Hearing Caelym’s mockery burst Aleswina’s bubble of happiness at knowing Annwr loved her as much as her real—no, her other daughter.
As the only deity she knew anything about was Jesus—who, as best she understood it, got to be a god by being born to a virgin, being celibate himself, and dying on the cross—she did not understand what making an oath to a goddess had to do with the kind of love Caelym was talking about. Still, innocent and unworldly though she was, she couldn’t miss his lewd innuendo. Well, she didn’t want any service from him, now or ever!
Keeping her head down, she went to the front end of the boat and waited there, hoping Annwr would tell Caelym off for being rude.
Caelym knew treachery when he saw it. Now he had to convince Annwr. He stepped nonchalantly over to her, took her pack, strode to the boat and handed it to Aleswina, saying, “Take this, if you will, my dearest heart, and put it under the boat’s front seat,” in Celt as casually as if he’d merely forgotten to switch back into speaking English.
Aleswina took the pack and did as he asked. She glanced at Annwr, expecting her smile of approval, but instead saw her looking so shocked that Aleswina turned around to see what she’d done wrong with the bag.
When Annwr found her voice again, she spoke in clear and careful English. “Aleswina, you cannot know Celt! You have not spoken it since you were a small child.”
All the abbess’s admonitions about eavesdropping being a sign of unworthiness came back to Aleswina—redoubled by the fear that now Anna might not want her for a daughter. Desperate to make amends, she dropped to her knees. “I know that I have sinned, only there is no priest here, so how am I to confess or do penance?”
“I told you not to take her! She’s been spying on us all along!” As Caelym was about to go on—reminding Annwr that he’d warned her over and over that no Christian, no Saxon, and especially no Christian Saxon was to be trusted—he realized what Aleswina had just said and instead broke off to demand, “What does she mean there is no priest here?” Suspecting some further affront, he added, “And what is this ‘sinned’ and ‘confess’ and ‘penance’?”
Annwr didn’t approve of Aleswina’s eavesdropping, but neither did she like Caelym’s acting as though it were some heinous crime punishable by death. Unaware that this was exactly his point, she decided it was time to take him down a peg. Intentionally assuming the long-suffering but patient voice of one instructing the hopelessly ignorant, she sighed and said, “A ‘sin’ is something a Christian person does that is forbidden and that they feel sorry for afterwards, like touching their own male or female parts for pleasure or stealing money from the poor-box. When a Christian person has done something that is a sin, they must go to a Christian priest, who is trained and experienced in such matters, and confess that they have done that sin. Then the Christian priest judges how much of a sin it is and decides how much of a penance that the Christian person must do. Then the Christian person does that penance and promises not to do any more sins. Then the Christian priest forgives the Christian person and they are done.”
Putting aside his astonishment at the idea that a person’s touching their own male or female parts for pleasure was something anyone would ever feel sorry for afterwards, Caelym stayed with the main point. Considering the possibilities of sin and repentance, he asked, “And is burning Druids a sin?”
“Not if you are Christian, for it is not forbidden by their priests and so Christian people do not need to feel sorry for it afterwards.”
Disappointed but not surprised, Caelym persisted, “So then the Christian person will not do any more sins after this confessing?”
Favoring Caelym with a look that was half bemused and half resigned, Annwr sighed again. “Of course, the person will do more sins. As long as people are living, they will be doing something that is forbidden and they are sorry for.”
It was only when Caelym stiffened his shoulders and dropped his hand towards his dagger that Annwr realized he was serious about Aleswina being a traitor.
“Caelym,” she snapped. “Nothing she has or has not done releases you from your oath, so you just forget what you are thinking . . .”
While Annwr and Caelym argued, Aleswina looked back and forth between them. She was used to kneeling in contrition, but the rocky bank was harder on her legs than the wooden floor of the confessional. When they seemed to have finished without saying whether she could get up, Aleswina looked to Annwr for some direction.
Annwr, however, did not return her look or give her any encouragement but continued staring at Caelym.
Not knowing what else to do, Aleswina looked up at Caelym, drawing in her lower lip.
Caelym glared down at her, drumming his fingers on the handle of his dagger and thinking how the simple-minded girl looked more like five than twenty. It was beyond his understanding that her only worry could be whether she was “forgiven” when she should be looking for a way to escape or preparing to fight for her life, as any reasonable person in her place would be doing.
Realizing that with her looking so innocently foolish, he couldn’t make himself kill her—even if Annwr released him from his oath, which she wasn’t about to do—Caelym began talking with the hope that he might come to some answer before he finished.
“Dear Heart,” Caelym used Annwr’s pet name but made it more serious with the gravity of his tone, “you are among Druids now, and you are doing your sinning with Druids.” Pleased to see from the widening of her eyes and the raising of her eyebrows that he had the girl’s proper attention, he paused briefly for emphasis before intoning, “And as I am a Druid priest and am well trained and experienced in these matters, it is I who will be judging these sins and deciding what penance there must be.”
Here Caelym paused again. Having had extensive experience in committing misdeeds himself, he knew the power of letting a guilty mind have time to consider its own judgment. When he felt that Aleswina had had enough time for self-rebuke, he continued, “First, I will say that it is no sin to speak Celt, which is the first and best of all languages, nor in your keeping silent, for that was what you had been told to do—but it is most certainly a sin to lie with your head on the lap of the one who raised you, feigning sleep and listening to words you knew were never intended for your ears!”
Aleswina bowed her head and gripped her cross.
“Now, as to the amount of this sin.” Caelym crossed his arms and assumed the somber expression befitting a high priest rendering his verdict. “I judge that this is a bigger sin than touching your own female parts for pleasure.”
At this, Aleswina reddened to the tips of her ears.
Caelym waited for her to look back up before he went on. “Yet I think it is not so bad a sin as taking coins from the poor. It is a medium sin. Do you agree with this?”
Aleswina bit down harder on her lip and nodded.
Caelym nodded back, although his arms remained crossed as he intoned. “Now as to the penance—for this middle sin, there will be two. First, though you have confessed and are sorry, you have too much knowledge to stay here in some convent among your own people, as I would have wished. Instead, you must travel on with us until we can find some convent in Celtic lands where our Saxon enemies will never find you.”
The poorly hidden happiness in both women’s faces left Caelym feeling discouraged that this penance would have any benefit in preventing future sins. Taking this as one more proof that Christianity was doomed to failure, he completed the formula anyway.
“And for your second penance, while we travel together, it is you who will be speaking in Celt instead of me who must speak English.”
“Mi wnaf,” Aleswina whispered, barely loud enough to hear.
Shifting to Celt as well, Caelym remained stern. “You are then forgiven but are to do no more sins in my presence!”
With that, he uncrossed his arms, took hold of her hands, and pulled her to her feet.
Aleswina wanted nothing more than to retreat into the boat but, as quickly as she stood up, Caelym dropped to his knees, so close to her that she stepped back, caught her legs against the edge of the boat and fell backwards—fortunately coming down on the center seat instead of landing upside-down in the bottom of the boat.
Caelym rose, pulled her back to standing, and knelt again at her feet. Then, looking solemnly up at her, he announced that he must now be confessing as well, “For I also have done sins, and it is you who must be hearing my confession and judging and giving the penance that I must do to be forgiven.”
Aleswina made no audible response, but Caelym continued on as if with her approval.
“When I did not think you could understand what I was saying, I have called you unkind names. I have called you stupid, and I have called you a coward as never I should have done, and I am sorry for it. Now, will you be judging this sin, and giving me some just penance that I may do, and then I will be forgiven?”
“It doesn’t matter . . . I don’t mind,” Aleswina stammered, barely aware that she was speaking Celt as if it were her first language. She would have edged away if Caelym had not put his arms out on either side of her and rested his hands on the side of the boat so that she was trapped there and could not move without coming into some contact with him.
Caelym remained on his knees. “Then you will not give me any penance, and I will not be forgiven but must be sorry for this ever after?” He gazed up at Aleswina with such a desolate expression that the gleam in his eyes might well have been unshed tears.
“Aleswina,” Annwr snapped, “give him his penance and forgive him, or we will be here until I die of old age!”
Casting about for something to say, Aleswina recalled her years of confessions at Saint Edeth. “Father Wulfric makes me say the fifty-first psalm once for each time I have been late for services or have thought unkind thoughts.”
“Then you will teach me this fifty-first psalm, and when I have said it once for each time I have called you stupid and each time I have called you a fool and each time I have thought these unkind thoughts, you will forgive me?”
Annwr answered for Aleswina that she would, only later, after they were in the boat and on their way, unless Caelym wanted his sons to be old men with beards before he saw them again.
With Annwr shooing them both, Aleswina clambered into the front of the boat, and Caelym heaved his pack after her. He shoved the craft into the water, held it in place long enough for Annwr to get on board, then gave it a final thrust and leaped in. As the current took hold, he scrambled into his seat, caught hold of the flailing oars, and maneuvered the boat into the center of the channel. Keeping a firm grip on the oars to steady the boat on its course, he braced his feet, straightened his back, and looked over Annwr’s head to where Aleswina was crouching in the prow of the boat. Assuming his most staunch and resolute voice, he declared, “I am ready! Recite for me this psalm fifty-one, and I will say it as decreed by your Christian priest, once for each time I have called you stupid, once for each time I have called you a coward, and once for each time I have thought these unkind thoughts.”