by Robin Morgan
Petronilla, as she did lately every chance she got, had turned the conversation to her growing fears about Richard de Ledrede. By now, everyone knew of His Eminence’s skirmish with Her Ladyship, and how she had bested him. But he had not left Ireland. On the contrary, he was ordering frequent parish assemblies in the Cathedral, summoning the townsfolk so that he might deliver speeches against evil-doing Jezebels in their midst. He peppered his sermons with references to signs of the Devil evident all around—claiming that Satanic eyes could be seen staring out from the circles on peacock feathers, warning that hair the colour of fire likely meant a person was marked for Hell, and repeatedly retelling the biblical stories of Bathsheba and of the whore of Babylon and their many husbands. Since Alyce Kyteler kept a pet peacock, had auburn hair, and had been multiply married, all of Kilkenny—indeed, all of Ossary—knew who he meant.
“That Bishop’s after having Her Ladyship’s soul in his pocket or her head on a pike,” Petronilla declared. “One or t’other. I be telling you, the man is up to no good.” She pounded the sage as if it were named Richard.
“M’mm, I dunno,” mumbled Annota, breaking a strand of red yarn with her teeth. “I canna take him seriously. I mean, he, you know, he is so … solemn.” She pulled a long face. “Hard to take seriously someone who canna even laugh.”
Petronilla glowered. She was growing impatient with her friends’ complacency. She was also concerned about what she perceived as her mistress’s blithe indifference to danger.
“I dinna know much about anything, but this much I know. A body who canna laugh may be just the person you would want to take all the more serious. Are we not to care, then—about him calling these big meetings and firing up all the priests and people against Her Grace?”
“Dinna scold us, Pet,” Annota protested mildly. “Her Ladyship keeps watch in her own way.”
Helena blew off a few clinging kernels of wheat from the last kirn baby and placed the poppet into a large wicker basket along with all the other finished dolls. She rubbed her hands and frowned.
“T’is a fact,” she murmured, “that the Bishop is calling a meeting with all the abbots in the diocese, aye. And when I brought the plums to market in town, I heard he now has all diocesan priests and monks attend on him in group audiences—pity the dears—to hear him lecture on ‘the crisis of the Irish soul.’ But Her Ladyship says t’is probably him just showing off—‘theatrics,’ says she.”
Helena and Annota exchanged glances.
“And by Holy Mongfhinn, Her Ladyship knows about ‘theatrics!’ ” Annota laughed.
“What is there to laugh at, about Her Grace?” demanded Petronilla, ever defensive on behalf of her adored lady.
“Nothing, child,” Annota replied. “T’is just that … well, Her Ladyship—like all nobles—knows how to show off, too.”
“I dinna know what you mean. She dinna dress in finery or act like gentry folk—”
“Nae, she shows off different. By ignoring ’em. Pleasures herself showing how she not be one of ’em. And in her way, shows off for us, too. Pleasures in acting like one of us, sometimes. Oh, naught bad about it, just funny if you—”
Petronilla leapt to her feet.
“Her Ladyship is the kindest—”
“There, there, Petronilla,” Helena soothed, in the voice she used with Dana. “Sit down, sit down. We all know our good fortune to live under Lady Alyce’s hand. T’is is only that …” she glanced at Annota again, who came to her rescue.
“T’is only that the great ones of the world strut their stories large, Pet,” the widow said, “and t’is best we humble folk keep well out of their way. Our mistress, sure she’s the best of her kind there be, aye. But when her kind does battle, t’is people like you and me can come to harm.”
“But this Bishop dinna want to harm you and me, Annota. T’is Lady Alyce he wants to hurt!”
“This Bishop dinna even see you nor me, Petronilla,” Helena chided, “He sees her because—well, t’is hard not to, round these parts. T’is what Annota means by using Her Ladyship’s fancy word, ‘theatrics.’ But you need not worry much. A lot of what passes between highborn folk—even threats—be just talk. They have the time for it, dinna you see.”
“Nae, he’s plotting something,” Petronilla scowled. “Something dreadful. I’m sure of it.”
“Perhaps not,” put in Annota, “Might be that the Bishop is lonely, wants for a bit of company, and canna admit to it—so he goes about calling assemblies. Have you considered that, then?”
“My thoughts exactly, Annota,” chimed a hearty voice behind them. All three women rose instantly, then dropped to the floor in curtseys as Alyce Kyteler, enveloped in an enormous apron with five deep pockets, swept into the kitchen. “It might be that this pompous, blustery little man needs to feed his sense of self-importance. Up, up, on with your work,” she continued, motioning for them to rise, “It might be that his convocation will dwindle into one of those nostril-flaring rituals so many of the fellows like. Even if they are supposed to be chaste, priests are men nonetheless, you know. Ach, I want a bit of a sit-down.”
She drew up another stool and sat down at the table, fanning herself with her apron; the women sat, too, returning to their tasks.
“I have been running about so much I hardly know how to stop,” sighed Alyce, “I sampled the crescent cakes for the right texture, tasted an herb butter to correct the flavor, oversaw the last of the candle-dipping, and made myself hoarse shouting at William that he and Robert must at least try to pay attention to what they are doing, and secure those cloaks more firmly or the wind will carry them away like so many rosy clouds. That lad … I worry about him. He is so agreeable—yet he evades his tutors and idles when he should be learning oversight of the estate. It cannot have been easy, having all those fathers and not one of them a fit man. I thought young Robert would be a good influence, but now I wonder.… Will ought to be more responsible at his age. We must all keep an eye out for him, eh? I do not want him misleading Maeve Payn with false promises into some irresponsible act that she believes will end in wedlock.…”
Petronilla, unbidden, had fetched Alyce a cup of cool water. She drank it down, then smiled at her three women. They all smiled back.
“Not that I lack for critics who think me incapable of recognizing an irresponsible act,” she chattered on, circling back to the previous subject, “Our Bishop, for instance.… Well, perhaps if these priests meet and preach and rail at each other long enough, they will tire themselves out and go play their games elsewhere.” She shrugged. “This is Ireland, after all. No one in Ireland has ever been executed, or even prosecuted, for practicing The Craft. This Bishop, apparently bereft of a sense of humour, seems to forget that most priests here are Irish, so do not share his failing. Like dear young Father Brendan Canice, for instance.” Helena and Annota chorused agreement.
“I think you’ve not yet met him, Petronilla,” Alyce mused, “but he used to come round often. Such a sweet-faced man! Hearty laugh, strong arms, good heart—hair black as midnight and eyes blue as cornflowers … now there is a waste of a comely chap! Ah, what celibacy squanders!… His mother—she has parted now—was a Wiccan Lore and Legend Keeper. Wondrous Tale Spinner of the Seannachai she was, too! A Biddy Róisín story would shine and ripple like a waterfall in starlight. And that woman could raise fluffy curds from new milk with just three swirls of a red-hot poker in the churn! She would say, ‘What today calls Magick, tomorrow calls Science.’ Nice, eh? Well, Brendan—of course we’d known him as Sean Fergus—went off to study at Kells in Ceanannus Mór, and he was such a fine scholar they snapped him up to be a priest. But on visits home he would still attend sabbats—in secret, of course. He would arrive in this comical disguise, having darkened his face with charcoal—you know, the way the Morris Dancers used to do?—and having pulled his hooded cowl way down over his eyes and having stuffed half melons under his robe against his chest, as if he could masquerade as a woman! Róisín
would call out, “Thanks be! T’is my daughter, the priest!” and we would laugh until our ribs ached with it. Once here, though, he’d be grinning like a gnome, kicking out the liveliest steps to be seen! He has not been to a sabbat in several years, more’s the pity. But I fear even if he did try to visit, the Bishop watches his priests’ comings and goings like a hawk spying every twitch of the field mice below. Well, let him spy all he wishes, if he has nothing better to do.…”
Petronilla blinked at the older woman, awed at how Alyce was able to change a mood of fear into one of good humour. It reminded her of tales she’d heard about alchemy, the skill of turning dross into gold. If only Sara could grow to womanhood learning such self-confidence, such indifference to what other people thought—qualities her mother knew she herself could never imitate. If only Sara might grow to be like this oak tree of a woman—rooted strength against her enemies but leafy comfort for those seeking shade from the world’s glare. Even Lady Alyce’s rare melancholy or pain seemed to Petronilla lofty, compared to her own vulgar troubles. The maid was ashamed to admit that she might envy so much as the way Alyce suffered—and it was clear to her that Sir John had made her mistress suffer—since Petronilla loathed how she herself cringed before her own pain. Not that her life had taught her to do much else.
Petronilla was an orphan—her mother dead in the act of birthing her, her father unknown. She had been a servant since earliest memory, always trying desperately to please others: first in the scullery of the convent where she’d been raised from infancy, in Inistogue, a neighboring village to Kilkenny and the place of her birth; later as kitchenmaid to one of the gentry in the nearby coastal town of Wexford. At the order of Cook in the kitchen where she labored, she’d married a man who had taken her by force one Twelfth Night, an assistant flesher whose hands always seemed to bear the faded red stains and gluey smell of the sheep and pigs he butchered. He frightened her. But she tried hard to gratify his desires, hoping that together they might create the family she’d never known. She clung to that hope until the day she ran away from him, taking Sara with her. Petronilla had grown used to the beatings her husband regarded as both husbandly duty and pleasure—but when he started striking their baby daughter, she found within herself a courage she’d never known she possessed. With the clothes on her back and her child in her arms, she fled to the sanctuary of the Wexford parish church. There, confident in her religious devotion as only someone with no other comfort can be, she threw herself and her child on the protection of her priest, Father Donnan. But Donnan was not one of Alyce Kyteler’s jovial Irish clergy. He was a cleric who believed fear to be the greatest form of worship and punishment the sole excitement flesh deserved. He denounced Petronilla as a sinful wife who had abandoned her husband and betrayed the marriage sacrament. Then he instructed her to do penance: to say fifty Paternosters, return home, kneel and beg forgiveness from her husband, endure his anger in whatever form it came, then fast and flagellate herself for three days and three nights.
Petronilla de Meath lingered long hours in that little Wexford church that night, but she was not saying Paternosters. She watched her child sleep peacefully in her arms while she considered her life. She sat still, listening inside herself to something she could not name, something that felt like a shifting, a swelling, a crack opening in her heart. When she finally walked out through the church doors, she knew that now both husband and priest must be left behind—whatever else might lie ahead.
She sought shelter with Lady Alyce Kyteler of Kilkenny, a stranger whose name she’d remembered hearing from another kitchenmaid. That forlorn woman once had gone to Kyteler for a potion to free her from her eighth pregnancy, and had blessed Alyce’s name ever after. Indeed, from what was whispered about Alyce Kyteler by more than one woman, she sounded less like a noble lady than like a possible friend—even an amchara, the cherished soul-comrade ancient Celtic culture had celebrated, the parent of one’s best self, trusted intimate of one’s secrets, reflection of one’s truest spirit. And Alyce Kyteler had in fact changed Petronilla’s life.
Not only her physical existence but everything she had been taught to believe without questioning—everything—had been transformed at Kyteler Castle. She had thought the Church merciful, yet found her priest pitiless; she had believed the aristocracy cruel, yet, arriving as a stray, found a noblewoman who treated her like a guest. Now she had as much food as she might wish to eat; she had a clean bed and two small rooms all to herself and her daughter, with her own fire—of real wood, not peat—in her own hearth; she wore warm dry woolens in winter and soft muslins in summer. Now she was learning numbers and letters, music and laughter and friendship. After a year and a half, she was still struggling to adjust to this way of living: days and nights with no fear, the emotion that had defined her entire existence. Most miraculously, she watched Sara growing into these freedoms early enough so that the child might never acquire the scars her mother bore.
But now there was danger. Now Petronilla was terrified that the Bishop might harm this woman who sheltered them. Now she was cold with dread that the violence of her former world would collide with the safety of her current one. With a sudden ferocity, she realized she would do anything to protect what Sara and she now had.
Such were the notions flickering through Petronilla de Meath’s mind as she sat grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle at the kitchen table on the day before Lugnasad Eve. But she kept these thoughts to herself, glancing at her mistress and saying only, “Well, my Lady, may our Holy Saint Brigid grant you be right about the Bishop and his boyos doing no hurt to nobody.”
All four women chuckled at the joke. Brigid was one of the oldest of all Irish names for The Mother—in Her capacity as Goddess of fire and keeper of poets, healers, and smiths. When the people of the Isles refused to cease their devotions to Her, the Church had created a new saint named Brigid—who quickly became the people’s favorite. It was an ideal Irish solution, one with a wink: the congregation could now be good Catholics while still offering devotions to their older deity, and the priests could pride themselves on the conversion of so many souls.
“Yes, well, I admit the Bishop and his fellows are a devious bunch,” Alyce agreed. “And if I seem unafraid, Petronilla,” she added, “t’is because in times like these a witch learns to hide her feelings. De Ledrede was so wroth about my delivering a baby—can you imagine what he would have thought if he suspected how many women I have helped not to have babies?”
“Here sits one—and glad of it,” cackled Annota Lange, “four was three too many.”
“So do not worry, Pet,” Alyce continued, “I am on guard against the Bishop and his monks. I suspect he would like nothing better than to burn me as his first Irish witch.”
“No!” Petronilla shocked herself by shrieking. “They canna have you! Never you, never! I canna let ’em!” She clutched her pestle like a club and glared across the table.
“Well let us not be so military about it!” Alyce laughed. “Truly, I would swear there must be warrior strains in your blood—not only that Anglo-Norman name, but the Viking ice glittering in that hair! Did you know, Pet, that the whole of Wexford county, where you were born, was settled by Vikings more than five hundred years ago? Perhaps you do come from warrior people!”
Petronilla knew that her mistress was trying to smooth the conversation toward another subject. But she could not stop circling, like a moth the flame, her own anxiety.
“I dinna know aught about my people. I dinna even know how old I am. My name—I dinna know if t’was my mam’s or my da’s, or if the Church give it me when they took me in as a foundling to raise me—”
“Well, you belong here now. They shall not get you back.”
“But the Bishop—” Petronilla began again.
“The Bishop will not get you, either, Pet. You shall go on being safe and content, and raise wee Sara here to a happy womanhood.”
“You could raise her for me. Better’n me. T’is a fact,�
�� Petronilla murmured, a tinge of jealousy shadowing the admiration in her voice—though whether it was jealousy of Alyce or of Sara she could not tell.
Alyce shot her an exasperated look.
“What kind of dismal talk is this for the day before a Sabbat Eve? Could we please forget bishops and plots and miseries, and concentrate instead on the holy-day? Much has yet to be done! We need to consecrate the Working Tools for the Ritual—which means that someone must go to fetch the Athame from Alyce and Henry. William could do it—that is, if he and Robert ever finish pretending they are knights jousting with those menacing billowy red clothes hanging out there SARA!”
Alyce let out a screech and dived to the floor where Sara sat silently turning blue as a Pict painted with woad. She had a nutshell fragment stuck in her throat, having begun to chew the shells once she had dispatched the nutmeats. One thwack on her shoulders brought the shell out, along with a fit of coughing. The delayed wail that followed worked beautifully: it maneuvered her onto Alyce’s lap to be cuddled and successfully averted a scolding from her mother for her reckless eating habits.
As the crisis subsided, Annota brought out a gift for the little girl. It was to have waited until the following day, but seemed a helpful diversion now: a tiny kirtle embroidered with yellow thread—stalks of wheat against a deep orange background the shade of peachblush. Labor paused for everyone to admire Annota’s needlework—which naturally had to be tried on and displayed by Sara at once, although intended for wearing at the Sabbat festivities. The child twirled around the kitchen, receiving applause from the four women and curtseying like a tiny queen accepting her subjects’ fealty. Then Helena brought forth a snack of boiled oats and cream and hung a kettle on the fire, while the conversation turned to cheerier subjects than the Bishop’s intrigues.