The Oblate's Confession (15 page)

I stopped just short of the opening. The noises were decidedly louder here and—though I knew I knew nothing of forests and their inhabitants—I was sure these weren’t human. Still I wasn’t afraid. Or not much. Father was near, and there continued to be something about the timbre of these sounds that, for whatever reason, convinced me of their innocence. But I was no fool. I raised my head into the opening only high enough to bring my eyes level with the light.

I was at the edge of a sort of clearing. A well-worn path no wider than my wrist ran from my hiding place up through thick grass to a mound of reddish earth at the very center of the open area. Playing on this mound and around the ground at its base were seven or eight fox kits, their coats golden and flossy in the light.

I’m not sure how long I lay there. That little clearing with its den lodges in my memory now as it did in that bramble, a bright place full of color and baby foxes. Again and again, I remember, an uncommonly ambitious, albeit roly-poly, little fellow climbed to the top of the parent mound and attempted to leap from that height onto the backs of his litter-mates, each time ending up in a cloud of dust at the base of the mound, undamaged but clearly surprised to find himself so far short of his goal. His brothers and sisters, for their part, always seemed equally astonished by this turn of events, gathering around the little fellow as if they had never seen such a thing before, pushing and climbing over each other for a better look. Then, in an instant, all curiosity satisfied, they would pounce on the target thus presented and the games begin anew.

Of course it couldn’t last. At some point I began to hear Father quietly singing Sext somewhere back behind me, and when I looked back out into the clearing it was to find the mound deserted, all the little foxes gone.

Later, on our way back to camp, the hermit explained what I had seen. The fox whose tracks we had followed was not really old or diseased; it had appeared thin and its coat poor because all the food it was finding was going to feed its young, the pups I had discovered at the den. He told me this was why its undersides had hung down like that, that these were udders, like a cow’s, and that on any animal such protuberances were proof of motherhood. This also explained the animal’s repeated trips up and down the trail. In a hurry to find food for her young, the vixen had risked the open path rather than taking a safer but slower route through the wood. Father told me these things as if he found them as remarkable as I. It was a gift he had. Of all the masters I have ever known,
none taught me so much while always making it seem
I
was the one who was wise,
I
the one who deserved approbation for having provided the reason for such a lesson.

Except for the end, except for what happened, what I did, at the end, I have always remembered my days on Modra nect as good, healthy, a time of unrelieved innocence, of lessons learned, discoveries made, the slow and uneventful process of growing up. But now, as I record these memories for the first time, attempt to put them in some sort of order, place flesh upon their bones, air within their lungs, I find myself beginning to wonder. Is that the way it was? Were things as perfect as I recall? Or is it possible that the habit of mind that would lead to my offense was present even in the child? Are we so formed at birth that our lives are just an empty clap of thunder, the lightning having long since done its work, flashed and gone out? The sins of the father. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that, as I labor here, I find myself again and
again coming up against the same hard fact: Winwæd is about to abuse a gift. Someone in authority over him has given the child a gift—whether of trust or of knowledge—and now we shall watch him abuse it, watch him wander off not after God or Wisdom or even truth, but after chimera, after some pointless chimera of his own foolish making.

I don’t really remember what sort of animal it was that led me to the grove. All I remember for sure is that I was tracking, practicing the new art Father Hermit was teaching me, trying to follow the print of some unknown and otherwise savage beast, to participate, at this small remove, in its daily round. I do remember the surprise I felt when I came out into the meadow, saw the trees at its upper end. I had not known there was a meadow there, had not realized until I saw it that I was now in a part of the wood with which I was unfamiliar. And it was above me. The meadow itself, and the grove. I was always suspicious in those days of places that were above me. Climbing, it was easy to pass—however unwittingly—from one side of the mountain to the other, to the wrong side. I didn’t like going down the mountain
—down
meant home, Redestone, the Rule—but up was worse,
up
could mean Cumbrogi. So, generally, I stuck to level, restricted my explorations to those parts of the wood my mind told me more or less corresponded to the height of the hermit’s camp.

But there was something about this place, this unexpected meadow in the middle of nowhere, that appealed to me. Like all things on the mountain, it seemed larger than it should have been, for I was always in those days finding myself surprised by the size and multiplicity of the landscapes Modra nect contained. I had thought I had known the mountain, but what I had known was only its image, the reassuringly compact view I held of it, had learned of it, from down below, down at Redestone. But Modra nect wasn’t that view; no, Modra nect was something else entirely, a nearly monstrous place that, even as I roamed over it, grew and shifted beneath me, giving birth to new arms, new legs, new valleys, new slopes. And now here was this meadow opening out before me like a great and rolling loaf of freshly baked bread. How
could I not explore it, how could I resist?

Whatever the animal was that brought me there that day— badger, fox, deer—the thing had not hesitated but instead walked directly out into the meadow. And so, in doing likewise, I was able to tell myself I was merely being obedient to my master—for Father Gwynedd
had
told me I should follow whatever track I commenced upon till I could follow it no further, never permitting myself to be distracted by unrelated print or phenomena
(age quod agis).
It must have been a large animal, probably a deer, for I remember having little trouble following it up through the tall grass. Large animals are easy to track in such places since their bodies as well as their feet leave evidence of their passing. But after the two of us had proceeded only a short distance up the meadow’s slope, my absent companion’s sign became agitated: the animal turning abruptly, then bolting for the wood from which we both had previously emerged.

Yes. Yes, the more I think about it, the more certain I am it was a deer, for I remember sighting along the line of that escape—the narrow, punctuated trough of broken grasses that only a deer can make—back down toward the wood, Redestone, home. Then I turned and looked back up the hill, wondering what it was that had so frightened the beast.

I couldn’t really see much. The ground rose from where I stood in such a way that, further up, it obscured what lay beyond. Still, from this vantage point, I could now see that the grove— which earlier had seemed to occupy the highest part of the meadow—actually stood at the end of a long ridge that swept back toward me, toward whatever lay above me. I looked back up that way, wondering if I might be able to see the abbey from up there. It happened sometimes. Sometimes when you least expected it, Modra nect could reveal aspects of Redestone you never would have thought possible.

With little else to do, I began to climb toward the high ground, arms up, woolens catching at the grasses, releasing, then catching again. It grew windy the higher I went and, from time to time, the grasses around me whispered and sighed. Between me and the
distant grove, the slope opened up, grew wide, acquired a dappled appearance: the white-blonde swells of grass giving way here and there to irregular patches the size and color of cloud shadow. Eventually I reached a place where I could see that the ridge did indeed cross above me, providing a sort of backbone for this part of the mountain. From here it appeared that the meadow encompassed the ridge, lay over it like a blanket thrown over the back of a horse, the grove a roofless cage resting atop distant withers.

I looked toward the faraway grove, back toward the ridge above me, both pleased by the prospect and a little disappointed; for I think I had secretly wanted to find something more than this, something different, unusual, a reason to linger, a reason not to go home. Telling myself there was still time, that it was not yet Sext, I began to climb again, working my way up toward something I had noticed near the crest of the ridge, a spot of color in what I was beginning to admit was really a rather empty and uninteresting landscape.

The lay of the land continued to change as I mounted the slope. When first sighted, the ridge above me had seemed higher than the grove, but as I climbed the two changed positions; or, rather, the grove maintained its height while the ground I was making for fell away, became increasingly level, its highest-most point now clearly lower than that of the distant trees. My spot of color changed as well, becoming green, a dark green I thought, and I began to make out what looked like an area in the grass around it that had been trod upon. Which made sense, for anything still green so late in the year was bound to attract deer; indeed, the animal I’d been following had probably been headed in this direction when it was frightened off. I was rather proud of myself for thinking this, for it sounded like something Father Hermit would have thought, reminded me of the way he would have described something like this had he been here.

But, as it happened, I was wrong in this, my self-praise premature. It hadn’t been deer that had trampled down the grass. When I reached the place I saw that it couldn’t have been, for the track these animals left was too straight for that. Deer don’t walk in
straight lines, never walk in straight lines: it was one of the first things Father Hermit had taught me. And they don’t eat holly either. For that was what this was, my spot of color, a few horny leaves—blue-green and leathery with age—on a length of branch woven carefully into the tall grass at the edge of the path.

I looked around. Whoever they were, you could tell from the track they’d left there’d been many of them. The line of trod-upon grass came down over the top of the ridge at an angle, turned here to rise again, then fell and rose in a series of gentle loops as it crossed the slope of the meadow to my right. Eventually, as if someone had made up his mind, the path ascended a last time and buried its head in the grove at the far end of the ridge. At the bottom of each loop in the path it looked as if someone had stopped to place one of these holly branches.

I saw all this, realized the meaning of all this, in much less time than it takes to describe here, in an instant really, and in that same instant I suddenly felt myself terribly exposed, vulnerable, standing there in the middle of the meadow. I knelt down. I knelt down and was relieved to discover that, kneeling, the grass hid me from anyone who might be watching from the wood below, the grove above. Of course I knew I should return immediately to the abbey, report what I had found, warn the community that there were strangers on the mountain. But—God forgive me—I wasn’t really thinking about the community just then; I was thinking instead of what the brothers might say, what Waldhere might say, if I brought everyone up here and there was really nothing to see, just a place where some people had beaten the grass down as they passed through a field. I raised my head a little, looked out across the meadow toward the distant grove.

The place looked safe enough. There appeared to be something moving at one end but it didn’t look important, a branch or something blowing in the wind.

Though it could have been a sleeve.

Maybe someone’s arm signalling someone down in the wood.

The more I thought about this the more I liked it. I could hear myself telling it, how I had knelt here, spying on the grove, and
how, then, something had moved, maybe only once, and I had thought, feared, there was someone up there, someone signalling someone down in the wood.

Of course in reality I didn’t think this at all. The way the thing moved—regular, desultory—made the place look even more deserted: safer, emptier. I stood up, checking the grove a last time but no longer really afraid. I would have a quick look-around, that was all, and then home to Father Prior and the wide eyes of my fellow oblates.

As I made my way across the meadow, I thought about the Cumbrogi that had created this path (for I was certain it was they), wondering what it would be like
to be
a Cumbrogi, to walk across a meadow like this with my mind full of evil. Such thoughts are in the nature of tracking. When you follow an animal’s print, discover in its sign proof of the decisions it has made that day—the stops, the turns, the place it chose for its bed—it is only natural to find yourself sympathizing with the beast, recognizing its needs, walking, as it were, in its shoes. Moreover, such thoughts are necessary to tracking, to understanding and anticipating your quarry’s intentions. But the holly branches surprised me. The things had been braided into the grasses here and there along the path with great care, even skill. There was almost a sort of beauty to it. Still, they were a puzzling people, the Cumbrogi—everyone said so—and I supposed even the wicked could be expected to take pains in their pursuit of wickedness.