by Robin Morgan
Petronilla looked down at their entwined hands, barely listening. Clenched together this way, she thought, two women’s hands are still only the size of one man’s fist. How innocent Her Grace is really, she mused, and felt for the first time as if she were the elder of the two. But she did not say that.
“I will try to trust myself. Ye be teaching me much,” she said instead, “Ye be like an amchara to me. I canna say …” She could not continue. The women huddled close, hands clasped, with no need to speak.
“So now. Ye go and rest awhile, m’Lady.” Petronilla managed a wan smile.
“Very well. But wrap yourself warmly while you sit sentinel,” Alyce replied. Then the maidservant watched her mistress enfold herself in a quilt, curl up beside the sleeping children, and fall instantly into a deep slumber. Like Sara, Petronilla thought again, like a wee innocent child.
A wind sprang up, rustling the pine boughs, releasing the scent of resin in the cold air. But once it passed, the forest seemed to hush itself, densifying its darkness around the visitors.
Petronilla de Meath, alone in her wakefulness, walked to the hill’s crest and sat on a rocky promontory, hunching against the chill, drawing her cloak tightly around her. She scanned the night sky, trying to draw down strength from a moon obscured by storm clouds, its glowing face hidden from her sight as if veiled in mourning for the dying year.
There was a sudden scream. Startled, she spun around to see a rush of black wings as a raven erupted in flight from a nearby juniper branch, screeching as it flew. The Badb, the Macha, she thought with a chill at the spine, naming the crow shapes of The Morrigan, the Battle Crow who flies at Samhain to pick the bones of warriors soon to die. Then she remembered. There was no Sabbat Ritual, and no Initiation, but it was still Samhain Eve, when the membranes between this world and the Otherworlds tremble at their sheerest and most permeable. It was the night of death and birth.
Here was no birth.
Here was only cold, silence, emptiness. The dark.
“Great Mother of All,” she began, “and Holy Mary, Mother of God,” lowering her eyes in shame at the double address. Ye be trying to have it both ways, she thought, harshly condemning herself. Coward. Ye still be trying to please everybody.
“Mother of—” she began again.
Then she stopped.
There it was.
She felt it even as she saw it.
A lifetime of tension shattered inside her, beginning in a trickle and swiftly flooding outward as if freed by the bursting of a dam. This was the certainty for which she had been waiting all these years. Unsurprised, she stared in recognition.
It was real. It was vivid as each nightmare, every waking vision, each foreboding, every dread.
There, well below the hill’s crest, crawled a caterpillar of torches borne by at least fifty men-at-arms, their tunics in the fireglow clearly bearing the crest of the Bishopric of Ossary.
Petronilla blinked twice to make sure it was not another vision like all the others that had flickered through her over the past days.
But these men were real.
They were inching closer.
The column was winding its way up the road directly to where the fugitives had made camp.
XVI
THE BREAKING OF THE STORM
IN THE ETERNITY of a few seconds that followed, Petronilla sat utterly still, numb. She opened her mouth, but could make no sound. She tried to stand, but her body wouldn’t move. She had once seen a hare rapt with terror, paralyzed, its eyes huge, watching its death advance in the shape of a nobleman’s hound.
Then, suddenly, involuntarily, her body did move. It began to shake uncontrollably.
She glanced back to where Alyce and the children lay sleeping, then swung her gaze again to the marching column of armed men—but in the blur between, one image lodged on her sight: the little stone church, bleared with moonlight diffused by the scudding clouds.
Slowly, an expression of comprehension blossomed across her face.
“If I trust myself,” she breathed, so low she could barely hear her own whisper among the shushings of the pines, “really trust myself—then what I choose to do … I be not caring how it looks. Not caring what anyone thinks. Anyone. If I really …”
She staggered to her feet and hastened, stepping lightly so as not to crack twigs underfoot, to the sheepskin bed. All was motionless, everyone sound asleep.
Still, even with so many others near, she could recognize her own child’s breathing, distinct from the rest. She followed its soft, even cadences to where Sara lay. Unable to see her in the dark but unwilling to risk waking anyone by groping for the little form, Petronilla crouched at the edge of the makeshift bed. There, helpless, unable to touch her daughter, she knelt on a cushion of pine needles, drinking in the rhythm of this sweet childish breathing—steady, delicate, fragrant as music.
Sara, Sara, she mouthed wordlessly, most dear loved child, forgive me for what I canna help but do. I canna stay, I canna be brave and fight that way. You be growing up strong and wise, I pray it. You be growing free from your mother’s cowardice. T’will be for you what never could be for me. T’is why I canna take you with me. Ah, what a fresh grief, this! The worst of all my griefs, to leave you. And shall you be hating me, then, not knowing how much you be loved? Shall you ever forgive me for what I canna help? Oh little heart, like once I carried you inside my body, I carry you still, wherever I be going, I carry you wrapped inside this rag that be left of my soul. T’would have been grand, watching you grow to the fullness of womanhood. But t’was not meant, not for me. Too much fear in me, too much pain. Oh God, I canna bear it! Sara, Sara, my only child, the one perfect thing I made.…
The words made no whisper, the cries no noise. Only the pines sighed and swayed in the wind with the woman as she rocked herself, keening soundlessly, beside the shape of the child who slept on, untroubled by such suffering, innocent of its proximity, its depth. Silently, the mother pounded her face with her fists. I canna leave her—but I canna help it—oh Blessed Mary please Holy Brigid sweet Jesus somebody give me the strength.…
At last she rose. She hesitated, a stunned woman seeking her bearings. Then she moved swiftly toward the wagon, tiptoeing past the sleepers. From deep in the woods, where the horses had been tethered for grazing, Tissy sensed human movement and snorted softly. Petronilla paused, peering back at her companions. No one stirred.
She reached the cart, fumbled for the muslin flaps, and slipped inside. Quietly, she groped for what she needed. Locating the tinder box, she struck a flame and lit a small candle, closing the flaps after her to ensure no light would be visible from the outside. Hurriedly, behind the food bundles, she felt for the casket she sought. She found her mistress’s Book of Shadows, a quill, and a tiny vial of ink.
How mystical, how holy, these writing tools had seemed to her once, back when Lady Alyce had begun teaching her to read and write! How long ago that seemed now—back when each morning had opened with the gift of every day. Back when she had gulped her sudden unimaginable freedom like deep draughts of water after a lifetime of thirst, back when she could not believe her good fortune, when she thought she had escaped forever from this dull, familiar universe of threat and pain and punishment.
She remembered the day she’d arrived at Kyteler Castle, one stray among what she would later learn were many who drifted there, wounded, in search of healing. She remembered how she had been terrified by encountering the famous Lady Alyce as a ghost—chalky white from head to toe, eyebrows to ankles—until the playful wraith who greeted her apologized for coming straight from a flour fight with her son in the bakehouse. She remembered the day she danced—her, Petronilla!—for the first time in her life. She remembered the day she heard Sara’s laughter for the first time in either of their lives, that laugh like a hundred tiny gold bells chiming at once, a laugh that compelled you to join in for the sheer bubbling bliss of laughing. She remembered the day she’d begun learning her letter
s, while Lady Alyce had winked at her, “You know, Pet, learning to spell and learning to Spell are not unconnected.…”
Guiltily, Petronilla tugged a leaf of parchment from the book and dipped the quill into the ink vial. For her, the act of writing still exercised mystical powers, even now. But there was no time to draw her letters properly. She blinked away that shame, trying to concentrate on the message she needed to write.
The note, scribbled in a shaky hand, took only a few moments. She folded it and placed it between the leaves of the book, with one edge protruding. Respectfully, she restop-pered the ink vial, wiped and put away the quill, blew out the candle. Letting herself out of the wagon and stepping with care, she carried the book to where Alyce lay, tucking it gently into the folds of the sleeping woman’s quilt where it could not be missed.
Then Petronilla ran once more to the hill’s edge to check the column of torch-bearing armed men.
Nearer, nearer.
She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs as if with her last breath. Then, with no glance backward, she gathered up her things and slipped off deeper into the woods to where the horses were tethered, disappearing into the dark.
The first crash of thunder woke Alyce from her sleep. If there had been none, still she would have wakened, startled more by something she could not name than by the noise.
She struggled with the quilt’s folds, trying to rise—and her hand grazed instead the familiar, heavy shape of her own Book of Shadows. Certain now that something was wrong, she lurched upright and stumbled to the hillcrest, softly calling Petronilla’s name. There was no answer. Behind her, one of the children whimpered with a bad dream.
Rolling fog now totally obscured the valley and the road below. It was as if the hilltop and forest were adrift in a Samhain mist, an Otherworld terrain suspended outside its own space, like the Day Outside the Year. She could see nothing beyond her own hand held directly in front of her face. Clutching the Grimoire, she groped her way toward the wagon, tripping and falling over a dead branch in the darkness, muffling her cry and scrambling to her feet as noiselessly as possible. Finally she could make out a solid black shape looming against the more intangible blackness. It was the outline of the cart.
Once inside, she reenacted the same ceremony with tinder box and candle that Petronilla had performed earlier.
Then, in the dim light, she saw the parchment’s edge, a small white flag protruding from the Grimoire.
Her teeth began to chatter. She closed her eyes and told herself it was merely the cold. Then she forced herself to open her eyes. Unfolding the note, she began to read.
Alyce, amchara, I dare be calling you by these names now, for the first time and the last. Please be not hating me for a coward. I go to seek sanctuary at my Church. Tomorrow I will confess all my sins. If I be truly penitent, I know I be forgiven. You shall have sailed by then. Do not stay, for the babes’ sakes, and because the People said you must go. I pray you all get free and safe.
Take my Sara as your own. When she is older, name her Basilia in The Craft. Help her. But let me go. I be what I am. Inside me is a room so filled with fear there be no space for fearing one thing more. I be at home in this room, I be safe from hope. Try to forgive your friend and student—who is grateful to you and who did trust herself and who did find her own way at last. Petronilla de Meath.
Stupefied, Alyce tried to grasp her thoughts as they raced through shock after shock.
She must follow Petronilla. She must find her.
She must not let her be driven back to the very sources of her fear.
She must keep her from Donnan’s vengeance.
She must rescue her, she must—
Alyce burst from the wagon, to be met by a wash of lightning that drenched the sleeping children with a harsh blue brightness. The children! They could not be left. How could she seek out Petronilla and leave seven young children alone?
A deafening bellow of thunder opened the storm itself, downsweeping in torrents—needles of rain, chunks of hail. Like a madwoman, Alyce reeled in the wind to where the small ones were waking, wailing. Already, the hail was bringing down the canopy above their heads.
A child under each arm, Alyce dashed back and forth, trip after trip, between forest-bed and wagon, bundling them back into the covered cart. Meanwhile, thoughts kept shuddering through her in spasms, like the lightning.
She dared not risk taking the children to the church to retrieve Petronilla. But there was no place safe to leave them—not even a goatshed or pigsty in sight, as glare after glare of lightning made punishingly clear.
She ground her teeth in fury. Trapped. She was trapped into forsaking Petronilla, trapped into abandoning her to an old slavery from which she had all but broken free. Trapped into defeat at the hands of these malicious foreign churchmen who had come to wreak ruin on her Ireland. Trapped. Humiliated. Powerless.
Numb with sorrow, she staggered out of the wagon, now sour-smelling from so many wet children packed whining, half-asleep, into its confines. She slipped in the mud and fell, then slid again trying to stand, and finally pulled herself up to lean against a wheel, raving into the wind.
“Oh Petronilla, how could you abandon Sara? How could you? Damn you Petronilla, damn you to all your Christian hells!”
The hail started to lessen, though lightning still rinsed the air between thunderclaps, and the rain swept on in a steady, thrumming downpour. But Alyce’s tempest was not spent. Soaked to the bone, she turned her wrath on herself.
“How could I not have seen? Why did I not take the first watch, why did I not take her terrors more seriously?” She lifted her face to the elements, sobbing her rage at the moonless sky.
“And You, Morrigan, Great Queen! Where are You while your people are driven from our homes, our lands, our lives? Where are You this Samhain Eve, this Night Between the Worlds, this time of descent when the Sidhe mounds gape and the past wakens and walks visible? Why are Your eyes fixed inward, indifferent to us, pitiless? Why do You show us only The Crone, The Hag, thrilling to bloody justice and hidden purpose? Show us Your face again as Maiden, generator, possibility—or as Mother, nurturer, preserver! Appear to us, Morrigan, as You did to the Ancient Ones! Aid us! Aid thy daughter Petronilla in her dread! Give me the power to save her, give me the power to protect these children!”
A fresh shaft of lightning flared, and she addressed it directly, shouting into the storm’s howl.
“Evo Kore! Hide Your countenance from me no longer—even if it be The Cailleach! Even if it be the Unnameable, the Ancient Chaos! Show me Your face, though it be the Face of Nemesis! Aye, even if it be forbidden, still I summon You! Badb, I summon you! Macha, I summon you! Nemain—I summon you! Appear to us, Key Holder! Whatever the cost, fill me with Your Frenzy! Even if it destroy me, grant me Your Power! Old One! Appear to us now!”
Less than an hour later, the rain-sodden, grumbling men assigned to the Bishop’s search for Dame Alyce Kyteler heard distant hooves pounding toward them. Then they spied the outline of a lone horse galloping through the fog, down the hill road toward their column.
The commander ordered a halt as the animal’s shape drew nearer and pulled up on an outcropping of rock above them. Their spitting torches glowed yellow through the fog, reflecting on the men’s spear-points and drawn swords. But as they peered upward, the flares began forming strange fogged aureoles of light, through which floated a spectral form.
It sat astride the horse with an air of unchallengeable authority. A heavy black cape denoting rank and wealth billowed from the rider’s shoulders. The figure’s face was veiled by a curtain of rain, its hair drenched by the storm to the colour of shadow.
But with the next stab of lightning, the men started in terror, many of them dropping their weapons, falling to their knees, and crossing themselves.
For the flash had imprinted on their gaze a sight they would never forget. The lightning had carved out the reflection of a shining crown the rider wore. It bore the shape
of a full moon cradled in the arc of a crescent moon, its two points upreaching, shaped as a pair of bright horns.
Motionless, the apparition shimmered at them, waiting.
The commander knew he must address this creature. He opened his lips and worked his jaw, but no words came. His voice shriveled into a knot of panic in his throat.
Then all his questions were answered at once.
It spoke.
It called out to them with a ringing voice, in a tone of absolute command.
Phrases clipped with contempt came riding over the storm’s roar with the majesty of lightning itself.
“Merry Meet, this Samhain Sabbat. You need search for Me no longer. You have met the One you seek.”
XVII
A MIDNIGHT CALLER
DAME ALYCE KYTELER, fugitive, exile, former Lady of Kyteler Castle and numerous Kilkenny lands and estates, pinched out her bedside candle flame between calloused fingertips and slumped back against her pillow.
She was tired. She was often tired these days, and her bones ached from ten years of enduring the damp English climate. She remembered with something akin to awe how energetic her former self had been, always up and doing, confident of her judgment, acting decisively.… She offered a snort of sarcasm to the room’s darkness. These days, although she functioned well enough, she did so at a slower pace, finding herself grateful for gradual progress, simple daily accomplishments, small victories. She’d assumed it was a sign of age. Knowing herself stubborn, she had always found transitions difficult, but this particular transition—from the Mother cycle of life to that of the Crone—seemed especially trying. Certainly she felt ancient. Too ancient, some might sniff, to be raising seven children and overseeing a modest but productive manor that provided for its own and managed to send surplus wool and fresh produce to market at fair prices.