The Oblate's Confession (49 page)

“I suppose I had better be going.”

Ealhmund looked up at me, looked toward the abbey, lip

protruding as if I had presented him with an interesting problem. “Sext,” he surmised.

“Well, not yet. But I probably ought to be getting back.”

A single nod here, abrupt, dismissive.

“You take care of yourself.”

Ealhmund didn’t say anything, seemed to have found something interesting to look at on the ground in front of him.

I raised my hand to wave, thought better of it, turned and began to walk back toward the orchard, embarrassed now by the sign that seemed to shout up from the ground all around me, glad Ealhmund hadn’t noticed it, couldn’t see how dumbly it proclaimed his fear, his hopelessness, for all the world to see.

When I reached the first of the cherry trees the urge to say something more, some last thing, came over me like a sort of hunger. I took one or two more steps and then, unable to stand it any longer, turned and, without thinking about what I was going to say, yelled, “So you’ll know, just so you’ll know? It really isn’t as bad as they say it is. The forest I mean. It’s not nearly as scary as

they say it is!”

 

Ealhmund was looking at me. At the sound of my voice he had glanced quickly toward the abbey and then back at me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t nod or shake his head. He looked at me. I looked at him. Then I nodded and, feeling for some reason better about myself, as though I’d done something helpful, generous, I turned and began to make my way back through the orchard toward the abbey path.

That was the last time I ever saw Ealhmund. He was sighted a few more times up by the kitchens, but even that stopped when Brother Wictbert began sleeping by the gate. After that the boy’s print became rare around Redestone and, eventually, such sign disappeared altogether. I have no idea what became of him.

That was the year our annual shipment to In-Hrypum was waylaid, the bishop’s man brutally murdered, and an entire year’s production of iron carried off. Most people, naturally enough, blamed the outrage on one of Northumbria’s traditional enemies, and when an arrow fletched in the Mercian manner was found at the site such suspicions seemed confirmed. Still there were those who pointed out that Ecgfrith failed to mount any punitive raids in response to the attack, and that, almost simultaneously, his smiths ceased to clamor for iron.

The loss was a great one for Redestone. After the failure of our wheat Godwin had assured us we would not starve so long as we had Victricius’s iron to offer. But now there was no iron. For the first time in the history of the abbey, Brother Cellarer was forced to
barter among our neighbors against future harvests for our food. For a community with such a long tradition of self-sufficiency, this was a bitter blow. And, as it is said, when one is offered humility for his fare, one tends to blame the cook. So it was that everyone now spoke of the transfer of men from Brother Cellarer to Brother Furnace, how Godwin had ignored Osric’s requests for additional help when the rust first got among the crop, how the new abbot had jested that, so long as we had Victricius, we could “eat iron.” Well, we couldn’t eat iron now. And the grumbling was become nearly universal. Even Maban was heard to blame Godwin for the decision, saying it was none of his affair, that he had cautioned against the transfer, had offered to help Osric himself but Godwin would hear none of it. Well Godwin would hear of it now. There would be no second failures. That spring everyone from prior to oblate was commandeered for the planting. Tellingly, even Brother Victricius was sent into the fields. I remember watching him as he went about his assigned tasks, the smile that played over his face every now and then when he did something wrong, moved in

some way that showed how unaccustomed he was to such labor. Though no one spoke to him, no one sought out his row to work in, his company, Brother seemed—for the first time since Agath-o’s departure—content, even happy. I wondered if, bent over our soggy Northumbrian soil, he saw something else, scented, perhaps, a drier, more fragrant air.

Upon being relieved of his responsibilities as a member of the hierarchy, Father Dagan had been placed under Brother Cellarer’s authority, which meant that no special order was required to send him into the fields. But it was, I believe, Maban who saw to it he was assigned stone removal. Of course no one likes stone removal, but you cannot imagine how bad it was in those days. Back then, when many of our fields had only recently been cleared, the rocks seemed to rise from the ground each spring like mushrooms after a good rain. Dragon’s eggs, the hill people called them, and, like all such superstitions, there was a grain of truth to it. For there was something perverse about those stones. No matter how many you carried off one day, a like number seemed always to greet your return upon the next, the gray-red piles of discarded rock growing big-bellied at the edge of our fields, slithering and cracking in the heat of the afternoon like big overfed adders.

None of which seemed to bother Father Dagan. Whatever task I had been assigned, setting stakes, digging seedbeds, I would glance every now and then toward his part of the field and always find him still at it, the man who had been prior down on all fours now, red with the red of our earth, Maban’s dutiful servant, breaking his fingers upon yet another impossible stone. Oddly enough I think I wouldn’t have minded so much had he shown a little more enthusiasm for the work, thrown himself into it as once he would have, intent, even in so menial a task, upon setting an example for those who labored alongside him. But Father showed no such inclination. He seemed content only to do as he was told, in all appearances so like the other workers, both lay and religious, that it was only with difficulty I could distinguish his sweat-stained back from among the many that clambered that spring over the rockier parts of our fields.

It was on a particularly wet and dreary day, as I remember it, that I was sent to assist our former prior. I don’t know what I had done to deserve such an assignment, but I do remember that it was Brother Osric who ordered it, the good cellarer staring at me with eyes made dull by hunger, not even bothering to admonish me, just signalling
the rocks
with his hands, then returning doggedly to whatever task it was that then occupied that extraordinary mind. Though I have no memory of it, I would have walked slowly to where Dagan and the other men worked. I did everything slowly in those days. Likely too I noted with displeasure the buildup of mud on my feet, cast a disapproving eye over the blackened stumps as yet protruding from that part of the field. I was a difficult boy in those days, willfull, feckless, aggressively sullen.

Father didn’t say anything when I walked up. Well, he wouldn’t have, would he? Maban was there and, except in his own defense, Maban was always very strict about the silence. But he did smile. I remember the smile because I remember how stricken I was by it. That Father too (even Father!) should look at me like this, grin up at me as all the others did now, trying to conceal the dismay the thought of my company so clearly caused them with these insincere smiles, these wanton invitations to partake of whatever pleasure was then at hand—in this case, as it happened, stone removal.

I knelt down next to Father without looking at him, without signing anything. The stone he was working on didn’t look like much to me. You could see that recent frosts had already had an effect upon it, heaving the thing up at night, lowering it again at sunrise, so that now the stone sat in its socket like a tooth loosened by much fingering. Surely it wouldn’t take much to dislodge that.

I glanced over at Father, expecting to see a similar assessment on his face, and was surprised to find his brow furrowed, the eyes dark, uncertain. To think that I used to kneel before this man, this man who now kneeled—utterly stymied—before a lump of mindless stone. I leaned forward, placed my fingers in the space between stone and earth, probed, gained some purchase, pulled.

Nothing happened. Well, that was to be expected. I went forward on my knees, giving myself a better angle, dug my fingers deeper into the earth, not thinking about what might be there, thinking instead about how much I hated this work, Brother Cellarer for sending me here, Father Dagan for smiling at me like that. Again I pulled and this time, pulling very hard, I very nearly pulled myself off my knees, catching myself at the last moment before smashing face-first into the object of my efforts. I sat back, looked at the rock. Stupid thing. Mindless stupid thing, staring up at me with its mindless stupid face. Red. Red like all our rocks. Redestone. And angry now, inspired, I grabbed the thing again, pulled with all my might, pulled as if this
were
Redestone, as if, with one great effort,

I might remove from this field, my life, this existence, all that I hated about this place: Maban, Godwin, the Rule,
everything.

And of course managed only to strain my back, the stone still staring blandly up at me from its hole, unmoved, unthinking, ignorant even of the stupidity I attributed to it.

I glanced over at Father, anxious lest he laugh at me. But

Father wasn’t laughing. He was looking at the stone, hands resting cold and still on his knees. For the first time I noticed how tired he looked, the strain on his face, the place where, in wiping an eye, he’d left a track of reddish mud across his cheek, drying now to gray. I glanced down at the hands that had made that track and was surprised to see how old they looked—the skin cracked and dry, stained red with earth, the fingers bent, nails bloodless, pale, outlined in red.

Father felt my eyes on him, looked over at me, the head turning slowly, the neck apparently stiff.

I placed my hands at the sides of my head, index fingers pointed upward, raised my eyebrows.

Father shook his head,
No. No, we will not need the ox.
He smiled, brought a finger to his lips, signalled patience.

And tears sprang to my eyes. I don’t know why. It doesn’t make sense to me even now, but something about the gesture, the smile upon that chapped and broken face, brought everything back, the time before this time, before Maban, Godwin, before

even Gwynedd, when Father was neither Dagan nor prior but just Father: the big man in the big clothes who smiled down at me, held a finger before his lips, played with me in the snow.

And I had to look away, swallow hard, the feelings coming fast and furious, sweet and painful. That once I had felt such things, known such things! I looked away. I looked away and I closed my eyes, shut them tight against this day, my tears, the difference between then and now. When I opened them again, the field before me appeared strange, bleary, gray figures walking upon a reddish sea. I sniffed, wiped my eyes, realized, vaguely, someone was looking at me, someone over by the wagon. I looked away, down toward the village, saw the house I thought Eanflaed’s, had to close my eyes again, beat back the emotions, embarrassed now by the fatigue that seemed to be letting this happen, the strain which, once released, permitted such a display.

“Winwæd?”

Would it never end?—the sound of my name upon his lips suddenly enough to wring my heart, send it bleating off toward

some distant heaven.

I held a hand out, begged a moment’s patience, rubbing my eyes against the other arm, the familiar scratchiness of my sleeve for some reason helpful now, sobering.

“The season...” It was Father again, whispering. “It can do this, the season. The eyes I mean, make them water. Autumn can too.”