Post #26.5, Weds., Nov. 10, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E. the forest north of the Loire

         Now the responsibility for this war falls to Daniel who simply decides we will go back home at first light.

         In the morning the embers of the fire are cold. Some of our band still sleeps, and some of the Pagan tribe are waking while most have gone off to wherever they live. We ready the horses. The count has nearly recovered, though he mumbles details of rescue by the hand of his own mother from that night terror. We offer no words of gratitude or farewell to our hosts; in fact there are no words spoken at all, as everyone is barely awake now. We mount up, and ride in the cold, drowsy silence back through the forest toward the ferry on the River.

         So what is it that makes peace?

         Is peace merely pieces of nothing? Or is peace something? Is it what happens when a war is won? Is this the stillness after the annihilation of everyone loosing or just the sleepy silence of a frosty morning?

         The vineyards of home are a few kilometers from the ferry landing, and that is of course, adding to the travel on both sides of the river. So our near winter trudge is longer than a summer’s one would be, with a fording place nearer our home. And at the ferry landing we must wake the ferrymen who fatten their till, and flatten the count’s purse collecting the tolls for each separate crossing of the eight of us.

         One-by-one each horse with its man steps with unsteady courage onto the flat deck of the ferry. The calm of the river today allows a smaller crew with no need for a line held at shore, just a pole man on the deck is needed. For horse and man this seems more tenuous, and at the mercy of the currents, as one-by-one we cross; some cross with terror, others with ease.

         Daniel crosses first, then the Count, who has already paid the toll for us all. And I have crossed, and now, with the sun high, and the morning well upon us, Thole is crossing. His horse panics as the ferry nears the shore. Thole’s horse breaks the temporary stall mounted onto the deck and slides to the side of the little raft as it tips up nearly vertical to the water, sending the horse and men sliding into the froth.

(Continue tomorrow)

Post #26.4, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E. by the fire of Samhain

         The moon has set and the pagan ritual goes on and on with incessant chanting, and calls from the druid and responses from his gathered. They all know the words to say. The druid’s movement is near dancing. A teller has tales steeped in tradition… and the seer is still attempting to locate the spirit of Anatase in the smoky thin place of this night. Maybe, in fact, I say this hopefully, the spirit of the child that Eve loved is elusive to searchers among the dead because she is still living.

         No one is arguing aloud or brandishing a weapon just now, not even the count who still believes they have Anatase tucked away in their midst.

         The count is bundled in his new silk cloak sleeping near the logs by the fire. Despite the apparent intensity of this ritual our band of men is dozing off, even snoring. It’s a three-day festival, and here we are drowsy on the first night.

         Suddenly the Count is shouting out in his sleep in unintelligible glossolalia.  He has a fever. The soothsayer hears it as message from another world. The druid reminds Daniel that we promised to send them a practitioner who is needed now.

         We brought nothing of a healing potion for our fevered leader. We don’t even have any meal leftovers to share.  All we have in each of our packs is a small wedge of cheese and a biscuit. We’ve come for a fight, and other than our swords and horses and the yellow banner we are completely at the mercy of our hosts.

         Apparently, the village of this tribe isn’t far from our campsite. So throughout the night one or two of the Pagans at a time goes and comes with a warmer wrap, or a basket of apples to pass around among us all — hardly an act of war.

         The druid sends one of the women back to bring Count Bertigan a cup of healing tea. She returns with a bowl still steaming in the crispy air. Bert wakes and receives the kindness of the cup from the old woman. But in all his confusion he thinks she is his mother and he is yet a needy child. All this is happening in the haze of fever and the smoke of ritual that seems to have pierced the warring dragon and twisted our leader’s angry courage into something conciliatory.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #26.3, Thurs., Nov. 4, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E. by the fire of Samhain

         Dear God, what do you make of this spiritual milieu? Is it alright that we make borders around our prayers and pray only to the facet of Spirit each of us already claims? Are we of one spirit despite our differences? But if we are not one, and are of separate tribes by religions, which of us do you love?  Amen.

         It’s acceptable that the seer of the Pagans breaks into the quietude to assure us the spirit that bound Eve to each of us in our own ways isn’t raging just now, but longing for the child she has lost. I do also feel the loving presence of a mother. I know God herself to be mother, and I know God’s child Eve is wandering in death. It is God’s love that gives me comfort. Yet this pagan soother assumes Eve was  an earthly mother, calling back from death for her own child.  Without words or language spirit surely confuses things by ignoring the plotline. With us right now is a loving presence but we each seem to give it different names and expectations.

         “So what of the lost child?” asks the druid.

         Count Bertigan assumes they feign innocence in the child’s abduction. But I think this band of withering Pagans has no idea they are under attack from us. Here they are offering their powers to “see” into the world of the dead to help us in our stated mission to avenge the death of Eve and perhaps to find the child as well.

         Rumor skews fact. I believe they had nothing to do with the slaughter of Eve or the kidnapping of Anatase. None of this ragged group of mostly old women is even brandishing swords and surely no one but our little band is prepared to do any slashing of throats.

         Yet, the rumor held as fact by some of us is clearly leading the belief that they have Anatase hidden away and we must battle to win her back from the Pagan grip. What if that were so, then what? She will be with us grieving, and she will have no teacher nor will the Pagans have the young practitioner of healing we promised to return to them. Any way we think of this, it’s Daniel’s promise to return the child that has been broken. And this tribe we thought was our foe seemed to know nothing of the tragedy we are avenging until we told them of it. And now they have empathy.

(Continues Tuesday, November 9)

Post #26.2, Weds., Nov. 3, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E. Forest Primeval

         We’ve found the druid and a band of the pagan tribe; maybe we found them by coincidence or perhaps by the synchronicity of the holy. The druid asked Daniel if we have come to join in the festival of Samhain.

         Daniel answers, “We’ve come to pay homage to the dead, rightly enough. As if you didn’t know my aunt was brutally slain, and it is our mission to avenge her death.”

         “Your aunt, you say? She is the practitioner of the healing arts to whom we loaned the child?”        

         “Indeed.”

         “That’s very tragic. So what’s become of the child?”

         Count Bertigan flourishes his sword. “You tell us.”

         “I have to admit” answers the druid, “I have no idea, but we have in our band a soothsayer able to listen to the voices clamoring from the depths of the world of dead this very night.”

         The pagan priest calls forward a very old woman from this line of unarmed and mostly elderly pagan woman.

         The druid offers, “As we were preparing to make our own fire your smoking embers called us here for the festival then we heard the piercing wail of the banshee, keening through the woods.”

         The Count, whose scream of terror they surely heard asks what?

         “The bean-síghe,” the druid answers, “it is the fairy banshee who weeps through the night for the dead. Surely the spirit of your woman of medicine is wandering and lost between the worlds on this night. But we have a soothsayer among us who can bring peace between the living and the dead.” [Footnote]

         The elder woman who is known to listen through the thin places, steps toward the smoky fire at the center of our gathering. She invites all who are standing just to crouch down and to listen in quiet. There is a silence of near prayer. For me, it is a familiar atmosphere where I am often for my prayers to the one un-namable God of my childhood. It’s not my need in this moment to demand some kind of uniformity of spirit among others at worship here because I know of God so vast to include us all in the creative love. Somewhere in the nature of God’s holy love we are one. So maybe some here are listening to the spirit they name as gods of earth rising into the thin place of this night, or maybe it is the spirits of the dead, or maybe it is the Christian’s bidding for angels from above and a holy triptych Godhead.

[Footnote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banshee, retrieved 8-10-2021

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #26.1, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E. Forest Primeval

         A scream of terror pierces the night.

         Count Bert is screaming, “a dragon! A dragon is slithering through the wood right toward our camp!”

         It is the night of Samhain when the two plains, the immortal and the mortal of earth become one. “This was the case in the mythical period. This happens during the night of Samhain … the eve of the Celtic New Year. This night belongs neither to one year nor the other, and as it were, free from temporal restraint.” [Footnote]

         We are in a world where time and season isn’t counted in Roman numerals. And apparently we have encountered a dragon.

         A dragon is a mythical beast. Everyone has dragons. The Chinese, the Christians, the heretics we all have dragons. In our particular forest of Christendom the dragon is a metaphor for evil. For those who only live in a literal world without metaphor a dragon is a gigantic, rare reptile that breaths fire and fearing it serves as a welcome substitute for fearing actual evil, even for the literalist. The bible tells of aquatic leviathan serving fear also. But apparently these Gualish dragons aren’t swimmers. They don’t cross rivers, so rumor has it we are safe in our own land on the other side of the Loire. But this forest might well have dragons.

         So we are under this mysterious early moon of the pagan ceremony of Samhain, eight men with seven swords and a banner, standing ready to smite the dragon whatever that may be. Our leader, Count Bert caught a glimpse of its flaming tongue as it was slithering through the trees — a slimy formless worm. Swords drawn and yellow banner high we stare into the smoke of our fire trying to see whatever sent the Count into such a panic. With a whiff of breeze the smoke gives way, and here it is clearly before us! Yes indeed it is the evil we came to slay. It is the band of pagans with a flaming torch held high by the druid himself. Through the smoky dim they must have seemed a dragon.

         Daniel knows this little priest now holding high his tongue of fire. It is indeed the one we have come this far to slay. He speaks first.

         “So it’s you, Daniel, come all the way from the vineyards on the Loire to pay homage to the dead in the time of Samhain.”

[Footnote] Sjoestedt, Marie-Louise, Celtic God’s and Heroes, (Dover Publications, Inc.Mineola, reprint 2000.) p. 52.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #25.12, Thurs., October 28, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E.

         This morning comes with a horse and an expectation that I too will ride with the count’s men. It is thought the pagans have taken back the borrowed child, burning the house, and murdering Eve.

         I’ve chosen not to carry a sword. I’m here simply to make the look of more men to gleam with the full awe of avengers riling with righteous rage for my daughter’s death. I offer to carry the banner. It’s a swath of yellow silk fabric leftover from making the count a new robe. He calls it the “golden flag.” I’m relegated to riding third in this fearsome line of raging young men. Daniel and the count go first. They lead because Daniel knows the way to the cooper where he met the pagan priest, and the count is nearer the front because he has a fancy white horse.

         Since we aren’t able to ford the river after yesterday’s storm we need to be ferried one horse and man at a time.  It takes most of the morning, but now we are ready to assemble our line again and make this fearsome swath through the forest. When Daniel comes up this way to buy barrels he takes two days to get to the cooper and back. And we’re already a half a day behind.

         Also, in this season, darkness falls faster and comes deeper into a forest, so we make camp amid the trees. Thole prepares a flame with the wicks he carries with the embers, while the others of us gather kindling and sticks — all is damp. The wads of nearly dry leaves we find under the wet make a smoky blaze but the flame is slow in finding the oaken sticks so we have lots of smoke and hardly a flame. The clearing autumn eve brings the hoary frost and seven of us crowd in a circle around our pitiful little spot of warmth with our stockings nearly in the ash. Seven we are, as the Count has made another trek to a more private place for his stink. He’s probably suffering the woes of fear in leading his men into battle.

         A few logs catch flame so we move back a bit, not for the heat of it, but for the billows of smoke rising making whispy fat pillows of gray, muffling the sharp moonlight’s corpuscular rays through the pillars of trees.

         Then comes the agonizing voice of terror screaming in the night!

(Continues Tuesday, November 2, 2021)

Post #25.11, Weds., October 27, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E.

         Thole has been waiting in the rain with the horses inviting me to ride with him to his father’s house. First we gather up the chickens binding their feet to take them along.

          We only go toward Tours as far as the road into the little village where Bertigan is the count. Jesse’s house is at the fork. It’s a cold little cottage with a walled enclosure for goats and a large stable with a shared wall with the house. I take the horses while Thole asks his father if I may stay as a guest tonight.

         Jesse has apparently become the count’s stable master. So here I see the count did go back and buy that stallion after all. I suppose Bert is raising his own horses now that he no longer fears a good gallop. Other than keeping horses for the count I see Jesse also keeps goats on this land, and now there will be chickens.

          Through the wall of the house I overhear Jesse’s raging voice reprimanding Thole for saying the name Lazarus – as though Thole was one who accepted the crazy “Christian myth” circulating as rumor at Ezra’s vineyard.  “So what does Ezra call him?” He asks his son.

         “He calls him ‘papa,’ Papa, as did Auntie Eve. Shall we call him Papa?”

         “Of course not! Call him nothing!”

         I can understand why in these times of lost metaphor, when sign and symbol are thought to be tangible fact people are believing that a banner or flag is the same substance as the people who follow it. And I know my name conjures a myth of new life. But I am a sign, a tale of something true, not a lie. In these times of confusion of truths and myths, and facts and lies, my son Ezra was once named after me, but now he calls himself ‘Ezra.’ I understand the apprehensions of myth.

         Thole comes out to tell me I am welcome as a guest at their table and I may sleep in the mow of this barn.

         “Thole,” I offer, “I heard your father through the wall here. Please know, you may call me Ezra. In my house father and son once had the same name. The son has chosen to call himself Ezra and so shall I.”

         Thole brightens with grin. “Thanks. Ezra.”

         Truth is that which doesn’t need to be said to be true. But lies only exist when they are spoken.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #25.10, Tues., October 26, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E.

         An autumn wind brushes through the patch of rosemary wafting with the scent of broken stems setting a storm onto our patch of sky then drenching rain. With Eve’s house in ash there is no shelter. We are all, however we grieve, soaking in shared rain.

         The soft gray dust of what was once a place for healing now clings to my feet. Why do I wonder over the substance of angel’s wings? Are they only an artist’s plaster, or are they made of feathers, as the images and metaphors imply? Now I see the wings of angels are made of ash, and it is our tears that weigh them to earth and don’t allow the pneuma to come as wind and carry them off in a great swirl of dust to be one with God.

         Dear God, please see this face past the ravages of her earthly woes, the pox, the blindness, the wear of time, and know the beautiful daughter you loaned to teach me more of your love than I had ever known. Amen.

         Some foundation stones mark the house.  The hearthstones stand cold; the flame is gone. Candles she kept here are now dark stain on formless ash.

         Where there was the shed no animals are here. The mules were moved to the count’s stables months ago. I find here the iron tool that was once Nic’s own dagger that he had hammered into this child-sized sickle for Anatase. I tuck that into my bag.  Even the coop for the chickens is burnt up, yet three chickens are flapping free waiting for their daily dish of grain.

         A farmer comes from a neighboring cottage. He says he heard the screams and stepped out in the darkness to see. “They came up from the river. They were Persians, swarthy like the olive skin of the pagan woman they killed. They had broad swords flashing in the moonlight. Flames were already rising. One had the screaming, thrashing younger woman over his shoulder. The blind woman was groping after the screams wandering into the dark. One of the pirates went right up to her swinging his sword probably expecting the woman would run away, but she moved toward to sound of the sword slashing at the wind, calling the girl’s name into the darkness; so she was slashed on her neck and killed. She spoke no prayer. They ran off toward the river. I’m sure they were pirates.”

 (Continued tomorrow)

Post #25.9, Thurs., October 21, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E. leaving Ligugè

         We leave after morning matins. The rising golden sun, the alleluias of our lauds, even the early songs of the birds rising from the trees for their autumn pilgrimage – it all seems out of place in my own grieving. 

         Riding at an easy gait the young man Thole is a length ahead of me.

         Dear God, thank you for the crispy dawning. Please stay close. Let tragedy not be impetus for vengeance, but in your way, rescue us  to love. Help me through my hurt and rage. Amen.

         Eve is wrapped in a linen sheet. A grave was dug in that same place next to Eve’s and Ezra’s mother where Nic once laid my bones. I draw back the cloth from her face. My chin quivers. She is ashen and as always scarred with pox and hollows of hurts. The slash of a sword on her neck is the single blow of death I see. My tears drop onto her face as I kiss her forehead and pull the linen to cover her forever and after. Ezra’s hand is on my shoulder as he too weeps. She is laid in the grave, and the pages I scribed that Anatase enhanced with herbs are laid onto her. I add as many handfuls of rosemary as I can gather after the Christian practice.

         There are no pagan gifts given here to take her to their other world. She will have to die a Christian as she was born. Dear God, please take Eve’s spirit into the ever flowing river of your love — stay close. And thank you for the gift of her. Amen.

         Everyone has a grief in this. The strongest men of us, Thole, Ezra and Daniel, and I too weep silently.  Colleta brings the loud wailing of Christian muddle of sin and guilt. And here is Thole’s father, Jesse, cousin to Colleta, wracked with the passions of his second love lost. Thole said his father never stopped pleading with Eve for marriage, and she never relented in proclaiming against it. Now he is shouting his woes into a loud and raging rally for vengeance.  Count Bertigan and Celeste are standing further back with their children, good mannered, watching. And there are others here as well. Maybe they are the new tenants on this land, or people who have come to Eve for healing, or maybe so many are here simply drawn by the rumors of a violent death.

         Some mourners scatter to their homes. I stay here to wander the ashes with my plea to God for closeness.

(Continues Tuesday, October 26, 2021)

Post #25.8, Weds., October 20, 2021

Historical setting: 588 C.E. Ligugè

         I’ve just met this man who has come as a messenger bringing the sorrows we share. We both love Eve in our own ways. I’ve learned now that Eve was violently slashed by invaders outside her burning house. She was clutching her precious parchments on which Anatase had placed herbs for ‘reading’ in her blindness. Thole tells me the child was stolen, probably to be a young wife for some brutal heathen.

         I do know of this man Thole. All those years ago even before there was Nic, I was staying in the haymow of Eve’s cottage when I heard the farmer, Jesse, pounding at the door begging Eve to come help his wife in the midst of a difficult birth. (Blog posts #3.13 & #4.1) So it was an icy Christmas Eve when this man was born, and also when his mother died. The Christian mid-wives and even the whole family of his father, Jesse, on that night were celebrating the birth of Jesus at the Cathedral of the Saint. He could find no Christian to help with the birth so he walked all the way to Eve to summons a healer he thought was pagan. I heard him at her door, but I didn’t realize what was happening until near morning when I found Eve returning alone in the icy storm nearly frozen to death. This man Thole was born in a bed of sorrow that night, and now here we are strangers to one another, both grieving for a woman who was called by Christian’s  “pagan.”  But the chant she taught to fill that night with shouts and pleas was the Jesus prayer. She told me his father, who claimed the creed, didn’t even know the words to the Jesus prayer. She had to teach it to him so the cold silence of the death before the birth would be hallowed.

         I think at his birth this boy was named “Troll” by his father, to honor the pagan who came when no Christian would come. Now he is called “Thole” and I also know that as a small child he was Eve’s helper before she had Anatase.

         He remembers her. He says, “I could easily see why my father was so taken with her. My papa always wanted to marry her, I wish he had; then she really would have been my mother.  But she would never hear of it.”

         “I know.”        

         I show Thole to the guestroom. We will leave at first light.

(Continues tomorrow)