The difficult conversation did not last much longer. Columba’s heart was sore. But as he watched the poor young woman at length break into tears, then turn and flee from him, he was powerless to allay her suffering. He could not comfort her with the comfort of a man. At this moment the comfort of God, however, was no balm for her distress.
That night Diorbhall-ita cried herself to sleep. Columba, meanwhile, found that slumber did not easily visit him.
Seventeen
As Columba lay on his hard bed, he could not get the face of Diorbhall-ita from his memory. The interview had shaken him. He found himself thinking about the mission upon which they were about to embark farther into the land of the Picts.
His thoughts gathered themselves about Mary of Magdala. She was of the company who followed the Lord as surely and faithfully as any of the men. Why should he not also have such a one? Diorbhall-ita was right. What was there for her here after he left? Whatever danger she might face with him, she could face worse here.
Despite the ache in her heart, Diorbhall-ita had eventually managed to fall asleep. When she awoke the night was still black.
Had she been dreaming, or had she actually heard her name? Some sound had awakened her. She did not think of God’s voice, for she had never heard of Samuel.
“Diorbhall-ita,” came the sound again, softly in a loud whisper.
She would know that voice anywhere!
“Colum!” she said excitedly. “Where are you?” She glanced about.
“Outside. Come quickly.”
She was at the door the next instant, peering out into the night. She felt his presence, though she could barely see his eyes in the darkness.
“Take these,” he said.
She felt him hand her a bundle.
“What . . . what is it?”
“Clothes . . . men’s clothes. Dress yourself and gather what you need for a journey.”
“You . . . you are taking me with you!” she exclaimed.
“If you are willing to go as a man,” he replied, “and not give yourself away. Only my closest companions will know.”
“Oh, yes! Of course I will—thank you, Colum!”
Unable to contain her joy, she threw her arms about him and kissed his cheek. Then suddenly realizing what she had done, she pulled away.
“Dress now,” he said. “Make yourself ready in haste. You must be gone from the village before dawn. Go upriver two miles and wait. There we will meet you.”
Eighteen
It was not many weeks that they had been traveling together before Columba knew it was not mere compassion for a soul he felt when he looked into the face of Diorbhall-ita. He realized he had known the moment she kissed him on the morning of their departure that he indeed loved her with more than merely the love of Christ. The love of a man had also sprouted within him.
Yet he buried his feelings in his priestly heart and did his work the more earnestly, in that he now must daily rededicate himself to his vow. If anything, he became yet stronger in his love for the Lord as his heart was thus opened to a woman.
Diorbhall-ita served the men of Columba’s mission with devotion and faithfulness. Upon occasion she received odd looks from natives in the villages and settlements to which they traveled, and on more than one occasion questions were raised about the tall, silent member of their company.
But the disguise kept any man from approaching her. And in many invisible ways did she make her contribution to the expanding of the gospel.
When at last they returned to Iona, Columba had a small building constructed for her to dwell in privacy and peace, with an adjoining prayer cell. To both this building and her fellowship through the years were added the presence of several other women.
Nineteen
In one thing, however, was Diorbhall-ita’s life unchanged. Her past continued to haunt her.
She now began to be plagued with terrible and vivid nightmares from her former life. Images tormented her from her father’s hatred and of the tormenting experiences at the hand of Gairbhith and many other men in the years after.
No prayer of her own or any of the community, not even those of Columba himself, could rid her of the memories of those evil days when her very life was a hell. The intensity increased such that her sleep was seriously affected. Fatigue set in. Gradually her health began to fail.
“Why won’t your miracles work for me?” she moaned to Columba.
“I do not know, dear one,” he replied.
“I am not a new creature. I am a wicked woman who can never escape what I was. I will never be like the rest of you.”
“I pray for you daily, my child. The Lord’s work takes time.”
“Help me, Colum—I do not know what to do.”
“I cannot help you of myself, dear one. Only he has power to heal.”
She turned and left him, more forlorn than he had ever seen her.
That same night a terrifying dream sent Diorbhall-ita into a paroxysm of screaming torment. Her shrieks echoed with chilling horror over the whole island. It sounded as if a legion of demons was attacking her.
Columba awoke in his cell.
“Oh, God,” he prayed, “why do these devils haunt your daughter? Give her peace, Lord, I beseech you!”
For several minutes the screaming persisted, with vague phrases, indistinct cries, and otherworldly howls.
“Go away . . . the hands . . . get away, you beast . . . leave me alone . . . get off me . . . Jesus, Jesus, help me!”
At last Columba rose thinking he must go to her.
Suddenly the sounds ceased. In great distress, he paused and fell to his knees and prayed again.
Diorbhall-ita’s screams had at last awakened her to full consciousness. As sleep departed, the dreams gradually receded, yet horrible visions remained. Sweating and panting, she went out into the night. A full moon was high in the sky. She walked up the hill to her favorite outlook of the island. It was warm and still, the sea calm.
“I know I have no right to expect peace,” she prayed as she went. “After what I have been, why should I not expect torment? But, dear Lord, Colum says you give peace. Why do I not have peace in my soul! Why do guilt and voices of accusation remain? If I am clean in your sight, why do nightmares come? Why do hands grab and grope? Must I forever relive the terror?”
Gradually as she walked, the calm of the night came into her spirit. A sense of presence filled the silence about her. Slowly a giant invisible blanket seemed to descend out of the sky, a blanket of white. She felt as though God himself were bringing it down and slowly wrapping it around her shoulders. The blanket was rich and pure. How good it felt, how clean and warm. For a few moments she felt safe, protected, enveloped in its thick white folds.
Then she felt the blanket rising up again. But even those few moments had been bliss indeed.
In her mind’s eye, as she looked up she saw the blanket rising back toward heaven. But now it had changed. Suddenly it had become soiled and stained, covered with dirt and blood, its edges tattered and frayed and torn.
In confusion she stared until it disappeared from sight. She brought her eyes back toward the earth. Now in her vision she beheld a figure walking toward her. He too was dressed from head to foot in a robe of pure white. When he looked into her eyes she knew that he knew everything she had ever done. She was ashamed and tried to look away.
But she could not remove her eyes from his.
“Do not fear, my child,” said the most lovely voice imaginable. “I know what is in your heart, all that you were, all you have done. And I love you still.”
She could only hear the words with the ears of her heart and wonder.
“Do you not know that the blanket is gone,” he said with a tender smile, “and has carried with it all the stain of your sin, and taken it to the bosom of my Father?”
Suddenly Diorbhall-ita realized that the torment of guilt was gone.
“What do you feel, my child? Do you not sense it?”
>
She felt as if she had bathed in a warm pool, not only her body, but every part of her inner self. For the first time in her life she felt whole and clean and pure.
“I took away your sin, my child,” said the Savior. “It is gone just as you saw that blanket rise away out of your sight, carrying with it the stain of your sin. By my grace you have been washed clean. You need never again think of the past. You are mine now. You need no longer fear. No more will your past torment you.”
Now in her vision, though she could not tell where it came from, he placed about her shoulders a heavy, thick robe of purest white—whiter and warmer and softer even than had been the heavenly blanket.
“This robe of purity will forever clothe you, my child,” he said. “It will never leave you, nor become soiled or stained. It is the robe of my forgiving grace. It is yours to wear for all time.”
Diorbhall-ita fell on the moonlit ground and wept, unable to prevent a great rush of long, tearful sobs of released emotion and thanksgiving. For ten, then twenty minutes, she wept.
At last the tears subsided. She began to breathe more easily. When she looked up again, she saw only the moonglow over the sea.
The vision was gone. She knew the Savior had taken her sin with him, where it could plague her no more, and left her a robe of white. She rose and, with gratitude and praise in her heart, slowly returned to her cell.
The nightmares did not visit her again that night, nor ever again thereafter.
Two days later a great rain fell. Diorbhall-ita rushed out to greet it like she had as a child. Her delight with the wild wonders of the natural world had returned! As her name meant “God’s gift,” now God gave back this gift which circumstances had taken from her.
Tears of exuberant laughter filled her eyes, washed and replenished by the pouring rain. God had made her happy!
Slowly she sank to her knees. From somewhere deep in her soul a small voice spoke. Instantly she knew that for the healing to be complete, the next step was hers alone to take. The soft words which now sounded amid the storm were ones no other mortal ever heard. But he to whom all tears are precious took them into his eternal bosom and made them—along with the tears she had shed at the hands of those whose names she now uttered—into jewels for the crown he was fashioning for her in the heavenly place which would one day be her home.
“God,” she whispered quietly as the rain beat down upon her head, “I forgive Gairbhith . . . I forgive Broichan . . . and I forgive my father.”
Twenty
Nine years passed.
The Columban church in the region of the Picts thrived.
Followers of the Irish priest, whose name would forever be associated with bringing Christianity to northern Britain, continued to travel throughout the mainland in the regions of the Scots and Picts, and even southward in time to the tribes of the Britons and Angles. Monasteries were built, that men of God, monks and priests, might study and learn together, and continue making copies of the Word of God.
It was now 574. Columba and his companions embarked at the onset of spring on their most ambitious journey yet through northern Pictland. It represented their fifth such expedition. The previous summer had been spent on the isle of Skye. Having now traveled through most of Alba, Columba realized this might be his last such extended journey. Thousands of Picts had been converted. The Dalriadic kingdom was secure and slowly expanding. The monastery at Iona was thriving. It was time for others to carry on the missionary work, while he devoted himself to writing and training new priests who would establish monasteries throughout the regions where they had sojourned.
The lad Fintenn, fourteen now, was one whom Columba knew would influence many for the faith. He had sensed it from the beginning, and had thus now invited the young man to join them. Fintenn had grown to love Columba as an uncle and was utterly devoted to him. His father Aedh, a hearty believer among the people dwelling at the mouth of the Ness and in truth more influential among the Caledonians than his brother the king, eagerly consented. The only drawback to the plan was that Aedh’s daughter, thirteen-year-old Anghrad, begged also to join them, a request which circumstances forced him to deny.
“I want to know why I cannot go too,” the girl had insisted feistily.
Taken by surprise, Columba looked upon her with a compassionately apologetic smile.
“Dear one, you are yet young,” he replied. “There will be many opportunities for you—”
“I am only a year younger than Fintenn,” she interrupted.
“I am sorry, but I simply cannot take along a young girl.”
Anghrad turned and stormed away. With a look of sincere sorrow mingled with kindhearted humor, Columba glanced at the girl’s father and mother.
“She can be troublesome when she does not get what she wants,” said Aedh. “It is good for us all she has been converted at a young age, or she would be likely to take up the sword and join my brother’s army.”
Columba was glad Diorbhall-ita had remained at Iona. None in the settlement of her birth ever knew what became of her. For this present conversation it was best no one know of the one occasion when a woman had accompanied them.
The expedition began—with Fintenn, but without Anghrad. Yesterday, however, the boy had lagged and grown exceedingly pale. In consequence young Fintenn had occupied a larger than usual portion of his prayers this night.
“I beg your pardon, Columba,” said a voice.
“Yes, Diormait,” said Columba, glancing up as his faithful servant approached.
“The boy has a dreadful fever,” said Diormait. “Baithen asked me to find you. He fears the worst.”
Alarmed, Columba rose and followed his attendant.
He found Baithen kneeling at the form of young Fintenn. Columba instantly detected his anxiety. He knew his cousin thought Aedh’s son was dying.
Columba placed his hand gently on the lad’s cheek. A slight shudder coursed through the body. The skin was on fire.
“How do you feel this night, my son?” asked Columba tenderly.
“Hot . . . very hot,” murmured Fintenn.
Columba turned and walked a short distance away. None of his companions heard the conversation which followed, but in the silence of his heart, he whom an emerging nation would call a holy man was pleading for the life of the king’s nephew.
Fintenn’s fever began to subside that night. They carried him the next day, but he was back on his feet the day after that, and strong as ever in two more. Surely God had chosen this one to be among them.
Despite his youth, the boy contributed a great deal, in both help and encouragement, throughout the remainder of the journey, reminding Columba of the young John Mark, whose travels with the great apostle prepared him to later write the Gospel account of the Lord’s life. He wondered what the future held in store for this young man in the Savior’s service.
It was Fintenn, during their journey to the northern regions of Pictland, who discovered the curious collection of stones, some small but some so large that no ten men could budge them, in the vicinity of what appeared an ancient human settlement.
In their missionary efforts among the natives of the area, a wizened Pict bard of ancient years told them the legend of the stones, that ancient kings and rulers—whether one or several, no one knew—were buried beneath them. That the stones signified something was clear enough from the unmistakable carvings and inscriptions upon the two that rose vertically into the air.
If they were stones of sacred intent, thought Columba, he and his companions must not disturb the standing inscribed stones. But why should they not remove a sizable chunk from the great slab jutting into the hillside, and carry it back with them to Iona, as a symbol of this place and its kings, to link the new center of rule and spiritual authority with the legends of those who had come before? He set his men about it immediately.
It was not until he was older that Fintenn joined them at Iona, at which time he saw his cousin Diorbhall-ita for the first
time in years. He did not know her, yet something in the tall, graceful form struck a chord of recognition in the brain of the eighteen-year-old Pict youth. She was by now a radiant woman of God of thirty-eight years, held in high esteem by all the Ionan community. He had never known that the outcast who lived at the edge of the settlement of his birth was his cousin. But when Columba now told him, he was proud of the filial bond.
Thereafter the two were as brother and sister, as in truth they surely were.
Twenty-One
Another journey was planned.
Now that she had a home, no more did Diorbhall-ita accompany them. She had remained on the island for six years without setting foot from it, and was free to be herself—the woman and daughter of God’s design. She had not dressed in the clothes of a man since leaving the mainland.
The evening before Columba’s departure, he went to her quarters to say good-bye.
The moment he saw her, he knew from the strange light in her eyes that she was feeling a great depth of love for him.
A moment of special quiet tenderness followed as they stood before each other, both their hearts full.
“I am more grateful for your presence at Iona than you can know, my child,” said Columba at length. “You are loved by all the community.”
The love of God had not diminished but rather had increased and made pure the created passion of Diorbhall-ita’s woman’s heart. Slowly she began to disrobe before him.
“I have not been with a man since the day you arrived in Inbhir-Nis,” she said softly. “Let me give myself to you, that I might know the joy of true love between a woman and a man.”
It was the only gift she knew to give. She wanted to give it to the only man she had ever, or could ever love.
“I do not want to be loved by the whole community,” she said. “I want to be loved by you.”
“Dear Diorbhall-ita,” replied Columba, and his voice contained great emotion. “My heart would hold you close if it were possible. But I must not, dear one.”
“My Colum,” replied Diorbhall-ita, “all these years I have served you. You have been more kind and loving to me than I ever thought a man could be. Do not break my heart like this.”
Legend of the Celtic Stone Page 52