In the Wilderness (6 page)

Outside, the morning sun shone so fairly upon the little green before the church—this summer it scarcely rained but at night. After mass Olav and his companion strolled northward through the streets that led up to St. Paul’s churchyard.

The houses here were much higher than in Oslo and they were
built of timber, with daubing between and boarded gables. But here and there the rows of houses were broken by strong stone halls surrounded by walls; watchmen with sword in hand stood at the gates. A green courtyard could be seen within, where men-at-arms exercised themselves in archery and games of ball.

There were trading booths along the walls of the churchyard, but if anyone stopped for a moment to look at the wares, a man instantly appeared to pounce upon the customer. Such was never the custom in Oslo—except among the Germans of Mickle Yard, where it was young women who stopped to look. But otherwise a man might go in everywhere, look around the shop, turn over and handle everything that was exposed for sale—the owner feigned not to see, scarce looked up from his work as he answered any question that was put to him. But here the prentices ran out into the street after folk. And here was a vast deal of noise and shouting.

The church bells rang incessantly above their heads—bells here and bells there, the deep booming of great bells and the busy tinkling of little chimes. Then for a while all the bells began to peal together in an immense chorus of resonance. With the conventual churches and all the small parish churches Olav thought there must be far more than half a hundred churches in London. At least ten of them were as great as the Halvard Church in Oslo; St. Paul’s was greater than any other church he had seen.

In the east by the town wall stood the convent of the Franciscans, and in the open place before it the corn market was held. Huge wagons with teams of oxen and great heavy-limbed horses made the market-place and the streets about it difficult to move in. Olav and Tomas Tabor walked about for hours looking at this fair show of wealth. Even now in the middle of summer the great bulging sacks stood ranged along the pavement—untied, so as to show the good golden corn. The dust from it hung over the place like a light mist. The cooing of a multitude of pigeons was heard as an undertone through the din and the hum of voices.

The town wall was also worth looking at closely, with its strong towers and barbicans before the gates. There were prisoners in some of the gate towers, and they let down little baskets from the loop-holes, so that people might give them alms. The guards at all the gates were picked men, excellently clothed and armed.

The convent bells rang for the last mass; the sun was now high
and it began to feel warm. Olav and his companion were sweating: they wore shirts of mail under their tunics; the Richardsons had told them they must always do so here. The soil, fed with the offal of human habitation for hundreds of years, gasped out its stench, but from the gardens behind the houses, enclosed by stone fences or convent walls, was wafted the sweet scent of elders and roses, the hot, spicy breath of pinks and celery. And now the smell of food, roast and boiled, poured out of open doors—it was getting on for dinner-time. The two strangers increased their pace through the lanes leading down to the river; they felt the suck of hunger under their ribs.

Black swarms of crows and jackdaws whose nests were in the church towers swooped down as soon as any offal was thrown out. There was a sickening stench from the blood that ran out of the slaughterhouses, making the gutter in the middle of the street run red. But when they came into the street of the brewers they were met by the sweet steam rising from the warm grains that were thrown out, and they had to drive off the pigs that were gobbling them, before they could pass. It was good to feel hungry and to buy bread on the way, two smooth, round, golden-brown loaves.

The ale-keg lay waiting for them in the ferryman’s boat; he had offered to fetch the ale for them every morning and would not take pay for it beyond what was agreed. But then he took toll of the keg. Olav and the men swore a little and laughed a little when they shook it after coming aboard.

They brought their sheepskins out on deck into the sunshine, and produced from their chests butter, dried meat, and cheese. Olav made the sign of the cross on the loaves with his knife and divided them. Then they flung themselves down on their sleeping-bags and ate and drank in silence, for they were both hungry and thirsty. The ale was excellent. And then this new-baked bread that they ate every day over here—they agreed that there was no need to waste money on fresh meat in the taverns when they had that.

Olav got on well with his two shipmates; they were men of few words, both of them. A good thing that chatterer Sigurd Mund, as they called him, had gone with Galfrid.

After the meal Olav and Leif stretched themselves on their bags. Tomas Tabor sat down to play on a little pipe he had bought
in the town. The thin tone of it, rising three notes, trilling down again, and leaping about the scale, the same over and over again, sounded, as Olav lay half-asleep, like a little maid at play, climbing about a stairway—at times he could plainly see Cecilia.

Toward evening Olav took the ship’s boat and rowed on the river. The finest of all views of the town was from the water; there was a movement on the stream like that of a great highway. From the stately houses on the Strand, west of the city, came great barges, flying swiftly along under ten or twelve pairs of oars; across the water came the music of minstrels and pipers playing to the lords and ladies on board.

A little lower down, the walls of a castle rose out of the river, with strong water-gates and a wharf outside, and lofty gabled halls behind—
Domus Teutonicorum
. Olav fixed his eyes on the castle as he drifted past in his little boat. It booted little for folk of other lands to contend with these merchants of Almaine; bitterly he reflected that no doubt the day would come when they would found their hanse on Oslo wharves too. But it was a fair house, this of theirs, as everything that bears witness of strength is fair in its way.

He turned and rowed up against the stream. Now he passed the south-western water-tower of the town wall and could see the whole western sweep of the wall from the outside, with the towers and barbicans before the gates. Soon the roofs of the Knights Templars’
prœceptorium
appeared above the trees.

Olav had never been out there, but Galfrid said he ought to go on a Friday morning. Then they carried out into the field an immense red cross, and while a priest preached to the people, the knights stood around, clad in mail with drawn swords in their hands, the points raised to heaven; they stood as though cast in bronze. And their priest must be the most powerful of preachers, for the people wept and sobbed, both men and women.

Olav’s thoughts were busied, half toying, with this monastery of warriors. He had heard that the Pope had given their Grand Prior the same right of loosing and binding as he had himself. Before a man was admitted to the brotherhood he had to confess all the sins he had committed in his life, both atoned and unatoned—and of the severe penance he had to undergo the world heard no more than it hears of what is done in purgatory. They had strange
customs, folk said—he who would enter their ranks was compelled to strip naked and lie thus for a night in an open grave in the floor of the church, as a sign that he was dead to all his former life.

He had seen the Templars ride through London more than once; they were clad in chain armour from the throat to the soles of their feet, with a red cross on their white tunic, which they wore over the shirt of mail, and on their white mantle; their great battle-maces also bore the sign of the cross. He had heard of the warrior monks before, but never seen them.

Then there were the anchorites. There were so many of them here in London; some dwelt in cells within the town wall and some in little houses that were built against a church with an opening in the wall between, so that the hermit might see the altar and the ciborium that held the body of the Lord. Some had a lay brother or a lay sister to do their errands for them, but many, both men and women, had caused themselves to be walled up, that they might share the lot of the most wretched prisoners. One of them dwelt in the wall close to a dungeon—till the day of his death he was to live there in a cold, black hole into which the water dripped, in his own stench and in his sour and mouldy rags; he was crippled and paralysed with rheumatism. And this man’s life had been distinguished by great holiness even as a child and while he was living as a monk in his convent. When men who were to suffer punishment were led past the orifice of his cell, the anchorite cried out: “Be merciful, as your Father in heaven is merciful!”

Of late years Olav’s thoughts had now and then been drawn toward the monastic life—whether it might be the end of his difficulties if he adopted it. But not for a moment had he believed it in earnest. Whatever might be God’s will with him, he was surely not called to be a monk. Of that he had the most certain sign—for it was not the hardships of the monastic life that he shrank from. On the contrary, to let fall from his shoulders all that a monk is bound to renounce, to submit to the discipline of the rule—for this he had often longed. Nevertheless no man was fit for this unless God gave him special grace thereto. But now Olav had roamed long enough as an outlaw on the borders of the realm of God’s grace to perceive that when once a man of his own will surrenders himself to God and accepts what is laid upon him, God’s power over him is without limit. And in the long, sleepless nights
he had often thought: “Now they are going into the choir in their convents, men and women, standing up to serve their Lord with praise, prayer, and meditation, like guards about a sleeping camp.” But it was all the things that were included in the rules for the relief and repose of man’s frail nature that
he
could not think of without distaste: the brotherly life, the hours of converse, when a monk has to show humility and gentleness toward his fellows, whether he like them or not, whether he be minded to speak or be silent; to have to go out among strangers or to serve in the guest-house when the prior bade him, even if he would rather be alone. He had seen that this was beyond the power of many monks, who were otherwise good and pious men; they grew sour and cross with strangers, quarrelsome among themselves. But this was a sign that these men were not fitted for the monastic life. “One may carve Christ’s image as fairly in fir as in lime,” Bishop Torfinn had once said to Arnvid, on his expressing a wish that he could be as calm and good-humored as Asbjörn All-fat; “but never have I heard that He turned fir into lime, like enough because it would be a useless miracle. With God’s grace you may become as good a man as Asbjörn, but I trow He will not give you All-fat’s temper, for all that.”

But now he saw that the life of a monk had other paths than those he knew at home in Norway. There were paths also for those who were not fitted to associate with strange brethren. Warfare with the discipline of the convent behind that of the warrior, like a hair shirt under the coat of mail—in the Holy Land the Templars’ hosts had been cut down many a time to the last man. In the Carthusians’ monasteries each monk lived in a little house by himself; they met only in church. And now he had seen some other monks, the Maturines—their white habit resembled that of the preaching friars, but they bore a red and blue cross on their breasts. They collected alms, wherewith to cross the sea and redeem Christian men from slavery among the Saracens. And when they had no more money, the youngest and strongest of these monks gave themselves in exchange for sick and weary prisoners.

It had not yet come to any fixed purpose with Olav, but it made him thoughtful. The world had widened to his vision, and he now saw that that other world which stretched its curtain over the earth from one end to the other was without bounds. And now, when he saw himself standing beneath this immense vault, he felt
so small and so lonely and so
free
. What mattered it if a franklin from the Oslo fiord never came home again? He might be stabbed any evening on the quays here—they might be plundered and slain by pirates on the Flanders side this autumn, they might be wrecked on the coast of Norway—every man who put to sea on a trading voyage knew that such things might easily happen, and none stayed at home on that account. Strange that he could have thought it so great a matter, as he tramped over his land and splashed about his creek, that he should rule the manor—indifferently well—if he had to murder his own soul to do it.

That might yet be while
she
was alive. But now—Arne’s daughters and their husbands would take charge of the children and of the estate if he sent home a message this autumn that he would not return.

London’s church bells rang—time to put out fires. Olav rowed downstream again. He put in at a little wharf just below the western water tower. The old man who took his boat was so thickly covered with beard and dirt that he seemed overgrown with moss. Olav exchanged a few words with him—he had picked up a little English now. Then he made his way through the lanes, where children ran and shouted and refused to obey their mothers who called them in, up to the Dominicans’ church.

He said the evening prayers and a
De profundis
for his dead, and then found himself a seat on some steps that led to a door in the wall. With his chin in his hands he waited till the monks should come into the choir and sing complin.

The lofty windows darkened and grew dense; dusk collected under the vaulting and filled the aisles. A single votive candle burned before one of the side altars, but up in the choir the golden lamp alone hovered like a star in the twilight. Outside the open doors the fading daylight paled in a grey mist. Folk came strolling in to hear evensong; the echo of their chattering whispers murmured incessantly through the lofty pillared church; their footsteps rang softly on the stone flooring. Then came the hushed but penetrating beat of many footfalls in the choir, the clatter of seats being turned up; the tiny flames of the candles were lighted on the monks’ desks, throwing their faint gleam on the rows of white-clad men standing up in the carved stalls. And down in the body of the church there was a rustle of people rising and drawing nearer, while a hard, clear, man’s voice began to intone and
was answered by the chant of more than half a hundred throats, the first short sentences and responses—till the whole male choir raised the song of David on sustained, monotonous waves of sound.