As I stood upon the parapet in the brilliant Mediterranean dawn, I understood what Priam must have felt as he looked out and beheld the ships of the Greek armada, bringing years of war, death and destruction. But he at least had the splendid battlements of Troy to shelter behind, a brave and battle-tested army to defend them.

But no, the Homeric metaphor was upside-down. No willful son of mine had stolen another man’s queen. Was I not the son, albeit illegitimate, of Rome? And had not my own queen been stolen from me? Or had she stolen herself? And why could I make no sense of it, shake off these disjointed fantasies?

But the image was clear, the danger real, the collapse of my world complete. For the Vandals had come, like a recurring nightmare, in the very ships we sent against them. The sun rose, like all the gold of Egypt, behind a hundred vessels at least, whose weight of men and weaponry I knew all too well. Death dotted the unresisting sea. Had our own fleet been so imposing? I suppose it must have, as most of the vessels here had been part of it.

But not all. The Vandals must have taken what remained of the Roman fleet at Caesarea as well, as some of the galleys were longer and sharper, more in the African than the European style. And the awful truth was, this was probably not their only force. How could it be? For Hippo, though a prize well worth plucking, was not the plum of Roman Africa.

And then. . .did I only imagine it? No. While perhaps half the ships came on, the other half bore away. My God, they must be scouring the coast up and down for hundreds of miles.

In that moment I knew that God was truly dead. No Heavenly Host had arisen to smite the Arians. On the contrary, the invaders were greeted by fair weather—as they must have been to make the crossing from Spain without loss—and a gentle sea in which to land, or sail on, wherever they chose. Had the gods of war sent them rowers as well? No. Soldiers and prisoners like myself: human plunder, taken from their homes, their families. Of what had happened to their women I dared not even think. Meryl.

It was all so unreal, with or without the sleepless night, the harrows of the day that preceded it, and the great dark continent behind. My mind would simply not take it in, all thrown together in a tangle of racing thoughts: the Trojan War, our own invasion turned against us, God and Meryl and Augustine…..

My reveries—more truly, mania—were broken off as a great wail went up from the city. For word had reached the inhabitants of their fate, albeit they had been forewarned. But like so much of life (including Death) that is unpleasant, until confronted by the actual fact we do everything possible to evade, escape, deny. Worse had come to worst, as it invariably does.

Lines of soldiers hastily gathered from their barracks were now ascending the stone stairs of the inner wall to stand beside us. I understood now what Cassius must have felt when he looked out and saw Count Asteria’s forces on the march. For these were not the proud and feared Roman Legions, but a pale imitation of them. Or a dark imitation, as many of those gathered were Arabic or Negroid.

As they continued to mount to the parapet which crowned the city wall, they also included native warriors that the Consul must somehow have induced to fight beside us. While their spears were welcome—I had seen how deft and deadly they could be—of what use were skin-shields against the cruel shafts and machines of war that the Vandals were sure to bring against us: skilled archers, javelin throwers, catapults and battering rams?

But the most disheartening sight was saved for last. Rows of slaves, bound by shackles about their necks and ankles, after climbing to join us, had their chains run through great ring-bolts in the parapet floor, so there could be no thought of flight. Like the galley-slaves of ancient Rome, they would go down with their ship, in this case a wall, drowning not in water, but in their own blood.

My eyes returning to the Vandals. . .were met by the very last thing I had expected, trying as I was to steel myself for battle. They were landing men and supplies by boat on the beach—predictable enough. But instead of gathering on the keys as we had done in Barceno, ready to fight at a moment’s notice….. They had landed at a safe distance both up and down the shore, on the beach rather than the harbor quays, where the fighting might well have begun. Instead they continued to methodically disembark, some setting up tents and pavilions, others moving on to the abandoned homes and storage buildings behind the city. What kind of attack was this?

Then it hit me, a battering-ram wielded by a giant. They would not come upon us in a mad rush, had no intention of wasting lives in a furious assault upon the walls. They brought instead a far grimmer foe, and one which had leveled greater cities than this: hunger, pestilence and fear, a patient and determined siege.

I thought at first I must be wrong—it was so unlike their conduct in Spain….. Again the ram struck home, bursting the gates of my mind asunder. To them Africa must be a different proposition altogether. They were not here like a plague of locusts, merely to devour, destroy and move on. No. They had found their own kingdom at last. Hideous thought! The Vandals were here to stay.

Whatever slight hopes I entertained of rescuing Meryl—after the encounter with ‘Monsignor’ it seemed a foregone conclusion that she and the twins were in danger—evaporated as quickly as the marsh mists that the blazing sun now obliterated.

“Fool!” I choked, just able to stifle the sound in my throat, though not the rage of self-loathing that shot through me. Christ! I had entered a doomed city, now cut off from all retreat, to save an erstwhile bride who had abandoned, if not outright betrayed me. Oh, how I wish I’d let Cassius and Ariel dissuade me! But were they any safer, now that the great Enemy had planted their flag in Africa? True they remained at a distance, well hidden, with the vast desert as an escape route behind…..

And then I saw him. Augustine. Strange. Had I not seen his likenesses in Rome I would not have recognized him. For he did not bear the trappings of a Prince of the Church, but was dressed as a simple monk. An old and careworn monk at that, leaning on a plain wooden staff.

He was not tall, something less than average height and build, with round, almost hunched shoulders, and a neck completely covered by a thick and wavering beard. He had a large head—not large in the sense of being grotesque, but clearly his dominant feature. His hair was brown, well streaked with gray, cut short in a tonsure. His eyes were sad, more bewildered than domineering, as if with all his years of Biblical research he had no real understanding of the world. They must once have been large, like the head, but now had sunk deep, overshadowed by fleshy brows. These were drawn together in an expression of doubt and worry.

Of course he was worried; that’s not what I’m trying to say. I don’t know why this is so hard. He is, after all, just a man, like so many others we elevate to god-like stature, then glorify or vilify according to our needs. All I can really say is that he looked quite human, not severe and paranoid like his minion, just thoughtful, troubled and sad.

He ascended the stairs slowly, followed by a train of monks, and with the aid of the long staff he bore. No, I must amend what I said earlier. For this device was in fact pontifical, with a crucifix at its head that made the dangling Christ look more horrific, more actively and presently tortured than any I had ever seen. Was the life, the message of Jesus Christ no more to him than grotesque suffering? Must all the world bleed as well? I have seen torture and death; I have no need to hold them forever before my eyes.

As he stepped out onto the parapet, the regular forces went down on one knee, bowing their heads before his exalted presence. If I did not wish to draw his notice I must do the same. And so I did, though perhaps a heartbeat too late, as my eyes revealed in the quick glance I allowed myself. He seemed to distinguish me, to consider me briefly, though his gaze naturally went on over the parapet to the grim enemy that confronted us.

He looked out at the ships which continued to disgorge both men and gear of war, sighed wearily. Then seeming to remember himself— that as God’s representative on earth he must appear strong and all-knowing—he lifted his chin aristocratically and turned to address the men.

“My brothers in Christ,” he began. “Our enemy has come, and he is strong. But fear and falter not, for he is the Enemy of God as well, and as such cannot endure. Do we not already behold his fear, his hesitation to attack the holy City of God?”

Did he actually believe this? Siege rather than blind attack was a tactical maneuver. The Vandals were no cowards.

“None come to the Father but through Me,” he pontificated.

Was he kidding? Had he assigned for himself the place of Christ?

“The Arians may call themselves Christians…..” In fact they were mostly pagan in their beliefs, with deep (and dark) Norse mythology as a justification for slaughter. And if not, why the title of his broadsheets, The City of God Against the Pagans, which were nailed to the doors of every building I had seen? Those who tortured Krieg, and mocked him for his Faith, were certainly not Christians. “…..but they are heretics, blasphemers, denying the very Divinity of Christ!”

A spark lept forth as he struck the iron-shod base of his staff against the stones beneath him, and I realized suddenly that I had been lulled by his humble appearance. For the men all around me flinched and drew back, as before the Seat of Judgment. In the heightened state of my nerves, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Here, in fact, was a true giant of the Church. And need I add, a very dangerous man? For the divine inner peace he had tried to show, now fled before the onslaught of animal rage.

Was this his idea of rallying the men in the face of deadly peril? He seemed to realize this himself, for after a flash of exasperation, he again controlled himself.

“My Christian soldiers,” he began again. “This is the hour which God has preordained to put our faith to the ultimate test. The Devil is strong, no question, but Almighty God is as far above him as the eagle that stoops to strike the serpent. And more than this, for God only allows the serpent to exist, as a trial of our faithful obedience.”

I cannot in honesty record the rest of his speech, for I do not remember it, only its tone, which was wheedling and cruel, as if he were probing our sinful hearts with a needle. I had transcribed his writings, so I shouldn’t have been surprised….. But such pedantic drivel! There was nothing natural or manly about him: a spiritual eunuch, empty and impotent.

But when he finished speaking—had he sensed my incredulity?—he turned his gaze, ugly and wrathful, upon me. I was frozen with fear, could not move or think to save my life. No, he was not looking at me—I breathed again—but at something behind me….. My backpack, leaned against the wall where I had placed it in the night. The flap was open! He was looking at the scroll in its leather cylinder, crowned with the Star of David!

At his gesture a guard approached him. He pointed toward me and,

again assuming the role of God, with ten words condemned my soul forever.

“Take him away, and bring his things to my chamber!”

II

It was full night as we stepped through the Stone Circle and entered the Sacred Grove. Nechtainn had been silent as we walked, deep in thought. I had not disturbed his meditations, and did not now. For if the place had an otherworldly aura in the full light of day, how much more so now? Yet as I looked up at the stars overhead it was not fear I felt, but awe. How brightly they burned in the indigo vault of Heaven, the fathomless mystery of Creation!

We had passed many tents as we neared the heart of the island, though none lay within the fence of stone that marked the boundary of the ritual plain. Just beyond it Nechtainn had spoken with a novice, who rose from one of a cluster of campfires and came toward us. The natives about it welcomed us, and beckoned us to join them. And so we did, sitting beside them in the orange glow of the fire.

Whole families had come, the first I had seen beyond our own island. They welcomed their spiritual leader, of course, who was as natural and warm with all of them—the children no less than the chieftains—as I had come to expect of him. And while they studied me with eager curiosity, as one of the mysterious travelers from the east, there was little or no hostility. Whatever holy day had drawn them hither seemed a joyous celebration of life, which touched them all with gentle happiness. They sang and danced, as the children laughed and squealed behind us, running to and fro in some antic game of their own. I felt my tension—for I was still unsure where we were going or why—melt away. At a further word from Nechtainn the novice retired to his tent, returning with a leathern flask.

“Will you drink?” asked the High Druid simply. I wondered at the intensity of his eyes as he said this, but clearly it was important to him.

I have never knowingly been rash, but if there was the least chance that obedience would bring me closer to a meeting with Brigid—the reason I had come, and the hope I could not entirely suppress—then I would do it. The taste was strong but not unpleasant, some kind of herbal elixir. Yet when no one else partook, I had to ask.

“Why?” I said, in the little Gaelic I possessed.

“Something to help you sleep,” he managed to convey, through a combination of word and gesture. I wanted to ask why I needed it…..

Now in the Grove, perhaps an hour later, I felt the full effect. Not mind altering, certainly not poisonous—the thought had occurred to me, but I had faith in this man—only an overpowering urge to sleep.

So when he indicated an oval futon on the ground I did not question him, but lay back as a pillow slid beneath my head, though I could not have said who put it there. Nechtainn, kneeling, laid a blanket across me, then kissed my forehead as if I were a child. I was content, only looking up at the stars between the trees one last time before I closed my eyes. So beautiful, so peaceful.

I fell asleep, and dreamed blissfully that Brigid lay beside me, kissing my cheek, then exploring my body with soft and loving hands. Need I say it was a dream from which I never wanted to wake? Though I knew…..

I opened my eyes in the first grey light of dawn, to find myself unable to move. My hands and feet were bound!

But to my unutterable joy and relief, I saw Brigid leaning over me. I was not spread upon the Inquisitor’s rack—the blackest nightmare of those who know of such things—not bound in iron by madness and hate….. For as I turned my head toward one of my pinioned wrists, I saw the hands of which I had dreamed gently tying the last knot in some kind of silk. From whence had it come? Recognizing the small bloodstain so forcibly imprinted on my mind, I realized it was from the same sacrificial garment that Cassius and I had examined upon first landing on the Island. Why, and what was the symbolism? That answer, too, came to me. On that occasion, during that ceremony, the male had been dominant. . .though in the end, ascendancy lies with the woman. Things were clearer in my mind, if no calmer in my heart.

For now I recognized where I was, and what lay beneath the futon, which had not been removed. What I had taken in my swoon to be the ground itself, was in fact a great stone lid, laid across the cistern. A white, cylindrical curtain, blowing gently in the breeze, surrounded us, suspended by extensions of cloth, tied about the branches overhead.

The Two Trees. Now I understood, though the realization brought little comfort. For I was bound in the very center of the Stone Circle, between them. I was to be the sacrifice. But of what ritual, to what end? Was I to be killed for my earlier trespass, or joined in marriage as the vestal virgin had been? How can I tell you the wave of fear and hope that broke over me?

“Brigid,” I asked in turmoil, “what is happening?” I realized then that my plea, uttered in Latin, meant nothing to her. She only leaned closer, kissed my forehead as Nechtainn had done, then brought another flask toward my lips.

“What is it?” I demanded. Then in Gaelic, “Why?”

She drew back with a hurt expression. Only then did I mark her own emotions, and realize that she herself was in turmoil. She too was confused and frightened. How closely love and fear are interwoven in the great moments of our lives!

“Could you love me?” she asked simply, as a tear trickled down her cheek. For all my anxiety, this touched me to the heart. I forgot my binds, my trepidation. It did not matter what others would see, think or feel. Only she existed in all the world.

“Yes, Angel.”

She could not understand the endearment, as for a moment my mind took me back to another time, when I had woken from a death-like swoon to see a beloved face….. But she must have felt it. She looked at me gratefully, still questing. Then bent down, her hand upon my cheek, and kissed me full as the tears of lost innocence wet both our faces. She brought the flask to my lips, and this time I did not resist. I could not understand the present, or see one moment into the future. But in that kiss, which like her name would ever after be upon my lips, we two, strangers in life but not in heart, had pledged our silent troth, and embarked upon the greatest adventure of all.

The strong and bitter liquid touched my throat. I swallowed hard. Again.

The light was growing about us, and the curtain billowed. I could just glimpse the hem of pale robes beyond. But for all my love of her, real now and not a young man’s fantasy, I wondered yet if it was the white of marriage, or of death. For now Brigid had taken up an ivory handled knife, its curved blade of polished steel.

The curtain was raised, and I saw about us first the semi-circle of Druids, who bowed ceremoniously and slowly backed away, then the throng of worshippers beyond. I looked up at my bride, and/or the instrument of my death, as she held the knife poised above my heart. The first rays of the rising sun touched the blade with a gleam of red gold. If I must die, then let it be by her hand. For there could now, and forever more, be no one else.

She kissed the hilt with trembling emotion, chanting words in an ancient language. The priests took up the chant, and then the throng. She touched the point to my breast, starting a trickle of blood that stained my sacrificial gown, much as the other’s had been, with virgin blood. But instead of plunging it into my unresisting flesh, she drew it back and began to cut away my garment, white and silk as the other’s had been, lightly touching me with the other hand as she did so, as she must have done the night before.

Soon I lay naked, but unashamed. Then she stood and loosened her robe, trimmed with cloth-of-gold as pure as that of the High Druid himself….. And let it fall to the ground.

“I love you,” I said soundlessly, with all I had to give. And though she could not understand the words, she read the intention in my eyes, and gave me a grateful half-smile in return. For though ten thousand looked enraptured upon us, yet we were alone in a world that none could touch.

She knelt beside me once more, and touched the small wound with her fingertip. Then traced a quivering line with it down across my torso, my abdomen.

“Dear God,” I prayed silently, “let me be virile, and give her what she needs.” Her silken fingers engulfed the base of my phallus, as in a flood of passion and relief I understood the second potion: an aphrodisiac, to overcome my nerves…..

But as she stroked so gently upward, all was lost in the first true intimacy of my life. My sex, already stirring, firmed and lifted in undeniable longing, unbelievable pleasure. Her lips were upon my breast, as I closed my eyes and lost all thought of dying.

The chant turned to song, to me a chorus of angels as she straddled my legs, then guided me in with her hand. She gave a little gasp of pain as her virgin’s seal was broken, our bodies and souls joined completely.

“Brigid!”

I, Ariel, take up the tale. We are gathered here on this sacred island, this blessed realm at the Summer Solstice, the feast day of Sun and Earth, the longest day of the year. I record now what my beloved friend could not. I do so without guile—as his heart has ever been with me—freely confessing my own emotions at the time. I am no writer, and don’t know how to separate the act from the symbolism, or say this in any but the simplest terms. But if wishing with all my heart to do it well can make it so, for what it meant to all of us, then perhaps some echo of the great cry of my soul will be heard.

It is said our greatest joys are touched with sadness, from which their true beauty arises. Surely this is truth. For as the bodies of the lovers joined, I wept with both happiness and sorrow. Happiness for my gentle friend, and sorrow for myself. For I tell you now without shame, and with all the turmoil it awakens in my heart, that I have never loved him more.

The High Druid had asked me to stand with him at the fore of the assembled throng, though why he would not say. He spoke no words of magic, nor would I have been moved by them if he had. Instead we only watched from our small distance. But if a woman ever experienced a true epiphany, and knew without question that we are not alone, it was myself in that moment. True miracle!

For even as Gaius cried out her name the sun rose, huge and majestic behind them, perfectly framed between the two hindmost Stones. The girl arched her back, wrapped her hands about his ankles and…..

Oh gleam of blinding light beyond the grave! Their union is etched in my mind forever, a perfect benediction. I have no words to describe it. But there it was, the communion of Man and Woman, God and Man, the heart of Life. I thought I knew what it was to be alive, to be a wife and mother. But I knew nothing of Eternity until that moment!

Then compelled by something greater than myself, and which I could not deny, I moved toward, and then around the lovers in an unhesitating half-circle, all shame forever banished, as the unborn life surged inside me. For I too was part of this, most blessed celebration of Fertility. I stood now on the far side of them, the sun at my back, warming and compelling me. I looked down on Gaius as he returned my loving gaze, both of us so deeply moved. And let my own garment fall.

I am Cleades, former slave, now free as I could not have dreamed. And though I am not a man of words, I gladly take up the tale as Gaius and Ariel ask. For I love him as well, the beautiful young Roman, recorder of our epic tale. And had I not, the night before, experienced the same blessed communion with my beloved Burgess? He and I stood together unashamed, our hands and hearts entwined.

Ariel stood beside the lovers now, on the far side of us, framed in poignant symmetry, the perfect disc of the sun behind them, naked and lovely as the day. Her pregnant form, though stark, was indescribably beautiful, a goddess of love and new life, if ever such a being walked upon the Earth. She knelt down beside them, as without foreknowledge or cue, the two lovers each reached out a hand, and laid it gently upon her swelling breasts.

Brigid arched her back suddenly, as at the same moment Gaius throbbed into her. Joined in the consuming passion of orgasm, which I will never know, they cried out plaintively. The sound was soon lost among the singing and cheering, as all in the crowd felt the power of the moment.

The symbolism was explained to me by Burgess. For the White Druids, among whose followers I now count myself, believe that at the Summer Solstice the Earth Mother and Sun Father must not only be revered and worshipped, but aroused to fertile coupling as well. Thus the ritual mating, in which my friend and his new bride were so gloriously chosen to participate. Yet this time it was the male who must be bound, showing woman’s greater role in the creation of new life.

And I realize now that in his wisdom, Nechtainn had seen a two-fold meaning in his choice of Gaius. Not only was his Brigid astride him in the more important role of Mother, but she, a native girl, and the very archetype of her kind, was dominant over a Roman, an outsider. And while there may have been some initial resentment among those who knew him as such, it subsided as they slowly understood what this meant: that this was their home, their culture, their Faith, which was superior to any outside religion or influence.

As for Ariel herself, toward whom, in her blessed condition, there could be no animosity….. She was not a symbol of anything, but like the Sun and Earth themselves, an actual, life-giving force, a beautiful and fertile young woman.

Forgive me, Gaius. I cannot say what it was to me, to all of us. Perhaps I only lessen it by speaking. I only want to relate, if I can, something of the power and glory of the moment, which needs no clumsy building-blocks, no words, to tell. It simply was.

Real life, real hope, real God.

Oh blessed Day, oh blessed Land! Great Gods, forever just beyond our reach,

Thank you for the glory of Love!

I

It is perhaps the darkest reflection on humanity that when our lives are threatened and destruction imminent, rather than joining together in mutual support, the small and weak among us turn upon their own. To judge by the number of ‘heretics’ and ‘spies’ lined up for trial, the only thing Augustine had accomplished that first day of the siege was to diminish his force and dishearten the men. For when soldiers are already afraid—and they’d be insane not to be, surrounded by the most brutal invaders I’ve ever seen—it doesn’t help to threaten them from behind. And Biblical quotations from a mean old man, by the look of him not altogether sane himself, won’t stand up to arrows, swords and spears. I would have fought to the death on those walls, so long as there was the least chance that Meryl lay somewhere within. That is what men fight for.

Useless. Not an arrow had been loosed, not a ladder or assault tower had touched upon the walls, and already the City was crumbling. Its leaders—I have yet to see the cowering Governor—seemed more interested in assigning blame and cannibalizing their forces than in defending the people whose lives were in their hands.

Had the Vandals’ reputation for ruthless cruelty (and almost uniform success) preceded them? Or course; but that doesn’t mean they’re invincible, or that you give up without a fight. Damn the leaders, and pity the men, women and children!

My trial was held almost at once. I’d spent a miserable day and night in a ramshackle hold, cursing myself for my folly in coming here, my carelessness in not securing the pack, only saved from despair by the thought that Meryl might still be alive. Or that— God help us—the Vandals made a successful assault, and I could escape in the confusion.

But even then I would try to find her first. I know there are men who can lie with a woman, promising marriage, and then abandon them. But rail at myself as I might, I was not one of them. I had not simply joined my flesh to hers, but my soul as well. Perhaps we could both still find a way to freedom…..

But no. Providence had deserted us all when the ship was struck by lightning. From then on it had been a downward spiral, all but inescapable. Only Cassius, who had suffered such misfortune that he could no longer be surprised by anything, and Ariel, who had every reason to live, had managed to elude the stroke. But for how long? And then with a qualm I thought of my beloved Sarah. Thank God they had convinced me to leave her behind!

So raced my thoughts, trying to escape the grim physical reality—impossible, of course.

As the detachment of spearmen (yet another depletion of the men who guarded the city) led us in irons toward the central monastery, I looked back at the ramparts to see the defenders, such as they were, inactive, not only gazing anxiously out at the encircling force, but down at us, in strained and melancholy boredom. They were like drunken men (drunk with fear and inaction), whom the slightest push would send reeling to the ground. Oh, why didn’t the Vandals attack!

We were led, prodded by both ends of the spear, into what must at one time have been a castle or keep, now a cathedral and monastery. The sandstone walls of this inner fortress, no doubt formidable in their day, were now lined and cracked with age. As we passed in through the arching double door, it seemed to my excited imagination to have opened by itself….. But no, here were two black-cowled figures—otherworldly enough in this waking nightmare—who closed it again with a muffled thud, neither feet nor faces visible, but only thin white hands upon the door.

Inside an eerie stillness reigned. A few monks moved past with downcast faces, whether in fear of the attackers or their own superiors I could not know or care. One of the meaningless thoughts that buzzed through my brain like flies about carrion, told me they had every right to be afraid. The Vandal attackers were not likely to spare the followers of a Bishop who referred to them as heretics, pagans, and mindless barbarians. All but the doorkeepers wore ash-stained sackcloth, as if presiding at a funeral pyre, the death of life and hope.

As we filed into the arched Cathedral, my last fantasy of a fair hearing left me. Roman justice could be harsh toward the conquered, but rarely punished the conqueror: its own fighting men. But there was no magistrate or military tribunal here. Instead we filed past rows of priests in three-sided cloisters, looking like corpses in upturned caskets. Surely these were faces that had never seen the sun, but spent their entire lives toiling away at obscure religious tracts: Saint Paul’s epistles, Saint Jerome’s bitter and sadistic ‘translation’ of the Bible. And of course Augustine’s own “Confessions,” and other laudable excrement. For they had a strict Catechism to cement: the Catechismus Catholicae Ecclesiae, as nearly opposite the teachings of Christ as could well be imagined.

And at the head of the Cathedral, beyond the altar, a dais and throne were raised still higher above the sinful supplicants. And in it sat almighty Augustine, this time a true Prince of the Church, donning his regal finery: the golden robes and tall miter of the Archbishop, the ascetic’s staff replaced with the symbolic shepherd’s crook, its curving head of solid gold. Poor (and black) sheep need not apply for deliverance.

To either side of him were the Inquisitors, a three-headed monster to bully all into confession of our sins. But no forgiveness this time. To Augustine’s left stood a grim monk who seemed a thousand years old—our half-hearted defender—leaning on his staff not to flaunt his authority, but to keep from sinking down onto the floor. On his right, my friend the Monsignor, boiling with indignation at the sight of me. For he himself was responsible for my presence in the city, an act of mercy he obviously meant to rectify now.

Before us stood another row of prisoners, their clothes torn open, their backs striped with the merciless blows of the lash. My mind reeled. Had Christ suffered the Roman scourge only to pass it on to the hands of these ‘Christians?’

It was then that I saw Cleades, who turned, and whimpered at the sight of me. This had to mean that Alexander was dead. For I knew him: he would have died before allowing his brother to be taken, and to suffer so again. I only wished we could have exchanged forgivenesses—

My heart stopped. For there she was, my once beautiful bride-to-be, tortured and terrified for the sin of being a Jewess, like the mother of Christ. I could not have kept her name from my lips if I wanted to. For all was lost now.

Hearing it she turned, saw me and began to scream piteously. “Gaius! Forgive me! Take me away—”

“SILENCE!” roared the Monsignor, with a venom he made no effort to conceal.

But how could that pathetic soul obey? What more could they do to her, or threaten her with, than the death which so clearly awaited? One of the guards rushed forward and clubbed her to the ground. I ran forward, pulling the whole line after me. As I bent and cradled her in my arms, the only prayer left in me was that the blow had killed her, and her suffering was ended. I bent my ear to the beloved breast—

My arm was nearly wrenched from its socket as one of the guards hauled me back into line, then knocked me all but senseless with a blow of his great fist.

And so the three of us, stunned and nearly out of our minds with fear, swayed in the double line of those awaiting sentence, our fellow prisoners with a hand on each arm doing their best to keep us upright. As I slowly became aware that a voice was speaking, reading out the charges, the very word ‘trial’ sickened me with false hope.

There is no need to record the rest. One Inquisition is much like another: religious fanatics condemning their victims for not sharing their brutal delusions: that the Devil lurks in every free heart, and God is a raging psychopath, galled by the very sight of his wicked and ungrateful creation.

There can be little bravery in the face of such madness, and few of us had the heart to defend ourselves against the Monsignor’s paranoiac assertions. Because the two things you can never argue with are ignorance and insanity, both of which glared out at us from his raging, demonic eyes.

The only thing I could not understand was that, as the names and charges were read out, as the victims pleaded for their lives—perhaps they did, and I am lost—or for reason of any kind….. When my own turn came, Augustine motioned to his minion, who stopped and approached him, seeming suddenly deflated as his superior whispered something in his ear. Then he gestured to one of the guards, and just prior to my line being herded off with the others, weeping and wailing, my shackles were removed and I stood alone, too dazed even to react.

I could not hope that my journal had moved the Archbishop to pity, which was beyond him. And yet I was led to a small chapel where I was commanded to kneel and instructed to pray— which I did, in spite of myself. Need I tell you what I prayed for? Not for God to forgive me, or even deliver me from the hands of my enemies, but for my beautiful and troubled Meryl and the young Greek, whose being seemed to merge into one, and whose minds were surely broken, along with mine. And that if there was anything I could do to help them, I be given the strength to try.

The guard then led me, none too gently, through a maze of passages and winding stairs….. Into the chambers of the great man himself! These combined a private study with a bedroom, and a lavatory off to the side.

He sat at a high desk with an angled front, a large scroll spread out in front of him. I swallowed hard as I realized it was mine: the journal I had tried so faithfully to keep, now no doubt to be used against us. With a further qualm that nearly dropped me to the floor at his feet, I realized that my Sarah, too, would be laid bare, along with Cassius and Ariel. But no, came the faintest voice of hope. The inhabitants of the city could not get out…..

The guard steadied me then stood silent, waiting. I could only do the same. At length Augustine turned and regarded us.

What happened next was so unreal, I felt I must have truly lost my mind. Though I had been prepared for threats and ravings, nothing of the kind ensued. He only smiled at me wearily, one man to another, and with a wave of his hand sent the guard away. The heavy door was closed behind us.

“You are Tiberius Gaius?” he asked, not unkindly, “and this is your journal?”

I stared at him in blank amazement. How do you answer the man whose thralls have tortured your wife and dear friend, who still holds the lives of all those you love in his hands?

“She was your mistress,” he pursued dryly, “the woman who called out to you?”

“My wife,” I said doggedly.

He indicated the scroll. “I read it all, last night. There is no mention of a ceremony, other than the hideous Jewish rite she proposed. You don’t honestly believe she meant to go through with it?”

I tried to master my rage for her sake, but could not.

“And who married you, to the mother of your son? the woman you later abandoned for a more favorable match, only to abandon her, too?”

His eyes flashed at this—for what I had said was true—though he soon calmed himself. I could not imagine why, for I was striking at the heart of him with all that I possessed. Though of course it is easier to remain above such things when you hold the power of life and death in your hands.

“You know something of my background?” he asked in the same dry manner. “Oh yes, you were a scribe. How many other lies and distortions did you copy out?”

“I translated the Scriptures from the original Greek text, which bear little resemblance to the ravings of your friend Jerome…..” I don’t know why I continued to battle him. I simply could not stop myself.

“Do you want them to die horribly?”

There was no need to guess who he meant by ‘them’.

“Let them go,” I said flatly, wondering at my own instinctive courage. “Or whatever it is you want from me, you won’t get it.”

“My dear boy,” he said, as my skin crawled at the endearment. “You don’t understand. She is a Jew, and lost in any case.”

“Why? You could set her free—”

“Predestination, Gaius.” He now adopted the manner of the wise Biblical scholar, trying to enlighten a willful and ignorant pupil. “She was born to perdition, and though free will allows her to choose the way of her fall—”

“You’re not God!”

Again the flash of irritation, quickly submerged.

“No, only a humble servant, who has spent a lifetime studying His Holy Word.”

“Behold, I bring you a new Commandment,” I quoted. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” And, “Judge not, lest ye shall be judged.”

“Please,” he said facetiously, waving this away. “Do you think I brought you here to engage in theological debate with a child?”

“Then why did you bring me here? …..Please,” I said, trying for my friends to control myself. “What can I do to save them?” 

I had been aware for some time of the sounds of a scuffle far below, drifting in through the shuttered window: the muffled voice of prisoners, probably gagged, crying out for mercy. But it all seemed so much of a piece that I hardly noticed them. Yet now I heard a scream that froze my blood, followed in an instant by the whoosh of sudden flames. A moment later, through the most heart-rending cries imaginable, acrid smoke drifted in through the shutters.

“What have you done?” I asked in a cracked whisper.

“She is dying,” he replied icily.

I ran to the window and threw open the shutters. A hundred feet below, two bodies burned at the stake, thrashing uselessly: one of them a woman, her hair and dress ablaze.

“Meryl!”

“She can’t hear you,” he said just as coldly.

I turned on him in trembling rage. “She was to be my wife!”

He rose now like a dragon in its wrath. “She was your Jezebel!”

In that moment I could have killed him with my bare hands. But as I rushed at him in a fury, a great black shape moved from the shadows to intercept me. Large and powerful hands held my forearms like sticks.

“Thank you, Ubu,” said Augustine wearily. “Take him away. Perhaps a few weeks in the dungeon will make him more amenable.”

My hands were pushed behind my back as the guards reappeared, bound me with some kind of leather thong, and I was half led, half carried away.

What did it matter now? How could I begin to care? My wife—for in my heart she was nothing less—my only love, who was not to blame for her delusion….. My mind simply would not take it in. After so much trauma and tragedy. . .dead.

II

I’ve heard it said that trial and travail need many words to convey, while happiness is a tale quickly told. Perhaps they are right. But I feel an obligation to—no, that is not the right word—call it a kinship with those who will one day read this work. Perhaps I grow vain. But having worked so long and hard upon this journal, I do hope that someday it will be understood and appreciated.

So. You stayed with me through the dark and introspective times that came before. I would, if possible, share with you some measure of my present happiness.

We’d been married in that stunning ceremony, my Brigid and I. And when it was done, when the people began to disperse, Nechtainn approached us smiling.

“Alainn,” he said, the Gaelic word for beautiful, as he placed the robe once more about my young bride’s shoulders. She turned and embraced him like a father, which explained much I had not earlier understood. She is his daughter. I do not say adopted daughter, as such a word has no meaning. Do you think I love my Sarah less because of it? Do you think he loves his Brigid less? Though it was a far different ceremony from the Christian ceremony, which I do not despise, it was no less moving, or wreathed in love. Of course there were tears in both their eyes, and his wife Brianna’s, as she approached and joined there embrace. I looked on awkwardly, though I had been dressed again. Ariel embraced me, though for the first time in my life my heart did not turn to her, but to the young woman who had joined her life to mine. She sensed this, and with a tear of her own pushed me away, toward them. Brianna opened one of her arms toward me, and I joined their family embrace. My family. I had a family! If Sarah had been there, it would have been perfect. But she soon would be. Again and forever. I must confess I was not master of my emotions. But if not now, why?

In retrospect I can tell you that the ceremony was deeply moving to the onlookers as well, and would be remembered in song for many years to come. But in that moment I had eyes (and heart) only for my bride.

Ariel had tried to walk away, but couldn’t. She approached me quickly as we at last separated, and whispered in my ear.

“I love you, Gaius. And I’m so happy for you at last.”

I embraced her gently. We’d never been so close. And I realized with a qualm, even through my love and tenderness for the young woman I had just married and made love to, that we never would be again. As she herself said, how our joys and sorrows intertwine!

But now Brigid regarded me, seeming hurt and a little angry. I took her in my arms, kissed her full, and with her sweet face held close in my hands, shook my head emphatically. It was the only way I knew of telling her it was she I had chosen, and that Ariel was only….. Only? How could I ever apply that word to her, who had for so long been my guiding star, giving me hope, and a reason to live? For in that moment I knew, as did Ariel, what it was to be in love with two. Though I knew that for both their sakes, I must let go the long dream of Ariel for one less ethereal, but far more tangible and real.

And how I loved my Brigid already! How our bodies had merged, as if they were made for each other, and how the passion had flowed! How could anyone call this sin? It was a celebration, nay, the very essence of Life.

Nechtainn put his arm tenderly about Ariel’s shoulders. “Sweet child,” he said, the words now known and familiar to us both. He put his hand lightly on her stomach, which seemed to knot at the touch. “Not long now,” he said. And he gestured to Brianna, who in turn summoned a woman, a mid-wife from the crowd. Then he embraced Brigid one last time, and I saw the anguish of separation and loss that he could not conceal. She held him hard, as if he would vanish.

I did not think myself capable of any greater awe, and yet I was as I watched them. Why had Ariel been able to reach Nechtainn? Why had he trusted me, not only with the ceremony that is the pinnacle of his Faith, but with the heart of his very daughter? Tears overwhelm me as I write this. Has any man or woman ever given so great a gift?

Alexander stood at a respectful distance, meaning to give us more time. But Nechtainn is a strong man, as surely you have seen, and Brigid no less than he. Anyone who says that women are not as strong as men, has never been to Ireland. Father and daughter gathered themselves, turned back toward us.

Then the High Druid extended an arm toward Clear Island. For it was time to go home.

Our home. Brigid would return with me, my wife. And Sarah would join us. Our family. I held my new bride, and said her name with all the passion it engendered. 

“Brigid!”

For I was home now. They were my home, Brigid and Sarah, and I swore with all I was that I would never leave them. “Amor tu,” I said in Latin. And though she could not understand she touched my face, her eyes still searching. What emotions must be churning in her young heart, married to a man she had accepted, but still hardly knew. I took her hand gently. But though she seemed grateful for this, there was something in her look that I had not expected. What was it?

Now Alexander came closer, and any tension that may have existed between us fled as he offered me his forearm, which I took warmly. And this gave me the chance, as the others moved off toward the boat…..

“Can you translate for us?” I asked eagerly.

“Of course.”

I turned to my bride, and through him I said. “I love you, my beautiful Brigid, and I will do all I can to be a good husband, and make you happy.” She nodded, but still with that look in her eyes. Anger? Jealousy? I went on, not knowing what else to say. “I understand that this is sudden for you, leaving your island, your friends. Please know, I will not try to keep you from the things, the people that you love.”

“My parents?” And her look was one almost of defiance.

“No. Of course, they are welcome anytime. I know how dear they are to you. I meant…..”

Now her look was quizzical. No use pretending I didn’t know. It would even be a kind of relief…..

“Moll,” I said. The word needed no translation. Now she flushed, and looked hard at me. “It doesn’t matter how I know, Brigid. I only want you to know that…..” I struggled for a way to tell her. “She will always be welcome to visit you, or you her.”

Her young face is so expressive. The emotions moved across it like the shadow of clouds across a hillside: first embarrassment, then anger, and finally, unspoken question. My eyes and reassuring nod must have conveyed something of my meaning, because she bit her lip to contain her emotions, then said through Alexander.

“Thank you….. She was sent away. That is why the ceremony fell to me.”

At this another question occurred, so vital I was almost afraid to ask. But I must ask, for her sake.

“You were not forced into this? Were not forced. . .to accept me?” I should have known the answer, but she is (I must admit) more the master of her emotions.

She looked at Alexander, not understanding his first translation. He talked with her for several minutes, then explained to me.

“No one forced her to do anything, Gaius. She was a vestal virgin, a high honor here, by choice. And no one forced her, either to take Moll’s place, or to choose you. Ariel told Nechtainn of your feelings for her, as I think you know, and he and Brigid talked for hours as you slept. She wanted to know everything he had to tell about you. She could have chosen another— you were not the only candidate—but she watched you as they spoke, then lay down with you, and knowing that you loved her….. She chose you, Gaius, and does not regret the choice.”

She wanted me. Sweet Heaven, she was mine!

Then her face colored and she said something else to Alexander, who turned again to face me. “She wants to know about Ariel.” A pause while she spoke again. “What are your feelings, your relationship with her?”

“She is my truest friend,” I said without hesitation, “and the wife of our leader.”

“The unborn child. . .is not yours?”

“No, my sweet. What you and I shared this day, I have never known with any other woman.” She had been watching Alexander as he spoke, and now examined both our faces.

“True,” he told her, one of the words that I had learned. Then he straightened, and said to me.

“Congratulations, Gaius, but now we must be off. You and your wife will work it out, I’m sure. No doubt Ariel will want to have her child at home, with Cassius there beside her.” Though this had been meant as a prod to get us to the ship, I took the further point directly.

“As he will want to be with her,” I said. And in that moment, if you can believe it, I even loved that old son of a wolf-bitch, the battered warrior who, for all his rough ways, had brought us out of terrible danger, so that Alexander could bring us here. How much I owed to them both!

“Yes,” was all I could say to his insistent glance. Then, “What about Brigid’s things?”

“Already being loaded,” he said with a wry smile. “They do things right in Erin.”

“Yes, they do.”

And now, so help me God, I will too.

We walked quietly toward the lagoon, and the feel of her breast against my arm as we walked hand-in-hand was warm and comforting and fulfilling in a way that defies all attempt to describe it. I can only say that this simple reassurance—of love, a mate, and the banishment of loneliness—spoke to something deep inside me, and in her, that needed no words.

Yes, we’ll be all right, my Brigid and I. For together we have embarked upon the greatest adventure of all, and again my emotions overcome me. How true are Cleades’ words, like the man himself:

Oh, great gods, thank you for Love!

I

The truly heartbreaking thing about Holocaust—they murdered my beloved Meryl for no other reason than that she was a Jew—is that when your loved ones are killed, when you believe you will never again feel or care for anything, pain and fear prove you wrong.

To spend long days and nights shackled to a dungeon wall is indescribable. But it seems I must try, as recording these horrors is all that remains of my harlequin’s life. I don’t know how long I have been here, as I am below ground, and the light (or lack of it) never varies. But I must say something of this Hell, cold comfort though it may not be.

First there are the physical torments. My own chains were bolted to the stone above and behind so that I stood, arms outstretched as on a cross, unable to sit, let alone lie down. So when fatigue, hunger and thirst overcame me, the best I could do was to wrap my hands about the chains and hold on, bracing my legs at an angle from the wall. Needless to say this reduces sleep, when possible at all, to a fitful dozing, releasing me for the briefest moment. . .until the muscles relax and gravity does its work, wrenching me back to a painful consciousness not only of the present anguish, but of the outright torture to come.

For the brutal fact is that tyrants and torturers attack both body and mind, no matter their high-flown rhetoric. And if there exists a more raw animal terror than finding yourself in the power of the religiously insane, I have never heard of it.

Oh, yes, I have read of such things, even being ordered to transcribe—I tried to refuse, but the patron was the Byzantine governor of Syria—Herod III’s, “Intimidation and Control Through Torture and Execution.” A cheering little treatise to be sure.

Which brings me to the gentle art of psychological torture. For no animal, set upon by the pack in a whirlwind of tearing teeth and claws, can know the excruciating fear and helplessness of being chained upon the altar, awaiting the whim of a psychopath. For though it undoubtedly knows the greater physical pain as it is torn to pieces, two things are absent. First, the animal’s suffering, however terrible, is brief. Because the human predator, unlike the animals he shuns as soulless beasts, does not, as they do, go directly for the kill. No. Like domesticated cats they prefer to play with their meal. And second, there is not the excruciating interval while the human victim waits, imagining the pain to come, surrounded by the screams of those whose virginal anticipation is over.

And one more thing. The tyrant must make an example of his victim: show his enemies how wrong they are to oppose him, and (hideous thought, but one I know quite well) that the pain and terror they endure, are their own fault. This last is the consummation, the orgasm of all that has come before, and in the face of which Death itself is but the afterglow.

‘Saints’ Jerome and Augustine—the latter not yet canonized, but how can the Church fail to bestow its highest honor upon the long suffering (and long-winded) Bishop of Hippo?—like to speak of the fiery torments of Hell. Thus they are particularly adept at creating it here on earth. For Jerome it was only through art—if we may apply that term to spiritual rape and murder—and the reader’s imagination. Horrible enough, I daresay. But for Augustine, and for those who will undoubtedly come after, there is the physical gratification as well.

You see, though nearly all dungeons are underground, this one is truly unique. Above it, the serene monks pray, and ponder the mysteries; the priests celebrate mass in that lovely cathedral, which doubles as the Day of Judgment (why should God have all the fun?); and the Bad Shepherd leads his flock to the slaughterhouse. For is that not the end of all sheep? But here, I mix my metaphors. What I’m after is the idea of Heaven and Hell contained within a single structure—Above and Below—divided by naught but the killing floor. And as miserable as their Heaven is, you should see their Hell! Men lifted from the floor by nooses about their necks—fouling themselves as they clutch futilely at the rope—are but one entertainment. Satan, you have a rival!

Do I become facetious, who should be setting down my tale in cogent and compelling order? Of course! Ah, but how do I write it? you ask, chained in the pit, the expectant bride-to-be. I will tell you after I speak of my recent interview with Augustine. For the two are not unrelated.

I was dragged, semi-conscious, up and up it seemed, spiralling toward some eminence. Was I dead, my spirit climbing, on angel’s wings, toward Heaven? No such luck.

For as I regained consciousness (if not sanity), I lay upon the penitential bed as my familiar demon, Augustine, watched me from the high writing desk and chair to which he seems to have chained himself, if only figuratively.

Of course my soul wretched at finding myself in his bed. But you see, gentle friend, I could no longer stand. And as soon as released by the guards I had swooned, and so been laid upon it, where I slept like the dead in their catacombs, that burrow beneath Imperial Rome. Hadn’t the early Christians hidden, met, and worshipped there? How quickly the oppressed become the oppressor!

I don’t know how long, whether hours or days, I followed Christ into Hell. But when I woke he was still there, as if neither he nor his bowels had moved, and I was bound head and foot to the stolid wooden frame. Needless to say I had not woken as they tied me down. I reopened my eyes—I had, like a child, tried to close them again to make the nightmare go away—to find him gazing at me almost wistfully.

So that is why he kept me alive. God help us, he finds me desirable, a romantic figure for his insane fantasy. But I had not been touched or molested. Why?

He climbed down from the chair, walked to a nightstand beside the bed, where he lifted a pitcher of water mixed with wine and brought it to my lips. I did not resist, the undeniable longing for sustenance even greater than the desire to spit in his face. And with no saliva in my cracked, parchment mouth….. He tried to stroke my forehead lovingly, at which I thrashed like the demon-possessed he must have thought I was.

Again the irritation that must be an inseparable part of his age and wasted life told on the pale, doughy, pathetic face. But once more he controlled it, stiffly returned to the seat of ease, took up his quill, and wrote more of his flaccid drivel even as he spoke. Posterity!

“Would it surprise you to learn that I was once like you?” He glanced at me briefly, then back to his death’s work. “It’s true. I once sought truth and love: through Greek philosophy, free thought, even physical passion.”

“But they brought you no definitive answer,” I spat back at him, “no absolutes of Good and Evil. So in bitterness you created them yourself: a vengeful God, galled by the very sight of His ungrateful children, and the Devil that rose out of your own worst fears. Heaven if you cower before this lunatic invention, Hell if you have the courage not to.”

My fevered state gave me a strange lucidity. Or perhaps it only comes to me now as I write. I honestly don’t know. But then or now, I continued:

“But even that wasn’t enough. You had to make hard and fast rules, a harsh dogma to impose on those not as cowardly as yourself.”

He whirled, his face distorted with rage. There was a demon there, to be sure. But like a man suffering from passion-induced heart disease—and, I might add, afraid of death for all his talk of Faith—he took several deep breaths to calm himself, then turned away again. And though the hand that gripped the quill trembled with indignation—how dare I speak the truth?—still he wrote on.

“Why do you insist on provoking me?” he asked wearily.

“You murdered my wife!”

I’d have thought this too would evoke an emotional response. But apparently his disdain for women is so complete, that for all my passion he hardly noticed the words.

“She betrayed you, as all women do,” he said with half his attention. “As Eve betrayed Adam, and the Jews betrayed our Lord.” And before I could reply to this, “Do you honestly believe she could have come to any other end, a fallen seductress, a lovely and lascivious Jew?” He said the word with such hatred that it twisted my heart like a rag.

“And so you anticipate God’s will,” I mocked helplessly, “hasten the damned on their way? As you’re no doubt planning to do with my friend, if you can keep your ‘lascivious’ priests off him long enough.”

I stopped, realizing two things at the mention of Cleades. First, that I still cared very much what became of him—a weakness in this mad game that was sure to be used against me—and second, that anything I said or did might be heaped in fiery coals upon his head. The Church is a great one for whipping boys.

“Ah, so you care for the little Greek boy.” His eyes betrayed a faraway longing as he spoke.

“Of course I do, you animal!” I blurted uncontrollably. Then trying to make light of it (a joke, I realize), “You’ve read my journal.”

“Yes, I have,” he said, reaching to caress it with his horrible, withered hand. “He is not dead, merely imprisoned, like yourself.”

“You can do no worse to him,” I lied, “than what you have already done. You raped his soul the day you killed his brother.” This much, surely, was the truth. For Alexander would have dared damnation to save him. He must be dead, and Cleades’ mind broken by it. “No doubt you find them both ‘abominations’, cannot begin to understand their love for one another in the midst of their suffering.” I grew weak and teary at the thought. “…..subjected to unspeakable baseness, forced to have sex even with themselves, trying to save each other from madness and emotional death.”

“How you try my patience,” he chided, the wise older man. “I won’t speak of the complex relationship between Predestination and free will.” Like that between celibacy and molesting little boys? “I speak to you now as a man.” Lucky me! “But do you honestly believe he would he have fared any better in the world outside these walls? You yourself describe the way the desert pagans ogled him—”

“You’re not God!”

His quill stopped. “I am His prophet, His instrument! My hand is mercy!” Again the sudden check, the bitter expression of one who knows he must not give in to passion, but cannot help himself. “Don’t you understand? Those predestined to the Pit of Fire live in utter misery, from which there is no escaping. I merely extinguish the false hope— ”

“Stop it! Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?”

He rose in wrath, his best imitation of Moses (another Jew, by the way). “Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain!”

“I do not take it in vain, but in deepest entreaty! How can you twist His message of love and forgiveness into one of death and damnation?” Here I might have said something worthy of an epitaph, if my feeble strength had not abandoned me entirely. “You’re insane,” I ended lamely.

He, too, must have felt the futility of this confrontation—if he is even capable of feeling now. He sat again, so weary, empty and alone that I could almost pity him. Almost. He lifted a mallet and touched a small gong. A servant appeared at once: a lithe and handsome youth, looking fearful.

“Yusef,” he said, not unkindly. “Bring us some seed-cake, and the chilled white wine from the cellar.”

When the boy had gone and returned with what was asked, the wine in a silver salver and the cake on a golden plate, Augustine moved once more to sit on the bed beside me. Again I could not keep my body from hunger and thirst, my heart from a desperate (and no doubt futile) hope. He poured the wine into a jewel-encrusted goblet, dipped pieces of the cake into it, and placed them in my mouth. This is my flesh you eat, this is my blood you drink. Then he patted my chest, which I could not elude, and began to speak.

“You care for this Cleades? You wish no further harm to befall him?”

I turned away, understanding at last the brothers’ bitter shame at having to submit to Asteria’s obscene caresses. For if they did not, it was not themselves alone who would be punished, even killed. “Of course I do.”

“You think it is only lust I feel for you?” He sounded hurt. I turned back in surprise, not trusting. What else could it be? He looked deep into my eyes.

“I told you I was once like you. What I did not tell you….. I had a son. I loved him. And now he is dead.”

He rose and began to pace slowly back and forth, back and forth, as on a death watch. “He was so sincere, with a questing mind and soul that could only have come from me. And when he grew to manhood he showed such filial devotion….. And yet God took him away from me.”

I said nothing, stunned. To suddenly see into your enemy’s heart, and realize he too longs for love and understanding….. That he was mad, I knew, but with this last trace of emotion and humanity. Was there a way to use it? For Sarah still waited….. The pain was too great, so I locked it away.

“Let him go,” I said, “or I’ll curse you with my dying breath.”

“I cannot.”

“Then you are altogether evil.”

“What if I brought him here?” he said, as if he had not heard me.

I stared at him, uncomprehending. Again he raised the mallet, struck the gong twice. This time the huge bodyguard, a slave, reappeared.

“Find the Greek boy. Feed him, bathe him, and give him decent clothing.” He looked at me with forlorn entreaty, as if asking, had he done the right thing? What else could I say?

“Thank you,” I whispered, my voice trembling, and turned away.

“Then have Yusef prepare the adjoining room,” I heard him say, “and bring him here.” I assume the bodyguard nodded, for he left the room.

“Why would you do this?” I asked brokenly.

“You love him?” I could not deny it. “Then I love him.”

He returned to his desk, drank some of the wine himself. He sighed with age, loss and resignation, then continued writing.

Later that night Cleades was brought up from the dungeon, and we were installed together in the room next door. And there my scrolls were returned to me. Thus I am able to write, and record this all but unbelievable series of events.

Is this really happening? Am I mad, or is he? I don’t know. Only that when Cleades wept in my arms I felt no revulsion. Only pity and a crushing sense of loss. For what am I to do now?

Now.

Now.

II

Brigid and I love each other, the bond so suddenly made now maturing into a quiet acknowledgement that our union was meant to be. As the days roll slowly by, they bring a tide of peace and happiness I have not known since childhood.

There is some awkwardness between us, of course. I know but a little of her language, and she, until recently, none of mine. But when a man and woman set out together with willing hearts and a common goal—a new family—somehow the thing is done. We manage to convey what is needed by day, and by night, find in the lover’s embrace that which goes beyond words, the rhythm of our longing, the rhyme of our souls.

I wasn’t sure how the others would react to her, or she to them. Because for all my present joy, I am not blind to female jealousy. Even my sweet mother possessed it in some degree.

But in truth I need not have worried. She had won Ariel’s heart from the first, and I’m grateful to both of them, for wishing my happiness and striving to be friends. While somewhat unlike in their outward demeanor—for Brigid is not at all the soft and subservient girl I first took her for—they both possess the same inner strength. And there was even less cause for concern between my wife and adopted child. For Brigid, having lost her own parents, can feel her orphaned soul in a way that even I cannot. And Sarah, those parents lost, was more than ready for a true, full-time mother. She returned to stay with us but a few days after we returned, all concerned agreeing that it should now be so.

It is no easy thing to start a new family, God knows, but joyous and deeply satisfying when undertaken together.

I was not entirely wrong in reading my Brigid’s virtues on that first, soul-stirring occasion, wondering, in quieter moments, if they were not mere wishful thinking. She is in fact kind and loving, though she hides it at times beneath an outer hardness—this no doubt the result of her orphaned youth—and is as hard a worker as I have ever known. With the help of the island’s other natives, she has set about furnishing our small home, and setting all to rights. This while Malachi and I fish to earn our daily bread—how much more meaningful those simple words now!—Cassius still unable, because of his injury, to haul on line or net.

And in opening her heart to the Sarah, she has quite stolen mine. So young, and yet so stout of heart. I know it was hard for her, leaving suddenly and forever the life she knew on Sharcaen, as indeed it must have been when she first went there as a little girl.

And yet she has done it, asking only that I understand the depth of her attachment to Nechtainn and his wife, who took her in when they learned of her condition: her mother having died in childbirth, her father lost at sea but a few years after that. To hear such things of someone you already love. . .only makes you swear deep inside yourself to stand by them, and give them everything you have.

Do not misunderstand me. I don’t live in a state of perpetual bliss. Far from it. That’s simply not the way life is, for anyone, let alone a new husband and father. But it is in taking the good with the bad, and caring for the ones we love as best we can, that inner peace is found, and in no other way.

Ariel went into labor a week after our return, and we all remained close at hand to lend whatever comfort and support we could. And that is well. For a woman’s womb—the font of life, lest we forget—does not always yield its prize readily, and never without pain. As stout-hearted as Ariel is—the soul of our company, as I have said before now—it is proving a long and difficult ordeal. Meryl stayed with her at first, along with the midwife. But the vintner’s gentle daughter, her nerves not yet tested in this desperate enterprise, could not long endure the strain. Being pregnant herself, with her own emotions rising and falling like the flood, none of us thought the worst of her when she asked, in tears at her own weakness, to be excused from the bedside vigil. We all have different thresholds, and let us not judge too harshly.

I thought of going to Ariel myself, but Brigid would not hear of it. She said that this was something only a woman could understand, or be of any use in. I felt a moment’s doubt about her motives until, seeming to read the thought and flushing with anger, she said simply: “I go to her.” And go she did, for the rest of the day, and on into the night.

I remained with Cassius in our home until fatigue overtook me, and I got a few hours troubled sleep. And on that second morning I found him sitting on the bench outside his cottage, desolate, beside himself with worry. I moved to join him.

“Should it take this long?” he kept asking. “Why is it taking so long?” Apparently the midwife had told him, when he could stand it no longer and went in himself, that this was not unusual for a first-time mother. And she had gently but firmly ushered him out again.

“But is she just saying that?” he asked me, “putting a brave face on it, because she knows something is wrong?” I assured him, with more conviction than I felt, that what the woman said was true. “It breaks my heart to see her suffering,” he said weakly, “and there’s nothing I can do. Please, God, let it end.”

It was a strange sensation to see this man, who had so fearlessly (or so it then appeared) delivered us from peril time after time, unable, nay, unwilling to deliver himself. And while Franzi would be some comfort to him if she passed….. Nay. I dare not even think it. Enough to say I believe it would kill him, as it would leave a permanent and unhealing wound in me. I added my own silent prayer to his.

Please God, don’t take her from us. As all my present happiness fled, and I was once again the lonely and desperate youth of so few years before.

I lent what support I could, even taking him by the shoulders, as he had once done to me, and shaking him perhaps harder than I’d meant. My words:

“She’s as tough as you are, Cassius. She’ll see it through.” And instead of the angry glare I expected, he looked at me keenly, though without the old feeling of a blade being drawn. For once he did not resist that simple manly touch, though the pain: the torture and self-accusation behind those burning eyes, now swelling with tears….. I had not truly known him until that moment.

Forgive me, Cassius. I knew the facts of your loss, but not what they had done to you: the unbelievable pain, the raging regret that so nearly caused you to throw away your life…..

I must say it. People can change. He is living proof of that.  

“I tell you, Gaius,” he said as the morning wore away, the two of us remaining there doggedly in the misting rain so frequent in this part of the country. The cries within were coming more frequently—a good sign by what little I knew of childbirth—but also seemed to be growing weaker, like the woman herself. “This is worse than any battle, even one you know you can’t win.” There must have been many of these in his time. “At least then you can do something, fight your way out.”

Another cry, shrill with pain. “Dear God, let her be all right. Don’t punish her for my sins!” And in a paroxysm of feeling such as I had never known or expected to see in him, he fell to his knees, clasping his hands before him and putting forth all he was in silent prayer. If there is a God in Heaven, He could not fail to be moved by the proud yet broken warrior calling out to Him: not for himself, but for the one he loved beyond all else.

A sharper cry came from within, higher and longer than any we had yet heard. He rose unsteadily and prepared to go in, like a man staggered by a blow, but who must continue to fight at all costs: a man who fought, like a cornered animal, for the lives of his nearest and dearest. At that he stumbled to one knee, throwing out an arm as the ground reeled beneath him. It was some time before I could steady him, body and mind, to rise and continue. And by then the cries had changed beyond all recognition, desperate and small. But as he took a deep breath, threw me off and prepared to charge, the door opened and Brigid stood before us, worn but undaunted.

“Is she all right?” said Cassius, a faint whisper as I murmured the same. She could not understand the words, but their meaning was clear enough. She gestured us in.

Ariel was lying in the bed, wet with sweat, as the midwife continued working, and Brigid refreshed the cloth on her forehead. The face beneath it was pale and haggard. And now we both saw the small bundle beside her, the little head not much bigger than a fist.

Cassius moved brokenly to the far side of the bed, leaned across it and took her hand gently in his. We were both so afraid…..

“Are you all right?”

Her voice a faint whisper. “Yes.” She gave a wan smile, then took several deep breaths.

“What is it?” he asked, his face streaming with tears. He meant, what is wrong? But the answer—  

“I’m all right,” she said simply. “And it’s a boy. A beautiful boy.”

Cassius reeled backward as from the blow of a giant, and would have struck the wall behind had I not caught him. He looked back at her, overwhelmed and disbelieving.

“I— ” A strangled sound came from his throat. “I have a son?”

As she nodded his head shot back and he uttered a wordless cry—of sorrow, shame, loss and triumph. Then moved back to the bed, and buried his face in the coverlet beside her. She placed her hand on his head as he sobbed, and gently stroked his hair.

For this was her victory.

Brigid took my arm and silently led me from the hut. Meryl and Malachi stood outside, their hands on the shoulders of Sarah and Franzi before them, both children looking scared.

“How is she?” Malachi asked Brigid, speaking for all of us. And this time it was Sarah who translated, my little Angel of mercy.

“She’s tired,” the two managed to convey. “But the blood. . .isn’t bad, and she should be all right.”

As the little girl opened her arms for me to lift her, I did, settling her on my hip, then put an arm about my wife. We drew together, the perfect circle of love. I would not have believed such feelings possible.

“Thank you,” was all I could say.

Ariel would live, and Cassius had a natural son.

I

So here we are, Cleades whimpering softly like a whipped puppy on the bed—there is only one—while after getting him to sleep at last, I try in a mad frenzy to write it all out, with no other thought than that it must be recorded, this tale of horror told in full.

When we were first put here I began to hope there might yet be some means of escape: that in his weakness for me, Augustine would not realize I’d do anything to be shot of him. But as the door was closed behind us, I heard the snick of the lock and the throwing of an outer bolt. With this—for such is the way of fevered minds—my soaring hopes crashed suddenly into despair. He still holds both our lives in his hands; I cannot hope overmuch for either of them; and the grim truths you read, willingly or not, are all that remain to me. Most probably, of me.

When you are in Hell, the soul rebels at thoughts of Heaven.

But now Cleades has woken again, forlorn and afraid, and I must do what I can for him. Be assured, I will return to the narrative when I may.

…..do not spare lives out of sentiment. And he released Cleades and returned my scrolls to me—blasphemous as he no doubt finds them—and assigned another lad to wait on us. He seems to fancy young boys, whether he admits it to himself or not. Can he really believe the natural desire for a woman is evil, while this unnatural lust is not? Yet there is no other way to explain it. He spares Cleades—a eunuch, a pleasure slave—yet thoughtlessly murders my bride, the poor, tormented Meryl…… And keeps us both prisoner to his will and whim alike.

I have again soothed, fed, and given wine to the miserable and broken Cleades, who sleeps again, though fitfully. Do you wonder at it? Starvation, deprivation and inhuman chains are not conducive to anything but suffering and exhausted despair. I too would sleep if I could, but not only is there much to record, but the racing of my mind, the impulse to do a hundred things at once will not be stilled. And in such a plight you never know how much time, how much life you have left. Every entry I begin, whether doomed to the fire like my fallen Angel….. Could be my last.

Just now, as I rose to open the shuttered window for a breath of air, it was again born in upon me the inescapability of our cell. For as I’d half sensed, then forgotten utterly, Augustine’s chambers are in the highest turret of the monastery tower. Why have I not noted it before? Perhaps I have. I must admit to myself—perhaps I have said this as well, and too many times, it all runs together in my mind— the possibility that I am no longer sane, and things are not as I perceive them.

No. I may be pushed to the last extremity of reason, but I know who and how and where I am. Let no future Church or Clergy use the after-effects of abuse as a way of denying the grim truths I now record. And if I anticipate somewhat, show the intention through to its inevitable result, so be it. I am no lunatic. I do not rave.

And because the monastery itself lies at the highest point within the city—a fortress within a fortress—when I threw open the window I realized two things. First, that to climb down from this eminence would be impossible, but also…..

It’s strange, but I could almost attribute to God—whose aged and erstwhile princeling torments me—a high vantage point from which to see, within and without, the effects of the Vandal siege of Hippo: this manic melodrama which is all too real. Nothing is so horrible as reality.

For as the sun continues to rise, illuminating the grim scene all around, I find that this is true. I can see beyond the city walls to the formidable force that surrounds us, driving to terror and madness this self-proclaimed, and self-devouring City of God.

But now I must leave off for a time. Cleades has woken and my racing mind, to say nothing of the body which cannot keep up with it, is exhausted. I must take nourishment, as he says, and lie down, or I will do myself yet greater harm. I choke back a sob at his kindness, my confusion, but it is true. I must rest, or surrender all hope. And that I am not yet willing to do.

Nightfall approaches, and if consciousness constitutes life, then I am still alive. I found both rest and comfort in the bed, but something else that now makes me fear it more than waking. I’m so confused, so afraid. What am I feeling toward Cleades, who lay in my arms like a girl? I cannot feel this for him. I must not! Yet I do. God help me.

The sun is gone and the darkness gathers round. Though the Vandals are, as ever, wily in their movements, I have been in this same position—surrounded by them—before: as part of the Roman army in Spain, the night before their crushing assault at the Battle of Bent River. I could be wrong, but I believe they are stirring for an attack of some kind, as they did on that occasion. We shall see, though there is no escape for me.

Cleades.

What Augustine could not win from me with all the rewards and threats of Christendom, that beautiful youth has done. Where rage and fear have failed to move me, forlorn love and affection have. I asked him, begged him, not to lie so close and comfort me. But as he and his brother must have done on many occasions to save themselves from madness, so he has done with me. No physical love passed between us, only the briefest kiss, which meant so much to him. And yet I am stirred, shaken to the heart. So confused. So alone.

And now the night awaits.

*                        *                     *

Day breaks, and now I am certain of my martial convictions. With the rising light I find that my instincts—whether of possibility or of dread—are justified. For it is only now, with the city forces lulled, expecting nothing but a long and bitter siege, that the Vandals strike.

Such cunning in violence! They have only been in Africa a short time, and yet already have learned some of its deadliest secrets. Say what you will of them, they are that most dangerous anomaly: barbarians with nerves of steel, and a mind to match.

Here then, the battle I witness from my window.

I’d been woken by the sudden clamor of the watch upon the walls. Roman horns rang wildly, as men hurried to their positions along the parapet.

What greeted their eyes would have given anyone pause. For great towers of war, which must have been constructed in pieces, then assembled at night. . .rolled forward as if by magic, drawn by what at first appeared to be great hairy serpents.

The native defenders, both free and enslaved, panicked at the site. When the officers, wielding the flats of swords and the butts of spears had finally stopped their wailing, the true nature of the caravans was shouted at them in several languages. By then I had guessed it as well.

The towers were drawn by long trains of elephants, six or seven in a line. Their backs were crowned by curving wooden frames to protect them from stones, the whole conveyance covered with a matting of woven reeds: to shield them from arrows and (not coincidentally) give them their unearthly appearance. Even Hannibal, who had crossed the Alps with scores of the beasts, had not thought of this. Brilliant! For not only are the snakes of Africa much to be feared, but Native superstition (like our own) has cast them in the role of demons. Thus the panicked flight.

That is to say the slaves had tried to run, but because of their chains only succeeded in hanging themselves from the inner edge of the parapet, to be hauled back up, more dead than alive, by their fellow slaves, free in name only, where men with whips and clubs who forced them back into position.

The true Romans—superstitious about nothing but the gods’ disdain for cowardice—gathered their archers, now armed with long bows, their arrows wrapped about the neck with oil-soaked rags. These were now lit, and sent flying directly at the animals.

Yet when enough of these fiery missiles buried themselves in the reed matting—which did not burn well, having been steeped in the river—the trainers beneath merely cut the chords joining them to the frames, and sent them slithering and smoldering to the ground.

By now they could not have been a hundred yards from the walls, coming on steadily. The flaming shafts were abandoned, and arrow-points dipped in poison used instead. Now the archers began to shoot lower, under the frames, to torment and turn aside the elephants. Yet the relatively few hits beneath the downward-curving frames did little damage, they themselves matted with cane, which protected their eyes and ears.

The thought came to me, as it must have done to others, that as the elephants reached the thick walls, not only would stone and pitch rain down upon them, but unless they could batter them down by main force, the great towers must remain, standing useless, no small distance from their target.

But again the Field Marshal, whoever he was, had anticipated. For at the braying of horns from within, the animals were turned by their trainers in unison to the right, which would bring their menacing burdens not only within reach of the walls, but to places along them from which the defenders and weapons had been moved, clustered instead before the animals’ former course, where they expected the assault to begin.

And still they came on, as the City forces were hurriedly realigned to meet them. At a distance of a hundred feet or so, the arrows and throwing spears began to torment the beasts—their unprotected legs and sides—and now they began to bellow and twist their great heads, shaking off their burdens, ignoring or hurling aside the drivers who tried to control them.

Yet again the Vandal Marshal, a true Lord of Chaos, had anticipated. The thick ropes binding the trains to their towers were cast off. And just as they lost their momentum, just as the defenders began to jeer at this apparent flaw in the plan of attack, the ominous, mobile fortresses, as if by magic, began to turn and roll forward again. Though it was clear to me in my tower that there were men inside, who now pushed on the axles, the thoughts and fears of those who manned the ramparts cannot be guessed.

And needless to say (forgive the omission, but my heart races as fast as my mind) divisions of infantry had marched behind the great engines of war. I saw now with confusion that they were native warriors, a fact only comprehensible when the seeming disorder of the fighting began.

And now as these long columns of men clustered behind the towers, largely protected from our arrows and javelins by their bulk, they began to push as well, and the great towers were slowly but determinedly propelled the remaining distance to the walls.

Then great flaps, like sloping drawbridges, opened near the top, falling down upon the parapets, and releasing scores of men. The Trojan Horse may have been more insidious, but the inexorability of these towers, and the immediacy of the danger….. Great ebony warriors ran or slid down with spears poised, as others scaled the stairs within from the seething ground to join them, and a terrible hand-to-hand fighting ensued.

For a time things looked bleak for the City Guard—and I can’t tell you how torn I was in both loyalty and emotion, as it seemed the assault would succeed. But now the Roman General (no fool himself, to judge by his response), released the whole of his force, some of them hardened veterans like Cassius, gathered below. They charged up the stairs of the parapet with pikes three meters long, as archers behind sent showers of death into the towers at their open ports.

What a melee! I knew my mind wasn’t right, but once the poor slaves on the parapet were despatched, it seemed a battle of seething demons, black against white, and fighting with unparalleled fury. There was no cowardice on either side, I assure you. But which were good and which evil, and who would prevail?

I had to step back from the window and collect myself. My heart was pounding, my head throbbing, sweat pouring and limbs trembling. Was I physically ill as well? Had I contracted one of the many afflictions, both of body and mind, that plague the veterans of dungeons? Even plague itself? The thought went through me like a spear…..

I found that someone was holding me from behind, patting my chest and trying to calm me. I fell back in dismay. Had Meryl returned? It wasn’t possible!

No, not my martyred wife, neither dream or nightmare incarnation. Cleades was leaning over me, had caught me as I swooned. He must have, for I was back in the bed, and he was daubing my face with a dampened cloth.

“What is happening?” I asked him.

“You’re not well, Gaius.” There were tears in his eyes, his mind and heart returned yet again to intimate pain and worry….. Only to find that the last person he cared for—nay, loved; he had said it—was suffering physical and emotional collapse. As with a sob I realized it too.

“What is happening in the battle?” I asked, almost not caring, but needing to know for both our sakes. He made sure I was calm, or as calm as I was likely to be, then went to the window, where he studied for what seemed a long time before answering.

“The Roman forces, the city defenders, have driven them back.”

“But we’ve got to escape!” And I began to rise.

“No, Gaius, please.” He came quickly to the bed and lay me back again. “You need to let go for now, and rest.”

“All right,” I said, though all was wrong, and my world upside-down.

“Can you write about it, or tell me so I can write? It would calm me, Cleades. I have to do this.” Surrounded by madness, we must choose the course least mad. Or something.

He seemed to understand this, for he brought me watered wine to drink, begged me to lie still in the bed, which I tried to do, even as the great crescendo of battle slowly diminished. Then glancing back at me—and to see love and care in the eyes of one you cannot love in return, in a situation as desperate as ours, was a pain almost beyond bearing…..

He moved to the slanted desk, took up a quill and began to write.

I stood behind you at the window, watching the crash of waves of hate against the walls. Yet there is even greater hate within, like the diseased heart of a body struggling to live. For I tell you, my beloved, I have often seen lust in the eyes of hard men, but never mixed with this otherworldly darkness. I have no wish to upset you further, but I fear for both our lives so long as we remain in the power of such desperate and tormented beings.

Then when you asked, I went back to the window again. I could not make out all that happened, but I did witness something strange. It has all been strange, and like you my heart has been broken, my senses jarred. But slowly, and with trembling hands, I put the pieces into place.

It seems the Vandals really did have spies within the city, though it could not have been the men and women who were scourged and imprisoned alongside me, still less the beautiful and troubled Meryl, whom we all loved, though I was not blind to her intrigues. Forgive me, Gaius, I do not say this to hurt you, and perhaps because of my own love I cannot be entirely objective. But she was not the woman to make you happy, at least not after the terrible shock of her husband’s death, which as you say, broke something fine in her.

But as to the battle and its strangeness, this is what confused me.

As the Vandals’ mercenaries—their native troops, I mean—began to retreat, some of those in the uniform of City defenders, but also wearing black arm-bands (this must have been the signal for the others not to attack them), scrambled up into the towers and then down onto the plain, and retreated along with the rest. I will describe it to you, and you can say it better, when you are well.

Pray the gods you will be well!

It is Gaius again, though barely, and hardly deserving of love. Cleades was as good as his word. He described the final stages of the battle to me as night came again. We’d had no sight or sound of Augustine all the long day. Doubtless he is conferring with the (nominal) leader of the city—Governor, Consul General, or whatever he is—brave in war perhaps, yet such a coward when it comes to dealing with Augustine, the city’s spiritual (and actual) head.

But enough of that. Something of my original desire to tell the tale honestly, however bleak and horrible, has returned. Here is what Cleades told me of the retreat, along with what I saw for myself, when I felt I could no longer lie helpless in the bed.

As the attackers abandoned their assault and retreated, some the men of the City went with them: the black-banded spies of Gaiseric, and/or his treacherous Marshal. But even if the defenders had any thought of pursuing them out onto the battle plain—clearly they did not—the mixed invaders ran not toward vacancy, but to the full force of the enemy: the Vandals themselves, mounted and on foot, ready to defend their own, and attack us directly if we were fool enough to open the gates for a counter-charge. We (why do I continue to associate myself with an army which I was forced to join, and which now fights for those who hold us captive?) were not.

The day’s hostilities were ended, though the questions raised by the enemy’s tactics have surely given Consul and Archbishop much to reflect upon. I make no doubt the paranoia of Augustine and his ilk will be increased ten-fold, their backlash against the innocent even more severe.

Cleades and I lay on the bed for hours, speaking low, trying to anticipate, make some kind of plan, but it is hopeless. There is no escaping this inverted Hades, this prison of the damned, and no way, short of suicide, to elude the twisted lusts of our captors. I asked him to make a death pact with me—that if either one of us were violently laid hands upon, to be dragged off, raped or tortured—the other would kill him first. A jagged stone worked out from the crumbling wall would suffice. But my poor friend insists he could never do it. Nor, in reality, could I. The only thing that keeps him alive, he insists, are his feelings for me, which he will not abandon so long as there is the slightest hope.

How painful it is to feel his love, which I can never return in kind. And how cruel the Fates, to place the soul of a woman in the ravaged body of a young man! Or the Christian God. For I no longer believe in anything, except that the two of us have been utterly abandoned.

And so I dwell on the battle, trying to form some idea of what is happening beyond the ramparts, our only chance of escape. I rise and pace and eat my heart out thinking. But he sleeps again as I cannot, and I must do something. So here I sit, scratching away like my loathsome captor. Here, for whatever they are worth, my observations.

The Vandals will surely win in time. Though Gaiseric might lack a heart, or any knowledge that such an organ exists, there is nothing wrong with his brain, which churns ever onward toward total domination. And his Marshal clearly shares his genius for psychological warfare.

Elephants, for God’s sake: evoking every Roman’ fears (and racial memory) of a time when the spear of Carthage struck deep into the heart of Italy, threatening desolation. Or was it unconscious: otherwordly Evil mingling with brutal men’s designs, a dissonant harmony of Horror?

Could Augustine be right? Was this, as his broadsheets proclaimed, a mighty battle between Good and Evil? Is this truly, ‘The City of God Against the Pagans?’

No, no, no! Good men, to say nothing of Angels, do not slaughter the innocent, among them my sweet and tragic Meryl! I will not succumb to the awful propaganda of my tormentors, or abuse my own mind for them!

Then Cleades, who had stirred, convinced me to lie down, for I was becoming distracted again. I must surrender myself to his care. I know I must, for all the raging passions that tear at me.

I will try: must not surrender hope until all is truly lost.

II

Several days after the birth of their son, Cassius and Ariel announced that two ceremonies would be held in his honor. The first was their own wedding, to be performed by Jacob in traditional Judaic fashion.

This is not surprising to those who know them well. They must often have spoken of it, and I believe that Ariel has also discussed it with Jacob, not only her rabbi, but (to use her own expression) a second, better father. Cassius even asked my opinion on it, as the days of her confinement drew near. I’m still trying to get used to his awkward friendship, but am glad of it all the same.

There was never any question of the love between them—I can say that now—or that they meant to spend the rest of their lives as man and wife. But thrown together as they were, as we all were, fleeing for our lives from Vandal-occupied Spain, then fighting the sea, the storm, fear and distance aboard Aphrodite, there was no real chance to solemnize their vows. It seems they’d thought of doing so during the long sail to Ireland. But Cassius, though he vehemently denies all superstition, felt nonetheless that it tempted Fate too strongly: that we must be safely landed, and allowed to settle first.

Yet when we were accepted here there was another reservation. I don’t know how else to say it: it was Cassius’ ultimatum to God: both mother and child would emerge safe and well from child-bed, or he would have naught. And thank God, the gods, or simply the God within us, both mother and child are fine. I love my Brigid more than I can say, but literally cannot, and do not want to imagine a world without our Ariel, shining like a star in the firmament.

On that note, and to expand on something she said the night before my own, miraculous wedding….. She has since read the entire journal, and insists once again that I have idealized her—seen and shown only the good in her—and that she is in fact all too human. Perhaps she is right, and I do not mean to put her forward as some kind of literal angel, or simply the ideal woman. No such perfect being exists. Yet if I saw, and still do see her through the eyes of love, she is, without question, an exceptional young woman, as beautiful within as without: gentle, as only a woman can be, yet stronger than any I had known before my Brigid, herself remarkable in strength. So take heed, my fellow men, before you count woman the weaker, or unwiser sex. You just couldn’t be more wrong.

The announcement of the second ceremony was more surprising. For little Gaius, as we have come to call him— need I tell you how touched I am that he was named for me….. Gaius Cassius Drusus will also receive his Bris, the traditional circumcision which marks him, both physically and spiritually, as a Jew. Jacob is proud and happy, of course, and Ariel loves both her husband and her children so much that I daresay Cassius could deny her nothing now. Indeed, since the crisis of childbed, when he felt the dagger of her death probing at his heart, he is more attached to them than ever, even displaying that affection in front of us, as he would never have done before.

He has never been deliberately harsh or unkind to her—since the early days of their meeting, when his heart was broken and the beast within took over— yet now he is like a boy with a bird’s egg that he yet hopes to hatch, a fragile treasure he would not harm for the world. He’s always been terrified of hurting them (this through one of the rare insights he’s given me), almost more afraid of himself than any external force. Yet now he makes himself almost ludicrous, opening doors, clearing paths, and keeping the rest of us quiet whenever mother and child are asleep. Mother and child. Call it blasphemy if you will: more than one Madonna has walked upon the Earth. Can we not rightly assign that name to every loving mother, who brings forth from nothing, through the burden of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth, a beautiful new life, nurses it at her breast, and gives it all the love and care that helpless and innocent creature so desperately needs? I think we can. I know I must.

Forgive me if I leave the tale long enough to contemplate such things. For those with families of your own, you know of what I speak. Until you are part of one, everything else seems more important: wealth and possession, lust and power if such is your desire, the search for beauty, truth and love if it is not, but always something ‘out there’, just beyond reach.

But when you find your own, you realize the reverse is true. It’s right here, in the immediate circle of those you love, where all that matters is to be found, and nowhere else.

And so with your permission, a few more brief observations, then forward.

First, I’ve heard it said that many families begin well, but often turn dysfunctional, even abusive. To me there is no greater tragedy, and so I must say it. Choose your mate carefully, and don’t let yourselves wander from the path of love and care. Cassius did that once. He knows it, and has sworn never, never, never again. And in his most open (and startling) confession to date, he told me this.

“There is nothing more important than your family. Nothing. And if you forget that, betray that trust….. Hurting those who love you is the road to Hell on earth. Whether it be physically or psychologically, by your presence or absence, your actions or your failure to act….. It is the greatest evil, hurting or exposing the helpless, and you’ll hate yourself for it the rest of your life. As I did. As I would still, if my love and protection were not needed.”

I’ll say it again. People can change, if it comes from the heart, though never completely, and not overnight. But it is good to know now from my own experience that our fates are not woven for us. Our lives our what we make of them. We have a choice: how we think, feel and act: how we respond to tragedy, and deal with our own shortcomings. Thank whatever powers may (or may not) be, we do have a choice. And I do thank them, should any such Providence exist, that Cassius and I have made the same choice: our families first, last and always.

Another surprise is that Nechtainn, who was here to see the infant and visit with the rest of us—Brigid not least, of course—asked if he could be allowed to witness both marriage and bris. Jacob agreed willingly. For in this way, too, they are alike. While single-heartedly devoted each to their own Faith, they remain interested in (and tolerant of) all others. That is to say, all others that do not become destructive. As alas, far too many—or simply the people who practice them—do.

Alexander came with him, though he could only stay one night. Apparently our neighbors to the north have shown signs of hostility, Aphrodite must keep a closer watch on them. This news, as you might expect, has been like the gathering of storm clouds after a morning of bright sunshine and great expectations. It seems that Erin, like the rest of the world, is not free from war and strife.

Cassius and Malachi joined us that night in our home, as Nechtainn, through Alexander, spoke to us about the growing danger of invasion—as he has already done with Magnus, Aengus, and the other tribal chieftains.

“We know nothing for certain,” he said, as we settled ourselves in a semi-circle about the hearth fire, as aging Druid and young Captain stood to either side of it. Aging, but not bent beneath the weight of this new strife. And perhaps that is the essential difference between himself and our Jacob. While Jacob is a man of peace—as the High Druid is when he can be—it becomes ever clearer that Nechtainn has known much strife, even fought in the wars of his people, during the course of a long and determined life. The fact that he is kind and compassionate, does not make him weak or passive. Far from it.

And so he began:

“Aedh and Domnall, sons Niall of the Nine Hostages, who now rule between them the lands north of our own, do not share our benevolent Faith, our desire for peace. Their High Druids, past and present, subscribe to another tradition altogether, what I can only describe as atavism, a throwback to far earlier and darker Druidical practices.”

As he continued to speak, I realized with a sinking heart that Erin truly was not, as I had hoped, a kind of Hellenistic utopia where peace, justice and tolerance reigned, but a land like any other: torn by tribal conflict, the bitter struggle for territory and domination, along with the inescapable darkness that keeps our world from being what it could, what it should be: Man’s inhumanity to Man. Because of its location (and frankly, the fierce xenophobia of the Celts), Ireland had been spared from the Roman occupation of Britain, as it has been from the chaos that swept across Europe like a devouring flood upon Rome’s collapse. But that did not free it from the chains of darkest human nature. Niall of the Nine Hostages, like any other tyrant, had established a single Ireland, answerable always to himself. But he had died some years back, assassinated by others who were equally ambitious. Erainn, here and now, was as peaceful and tolerant as it was by the long labors of Magnus, Nechtainn and other good men who had fought like the Devil to be free of the Devil’s reign, by whatever name you call it. As ever, Nechtainn seemed to read the thought in my face.

“Perhaps, my young friend, you thought that all of Erin was like our present-day Erainn: all its rulers as unprepossessing as Magnus, its Druids as benevolent as I. Alas, it is not so, nor did our land and our Communion with the Earth become so without long years of struggle. While neither Magnus nor myself are so arrogant as to think of our time and place as some kind of Golden Age, yet it is the best we have known for long lives of men. Nor is any kingdom safe unless its military, fortresses and people are strong. Cassius, or Alexander, could tell you that. Without their great armies there could have been no Golden Age of Greece, no Roman Empire, both good and bad.”

Both men nodded, looking grim.

“I’d like to meet with Magnus myself, and right away,” said Cassius. “We need to accelerate work on the island’s defenses, and make damn sure it’s protected.”

“And he would like to speak with you, though because of his own preparations he cannot leave the mainland.”

“Then I will come to him, but it must not be far inland. You know what I leave behind.”

“Yes,” said the older man, with a glance down at Ariel as she nursed their infant son. “And I know what this news means to you, to all of you. That is why, along with the wish to see my daughter, I have come here.” He smiled at Brigid as he said this, a moment of light and warmth in the otherwise somber gathering. At this, knowing how important his place, how strong his influence with the ruling brothers, we all expressed our gratitude.

Even Cassius, so brusque with all others in matters of war and defense, seems to find Nechtainn a competent leader of men. Not to belabor the point, while Jacob’s eyes are soft, full of love and giving, if you look close into those of the Druid, you also see the warrior within. I had seen it on the night he chose me for the ceremony—a searching and searing gaze it took all my strength to face—and it was confirmed beyond doubt by the story he went on to tell. This that we might understand the roots of the coming conflict.

“When I was in my middle years,” he said gravely, “I was sent north by Clannach, the head of our Order, in pretext to study sacred relics with the Druids of Cruachain, the nearest of the Northern provinces, though in truth to observe the Druids themselves, and report back to my Master, and thus to Magnus, our new Lord. For Niall would not yet call him king, and in fact awaited the birth of an heir, that he might hold it hostage as he did the children of all the rulers of Erin. Thus, the forced obedience. Thus the name. Magnus himself had been such a hostage.” Was I wrong, or did he close some shutter in his eyes, unwilling to say more? But he began again:

“My Master and I had heard rumors of dark practices, and with Niall’s own sons soon to come of age, we must know the spiritual foundation, at least, of any kingdom one or more of them might establish in the future. For Niall’s practices were not like our own, and growing up among them, Magnus had seen first-hand how ruthless his sons could be.”

“You and your new ruler were in great danger,” said Cassius plainly.

“Yes,” said the Druid. “Niall could crush us like a bug if he chose to, and the Druids of Cruachainn were trying to convince him, and/or his sons, to do just that. We didn’t know which way Niall and his sons might turn, and we couldn’t take the chance.”

“And so you were sent north to spy on their Druids,” said Cassius, and see which way the wind blew.” Nechtainn nodded.

“Understand,” he continued, “we Druids do not name ourselves White or Black, as outsiders do, though there are times, as now, when the difference between us is as hard and sharp as the naked sword. Among ourselves we are only Druids, and much passes between us unhindered by boundaries or monarchs. Indeed, a priest or novice used to be able to walk from one end of Erin to the other without weapon, never fearing for his life. Though since the slaying of Niall, and the sworn vengeance of his sons, I would not now venture into Cruachainn for all the ancient treasures of our race.”

Nechtainn went on with his tale, as cogent and powerful as any prior warning of Cassius. In some ways more so, because he did not try to pound the lesson home, as Cassius calls it, but only to let the solemn, even gruesome facts speak for themselves. I record it now in the first person, as literal as possible, for several reasons. First, I don’t want the raw power of it to be in any way diluted. The truth must be told, even when we don’t want to hear it. And I must again confess my own delusion, who had begun to think Erin a (literally) blessed realm, a place where war and greed, to say nothing of pure Evil, had been banished forever.

So let me speak as he did—directly—so you will feel the full intensity of his words, and understand the danger we now face.

*                         *                        *

It was in my thirtieth year that I set out upon the most memorable journey of my life: up the coast, toward the heart of the growing darkness. I traveled alone. Not because I felt safe, but because it was the only way I could visit our northern brethren without arousing suspicion. It is as perilous a thing as I have ever done, and had I known what I would find there it might well have kept me from going. I am glad that I did not. For to know what is good one must experience true Evil. To be of use a torch must be taken into a dark place, and stars shine brightest on the blackest night.

I entered Cruachain without challenge, but knew that I was watched, and that word of my coming went before me. For a Druid to wander in search of dreams and signs was in no way unusual. But since Alichainn’s ascendancy, his return to the older, darker ways, the schism between his priests and ours was well known. And either man, High King or High Druid, might choose to make an example of me: to kill me, or at the least, force me to swear allegiance to him alone.

It was not until I was well into Contae Claraech that any tried to bar my way. No warrior would, for the gods walk with us, and to shed a Druid’s blood is to arouse their wroth. But another priest might, and on the twelfth day of my journey, a cold and mist-shrouded morning, as I moved inland from the low and rocky shores toward the Tomb of Gleninshaen, three of them did.

The great, table-like tomb lies amidst a flatted landscape of tussocky earth pocked with stones, and bordered by wind-riven bramble. It consists of a large flat stone which lies across several others, projecting up out of the earth like a cracked and hollowed tooth. The chamber created within is large enough for a man to enter, though this was not my intention. The man or god whose crypt it was remains shrouded in mystery. I did not know what spirit lay within, only that the place itself was ancient and hallowed. I could feel its power rising up out of the bones of the earth. Thus I hoped to use it as a portal to listen to the distant whisper of the gods, perhaps even to commune with the great Earth Mother herself: Danu, the womb, the giver of life.

But as I drew nearer, Alichainn’s minions, Glornach and Ailthwain, stepped out of its shadows and blocked my path. This, to me, was sacrilege. One did not desecrate the graves of the Old Ones by entering into them.

But there they were. They questioned my presence, mocked my intentions and barred my way. Then Glornach challenged me to a duel of sorcery—here, where he supposed his power would be greatest. I declined. For the true Faith does not countenance such battles of wizardry except in times of literal or spiritual war. Nor does it need, or even tolerate, foolish displays of magic. I had no doubt their tricks—for they could be nothing else—were well prepared, and I had no intention of lowering myself to their level.

“Our rulers are not at war,” I said simply.

“Not yet,” Glornach sneered. And I knew that having heard these words only increased my peril. For I could not be allowed to return and repeat them.

“I will not contest you,” I said again, “here in the sacred presence—”

But my words were cut off as a great mastiff bounded out of the tomb and lunged at my throat. Not allowing myself to freeze in terror, I had just time enough to raise my left forearm, knowing that if it were not a beast of the Underworld, but only an animal of this, it would seize whatever was thrust out toward it. Still its bulk and impetus knocked me backward, down onto the stone-pitted earth where I struggled for my life. The pain of it was terrible, for the brute’s teeth had gouged my arm nearly to the bone, and now its strong neck and jaws were shaking me back and forth so I thought it must be torn from its socket.

But somehow I kept my head. This was no demon, albeit its fur had been drenched with blood. My armor against fear was not broken, nor had I come unprepared for such a stroke. Though my staff had fallen from my grasp, there to be seized by the gloating Glornach, still I had the leather bag I kept inside my robes. I pulled the slip-cord and reached inside, quickly and carefully. And the gods must have aided me, for the lethal thing I drew out from it did not bite, and I’d managed to grip it just below the head: a venomous serpent of Breton.

It needed no prompting as I held it out toward the hound. Indeed, it slithered free of my fingers and, using my palm as a base, immediately struck at the exposed neck. The dog cried out in pain and alarm, though it did not yet release me. Instinct and training both compelled it to hold hard, as the minions urged it on.

But those deadly fangs must have found an artery, for the poison worked swiftly, and the beast let me go with a yelp. Its legs trembled, then it collapsed to the ground and shuddered in convulsions that were terrible to see.

The serpent, now on the ground, slithered toward Glornach, who dropped my staff and cried out in fear. For in Erin there are no snakes, and the mere sight of such an unearthly creature is enough to panic one unprepared. He leapt away, as did his companion, while the serpent, as if by command, slithered into the dark opening of the tomb and disappeared. Thus had the true incarnation defeated the false, then returned to the bowels of the earth from whence it came.

Of course I realized in later days that the snake, for whom shelter and concealment meant life, had only done what was natural, as I knew the great hound for what it was, a trained animal. And yet something Unnamable had aided me in my distress…..

My beliefs, as I have tried to show, are not those of magic or miracle, certainly not of show, but of the underlying currents of life that flow through all of us: Earth, Sun, Sea and Sky. It was my harmony with Nature, including my own, that had delivered me, and shamed the false usurpers. For their ‘faith’, once they had recovered it, was in human will alone.

“Seize him!” cried Glornach. And as I recovered my staff and made to rise, my forearm bleeding and probably broken, together they did. But not before I had slipped my right hand into the loop of the lanyard about its head and made several twists—that it could not again be taken from me—and they were forced to bind my wrists before me with it still in my grasp. Yet the pain of my wounded arm was excruciating, and they only used the staff to drag me away, to what end I dared not think.

I was in fact taken to the cave where Alichainn had his fortress, not of walls and towers, but of sorcery—which to the superstitious (a failing all to common among our people), was every bit as formidable. Burned corpses stood tied to the line of stone posts that led up to it, and a ghost-fence of human skulls on spear-points guarded the entrance. It held for me none of the awe of Gleninshaen, though its horror was all too real: not all of the skulls had been taken from funeral pyres, a sacrilege in itself, but still had rancid flesh upon them, the victims of some ghastly rite.

Alichainn sat far within on a dark throne atop a pile of bones, a great black staff held upside-down in his hand, its creeper-strangled spiral pointing downward like a stairway to Hell. He may have been surprised to see me alive—clearly his orders had been to kill me—but his eyes in the wavering torchlight showed nothing. For the cave was deep and dark, and stank of death.

He was not tall and gaunt, as many Druids, but short, and hunched forward like a toad. He must at one time have been powerfully built, though now, at fifty, his shoulders were rounded and no longer strong. He did not wear the ceremonial robe, but a great bear-skin with the head intact, the yellow fangs of the upper jaw clutching at his forehead. His face was ugly—pocked, and partly burned from some childhood accident—which may have accounted for his wish to inflict fire on others, though he no doubt feared it himself.

“You live,” he said dryly.

“By the grace of the gods,” I answered mildly.

At this he gestured Glornach forward, who leaned to whisper in his ear. One eyebrow raised on the dark forehead as the minion told him of my deliverance—and, no doubt, the portent of the serpent slithering straight into the tomb. It must have made an impression. For mingled with the High Druid’s rage I could read the conflict between the urge to violence, gnawing fear, and a grudging respect. I do not say this to flatter myself. But such marks of power—in my case, the vengeance of Hu Gadarn, Horned God of the Underworld—are taken seriously. And no one is more afraid of the Demon-god’s wrath than those who deign to serve Him.

“Have the slave girl bind his wound,” he ordered curtly, “then prepare him for the ritual. We will see how much power he possesses.” He spat the word, and the sneer that followed made it clear that I would be part of the ritual as well.

The sun sank red into the Sea as we stood atop a high hill overlooking the rocky, half-moon shore. A clearing atop it had been carved out of the pine forest behind. In the midst of the clearing stood a natural, and yet unnatural formation, a low, bulging rock, which had been turned into an altar. Perhaps a hundred worshippers had gathered to darken the eaves of the encircling wood. For they were robed in ragged black, tied about the waist with fraying ropes. As the twilight faded and night came on, their eyes glinted dully in the torchlight like wolves just beyond the orange light of a campfire. What bizarre belief or morbid fascination had brought them I could not imagine. For here the metaphor was reversed. These frightened sheep, huddled about a campfire of wolves.

Three dead and fire-blackened trunks formed the triangular margins of the altar, three victims bound in chains against them. For ropes might burn through, and the fleeing bodies set the woods ablaze. On the curving, oblong stone, no sacrificial offering had yet been laid, though the dark, grimly rayed stain at its crown could only have been made by blood.

It was a chill night, the sea mist beginning to rise, though I knew it would be banished here once the terrible fires were lit. No comfort there—or anywhere else—once Man has forsaken all humanity.

A further affront to the gods awaited. I was bound to a living mountain ash, most sacred of trees, from which the forward branches had been hacked—true sacrilege—to allow it. I shivered from the cold, the pain of my wound, and a fear that is far worse than any threat to the self. For innocents would die here, in the name of what lay deepest inside me, and I was powerless to stop it.

Alichainn stood beside the altar with a dagger in one hand and a chalice of wine in the other. The symbolism was clear. Christianity, like the other faiths brought by the Romans to Britannia, would make no inroads here—not so long as he, the High Druid, lived. Glornach and Ailthwain had given me over to three novices, and it was they who bound me. The dark minions themselves were not yet to be seen.

I heard rather than saw them approaching. For as they dragged someone or something toward us through the wood— the voice, though probably human, was so distorted by pain and fear as to make it unrecognizable—I heard first a scream as it saw what awaited, then a further cry of pain as Glornach cuffed and then cursed what could only have been a young woman. For she sobbed and begged for mercy. And then I saw her: a pretty, long-haired peasant girl, no more than thirteen, bound in a dirty white shawl already torn through and stained with blood across her back. She had been scourged as well. Until then my mind had been clouded, my heart dulled and my spirit daunted. But no more. I swore to holy Danu that if granted life I would avenge her suffering and all that it signified: cowardly violence, and hatred of the women who give us life.

They dragged her out into the torchlight, a mere child, and the fear in her eyes was terrible to see. The dirty shawl was the mockery of a wedding gown—a virgin at her marriage rite—though she would wed nothing but pain and death. And in that moment, though my mind was already decided, I offered my soul for her deliverance.

“Alichainn!” I cried, trying to sound defiant. But his eyes had never left me, and he knew what I was feeling. “Take me instead, and all my power goes to you!”

He stepped to the base of the altar, where his minions held the girl with her arms pinioned behind her.

“I will have your power anyway,” he answered coldly, “because you gave it for this girl. This pitiful girl.”

And seizing the top of the dress, he inserted the blade between her breasts and cut back, tearing it open. Then with grasping, claw-like hands he tore away the rest of the gown, down to its shattered hem, wounding her fair skin further as she cried.

He returned to his place beside the altar, and raised the chalice in his left hand, now holding the blade dagger-like in his right. “Death to the Christians!” he cried. For their missionaries had indeed been among us. “And death to their merciful God!”

His minions and novices began a chant, which was then taken up by the worshippers in their eerie half-circle of death.

“Life is death and death is life

bone for child and sword for wife

Kill the living, raise the dead

Virgin to a Demon’s bed

Hate is love and love is hate

Let the dark Gods penetrate

War for peace and endless strife

Into the womb the killer’s knife

Spill the blood and light the fire

Screams upon the funeral pyre

Slash the heart and drink it deep

Souls that nevermore shall sleep

 And as the volume and intensity increased, Glornach and Ailthwain pulled the terrified and screaming girl back across the altar and tied the rope ends waiting there about her wrists and ankles, then synched them tight, so she lay naked and utterly helpless upon it.

“Danu!” I cried, an entreaty for her life, an unending curse against her foul attackers. But Glornach, now free of his charge, rushed at me with my own staff—it had been cut from my wrist and held by a novice—and struck me hard across the face, knocking me senseless, though still on my feet. When I recovered there was a blotch of color before my eyes so that I could not see anything directly. Perhaps it was the gods’ blessing, sparing me from the awful sight. But I did not want protection. I wanted her life!

The chant had become wild and savage. For now Alichainn was upon her, the hideous toad, raping her savagely as those chained to the blackened trunks were set ablaze. No slow-killing fires these, licking malevolently as the innocents screamed, but fed with oil, and therefore blazing into instant, demoniacal life. The black-clad watchers crowded closer, mad with death-lust. Forcing my gaze to one side that I might see the girl full on, a last desperate hope of saving her….. I saw Alichainn raise his dagger for the death-blow.

I somehow wrenched one arm free, raised it to the heavens, and cried out with all my strength:

“Dagda!”

And somehow that word, calling forth the Warrior, the Hammer-Bearer of the gods, broke through the noise and confusion, reaching up into the threatening sky. A bolt of lightning speared down from the clouds, urged on by the steel of the blasphemer’s dagger. There was a blinding flash, followed almost at once by a tremendous crack of thunder, as if the heavens had been rent asunder.

All in that clearing of death crouched suddenly, stunned. And as they rose, as I opened my eyes, I saw the blackened body of Alichainn roll off her, down the stone to smolder on the ground below, a charred and withered lump.

“Release me!” I cried. And though Glornach raged a countermand, the novices had seen enough. With trembling hands they cut away my bonds. I was still surrounded by the benumbed worshippers of horror, but now I had their measure. “My staff!” I commanded in fury, and it was handed to me. And as the lowly Glornach rushed at me with a blade he drew from his robe, I clubbed him down without mercy.

“Be gone!” I cried, to those still crouched like beaten dogs about the altar. And as they ran, groaning and shrieking, I moved to see what could be done for the girl. As the fires, temporarily stunned by the blast, now sullenly finished their work, consuming the three victims’ flesh down to blackened meat and bone.

Alichainn’s body had absorbed most of that terrible bolt, but it had passed into the body of the innocent as well. Her abdomen was horribly scorched, and the only mercy I could find. . .was that as she slowly died she did not seem to feel it.

I lifted her in my arms, my own pain and dread forgotten—the ropes had burned clean through—and with tears in my eyes walked with her to a rise in the ground, a patch of soft and unpolluted moss. There I sat with her shuddering in my arms. And all I could, powerless to heal, or restore that sweet young life….. Was to stroke her forehead, yet unscathed, and as the twitching became more fitful, grew less, and finally ceased altogether….. Was to close those beautiful young eyes, that would never look out on the beauties of this world again.

The anguish of that hour has never left me, and my tears fell like rain.

Yet I said the Prayer of Passing as I kissed her eyes, and I must believe that her spirit passed over the Bridge Between the Worlds. “Wait for me there,” I said, broken, “for I will come to you with all my love.” But I knew that this was meaningless. She was dead, and gone forever.

Then with the help of the novices—Ailthwain had fled, and Glornach remained unconscious—we built a funeral pyre and returned her essence to the Sky and the Earth, with another prayer to the Sacred Mother of all.

I have never forgotten the Horror of that night, nor the hard lesson it taught.

“What lesson could there be?” I asked, dismayed. I seemed to return to myself from far away. We sat before the fire that had all but died, and my naïveté along with it.

He turned towards me as if he himself had been yet farther: beyond the Bridge, searching for her in the land of Lost Spirits. He answered slowly.

“Faith heals. Religion kills.”

I

Cleades has just told me something more disturbing than I can well relate. And I don’t mean about his love for me, which is so patient and kind, so non-threatening….. Enough to say that I am no longer unnerved or unmanned by it, though obviously I can’t return it as he wishes. While I’ll never again judge homosexuals harshly, I simply am not one myself.

No, what disturbs, upsets and infuriates me, is this. It seems that on the nights he and I lay together—platonically enough, I assure you—a peep-hole opened in the wall between the chambers. Cleades was unsure of it until last night, when whoever it was (really, there is no doubt in my mind), was given away by the momentary light that outlined the hole when it was opened, but not yet covered by his eye.

He has been watching us! Augustine the Great, Augustine, the high and mighty. Augustine, the pig. So much for the forlorn love of his departed son. Or perhaps he is so perverse….. No. I wish to look no further into that twisted and unnatural mind. Yet I can well imagine that his real intention was to try to rouse himself while watching our tender confusion—the wistful love of the beautiful soul that is Cleades—trying to stroke his shriveled sex into a state of grotesque erection. No, I am not exaggerating—now that I have seen his madness, and felt his loathsome touch.

It is for this he spares us. The beast. The vial beast!

Now, as if reading the thought (as he will surely read the page) he breaks in on us, his face distorted with rage.

“Spies! Agents of the Devil—”

Supplemental

I have not the heart to tell you this, and yet I must. Oh, my beautiful and long-suffering friend! Only now do I understand your pain. Only now, too late, do I love you in return.

Augustine burst into the room, the enormous slave behind him. He all but shrieked his crazed orders, as two others followed the first. Cleades was seized, and I was knocked down as I tried to defend him. Why hadn’t I realized the danger was to him?

We were taken, dragged to a chamber I had not yet seen, one level beneath our own. But there were no walls here to divide good from evil, no barrier at all to keep malevolent lust and paranoid delusion from venting themselves on the innocent.

A bucket of water was thrown over me to bring me unwillingly back to my senses, and I found myself in bondage once more: no longer on chains which allowed me partial movement, but hard in iron bands against the wall. Blood flowed from my wrists at the jagged, rusted edges, but I had no thought for myself.

“Strip him!” shouted Augustine. At first I thought he meant me, and I wish now that he had. Whatever sliver of sanity he might have retained until then was gone. The Vandals’ attack, the sight of their actual, rather than imagined spies returning to them….. There was nothing left of the shrewd if conniving Bishop, still less of the questing youth he might once have been, only the searing suspicion and hatred of the religiously insane.

I saw two of the three powerful slaves, their savage eyes leering, do what he commanded not only willingly, but with eager anticipation. The third hung back, looking rueful. What atavistic lust for blood and suffering so moved the others I cannot say. But I saw that both of them, beneath their loin-cloths, were as hard and merciless as any vicious rapist who ever lived. They did not bother with knife or blade, but tore the garments from Cleades with the strength of their hands alone. He looked to me once, eyes wide with terror, and somehow managed,

“I love you!”

I do not know what I said in return for by then I was raving, weeping and pleading for mercy, trying to reach any shred of conscience that remained in them. It was useless, though apparently something I said stung through Augustine’s blind rage, for he turned his blood-shot eyes on me.

“He was seen,” he cried, “at the window!” But before I could confess that it was I who sent him there, something else caught his eye and he turned…..

“ABOMINATION!” he screamed, with a violence that tore his throat and our souls. For he had seen Cleades’ bared genitals: his fear-shrunken penis no testicles below. He had known in his rational mind that the youth was a eunuch, but now was both shocked and stimulated—

“Spawn of Satan!” Then to his men, no longer seeming to know who or where he was: “Crucify him!”

To my horror I watched them drag him to an actual, life-sized cross, mounted and bolted to the floor. From the bloodstains on the cross-piece I could see that it was not ornamental. Madness! They began to pinion Cleades, just as the gentle Jesus had been….. But Augustine seemed to come out of his delirium (or pass into another level) for he shrieked.

“Not as Our Lord! Face forward, as the lascivious plaything he is!” They began to look about for rope to tie him, but again the enraged beast countermanded. This time his voice was calmer, colder. Cruel as a spear.

“Shall he not know the Passion of the Christ as well? Nail him.” And if Cleades’ pain and terror had been animal before, they now passed beyond the threshold of reason. And as the pitiless spikes (these were close at hand, along with a hammer) were driven into his wrists and feet, his fearful, breath-shortened cries were terrible to hear.

“Kill him,” I pleaded in despair. “Just kill him if you’re going to—”

But instead Augustine bellowed, summoning the slave boy we had seen. And when he came running, just as fearful, the Saint commanded him to kneel. Then the horrible old man lifted up his robes, and made the frightened boy lick and suck…..

“Lash him!” he said greedily, beginning to respond. Then as the burly slave took down a scourge from the wall and approached my beautiful Greek, who shuddered in fear and unimaginable pain, “On his back, but not his buttocks.” And the repulsive old man actually licked his dry lips in anticipation.

Then the scourging began, another Christ crucified for the mindless hatred of Man. I’m sure my love must have cried out, yet I could not hear him for my own screaming. I was broken, am broken, and there is nothing left.

Then at last Augustine had the erection that he craved, aroused by bondage and brutality. He clenched his fist in triumph. Then not giving it a chance to fade (or the least humanity to return), he approached the tortured Greek as his minions stepped away. And as I closed my eyes, unable to bear the awful truth, he must have spread Cleades poor cheeks, and rammed his dagger home.

The thing that had once been Augustine must have sensed my abhorrence, my denial. For his next command was,

“Bring him here!”

I was unshackled, and dragged weeping toward the final humiliation, the death of my soul. Whether I would simply be made to witness, or participate in this Devil’s debauch…..

But even as I was dragged near them, the Bishop emitted a gasping cry of pain. He staggered and fell back, clutching at his heart.

“Die, you bastard!” I said in my mind, for I had no voice left. And as the others watched in dismay, he fell and convulsed on the floor, his flaccid penis fucking stone.

And as he stopped squirming, the life slowly leaving him, he looked at me imploringly. I summoned the last of my bile, and spat in his face.

Thus he died, cursed by the last soul he claimed to love.

A moment later, horns were heard beyond the walls. And somehow I knew, this was no feint. The Vandals had come in earnest. The slaves ran from the room…..

Only then did I remember my tragic love. Yet no fatal flaw had brought him to this terrible end, only fathomless human cruelty: the unspeakable sadism of twisted male lust. I rose and went to him.

“Cleades!”

But there was no freeing him from those bitter spikes. I saw that one must have shattered a vein, for he was bleeding profusely. No tender death was granted us by the accursed God of fear and hate. All Cleades could do was turn his face. And at this simple act of humanity, this last hope of life and love, another vessel ruptured, and the blood poured out.

Like Jesus he had been crucified: that martyr of love and forgiveness, the final wound superfluous, unnecessary. For all that was good in him had already died. Now his words would be twisted beyond all recognition, by those who sought to use him as a symbol, a battle-cry for their domineering cruelty. Fearful and sadistic pieces of shit like Augustine.

“I’m cold,” he whimpered, my beautiful Greek, no naïve and loving messiah but only a man, broken. “Hold me,” he begged. I did, as best I could. Then,

“Kiss me.” A fading whisper. “Kiss me, Gaius. My only love.”

I did so with all my heart, as if I could somehow pour my life into him, and bring him back. But there is no resurrection for the victims. He only shuddered more violently.

And as I cried to the Heavens, “Please!” he died.

“I love you,” I sobbed, though I knew he could not heard me. “Cleades! I love you.”

But he was gone, along with the last trace of my soul.

II

Building on the island’s fortifications intensified. And that is well, for we began to hear the rumor of war almost at once. Refugees fled south down the mainland, bringing news. At the urging of Glornach, now High Druid of Cruachainn the sons of Niall have been gathering an army. Though there are others, the two who pose the most immediate threat—ambition for power personified—are Domnall, and Aedh the Red. The warriors of their realm have been mustered, and a large bounty promised to all mercenaries, along with the usual incentives of rape, murder and plunder. Such is the way their foul minds work, believe me.

Cassius and I sailed to the mainland, then up the same fjord that Liolus had used, to meet the King in his wartime Castle. Following the zigzagging road up the high rock on which it is perched, we crossed the drawbridge, its mote a sheer chasm, passed under the great arch, and on into the courtyard. The place was strewn with tents, like the grounds below, as the inhabitants huddle close to this fortress and others like it, awaiting the onslaught of war.

We were shown not into a throne-room, but a circular chamber of the great rearward tower, where a council of war was being held. A dozen men or so were gathered there, all chieftains and fighting men, including the man we had come to see. True to his reputation, Magnus shunned all talk of king and crown.

“If you must call me something,” he growled, as I groped for words in my poor Gaelic, “call me Warlord. For that is what I am to you now.”

Maps were spread on a long table in the center of the enclosure, over which the various leaders leaned to look, point and speak. Alexander was there with Aengus, to discuss preparations for the sea approaches and island defenses.

Cassius asked Alexander to translate as much of what was said as possible, and the young man nodded sternly. If I had thought him serious and determined before, that was as nothing to the face he now showed. We had heard of his impending marriage to Aengus’ daughter, and the love between them must be strong indeed—no half-measures for our passionate Greek—to judge from his present intensity. There is nothing like protecting loved ones to harden a man for war. Don’t I know it?

Now Aengus leaned forward and spread open a sheepskin, on the inside of which a map of the coast had been skillfully painted.

“We’ve headed off any number of long-boats—much smaller than those of the Vikings, thank the gods—but were unable to pursue them. They either turned back for the coast of Cruachain, or pulled straight into the wind’s eye, where no sailing ship can follow, there to turn aside once out of sight and danger.”

Cassius and I both pricked up our ears at this. Aengus continued.

“Whether they came for plunder or to scout our defenses—probably both if they’d caught us napping— at least we’ve had a look at them. Some bore the painted shields of Aedh—the red ram’s head on a black field—though others bore unknown devices, and carried the war axes of— ”

“The Saxons,” broke in his brother with a curse.

“Yes, Magnus. These may prove a faithless ally once the fighting is over, but in the meantime…..”

“A deadly foe.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve fought them on the mainland,” asserted Cassius. Alexander translated, and the hard faces turned toward us.

Some there knew of us as the Roman refugees, the Mediterranean travelers, what have you. But as ever in war there is little trust of outsiders. Indeed, as we later learned, only the word of Nechtainn and the stubborn insistence of Aengus had turned aside harsh talk of spies, of imprisonment or banishment. But Cassius met the hardest glares with one at least as sharp, and far more certain.

“The Saxons are most dangerous when given time to huddle before a battle, and chant themselves into a berserker state. For though they are not pure Norseman, they are descended from them, and like all German barbarians, retain much of their fierce martial culture. They worship the same gods of war and slaughter; and whether superstition or not, can rouse themselves into a passion near to madness. This they must not be allowed to do.”

At this there was a grudging assent. For the Celts had faced them too, in Breton.

“They have not brought great ships of war?” one chieftain insisted, turning to Aengus, “like those of the Vikings?”

“We have not seen them, and we do not think so. For their ancestors migrated to Germany overland, many years ago, and their ship-building skills are more rudimentary.”

“We hope,” added Magnus cautiously. Then my friend—it is still strange to think of him this way, but the mutual threat to our families has removed any doubt—spoke again.

“To those who do not know me, I am Cassius, son of Drusus, a soldier of Rome. I understand your mistrust, but you must believe me in this. I’ve fought from one end of Europe to the other, against every people descended from the wild warriors of the North. While the Saxons are not the dread sea lords their ancestors were, they have lost nothing of their ferocity. It is both their strength, and their weakness.”

“Go on,” said Magnus, silencing all debate. “You’ve earned my trust.” No thanks from Cassius, for that is not his way— at all, let alone in time of war. But Magnus seems to understand, and share his blunt realism. He pushed on directly.

“A Saxon attack is like the breaking of waves upon an uneven coastline. There is no rhyme or reason to it, but a terrible and savage unison of purpose. It is like the fever that makes a man delirious. Some will stab at you as they lay dying, while others do not feel their wounds until the battle is ended, or they themselves drop dead.”

“Black sorcery,” said a chieftain ruefully.

“How would you stop them?” came a level reply.

“There are hunters among you?” he asked sardonically, “who can shoot a bow?”

“Of course.”

“Then use them to break it up—at once, and without hesitation.”

“Won’t that only enrage them?” asked Aengus.

“Enrage, yes, but also disconcert them. And it prevents them…..” He struggled for the metaphor, which Alexander provided.

“From turning embers to consuming fire.”

“Exactly.” 

“And provoke them to a yet more ragged charge,” said Magnus, understanding.

“Yes. And forget about their warlocks, sorcerers, or whatever the hell they call them. We fight men, with men, or we might as well cut our own throats.” There was grumbling at this, but again Magnus silenced it.

“I fought them in Breton, as you know, the reason I agree so far. But from your experience, perhaps more direct, what weapons and tactics are they likely to employ?”

“As to weapons, almost anything is possible: the two-headed battle axe, the heavy spear and shield, even the war hammer. And if they were used with discipline, or even in unison, they would be all but irresistible. But by my experience they are not.”

“How do we defeat them?” queried another, beginning to take the point.

“With order, discipline, and tightly formed shield walls, both in attack and defense.”

“We don’t possess the Roman phalanx,” said Aengus, who like his brother had seen Imperial warfare in Roman Britannia. “Nor do we have your uniformity of shield and spear.”

“I know,” said Cassius, calming somewhat in the knowledge that the brothers were truly listening. “But you have good shields, and spears. Your men must be trained to use them in tight formation.”

“Do you think us mindless barbarians?” exclaimed the first chieftain. “We know what a shield wall is, and how to use it!”

“I think nothing of the kind. I know your men are trained and disciplined, for I have fought them in Britannia. And the Irish forces there”—this with a nod to Magnus—“were as fierce and determined as any I have ever known. What I am saying is this. We must be the uneven shoreline upon which their waves break, thus dividing them and lessening their power. And this must drilled, again and again, from this moment, until we meet them on the field.”

“I agree,” said Magnus firmly, not approval but command. For though he may not like the title, there was no doubt he spoke as King.

“But where are they likely to strike?” asked a chieftain who had not yet spoken. “For their lands lie to the north, and we who dwell in its shadows are already troubled by raids and skirmishes. 

“We must guard every fortress along our border with Cruachain,” said Magnus, tracing it on the first map.

“As we must guard our entire coastline,” added Aengus.

And so the council continued, with all contingencies considered, and hard preparations made against those that seemed most likely.

“What allies will come to your aid?” I asked suddenly, having learned the words from Brigid beforehand, but nearly forgotten to utter them. I felt abashed now that I had, an obstinate intruder. But when Cassius looked to Alexander, who translated them back for him, he nodded in assent.

“We have sent emissaries,” replied Magnus, “to Caisil and Laigin, our neighbors to the east. They have their own lands to think of, and will want to be paid in land and gold.”

“Will they come?” asked Aengus simply, “and does their aid justify the expense?”

“Some will—for they, too, fear to see Domnall and Aedh grow too powerful—though it is hard to say how many. But yes, I think we must do it. With the gathering of mercenaries and the aid of the Saxons….. Yes, surely we must. I have sent messengers to Laeghaire”—the High King of Erin—“but who knows if he will send aid? For he too is a son of Niall, though with no great love for Aedh. And would such aid arrive in time if he did? We must certainly not count on it.”

“Our one hope,” he concluded grimly, “is to make an invasion of our lands too dear for his bastard brothers. We must convince them to turn their ambitions elsewhere, to the north and east, in the hope of a less determined foe.”

After a time the meeting broke up, to be continued by those present with the lesser chieftains camped outside, and reconvened that night for final orders.

But Cassius and I could not wait, needing first, last and always to think of and defend our own. When we communicated this to Magnus—who had many other things to think about—he only waved his forearm in dismissal.

We walked again through the courtyard, across the drawbridge, and slowly down the zigzag path to the knifing inlet, where the launch awaited. We put off and rowed away, my companion silent, his face showing nothing until we were well out of sight of those on land. Finally I asked him.  

“Magnus is no fool,” he replied, “but he’d better be right about turning his enemies in another direction. If Domnall and Aedh are as shrewd as their father—‘Niall the Great’ conquered all of Ireland, and part of Breton for a time—they will strike, one place or another, with their entire force, and take the separate fiefdoms piecemeal.”

“Are they as shrewd?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things, but listen.” Even now he looked about him and leaned closer. “We must make our own preparations, in case Erainn is overrun.”

“Become refugees again?” I asked darkly. For I had no wish to take my young family down that long and bitter road: no home, and therefore no peace, anywhere.

“It is better than death,” he snarled, the desperate aggression once more in his eyes. I looked away. He sighed heavily, then relented.

“I want to stay and fight,” he said solemnly. “But not at the cost of my wife and children. I made that mistake once. Never, never again.”

“What must we do?” I asked simply, knowing how deep these feelings—this dark wisdom—ran in him.

“Watch and wait,” he said, “prepared to go either way. If Magnus’ forces can stop a land invasion, and Aengus’ ships protect the coast…..” He became silent for a time, and I did not press him, lost in my own reflections. But when we overcame the waves and currents at the head of the fjord, and made our way out into Roaring Bay, both our eyes searched the waters to the north.

“Would they attack the island?” I asked, with a catch at my heart.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “It’s strategic for defense. . .though not offense, seemingly. But we must be prepared for every possibility.”

“Yes,” I agreed. For I must defend my family. I would not live out Cassius’ tragedy, would not even think of it.

Defend my own. Defend my own. The words throb in my mind as I write them.

I

I could not bury him. I could no longer think or feel. But some forgotten voice told me there was something I still needed to do.

I slowly returned to our chamber, where he had offered me his love. Where in my fear and confusion, I would not take it. Where, had he still been alive and the world a better place, I could have lain with him….. But that was pointless. Perhaps all is pointless. But still this one more thing to do.

Mechanically, as a ghost in a nightmare, I re-rolled the scroll and slid it into its cylinder, the Star of David reminding me for a moment of Jacob. But he was dead. All were dead, and me most of all. I placed the cylinder in my pack, took it up and calmly walked out of the room. There was no one to stop me. For the Vandals were breaching the walls and the city writhed in terror. I could have seen it all from my window, but only glanced briefly to see towers, and countless ladders swarming with men. I heard the gates booming with the sound of great rams striking home.

I descended the stairs and, though panicking priests and monks eyed me doubtfully— for what was I to them, or they to me, now?— walked through the Cathedral by which I had entered this horror of man-made religion. A number of holy men— I spat at the thought— were struggling to bar the doors while others, equally intent, struggled to open them and escape while they could. In the confusion I saw a small postern door behind the sacristy, padlocked shut. But lifting a heavy candelabra, I struck down with the base— once, twice, a third time— and broke its rusted grip. Out into the hard light of day, the sights and sounds of battle.

Defenders were running hither and thither. At least one of the gates had given way, for there were Vandals on horseback among them, fighting and killing. One of them was shot in the neck by an arrow and fell as his horse, turned hard by the sudden jerk on its reins…..

I don’t remember it exactly. It was all done instinctively, and utterly without feeling. I remember smashing his skull with a stone, then dragging his body into a shadowed alleyway. I took off my clothes and put on his, then went to find another horse. Or perhaps it was the same one.

I only know that to the sounds of murder and dismemberment I rode out of the City by the gate through which I had entered it— the battering ram left where it had broken through, the portcullis torn aside as if by giant hands— and back onto the long and bitter road I felt I’d never left, and never would.

Someone shouted a challenge, perhaps more than one. But when you show no fear— nay, when you just don’t care….. If the thought occurred to me to stop, it was not acted upon. I rode out, and on.

My next conscious memory is of waking, shivering from the cold, somewhere in the desert night. Or the edge of the desert, whatever this rocky no man’s land is called. For a moment I felt relieved: I had escaped, almost alive. But then I remembered Cleades, unburied and unwept, save by one lost and wretched soul. My own. But what was I to do with that, and the trembling body to which it clung by a last, tearing stitch?

I rose and tried to rub some warmth back into those disconnected limbs, licked dew from a scrubby plant that pricked my tongue. Then nothing else for it, nothing at all….. The horse had not run away. And so I remounted and rode on. And on. Into nothing.

Near dawn I reluctantly realized two things. First, that I was not far from the cave. Was that the thing that remained undone, the last thing before dying? And second, that I was dressed as a Vandal, and rode a Vandal’s horse. Which meant. . .what? That I would frighten them? Yes. That Cassius might shoot me with his bow? That did not seem so bad…..

But. . .something….. I would not have brought danger on them for the world. The world? Something tugged at my consciousness but I could not, perhaps would not let it in.

So I dismounted, took down my pack. The horse had been a true friend, life carrying the dead, and so I took off her bridle and let her go. She stood for a moment, uncertain, which forced me to cry out and make a rush at her. She ran off I think, but that was the last of my strength. I fell down, did not know if I could rise again.

But then I remembered snow on the battlefield, and almost remembered….. Something else.

I got up, and began to stagger. There was an incline. Was it dusty scree I stumbled over, or snow-covered stone? Had I seen a flash of metal, the sun glinting off a sword? No, that was before. Where was I, and why would this torment of climbing never end?

Yet there was one thing to do. One more thing. One more. I slipped, slid down a ways. . .and lay there motionless.

Something seemed to be lifting me. Was I dead, floating up into the clouds? I did not think so, because it hurt. But it didn’t matter. All was slipping away.

The burning on my skin relented, and the air seemed cooler….. Then I heard a voice, and it did matter.

“Gaius!”

I knew that voice. Once it had called me back, an Angel. I was set down, and water must have been brought to me. For I felt cool metal against my chin, moisture trickling down my throat. I swallowed, coughed, then drank again. The dizziness lifted a little, though I still could not open my eyes. I was half seated, I realized, leaned back against something….. And heard what sounded like the small cries of an infant. For some reason this struck me like a blow: new life, my own soul…..

Then I felt a child’s body settle against me, little arms about my neck…..

“S— ” How the thought tore my soul! “Sarah?”

That was what I needed to remember. Then I was weeping dry tears, and felt her tiny hand patting my back. I forced open my crusted eyes, saw Ariel with a baby in her arms, and that she was crying too.

Cassius had only two words for me, that bound me once more to the world of care, worry and pain. Yet I would hold them to my heart, so long as there was breath inside me, and a child who needed me.

“Welcome home.”

And my breaking heart erupted in tears.

II

I don’t know why it was left to me to record the tragic Battle of Sharcaen: why such a battle should be fought, what, if anything, it accomplished, or why rulers and their armies do the things they do. But it happened, I was there, and so I must do my best.

For that is all any of us can do in the end.

War was coming, we all knew that. The island’s defenses were tenable if not yet complete. Magnus had gathered his forces and summoned what allies he could. And Aengus’ three fighting ships, along with numerous smaller vessels, kept constant watch upon the coast.

Cassius and I played our part, though never straying far from home, in the very launch from which this narrative began. Everything returns. Who would have thought that the vessel in which a broken-hearted soldier fled in tragedy from Rome, would prove the salvation of our company in Spain, and the catalyst for all that came after. I must confess that as I write and ruminate, I feel an awe that is like the inescapable presence of Death.

Fate or chance, love or lust, God or chaos? Who can say which rules us? And the endless enigma that we call Life….. Truly it does not know its own strength.

We kept the launch provisioned at all times, and never out of site and sail of home. But in these last days as the storm gathered, to break like a sudden storm upon us, I sensed that Cassius, like myself, had decided to stay and fight.

For we’d been refugees far too long. It is one thing to expose your loved ones to a calculated risk on familiar, defensible ground. Of course we must be prepared for flight. Yet without a home you still expose them to danger, and to those you can in no way anticipate. Not only was the sea no place for a young family, but the distant Mediterranean, along with mainland Europe, were lost to us in any case. Here, at least, the people ruled themselves and knew their enemies. In Europe, invasion could come from any direction, any unknown enemy, and all our lives be consumed in a single hour of pillage, rape and murder. Perhaps someday it will be otherwise. But for the immediate future, Erin was our home, and we must fight for it.

The island’s defenses were now sound; no land army could attack us; and if worse came to worst, as it so often does, we could always make our escape in the launch, one small ship upon a vast sea, until we could form some other plan.

Neither of us had any intention of joining Magnus’ land army, or the naval forces of his brother. There was some grumbling at this. But as he and I easily agreed, let them grumble! Alexander and Cleades both served on Aphrodite: the swift ship that we had in part provided. Malachi was unwell, Jacob aged, and Cassius and I with our own families to protect. And while we were willing— I would say eager, but no sane man longs for war— to defend our island to the last. . .clearly our place, our cause, was here.

The resentment among the islanders was softened somewhat when Alexander returned to us some of the armor and weapons we had brought on board Aphrodite, but had remained in the hold, unused. For breastplate and helmet are unwieldy articles at sea, as likely to drown a sailor as save him, and those who defended the island, including ourselves, could make far better use of them here.

I must admit if felt strange to don the Roman armor, sword and shield again, and drill day after day with Cassius, the most ferocious instructor I have ever seen or heard of. But no one could doubt our commitment. If some came to watch, receive instruction or ask advice, Cassius gave it to them. He and I, though dog tired ourselves, assisted in what final touches could be made to the walls and gate of the little fortress.

And so we prepared, drilling with the island’s defenders as well as ourselves, trying to be ready for the moment when the hammer-stroke fell.

But the one certainty of War is that no matter how you prepare, no matter the contingencies you try to plan against, it is always the unexpected blow that does the damage. Never more so than on this occasion.

I will not speak of the fighting on the mainland, which I did not witness. Nor was it, as things turned out, the decisive action. As I now know— oh, bitter farce— the entire invasion of the south, more threat than actual fighting, was only a feint, meant to draw ourselves and our allies away from the real target: the rich provinces of Ulster, to the north and east.

No. The long sorrows of war have no need of another tale of weapons, tactics and carnage, all of which solve nothing, and leave a gruesome wake of death and mutilation behind. I will tell you only that part of the conflict in which I myself took part, and which impacts directly on the fellowship that we have been: those few, precious souls who form such a deep and integral part of myself. I have loved you all, and ever will: Sarah, Ariel, Jacob, Cassius and Franzi, Meryl and Malachi, the heroic Alexander, and Cleades, his troubled twin. And my beloved Brigid, who has joined us so recently, but with whom I would not now be parted for all the treasures of this life and the next.

*                     *                     *

It was a gray morning, like so many here when the month of June has run its course. The fog was thick, so that none of our boats were at sea. Even Tyrion, the largest of Aengus’ fighting ships, and our beloved Aphrodite, could not sail blind. The Tyrion was anchored just off Sharcaen— oh, bitter irony— where we had first set anchor. The Aphrodite was here, in the deeper and more tenable harbor of our own Clear Island.

And that’s when they struck. The Saxons.

The first we knew of it was the braying of horns upon the watchtower of our own island, followed by the lighting of beacon fires both here and on Sharcaen. For whether by chance or design, that is where their long boats, bearing a score of men each, were attacking. As the sun rose red, the dawn breeze slowly swept away the fog to reveal the horror: several boats were attacking the sacred island, with at least six more besieging Tyrion. They had not caught Aengus napping, but they had caught him.

Cassius came running out of his hut. It was my watch, so that I was already atop the hillock, in full fighting gear already. Malachi and Jacob were not far behind him.

“What can you see?” demanded Cassius. For he knew my eyes were sharper.

“Three or four longboats attacking Sharcaen, maybe twice that number boarding Tyrion.”

“Any headed toward us?” He was in control of himself, the seasoned veteran, but I could feel the underlying tension and anxiety. For it was mine as well. I looked about our island, scanned the sea in all directions.

“No.”

At this the women and children came out. They all knew what to do. And though Meryl was scared— we all were, her fear only more tangible— this, or something like it, had been planned for.

“To the fortress!” ordered Cassius, and without a word they went: Meryl and Malachi, Jacob, Ariel and the children. All but Brigid, who helped me strap on Cassius’ armor, while he tried to decide what he and I should do.

Then Brigid stood before me. “Be careful,” she told me in a husky voice, the short speech she must have prepared beforehand. “Don’t be a…..” She struggled for the word. “Hero. We need you.”

“Yes,” I told her, meaning it. “Now you, Angel, up to the fort.” She nodded sternly, kissed me, then ran as only a native lass can, holding up her skirts and picking a sure way up the path to the fortress, where men were already lining the walls and looking anxiously toward Sharcaen.

At that moment Cleades came running up from the Aphrodite. He looked scared, but not for himself. Burgess was on Sharcaen, and he knew that his brother…..

“Alexander wants as many men as you can send, right now! He’s going to relieve Tyrion, then move inland if he can.”

While Cassius held no rank or title on the island, Magnus had made it clear that he valued his experience— his advice was to be sought— and so the young Greek had come to him. Together, fully arrayed, we now jogged toward the gate of the fortress ourselves.

Clyber, the garrison commander, heard Cleades’ message from atop the arch above the open gate. The commander took one last long look to the north, then made his decision. Cleades, though less fluent than his brother, translated it back to us.

“He will leave twenty men to guard the fort. The rest go with Alexander.” As his forces were divided within, Clyber looked to Cassius, who nodded sternly. He was in full agreement. But as for himself, he planted his sword in the earth at his feet, a message that needed no translation:

“I stand here, or die.” He was staying on the island, to protect his family.

Cleades took hold of my arm as the others were preparing to set out. “Please come,” he said. “I’m worried about my brother. His wife is there,” he added, pointing desperately to the larger island.

I looked to Cassius, torn.

“Go,” he said, breathing deep to still his own emotion. For this time he had not failed the ones who loved and needed him. “I won’t let anything happen to Brigid and Sarah. We can’t let them take Sharcaen, or they’ll be coming here next.”

I looked up to see my Brigid on the rampart. She could not have understood the words, but took their meaning. Her family and friends— Nechtainn and his wife, the vestal virgins— were on that island, guarded by only forty men whom Magnus had hastily despatched for the purpose. Worried tears were in her eyes, but she nodded.

“I love you!” I cried. Then to Cleades. “Let’s go.”

We ran down to the harbor, perhaps thirty in all, where we were quickly ferried out to Aphrodite by the watermen who remained there. Alexander put out to sea in the freshening northwest wind, and spread all possible sail to shoot straight for Tyrion, which fought bravely, but surely could not hold them off much longer. For as we drew closer we saw the boarders had swarmed over the sides and broken Aengus’ men into small, desperate clusters, outnumbered at least two to one.

At first the fighting men on Aphrodite had crowded forward to peer anxiously, but Alexander ordered them back. As the wind continued to freshen, turning more north than west, he needed us to line the port rail, our added weight stiffening the ship, and increasing her speed by just that fraction which might mean life or death for our comrades aboard Tyrion. There was no feeling of being an outsider now. We were all Irishmen, fighting for our home.

I tried to gather myself for battle. For whatever the poets may say, it is no easy matter convincing your body to expose itself to mortal peril. Even harder when you know that your loved ones remain in danger behind.

Though once committed to action, your heart burns the whiter because of it. My personal battle, as we drew within clear sight and sound of the fighting, was to remain calm enough to think clearly. Here Cassius’ training paid off. For he had told me plainly:

“You’re gut tells you to throw yourself wildly into the heart of the fray; but you can’t do that. You’ve got to keep your head, see where your presence and your sword can do the greatest good for your men, the greatest damage to your enemy.” This was but one of many principles he had drilled into me, and some could not be applied here. For this would be desperate, hand-to-hand fighting. But I remembered these words, along with those of my beloved, and between them determined not to throw my life away rashly.

Having said that, the tactic Alexander chose to employ—though he may have felt he had no choice—disconcerted us all at first. Thankfully it dismayed the Saxons even more. For there is nothing a hate-filled invader fears more than native courage and moral outrage.

“Brace for impact!” he shouted as we drew near. “Then over the bows, and fight like the Devil himself!” And sent Aphrodite smashing between the boats, straight into the side of Tyrion.

I fell forward, as did others, but our confusion was brief. Great hairy men clad in furs were attacking our brothers. They had backed what remained of Aengus’ men into the stern of the ship; and with righteous rage tearing at our hearts we struck, even as our ship had done, crying defiance and fighting like wolves defending our own.

There are no words to describe close combat on the deck of a ship. For blade, pike and battle-axe come at you from all directions at once. Your one hope, when there is room for it, is to knock that thrust aside, then drive your own weapon home.

Through the heat of battle, the thorny hedge of blades and points all around, somehow I managed to keep my head, and use it in the fighting. And I blessed every moment of the hard and ruthless training I’d received from Cassius. For I’d leapt in spite of myself—like Alexander, there was no real choice—into the heart of the fray.

But I had not leapt blind. As I planted my foot on what remained of our shattered rail, I chose my first victim: a large, drunken man who breathed hard, and struggled to lift his great two-headed axe. The most he could do as he became aware of my mortal intention was to hold it, foreshortened, before him. But I knocked it aside with the greave on my left forearm, and with the added impetus of the jump, stabbed the blade downward, straight into his heart.

I did not waste an instant retrieving it, and it is well that I did not. For another grim savage, wielding a pike probably taken from a dead defender, charged— a relative term on the closely packed deck— straight at me. I backhanded it away, then as his shoulder came crashing into my chest, fell with him to the deck. But my mind worked faster than his, and before he could right himself, I had drawn my knife and was stabbing again and again at the side of his neck. He did not rise when I did. But again there was no time to do anything but face the next, desperate attacker.

Cleades’ had been right about his brother. He would not spare his ship or himself. This did not surprise me, knowing him. But from the corner of my eye I saw him attack a great brute of a man—probably the Saxon leader—and his personal guard, all but single-handed. I had no time to mark it, much less come to his aid, but was again engaged in close, vicious, hand-to-hand fighting.

But then I heard two things which roused my attention, one the echo of the other. The first was a cry of physical pain, barely distinguished from the others all around. But the second cry stopped me. For not only was it familiar (the first may have been as well), but called me by name.

“Gaius!” It was Cleades’ voice, and filled with despair. I slashed across a lesser man’s throat and turned…..

Alexander was down. Without waiting to see if my stroke had been fatal, without even noting that the deck, though cluttered with bodies, contained fewer combatants, I ran toward him. The Saxons were retreating, clambering down into the boats or leaping into the water beside them. Their Chieftain was down, but one of his bodyguards hurled curses at the fallen Alexander, and raised his great hammer for the killing blow.

That blow never fell, as the sword I had lifted from the bloody deck split his shoulder blades. He began to fall forward, onto him. But I released the blade, and with a raging strength seized hold of his fur and leaned and twisted and threw him over the side. But Cleades’ was weeping at his brother’s side, the man himself bleeding from many wounds.

Alexander looked up at me almost in defiance. I fell to my knees and lifted him to a slumping sit against me. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t stand to see him lying there. His breath was short, failing, but he wanted to speak.

“Write it,” he told me, gripping the collar of my breastplate. It was as if he mustered all his strength to pour the truth into me. And I realized with a sob…..  

I was the chronicler of his tale. And only then did I understand, as my heart had refused to take in before, the long sufferings of his stolen youth: his anguish as a slave, his determination to save his brother, who was not as strong as he. I saw it all.

“Write it,” he repeated. “All of it.”

“I will. Please. Save your strength.”

But there was no conviction in my voice. He shook his head, determined to finish what he’d started. He lost his grip suddenly and slumped into my lap; but still he looked up at me fiercely.

“No one,” he struggled, choked. “Can say I’m not a man.”

“No one will say that.”

“Tell them…..”

“Yes?” I said, stroking his forehead like a fevered child. His eyes shone, somewhere between anguish and ecstasy.

“I’m free.”