The Fires of Bride by Ellen Galford

Author:Ellen Galford [Galford, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780704340206
Google: _qVaAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 0932379419
Barnesnoble: 0932379419
Goodreads: 1682764
Publisher: Firebrand Books
Published: 1988-04-01T03:00:00+00:00

On that night in the year when the light never quite disappears, the Sisters read to each other from the Book of Bride. They fill their cups with mead, fermented from their own bees' honey, and listen closely. The story never seems very long, but when it is done, they are inevitably surprised by the warm glow of morning.

The Book offers partial explanations for certain things: their Holy Fire, their special responsibilities, the practices that make the priests of Iona so uneasy. But every year, the words change slightly. Even if the same readers, in the same sequence, take the same passages, year after year, it happens. In the lifetime of an elderly nun, from her novice year to her final solstice, it is likely that certain episodes will alter just enough to skew their meaning; others will disappear from the text altogether.

This is why Bloduedd works so frantically in her scriptorium, and trains up Mhairi to equal or surpass her, to fix the story for all time. But even the written and decorated copies of the Book develop their quirks and differences. Sometimes the words are at war with the pictures, sometimes new marginalia appear, and others vanish. There are, however, certain immutables: the fruit-bearing tree, the linked spirals, the gaily-striped snake nibbling its own tail always make their appearance, and the sow with seven piglets is rarely far away.

And this is, roughly, how it goes:

Good news, as in all Gospels, travels fast. But even better news may not travel at all. Especially if, at the time, no one considers it to be particularly interesting. And in those days, among the Jews and their neighbors, very little fuss was made about girl babies. Selling one, to raise the cash for a boy-child’s blankets, was a regrettable necessity, but no sin. And giving one away, although unusual, would excite no reaction save mild surprise that anybody should want one.

So when a nervous Herod, acting on Rome’s off-the-record instructions, slaughtered the Jewish innocents, she was well out of the way. And by the time her twin brother was nailed on the cross, as a lesson to all the other local dissidents, she was long forgotten.

Except among those who had taken her in. Or, more precisely, those who worshipped the one who had done so.

Whether the child herself made the long, long journey is unknown, but it is certain that her story did. Over bright, blank deserts and plundered coasts, spinning high above the billowing sails on the sea (a streak of light to the boy on deck, a thin shiver down the spine of the oarsmen), invisible to the jostling tribes on the great, flat plains, leaving few traces anywhere between Bethlehem and Benbecula. One thing is very sure: she did not come back with the crusaders, packed in among their silks and drugs and spices. For she was in the land before they’d ever left it; indeed, she held sway in cold, northern places that were, to most of them, as remote as Jerusalem and more mysterious.

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