A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(82)
Rebecca keeps glaring around her with narrowed eyes, as if she expects to catch the source of the noise and scold it for not falling in order with the known universe.
I withdraw a long, white taper from my coat pocket and walk to the south lantern. I remember this part without looking at my paper, and I murmur, “St. Brigid, patron saint of cattle and newborn babes, wardeness of fire and sweet water, we light this flame thinking of you.”
I kneel and open the little glass door of the lantern, touching my taper to the big, sturdy candle inside. The flame hisses and jumps to life, and I close the lantern and stand, hardly able to see over the dancing brightness of the flame.
“Bring my bride to me,” Delphine says once my candle is lit, and it’s so unlike her, so unlike her usual girlish self. It’s commanding and almost arrogant and deeply, deeply sexy. My pulse starts thudding deep in my cunt when Becket takes my hand and leads me to her, my lord for the night.
And so I’m brought before the altar.
There’re so many differences from the times I’ve dreamed this. The rustle of my coat, the sound of sodden grass under my boots. The huff of my breath in the air and the twist in my stomach and the burn of the others watching my back as I walk. I’m not bearing a torc like in the pictures, and I’m not in a robe, but it doesn’t take away from how inevitable it feels to slowly make my way to the lord who will extract promises from me. How heady and how divine and how right. Like this one moment, this one night, is what I’ve been seeking my entire life without knowing it. Like every answer to every question about myself and my mother and her past and this house and the boys I hate myself for loving is waiting just beyond a veil I can’t see, and if I can reach through it, if I can part it with reverent fingertips and step in . . .
Reach for what and step where, I’m not sure. But I am sure that I can’t stop myself from trying. I am sure touching that veil might be the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s the closest to God I’ve ever felt, and I don’t know if that’s okay to feel, if that’s allowed, to have Catholic feelings inside an arguably pagan space, but I do. I do, and they’re all jumbled up together so thickly I almost can’t remember what they felt like separately, and then when I stop in front of Delphine and she cups her hands around my face, I think this must be what Becket feels every time he performs the Liturgy of the Eucharist and fuses the holy into the profane. Except right now, we are the wafers being transfigured, all six of us; we are being made into something other and better and sanctified as we stand in a circle and act out the ancient human ache for renewal and spring.
Becket, who turned out to be something of an expert in Celtic paganism, explained to us that there’s a difference between evoking someone like St. Brigid and invoking St. Brigid—meaning that we invited our saint to our ceremony, meaning that we asked her to protect us, but we didn’t ask to be her. So in theory, I’m only playing a role, I’m only echoing the words she would say if she were here.
But I feel a kick of dizziness when Delphine asks, “St. Brigid, we beg your blessing on us,” and I say, “You have it.”
Wax drops from my taper onto my hand, hot and clinging, and the pain takes the dizziness and marries it to a breathless sort of hyperreality, grounding me to this moment even though I’m dreaming it too.
Delphine replies, “Then bestow your blessing upon all who ask.”
Another kick of dizziness when Becket presses three candles into the soft grass covering the altar and I lean down to light them with my own candle.
“I promise to keep the fires burning,” I say as I light the first one, feeling like I’m floating outside of myself . . . or maybe I’m deeper inside myself than I’ve ever been and that’s why I’m so dizzy, that’s why I feel like something shimmering and hot is pulling my chest tight with love and fear.
“I promise to keep the waters clean,” I say, lighting the second one. A tear spills free and slides down my cheek and I barely feel it, all I can feel is what God and St. Brigid and priests must feel when they cup blessings in their hands like water.
“I promise to bring the lambs through birth safely and to bring the new shoots from the earth,” I finish, lighting the third candle. I straighten up and turn to the others. More hot wax runs down my fingers and wrist, sending echoes of its heat to my breasts and belly.
“I promise to bless all of you and be your blessing in turn.”
“Then light the fire,” Delphine says softly. “So that we may feel your blessing warm us all.”
I cross the circle to the cone of wood and kindling that’s been covered with a tarp, and Saint is there, pulling it away and readying it all for me, and then I kneel down and touch my taper to the crumpled newspaper underneath the wood.
There’s a hush all through us and through the trees themselves as the paper catches, as the small sticks above those catch, and as finally, finally, the big split logs catch too. It reminds me of the Catholic tradition of Candlemas, of bringing in your candles for the year to be blessed, and the idea of keeping the same sacred flame burning all year long.
One flame to another flame to another and another and so on, until everything is connected, everything is hallowed by memory and hope.
When I walk back to Delphine, I set my taper in the grass of the altar too, right in the middle of the three candles I lit earlier. It’s so soft and muddy that the candle goes easily in, and then I take a deep breath and turn to my lord.