The Janus Stone

Somehow she is hungry again and she forages in the kitchen for some biscuits. Then she sits at her desk to check her emails, scrolling down through the requests from students for extra time on their assignments, the supposedly amusing jokes sent from a colleague in the chemistry department, the new timetables for next year. Incredible to think that the academic year is almost at an end.

She is just about to delete another email from the chemistry department when she sees the name of the sender.

From: Michael Malone

Date: 19 May 2008 17.30

To: Ruth Galloway

Subject: Imbolc

Michael Malone, also known as Cathbad, sometime Druid, also employed as a lab assistant in the chemistry department. Strange that she had been thinking about Cathbad only that evening, sitting in the pub with Max. But, on second thoughts, maybe not that strange. Cathbad has a habit of appearing just when he is needed. Cathbad would say that this is his sixth sense, his extraordinary sensitivity to the world around him. Ruth prefers to think of it as coincidence. As far as she is concerned, the jury is out on Cathbad’s sixth sense.

Light a fire to celebrate Imbolc [reads the email], the Gaelic festival of the coming of spring. Join us on Saltmarsh beach on Friday 23^rd May at six o’clock. Light a fire for Brigid, the goddess of holy wells, sacred flames and healing.

Below, in rather less high-flown language, Cathbad has written:

Imbolc is traditionally celebrated on 2^nd Feb but the weather’s been so bad I thought we’d wait. I don’t expect Brigid will mind! Do come, Ruth.

He finishes with a Gaelic verse to which he has kindly added a translation.

Thig an nathair as an toll

La donn Bride,

Ged robh tri traighean dh’ an t-sneachd

Air leachd an lair.

The serpent will come from the hole

On the brown Day of Bride,

Though there should be three feet of snow On the flat surface of the ground.

Ruth looks at this email for a long time. On one hand it is Cathbad doing what he does best, combining Celtic mysticism with an opportunity for binge drinking and dancing round a fire. On the other hand… She points her cursor at the words ‘goddess of holy wells’. It seems strange, even sinister, that this email should come just after her discussion with Max. Ruth wonders about the term ‘holy wells’. Brigid seems distinctly pagan – in what sense were her wells holy? And what’s this about ‘sacred flames’? Is Brigid another fire goddess? Sacred, holy – it is the language of the Church but she knows that there will be nothing Christian about the celebration on Saltmarsh beach.

On impulse, she types ‘St Bridget’ into her search engine. Immediately, she comes up with a Wikipedia entry for St Bridget, or Brigid. St Bridget, she reads, is considered one of Ireland’s patron saints, along with Patrick and Columba. Her feast day is the first of February.

Imbolc, according to Cathbad, is usually held on the second of February. Does the holy Bridget (a nun, she discovers) have anything to do with the earlier, pagan feast day? She reads on. Bridget founded Kildare monastery, which is sometimes called ‘the church of the oak’ after the large oak tree which grew outside Bridget’s cell. The oak, Ruth knows, is highly important in Norse and Celtic mythology. The word Druid even comes from the Celtic word for oak ‘derw’.

Another story concerns ‘St Bridget’s cross’. Apparently, Bridget made a cross out of reeds and placed it beside a dying man in order to convert him (might have been more useful to have called a doctor, Ruth thinks). Anyway, traditionally, a new cross is made every St Bridget’s day and the old one burnt to keep the maker’s house safe from fire. Clearly there is a thin line between the pagan Brigid’s fire and the saintly Bridget’s burning cross.

Max would be interested in this, thinks Ruth. Should she invite him to Cathbad’s Imbolc celebration? Max did say that he wanted to see the Saltmarsh. And it is interesting, too, from an archaeological perspective. Ten years ago, Ruth’s extutor, Erik, discovered a Bronze-Age wooden henge on Saltmarsh beach. That was where Ruth first met Cathbad. He was one of the Druids fighting to stop the henge’s timbers being removed to a museum. The Druids had lost, even though Erik had sympathised with them, and now all that is left of the henge is a slightly blackened circle of sand.