Brigid of Kildare

by Heather Terrell

  Broicsech and Brigid return to their quarters as the men continue with their drink and games. They are both quiet as the servants help them undo their heavy ceremonial dresses and jewelry. In the stillness, Brigid carefully fashions her questions and waits for the servants to leave.

  “Why did you ask me to perform this evening, Mother?”

  “Isn’t the answer self-evident, Brigid? I have made certain you were trained in all the arts so that you can properly represent your family. And you have done well.”

  “I think the answer is not quite so simple, Mother.”

  The blade of her mother’s voice begins to sharpen. “If you knew the answer, Brigid, then why did you ask the question? Pray do inform me of this answer.”

  “I think you and Father were displaying my qualities to Eaghan’s clan like cattle available for purchase.”

  Broicsech’s lovely brow knits in frustration and anger. “Brigid, do you think so little of me? Do you think for one moment that I wish to thrust my only daughter—my only natural child—into the marriage ring? I have no alternative but to do so.”

  “Why do you believe you have no free will in the matter of my future?” Brigid answers her. It is the first time she has dared to truly challenge her formidable mother.

  “Politics and the survival of our people leave me with little choice. If you make an advantageous marriage, you may assist our future greatly. Had we other children, perhaps I could have sheltered you better.”

  “Why did you bother to raise me with the belief that I would be able to choose my own path? Why did you expose me to so many callings? I would have been better off knowing little but the domestic realm if this was to be my fate.” Brigid wants—has always desired—to please her family, her oft-absent father in particular. Yet she has always hoped to achieve that goal not through marriage but through her own accomplishments in her studies, or on the battlefield.

  “Do you remember the story of your birth? Born neither within nor without the house?” Broicsech references the tale Brigid knows well. Broicsech’s labor was fast and early, forcing her to bear Brigid alone on the house’s hard stone threshold.

  “Yes.”

  “I had to prepare you for all worlds, Brigid. For I do not know—I have never known—upon which you will settle.”

  ix

  GAEL

  A.D. 456

  BRIGID: A LIFE

  The return to the cashel does not bring the usual excitement of returning rulers, at least not for Brigid. For their homecoming also brings the parting ceremony for Oengus, months before originally planned. His parents, adherents of the old gods, want him back early, long before Patrick revisits Dubtach and his family. Though Brigid paints a smile upon her face during the banquets and entertainments and offers good wishes to her foster brother and his family, she feels empty and sad. Without Oengus, Brigid is alone, now more than ever.

  She retreats into her studies, though this means time with Broicsech. Her mother acts as ever, yet Brigid senses the distance between them. Logically, she understands the reasons for her parents’ plan and even concedes that measures toward Gaelic unity may be necessary. Still, she cannot help but feel betrayed that her own mother would sacrifice her to that end, no matter how noble, without heed to her desires.

  Never discussing their rift, they continue with the examination of the sacred manuscripts in Broicsech’s collection. Periodically, Broicsech interrupts her textual instruction with more practical training in the divergent forms of Christianity and the battles brewing—or already brewed—between the Roman Church and its outliers. She explains to Brigid that the heresy most associated with Gael is that espoused by the late Briton Pelagius, who argued that individuals have moral responsibility over their own actions because God gave them free will. Though mother and daughter agree that Pelagius’s tenet bears a certain logic, akin to the Druidic beliefs, they agree to keep such accord private so as not to risk alienation.

  Queenly duties periodically force Broicsech to break from their studies. Whenever they do stop, Brigid flees the library with a text in hand. She longs for the openness of the plains and the coolness of the early spring air to free her from her anger and sorrow, and finds solace in reading His Words outdoors in His creation.

  She rediscovers the manuscript handed to her by Broicsech on the day of their departure. Sitting in a knoll by the Liffey riverbank, she opens the small book titled the Gospel of Mary the Mother. She hears the leather-bound spine crack a bit as she turns to the first page. Her eyes strain as she attempts to decipher the cramped Latin script, the ink and vellum faded with age. Yet from the first moment she makes sense of its prose, she is entranced.

  As Broicsech had promised, the manuscript contains the story of a woman, a most impressive female from the world of Jesus Christ. The text contains a full account of Jesus’s mother, Mary, a narrative utterly different from any other Brigid had read with Broicsech in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

  Brigid learns that Mary, at the young age of three, enters the famed Temple in Jerusalem to study with the priests. It is an honor normally reserved for boys alone and, even then, for a very select few. From the start, Mary’s maturity, learning, and piety distinguish her and engender adulation among the people of Jerusalem. She bears the gift of sight and the ability to converse with the Lord’s messengers. While at the Temple, the text says, “no one was more learned in the wisdom of the law of God, more lowly in humility, more elegant in singing, more perfect in virtue. She was indeed steadfast, immovable, unchangeable, and daily advancing to perfection.”

  Suitors seek her hand when she comes of age. In contravention of the wishes of the priests and her family, Mary forbids them, saying, “It cannot be that I should know a man, or that a man should know me…. I, from my infancy in the Temple of God, have learned that virginity can be sufficiently dear to God. And so, because I can offer what is dear to God, I have resolved in my heart that I should not know a man at all.”

  But then an angel appears before Mary, saying, “You have found grace before the Lord of all. You will conceive from His Word.” Mary resists at first, adhering to her vow of chastity. She acquiesces when the angel explains the virginal nature of the conception and the fact that Mary will bear “the Son of the Most High … who will save His people from their sins.” The angel guides Mary to accept Joseph, assuring her that he will not be a true husband and saying that since “she had found favor with God, she would conceive in her womb and bring forth a King who fills not only earth but Heaven.”

  When the Temple priests hear of Mary’s pregnancy, they assume defilement by Joseph. But Mary says—“steadfastly and without trembling”—“if there be any pollution in me, or any sin, or any evil desires, or unchastity, expose me in the sight of all the people, and make me an example of punishment to all.” Before the priests, she approaches the Lord’s altar boldly, circles the altar seven times, and no sign of impurity appears upon her. Thus she convinces the people of Jerusalem of her innocence.

  Brigid is moved by Mary’s endurance and strength on the long journey to Bethlehem and in the bearing of her precious child without complaint or bloodshed. Yet the account of the bond between mother and Christ child sways her most. For she learns how Jesus drives fear from Mary’s heart in moments of terror, and listens to His Mother’s guidance in times of crisis and youthful misbehavior when He will heed no one else. In one tale, His Mother comes to the youthful Jesus after He has killed a childhood rival in anger and says, “My Lord, what was it that he did to bring about his death?” When Jesus explains what happened, Mary says, “Do not so, my Lord, because all men rise up against us.” And He, “not wishing to grieve His Mother,” causes the child to rise. Again and again, he returns to her side, and she encourages Him to strive to His Father’s calling when all others cower in fear before Him: “Jesus returns to His Mother.”

  The Gospel of Mary the Mother lures her. For here is a strong woman of Jesus’s band worthy of emulation�
��resilient, bold at times, and learned. She is not afraid to instruct her Son—even chastise Him—when His behavior demands it, and He heeds her, recognizing her as a woman worthy of respect. Brigid returns to the text’s Words again and again, whenever her circumstances permit. And this text, this Gospel of Mary the Mother, plants a seed.

  One particularly fine summer afternoon, a cry interrupts Brigid’s solitary reading by the riverbank. As the sound grows closer, she recognizes the voice as that of her mother’s personal maid, Muireen. “The queen summons you immediately,” Muireen announces. “Bishop Patrick is due to arrive.”

  Brigid rises from her knoll. As she hurriedly walks back to the rath, she is careful to brush off the dust and grass from her cloak and smooth her hair into neat plaits. She does not want her second meeting with Bishop Patrick to commence as her first did. Too much may depend upon it.

  She pushes through the gate and, from the state of the cashel, sees that Patrick has yet to appear. Relieved, she walks to her quarters to further refine her appearance. As she thinks on which gown to wear and with which pin to fasten it, she walks by her parents’ rooms. She is surprised to hear her father’s voice from behind the closed door; he is rarely found within the cashel during the busy daylight hours.

  Slowing nearly to a stop, Brigid hears her father say, “Broicsech, I have made myself abundantly clear on this point. I will not play host to a mass baptismal rite for a personal aim of Patrick’s.” He pauses and then spits out, “Or whatever master he serves, the bastard Britons with their Saxon mercenaries or the Roman government with its unquenching desire to conquer our lands.”

  “Dubtach, do not speak such heresy. You know that Patrick has allegiance to neither Britannia nor the Roman government. In fact, he has made enemies of both Britannia and the Roman government in even coming to minister to us in Gael. He had to convince the Romans that we were worthy of conversion, and he made himself suspect in Britannia by desiring to minister to the Gaels at all. Patrick’s fealty is to the Roman Church—and to God in the purest sense.”

  “Are you so certain that the Roman Church and the Roman government are not one and the same? Or that the Roman Church is so separate from the church and government of our enemies in Britannia? I do not trust him, and I will not be used for his schemes.”

  “Please, Dubtach, I beseech you. Bishop Patrick has asked to baptize us before our people, and I believe it is our Christian duty to honor that request.”

  “I am a king, first and foremost. I must protect my cattle, my land, and my people and heed their needs. Not Patrick.”

  Her mother’s voice sounds horrified. “What do you mean, Dubtach? As king, the leader of your tuath, you are charged with the care of your people’s souls. As a Christian king, you should guide them toward the true faith.”

  Brigid smiles. Her mother is using the same tactic with Dubtach that Patrick had used on her.

  “My role is practical leadership, not religious conversion. The people must choose their own spiritual guides, and if they do not feel compelled by our God, I will not drive them from theirs.”

  Brigid’s smile fades. It seems that Broicsech will experience less success with the tuath strategy than Patrick had with her. Brigid strains but can hear no more from the chambers. After a long moment, she hears Broicsech ask in a small voice, “What of Brigid?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Will you allow her to be baptized by Patrick?”

  Her father is quiet for a time. In the stillness, Brigid saddens at the thought of her otherwise intimidating mother having to beg her father for permission. She wonders whether women’s subservience to men will grow more common with the infiltration of Roman and barbarian notions of women. Then Dubtach responds: “You may have her baptized—in private. I do not want Brigid’s religious status to become known and jeopardize any plans we might form for her. She must be preserved for the role in which she can serve us best—as a wife.”

  x

  GAEL

  A.D. 457

  BRIGID: A LIFE

  Brigid is slow and deliberate in her preparations. She selects a gown of unblemished white linen and closes it at her shoulder with her simplest silver pin, shunning all other ornamentation. Drawing her redgold hair back from her face, she braids it into three layers of plaits. She washes her face and hands, scrubbing them until they are raw. Then she steals a glance at herself in the highly polished silver pitcher on her table, and nods in approval at the austere visage staring back at her.

  Alone, she solemnly walks the short distance to the smaller of the cashel’s two reception halls, as if marching along one of Dubtach’s ceremonial routes. The cashel no longer bustles with the arrangements for Patrick’s welcome. The bishop has already arrived, and, in any event, Dubtach’s decision has halted the need for any intricate plans. Thus Brigid passes, almost unobserved, into the hall.

  Broicsech sits with the bishop at the large dining table at the hall’s center. They talk quietly, while the bishop’s monks and Broicsech’s maids stand idly behind them. No one notices Brigid, leaving her to wonder what words pass between the bishop and the queen that so engross them. Do they discuss the finer points of Christian doctrine? Or is Broicsech trying to appease Patrick for Dubtach’s rejection?

  With a start, Patrick stands. Her mother rises in quick succession. “Come,” Patrick says, “we have been waiting for you.”

  Brigid approaches the bishop and kneels in respect. At his behest, she settles into the chair to which he points, across from him and Broicsech. She keeps her eyes lowered and her hands clasped as if in prayer.

  “Your mother tells me you are ready for the rite of baptism.”

  “I hope you find me so, Bishop Patrick,” she says, without raising her gaze.

  “I am certain that I will. I understand that, with your mother’s guidance, you have been undertaking good works and reading the Words of our Lord, as is required for the sacrament.”

  “Indeed, Bishop Patrick, I have prayed that the study of His Words will prepare me well for my first initiation into His Kingdom.” Brigid chooses her phrases, and her emphasis, carefully.

  He seems not to have perceived her implication. “I have no doubt that He has answered those prayers, Brigid. And that His Words have brought you closer to Him. I know that the Words returned me to Him when I had wandered far from Him during my years in Britannia before I was taken to Gael.”

  “To be sure, I have found the stories of Mary—and her decision to take the veil—to be of particular comfort.” Brigid wants to ensure that her meaning is understood and that her groundwork is laid.

  “You speak of the stories of Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ?” Patrick’s voice grows cold.

  Brigid does not understand the change in his tone. “Yes, Bishop Patrick.”

  He turns to her mother. “Broicsech, has Brigid been reading the Gospel of Mary the Mother?”

  Her mother is quick to answer: “Bishop Patrick, we live in a land far from Rome’s civilizing influence, as you well know. We must study the limited sacred literature available to us.”

  “Surely, other, more appropriate texts are available to you? You do know that the Gospel of Mary the Mother was forbidden by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons and a leader of our church, nearly three hundred years ago—along with other self-proclaimed Gospels—as apocryphal and unorthodox? And that His Holiness the pope has adopted Irenaeus’s views?”

  “I have heard of that edict, Bishop Patrick, and the pope’s agreement. But Brigid understands that the true Gospels are only those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. She does not read any of the other texts for the veracity of their words, only for the texture of their tales. I will let her assure you of this herself.”

  Brigid hears the command underlying Broicsech’s gentle assurances. She knows how to placate her mother, and she is in accord. Though she sought to invoke Mary the Mother, she nonetheless wants nothing to impede her baptism. “My mother is correct, Bishop Patrick. I only meant
to say that I find Mary’s devotion to be moving and inspirational.”

  “Ah, if that was your sole meaning—”

  “It was indeed, Bishop Patrick.”

  “Then I do not think that you have damaged your faith or imperiled your soul by reading her self-proclaimed Gospel. And, among the three of us, I have read a copy of the manuscript as well. I find myself charmed by the anecdotes of Mary’s life, though, of course, they are not to be treated as Gospel. ”

  A palpable relief descends upon the table. “May we proceed with the rite of baptism for Brigid and myself?” Broicsech ventures to ask.

  “We may,” Patrick says with a signal to his monks.

  Brigid watches as the robed ascetics fill a vast basin with water from jugs marked with the sign of the cross. “We will not be baptized in the river Liffey?” she asks.

  Patrick shakes his head. “It is true that our Lord was born anew in a river. However, I understand that your father would prefer that you and your mother experience a more intimate rite. As would our pope.”

  Broisech and Brigid kneel before the basin. Bishop Patrick articulates the sacred words of exorcism to ensure the purity of the women’s souls before the sacrament. He then anoints them with blessed oil from a tiny jar hidden within the folds of his black robe.

  Patrick asks, “Do you believe that you cast off the sin of your father and mother through baptism?”

  In unison, Broisech and Brigid say, “We believe.”