The Ritual

Mother Ruth peered through the gaps in the converted storeroom door at the girl chosen for the ritual. Mara, clad only in her night shift, her hair still loose, knelt before the simple, wooden altar lighted by a lone candle, beeswax not tallow. An older version of the girl Ruth had once killed. Had it been real? She no longer remembered. That night had been nearly a lifetime ago. Before she’d donned the white and been touched by the goddess’s light.

Bitterness like sour smoke rolled off the girl as she prayed, to god or goddess Ruth did not know. Mara was a near stranger to her, although by rights she shouldn’t be. Abducting her had been risky.  When her mother discovered her missing, there was bound to be a reckoning. At dawn, Ruth would commend her soul into the hands of the goddess for the good of the village. After that, it wouldn’t matter. Every year, her order tried to disrupt the village’s ancient ritual and supplant it with their own. Only once had they succeeded.

The villagers called her order the Night Ravens, sometimes worse when they thought none were within earshot. An epithet meant to convey that they would all be the better plucked and roasted. Not that any of them would dare lay hands upon a priest.

“Mother,” Brother Dawid shuffled up the drafty, torchlit hall as quickly as he could without running, keeping his voice low as decorum dictated. “A crowd has gathered outside the gate.”

Ruth turned away from the door. “Tell them to return after morning prayers,” she said, tucking her hands within her felted sleeves.

Brother Dawid’s robes were still mud spattered from the nocturnal errand she’s charged him with. She wondered how many others he’d pressed into service. No more than a handful. Too many were locally born and would take a dim view of her actions despite their vows to set aside their former lives.

Brother Dawid ducked his head and hunched his shoulders in an unconscious act of subservience, a habit she abhorred as much as she valued his surprising loyalty given he, too, had family in the village. “They threaten violence if you do not speak with them.”

Ruth sighed. “Then I suppose I must. Keep an eye on the girl until I return. No one is to interrupt her prayers.”

“Yes, Mother.” He cast his eyes toward the floor. “I’ll see to it myself.”

Ruth strode down the stonework hall, her sandaled feet no more than a whisper as she passed the arches to the galleries where the monastery stored apples, root vegetables, cheeses and honey wine along with the granaries filled with freshly harvested seeds for sowing next spring. At the wrought iron gate that led to a stair up and out of the cellar, she pulled a silver chain through the neck of her robe until she clutched a brass key in hand. It rattled in the lock as she turned it until the heavy latch clanked free. The gate sighed open. In her time as Mother, Ruth insisted on proper maintenance throughout the monastery. If cleanliness brought the siblings closer to the goddess then maintaining her property brought them closer to her order.

Ruth locked the gate behind her. To her left lay the entrance to the whisper chamber beneath the nave with its adjacent niches and chapels where the order’s many martyrs lay entombed. Instead, she turned right and ascended the stair to the covered passage near the cellarer’s office. Brother Dawid’s office. His and hers were the only cellar keys.

She emerged just in time to see a novice whose name escaped her rushing across the cloister, frantically scanning the portico until she spotted Ruth. Ruth paused and let the girl come to her. Only at the last minute did the girl remember her station and slow her pace from a near run. And still she arrived breathless.

“Mother…” she started then remembered again to bow her head and wait to be acknowledged.

Ruth stood silent a moment before responding to allow the girl to catch her breath. She couldn’t be but maybe a year older than the girl locked away in the cellar. “What is so urgent my child that it pushes you to the edge of decorum when all the novices should be abed?”

“There is a mob outside the gate. They threaten to break it down…”

“Slower, my child,” Ruth calmly interrupted her. “Start at the beginning.”

“Sorry, Mother.” The girl kept her eyes upon the flagstones as she mastered her composure before she recited what she’d been told. “The Night Vigil heard a pounding on the church doors. When he opened the eye hole, he was confronted by an angry mob that accused us of kidnap of a village daughter and demanded her return. He woke the Sacrist who summoned all the novices to reinforce the west range gate where the mob now gathers. She sent the Cellarer to find you.”

“And so he has,” Ruth replied. “Go tell the Sacrist to inform the villagers I will address them from the porch above the gate.” A hollow boom reverberated through the stone passage that led to the west range gate as if the mob truly meant to break it in. When the girl stood rooted, Ruth added. “Now you may move with the purpose of my authority.”

Wide-eyed, the girl turned and fled toward the gate, her white robes flying behind her like the trailing remnants of a ghost. The night was prime for such apparitions, a misty cold bordering on first frost.

Ruth strove to maintain her own composure as she strode around the perimeter of the cloister toward the passage where the girl had disappeared. Gate was not much of a misnomer. Compared to the ancient god reborn, the goddess had not long resided in north. The local populace accepted her presence uneasily. The monastery remained her only fortified outpost. The mission had been here for decades yet had met with only limited success. The villagers stubbornly clung to the old ways even where outlawed by their recently converted king. This deep in the marches, they only begrudgedly recognized his authority anyway, usually under duress. Her order was determined to save them from themselves and their backward ways no matter how many lives it took.

The blue moon hung just over the slate rooftop of the western range. The Betrayer’s Moon. The eastern sky had not yet begun to lighten with even the false dawn. A long time to delay the mob outside but she knew she must. Only when the sun had breached the horizon could Mara be committed to the goddess. Then she would be beyond the reach of the angry villagers forever.

Ruth stared at the stake in the center of the cloister where the ritual would be performed. To either side twin stacks of firewood had been laid crosshatched for the bonfires. The fires that would burn the girl’s sins away and leave her pure before the goddess. The girl knew she had done wrong. The ritual was her only way to atone.

As Ruth approached the covered passageway across the cloister from where she’d emerged, she saw the Sacrist rallying the novices to reinforce the bars and braces on the west range gate. The mission walls were thick and high, its doors heavy and reinforced. The goddess had received an uneasy welcome when her followers had first arrived in the north. The intervening decades had been long and sometimes bloody with martyrs beatified on both sides.

Another resounding boom echoed across the cloister as wood collided with iron-bound wood. The villagers must have crafted a makeshift ram. The Sacrist shot Ruth a pleading look as dust danced in the torchlight of arched passageway. Ruth instructed two novices to retrieve torches from the wrought iron wall sconces and follow. She turned to ascend the nearby stairs.

She emerged onto a porch high above the west range gate. She motioned her torchbearers to remain beside the door. As she waited for their light to draw the villagers’ attention, she surveyed the scene below.

A small sea of torches greeted her as she approached the waist-high parapet. The villagers were arrayed in full rebellion, most armed with simple three-pronged hayforks and threshing flails. At points like polestars interspersed within the crowd, torchlight flickered off the blades of scythes, billhooks, and makeshift glaives. A small cadre of woodcutters near the fore encircled a matronly woman whose righteous anger rivaled the firebrands lighting her familiar face. Horpa. Beside her a pale, sickly young man Ruth knew to be a fyrdman for the local lord leaned against rude crosspiece-lashed ladder. Malon. Horpa’s son, the girl’s brother. No aid would be forthcoming from that quarter.

Directly below, eight sturdy field hands swung a fresh-felled timber as big around as a child’s waist against the west range gate. Without a frame for leverage, it created a mere grumble of their discontent. In the pasture behind the fishpond, just beyond the siblings’ cemetery, a conical bonfire had been laid. It remained as yet unlighted.

Ruth folded her hands within her sleeves as she waited. When that moment stretched toward discomfort at the single-minded focus of the mob, she beckoned her torchbearers to the corners of the parapet encasing the platform. The light finally lifted the villagers’ eyes. The stentorian voice of their battering ram fell silent.

When the mob fully settled, Ruth called down, “Why do you disturb the night offices of this holy enclave? Disperse and we will receive you after our laudatory prayers.”

“You know full well why we’ve gathered, sister,” the matron called back up. “Your goatsuckers stole my daughter under the mantle of darkness. We come to claim her back.”

Ruth saw no point in denying the girl was inside. That much the villagers surely knew. “Mara is reflecting with us on her future of her own accord, Horpa. Return at dawn and receive her decision with the rest of us.”

“She made her decision at the Eastern Rising,” Horpa spat. “When she chose to lie with the god reborn, she chose the ancient ways.”

“You and I both know no girl chooses for herself,” Ruth replied. Only years of discipline kept her eyes from narrowing as she remembered that night so long ago. “That choice is only made by beldams like you.”

“Better rebirth in the threefold cleansing than a permanent death with you.” Horpa turned her back on the monastery, raising her arms, seeking the crowd’s assent which came in a wave of brandished weapons and torches accompanied by angry exclamations. She faced Ruth again, smiling smugly. “That we cannot permit.”

“The king has declared your ritual outlaw.” Ruth stood unmoved. “To defy his will borders on treason as well as heresy.”

“Chilion has never crossed the river,” called up Malon from beside Horpa. “He wastes away in his castle, an tired old man trying to bribe his way into paradise with whichever gods will listen. His edicts carry no coin here.”

“You claim to be the light-bringers,” Horpa said. “Stand against us and we will put your endurance of it to the test.” With her nod, a torch sailed over the lay siblings’ dormitory. At worst it might light one of the pre-laid bonfires on the cloister. The mission roofs were slate, the walls stone. As a threat, fire was less than immediate.

Yet still Ruth flinched. Only the memory of the goddess’s light soothed her like a balm. She knew she must stand firm or risk seeing generations of work undone.

“You dare assault the goddess in her own house?” she called down upon the peasant farmers. “If we withhold her seed, how many of you will starve?”

“Those stores are ours by right and privilege,” Horpa responded. “Who will stand against us should we choose to liberate them? You? Your goatsuckers?”

“The first of you who trespass inside these walls shall see the granaries set alight. If you survive the winter, you’ll have nothing to sow come spring. Your god reborn will starve before the next Eastern Rising. Then what shall you reap?”

Autumn’s chill had begun to coalesce the air. Each word of Ruth’s threat hung before her like the smoking prelude of the dragon’s breath. The villagers exchanged uncertain glances. Only the faint crackling of their torches broached the descending shroud of silence.

Horpa appeared undaunted. “You always were a dedicated believer, sister.”

Ruth didn’t know what to say to that so she merely waited, knowing more would be forthcoming.

“Or so our mother thought when you were chosen,” Horpa continued after a momentary pause. “Didn’t you vow to faithfully serve the god reborn when you lay with him that night? Before you embraced cowardice and crafted a new vow with your goddess. So then tell me, sister, which of those vows is false?”

“With my vow broken, wasn’t it your duty to assume my place, sister?” Ruth shot back. “Yet I still see you standing before me casting stones. Perhaps your god reborn is more angry with your breach of faith than mine. Perhaps you are why his power wanes.”

Ruth felt the mob’s support begin to waver. And yet Horpa’s confidence remained undimmed.

“I offered up my own daughter to reconcile my sin,” she called up. “Any woman worthy of the title mother understands how much harder it is to sacrifice her child.”

“Any pledge I made to the god reborn was coerced. Only my freely given word to the goddess matters. The same is true for Mara.”

“I see you remain defiant in your faith,” Horpa answered. “I expected no less. It’s time to see if all your siblings share your resolve.”

She made a quick gesture with her hand. Her knot of axmen dispersed within the crowd. Ruth sensed a trap closing around her though she couldn’t quite outline its contours.

The axmen reconvened around a maiden with a pleasant face, perhaps thirteen, standing near her elderly parents. As the axmen wrestled the girl into the torchlight around Horpa, Ruth recognized her. Naomi. Dawid’s sister.

Now she understood the danger. Ruth stepped back from the parapet. Fishing the cellar key from beneath her robe, she motioned to one of the novices.

“Take this to the Sacrist at the gate. Tell her to retrieve the girl from the cellar and bring her to the cloister at once. We will perform the ritual immediately.” She pressed the cold brass into the boy’s hand. When he stood gazing at it an instant too long, Ruth added, “Fly, boy, if you ever hope to see a sibling’s robes.”

As the boy’s sandals slapped against the stone stairs, Ruth turned back to the edge of the balcony. She paused a moment to compose herself. She needed to buy the Sacrist time. Everything else lay within the goddess’s hands.

Once again, she stepped forward to confront Horpa and her mob. The axmen had begun to bind Naomi to the fyrdman’s ladder already planted in the ground. The girl didn’t struggle. Her face looked blankly angelic as she turned her eyes toward heaven. Ruth knew she would feel honored to be so chosen. Too bad she hadn’t been selected before the Eastern Rising.

“You know the god reborn will recognize this girl is not his bride,” Ruth called down. “How angry will he be with those who seek to deceive him?”

“Then spare us all his wrath and return his bride to me,” Horpa shot back. “You have no right to interfere.”

“No right?” Ruth spat. “At thirteen, I was chosen as his torchbearer. A year later I was to be his bride. I know exactly what these girls go through. I think that gives me every right.”

“Naomi was chosen as his torchbearer. Now, she’ll serve as his surrogate bride a year early. That is but one of the duties of his handmaidens. Or have you forgotten, sister?”

Ruth still shuddered at the torchbearer’s first duty. Handmaiden, torchbearer and bride were a progression of honors in every young girl’s dreams. Only the constant reinforcement of their pride at being chosen could see them through the horrors of what each entailed. Better that the goddess burn those sins away.

“No matter that she is my Cellarer’s sister? The man whose actions stained our family? Now you seek to redeem his slight with your daughter’s life. Don’t think I missed the envy in your eyes when mother pushed me forward instead of you. Your jealousy was always as naked as your rage. But this girl has no part in it. Have mercy on her. Leave her life aside.”

“If you value her life so well, send my daughter back and we will cut her free. You have my word.”

When Ruth made no move comply, Horpa uttered one word to her fyrdman son loud enough to lay her plan bare.

“Wood.”

The villagers began piling fuel from the pre-laid bonfire around the girl until her ankles then her knees were obscured. Ruth had no doubt that Horpa meant to make good upon her threat. Her leadership was ill-conceived, her ritual a corruption.

What was taking the Sacrist so long? She should have sent word by now that the girl was ready on the cloister. Once they lit the bonfires and threw open the gates, the crowd outside would see Horpa’s extortion was in vain. Ruth knew most of the villagers were good people, misguided but not vindictive. In the face of futility, the mob would drift away.

As if summoned by Ruth’s thoughts, someone burst through the door behind her. She turned to find the Sacrist leaning heavily against its frame. Her temple oozed a bloody trail that meandered down her neck and stained her white collar before it disappeared inside. She only managed to hold Ruth’s eyes for an instant before she dropped her gaze and ruefully shook her head.

Even as Ruth pieced together the tale of what must have happened belowground, an anguished cry erupted from the church doors to her right. 

“No,” Brother Dawid howled like a banshee, his white robes aflutter as he ushered Mara across the greensward by an arm. The girl followed freely, her bitterness blossoming into enrapturement at her answered prayers. A triumphant cheer erupted from the crowd.

True to her word, Horpa cut Naomi from the ladder. The axmen then tied a willing Mara in her place. Malon barred Dawid with an arm when Horpa extended a torch to Naomi. Before the girl could perform the duty demanded of her, Ruth turned away.

She descended the stone stairs back toward the cloister, the Sacrist following, the novice sealing the door behind. Shielded against the celebratory sound and fury beyond the wall, Ruth paused in the archway at the threshold of the cloister.

“What should we do when Brother Dawid returns,” asked the Sacrist, daubing her temple with the hood of her robe. The pristine white came away a red that in the torchlight bordered on black. 

“Allow the girl sanctuary,” Ruth replied, her surficial calm restored, “but bar the door against him. With his betrayal, he has chosen darkness over light.”

Even as she said the words, she was saddened by her decision. She remembered too much of that same darkness the night Dawid had saved her from Mara’s fate. She had misjudged him, misjudged the siren song of blood over beliefs. Perhaps she had misjudged herself in thinking she could harvest both and redeem her sister’s sin.

Ruth stared at the stake set between the twin laid bonfires that dominated the cloister. The stake meant to serve as her niece’s salvation. The thrown torch lay dead in a pool of blackened grass just short of the post’s base. She had envisioned Brother Dawid standing beside her, watching Mara die between the fires only to be reborn into the white once fully cleansed by the goddess’s light. Just as he had watched a younger girl so many years ago as the stain of her sins as handmaiden and torchbearer slowly burned away. The girl she’d murdered. The girl she once had been.


© 2016 Edward P. Morgan III