Sacrifice Read Online Free PDF

spoke.
    â€œYou put me in a difficult position, Sister Deirdre. I need your expertise to solve this crime, but I also need your obedience. As you may have noticed through the years, I do not like or trust the druids. I have always maintained good relations with the Order for the sake of this monastery, but I am not like Brigid—or you. I do not believe we can all work together for a common spiritual goal. We share many values with the druids, but in the end our ways are not compatible. There is either one God or many, one path to salvation or not, one life followed by judgment or endless reincarnations as the druids teach. Christ either died to redeem the whole world or he didn’t. I confess that my feelings about the Order are colored by my own experiences, but I cannot change who I am.”
    I knew it was not my place to ask Sister Anna about her personal life. She was a deeply private woman who never talked about her past. She was from Britain—several of the sisterswere, but they had all left their homeland of their own free will to come to Ireland and follow Brigid’s path. Still, I had to know.
    â€œSister, what do you mean when you say your feelings are colored by your own experiences? Why do you feel this way about the druids?”
    The abbess scowled at me.
    â€œThat, Sister Deirdre, is none of your business.”
    â€œYes, Sister Anna, you’re right, of course. It’s just that my grandmother once told me that you know more about the ways of the druids than most.”
    â€œWhat did she tell you?” she asked angrily. “How would she know anything about my past?”
    â€œShe wouldn’t tell me anything more. I had the feeling she herself didn’t know much, perhaps just bits of a story she had heard long ago from some other druids.”
    Sister Anna looked at me hard, with anger and pain in her eyes.
    â€œDo you really want to know, Sister Deirdre? Perhaps I should tell you, just so you can learn the truth about the druids you so honor and protect.”
    She rose from her chair and stared out the window for a long time. I heard a dog barking somewhere in the distance. At last she spoke, her voice cold and empty, not even turning toward me, as if she were talking to the growing darkness.
    â€œI was born on a small farm on the western coast of Britain near the old Roman town of Luguvalium. My baptismal name was Anna, though my father always called me Blodeuyn, which in my language means ‘flower.’ He was a giant of a man, but he was always gentle with me. My mother was the disciplinarian in the family. She worked hard to keep us alive every winter when the north wind blew down from the land of the Picts. I had two sisters and an older brother who helped on the farm,just as I did. I was the youngest. My most important job was to feed the chickens and collect their eggs each morning. We never had much, but we were happy.
    â€œThe Irish raiders came in the spring, just after the seed was in the ground. They slipped into our farm quietly at night and surrounded the place before we realized what was happening. Somehow my father awoke and knew something was terribly wrong. He roused everyone and told us to stay hidden while he and my brother took the two rusty swords we kept in the house and rushed out into the yard. There were perhaps a dozen pirates waiting. They laughed at my father and brother standing there determined to protect us from so many of them. They changed their minds when my father skewered one through the heart with his sword and threw another against our low stone wall, breaking his back. The remaining men rushed my father and brother, hacking them both to pieces as we watched from the window.
    â€œThe men burst through the door of the hut and grabbed my mother, my sisters, and me and tied us with ropes. After they had stolen what little of value they could find, they raped us, taking turns while the others ate what food we had. I was