Pier 21 Prompt Response

St. Patrick’s Goat

A Story of Sorts

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

In my bones, I feel the beauty of Skerries, or in my mother tongue, Na Sceirí, to be the most beautiful when she is in a foul mood.

Each time I ride on her moods like I ride on her waves, bracing for destruction, and grateful when she shows me mercy.

My body is a pebble, smoothed by the caress of her touch — a touch that is, at times, malevolent. Still, I am utterly bound to her.

Were it me alone, we could live together in simple harmony. I would have all her riches to myself: her fish, her herbs, her fertile fields in which to sow my crops.

Alas, I was not the first soul to be born here, and certainly not the last.

There is talk of a foreign missionary who has recently made berth on a nearby island. He calls himself Patrick. Yesterday morning, I overheard on the wind that he, as a young lad, was brought to this land by raiders and spent an enslaved six years herding sheep. He fled to his homeland, but didn’t remain long. God came to Patrick in his dreams, and urged him to return to Ireland. These days, he preaches, he teaches the Trinity with the use of a common shamrock. People have begun to revere him as a saint.

Preposterous, I say! I’ve seen the man recently — with my own eyes — and naught about him sits right with me. No man is charitable for charity’s sake. We humans all get something out of it. We demand favors. We do not pursue the gates of Heaven without recompense for our suffering!

This man seeks fame, I feel it in my gut. He’s not worthy to step on the land of Na Sceirí, and this he knows well. That’s why he hides out on his little island — what a coward! If God told him to return, why does he linger on the island, cut off from the people he claims to desire to share his faith with? Patrick is a fraud and a fool, I daresay.

Food is scarce here. As I said, were I fortunate to be the only inhabitant in Na Sceirí, I would be wholly nourished from her fish and fields. I share because I must. I have naught of value with which to go to market. Until recently, I hadn’t the ability to muster strength within my muscles.

When Patrick passed me in the alleyway, he hardly lowered an eye to where I groveled in the dirt. My body shook from an onslaught of coughing, struggling for air enough to ask him to spare a bit of silver or otherwise something with which to barter. The man, cloaked in a mysterious garment of mist, strode onwards.

In time, fortified by the salty air my dear Na Sceirí breathed into me, my lungs have healed. But regrettably, she has not been able to replenish my desperate stomach.

Therefore, I have a plan. I shall round up my bretheren. One of them will commandeer a dinghy. We will see what this Saint Patrick has taken from us. I do fear he has sequestered a harem of our fairest Irish women, though the man proclaims chastity.

This I know: his eyes sparkle green with sin.

When we departed, Na Sceirí was in a right foul mood. Her tangled seaweed hair tossed under our vessel, roughly swaying our bretheren from side to side. We had naught in our stomachs to purge. I sang in praise of her ephemeral beauty, hand to my heart. We pressed onward, towards the speck of land in the distance.

We had to be careful now, not to break our humble vessel upon the rocks. The strongest man steered us in with the grace of a dancer, and we lit our lanterns to regard this shadowy land. A church had been erected in stone that matched the sky. Had the man built it alone? Had he slaves of his own, to revenge for the six years he himself was enslaved?

In the church, we found Latin scribblings we could not comprehend. Patrick was not there. There was nary a meal to be had. Then, through the storm, we heard a sound coming from outside. A woman?

In a small enclosure, I came to find no such woman — instead, a single goat. One of my men laughed at the irony that such a pious man would keep a symbol of the devil in his midst.

With hatred burning in my gut, I stared into the beast’s rectangular pupils, utterly otherworldly, and reached for the blade in my pocket.

Patrick’s voice carried over the whipping wind before I even saw his tall figure stride along the sandy path. I kept my eyes ahead, on the gray waves, jaw tightened, trying to appear like a man with naught to hide.

He moved along the line of us, purposeful and unhurried. Some of the other inhabitants shifted on their feet.

“One amongst you has taken what was mine,” Patrick decreed. “My dear companion, an innocent creature of God.”

I could still taste the fat of the beast on the backs of my teeth. We had burned the hide and buried the bones before dawn. There was naught for him to find.

He stopped in front of me.

Not for long — just a breath longer than he’d stopped in front of the others. His eyes were patient, the eyes of a man who had learned patience the hard way, out on the drenched hills with naught but sheep for company. He said naught. He moved on.

But something happened in my chest in that pause. I couldn’t name it then. I can name it now, years later, turning it over like a stone in my palm: it was witchcraft.

He reached the end of the line and turned to face us all.

“God sees the hunger that drove the hand,” he said. “And God sees the hand.”

The tide crashed in. We stood in silence.

Mind you, I have ne’er eaten so well, before or since. I have ne’er slept so poorly thereafter.

When I determined to speak, to break the maddening silence, only the ghostly bleating of the accursed goat came forth.

This is my response to the Pier 21 Prompt: Tales in Time. I recently travelled to Skerries, Ireland, just 30km north of Dublin. There, I came across **the legend of St. Patrick and the goat** and was inspired to explore the tale from the perspective of one of the thieves, whose name was lost to time, if indeed he ever existed.

You are warmly invited to send us your own historical fiction piece and attend our feedback workshop on June 20th at 6:00PM (Berlin time). I will link the prompt and announcement below:

[embed]Tales in Time Pier 21: May-June (Special Edition)medium.com