Saint Brigid's Bones (3 page)

“See for yourself. I've been using the piece that ripped off to blow my nose.”

I took the small, damp rag and looked at it in the last of the fading light. It was a tartan weave of dark green-dyed wool with black and gold diagonals. Every tribe and clan had their own favorite pattern passed down through the generations. I didn't recognize this one, but it looked like a Leinster weave from our own province. It was a fine piece of work. Whatever wife had made this for her husband would be none too pleased that he had torn a hole in a cloak it had taken her months to make. Farmers wore tartans as well, but they were simple checked weaves made from coarse wool. This cloak had been made for a member of the warrior nobility.

“May I have this, Tamun?”

“Sure, keep the damn thing. I don't need it.”

“Thank you. A good evening to you, Tamun.”

“Just leave me in peace or I'll set the dogs on you again.”

I walked back to the monastery through the darkness. A Byzantine ribbon and a warrior with a fine cloak hiding in the woods on the border of our church lands. I wondered if he could have taken the bones? Michaelmas was the feast of the angels celebrated at the end of September, plenty of time for dust to collect on the chest latch. But why would a nobleman want the bones of Brigid?

When three frantic, sleepless days of searching had passed, the sisters and brothers all gathered in the church to pray on our knees that our holy founder might speak to the misguided soul who had taken her remains and urge him to return them safely. Believers from the more distant farms and settlements arrived to ask if the news was true and joined us in supplication. We questioned them as well. Weeping and wailing could be heard throughout the monastery at all hours. It was as if someone had stolen a mother away from her children.

I gave Sister Anna the piece of the cloak from Tamun's farm. She didn't recognize the weave either, but placed it in a small wooden box along with the silk ribbon we had taken from the church. She was also surprised that a warrior would be hiding on the border of our lands. Still, as I thought about it, noblemen often passed through Kildare on their way to the west or south. It was a natural crossroads for this part of Ireland. Perhaps the stranger had simply been waiting for a friend by the stream and was spooked by a crazy old man with a hoe. Or maybe he was meeting a woman.

Sister Anna sent word to Father Ailbe urging him to return home as soon as possible. He had left for Munster after morning prayers two weeks earlier to visit friends. I was worried about him travelling that far alone since he was over eighty years old, but he insisted he could still take care of himself.
I walked with him westward from the monastery for over an hour just to make sure he would be alright. He wouldn't even let me carry his satchel. Then he smiled and said it was time for me to turn back. I kissed him on the cheek and watched as he moved at a slow but steady pace down the road. I was relieved when we later got word he had arrived safely.

A week after the bones were found missing, Sister Anna received a note from him saying that he had gotten her message and was returning to Kildare as quickly as his legs would carry him. He said the seriousness of the situation would have prompted him to ask the king at Cashel for the loan of a chariot and driver, but he was afraid his own bones wouldn't survive the trip.

T
hat night after evening prayers I walked through the empty monastery grounds. It was late, but I had a feeling most of the younger brothers and sisters would be gathered in the cooking hut. In happier times we would sit around the fire at night, drink beer, and sing, keeping it quiet so Sister Anna wouldn't hear. It was a great way to unwind after a long day's work.

“Deirdre, wait for me!”

It was Dari, running from the children's hut. I knew she must have just gotten them to sleep. We had been so busy the last few days that I had scarcely found any time to talk with her. She was my best friend at the monastery and the same age as me. Her real name was Darerca, but everyone except Sister Anna called her Dari. She was slightly shorter than me with light blond hair and pale blue eyes. Dari was the sort of person everyone instantly liked. She was unfailingly kind and
thoughtful, full of common sense, and respectful of others' privacy. I, on the other hand, as Dari like to remind me, was impulsive, opinionated, and nosy.

“I feel like I haven't seen you in ages.” She put her arm through mine and gave me a kiss. Leave it to Dari; even when everyone else in the monastery looked as if they were in mourning, she greeted me with a bright smile.

“I've been staying with the girls at night the last week since the children have been so upset. Some of the little ones are still crying themselves to sleep. None of them can focus on our lessons, not that I blame them. They're scared, Deirdre. So am I.”

Dari was the teacher of the youngest children at the monastery. Parents from all over the island would send their sons and daughters to us for an education. We welcomed everyone, rich and poor, Christian or not. We even had a few children of druids among our students. Dari loved them all, perhaps all the more since she hadn't been able to have any of her own.

Dari and I had both been in unhappy marriages before we took our vows. She had been born near the sea in Ulster, the youngest of many children on a poor farm. Her father was a cruel man who didn't hesitate to beat his wife or children. When he bothered to speak to Dari at all, it was to yell at her to bring him more ale or berate her for being such a little fool. Her mother was a timid woman, too busy trying to avoid her husband's blows to care about her daughter. The only member of the family who showed her any love was an older brother who protected her as best he could from their father's anger, even though it earned him many a blackened eye. She was devastated when, in her tenth year, he was killed by outlaws who raided their farm.

Dari's father sold her in marriage to a local pig farmer when she was barely twelve. Her new husband drank even more
heavily than her father and used her hard, beating her if she dared to cry. He was furious when she couldn't become pregnant and give him a son. Dari wouldn't tell even me some of the worst things he had done to her. One cold night, when she was seventeen, he fell drunk into their well and couldn't climb out. He called to her to throw him a rope or he would kill her, but she huddled in their hut with her hands over her ears and did nothing while he froze to death. Even though the brute deserved his fate, Dari was tormented with guilt for letting him die.

As a young widow, the law said she must return to her father's home so he could choose a new husband for her, but instead she ran away and met a kindly old priest named Ibar who told her of a God who loved those in need and forgave all sins. After some months of instruction, he veiled her as a nun. Her father was outraged when he found out, but the church had become her legal guardian and there was nothing he could do about it. Over the next few years, she gathered a small group of abandoned and abused women about her and formed a Christian community near Armagh, though the abbot there eventually drove them away. She then brought her little band south to Kildare and was welcomed into Brigid's monastery, just a year before I took my own vows.

“I'm scared too, Dari,” I replied.

“Should we go in with the others or head back to our quarters?” she asked.

“We'd better go in. I haven't really talked to anyone for days and I want to find out how they're doing.”

Dari nodded and opened the door to the cooking hut for me. Just as I suspected, there were a half-dozen men and women sitting around the fire. Most of them greeted us as we walked in, but not with the usual warmth and cheer. Sister Eithne glared at me. We had an unspoken pact of mutual loathing
even in the best of times. She was a year older than me and we had gone to the monastery school together. On the first day of class she deliberately broke my new wax writing tablet. She and her little group of friends were always whispering about me behind my back. She hated that I would show her up in front of the nuns in spite of her best effort to be their favorite. Everyone thought we would grow out of our animosity as the years went by. We didn't.

I will grant that Eithne had a special gift for working with the poor widows who found a home at our monastery. She would spend hours every day talking to the lonely ones and tending to the sick and dying among them. Still, her kind heart didn't stop her from making my life as miserable as possible.

A couple of the other sisters moved over on a bench to make room for us. Brother Fiach, the carver, passed us a cup of milk. No one felt like drinking beer that night.

We talked for a few minutes about the weather, but I could tell no one had the heart for small talk. At last Fiach asked the question on everyone's mind.

“Deirdre, what do you think will happen if we can't find the bones?”

“I wish I knew. Brigid's bones drew pilgrims to our church along with their donations of food for our ministry. Our stores were already low. Without the bones and their healing power, I'm afraid visitors will stop coming altogether. I don't know if we'll be able to feed ourselves for long, not to mention the needy. And now that I've burned down the church at Sleaty, we won't be getting any food from there next fall.”

Brother Kevin spoke up.

“Deirdre, you've got to quit blaming yourself for that. It could have happened to any of us.”

“Yes, it could have,” I said, “but I was the one who fell asleep with the candle burning.”

Kevin shook his head. We had grown up together and he knew me too well to argue when I was indulging in self-pity. He wasn't a man of many words in any case, though he was kindhearted and always generous. He was tall and handsome with golden hair and muscles like a blacksmith underneath his robes. More than one impure thought had passed through my mind about him over the years, but I had to laugh at the idea. Kevin was the holiest person I'd ever known. He was always up before the rest of us praying in the church and was the last to leave each night. He fasted every Friday even though it wasn't required. He never so much as looked at a woman.

Suddenly Eithne spoke up.

“Quit blaming herself, Kevin? I blame her and I'm not the only one.”

The bitterness in her voice was chilling.

“Deirdre, have you thought about what the fire you started means? It's the end of everything we've worked for here. It means starvation. Even while the bones were still in their chest we were hanging on by a thread. The church at Sleaty was our only hope for a steady supply of new food.”

I saw Dari was about to say something, but I put my hand on her knee. Eithne was entitled to speak her mind. I deserved it.

“No food means no future,” she continued. “It means the school will close down and the widows will be sent away. They have no families to care for them. Do you really think they'll find someone to take them in? Practically everyone on this island is hungry with the bad harvests of the last few years. The monks at Armagh will bar their gates and leave the starving in the cold to die. You can always go back to living with your grandmother and playing your little harp for kings and princes, but the widows have no place to go. A lot of us have no place to go.”

She put her head in her hands and started to cry. Dari went to sit beside her and put her arm around her shoulders. I knew Eithne was the only child of poor parents from the Wicklow Mountains who had died recently. She had gone home just that summer to bury them. Their small, rocky farm had been seized by the nobleman who owned it and turned into a sheep pasture. Eithne was in her early thirties, old for a poor woman to find a husband. She had given up her youth and hopes for children to become a sister of holy Brigid.

Kevin spoke for a second time that night, a new record for him.

“Eithne, you know Deirdre didn't mean to burn down the church at Sleaty. If we can't forgive each other our sins and shortcomings, we don't deserve to call ourselves Christians.”

Eithne wiped away her tears.

“You're right, Kevin.” Then she turned to me. “But it's hard to forgive some people.”

Fiach got up to pour everyone more milk from the pitcher before he spoke again.

“What happened at Sleaty is over,” he said. “The fact remains that our monastery is in serious trouble now. What will we do if we can't find the bones? I don't see how Kildare will survive without them. Where will we go?”

We all sat in silence. It wasn't as if there were many options for nuns and monks in Ireland. We could try to form a new monastery somewhere, but few kings would welcome us onto lands they could make a better profit from with other tenants.

“We could try working something out with the monks at Armagh,” suggested Sister Garwen, the nun who had discovered that the bones were missing. “Maybe they would be willing to accept us onto their lands to continue our work.”