The Oblate's Confession (36 page)

Actually there was a sort of lever arrangement—Victricius had constructed it, part wood, part iron—but I liked the way the hermit saw it, the image of it, a man standing there all by himself, straddling the race, releasing its force with a single upward sweep of his arms.

The hermit thought about it, shook his head, looked at me. “That’s the way I do it, when I pray I mean, that’s the way I do it.” “You pull up a gate?”

The hermit smiled. “In a sense.”

I just looked at him.

Father sighed. “When you pray for your friend, when you pray for Ealhmund, you must stand like Victricius with the river at your back, only this time, this time the river is not the Meolch but God, the love of God pouring down from on high like a torrent, like a mighty torrent.”

I swallowed.

“Yes. Yes I know. Frightening. Extravagant. Of course it’s

around us always when you think about it, here, there, but when you perform this sort of prayer you must imagine its source, the great cataract at its beginning, and you must imagine yourself the only thing holding that back, the only thing restraining the flood, keeping it from roaring down, from washing over Ealhmund and his fields, making everything turn green, flourish.” The hermit blinked, looked at me. “And then you must open your gate. Just as, with a single sweep of the will, you cleared your tabulum, now you must open your gate, allow God’s love to pour through you, race down toward what you cannot see, the fields, the mill, Ealhmund’s face, his hands, the fear he feels when people abuse him, call him names.”

I smiled, for a moment forgetting the person I intended to pray for, seeing instead Ealhmund’s face, the spots receding, the boy thankful, happy, new. The hermit watched me, nodded as if seeing what I saw, looked away. I thought some more about Ealhmund, remembered Eanflæd, thought about her, saw myself on my knees, praying, darkness all around me, Eanflæd in darkness also, asleep, unaware, my prayers settling around her like blankets, like dreams, keeping her warm. I liked the image, liked the idea of it, the hardness of the stones I knelt upon, the softness of Eanflæd's sleep, my prayers unsought, unasked-for, their devising utterly selfless, unknown and unseen. Of course the changes would be slow at first (a less colorful dress perhaps, fewer ornaments, the hair a little more chaste, a little less wild), but it would work, of that I was certain. I had absolute faith in the hermit. Indeed, at that moment, with his help, an entire range of possibilities, hopes, opened up before me. “Is it true,” I asked, wanting it to be true, wanting the hermit and his prayer to be omnipotent, capable of anything, “I mean is it true what they say Father, that if Ælfhelm had made it, if he’d made it up here before he died, you would have been able to save him. I mean none of it would have happened—Oftfor, Father Cellarer—they’d all still be alive?”

Of course the mention of Ælfhelm’s name had been a mistake,
I knew that as soon as it came out of my mouth. Father looked at me as if stricken, looked down at the slope of the mountain
beneath us, imagined, I suppose, the path, Ælfhelm climbing. “I don’t know,” he said, a small smile, apologetic, embarrassed. “Possibly.”

For a while after that neither of us said anything. I was used to this, the quiet. Father always became quiet at the mention of Ælfhelm’s name. Overhead, God’s shuttle continued its work, back and forth, warp and woof, the day turning cold, gray, a storm in the offing. Brother Botulf appeared from somewhere back of the sinks, tied down his beloved drying racks. Brother Osric sent someone to carry the unfinished hurtles in. When the lowing reached us, the deep notes only, Sinistra’s knees bothering her again, it was as if I’d heard it all a thousand times before, as if I could have predicted it, could predict what would happen next, the office, the long walk down the mountain, the rain, the wet, the work. I looked out at the Far Wood and thought about my father, the life I might have had, the life that could have been. “What about against?” I asked, not really thinking about it, thinking about something else, the dark place, the empty place in the trees that marked the way, the road away from here, away from Redestone, away from this place.

“Against?”

I looked at the hermit, realized what I had said, done, saw Father Bishop’s face, his hands, falling from me, away, dropping from the crag, down into the trees below. “You know, against?” A smile here to let him know I was still just a boy, curious, an oblate, nothing more. “Against instead of for? Can you pray
against
someone in the same way you can
for
them? I mean could you, an enemy or something?”

The hermit didn’t say anything, looked at me.

I looked away.

Still the hermit did not speak. I could feel him looking at me.

I affected anger, started to get up. “If you don’t want to tell me....” The hermit placed a hand on my knee.

“An interesting question.” He meant why do you ask such a question, where does it come from?

I sat back down, shrugged.

The hermit didn’t say anything. From somewhere below us a raven left its roost, sailed out over the Meolch, drifted down toward the village. I looked over at Father but he was looking up the valley now, his nearest hand still stretched toward me, fingers just touching the rock. I noticed the scar, found myself angry once more with the man for having such a scar, for the guilt it caused me—the obvious naivete, the stupidity, of the boy that had done that. I looked away. The raven had reached the village gardens but it did not descend. Instead, it turned and, pumping hard, began to beat its way back up toward the abbey, head working back and forth, beak shiny, black.

“It affects you you know, the love.” The hermit gestured vaguely toward the mountain’s upper slopes. “You can’t feel it. I mean when it’s happening, when it’s happening you don’t know it’s happening and afterwards, afterwards you can’t remember but, you know, you know something’s happened.” A small smile here, still looking up the valley, embarrassed to find himself stammering. “I mean you feel better, don’t you, different? It’s...it’s like....” He looked around, looked at me. “It’s like the sluice-gate! That’s what I said. It’s like water, like holy water pouring through you.” A big smile now, pleased with himself for having remembered this, pleased to be remembering it. “Cleansed, you feel cleansed, washed clean, better, good.”

If he’d forgotten, if that was what this was, if he’d just forgotten, wandered off, I wasn’t going to remind him. I would let it go, forget for now about
against
, about Ceolwulf and his wishes, the bishop, death.

Father had become interested in his feet. He raised them into the air before him, turned them first right and then left, flexed his toes. He shook his head. “That’s what it’s like.” He lowered the feet, looked back at me. “That’s what it’s like when you pray
for
someone.”

And suddenly I knew where he was going, where this was all leading, what he was talking about, had to be talking about, and the thought, the idea, sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with rain or cliff-side breezes.

“But when you pray against someone....” Father turned and his shoulders seemed to sag as he looked once more away from me, up the valley. “Well....”

“It’s not love.... It’s not love that pours through you then, is it?”

He looked back at me, shook his head, eyes full open now, clear, watching me.

The cold weather arrived early that year and with it there was much rain. The plowing went poorly. Toward the end of the season a bad cough got in among us and carried off old Brother Hygbald. When the first frost came, the ground grew glassy and slick, yesterday’s footprints rising and breaking open like flowers. We lit the big fire in the center of the dortoir and Father Abbot began to spend more time with his monks.

Throughout the bad weather I prayed as Father had taught me. I knelt in church each night, the sound of the river just audible through the stones, and I would think about the power at my back, think about it building there, piling up, only me holding it back, and I would think about Eanflæd down in the village below, waiting, asleep, the fingertips of one hand just brushing her lips. And
then, with a single sweep of my will, I would open my gate, open it wide, and God’s love would come pouring through, spilling through me as Father had said it would, like a flood, a cataract, obliterating everything in its path, me, the church, everything, in its mad dash to get to Eanflæd, fill her up, fill her out. And then afterwards, sometimes afterwards when I opened my eyes, I would find everyone was looking at me, the old monks, the serious monks who stayed for the long watch, would all have turned and looked at me as if I’d said something, done something, maybe groaned, in the midst of their prayers. It made me want to laugh they knew so little, it made me feel sorry for them, almost pity them, they seemed so small, so unimportant compared to what I knew, compared to what I knew that the hermit was teaching me.

I also prayed for Ealhmund. I hadn’t expected to. Ealhmund had just been a ruse, an excuse, a standin for Eanflæd in my discussions with Father Hermit. I didn’t really care about Ealhmund. But, having told Father I would pray for him, I felt I should. And there was time. The weather was so bad we often spent entire
days inside, weaving hurtles, copying text.

The Bishop’s man came for his iron and, as it always did, his presence made me feel guilty, reminded me of my duty to my father, his request, my failure to fulfill it. I would stand by the window in the dortoir and look out at the Far Wood, the path less obvious now with the leaves gone, and I would think about Legacestir, the battle which Father Hermit insisted upon calling Carlegion. The story was old even then but it was still told, most frequently when we were worried, when there were rumors of movement on the Mercian border, councils of war among the Cumbrogi. It was comforting at such times to think of our warriors as this tale depicted them—savage, unstoppable—they were, after all, our only defense. And besides, the whole thing had happened long ago, to other monks, Cumbrogi monks.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like for them. According to Waldhere our people hung human arms from their wheels in those days, impaled infants on spears, wore paint on their faces, dyed their hair. I didn’t know if any of this was true but
I could imagine what the monks must have thought. Though no one ever said so, they had to have been worried about their holy places. After all, we were heathen ourselves then. No one will ever tell you what we did to churches, altars, but it can’t have been good. I mean, think about what we do nowadays to pagan sites. So the Cumbrogi brothers must have felt they were doing God’s will when they marched out that day, set up at their army’s side, began to pray for their pagan enemy’s destruction. When our warriors charged in among them, charged their ranks first, it must have seemed as if God had misunderstood, as if the wrath they had called down upon the heathen had descended instead upon their own heads. Everyone’s heard the stories of course, the slit throats, the decapitations, how our warriors strolled among them like men with scythes, bemused at first by the lack of resistance, then growing bored, tired, working quickly, wanting to get it over with, on with the real work, the real fighting. But can you imagine how the monks would have felt? Father Hermit had no illusions. “God killed them,” he said. “In answer to their prayers, the God they loved picked them up in His teeth and shook them till they were dead.”

I looked out at the Far Wood and thought about my father and I did not pray for the death of our bishop.

But I did attempt again to pray in the other way, the special way Father was trying to teach me. The story he had told of the boy and the hole he’d found beneath the fence, the field full of light, was so good, so perfect, I felt certain it would work for me. All I had to do was sit and wait,
persevere
as he put it, and, eventually, I would grow tired, slump forward, collapse, into God.

As it happened of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. Nothing ever is. Which is not to say that it isn’t simple. As Father said, God is there, everywhere, waiting on us. All we need do is let Him in. But our minds get in the way of such simplicity don’t they, rush ahead of it, dance around it like dogs yapping at the feet of a noble horse? And that is, of course, exactly what happened to me. Now, in addition to the distractions, there was the idea of perseverance to distract me. Again and again I would tell myself, as I sat by the
river, in church, wherever, that my thoughts were just thoughts, puffs of smoke, that I must let them float by, give them no more thought than I would a passing cloud, a falling star. And I would. And I would congratulate myself on the success of my disinterest. And I would wonder what this meant, that I was becoming so good at prayer, see myself someday becoming a hermit, a holy man like Father, maybe even a saint, pilgrims visiting me, bishops, abbots. I would be called upon to teach, found a monastery, accept the mitre, and all of these I would refuse, my humility not suffering such a thing, wanting to remain here, in these woods, like Father Gwynedd, where I could be poor, humble, and at peace with God. And then I would realize what I had been doing, remember where I was, what I was supposed to be attempting. And, anxious now, maddened despite myself by the profusion of my thoughts and their unrelenting pride, I would hurry ahead, tell myself that now, surely, I had persevered long enough, that I had grown tired, exhausted, and now, reliably, I could rest in God. And of course nothing of the sort would happen. My mind was just as
alert and active as ever, had indeed been made more so by the feverish pace of my speculations, and, within moments, I would be off on another course, inventing visions, telling myself I was seeing lights where there were none, burning bushes, shimmering halos.