Brigid of Kildare: A Novel

i

ROME

A.D. 470

Brother,

I write you in the utmost haste, trusting in God that I will find a safe way to deliver this letter unto your hands. For this very eve, I must leave Rome for an island so far outside the bounds of civilization it has never merited the attention of our dear Republic: the land of the Gaels.

That the Lord has summoned me to this mission, I have no doubt. Yet, as dawn broke and I finished my prayers this morning, I would have sworn on the cross that the day would progress like every other.

I settled at my desk in the chambers of the papal secretary just as the sun’s rays began their full celebration of God’s good day. Capturing the clarity of the earliest light is as critical to my work as a scrivener for the Lord as it is to your work overseeing the family land; thus I was alone in the study. I was preparing to record the edicts emanating from a recent council meeting when I heard my name.

I turned toward the sound and, to my surprise, saw a papal page in the doorway. He said, Brother Decius, you are to follow me to an audience in the chambers of His Holiness Pope Simplicius, bishop of Rome.

The page started off down the long and winding corridors that lead to His Holiness’s inner sanctum. I raced after him, wary of losing him in the labyrinthine route connecting the church’s official buildings to the palace. I kept his pace, and he left me at the entryway to the pope’s own chambers.

A crimson tapestry separated the sacred inner sanctum from the bustle of the rest of the palace. I approached it, and though I pulled the heavy fabric aside with reverence and care, my fingers caught on the pearls and rubies sewn into the silken embroidery. In that moment of disentanglement, I know not why, I hesitated before crossing the threshold.

My body began shaking, as it had never trembled before. Yet I knew I could show no fear. Courage is necessary—nay, mandated—for selection to one of Christ’s missions. And somehow I knew that this was the purpose of my summoning.

To expel the devil’s own trepidation from my heart and soul, I steeled myself with the image, oft described by you, of our father and mother stoic in the face of the barbarians. If our parents could suffer at their hands and never flinch before the final swing of the crude battle-axe, then, I told myself, I could take the simple step of entering the private chamber of Saint Peter’s own representative on this earth.

Peace descended upon me, almost as though our mother and father spoke from heaven. I left the tapestry to swing in my wake and immediately knelt before His Holiness. Or so I believed.

Rise, Brother Decius, the order sounded out.

I readied myself to confront the intimidating phalanx of aristocratic councillors that accompany His Holiness’s every movement, which I had witnessed during my three prior papal audiences. Yet as I rose from my deep genuflection and lifted my eyes, a single figure greeted me. I knew the man only by sight and rumor, as he would never deign to enter the secretary’s study: it was Gallienus, a priest and the most senior of the pope’s councillors.

I bowed my head in respect, yet could not help but note the comfortable, nearly languorous, manner in which he leaned against the empty papal throne. Your Eminence, I said.

The twelfth eagle will soon fly, Gallienus said.

I did not answer at once, uncertain as to his meaning and even more unsure as to the safest response.

Are you not familiar with the Prophecy of the Twelve Eagles, Brother Decius? Gallienus asked.

I am, Your Eminence. Indeed, I guess nearly every Roman citizen has heard the divination that the Republic’s supremacy will last twelve centuries only, each one represented by an eagle. Even the masses must have heard it bandied about in the bars and streets of the bustling Aventine Quarter in recent times, as the Visigoths rule Rome in all but name and other hordes conquer more and more of the Roman provinces every day. Oh, but this is old, sad news to us true Romans.

Then you know that twelve centuries of the Roman Empire’s rule as foretold by the twelve eagles are nearly at an end?

I paused before answering. I hate to speak ill of a fellow Christian, but the elite Gallienus is known for his wiles and I feared that the question was a trap. If I admitted to an awareness of the prophecy and the few years remaining on it, I could well be confessing to giving credence to pagan lore—a punishable confession, since Christianity was proclaimed the state religion almost one hundred years ago, as you know well.

I delivered a measured response. I do, Your Eminence. Yet I also know that such prophecy is but heretical conjecture spoken by the masses.

Gallienus stared long at me, never blinking but keeping his eyes hooded in shadow such that I could not read his reaction. Then he nodded slowly and said, That is true, Brother Decius. Still, we must be prepared.

Of course, Your Eminence. Wary of this man, I was apprehensive of accusations that I had discounted the empire’s military might with my answer. So I said, Though the empire maintains a vast army.

We cannot leave the fate of the Roman Christian Church to Emperor Anthemius’s troops, can we, Brother Decius?

Understanding that Gallienus’s question brooked no response other than agreement, I said, No, Your Eminence. We cannot leave the fate of the Roman Christian Church to the Roman army.

I am glad we are of like mind, Brother Decius. Heartily glad.

I watched Gallienus saunter around the pope’s chamber as if it belonged to him, pausing to touch the gilt arms of the papal throne and the intricate wall mosaic of birds in flight. As he gazed out between columns to the surging metropolis below, still crowded with marble temples and colonnaded forums dedicated to the pagan gods, despite the edict banning their worship, I waited for my mission.

We must secure the land of the Gaels, Brother Decius, Gallienus pronounced without turning back toward me.

The desolate isle beyond Britannia, Your Eminence? My brother, I regretted the question the moment it slipped from my tongue. I knew, of course, where the Gaelic land lay, but I could not believe that the church would trouble itself with the unimportant, rocky outcropping on the precipice of the known world, an island so inconsequential that Rome did not bother to colonize it even in the Republic’s prime. Not to mention that with Gael’s lack of a central ruler, subduing its countless chieftains would have required more than fifty thousand troops, which Rome could ill afford due to mounting pressures on nearly all other frontiers. But I did not want the man to think I was a fool or, worse, an insubordinate in need of punishment.

The very same, Gallenius answered, without rebuke or surprise at my response. He faced me. Rumors are surfacing that its chieftains are uniting in power under the newly formed Christian monasteries. This news would be hailed—indeed, we always embrace new sheep in our flock—but for the reports that the Gaelic brand of Christianity is rife with heresy. We would not want Gael to unify under a Pelagian Christianity, now, would we? We must determine whether these reports bear truth.

Gallienus did not continue with any details, though, of course, I had long heard rumblings about Pelagius, the rebel monk from Britannia who had maintained that original sin does not exist and that man has free will, a belief condemned by the church’s Council of Ephesus in 431.

Would Bishop Patrick not be able to serve in this regard? The Roman Christian Church had sent Patrick to Gael as a missionary some years before, in an unprecedented posting. The church had never before assigned a missionary to an uncolonized land, but Patrick had made constant, persuasive arguments about God calling him to convert the people who had once enslaved him.

Inexplicably, Bishop Patrick is too enamored with the Gaelic people to report upon them objectively. Gallienus then made a broad gesture toward me.

I finished for him, as he clearly wished: You would like me to make this appraisal, Your Eminence.

Yes, Brother Decius. I wish you to study a particular abbey that grows in power, the Abbey of Kildare, which is run by a woman, Brigid, no less. He paused and then asked, Do you understand the critical importance of this work?

I welcome Your Eminence’s wisdom. I felt the need to remain guarded in my responses, though I had begun to intuit his designs.

If, in fact, the Gaelic monasteries and churches preach heresy as charged, we must stamp out the leaders of this profanation and replace them with our own. Only then can we unite this disjointed, backward land under the true Christian faith and present it as a tribute to the emperor. To help him bolster the empire and … He left the sentence unfinished.

And, in turn, bolster the church, Your Eminence? He seemed to want me to say this aloud.

You do see, Brother Decius. I am well pleased.

And see I did, when he put it so plainly. The Roman Church stands on increasingly unsteady ground as the Roman government falters. It needs to shore itself against the barbarian onslaught by routing out all heresy. Efforts to keep the remote island fully Roman Catholic could prevent it from becoming barbarian—and create a fitting honorarium for the Roman emperor in the process.

Gallienus sidled up near me, drawing so close that, despite the early hours, I could smell his sour, wine-laden breath. Do you wonder at your selection for this task?

I lowered my head, away from his probing stare and his stench. I trust in the sagacity of God, Pope Simplicius, and his learned councillors, Your Eminence.

Gallienus smiled. Always cautious, Brother Decius. Almost as cautious as myself. It will serve you well. The smile vanished, leaving an unpleasant grimace on his lips. We chose you not for your ardent faith or your private hatred of the barbarians, though you have both of these excellent qualities in abundance. We chose you because we need a scribe.

My dear brother, the light fades, and the horses assemble for the long journey. I have not the time to complete the description of my encounter with Gallienus or my mission to the Gaelic land, though I suspect you would reel at the notion of your pious, careful younger brother, whom you always protected as you dashed off on some adventure of your own design, heading off into the dark unknown. I pray with fervence to our Lord that He will deliver unto me the means to transport this letter to you. Until then, I will be in His hands. Pray for me, brother, as I pray for you.

Decius

ii

GAEL

A.D. 456

BRIGID: A LIFE

Brigid readies her sword. She sizes up her competitor and fashions a fresh strategy. The call to battle sounds, and they rush at each other headlong.

The metallic shriek of their locked swords overtakes the battlefield. Brigid begins with a thrust and parry so they will seem even matched. But she knows her combatant well, and her standard swordplay serves as a trap. The rhythmic clash of their blades lulls him into thinking he commands the lead and wipes any strategy from his overconfident mind. She lures him to the edge of a ditch bordering the field and prepares her final strike.

An almost imperceptible tremor passes through the watching soldiers. Brigid averts her gaze momentarily and sees that her father has arrived. A faint smile curls on her lips as she thinks about the fortune of having her father watch her victory. She shifts her weight to muster all her force for the winning thrust.

But her competitor marks her fleeting distraction and subtly changes his position. When Brigid swings forward with all her might, she stumbles to the ground in pain and embarrassment. It is her opponent who delivers the ultimate blow—not Brigid.

She rises under her own strength, pushing aside her competitor’s outstretched hand. If she must fall to another’s sword, she will prove to her father that she can shrug off a blow as easily as his fiercest warriors. Brushing away a servant’s attempt to dress her shoulder wound, Brigid passes her blade back into the scabbard hanging from a loop off her metal belt. She unrolls the hem of her long robe, which she had tucked into her belt, and strides off the field as if she had won.

Brigid glances in her father’s direction. She hopes he has observed her stoicism, if not her victory. But he is gone, leaving her to wonder just what he witnessed.

She curses to herself as the crowd dissipates. Her overeagerness had caused her fatal misstep, one only a rank beginner would commit. She is furious with herself.

Ach, don’t beat yourself up about it, Brigid. Everyone knows you’ve got better sword skills than me.

She turns toward the voice. It is her opponent, her foster brother, Oengus, who has been sheltered by her family since the age of seven, according to Gaelic custom. He will return to his own family at seventeen, taking the newly made bond with him as a tie to his own family. Easy for you to say. You just won to a warrior’s crowd of a hundred, with my father at the center.

Oengus does not respond. Wisely, Brigid thinks. For she knows—and he knows—that she is right, that her father expects her to dominate in every respect. Even on the battlefield against a man. For her father is Dubtach, king of the Fothairt people of southern Gael, and he demands nothing less of his only natural child.

The long walk across the crop fields to the stone cashel ringing the royal homestead lessens her inner anger. As they pass the cattle and sheep fields, she forgets her troubles for a moment and unconsciously counts the animals’ heads: they are the measure of her father’s power, along with the slaves captured by raiding parties. By the time they cross the rampart over the ditch encircling the inner wall of the cashel, Brigid has even mustered a laugh at Oengus’s imitation of their instructor, an aging warrior of her father’s. Oengus alone can make her laugh. At their approach to the two vast earthen mounds used by Dubtach for his ceremonies, she is able to pretend that she has forgotten about her humiliation. But she never really forgets.

Brigid and Oengus near the large heather-thatched building used for their studies. Though they are well ahead of their appointed time, they notice a number of unfamiliar people entering the structure. Brigid picks up her pace, pushes open the heavy oak door, and enters with Oengus hard at her heels.

Fresh from the battlefield, I see?

Brigid’s eyes adjust slowly from the bright spring light to the dim interior. She does not need to see the face to recognize the speaker. It is her mother, Broicsech, queen of the Fothairt people, and from her tone, Brigid understands that she is fuming.

Brigid falls to her knees out of deference and custom, and Oengus quickly follows. Broicsech is every bit as formidable as Dubtach, and Brigid does not want to be the subject of her wrath. Her father is fond of saying that Broicsech wields a blade as well as any man, but her most fearsome weapon is her sharp tongue.

You see that my daughter and foster son like their feats of martial skill and courage. They enjoy those skirmishes so much, they cannot bear to wash away the bloody badges, can they?

Brigid wonders to whom her mother speaks, but she dares not raise her head until given permission. She chastises herself for not changing her dirty garb before entering the library, the place where her mother is most often found. She stays frozen in her position.

Our Lord Jesus Christ implores us to turn the other cheek to our enemies, not brandish our swords before them, an accented voice says in response.

He does indeed, and we try to heed His Words. But He did not know the Gaelic people, did He?

Brigid is surprised to hear a deep laugh come from the serious-sounding stranger. He might not have met the Gaels while still here on earth, but I feel certain He knows them well from his vantage point in heaven.

Broicsech chuckles at the retort, the kind she might have made herself. Well spoken.

Brigid’s knees begin to ache from kneeling and from her battlefield fall. She alters her stance the tiniest bit, and Broicsech says, So impatient to meet our guest, Brigid? I suppose you and Oengus may rise.

With little of the grace her mother insists upon, Brigid struggles to her feet. Behind her lovely mother, immaculately dressed as always in a pristine robe and with a golden crown encircling her black hair, stands the stranger. A very strange stranger indeed, Brigid thinks to herself.

The man wears the dark robes of a monk or a Druid, though Brigid supposes that the reference to Jesus Christ marks him as a monk. He has dark hair tonsured in the Roman style and light eyes and seems of her mother’s age, though much worse for the wear. Yet it is not these features that distinguish him as strange. His oddity comes from his eyes, so intense they seem as if fire lights them from within.

He meets her stare. So this is your Brigid?

It is indeed. She gestures toward Oengus. And this is my foster son, Oengus, of whom you have heard me speak. Brigid and Oengus, pay your respects to Bishop Patrick.

They lower themselves to the floor once again. Brigid is astonished that Bishop Patrick stands in their midst. That a senior Christian official visits their cashel does not startle her; her family is ostensibly Christian and certainly royal, and thus the visit is unusual but not unfathomable. That a stranger stops in their kingdom does not surprise her. No, her incredulity arises from the fact that Bishop Patrick pays his respects to the family of Dubtach, best known for the ferocity and frequency of his raiding parties for slaves in Britannia. For Patrick was born a wealthy Roman Briton, the son of a Christian deacon and the grandson of a Christian priest, but he was taken prisoner at sixteen by Gaelic raiders and served as a slave for six years, until he escaped. Astonishingly, Patrick then eschewed his own people to minister the Christian faith to the Gaelic people, who once enslaved him, and to preach against slavery.

Shall we pray?

Her mother nods her acquiescence, and the assemblage kneels. Bishop Patrick leads them in Jesus Christ’s own prayer, then stands and addresses them while they continue to kneel before him.

"Broicsech, I know your family to be strong leaders of your tuath and ardent Christians. You serve as sublime examples to your people in the saving ways of our Jesus Christ."

As Broicsech gives her thanks, Brigid thinks on the cleverness of this Patrick. Patrick, though foreign, understands the Gaelic people well—from his years in Gaelic captivity, she supposes. By referencing the tuath, or kingdom, over which her father rules in all matters material and moral, he subtly reminds her mother that Dubtach is the sacred protector of the people’s lives and their souls. Brigid wonders what Patrick wants that he raises the stakes so high.

My monks and I will pass through your lands again in six months’ time. I know your family to be good Christians, but as yet unbaptized. I ask in the name of our Lord that you will consider allowing me to baptize you and your family in a ceremony before your people. Where your family leads, your people will follow.

Broicsech is quiet for a time, then answers in an uncharacteristically muted voice: Bishop Patrick, I vow to you that I will consider your request for myself, my daughter, and my foster son, but I cannot speak to my husband’s willingness for a baptism or his appetite for a public ceremony of the rite.

Patrick is silent, but Brigid sees the fury simmering in his eyes. His voice rises in anger to match.

Broicsech, I do not ask much of you as a Christian. Nor does God. Consider my ministry to convert the people of Gael. I am bound by the Holy Spirit to work here in Gael and never again see my own kin. I must extend God’s mercy and kindness to the very people who once took me captive, and who made such havoc of my father’s estate. God asks comparatively little of you.

Watching her mother offer apologies and promises, Brigid considers Patrick’s statements. She finds him not only clever but convincing. For how could he bear his ministerial burden but for the grace of God? It is compelling evidence that his God must exist. She wonders how Patrick’s words will resound with the Gaelic people, who would rather draw pools of blood from their