I want to light the fifth candle today – to remember, as if I could ever forget! A simple gesture perhaps, futile even, but I know that when I gaze into that small, yet resplendent flame – it will all come back to me. The anger, the pain, the fear, the days when I didn’t want to survive, and the days when I held onto that survival with every ounce of strength I had left. This candle has brought me full circle now. Yes. It IS time to remember…

I lit that first candle for warmth. The dank, moss-covered walls of the cave did nothing to protect me from the harsh elements outside. As that small, insistent flame overcame the darkness and gradually melted winters’ icy clutch from my stiff, frostbitten fingers, I recalled the fierce heat of anger that raged through me that fateful day – the day of the Hanging. The day I cursed the priest.

I was tired, so very tired, but those voices! Those voices in my head kept me from blissful slumber.

“Witch, Witch!” they cried. “Burn, Witch, Burn!”

I lit the second candle then. It’s probing swords of light battled against the darkness and the menacing voices calling to me from the shadows, and though sweet dreamless sleep came upon me, the darkness still seemed to triumph.

I cannot remember how many days and nights I ran from that witch hunt, but always I saw Dominic’s’ face before me, his eyes filled with terror as he pleaded for his life, protesting his innocence until the rope snapped his neck in two. And he WAS innocent – he was no murderer!! That night, I felt the new life within me kick for the first time, and I lit the third candle to honour the father my unborn child would never know. The light triumphed.

I have placed a curse on a man of the Cloth – God save my soul! A man who outwardly embraced all that is good and pure, a man who openly preached love, hope and charity, but who harboured an ambition so powerful that he was prepared to send an innocent man, my Dominic, to the gallows. The common habit of a lowly priest was not enough for the brother. He craved the robes of power that he would wear as Bishop. I lit the fourth candle in memory of the rightful Bishop who now lies in the darkness of a freshly dug grave. It was not only the tainted communion wine which led to his untimely demise, but the greed and ambition of the man I cursed – the priest who would be Bishop, the bushel that tried to smother the light.

Tallow and wick – this simple candle does not seem like very much at all. But I light it not for all that is past, the grief survived, the pain endured or the anger – now spent. I light this fifth candle for the love and the joy my unborn child will bring me, and for the memories of the past – now laid to rest. I know that good will triumph over evil, just as this flame, steadfast and true, will bring light to a darkened room.