Chapter 46 Voices
Voices
Lydia Brown
We return from our expedition and bring Theresa back with us.
She shouldn’t leave without seeing the view at the bluff.
Now she sits with Kate and me on the porch, and we’re bathed in the golden light and revelations.
We slip off dirty shoes and settle around the table.
I pour Greek wine, and we munch on olives, miniature spinach pies, hummus, and pita bread I bought at the café.
The unraveling of Birdie’s hidden life is in full swing, and I add four more clue cards to the stack: BIRDIE’S BOOKMAKING ROOM, WATERFALL TUNNEL TO BIRDIE’S WRITING CHAMBER, TRIANGLE SIGN FOR KEEPER, GAELIC MESSAGE ON CAVE WALL.
I spread all the cards on the table, and we move them like chess pieces into different groupings, looking for the pattern.
Theresa picks up BIRDIE’S WRITING CHAMBER and separates it from the rest. “This one best represents Birdie’s expansive life.” She pops another miniature pie in her mouth then rubs her tiny feet with their turquoise-painted toenails the size of buttons. “I think it holds the heart of the mystery.”
“If that’s true, it’ll be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack,” I say. “The scope of that place is overwhelming. We don’t even know how many rooms there are or how the place is organized. Discovering that will be an overwhelming task, and my least favorite place is underground.”
“Well, ladies, how I wish I could stay till the very end, but tomorrow I go home. After lunch I’ll recount my findings with you, but for now, I need a shower and my soft bed. It has been a most excellent day.”
She leaves Gus and Kate with the wave of a weary hand, and I drive her to the inn in unusual quiet.
Theresa’s all talked out. When I return, Kate still sits in the swing watching the remnants of the sunset.
Since the curator arrived, we’ve had little time alone, and I finally get to ask, “What do you think about all this?”
“What am I thinking? How could I live in a place for ten years and know so little.”
“Don’t feel guilty. You saw what Birdie wanted you to see.”
Kate stares into the wine she swirls in her glass.
“Maybe,” she says. “But I know she wanted me to be more inquisitive. To challenge my beliefs. Instead, I held tight to my narrow ways.” Kate looks up with determination.
“But I want to make one thing clear, Lydia. I will not be digging through the contents of that depressing chamber room. I will not spend one day underground.”
I chuckle at her honesty. “I don’t think Theresa was suggesting that. She was reminding Granny C that you were called to care for the books. But I will be the one to do that deed, not you.”
“Because of the mark?”
“Maybe.” I hold up my hand, like an Indian peace sign. “Maybe because I share this sign with Granny C and Birdie and two other witches.”
“Two?”
“Loretty and my childhood friend Trula Freed. But the primary reason I’ll search Birdie’s chamber room is because she asked me to.”
It takes a moment for Kate to understand what I’m saying. “When did she ask you? The night you stayed in her yard?”
“No. Today.”
“You heard her today.”
“Yes. I don’t expect you to understand, Kate, but Birdie spoke to me when I entered her chamber.”
“What did she say?”
“I been waiting on you, Lydia Brown. Bout time you come. You finally there.”
“Did anybody else hear?”
“No. Not even Gus. Birdie spoke to me, but I knew who it was.”
“And you’re happy to have a ghost talking inside your head?” Kate begins to grin.
“I am thrilled.”
It’s Theresa’s final day. She will leave us a bounty of information, and we are settled into our familiar spots at the top of the stairs when the curator calls out in a tremulous voice we’ve not heard before. “Lydia, Kate, you’ve got to see this.”
She turns to face us with rapture on her face, like she won the lottery or found the Ark of the Covenant.
The manuscript is open on a bookstand near the end, and the format has changed.
It’s no longer an image of a healing plant and a list of its qualities and recipes for cures. It’s the cameo portrait of a woman.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“I’m scared to look away for fear she’ll disappear.” Theresa takes a deep breath then translates the lead paragraph.
“In The Apothecary Book of Elcho Priory herein lie abbreviated biographies of skilled women whose contributions are recorded. May these pages mark their dutiful place in Scottish history.”
I whisper in reverence, “Biographies. Of the women who created this masterpiece. Women who could have been lost from history.”
Kate asks, “Ever seen anything like this?”
“No, no, no,” Theresa replies. “Not this kind of testimony for and by women in medieval history. Certainly, there are articles about larger-than-life women like Joan of Arc and Pope Joan and Saint Hildegard of Bingen, but less than one percent of written history captures contributions by women. Their talents and gifts have been intentionally excluded throughout time. Virginia Woolf said it succinctly when she wrote in A Room of One’s Own—and I quote: ‘I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.’ I believe that’s true in all literary forms. Women chose anonymity in order to write.
In the case of our manuscript, this proclamation is an audacious and brave claim that is extraordinary. ”
Kate and I study the first portrait of a thin-faced, benevolent woman who lived nearly five hundred years ago. Theresa reads,
“Euphemia Leslie, prioress of Elcho, sought papal dispensation at age eighteen and was elevated to prioress. She was the spurious daughter of Walter Leslie, the parish priest of Kirkton of Menmuir and the daughter of John Stewart, Earl of Atholl. Her personal seal bore the arms of the houses of Leslie and Stewart of Atholl.”
“Spurious?” I lean forward to see the word in Gaelic. “Doesn’t that mean illegitimate?”
“Yes.”
We look at Euphemia’s portrait, her enigmatic smile that is reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. Was she responsible for this courageous addition? Her place at the start of this section is telling of her position.
I ask, “How many women are there?”
“Eleven, including our young Florie Leslie.”
Theresa gently turns page after page to the last image—a woman with red hair.
I ask Kate, “Are these the ghosts you saw at Birdie’s funeral?”
She has the strangest look on her face. The look when the impossible turns believable because facts can’t be denied. The moment of enlightenment. “Yes, but how can that be? Ghosts aren’t real. At least I don’t believe in them.”
“Maybe they believe in you,” Theresa says, then continues.
“We know from the journal that Florie is the illegitimate daughter of the prioress who was raped during a battle with the English. Eugenia became pregnant and chose to carry a bastard. That bravery gave Florie and her mother a special status. We already know that abortions were common during the Middle Ages, and that was due in part to the teachings of Aristotle.”
“What did he say about the matter?” I ask.
“He proclaimed a fetus was ensouled not at conception but at a later date. He proposed that the soul infused the male fetus at forty days because of his hotter temperament but eighty days for a woman with the cooler disposition.”
The three of us pause to contemplate this preposterous theory, and then we laugh at the influence of a clueless man twenty-four centuries ago. Kate speaks first. “How did he come up with that bizarre theory?”
“From studying fertilized chicken eggs.”
Theresa lets that remark hang in the air, then adds, “It took two thousand years for his liberal view to be overturned by papal order. God bless the jury of men who guess dreadfully at the divine mystery.”
The curator carefully turns the pages back to the beginning of the biographies and says, “Let me read these eleven names aloud. These brave women have been boxed in the dark for too long, haven’t they? Against staggering odds, it’s my pleasure to introduce the original Keepers of Truth.”
We hear the names Margaret Towers the herbologist, and Isabel Barclay, skilled in obstetrics and aborticide.
Elinor Stewart, Christian Moncrief, Christine Rocas, and Kathryn Smith, scribes, librarians, and herbalists, and Christina Harker the beekeeper.
By the time Theresa speaks the last names Isobel Wedderburn, Elizabeth Pollok, and Florie Leslie, my hands are folded in prayer.
It is the cherry-on-top moment we did not foresee in this unraveling of Birdie’s secrets.
“Kate,” I say. “Do you remember the directions we found from Romi to Birdie’s place through the tunnels?”
“I do.”
“Did I tell you Romi’s last name is Harker? She is a medicine woman and beekeeper. Like the name in the book.”
Kate says, “Then Christine Rocas is linked to Birdie.”
“Yes. I believe she is.”
Theresa’s orange Volkswagen is packed and it’s our final lunch before she leaves, and we celebrate with a meal on the patio at Little Switzerland Inn.
Sandy brings a platter of succulent tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and thinly sliced prosciutto beside pickled beets and corn salad.
Dessert is lemon tarts topped with meringue.
Between mouthfuls, Theresa asks the final question.
“Have you decided what will become of these treasures?”
I look to Kate for answers.
“They don’t belong in a rich man’s library,” she says. “Birdie’s books are teaching tools meant to inspire and educate.”
“True, but generating a lot of money isn’t a bad thing, is it? If they’re auctioned, they’d bring a fortune. I know the Rare Book School would make a generous bid.”
“But to what end?” Kate asks. “The money wouldn’t be mine. It was Birdie’s labors.”
“But she’s dead, Kate,” Theresa says tenderly. “Figuring out what’s next is up to you.”
We signal for more iced tea, and I ask a question that’s been nagging me.
“Where are the men?”
“What men?” Kate asks.
“Precisely. In all we’ve reviewed, there’s no mention of men, yet for this lineage, generations of female babies were born—yet even witches and medicine women need sperm to conceive.”
Theresa easily adds plausibility. “Witches and healers were commanding women. They could cast spells, so why not cast one over a convenient man when the time was right? We lesbians have found ways to become mothers that don’t involve legal commitment, and we can’t even cast spells.”
This is Theresa’s first admission that she is gay. It is the ease with which Theresa claims her identity that registers on Kate’s bewildered face. “So, you’re gay,” she says, plopping back in her chair. “Without hesitation, you say it out loud.” She glances around at diners within earshot.
“Of course. Being gay is like being born right-handed or left-handed. It’s simply part of who I am, and I’ve never denied my reality. What about you?”
In that split second the professor turns the table on Kate, and there it sits. An easy declaration for one, and something that is a source of pain in the other. Kate squirms under Theresa’s gaze.
“You don’t understand,” she begins.
“I probably do.”
“It was Mother—”
“Ah…Mother.”