The Oblate's Confession (44 page)

And that of course is what he did. And why the hall became so quiet when Father Agatho called upon his monks to swear allegiance to Godwin. You know how it must have been, brothers looking at one another to see who would go first, hoping that seniority would hold precedence here as it did in most situations, and then remembering Baldwin, realizing that in this case things would have to be different. And then Father Dagan of all people, still Father Prior then, surprising everyone by kneeling first, going down on his knees before a perfect stranger to swear vows of loyalty and obedience. How Maban must have enjoyed that, knowing what was to come, that no amount of obsequiousness could supplant him in Godwin’s eye. But then Maban never did understand Dagan, couldn’t really I suppose. As of course, neither did I. When Ealhmund told me it was Father Prior who was first to kneel, I was embarrassed for him, embarrassed and even a little ashamed. Not that it didn’t work. I mean they all followed Dagan’s example. If Father Prior accepted Godwin, who could deny him? Still they say Brother Baldwin was the last to submit and, though I cannot pretend to have cared for the man, I do admire him for that. Even today I sometimes picture the event in my mind, the way it would have been, Brother’s meaning perfectly clear to an assembly used to communicating only by sign. He would have knelt slowly I

think, I mean he always did that in those days, old bones, old joints, but in this case the slowness would have been intentional, Baldwin wanting to draw it out, prolong the act so that everyone could see what he was doing, see how the cords stood out on his neck, see how he held his head, eyes half-closed, face slightly averted, not really looking at Godwin as he spoke, not really looking at anyone, just saying the words, repeating the words, meaning them and not meaning them, swearing allegiance, but swearing allegiance to an idea, a chair, not the man.

According to Ealhmund, Father Agatho left the next day. No ceremony, no special Mass, just a brief farewell before Chapter and he was gone. I wonder what he thought of the horse, what he thought when Godwin gave him the horse, declared it a gift from Bishop Wilfrid in return for loyal service...what sort of struggle do you suppose he went through over that? For he did ride the thing, there can be no denying it. They say he climbed aboard the beast as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if spreading his legs around a horse’s back was something he did every day. But I wonder about that. Father was no fool, and though Victricius later told me things were different in his country, that priests in Father’s country often rode out on horseback, Father Agatho had never done so in our presence. Yet he did that morning. Was it perhaps, like so much else in Father’s life, intentional, a final message for his monks, a reminder that in this as in all things, like us, he was obliged to obey his bishop? And if that is the case, if Agatho, even in this, thought of his flock, had their interests in mind, what parting advice do you suppose he had for their new shepherd? That must have been an interesting conversation, the two of them sitting alone in the abbot’s lodge that last night, the one coming from the cultured world of Roman Gaul, the other from the Northumbrian Church that so wished to ape it. Or did he instead save his breath and advise his successor, as he had Chapter, through example? For the story of what happened to the horse is of course still told. Doubtless Godwin himself heard it more times than he would have liked. For Father did not keep the beast. He travelled only a short distance before giving it away, handing it

over to the first beggar he came upon along the road. Godwin must have been outraged, but what could he say? Father had shown himself the perfect monk, obedient to his Lord in heaven as well as the one that sat at In-Hrypum.

For my part, I have often wondered about the beggar. If Father truly hadn’t travelled far, he may only have reached my father’s land (they say you must pass through it on your way down the mountain). If this is the case, then the man Father gave his horse to could conceivably have belonged to Ceolwulf. He might even have been the one my father told me about, the old man who liked to spend his days sitting at the entrance to his hall. I think Father Agatho would have liked that, would have enjoyed the fact they shared such a bond. He too loved his sons.

It would be unfair of me to tell the beginning of Æthelthryth’s story without making some mention of its end—for there have been those who have doubted her word, pointing out that it is rare for a woman twice married to die a virgin.

After leaving the king, Æthelthryth entered a convent and, eventually, became herself an abbess. In this capacity she led a life of exemplary virtue, wearing only the simplest of woolens and rarely eating more than one meal a day. Toward the end of her life she not only predicted a visitation by the pestilence but the names of those, including her own, that would die therein. All came to pass as she had said it would and the woman who had once been queen was buried, like any other nun, in the wooden coffin in which she had died.

Now it happened that, some sixteen years later, a stone sarcophagus having been found, Æthelthryth’s successor as abbess decided to exhume the former queen and have her bones placed in this more fitting receptacle. Cynifrid, who had been Æthelthryth’s physician in her last illness, happened to be present at the exhumation and, living still, can attest to what he saw. Not only was Æthelthryth’s body found to be free of corruption but, to

Cynifrid’s amazement, a tumor under her jaw which he himself had lanced only moments before her death was discovered to have healed over completely, only a small gray scar showing where his blade had pierced the flesh. By such signs did God exalt his handmaiden and bring low those who had doubted her. Pieces of wood taken from the coffin in which the good abbess was first buried have been found to cure diseases of the eye.

Though at the time it seemed as if I and I alone suffered under Redestone’s new rulers, I realize now this could not have been the case. One of the first things Maban did as prior was to institute a daily practice, which meant that, in addition to the work of the fields and the hourly commitment to the office, the community now had to spend an entire interval listening to Brother Prior ridicule its chant. You know what it is like during the intervals, the great and luminous silence that settles over our abbey like a glass. Imagine having that peace broken each day at exactly the time you need it most. The older monks must have felt their one and only pleasure had been taken from them.

As, of course, did I.

I can’t really be sure now if it was the first time I saw Abbot
Godwin preside over Chapter that he made the announcement or if it only seems that way in retrospect. All I know for sure is that, just as first impressions tend to color all our subsequent knowledge of a person, to this day I associate remembered expressions of Godwin’s (the way his lower lip would droop when he finished speaking, the way his eyebrows could sink disarmingly if you questioned one of his ideas) with what my memory tells me was that first and most awful pronouncement. The production of iron at Redestone was to be increased. The production of iron at Redestone was to be increased significantly. Bishop Wilfrid, it was explained (a small smile here, the good abbot encouraging us to become part of a larger and more important world), required more iron of us if he was to negotiate with his friend and companion the king. Three monks would be removed from Brother Cellarer’s jurisdiction and placed at Victricius’s disposal. They were to work exclusively in the quarry. The more ore, Father Abbot assured us (already an expert), the more iron. “Oh and something else, there was something else, wasn’t there?” Maban bends forward here,

Godwin’s head turning to catch the whisper, eyes wide open, listening, agreeing. “Yes, yes, that’s it, the boy!” A quick glance around the hall and, failing to find anything that looks like a boy, Godwin shakes his finger at Brother Ninian. “No more of these two-day jaunts up the mountain. From now on you will make yourself useful at the yard. Someone else can take care of that ridiculous old man, someone who can make the trip in a single day.”

And so, at a stroke, I was separated from all that had seemed to make life bearable at Redestone. I remember wandering out onto the garth that night, gazing out at the village, the little house I believed to be Eanflæd's, and thinking how unfair it all was, how unfair and how unkind. And the worst of it of course was that I would not be able to tell Father myself, that Brother Edgar, a man completely unknown to him, would wander into the hermit’s camp in a couple of days and deliver himself of the news that Father would never see me again. That I would never see him again.

For a while I stood like that at the edge of the terrace, my mind’s eye picturing Father as he heard the news, the little circle

his beard would make around his mouth, the disappointment, the sorrow. It was as if Father’s face and the grief it held was, in some way I could not explain, my face, my grief. I stood there and thought about it, recalling other blows, other setbacks, and then slowly the image, if not the sorrow itself, faded from my mind. I found myself staring absently at the river, its moonlit surface, the dark mass of Wilfrid’s bridge, thinking about all the times I had watched Ælfhelm cross that way, how angry it was going to make me to see Brother Edgar do likewise. And at the same time realizing, noticing, how appropriate such a thing was. For just as it was Wilfrid’s bridge that would make it possible for Edgar to pass over the Meolch dry-shod, so it was Wilfrid’s surrogate who had set him on that path in the first place, assigned him this journey that was, by all rights, mine. Just as—the one thought following easily upon the other—Wilfrid had set Godwin in Agatho’s place, Maban in Dagan’s. You can see where this was leading me. It would have been impossible, I think, for a boy my age to have lived through what I lived through, lost what I had just lost, to go unreminded of that first loss, that primal loss which had brought me here, the father to whom I had made a promise, the father who had warned me of all this, warned me that the bishop could not be trusted, was, indeed, treacherous, warned me and had now (How could I have judged otherwise?) been proven right, justified, almost omniscient. What child would not have harkened back to such things? What child, having remembered them, would not have been tempted?

As if God Himself had taken the bishop’s side and sought now to mock any resistance I might offer, it was as I thought these thoughts that a girl appeared at the edge of the village garden, stepped out into the moonlight before the peas, began to dance. Of course it might not have been Eanflæd. At that distance, it could, I suppose, have been any of the younger women who lived that summer in our village. For that matter I sometimes wonder if the memory itself might be wrong. It does seem unlikely that two such events—Godwin’s announcement and that clandestine dance—should have taken place on the same day. Life at

Redestone is not known for its drama. Yet that is the way I remember it, have, I think, always remembered it. I am standing at the edge of the terrace, probably the interval after Compline, thoughts of betrayal, rebellion, running through my mind, and out of the grasses at the far edge of the village steps a dancer. That a dancer did appear to me one night as I stood on the terrace I do not doubt. I remember the image too well, the garment she wore, the light it gathered to itself as the girl turned and moved beneath the moon. Was she really dancing? Or was this just the elaborate playacting of some dreamy-eyed adolescent? Looking back on it now, who can claim to know? But for me, as I stood there that night, the gentle breath of the fields rising to me still warm on the cool evening air, there could be no doubt that what I was seeing was a dance, that I was watching the elaboration of some heartfelt and complicated longing. That I was watching Eanflæd. I remember I stood and I watched that figure move soundlessly back and forth, arms thrown out as in prayer, and everything I had ever hoped for or wanted seemed to go out of me. All was vain, futile, lost. My life
stretched out before me like a long and dreary road.