* * *
Away in Connaught Turlough O’Conor, its king, died. The young O’Conor received the news just after he’d delivered Dervorgilla to her husband in Breffni. He rode like a mad thing to Connaught to begin the vicious and bloody in-fighting against his brothers for the throne.
With Connaught having its problems the pattern of power flickered and shifted. The scales tipped to the other great contender for the High Kingship of Ireland, MacLochlainn of Ulster, who now prepared for war with Connaught.
Down in the south-east of the island Dermot of Leinster saw his opportunity to win the High Kingship for himself and called a meeting of all the Leinster lords at the ancient site of Dunn Ailinn.
It was a fine day with a light breeze which carried Dermot’s voice compellingly to his audience. He spoke of history, carrying the lords of Leinster back to the third and fourth centuries before the birth of Christ, to the elemental tales of the common ancestor of all Leinstermen, Labraid Loingsech, to the time when a powerful Leinster confederacy dominated Ireland. He didn’t speak of himself, only of Leinster, Leinster and, again, Leinster.
‘Jesus God,’ whispered the O’Faolain to the lord of the Hy Murchadha, ‘he’s after the High Kingship.’
But even as he translated into political reality the great phrases that rolled from Dermot’s lips, he wept at them, and the ancestry in his veins shouted for Leinster’s rightful supremacy, and his love for his province overflowed in a torrent that swept over the Wicklow mountains to the east, flooded the plain to the bogland and hills of the west and divided in clutching fingers down the Slaney and the Barrow and the Liffey to the sea.
Dermot’s own eyes spurted tears as he called up Finn and the Fianna to come to his aid, and huge tattered figures came racing across the sky from the Hill of Allen to stand by his side. By the time he reached his peroration he had a massed, half-seen army of dead heroes standing at his back.
‘Now is the time, now,’ he roared at them all. ‘While Connaught and Ulster tear at each other, let Leinster march to her glory on Tara. From here, from the height of Dunn Ailinn, let us resemble Labraid and throw down the mighty of the earth.’
He threw out his arms to raise the mighty of Leinster to their feet. However, with bad timing, a flock of swans chose that moment to come flying over Dunn Ailinn from the west where Kildare stood, five miles away. The mouth of Dermot’s audience remained open to cheer but its eyes flickered heavenwards, even as it stood up, to an undoubted portent.
O’Faolain remained in his seat, though he had to struggle as if against pulling string to do so, and the Murchadha and Donal MacGillacolmoc, chief of the Hy Dunchada, stayed sitting with him.
‘Now is not the time, Mac Murrough,’ called out Donal.
‘But it is, my dear. The opportunity is here, I can feel it through my blood.’ And they could see that he did. ‘You’re not going to be petty about old scores on this glorious day.’
The ‘old scores’ had mounted up in 1141 when the North Leinster lordships had risen against Dermot and been put down with a ferocity unusual even for him. The three chiefs who faced him were all young – he’d had their fathers killed.
‘It’s not that, Mac Murrough,’ said Donal. They were pragmatists, after all: these things happened. ‘But St Brigid is against a war at all. She asks if we haven’t had enough of fighting, and indeed my people are still bled white after their sufferings at the hand of the O’Conor’s army.’
‘And who is speaking for St Brigid?’ asked Dermot silkily. ‘Not that bloody kitchen maid.’
He shocked the company by his disrespect. ‘She’s the Comarba,’ shouted the O’Faolain, ‘and one you gave us yourself. She has the sight without doubt. She told me not to marry my wife’s sister, and, sure enough, the woman died the next month, so that saved me a waste of time.’
Donal MacGillacolmoc nodded: ‘Even though she hasn’t got the Irish, she reads your mind. In front of her I said something in our own tongue to my standard-bearer, and she knew what it was. She is the true Comarba.’
The discussion spread. Other lords, now freed from the madness of Dermot’s voice, remembered that they too had been advised against war by the Comarba at Kildare.
Dermot begged, pleaded, commanded, threatened, but slowly his chance at the High Kingship, which would only come once and was here, now, while the other two great kingdoms fought each other, blew away on the breeze out of his grasp.
It was all over when Donal, remembering his depleted wealth from the latest war, and overcome by religious fervour, leaped on his chair to quote the ancient ‘Hail, Brigid.’
‘When from its side I gaze upon the fair Curragh.
The lot of every king brings awe for each downfall,
O Brigid, whose land I behold
Upon which each one in turn had his being,
Thy fame outshines their fame.
Thou art king over all.’
The company bent its head in prayer and, unseen, Dermot went behind a hawthorn tree and vomited.
‘No hard feelings, Mac Murrough?’ asked the O’Faolain as they went down the hill.
‘None, my dear. Why would there be? We’ve lost our chance and now we have to decide which to throw in with, Ulster or Connaught. Personally, I’m for Ulster. I’m against the O’Conors.’
‘Why either?’ asked Donal, ‘Let’s get strong again first. Let’s have some peace.’
Dermot turned on him and grabbed him by the throat. ‘There is no peace,’ said Dermot, smiling into Donal’s eyes. ‘We can’t stop and let the others fight. We are cats in a bag and we must fight until one of us is left. It is our doom, willed to us by our ancestors, God help them. Either it will go on for all eternity, or we will be invaded, or one of us will conquer all the others and start making a coherent state out of our anarchy. Do you see?’
He was pulled off and thrown to the ground. A bewildered Donal massaged his bruised throat. ‘He doesn’t see,’ explained Dermot gently, sitting up. ‘I am the only one who does. You should have followed me, my dears, not the kitchen maid.’
A realisation of the danger entered the O’Faolain’s dogged mind. ‘No reprisals, Mac Murrough. I know you. She’s not like O’More. She can’t be unfitted by blinding. She’s the Comarba. She’s inviolable.’
They left him rolling on the ground, tearing at the grass. Murchadh Mac Murrough lumbered up, knelt by his brother and held his head until the fit had passed, then gently helped him to his feet. ‘Do you want them killed?’
Dermot shook his head. ‘Not yet. It’s not them. It’s her.’ He wiped the spit from his mouth. ‘I’m afraid, my love, that she wasn’t one of my better ideas.’
Murchadh thought it out, a process he found difficult. ‘If we kill her we’ll have every churchman in Christendom cursing our souls. She’s inviolable.’
As they rode towards home, Dermot was quiet. Murchadh, used to silence, didn’t break it. They were nearly at Narraghmore before Dermot looked up.
‘Not quite,’ he said.
* * *
Boniface had a dream. In it St Brigid, stout, comfortable, motherly, stood in front of her holding an illuminated first page of a gospel in either hand. Boniface knelt before her, knowing that the saint was about to reveal a great truth to her Comarba. They were in an enclosed garden – Boniface could smell roses and herbs. ‘Yes, mother?’ she said, reverently.
St Brigid smiled at her and held out her right hand so that Boniface could see the page of vellum it held. It was the St Mark’s Gospel on which the ring of St Brigid had been proffered to her at her inauguration, but this time Boniface’s eyes were able to probe even further into its beauty, into each faultless spiral in an inch of space which consisted of hundreds of interlacements, the innumerable hairs on the winged lion of St Mark.
‘The Word of God,’ said St Brigid’s voice. Then the saint held out her other hand, and Boniface found herself staring at exactly the same gospel. Not quite the same. In the place of the winged lion wa
s the witch, the Thing on the Wall, terrible, exquisitely drawn, with the gaping vagina spiralling into a hidden infinity.
‘The Word of Man,’ said St Brigid.
Boniface was filled with a colossal understanding. ‘Thank you, mother,’ she said, ‘I see. I see. I see.’
She found herself sitting up in her bed, still saying, ‘I see,’ with the scent of roses and herbs drifting through her window from the summer dawn in the courtyard outside, still understanding something desperately important, but unable to remember what it was, although the dream was still clear to her. ‘I’ve had a vision,’ she thought, ‘that was no dream, that was a vision. But what did it mean?’
It had something to do with Brother Flan. Her loathed secretary had been loitering, unseen but irritating, on the edge of the garden while she had talked to St Brigid.
She was beginning to achieve true power as the Comarba of Kildare now. She had used every influence she had with the nobles of Leinster – all excepting Dermot, whom she had not seen since her arrival in Ireland – to persuade them from war and it had been a great day when they brought her the news that they had voted against it at Dunn Ailinn and thwarted Dermot’s plans to take over the High Kingship.
Yet she was still powerless in one important field – her correspondence with the outside world. Brother Flan was definitely censoring her letters as he wrote them. Only the other day she had received a letter from the Abbess of Fontevrault asking a question about the form of Irish church services which Boniface knew had already been answered by information in one of her letters to Mother Matilda.
She stayed in bed while her serving maid, Ban, set her bowl of hot washing water in its canvas cradle on the tripod. Suppose, suppose, he was also doctoring Mother Matilda’s letters to her? Not reading certain things to her? Censoring, weighting, embroidering? He might be denying her knowledge of all sorts of things which were vital to her. Was a worldwide network of abbesses being thwarted in true communication with each other by a worldwide network of malevolent monks?
‘Kak,’ she said, shocking Ban. She was learning Irish swearwords from Art.
As she went about her business that day she pondered on the meaning of her vision and told her nuns about it at chapter.
They were thrilled. ‘Aren’t we the lucky ones,’ said Sister Acall, ‘to be blessed in an abbess who is visited by the Blessed St Brigid.’
‘But what did she mean by it?’ asked Boniface, irritably, aware of the honour of the greatest saint in Ireland trying to tell her something, but wishing she’d made it clearer. ‘She seemed to be implying that the Word of God was virtually the same as the Word of Man.’
‘Well, we know the Bible was physically written by men, I suppose,’ said Sister Aine thoughtfully, ‘but at God’s dictation.’
‘Was it?’ Sister Maire had obviously envisaged a celestial pen inscribing the original from which all subsequent testaments were copies.
‘Now I wonder why God made women unable to write,’ mused red-headed Cruimtheris. ‘Wouldn’t the Word of Woman be something?’ The other nuns smiled indulgently; Cruimtheris was so young and so fanciful.
‘Women can write,’ said Sister Acall unexpectedly. ‘There was that Hypatia in Alexandria in the old days and even though she was a pagan they say she was a great scholar. And wasn’t one of our Norman pilgrims telling us only last year about that sinful philosopher who taught his inamorata to read and write? What was his name now?’
Boniface put a hand to her head. ‘Abelard,’ she said, ‘Peter Abelard.’ She had forgotten until now the scandal that had rocked the clergy of Europe only a few years before. ‘Her name was Heloise.’
‘That was it sure enough,’ said Acall, ‘and there you are, though one was a pagan and the other a sinner, they show that women can write and even read if they’re taught.’
Boniface stared at the inflamed face of her nun. Really, she thought, Acall was extraordinary; most of the time a liability, given to sulks at imagined slights; the censing at Mass had to be done crab-like in order to shield her from the sight of the swinging censor since anything which oscillated sent her into hysterics; yet occasionally, as now, she could produce surprising knowledge, just as at other times she showed penetrating insight.
‘Then why shouldn’t we?’ she asked, ‘Why leave it to pagans and sinners? I shall tell Brother Flan to start instructing a couple of you right away.’
Boniface had no love of scholarship for scholarship’s sake; she herself did not want to roam the sacred fields of literacy. To experience the excitement of the written word was not for her, though she was aware that it held excitement, but since her frustration at the hands of Brother Flan she appreciated the need to command its power. For the very first time she realised how powerful it was. And how it would enhance the prestige of her abbey, not to mention herself, if she could tell the Pope that it contained literate nuns.
She blessed the sister, especially Sister Acall, with unusual warmth and hurried away. She would set the project in train at once.
* * *
She began her letter to the Pope with a report of her achievements in reform so far. ‘May you not be displeased, Holy Father, by the advance of God’s rule and that of His handmaiden, the Church, in this land,’ she dictated, after she’d listed them. She looked suspiciously down at the wax tablet on which Brother Flan made his notes to be transcribed later. ‘What have you put?’
‘May you not be displeased, Holy Father…’ he read back in his sullen monotone. He did not hold with the Roman way though he had been forced to adopt its tonsure.
‘We now intend to devote ourselves to enforcing the prompt payment of tithes, rents and first fruits which are so scandalously neglected here,’ Boniface went on. ‘Furthermore we would bring to your Holiness’ attention our intention to have some of the sisters of our congregation taught to cipher and to letter.’
Brother Flan laid down his stylus and folded his arms.
‘Write,’ commanded Boniface.
‘I shall not. The Holy Father must not be misinformed. Women are incapable of lettering, and no one here will take on the task.’
‘They will. Write what I say or you’ll be dismissed and I shall find someone who will.’
‘You won’t.’
‘I shall.’
‘Where?’
Her chaperone, Gormlaith, and Flan’s chaperone, Brother Aidan, looked up in alarm; the exchange had risen in a rapid crescendo to screams. The ‘Where?’ was intolerable to Boniface who, if Abbot Flynn backed his monk, and he probably would, was helpless. She found herself gasping, as if she were suffocating.
‘I am the Comarba of St Brigid and you will do as I say.’
‘You are still a woman and therefore inferior.’
She grabbed his ear and hauled him to the door, her anger and his surprise giving her the advantage. ‘Get out.’ She administered a kick to his backside which staggered him along the passage until he could recover his balance. ‘I’ll give you inferior, you little bastard,’ she shrieked down the passage after him.
Abbot Flynn was obdurate in refusing to allow any of his monks to teach the nuns to write, though he was more avuncular about doing so. ‘It would addle the heads of the poor ladies,’ he said sweetly, ‘to put such a nonsense into them.’
‘Then I shall send to the Pope to ask for a monk to be sent over who will teach them,’ shouted Boniface. But, though Brother Fintan was appointed in Brother Flan’s place, this new secretary also drove Boniface almost to madness by refusing to write to the Pope about it.
The Irish nuns were discreetly silent about her physical attack on Brother Flan, though, surprisingly, they treated her with a new warmth. Sister Brigh was overheard to say, ‘Didn’t I tell you she had the Irish ancestry?’
It was Clotilde, her truth teller, who lectured her on handling the matter badly, which made Boniface cross because she knew it was true, although on reflection she was unable to think of any way in which she could have handled
it that would have altered the outcome, and never until the end of her days would she regret the contact between the toe of her boot and Brother Flan’s bottom.
There was a change in her after this. Outwardly, she held to a greater dignity, almost stilted, and flaunted her power as Comarba as if to compensate for the lapse of both during the encounter with Brother Flan. Certainly she seethed at the impotence the monks had imposed on this one vital area of her authority; that they could deck her with garlands, bow to her, pay her lip service as a figurehead and then rein her in like some processional horse that had got out of line, brought her to screaming point. The more she thought how feasible it was for women to wield the pen, the more determined she became that they should. She wasted a good deal of time in trying to find ways of escaping from the incommunicative prison in which she had been put. At one point she briefed Sister Clotilde to go to Rome as her personal messenger to the Pope, but dropped the idea realising, as Clotilde pointed out, that it would take years.
But underneath all this frustration, she was oddly invigorated. Suppose that in the shameful little episode with Brother Flan there had been a microcosm, a miniature representation, of a global conspiracy by men against her sex? How many other women had conceived good, great ideas and been thwarted by their inability to publish them abroad?
Communication, history itself, was in men’s keeping and who was to say that they’d got it right? She glimpsed rows and rows of annalists and chroniclers and commentators and philosophers bent over desks arrayed in lines that disappeared into the horizons of the past, and all of them looked like bloody Brother Flan. Sullenly, wickedly, and sometimes out of sheer ignorance, they altered what they knew to be true, just as Flan had changed her letters.
‘What have you put?’ Mentally she asked them the same question she had asked Flan, but she got no answer.
Daughter of Lir Page 10