The Oblate's Confession (10 page)

But of course he hadn’t. And so I decided Father must have been right, that this man was no different from any other. Indeed, now that I thought about it, I wondered if Prior Dagan might have been trying to tell me something more, if, possibly, he had wished to warn me that this Gwynedd, this reputed holy man, was not only not special, he was also not particularly nice, that, in point of fact, he might be mean, someone like Baldwin, a mean man who did not like children. Which, in turn, got me to thinking about the other thing, the thing I’d been trying so hard to forget, that soon— not too soon, but soon enough: seven days—I was going to have to go back up there, I was going to have to go back up there and stay with him, stay with this man Father might have been trying to
warn me about, stay through the night (in the wood!) with this man who did not look special, did not even look like a monk, this man who, truth be told, looked like nothing so much as a beggar, one of the evil thieving beggars.

By the time we recrossed Wilfrid’s bridge, the sun was down and Redestone sat quiet and dark beneath her stars. Prior Dagan met us at the kitchen gate, signing to us to keep our voices down while whispering rather loudly himself. We had missed collation but Father had set aside cold soup and bread for us. I remember he hugged me, though he wasn’t supposed to, and listened while I told him and Tatwine about our day. After a while I grew sleepy. It was nice to be home.

The dream is always the same, I climb and I climb but, no matter how high I go, how desperate I become, I never can find the hermit. Later, when I awaken, the reason for this will become clear: the mountain I’ve been climbing isn’t Modra nect; it’s some other mountain, like Modra nect but not like it too. On at least one occasion it wasn't even a true mountain, just an unending series of hills. Nevertheless, and despite the obvious incongruities, I always resolutely climb on, certain only of my uncertainty, that things are not right, that these landmarks, while familiar, are, in some fundamental way, wrong: a spring at the top of a cliff instead of the bottom, a valley where the path was meant to rise. Once I even sought the wrong hermit. I remember how strange I felt upon waking to realize that, instead of Father Gwynedd, I had been sent
after a Father Spoor. An interesting name when you think about it, as if I had searched after searching itself—the art of searching, its methods and tools.

My first trip up Modra nect by myself must have been very much like my dream. I must have been exceedingly afraid, exceedingly unsure of myself. No doubt I thought I was lost again and again. But I cannot swear to this, for I have no memory of that first climb. Indeed, nowadays, I cannot even imagine what it would be like to
not
know my way up that path—its bends and turns, its slopes and level places, having long since been laid down as surely in my mind as they are upon the mountain itself. Nevertheless, as the scar left by a wound otherwise long forgotten may still, on occasion, pucker and ache, so the mark left by that first trip still sometimes troubles my sleep and I awaken in panic, bedding wrapped round me like winding sheets, heart pounding in my ears, arms flailing about like those of a man trying to swim to safety. After a moment or two, sheepishly, I remember where I am, who I am, that I have no reason to fear losing my way on the mountain anymore, that, indeed, I have no reason to go there anymore. I lie back on my bed as relieved as I was when, on that first trip, I finally did reach the hermit’s camp. For that I do recall, the giddy sense of accomplishment, the pride, the silly joy. “Father!” I remember shouting, “Father, I am here!”

The hermit looked up, all color drained from his face.

I stood where I was, hand still hanging stupidly in the air. I had done just what I had been told not to do, I had disturbed the holy man at his prayers.

For a moment or two the hermit just looked at me. Then, slowly, like a man getting up from a long sleep, he unwrapped himself from his sitting position and, awkwardly, climbed to his feet.

I smiled a little, but thought better of waving again. Should I prostrate myself? Did people do that sort of thing on a mountain?

The hermit took a few hesitant steps toward me, then stopped at a distance too respectful for the kiss of peace.

Again I smiled. Should I bow? No one had told me anything.

The hermit did not smile. He stood very still and very straight, looking at me as if he had forgotten something.

I was about to whisper,
Winwæd, I am your servant Winwæd,
when, cautiously, like a man lowering a fragile weight to the ground, the hermit lowered himself to his knees, looked at me one last time as if reconsidering, then lay all the way down, face-down on the ground before me, that great unshaven head of his coming to rest about a hand's width from my foot.

That was a hard spring for Redestone. With the abbey’s stores depleted after the bad harvest and our ranks reduced by pestilence, only one growing season stood between the community and famine. Nighttime offices were curtailed and Terce, Sext, None, and Vespers sung in the field. When we worked, we worked like men asleep, planting and pruning by memory. When we sang, we sang like old men crying. Hunger made us short-tempered. I remember on one occasion we even heard the village women quarreling down by the river. We were all surprised by this for we did not hear women often. Sometimes they sang at their wash, but if the sound of the singing reached us, one of their men was always sent to quiet them. But not this time. No one shook their heads this time, no one looked embarrassed, no one did anything.

We just worked. Come rain or shine, cold weather or hot, we worked, we planted. We had no choice, this growing season must succeed.

Strangely enough, despite all the hardship, I have fond memories of that spring. After only two or three trips to the hermit's camp, I grew confident of my ability to get up and down the mountain safely. Not that I didn’t still sometimes think myself lost. If a tree had fallen across the path or a portion of it been washed away in the rains, I could easily become confused. But, generally, the landmarks remained in their proper places. There was even a sort of logic to them: as Vespers followed None, so the mossy place in the trail always came after the high ridge, the cool place after the stream. You could depend on it. Indeed, I became so sure of my proficiency I began to enjoy the climb, looking forward to it, drawing it out, delighting in my ability to predict what lay around the next bend, over the following rise. The further away from Redestone I got, the better I always felt. It was as if I grew happier and healthier the higher I climbed.

But in reality of course I did not grow healthier the higher I climbed. By the time I reached the hermit’s camp I was inevitably exhausted, the week’s work having taken its toll. After receiving my master’s blessing, I would go directly to bed, not waking again until after dark, my body stiff and sore, Father warming something by the fire. Sometimes the stiffness was so bad I couldn’t grip a spoon and the hermit would have to feed me by hand. It shames me now to remember the pride I took in this. I would look at my hands, trying to bend the fingers, and I would think about the sacrifice I was making, how I was working as hard as any adult. And of course I was working hard, we all were, but that gave me no right to look at the hermit, as I sometimes did, as if I were better than he. He too did his work, he too made his sacrifice. To be quite honest about it, I think he sometimes missed the fieldwork. I’ll never forget how sad he was when he learned old Dextra had died. He told me he had broken her to the plow.

Mornings on Modra nect were my favorite time of day. Though he wasn’t supposed to, Father usually let me sleep
through the Vigil, and, as a result, I always woke up feeling reinvigorated. Of course I should have been sent directly back down the mountain, but I never was. Rarely did I leave before Sext, and even then it was my own decision, not Father’s. He treated me more like a monk than an oblate; and of course I didn’t complain. Until that spring every day of my life had been defined by the hours. From the moment I woke up till I put my head down again at night, I always had some place to be, some chore I was meant to be doing. But now, once a week, I found myself, incredibly enough, with time on my hands. I could lie in bed as long as I wanted, or I could jump up and play in the sun, and no one, not Father Prior, not Brother Baldwin, not even Father Abbot, could do anything about it. I loved those mornings on Modra nect. The thought of them pulled me from sleep like the smell of something good cooking.

Still, there was little for a boy to do around that camp. I made up small games for myself but of course I had to be quiet: the hermit was always working. Sometimes he scratched at a tabulum.

Sometimes he read from one of the books Father Prior sent him. Sometimes he busied himself with supplies. But, mostly, he prayed. The man had a capacity for prayer that was truly extraordinary. He could sit for entire intervals without moving—eyes closed, lips still, hardly even breathing.

Father Prior had ordered me not to think the hermit special, his prayers any different from any other monk’s, but in this I had long since disobeyed him. No one could look at the way this man prayed, the length of his prayers, without realizing he was different, that what he did was different. And by then of course I had heard the tales. Living trees would bow toward the hermit as he prayed, dead ones sprout new growth. His water would attract butterflies, his night soil salamanders and snails. Doves would build nests in the eaves of any structure he built. Coals from his fire could cause stones to burn, water to burst into flame. I was told to watch him closely when he prayed, that he might float like a cloud, the air above his head fill with lights. And if that was not enough, there was the attention I received as his servant. Monks
waylaid me on the garth, knelt by me as I weeded, woke me in the night; they whispered, cajoled, pleaded for a moment of the hermit’s time, a prayer, a special blessing, a little help with “something I haven’t wanted to bother Father Abbot with.” Even Father Prior stopped me once in the peas and asked that the hermit say a prayer for him. He didn’t tell me why. Indeed, I think he wanted me to think it perfectly normal, merely a matter of courtesy; but of course I didn’t. You must remember that I was very young. The idea that grownups ever did anything out of the ordinary was entirely foreign to me. That they did, or seemed to, for this one reason, impressed me more than anything else.

And so, morning after morning, I sat opposite the hermit and waited as he prayed, certain I would see something miraculous. And—morning after morning—I saw nothing. Once there was something, a swirling in the air over the hermit’s head as if a cloud of midges had suddenly been attracted to that place, circled for a moment, then as quickly departed. But, otherwise, nothing. No concourse. No angels dressed in white, no voices singing.