Brigitte's Cross (The Olivia Chronicles)

by Angelic Rodgers

  After taking a few questions and giving a recommendation for her cemetery tour later that afternoon that included a visit to both possible gravesites for Marie Laveau, Ai started moving and the group followed her as she headed toward The Ruby. “We’ll have a stop at The Ruby first, then we’ll come back to Marie Laveau’s bar for another drink for those of you who are interested in joining me this afternoon. I’ll be giving some more details about the legend of Marie Laveau and the story that she never truly died.”

  When they got to The Ruby, Liz first made her way to the bathroom, letting the group get seated. She then slipped into her office. Mike came in a few minutes later with a drink for them both.

  “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” Mike was cautious, as he wasn’t sure how to read Liz’s silence since the tour was over.

  “Mmm. Me either. If that’s what she does in all of the tours, I guess I can’t be too mad about it. And, it seems like most of the people who are taking the tour are out-of-towners, so I guess there’s not much harm.” She took another sip of her drink. “Can I tell you something, Mike?”

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  “I’ve been sleepwalking again. I fell asleep in here the other day and was having this really odd dream I was someone else—someone named Daniela. It was so vivid. I am not sure where I would have wound up had Kirby not latched the office door. I was having a hard time finding the knob and the lock and woke up in the dark, not sure where I was.” She looked worried, shaken.

  “That’s not the only time. I woke up in the park again on New Year’s Eve, and when I was working on Lisa’s house, I woke up outside there, too. I thought I was over this; I didn’t have any episodes when I was at dad’s.”

  Mike was worried. “We need to tell Kirby, Liz.”

  “I know; I wanted to talk to you first, though. He’s going to be upset about it, and I know he’ll probably tell dad, which means I’ll have to deal with the two of them on top of worrying that the next time I go to sleep I’ll wander who knows where.”

  Just as they were finishing their discussion, Kirby walked in. “Hey, kids. I brought you another round. The tour group has moved on, and no one seemed to notice you left the pack or that you came back here.” He set the drinks down. “How was it?”

  Mike looked at Liz. “Tell him.”

  “Oh, was it awful?” Kirby sat in the desk chair, waiting to hear the details.

  Liz shook her head. “Actually, what Mike wants me to tell you is that I’ve been sleepwalking again, Kirby. I didn’t want you to worry, but I’ve woken up outside twice and I would have wandered out of the bar the other night if you hadn’t locked the office door.”

  Kirby was, indeed, upset about it. “You need to talk to someone, kiddo. It’s not startling that your grief is working out this way, but it is dangerous to have you stumbling around unaware of things.”

  “I know. As odd as it sounds, I was thinking I might see if Vivienne will talk to me. The whole experience with her and the possession seemed to shake some things loose, and I feel comfortable with her. Maybe she can recommend something.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Liz insisted she call Vivienne herself. “I don’t want her to think you’re intervening again, Kirby. I’d like her to be my friend, and I don’t want her here out of obligation to you.” Vivienne had been warm and friendly when Liz called her, and they agreed on a coffee date at Rose Nicaud later that week.

  When Liz first got there, she thought she had arrived before Vivienne, even though she was running a few minutes behind. Then she realized that the woman reading in the corner was Vivienne. She looked up from her book as Liz approached the table. She was dressed in typical street clothes this time, not in anything that distinguished her as a Priestess; she looked more like a professor than a Mambo with her glasses perched on her nose and a pen in hand.

  “Good morning! I’m sorry I’m a bit late.” Liz sat down across from her. “I’m going to grab a bite to eat with my coffee. Can I get you anything?”

  Vivienne shook her head. “I got here early, and I just got a refill, so I’m good.”

  Liz put in her order and came back with her own cup of coffee.

  “Thanks so much for agreeing to meet me. I’ve wanted to talk to you ever since the blessing at the bar. I know we don’t really know each other, and I should probably just go to a therapist, but I just felt like you’d understand.”

  Vivienne smiled. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I am glad you called me. I don’t have a lot of female friends, and it’s nice to be invited for coffee.”

  Liz smiled, relieved that Vivienne didn’t feel imposed upon. “I just thought maybe you’d have some insight. Ever since the ceremony at the bar, I’ve been having these really vivid dreams and sleepwalking.” She took a few sips of coffee, wondering how much she should tell Vivienne. “I have always been prone to both, ever since I was a kid, but not to the degree I’m experiencing them lately. It’s getting scary.”

  Vivienne looked concerned. “What are the dreams about? Are they related to the ritual or to Brigitte?” Liz shook her head. Vivienne hated to ask, but she had to. “Are they about Alex?”

  “No. I wish they were about her. They are really odd dreams where I’m someone else. I’d be happy if I were dreaming of Alex, as long as the dreams were good ones. I did have a dream where I relived finding her and Wren. I felt horribly guilty because it was as if I was more interested in what Wren was doing than I was in saving Alex. It was like I helped Wren finish her off.” Her eyes welled up.

  “I’m no therapist, certainly, but it sounds like maybe your brain is just protecting itself. The dream with Alex makes sense as survivor’s guilt, Liz. The others are probably just escape for your brain. Maybe they really are about Alex, but by making new identities for yourself and others in the dreams it is a safer way for your mind to deal with it.” Vivienne reached over and patted Liz’s hand.

  “Maybe. I should start keeping a dream journal, I guess, so I can keep track of them. Of course, when I wake up in the park in my underwear, writing the dream down is a bit more difficult.” Despite the worry, the image made both of them laugh a bit.

  “Kirby and Mike do a pretty good job of keeping up with me, though. I finally talked to them about it, and we’re taking precautions to try to ensure it’s not so easy for me to wander out in my sleep.” Liz still looked worried as she said this.

  “Aha! This is the perfect time to give you this, then.” Vivienne reached into the neck of her shirt and pulled out a St. Brigid’s medal and placed it in Liz’s hand. “My mother gave one just like this to me, and I want you to have this one. She can help protect you.”

  “I can’t take this, Vivienne.”

  Vivienne nodded. “You have to. I want you to have it.” She reached into the neck of her shirt again and pulled out an identical one, albeit one far more worn. “See, yours is new. I’ve still got the one my mother gave me.”

  The medal was still warm from where it had rested against Vivienne’s skin. Liz slid the long chain over her head. She wasn’t sure if it was just the comfort of having a new friend or of having the medal, but she did feel better.

  Her food was ready, and Liz claimed her plate, bringing it back to the table. “I hope you don’t mind. I just have been really busy between the bar and working on a painting job that I have let cooking slip. Kirby and Mike are usually feeding me, but I thought I’d treat myself to breakfast.”

  “Not at all. I was so glad you called because I wanted to give you some more information about Brigitte, if you’re interested. You may already know about St. Brigid?”

  Liz nodded. “That would be interesting. I come from a family of lapsed Catholics, as did Alex.”

  Vivienne began. “You may know that Voodoo’s Loa are often analogues of Catholic saints. Brigitte is no exception. Her Catholic equivalent is St. Brigid. In Irish lore, Brigid was born a slave, even though her mother was free. You see, her mother sold Brigid prior to her bi
rth. Facing a marriage she did not want, Brigid prayed to become ugly so no one would want her. Legend says that her beauty was returned to her upon her confirmation as a nun.”

  “She is the patron saint of artists, in part because of the beautifully illuminated texts that came from the monastery she helped found; she also established a school of art. She’s also often held up as a symbol of strength, having come from slavery and rejected an arranged marriage. She is honored for her assistance to the poor, as well.”

  Vivienne stopped for a second, showing Liz on her tablet a photo of a prayer card with Brigid’s likeness. “It is appropriate, perhaps, that you are a painter.”

  Liz looked at the prayer card. “Interesting.” Scrolling down, she saw the prayer to Brigid:

  Brigid

  You were a woman of peace.

  You brought harmony where there was conflict.

  You brought light to the darkness.

  You brought hope to the downcast.

  May the mantle of your peace cover those who are troubled and anxious,

  and may peace be firmly rooted in our hearts and in our world.

  Inspire us to act justly and to reverence all God has made.

  Brigid you were a voice for the wounded and the weary.

  Strengthen what is weak within us.

  Calm us into a quietness that heals and listens.

  May we grow each day into greater wholeness in mind, body and spirit.

  Amen.

  Liz felt comforted even more by the medal Vivienne had given her after reading the prayer. “I’m not normally one for religious trappings, but that’s a nice prayer. I certainly could use some strength and wholeness.”

  “I’ve always found her comforting.” Vivienne flipped to a different browser page. “Brigid has pre-Catholic roots, of course. Just as Voodoo borrows from the Catholics, the Catholics borrowed from pagan religions before them. In Brigid’s case, she’s pretty powerful as a Celtic goddess—she’s the virginal aspect of the triple goddess replaced with the trinity by the Catholic church. Of course in Catholicism, she was a virgin and a nun. In pagan belief, she was virginal yet she married, and she’s associated with motherhood, inspiration, and healing. Depending on who you ask in terms of Celtic mythology, she either was a single deity with three main aspects or she was one of three sisters—all named Brigid.”

  She handed Liz the tablet, and Liz scanned the various images on the page that Vivienne had pulled up as she talked. She was drawn to the pictures of Brigid as the goddess of fire. She pointed out one of them to Vivienne as she handed the tablet back. “I guess I get the peppered firey rum now.”

  “Exactly! That aspect of her as associated with fire—the flames of inspiration, for instance—carries over into the Voodoo version of her. Brigitte is married to Baron Samedi. Baron Samedi is the Loa of the dead. He waits at the crossroads between the living and the dead and he determines who passes over. If he determines that someone has been wronged and killed through bad magic, he protects them and even resurrects them. One under his protection cannot be killed, at least not through magical means.” She showed the picture of Baron Samedi she’d pulled up on her the tablet, and Liz recognized him at once; a skeleton in top hat and tails, he was probably one of the most depicted Loa and the most commercialized.

  “As Baron Samedi’s wife, Brigitte is the mother of the Guede, the spirits of the dead. In her role, she protects the newly dead and their places of rest. She’s who we invoke, too, to cure those who are on the verge of death due to magical intervention or curses. One can invoke both Brigitte and Baron Samedi to address injustices done to them.”

  Liz nodded. “I certainly would call losing Alex an injustice, and I worry about her crossing over. Like I said, I’m not religious but I worry about her, even now. It’s not logical, I know.” She fingered the medal that Vivienne had given her. “I hope that Samedi and Brigitte are working for her.”

  Vivienne smiled. “It doesn’t have to be logical or rational to be valid, though. I’ve got degrees in all kinds of things that aren’t based in logic. Facts only get somebody so far. I know what you mean about the worry, though; I worry about my mother, who also met a violent end, albeit by her own hand.”

  The two women stayed for a while longer, visiting and talking until Vivienne had to head over to the Voodoo Museum to work on an exhibit. As Ai’s afternoon tour group of the day walked by the museum, Vivienne was inside working on the latest exhibit, coordinating with the director and helping to set up the displays, making sure they were done well.

  The exhibit was all about Marie Laveau. Vivienne hoped between the exhibition at the Voodoo Museum and the guest lectures she was set to do in the Folklore and History department at UNO that she could begin to shift the attention toward Laveau’s work in the community rather than it just being on the sensationalistic legends of her as the Voodoo Queen. As a descendant of the famous Marie Laveau, Vivienne cut her teeth on the stories of how Marie led dances in Congo Square and how she held huge ceremonies on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, but she also knew that Marie had been a great humanitarian who helped her priest minister to the sick.

  Vivienne stayed late into the evening working on the displays, avoiding going home. Eventually, though, she gave in and headed home. After eating a hastily made sandwich in the kitchen, she poured a glass of wine and went to her bedroom, reaching back in the rear of her closet shelf, moving boxes aside. In the back was the letter her mother had written to her on the day she died.

  My dearest Vivienne,

  I write this to you with a heavy heart because I am leaving you today. I fear that in doing so I can no longer protect you.

  I can only hope that the education you’ve gained and the understanding of our culture you have will present you with some solution. I did not have the opportunities to learn as much as you have, and as a result I have no choice but to take my own life before your grandmother can take it from me.

  I know that you have heard the legend of Marie Laveau and how she lived well beyond June 16, 1881. Anyone who has read Robert Tallant or even gone on a French Quarter tour has heard the legend that she came back younger and more beautiful than before to continue to perform ceremonies.

  They are not just legends.

  The Widow Paris, the first Marie Laveau, discovered through her studies a way to become immortal. Granted, it was at the cost of one of her daughter’s lives that she accomplished the feat, but accomplish it she did. The woman who died in 1881 was actually Marie Laveau II. A transfer was accomplished through magical means; when the original Marie felt it was time, she called Marie II to her. It was Marie II who died in 1881. I tell you this because your grandmother is Marie the first. This is why I must do this.

  Your grandmother has groomed me from the beginning, just as her mother groomed her. Just as you have been trained in the arts, so was I. When I became an adult and you were born, she began to reveal the truth behind the training; it was preparation. My rebellious nature irked her, but I have always lived my life as I chose. If you look back on your interactions with your grandmother, no doubt you will remember instances that seemed innocent enough at the time that will reveal to you her plans. A word or two here, a comment there, even things meant to prepare you for the transition you would one day face. I hope that if you do someday have children, that they are all males, although I suspect she has a hand in ensuring the line of women descended from her.

  I’ve done my best to shelter you and to help Christophe; my hopes for you both were that you would lead normal lives and that they would be your own. I sent you away to school not to be rid of you but to give you the best chance to gain knowledge from the world. I wish that I knew some other way to defeat her, but I do not. Know that I love you and that if there were any other way to stop her, I would choose it a hundred times over death. For me, death at my own hand is preferable to a death I do not choose.

  I love you, and I pray you find your way.

  Rosalie

/>   Her signature was carefully drawn at the end of the letter. Vivienne had so rarely seen her mother’s writing outside of ritual slips of paper slid into a honey jar, a beef heart, or on papers slid into the flames that she cherished that signature almost more than the entire letter.

  It had been ten years since her mother’s death. When she first received the letter by post, she had been so despondent over the death that she almost threw it in the trash without opening it. The slope of the writing on her name and address was familiar though, and she caught herself before she threw it away. The page was heavily creased where it had been folded and unfolded, as she read it often. Initially, she had dismissed the letter as paranoid ramblings. Her mother was always kind and warm toward her and toward Christophe, but Vivienne had hurt feelings from slights she thought had happened when she was younger. Shortly after her mother’s cremation, which her mother had indicated she wanted and which was for the best as Vivienne’s grandmother refused to allow a suicide to be buried in the family crypt, Vivienne received the letter from her mother through her mother’s lawyer. She feared her mother had succumbed to insanity, and that the letter’s only real warning was one regarding madness.

  After a year passed, she could look at the letter more objectively and she started to consider that there might be merit to her mother’s warning. In the year following her mother’s death, she became far more involved with her grandmother and her grandmother’s practice. The grief was a bond they now had, and in her mother’s absence, she was asked to step up and help with her grandmother’s clients. She began to listen for little comments regarding her grandmother’s retirement, her mother, and her grandmother’s plans for her. At the very least her grandmother did seem to be grooming her for something bigger, and she would often make comments about how pleased she was that in the long line of women that were descended from Marie Laveau that Vivienne had proven herself to be wise and forward thinking. Her grandmother, who had originally scoffed at the idea that she should study at college and certainly was not happy when she continued on to graduate school, suddenly seemed to value the academic knowledge and the different ties in the community and the legitimized view of Voodoo that came with that academic knowledge.