Confessions of a Pagan Nun by Kate Horsley

Author:Kate Horsley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

1. Editorulgatu: common Latin version of the Bible, based on a translation by Saint Jerome.

2. Bean sidhe: woman of the fairies.

3. Aisling: mystical vision or dream.

[ 8 ]

LET IT BE KNOWN HERE that Giannon was a good man, unacquainted with demons. But he had dark moods, which caused him to be ungentle. After we had lived together for several years, he was less often summoned to the homes of chieftains, because they had come to fear his sharp satires. They wanted the powerful magic of other druids, who performed with smoke and crystals. In those times, many druids sought to hold their power with tricks that Giannon disdained. They manipulated fire and claimed to metamorphose into beasts and birds. Some druids encouraged one chieftain to attack another, thereby enlarging the influence of the dominant chieftain and his attending druid as well. No longer were druids free to roam from one allegiance to another, free of threat, for they were all threatened now by the tonsured men and needed protection from pagan chieftains. There was violence between druids and Christian priests, and between Christian and Christian. And it happened that the oblaire with the forked beard had his head held beneath the waters of a lake until he drowned. This happened in a túath in which the chieftain had been converted to the Christianity of pope and priest.

When I had been with Giannon for seven years and had learned almost three hundred stories but borne no child, the gleemen who had been my companions visited our home. They were no longer five but four. Solemnly the woman told me that the oblaire had thought the Christians of a lake túath were his brothers, but the priest who attended the chieftain told the people of that túath that the oblaire’s beliefs were demonic heresy. The woman stood knocking her head against the herbs hanging in our dwelling to show how the oblaire had preached that Christians did not need the intervention of clergy in their communion with God. He had opened a cage and let free the ravens inside as a demonstration of the freedom of a man’s soul to soar to God’s heaven on its own wings. The trumpeter’s antics did not dilute the oblaire’s insult to the priests. During the night, when the troupe was camped outside the wall that ringed the túath, some men came to them and took the oblaire away to the lake and drowned him. The lesser juggler, who had been my husband, assaulted the men with a large branch and killed one of them. The troupe fled and came to Giannon’s home, knowing I lived there and hoping to make plans without being molested by those who wanted revenge.

We sat in silence, except for my weeping at the news, which was a new wound for me and sore with fondness for the old gleeman. I could not see what help there was in our small clearing. Giannon brought out ale, and we considered the methods by which a man can hide himself in this land.

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