by Robin Morgan
She sat motionless, empty from her recital, drained of all her deaths.
Alyce was weeping silently, tears cascading down her face. Helena lifted her head and stared at her, as if surprised to see her old mistress sitting nearby, in a kitchen, by a fire, crying.
“There, there, Lady Alyce. T’is all long ago. They all be gone. They be gone a long, long time.”
“Not for me. For me they die tonight. For me they die backwards from tonight. They only now …”
Alyce looked up at Helena through brimming, red-rimmed eyes. Even in her grief, she missed the name not spoken. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but Helena spoke first.
“And what of ye and the children, Your Grace?”
“I … we …”
She had no names for safety, plenty, or peace after Helena’s news. She gazed into the fire. Then she settled for a recitation of plain facts she thought she could enumerate without breaking down. That much she owed Helena. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her nightdress.
“We have—fared tolerably. Certainly compared with what you … we did find sanctuary here, though not quite what I would call welcome. After some time, it became clear that we were not … not soon to return home. So I bought land and—tomorrow I shall take you round and show you everything. We live quietly here in England. King Edward ascended the throne six years ago. The rumours beginning back when he was Crown Prince were true. He is drawn to The Craft, though he must keep his Seeking private to himself and a few trustworthy friends. He would have liked me to be one of them—but court life was not for me, and that displeased him. It matters little, though, since he usually is off fighting France and massacring the Scots. But the man is no fool. I myself have heard him vow to curb Church power. He wants to abolish Peter’s Pence, a tax every household in England is being forced to pay the papacy. And Helena! Five years ago, Edward seized the revenues of Richard de Ledrede. He swears if the Bishop is ever fool enough to return to England, the Crown will ensure he is ostracized.”
Helena drained her soup bowl and set it down, turning eyes dim with fatigue on Alyce, who realized that her guest hadn’t comprehended most of what had just been said.
“More talk can wait until morning, Helena, after you have rested. Come now and—”
Then Helena, speaking absently from inside her own thoughts, interrupted.
“T’was the first thing I noticed when you opened the door. Your hair. Your fiery red Celtic hair. You be old enough for some greying, mayhap, Lady Alyce. Yet your hair be paler than Petronilla’s. Why be your hair stark white?”
XVIII
A GIFT OF SHADOWS
ALYCE SPOKE SLOWLY searching for the words she needed, finding them one at a time, losing them again, seeking a way to say what she had never yet spoken aloud and feared to name now.
“The night … the night after we left home, the eve of Samhain, we stopped in the high woods near Wexford. We were waiting for dawn, when we could board the boat. Something … happened there. During the storm. I cannot describe it. I—I fell. Into a—a somewhere. I became … snared, sucked into this place. It is a perilous place, from which there is no way back, no way forward. No way out … I gazed directly at Her—at The Morrigan. I saw Her true Face. Death Bringer. Mother of Despair. The Tomb of Every Hope. Finally I saw Her truths. They were—unspeakable. Indifferent to our puny truths, unaffected by our pathetic faith. Hideous.
“Her truth—the real truth—was that The Burning Time was neither rumour nor myth, not something hideous happening somewhere else to other people. The truth was that the Inquisition had arrived where we were. It was happening now, to us. The truth was that I had been a fool to think us safe from the world on our little island, a fool to be sure I could do what was necessary to defend us, a fool to feel secure under Her protection … and something else. The cruelest truth. I realized that I knew nothing, understood no one. I, always so certain I could read people well—I was ignorant, witless. And cold inside, cold. Colder than I had ever …
“Then I saw—I saw the skin of the universe peel back. Festering there under the surface—alive, squirming, heaving, crawling up through the rip in the skin—were lies. They glowed a greenish white iridescence. It was a cosmic nest … of maggots. Huge, fat, flagrant lies; tiny, winged, subtle lies. Lies about the existence—even the possibility—of health, friendship, trust. Sly, side-glancing, hypocritical, grinning, giggling lies. And everywhere, everywhere, betrayal.
“Simply, I saw life. Bare, sour, brutish, unadorned by illusion. Nowhere a gleam of honesty or sweetness. No way to lend purpose to meaninglessness, not even in passing, not even as a gesture. Only contempt for others—their stupidities, vulgarities, self-important scurryings busy as insects. Only disgust with myself—my conceits, willfulness, ignorance, spite.…
“I died that night. Like the banshee, I became a host for the dead. I welcomed it, welcomed death into my heart. It lent me an armor against feeling anything—pain, joy, curiosity, love. It brought a strange solace—a hard, icy power. It settled the nausea of boredom, because it assured eventual release. I could believe in death, because death alone has proven its existence. That night I lost my faith in everything else I had been foolish enough to build my life on. The sole order I could recognize was disorder. The sole promise I could trust was death.”
A brief, bitter smile curled her lips.
“But the children … the children were still there, still needed me, still had to be carried to safety. I hated them for that. Aye. I hated the burden of them, hated the pledge I had made to care for them, hated all you serfs for having extracted that pledge from me at the moment I humbled myself to what I thought were our shared beliefs. So had I been neatly trapped between all of you on the one side, and the Bishop on the other. So did I hate you both. It was then I discovered the energy of hate—a formidable energy. Hate drove me, by dawn, somehow to get seven screaming children—in a mud-mired, rain-soaked wagon hauled by one wheezing, drenched horse—down to the wharf and aboard the boat. At daybreak we weighed anchor. By the time the storm lifted and the sun burned through the fog, we were into clear water. It was in that sunshine I first saw it, after—still fueled by hate—I had fed the children, bedded them down in their cabins, and sung to them until they slept, warm and dry. Then I climbed back abovedeck to see if I could spy any receding outline of Ireland through the haze. I could. Just barely.
“It shrank as I watched it fade. One final sight, to last me the rest of my life. Eire. Erin. Home. The land I knew, the hillocks and paddocks; the rushing sound the river made in spring. The stones I knew, the echo of footsteps in familiar chambers where dust would fur my silent loom now; the stars seen from my turret window. The people. My son—child, man, heir; the rebel nuns who raised me; my parents’ graves. The dull gold summer evening light, the expressions on certain animals’ faces; the rich brown smell of onions stewing in wine near suppertime in winter. The child and girl and woman I had been, the only self I knew …
“I stood in that sunshine, watching it all go. The wind freshened and began billowing the sails and whipping my hair about. I reached to brush some strands from my eyes. It was then I saw that my hair had turned pure white during a single midnight storm.”
Helena looked at her with the glint of an all but forgotten pride.
“We were right, you see,” she said, “You saved our children. And our children saved you.”
“I saved your children, aye. But I was not saved. I have never spoken these dark things aloud. I have paced through these ten years an imposter of myself—for your children’s sake. Oh aye, I can pretend through the daylight hours. I have learned to practice lying as an art. I can act as if I believe The Craft was worth such loss, as if I believe The Craft is more than yet another myth. How can I blame my Will for recanting when I myself pretend to believe The Old Ways still have power or meaning? Oh, I can celebrate a Sabbat convincingly for the children’s sake; children need the illusion of hope. But I have lost th
e voice of a High Priestess. My spells ring as rote, like those Christian parishioners I once pitied for mumbling their rosaries without conviction or even attention. I can act as if I remember how to feel joy.… Yet in the nights, alone, I know who I am—and who I am not. Then the bleakness tightens around me and swallows up the air. Then I cannot breathe … and then I know I am a charlatan among the living, an imposter, a dead woman. Not even properly dead, merely in a lifelong transition, dying down all my hours. Until someday I am let go, finally. Safe from living.”
“Why, then?” demanded Helena, “Why did ye not abandon our children? Or leave ’em in some home, with payment for their keep? Why, unless ye felt obliged to us somehow? Unless we were people ye cared about, people ye—”
“You made me give you my word.”
“People break their word all the time.”
“Not a Kyteler. I was bound.”
“So ye kept faith with our babes only because ye gave the word of a noblewoman?” Helena narrowed her eyes and peered at Alyce. “I dinna believe it,” she announced. Then she shook her head sadly. “But I dinna know about such a dark place as you tell about, m’Lady. I dinna know what to say, or how to help ye.”
“There is no help for me, Helena,” Alyce said. “Nor might I recognize it if it appeared.” She smiled, that caustic smile again. “But my state is not important. I told you because you asked, and because you have earned the right to an honest answer. My troubles should not even be mentioned, given the—torment you all …”
In the long pause that followed, Alyce realized she was wrestling with the one question she most needed to ask but could not frame. She could manage it only as statement, as presumed fact. She began to speak rapidly.
“Is—Petronilla de Meath is safe, of course. They would not harm her. I mean, not since she returned to the Church, repentant. You did not mention her fate—and I can understand that, in the circumstances, given what happened to the rest of you. But still, I should like to know—”
Alyce stopped as she watched Helena’s expression change from confusion to dread.
“I dinna mention her because I thought you knew.”
“What. Why would you think—? What would I know? What?”
“I thought the night she left you, she told you what she planned to do. I thought you had tried to stop her but failed. I thought she …”
Alyce Kyteler’s hands found each other and formed a knot in her lap.
“She did tell me. She told me she was horribly afraid. And I thought, well, she is usually afraid, and now we are all afraid with reason, so I … we quarreled. I was patronizing and cross. I struck her … but then we made our peace. Or so I thought. She took the first watch. Then, while I was asleep, she vanished. She left me a letter. She wrote that she yearned to return to the Church. Yet she also asked me to raise Sara—and in The Old Ways. I was stunned, hurt, distraught. I was desperate to go after her. But how could I leave the babes alone? And in a tempest?
“Then I discovered that Petronilla had taken one of our horses, and that she had even stol—taken—other things with her, things I have never understood. Why should she steal from me? I would have given her whatever she asked for. She was like a daughter to me.… But it was not merely the horse or the objects she took. You remember the legend that one must sleep warily on Samhain Eve for fear one’s spirit may be stolen? T’was like that. Her leaving and taking what she … something broke inside me. I was sleeping, and when I woke, my essence—what made me me—was gone.
“I have never told Sara the whole story, of course. She knows only that her mother longed to return to the Church—yet wanted a different way for her daughter, whom she loved above all else. I have been unable to answer her questions—other than telling her that adults can become set in our ways yet still may wish different choices for our children. Which is what Petronilla wrote to me, after all, even if it did not make much sense. That is what she did, too. Did she not? Helena? Helena. Did she not?”
Helena stared into the middle distance, possessed by a knowledge too painful to be uttered. Yet she knew it must speak through her.
“Not far down the road from the forest where ye and the children were sleeping, the Bishop’s men-at-arms were closing in. Ye all would have been captured within an hour. Petronilla de Meath intercepted them. She claimed to be Alyce Kyteler. She was wearing the cloak and the silver Moon Helmet of a Wiccan High Priestess, so they believed her. Triumphant, expecting a fat reward, they sent a runner ahead to Kilkenny, saying they were bringing her back as their prisoner. I heard tell the Bishop went to the sacristy to prepare a mass of thanksgiving. Then, when he saw who it was they had captured, he fell into a fury. He dispatched more troops after ye. By then it was too late. Your boat had sailed.
“Never have I seen such rage as his. Rage he spent on Petronilla de Meath. Interrogation, trial, sentence—his vengeance took less than three days. Yet those three days were endless. She begged him not to torture her. She said she be greatly fearing pain and willing to confess to whatever he wished. So he had her confess. Holy Erin, what he had her confess to! Sorcery. Murdering infants. Making pacts with Satan. Consorting with a horned incubus, concocting potions from the brains of unbaptized infants—everything his sick madness could imagine. She confessed and confessed. Then he demanded she name her brothers and sisters in Satan. She knew from his ravings that ye had escaped his clutches. So she named Dame Alyce Kyteler. She confessed she be acting as go-between, arranging trysts for ye with the Devil. She be naming ye the most skilled sorceress in the world, swearing Lady Alyce had done whatever the Bishop told her to say ye had done. Then he be wanting more names. But she be naming no one except you. T’is why I be alive at all. Else, those of us sentenced to prison would have been burned.
“But when she would not name any others, de Ledrede had her publicly flogged in the marketplace. The whole county be summoned and forced to watch, including us prisoners. We be brought from jail in irons. That body of hers, so frail.… But ach, her spirit! I dinna believe this was the child-woman I had known. After the flogging, when offered forgiveness and the sacraments of the Church if she would name others, she laughed. In the Bishop’s face. In the marketplace. With the crowds watching. ‘Fie,’ she sings out, ‘Fie, fie, fie, amen!’ T’was so cold the vapor from her breath was like smoke, I remember. As if she be breathing fire.
“Next morning he had her flogged again. Five times that day. Every two hours. They be having to work in shifts so the torturers could rest, for even the men doing the flogging be too tired to continue. In between, they left her raw body bound to the whipping post, exposed to the freezing rain. There were rumblings of outrage in the crowd but no one moved for fear of the men-at-arms. We prisoners were kept standing in our chains. The Bishop, he sat to one side, wrapped in his furs, fingering the rubies in that big gold cross of his. He kept drinking heated wine and calling for more flagons. Every minute he watched us, as if feeding his empty eyes with the sight of us. He spoke to the crowd only once—a strange speech, like he was pleading with us. He said we be having to understand he was a good man, he was only doing his duty, he was saddened but forced by righteousness to carry out divine punishment, he was forced to be an instrument of God’s wrath. He said God be no base merchant haggling for souls that were his by right. He said heavenly light needed human darkness so as to show itself clear, so what ill he be forced to do, it be for her salvation and ours. Then he pulled his cowl down, so his eyes be hidden.
“Five floggings. All day long. After the third lashing she dinna scream anymore. After the fourth, the man plying the whip flung it down in disgust and walked off. But the Bishop ordered a yeoman to pick it up and go on.… Then, when it was finished, de Ledrede pronounced sentence: Petronilla de Meath would be burned alive at the stake in the marketplace on the following day.
“We be dragged back to prison. I knew they put her in a cell near mine, so I kept calling to her softly. No answer. Then I hear a key turn in the lock of
my cell grate, and who should walk in but Father Brendan Canice. Do ye remember who he—? Aye? Well, he told me the moment he had heard what was happening, he had ridden hard from Kells at Ceanannus Mór to Dublin, where he got himself an audience with the Archbishop, then had ridden on without stopping all the way to Kilkenny. The Archbishop had granted Father Brendan special permission to visit Petronilla and to offer her repentance, the sacraments of the Church, and delivery from the stake if she recanted her defiance—even without naming any others. From her cell, he had heard me calling to her. Always a fair man, he was. He bribed a guard to let me join him in Petronilla’s cell.”
Helena paused, passing a hand over her forehead and eyes as if to wipe out a sight sealed there past any forgetting.
“I canna describe what she—how she—I tried to talk to her. Then I tried to chant at her, teach her some of the meditations on pain. Such a young Seeker, a Neophyte. She never had time to learn more than the basic rituals … I canna be sure she even heard me. But I lay down next to her in the filthy straw. I cradled her head in my arms. Her hair looked almost as red as yours once did; t’was matted with blood, stiff with it. I dinna know what to do, so I said the spells to her over and over, trying to squeeze years of Craft study into hours, trying to fill her brain with the disciplines that would lift her outside her body. I dinna believe they would work. They dinna always work; they dinna work for me in childbirth, remember? Aye. But I dinna know what else to do.
“Brendan kept talking to her, too. Pleading with her to recant, saying her death was a waste, a selfish waste, since now t’would change nothing, save no one. He beseeched her to let him make the pact with the Bishop for her life—prison instead of the fire. He begged her to choose to live, for his sake, for the sake of true Christianity, for the sake of humanity. I remember him telling her that grace belongs to all humanity—not just each of us, not just her, not just one miserable sinner. T’was odd. Through that whole night she opened her eyes and spoke only three times. The first was after he said that. She tried to—stutter through those cracked lips. We leaned in closer. T’was like straining to hear someone underwater, drowning. ‘One miserable sinner,’ she gasped, ‘is all humanity.’