Brigid of Kildare Read Free

His Words. But He did not know the Gaelic people, did He?”
    Brigid is surprised to hear a deep laugh come from the serious-sounding stranger. “He might not have met the Gaels while still here on earth, but I feel certain He knows them well from his vantage point in heaven.”
    Broicsech chuckles at the retort, the kind she might have made herself. “Well spoken.”
    Brigid’s knees begin to ache from kneeling and from her battlefield fall. She alters her stance the tiniest bit, and Broicsech says, “So impatient to meet our guest, Brigid? I suppose you and Oengus may rise.”
    With little of the grace her mother insists upon, Brigid struggles to her feet. Behind her lovely mother, immaculately dressed as always in a pristine robe and with a golden crown encircling her black hair, stands the stranger. A very strange stranger indeed, Brigid thinks to herself.
    The man wears the dark robes of a monk or a Druid, though Brigid supposes that the reference to Jesus Christ marks him as a monk. He has dark hair tonsured in the Roman style and light eyes and seems of her mother’s age, though much worse for the wear. Yet it is not these features that distinguish him as strange. His oddity comes from his eyes, so intense they seem as if fire lights them from within.
    He meets her stare. “So this is your Brigid?”
    “It is indeed.” She gestures toward Oengus. “And this is my foster son, Oengus, of whom you have heard me speak. Brigid and Oengus, pay your respects to Bishop Patrick.”
    They lower themselves to the floor once again. Brigid is astonished that Bishop Patrick stands in their midst. That a senior Christian official visits their
cashel
does not startle her; her family is ostensibly Christian and certainly royal, and thus the visit is unusual but not unfathomable. That a stranger stops in their kingdom does not surprise her. No, her incredulity arises from the fact that Bishop Patrick pays
his
respects to the family of Dubtach, best known for the ferocity and frequency of his raiding parties for slaves in Britannia. For Patrick was born a wealthy Roman Briton, the son of a Christian deacon and the grandson of a Christian priest, but he was taken prisoner at sixteen by Gaelic raiders and served as a slave for six years, until he escaped. Astonishingly, Patrick then eschewed his own people to minister the Christian faith to the Gaelic people, who once enslaved him, and to preach against slavery.
    “Shall we pray?”
    Her mother nods her acquiescence, and the assemblage kneels. Bishop Patrick leads them in Jesus Christ’s own prayer, then stands and addresses them while they continue to kneel before him.
    “Broicsech, I know your family to be strong leaders of your
tuath
and ardent Christians. You serve as sublime examples to your people in the saving ways of our Jesus Christ.”
    As Broicsech gives her thanks, Brigid thinks on the cleverness of this Patrick. Patrick, though foreign, understands the Gaelic people well—from his years in Gaelic captivity, she supposes. By referencing the
tuath
, or kingdom, over which her father rules in all matters material and moral, he subtly reminds her mother that Dubtach is the sacred protector of the people’s lives and their souls. Brigid wonders what Patrick wants that he raises the stakes so high.
    “My monks and I will pass through your lands again in six months’ time. I know your family to be good Christians, but as yet unbaptized. I ask in the name of our Lord that you will consider allowing me to baptize you and your family in a ceremony before your people. Where your family leads, your people will follow.”
    Broicsech is quiet for a time, then answers in an uncharacteristically muted voice: “Bishop Patrick, I vow to you that I will consider your request for myself, my daughter, and my foster son, but I cannot speak to my husband’s willingness for a baptism or his appetite for a public ceremony of the rite.”
    Patrick is silent, but Brigid sees the fury