I said. “That’s it. Priscilla, I’m sorry. I think I need to rest. Help me up, and we’ll go find Judith and you can talk to Miriam….”
The wind suddenly picked up on the lake; some doves roosting on the walls startled and spiraled into the air. Rain fell down between my legs and spattered dark on the dusty ground.
“Mary,” Priscilla said to me, as if from a long way off, though she was right next to me. Then she called out. “Berta! Dido! Judith!”
From all directions women came toward me. Priscilla gently handed me to them, as if I were a precious gift.
“May it be well with you,” Priscilla whispered in my ear. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell them your time is come. I won’t. I’ll stall them as long as I can.”
And she turned to go.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BLACK DOVE
“COME ON, LIEBLING, come to the birthing cave. Do you hear that wind? I think it’s going to storm.”
“No, no, not inside. I can’t go inside.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my friends exchanging glances, wondering if I was going off my head, as some women did in labor. But I was already heading for the tower roof.
“Mary,” said Judith sharply, “it’s not seemly to give birth out in the open, like some wild animal, where any passer by might hear you screeching.”
“They won’t hear anything over this wind,” said Dido grimly. “Red, be sensible. Must we all be fetching and carrying hot water and linen up and down the stairs?”
I kept going. The pains were bringing it all back, the other birth inside the stone cairn. It was dark and smoky, and outside a storm raged, a storm I’d called to stop the druids from crossing the Menai Straits in pursuit of Esus. I’d called a tidal bore, too. My father had slipped from his horse, and walked into it. I had watched him disappear under the wave. That was the last thing I’d seen before the priestess dragged me to the cairn. I wasn’t going inside this time. I needed the sky; I needed to be alone.
“Don’t come yet,” I said to my friends at the foot of the stairs. “I’ll call when I need help.”
I stand on the roof, looking out over the lake that has turned black and white with cloud and wind, wild as the day the twelve had almost drowned with Jesus calmly asleep in the bow. I hardly feel the cold, and the wind exhilarates me, blowing away the image of the cairn, the sharp crow-like faces of the priestesses, well-meaning and ruthless. Up here on the roof the labor pains take on the quality of the elements—clouds uncoiling to take up the whole sky, waves rising and breaking, smashing against rock, and the wind with its beansidhe shrieking. I hardly register the labor pains as pain; they feel like power, as if I have taken the force of the storm into my body. I ride that power the way I rode the wind in my dove form when I went to the rescue of Peter’s tossing ship.
Someone is singing; or is it only the wind. Someone is singing, a woman is singing, her voice is strong as earth, fierce as the storm, her breath fills my lungs, her song rings in my bones. There are no words, but the song is a call; she is calling and calling. At last he answers. He is with me; he has my back, he circles me round. I am the curved prow of ship and he the mast, and we sail on together, plowing the waves, as our child kicks strongly, swimming to meet us.
The storm moves over the lake, over the mountains, and the sun rolls after it, leaving stars in its wake, and a late rising moon on the wane. My beloved holds me, even as my friends come and hold me, too. They join their voices with mine, and we sing the strange, sweet song of the stars with its piercing harmonies and dissonance. The song changes as I squat for the birth, and sing a song full of long O-O-O-O s, a song to open the way for the one who is coming, the one who is riding the red waves into dawn.
There is the head, black and sleek as a silkie’s. As the body slides free, so easily, so easily, I catch the baby in my own hands. Cries flutter up from my friends. The doves wake and add their tender, yearning sounds. Then comes the baby’s first cry, more like a bellow, full of power and purpose. Dido and Berta help me turn her over and lift her into my arms.
My daughter.
The way she fits the curve of my arm, the way she latches unto my breast, so surely, so fiercely, my body remembers, and for a moment I am back in the cairn, cradling the bright head of my firstborn. Someone wipes my tears away, so that I can see this new one.
She is dark, darker than her father. The tufts of hair on her head are black, too. But it is her eyes that arrest me, hold me still, so I can hardly breathe, hardly know where I am. They are golden, as golden as the leaves of the tree in the garden of Tir nan Og where I stood with my beloved. Her gaze is as strong and insistent as her mouth on my breast. Where did you come from? I almost ask her out loud. Who are you?
“Colomen,” I hear myself murmuring. “Colomen Du. Colomen Du.”
“What is it, honey?” asks Reginus, a little anxiously. He is always present at women’s mysteries. “What are you saying?”
I look up and smile at everyone in turn, Dido and Berta, kneeling beside me ready to deliver the afterbirth, Judith who is hovering, waiting to wash and swaddle the baby, Ma who is silent for once, all here, as if no angel could ever distract her again.
“Colomen Du,” I say again. “That is her name. It means Black Dove.”
There is a brief silence, and then everyone tries, without much success, to pronounce the name.
“Is that Celtic?” asks Reginus suspiciously.
I nod and return my gaze to Colomen Du.
“Don’t you think a nice Greek name would be a little easier for the kid? Everybody speaks Greek. How about Phoebe, or something, since she was born at sunrise.”
“She is a little princess!” Ma pronounces, and she bends down and coos over the baby as if she were an ordinary grandmother. “We will call you Sarah.”
“Her name is Colomen Du,” I protest. “She is my daughter.”
You see? It is beginning already.
“Of course,” says Miriam as if there is no contradiction. “Every divine child needs a name, secret like the name of the Most High, that no one can pronounce. We’ll call her Sarah.”
“Sarah,” everyone murmured happily.
“Sarah,” I sigh in surrender, too happy, too tired to fight.
After a breakfast feast and hymns to Isis, I was ready to go inside to the inner temple to rest. I curled up with Sarah in the very same chamber where we had laid Jesus the night the Samaritan merchant brought him to us, half dead of exposure and wounds. I had held him in my arms all night long, the fire of the stars flowing through me, restoring him to life. Now as I fell asleep, I felt him with me, holding me, as I held our child. And if you never understood the trinity before, maybe now you do.
When I woke—or perhaps I was dreaming—I saw Jesus, saw him with my eyes, for the first time since he walked through the Beautiful Gates. He was gazing at us and weeping silently. I wanted to go to him,
