Read Online The Woman who Loved an Octopus and other Saint's Tales by Imogen Rhia Herrad - Free Book Online Page A

end, and now I have. This is for you, Eiliwedd you little whore, for going against me.
    There’s something whistling though the air and then pain explodes on the side of my neck and I stumble in the water and fall; and the horse splashes past me.
    I can’t breathe, my neck hurts like it did that time someone was trying to strangle me, tighter and tighter. There’s a pounding in my ears and a voice that whines, Eiliwedd, Eiliwedd, help me, help me.
    My feet are cold from the water, my legs, my whole body; all I am now is the pain and a voice that whimpers her name.

    cold, cold water, cold cold i’m so cold
    cold is better than the pain that is everywhere.
    Dead.
    I think I am dead, I wish I could see Eiliwedd again and tell her that I died for her, and ask her to forgive me.

    When I open my eyes again it’s dark; I can hear the water in the stream rushing and I’m cold, so cold; and there’s a terrible pain in the side of my neck whenever I move, whenever I breathe.
    I’m not dead.
    I’m still alive and Eiliwedd is still dead.

    * * *

    I have left my hut on the hill. I can’t stay now that she is dead again, and everyone knows it.
    Her story is being told now, just like all those god stories in the book that she told me about.
    People tell her story as if she was someone they’d made up. How she ran away from home so she wouldn’t have to marry the man her father chose for her. How she lived in Christian poverty but was run out of villages because people thought she was a thief, homeless, a woman of the road; and how her god later sent plagues to those villages, to punish them. How she finally found charity with a big lord who let her live on his land, and how the man she’d refused to marry - others say it was her father himself - went after her. And how she defended her chastity and died for it.

    Everybody knows she’s dead now; they heard the man brag about how he’d killed the bitch that had gone against his orders. Someone saw me lie in the stream, white and bleeding from the neck. They wouldn’t want me to be alive now. Maybe they wouldn’t even want her to be alive. When I got up and crawled away, they just said it was a miracle; her dead body disappearing like that.
    They’re beginning to call her a saint, not because she was sweet and tried to be free and not to harm anybody; but because they say she was a virgin, and because she is dead.

    Yesterday I began to collect acorns and horse chestnuts and shells from the stream for a necklace. I hope she can see me. I hope she can forgive me for having twice stolen her life.

    I miss her.

Eurgain
    First century AD

    eurgain (obsolete) adj – of golden brightness, golden and beautiful
    Eurgain was the daughter of Prince Caratacus (Caradog) of Glamorgan. Around 50 AD, he and his family were taken to Rome as captives in the wake of the Roman conquest of Britain.
    In Rome, Eurgain is believed to have taken on the revolutionary new Christian faith. When she returned to Wales some years later, she brought the religion and, so the story goes, a group of Christians with her and started spreading the word. This would make her the first missionary in Britain.
    Many women in the early church were active as deacons, preachers and missionaries: either alone, in pairs or with their husbands.
    Her church came to be called Côr Eurgain or Bangor Eurgain. It was already an old place by the time – some 400 years later – that Saint Illtud came to live there. Today, Côr Eurgain is known by his name: Llanilltud Fawr, Llantwit Major.

A rddun! Arddun!!
    They said you might get here today. It is so good to see you! How long has it been – six years?
    Come on! Let’s go down to the beach and talk.

    I’ve only been back a couple of weeks; me and Grandfather, we travelled together. Mother and Father and Gwyn and Einir and Gwladus are still in Rome. Gwladus got married last year.
    She’s