wait for us.”
We returned to Penn Willows in heavy silence, bearing more in our hearts than it is possible to bear. Concern showed on the faces of the two young women who were waiting. We had been gone longer than expected. Swiftly and silently they went to the boats and took up the alder paddles, not daring to ask the questions apparent in their eyes.
Vivian touched my arm. I started to give her the box in which the cup had again been so carefully stored, but she shook her head. The stench of the dark, bitter water was heavy in the dense evening air. Creyr stepped to Vivian’s side, helping her into the old boat that would take her away to the island I will never see. There was a deep moment of not wanting to part.
"Keep it, for now, dear one,” she said to me, “I have an idea." Again she touched my cheek, and smiled with her eyes though she was horribly tired. I hated myself for the strain I had placed upon her. Then she stepped into the boat, and was gone, and I stood looking after her into the gathering mists.
“Come, Master Eosaidh,” Fianna said softly. “It is late, and will be fully dark before we reach the old alder on Ynys y Niwl.”
~~~~~
A glint of sunlight off the open water to the northwest catches my eye and brings me back to the present. Bryn Llyffaint stands out clearly in the westering sun. Can it be such a short time ago I left there in the dead of night to seek this island? It seems a lifetime. Were I higher on the slope of Wirrheal I would be able to see the hills of the Silures, purple and soft in the distance. Beyond them, far from my sight, the mountains said to be the home of the fferyllt. The home of the cup. Those who work the tin and lead of Cornualle and the Mendydd tell of these magical craftsmen in the far mountains, druid alchemists who work spells into the blowing of glass, and wisdom into the elements. The sun is warm on my face, and I am weary, and again my spirit wanders, across the water and the far hills, to the slopes of yr Wyddfa.
I see in my mind the hidden city of Emrys, on the high escarpment of Penmaen, and within it the stronghold of Broich y Dinas, called by many Dinas Affaraon, the Fortress of High Powers. I know no person who has been there, though tales abound, so I use only my imagination to see the towers and flying banners emblazoned with the dragons of the fferyllt. In a courtyard hard against the mountain wall there hangs a cauldron over a blazing fire. Around it are the chemists, stripped to the waist against the blazing heat, pouring into the cauldron their secret proportions: fine white sand from the outer isles, and copper from the hills, and other things I know not of. Within the cauldron is the rich glow of blue, molten glass. A Lady, beautiful and terrible seems to appear from the flames, wearing a deep scarlet robe. She stirs the cauldron with a great paddle and then, wondrously, reaches into the molten glass and lifts out a blue cup fully formed and glowing with life.
"I am the renewal of life," she says in a voice that is at once a gentle mist and a raging torrent.
A squall of snow swirls off the summit of the
mount, obscuring the scene, and I realize with a smile that I have once again clothed the simplicity of these lands in images of my Romanized mind.
~~~~~
"Master Eosaidh." A gentler, nearer voice awakens me. It is Gwenlli, who stands before me under the thorn on the side of Wirrheal. "Pardon, Master Eosaidh, but my Lady awaits." She has come. She has given me this month to live with the cup, to decide my part in its fate. Now she has come, and I know the soul cup must return to the elements. I sigh quietly, gathering up the axe head and handle, which I will have to join on another day, and lean against my staff to rise.
Gwenlli is patient with my slowness. So young, yet she has learned well from Vivian to understand the necessities of age. I follow her down the hill to my roundhouse, and there is Vivian, sitting on a stone beside the open fire. I have not seen her this past month except in my imaginings and dreams, and my heart quickens. Today she looks nearly as young as Gwenlli. Some strange warmth soothes the ache in my bones. I stand a bit taller. Eos, you old fool!
"I am ready, Vivi," I say. She smiles and nods, as I duck into the hut to retrieve the cup. Reaching under my cot I draw out the box of acacia wood. In the silence of my own space, I take the time for one final visit with this last remnant of the lad. Sitting on the cot, I hold the box on my lap and undo the leather thong that holds its lid closed. The wood which once was oiled and smooth is, I notice with wonder, worn with age. The strong scent of acacia it once possessed is more a memory than a reality. When did it get so old?
Gently I push aside the lamb's wool. Once it was as soft and white as the summer clouds over Galilee. Now it, too, is old. The lambs from which it came are gone from this world, their descendants now nibbling the grasses of Iudea. Only the linen cloth still seems fresh and new. Then I touch the smooth, blue glass, and lift the cup from its soft bed. I hold it before me, once again seeing the lad:
The Apple and the Thorn Page 10