Muirchu relates that along this road there is someone coming.
It is Patrick, archbishop of Armagh, the stateless Gaul, the miracle-worker, the founder. He is a graying colossus. A widower by vocation, and powerful. Behind him are thirty disciples and attendants with croziers and reliquaries, circular shields, books and swords. It is not entirely a strolclass="underline" if he is marching like this from Armagh to Clonmacnoise, from Armagh to Dún Ailinne, and from Armagh to Dún Loaghaire it’s because he must convert to Christ the kings who in their fortified clods feebly worship Lug, Ogma, cauldrons, harps, and idols. And that, thinks Patrick on this spring road, is not difficult. All it requires is a few druidic spells, a couple of well-primed acolytes, and snow is instantly turned into butter, water into beer, the flames of purgatory appear at the tip of the magic rod, and the Holy Trinity in a shamrock leaf. These conjuring tricks are enough to bamboozle the jocular, pensive kings, who waver. And perhaps because he is growing old and his ardor and his malice are becoming blunted, Patrick regrets such facility as he walks along this road. He would like a real miracle to occur, just once, and for once in his lifetime, matter in its all its opacity to be converted to Grace before his eyes. He looks at the dust at his feet; he has not noticed that the road runs alongside a river. He hears the shrieks of the three girls.
He lifts his head; he sees the milk-white rust-spotted flesh through the leaves. The troop halts. He walks alone partway down the embankment. The girls are still at their games and do not know that the men are looking at them. Patrick immediately loves them with soul and body: they are flagrant and excessive, like Grace itself. He calls to them. Their gestures freeze. Against the morning sun they see silhouetted the powerful man who looks like a king: his linen tunic, his cloak, the gold on his clasp; and above him they see the royal procession, thirty attendants brought to a stand, croziers and shields, silence. Below this array the girls are naked. They offer greetings the way princesses greet a king, step unhurriedly onto the riverbank, and put on their clothes. He has come down and stands beside them; he is very tall. He asks whose daughters they are. He asks if they know the true God: they see that the gold on his clasp is a cross. They say that they do not know Him but that a slave has told them about Him, that they wish to know Him. They laugh; this beautiful morning has brought them a bathe, a king, and a god. They form a sort of pagan circle around the old colossus. They ask questions the way they slapped the surface of the water, the way they ran, with body and soul entire. “Is He handsome?” they say. “Is He young or old? Does He have daughters?” says Brigid. “Are his daughters beautiful, and are they loved by the men of this world?” Patrick replies that His beauty is devastating and that all the girls on this earth are His daughters. Although He is young, He has a son, but the Son is no younger than the Father, nor the Father older than the Son. He is the Bridegroom of every girl in this world.
The two sisters have sat down, but not Brigid. She has stepped a few paces away on the riverbank; she looks at her bare feet; she half turns her back to Patrick. She shivers. In a rasping voice she says, “I want to see Him.”
“No one has seen Him,” says Patrick, “who is not baptized.” He talks about the River Jordan, the angels on its banks, the waters that redeem, about John and the Master. The girls want to be baptized. Once again they stand undressed in the river, very serious, their eyes closed. Patrick rolls up his chausses, and above this excessive flesh he performs the requisite small gestures. Brigid opens her eyes; the sun has turned; it is almost noon. “I don’t see Him,” she says.
King Leary’s servants appear; he is worried about his daughters. A few words are exchanged. The procession leaves the river; they pass through the mantlet and the wattle surrounding the clod. The fortified gate closes on the croziers, the blessed colossus, and the girls: he clasps the two sisters close, holding them by the shoulders; Brigid walks ahead. Now they have disappeared from view. Patrick is doubtless performing his usual repertoire, devised for the benefit of the last of the feeble Merovingian kings. Leary’s loud laugh can be heard, druidic spells, Latin. Preparations for a banquet can also be heard. Then, all night long, singing, inebriation. The girls are in their chamber.
Once again it is a spring dawn. Brigid at her window closes her eyes violently, and opens them: there is only the daylight gradually approaching, the silver thread of the river growing larger. The sun rises like a bridegroom, but it’s not the Bridegroom. Gently she pushes open the door of the king’s chamber. Wrapped in his fur-lined cloak Leary is sleeping like a drunkard, dreaming of raids and cattle. His mouth is open, he is older than he was yesterday, but brutal and handsome. He is talking in his sleep. He says a name. Brigid thinks she hears her own name in the name from the dream. All the blood leaps in her heart; she flees in panic down the passages; she is in the guest chamber. Patrick opens his eyes. Brigid is standing over him. She seems very tall. She is pale. She is excessive and determined like a queen. She says, “I want to see your God face to face.”
Patrick sighs. He sits up on his bed.
Now we may imagine that all morning long and perhaps until nightfall, without leaving the guest chamber Patrick sits holding her in his gaze and evangelizes the girl, whose soul he sees naked just as he saw her milk-white rust-spotted breasts. All without druidic quibble, just the arid truth of the Greeks and the Jews; the Fall, which veils the holy Countenance from us, the oblique mirror in which fallen man can nonetheless glimpse the holy Countenance, and the promise that one day the veil will be torn away, a promise made to us on the banks of the River Jordan and repeated at a supper in Jerusalem. Brigid does or does not understand; but she understands only too well, and with painful clarity, that you sometimes see the face of God when you have received within your own body the body of the Bridegroom in the form of a little wafer that melts on the tongue. This is what she wants. And starting from that moment, on the following day and the days after that the colossus prepares the three virgins for communion, with the permission of the king, who, jocular or pensive, sometimes appears in the doorway of the room where Patrick is performing his holy pedagogical duties. Eight days, then: eight days of study and mortification, time for April to give way to May — and outside still the silver river where the girls no longer go. They learn Latin words from books, which they read by running their tiny fingers over them. Patrick’s heart melts.
At last the eve of the ceremony arrives. They have tried on their white linen robes, the gold fibulas. They are asleep, except for Brigid. She is still wearing her robe and her fibula. She tiptoes into the king’s chamber. It is lit by the moon. In the warmth of the May night, the king lies naked and quiet, at ease; he is not dreaming about women. Brigid wants to weep. And weeping she runs to the guest chamber. She kneels beside Patrick; he is sleeping somberly, and the sorrow caused by his dream is visible on his face. He dreams that Christ is dead, and Lord, how young the saints appear: they caress the naked body with their milk-white rust-spotted fingers. Brigid touches his shoulder; he sits bolt upright, afraid, and he is irritated by this indistinct fear. He can see the excessive flesh inside the white linen, he can smell it. “Swear to me,” says Brigid, “that I shall see Him tomorrow.” He looks at her with staring eyes, a large, irascible old man ejected from his dream back onto earth. He says, “You will see Him when you die, as will all of us in this world.”