The Burning Time

by Robin Morgan

  Father Brendan studied his bishop for a moment, then bowed a deferential head. When he looked up, his face seemed almost boyish.

  “My lord Bishop,” he said, gently but urgently, “My vows bind me to aid you in every manner that I can, and I am grateful for the chance to do so, and will strive to serve you with a glad heart. So I might, if you will permit, explain some of our ways, that you might be more … as you say … effective. You see, my people truly mean no insult in keeping the seasonal feasts that our ancestors were celebrating even before Christ’s great sacrifice for mankind. This is an ancient people, descended from the Celts, related to the Picts, cousins of the Druids. We have a great culture. We—They simply want to … mingle different paths to the Sacred, each path of which they genuinely love—including the newer path offered them by the Church—enriching each faith. Nor is this true only of Ireland, but much of Britain. Why, t’is barely twenty years since the Bishop of Coventry openly admitted to being an observer of the Old Religion! So while some of them might—as you note, sir, with wit—sing at the moon, most of them attend Mass as well, and fairly often. The one worship feeds the other. Where is the harm?”

  “‘As well’? They ‘fairly often’ attend Mass ‘as well’? This is what strict doctrinal obedience now means? My God! The Church is not the savory onion in a stew pot of turnips, Father Brendan! It is not one choice, or even the best choice. It is the only choice. Inside the Church, salvation. Outside, perdition.”

  Father Brendan tried a different approach.

  “Perhaps, sir, if you could be mild with them, then? And display some humour? The Irish greatly admire—”

  “It is not their admiration I seek, Father, but their obedience, their adherence to doctrine. I am not here to entertain. I am here to educate—and chastise, if need be. For your edification, I have tried what you call ‘mildness.’ For most of last year I exhausted myself. I spent months untangling bishopric finances. I distributed alms. At Christmas and Easter, I knelt and washed the reeking, pustulating feet of beggars. I spent endless hours of what passes for social life with the Irish gentry in Ossary, since most of the English landholders sensibly remain abroad, and I felt my intellect atrophy in the presence of these impressively ignorant gentlemen. I performed baptisms, christenings, and ordinations, celebrated hundreds of Masses, preached scores of homilies, visited every church, abbey, and convent in the entire bishopric!”

  “Indeed, my lord, at Kells we heard that you were a model of activity—and I grant some of the gentry are uneducated. But not all. There are a few who—”

  “Yet still blasphemy and debauchery abounded. Peasants would defiantly leave wilting, stinking salads—‘bouquets of herbs,’ they claimed—at the foot of Saint Brigid’s statue. The abbesses openly flouted my stiffer rules for their novices. Your precious monks in the scriptorium at Kells continued to insinuate pagan images into the illuminated letters of holy Christian books. Some of my own diocesan priests would wink when fires were lit on the heath—with Satan himself knowing what obscene rites were taking place out there!” He paused for a breath. “Perhaps you do not know, Father, that I am English by birth.”

  Father Brendan bit his lip and raised his eyebrows, hoping to convey surprise.

  “Well, I am. It may be impossible for you, who have lived your entire life on this small backwater of an island, to imagine what sacrifice it is for a widely traveled Englishman, educated by Franciscan monks in Italy and France, to demean himself by accepting as his cross the assignment of securing this ghastly quagmire of a country for the Church. When I was recalled to the Papal Court last October, I tell you plainly: I rejoiced. I thought I was being rescued. I assumed it was a permanent recall. That, I now realize, was yet another naivete on my part.” The Bishop seemed unaware of the bitterness leaking through his words. “The Church Merciful may have sent me to Ireland in the first place, but it was the Church Militant that received me back at Court. There I was reminded that my ‘mildness’ had worked abysmally. There I was also reminded that the Church has embarked on a great task: bringing Europe to submission—with a firm hand, undeterred by false pity—for the salvation of man.”

  Father Brendan’s rosy face turned pale.

  “Oh really. You need not look so terrified. These are merely inquiries. Why do people become so emotional about being asked a few questions? When persons suspected of committing heresy are invited to clear their names, what is to be feared? They should be grateful! Indeed, why are they afraid—unless of course they have done something wrong? And if they are guilty, it is long past time to scourge the filth from their souls, or else to purge their lives from the community of the faithful. Never forget: If men do not fear evil, there is no need for them to do good. In some regions, Church law is now strong enough to overrule degenerate secular courts. So is the Continent being cleansed of the infestation polluting it—Albigensians, Templars, Kabbalists and other Jews, Moors, witches, sorcerers, all the foul heretics and apostates who prey on Christian souls.”

  “Aye, my lord, aye.… But Eire—Eire-land, Ireland—is a special case. No one here has ever been prosecuted for observing The Old Ways, which are so deeply—”

  “ ‘The Old Ways?’ You forget yourself, Father. You would do well to remember it is only a few weeks since I was given instructions by His Holiness Pope John XXII, in a personal audience. You are addressing his Emissary, sent with orders to see that the Irish are brought to heel. No more mildness. This time I return not to bring peace but, if Ireland requires it, the sword. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my lord,” the younger man replied. His voice held the music of persuasion, but his eyes had darkened to the colour of the waves gently rocking their ship. Serving this Richard de Ledrede looked as if it would be a true spiritual mortification. But somehow he must do it and do it gracefully, winning his release back to the glory of Kells. If he plied sufficient skill, he might yet soften the Bishop’s stand for the good of all … but he must keep his distance. He decidedly must not regard this man as his father confessor.

  “How came you to the cloth?” de Ledrede asked, gruffly changing the subject. Father Brendan’s reveries returned to the conversation with a rush.

  “I fear I can claim neither visitation nor early vocation, my lord. It was books. Education.… You see, I come of peasant stock. But I had the good fortune of learning to read—a long tale, that—and loving it, ah, loving it. And as I grew older, the great libraries at Kells seemed to me—”

  “—paradise pure, on earth,” de Ledrede murmured.

  Father Brendan was taken aback.

  “I feared you might find my story lacking in … religious fervor, my lord. Although surely since I have been ordained, my devotion to Christ—”

  “You thought I would be distressed because you were drawn to the Church as the greatest institution of learning on earth, in all history? Rather than your crawling to it as some wounded creature, or out of habit, or because of some ‘mystical moment,’ or simply from not knowing what else to do in life?” To Father Brendan’s further surprise, the Bishop smiled. “To the contrary,” de Ledrede continued, “you perfectly demonstrate my point. The Church is the sole structure in the world wherein even a peasant can rise. Oh, to be sure, we never lack sons who come to us from the aristocracy or the military, or … the mercantile class. But nowhere else, not even in the finest army, can a lowly man rise from his class so high as in the Church. How? By merit, my son! Hard work, intelligence, a healthy ambition. And most of all, obedience.”

  “And … poverty and chastity … and faith, surely, my lord?” Father Brendan was not going to be caught out twice on doctrinal familiarity.

  “I am a Franciscan, Father Brendan, so I know all about ‘poverty, chastity, and obedience.’ Poverty is dreary. The poor have no power to help humanity; they cannot even help themselves. Chastity … well, yes. But that is no great hardship; personally, I have always lived for my work. Poverty and chastity are greatly overrated virtues. Nor is ‘
the greatest of these’ love. It is obedience.”

  Father Brendan blinked, unsure whether to be relieved by such frankness or appalled by such cynicism.

  “As for faith,” the Bishop continued, “let us be honest. Faith manifests itself, after all the flummery is over, in deeds. Deeds bring us back to obedience. Do you see?” Richard de Ledrede smiled again.

  Emboldened, Father Brendan asked, “And you, my lord? Dare I inquire as to the road that brought you to the cloth?”

  The smile faded.

  “That is a long tale. Some other time, perhaps.”

  “And do you never miss your own homeland, England?” the younger man persisted, trying to recapture the moment of warmth.

  “Hardly,” his superior barked, “Cold. Wet. Populated with almost as many fey eccentrics as Ireland. Now Avignon—that is what I miss. You must do whatever you can to visit the Papal Court there one day, Father. It is an amazement. It is …” The Bishop’s gaze grew distant with longing. Then he shook himself back to the present. “Look,” he commanded, “Off there. The shore-skiffs are approaching. We have dropped anchor. I must prepare to disembark. In nomine Patri …” Mumbling a blessing and making a brusque sign of the cross, he dismissed his priest, turned, and strode off to descend below deck. Father Brendan, startled by such abruptness, found himself abandoned. Then, genuflecting quickly to the Bishop’s back, he also hurried off, his mind awhirl in anxieties.

  Soon the morning was given over to scramble and shouting and rope ladders being dropped over the side and trunks being heaved up from the hold. As the passenger of highest rank, the Papal Emissary was helped to descend, gingerly, into the first dinghy, where a leathery-skinned oarsman sat waiting to ferry him to shore. Once wedged in the small skiff, his hands clutching the sides, his eyes squeezed shut against the damnably lifting and dipping horizon, the Bishop tried to deflect his rising nausea by concentrating on the task ahead. Father Brendan might prove a useful ally, once that youthful idealism was tempered; so they were never fools in Avignon, after all, not even the bureaucrats. He peeked for a second at the detested shore as it drew nearer, then clamped his eyes shut again, recalling the first time he had ever seen it. Back then, he had been so pitifully enthusiastic to be the Papal Emissary, innocently believing he was being sent to Ireland because of his persuasive powers. Now he knew better. It had been, if anything, a punishment for his presumption.

  The dinghy’s hull scraped pebbles and sand as the boat heaved. They had arrived.

  The Bishop clenched his jaw. This time he would prove his enemies at Court wrong. When next they recalled him, he would make certain it was a permanent recall—for his ceremonial investiture with a cardinal’s crimson hat. He stepped resolutely out of the dinghy, reeled for a moment in the surf, then marched up the beach toward the waiting horses. His nausea was already beginning to recede and he was actually hungry. He would bring them a second coming of Saint Patrick, by God.

  Excusing himself to stay and oversee the unloading of the Bishop’s wardrobe trunks, and promising he would rendezvous with his new master at the Wexford Inn, Father Brendan Canice had remained a discreet distance behind, boarding the third dinghy. So Bishop Richard de Ledrede never saw his tutor and aide step ashore, half-kneel as if to re-lace his boot, and swiftly, discreetly, kiss the blessed soil of Eire.

  II

  THE RIGHT TO A WINDOW

  DAME ALYCE KYTELER ignored the silver snuffer on her bedside table, pinched out the candle flame between calloused fingertips, and slid in under her goosedown coverlet. Slowly, the Lady of Kyteler Castle stretched her left leg over to one edge of the big bed and her right leg over to the other, encountering no obstacles in either direction. She wiggled her toes, cooing small warbles of delight. What bliss to sleep alone, after all the husbands. No elbow to intrude into her ribs, no sag to upset the balance of the sweetgrass reed mattress, no icy feet pressed against her calves, no grunts and snores rupturing her sleep.

  The bed curtains were drawn back, so Alyce could lean against her goosefeather-stuffed cushions and look out through the narrow window in her turret bedroom. Sir John le Poer considered his wife quite mad for, among other things, having chosen to sleep in a room with a window. Sensible persons, he insisted, knew perfectly well that night air brought evil humours and disease, excellent reason for not having windows. Castle windows, John had more than once lectured her, existed solely for military purposes—as sentinel lookouts, and, if besieged, for aiming crossbows and lobbing arrows through. In response, Alyce had shrugged that military purposes were boring and that fresh air was good for you. Besides, the window was small enough, barely a slit, although during the weeks of Mí na Nollag—particularly near the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year—even this slit of a window provoked gusty dreams, and that despite the tapestry she had hung to cover it during the cold months. How splendid it would be, she thought, hoisting herself up on one elbow, to work a magick beyond her own considerable powers and create an invisible panel or wall that might keep out the cold yet let in the view. Or, failing that, she thought more practically, persuade the Cathedral masons to divulge their secret for forging those leaded, rigid, colour tapestries set high in church walls, tapestries through which the light glowed. Not that a glimpse of the star-jeweled night sky through her own window wasn’t worth a frosty draft or two.…

  But at present none of that mattered, anyway. It was the month of Júil. She could lie back down in the warm summer darkness and watch the sliver of a new moon glowing through cloud wisps in a celestial game of hide-and-seek. No chilly drafts—and no complaints from John. Savoring the pure luxury of it, she stretched again, gurgling a low laugh of pleasure.

  The young moon would be big-bellied and full in time for the coming holy-day, a happy coincidence to make the next sabbat even more distinctive than it already was: the Festival of Grains and First Fruits that the Druids had named Lugnasad, now also called Lammas. Lugnasad, one of the four great Cross Quarter Days of the year, was only a little more than three weeks away, in fact—a realization that jolted Alyce to start mentally listing all the work yet to be done. Pear and ash wood to be cut and dried for the bonfire, new candles to be dipped, chervil seed and pennyroyal to be pounded for incense, kirn dollies to be braided, crescent cakes to be baked from the thousand-year-old recipe … and all this in addition to the normal round of seasonal tasks: the first of the summer crops to be harvested, the fresh catch from the River Nore to be salted and dried, the—

  Alyce sat up with a start as Prickeare, her plump but distinguished elderly cat, landed on the bed with a thud. Prickeare, whose charcoal grey coat was so densely plush it appeared sable black in most light, was performing the ritual he usually observed around this time of night: abandoning his basket for the company of his pet human’s toes. Now he circled his own tail, then settled down with a possessive mew on his mistress’s ankle.

  “Hullo, Lightfoot.” Alyce greeted him by one of the many names she used for her beloved Familiar—this particular one dating back to when he was a lean young catling—as she did so rearranging her legs to make room for this sizeable living pillow that had already begun to purr. The small earthquake of bedclothes erupting from Alyce having shifted position disturbed Prickeare not a whit; he offered a delicate, coral-tongued yawn as he rode the quilt’s ripples and waves like an accomplished sailor wobbling back aboardship after a tipsy revel.

  “Been drinking again, eh?” Alyce teased. “For shame, you old sot—Oh! By the pope’s boils!” she swore loudly to the cat. “The wine! I never finished adding orris powder to the mulling vats! Ah, and I also forgot to wrap sage-leaf layers around those five cheese wheels ageing in the dairy!” Now she was irked at herself. But any state of irritability soon brought to mind her husband, an always reliable target for blame.

  “Pah,” she spat, “All this ado over John’s tantrums and theatrics … I cannot let it go on distracting me this way! What a nuisance that man was!” Plumping her pillow with a few
vicious jabs, she grunted, turned on her side, and tried to settle down again. Prickeare placidly ignored these agitations, while his mistress tried forcing her mind back toward the sabbat and more agreeable thoughts.

  How jubilant Kilkenny folk always are at a warm-weather sabbat, she mused. To be sure, during the winter months it was cozy to have the feasting and dancing indoors—torches aflame, thick candles sputtering, Ieul log roaring in the huge hearth. But there was something … deeper about holding the Rituals outdoors at the Covenstead—that circle of massive stones called the Cromlech out on the heath, centered around the dolmen stone—that the Old People had assembled and raised, back before memory. Was it because the Ancient Ones even before them had brought the Rituals from a legendary far-off southern isle where the weather was always warm? No matter. Even on this rocky northern island one could celebrate the mystery of new tendrils upgreening through the earth’s thaw; one could practice the magick of spinning out giddy chain-dances in summer; one could sit spellbound to watch bonfire flames—red edging orange fluttering into blue—race each other up toward the Moon, hot suitors in love with Her distant, cool, white shadow.

  “ ‘No other law but love She knows …’ ” Alyce quoted to herself, smiling into the darkness to feel her faith freshen through her like a sudden summer breeze, leaving a sense of relief and generalized affection in its wake. The relief was for John’s departure. The affection was for her serfs—the men, women, and children of her estate—the people with whom she preserved The Old Ways. There was affection, too, for herself: pride. She was proud of the aristocratic blood sent pulsing through her veins by generations of Kytelers; of her beautiful, fertile lands; of her beloved Eire, the isle sacred to and safe in The Old Ways. Then, too, she felt she had earned the right to be proud, by her own actions. She was proud that she was a skilled healer, and that she did not rule her serfs as other nobles did, but showed generosity to her peasants and cared for their health and well-being. She was proud that her peasants and servants regarded her, she knew, with grateful affection.