The Oblate's Confession (53 page)

I have often wondered what it would be like to have something like that returned to you, to think your mother’s beauty lost, that you would never see it again, and then to have her restored to you, to have her smile at you as she had before, laugh and share food with you as if nothing had happened, as if the two of you would live like this forever: healthy, happy, content and secure. Such a transformation must have seemed a miracle to Father, perhaps seemed so still, for I remember his eyes grew damp as he told me of it, his cheeks shiny with tears, glistening. I don’t remember saying anything. I don’t remember reaching out, touching his arm. I don’t think I did anything at all. Doubtless I envied him. Doubtless I sat there and, fool that I was, thought him a fool for crying, thought him a fool for not appreciating what he had, the memories of his mother he as yet possessed, the time he had spent with her.

The day began, as Father remembered it, with a sudden and unexpected noise, an explosion of sound so loud and abrupt it brought him immediately awake, drew him so completely from sleep that, for the remainder of the day, Father said he experienced a sort of displacement, as if, in a sense, he slept still, lay as yet curled upon his bed, all that happened around him taking place as in a dream, a dream so vast and incomprehensible as to be someone else’s, a dream dreamt not by him, the little boy Gwynedd, but by someone else, someone large and not altogether sane. When I asked about it, Father said he wasn’t sure what had caused the noise—drums and cymbals certainly, a tambourine he thought, maybe a pipe or two, but what he was sure of, could still in a sense hear, was that, whatever the instruments employed, they had all been played at once, without regard for harmony or tone, as if every savage within two-days’ walk of that place had been given a drum and told to beat on it as loudly as he could. And he had. And that, accompanying this cacophony, as if any noise so loud and fierce must generate its own heat, there had been a smell, the smell of something hot and disagreeable, as though the heathen had taken to burning not incense but hair, great long hanks of human hair.

And where was Gwynedd’s mother during all of this? What did she do to allay her son’s fears, soothe what must have been a growing sense of alarm? We do not know. Interestingly, Gwynedd remembered almost nothing of his mother from that day. Perhaps she had already been taken from him. Or, more likely, perhaps she kept him occupied with some childish game, pretended all was as it should be, the little boy becoming involved in her conceit, absorbed, lost, until, finally, he attends to her not at all. By such crafts mothers have always prevented the formation of unpleasant memories, in the process denying their children—it must be said—the consolation of a true good-bye.

What Gwynedd did remember was that night, what happened that evening after the sun went down. They had given him something to play with, a toy of some sort, something that belonged to the children of his master, and it was this, he told me, that first

alerted him to the change in atmosphere, the feeling that somehow things were different, that maybe there was something about this day (the smell, the heat, the sound) that made people nice, friendly, for he had never been allowed to play with the toy before, had indeed been struck for so much as looking at it, and now, here, the selfsame woman who had dealt that blow gave it to him, leaned down and offered him the toy as if she were his mother herself, her hand not striking but stroking his head, her voice not raised in anger but soft, caressing, like a mother’s, like his own dear mother’s.

And then, just as the child Gwynedd lowers his defenses, begins to play with his toy, grow comfortable with the woman who has given it to him, perhaps even a little enamored of her, a familiar character enters our story to sound an alarm. For it is Folian, the same Folian who will someday found our monastery, become its first abbot, that now changes the tenor of the day, gives the first indication of the horrors it must contain, returns the boy, in an instant, from a growing sense of confidence to one of utter bewilderment. For why should the holy man cry out like that? Why should the stranger, the one everyone laughs at but his mother, the one his mother loves, respects, reveres, why should he cry out like that, why should his voice rise suddenly like that above the din, reach into this room as the smell does to distract him from his pleasure, draw his eyes from the toy to the women at the door, the women who, he now realizes, stand not like mothers but guards, their glances, however maternal, however caring, thrown at him over their shoulders, back at him over their shoulders, their real concern clearly elsewhere, outside, beyond this room, where whatever is happening is happening (the noise and confusion), outside where the holy man has just yelled? And why should he cry out like that? Why should the holy man yell
No!
like that?

And in an instant it is gone, the sense of security so carefully developed, so assiduously maintained, it is gone, vanished, the toy gone limp and unimportant in his hands, the women at the door no longer women but harpies, harridans, a troupe of witches set to guard him, keep him, who knew, fatten him for the fire, the

terror he has suppressed all day unleashed, set loose, a terror so big he cannot contain it, a terror so big it spills from him like something alive, something crazed and alive that bounds about the room, howls and shrieks at him from the rafters, from beneath the bed, over the door, till it seems it must explode, the room, the house, must explode with the exigency of it all, the holy man yelling
No!
out there like that, and he has to get out of here, escape from this place, this room, these women, this living and uncontainable terror.

And the next thing he remembered was stars. A collision, someone’s legs, the sound someone makes when their back strikes the ground, the wind driven from their lungs, and then he was out, free, the sky overhead dark and full of stars. And for a moment it was wonderful. When he told me about it all those years later that was one thing he remembered well, how good it had felt to be outside, how really fine, as if one actually could escape such terror, leave it behind, blind and shut-up in a room.

And then he saw the holy man.

The open area before the houses had at first seemed almost empty, surprisingly empty for all the noise it had generated, one or two old men beating on a drum, someone playing a pipe, but, otherwise, apparently, no one. Then he saw the priest, the one he had been taught to address as “Father.” He hadn’t noticed him at first because he hadn’t expected to see him (anyone really) in such a position, the two of them, the priest and old man Baldred, not arguing with one another by the fire as might be expected after that
No!,
but lying on the ground, both of them dirty and disheveled, entangled in one another’s arms like little boys tussling, like two little boys caught tussling. And they were looking at him. He remembered that well, Father did, the two faces almost comic in the firelight, open-mouthed, staring at him as if embarrassed to have been found in such a position, no one moving, no one saying a thing. And he almost laughed, the two grownups on the ground like that, their faces, his unexpected freedom, he almost laughed, but he didn’t, because there was something about the faces he didn’t like, something about the way they looked at him,

the way they looked at him and then turned in unison, turned in unison as if part of the same pantomime, turned and looked from him up and out into the darkness over the fields.

And Gwynedd (the fear creeping back into him now, the fear seeping from between the legs of the women in the doorway to creep across the ground and back into him like something alive, something alive and full of worms) looked that way as well. And saw lights. A confusion of lights really. Torches. Most of them up on the rocky place, Dacca’s crag, but another, a single torch, down below the others, below the others and off to the left, above the fields. And for a moment the little boy is very much afraid, terrified, his mind unable to make the necessary connections, the lone torch seeming to float ghost-like above the fields, a will o’ the wisp, a fiery demon. But then, thankfully, it all comes clear, his mind showing him the scene as it would appear in daylight, the position of the light suddenly evident, reasonable. Someone was up on the ridge. Someone was standing up on the ridge (the one that rode the fields like a boat and sometimes figured in his dreams), someone was standing up there and waving a torch at the people up on the crag. Who, in turn, seemed to be waving back. Or something.

But it was then that he heard the movement, all that had happened since his escape taking but an instant—the collision, the firelight, the priest and old Baldred, their look, the torches, his resolution of their respective locations—all of this having taken but a moment, and then the women were upon him and he was up and running, hands thrown over his head, running out into the peas, the chard, hiding himself among the plants of the field.

But it was here, as I remember it, that Father stopped for a moment in the telling of his story, hesitated, cocked his head as if looking at something he had not seen before. For though he knew he had hidden among the peas, could as yet smell them, still, at the same time, he also knew—or at least had always believed— that the rites performed that night were undertaken by hill people only during the short days, mid-winter, long before any crop would have come in. So how could he have hidden among peas?

But there was no changing it. He remembered peas, the smell of peas, their placid vegetable scent somehow reassuring after the alarms of the night. And stars. He was sure of that, winter or summer there had been stars, a great dark dome of sky struck through with stars—and beneath that silent turning beneficence, torches, the one upon the ridge waving and the others, those up on the mountain, waving back. Or something. Were they dancing? It seemed, as he watched them, that they were, and that there was one, a giant seemingly, taller than the others, much taller than the others, that danced with an abandon he could not credit, an improbable jangling that defied logic, the human form not meant to bend like that, the chest seeming to flex at mid-point so that, for a moment, his mind told him he watched not a man but a snake, a snake capable of bending where it willed. And then, again in an instant—the entire evening a collection of such moments, fragments of time clashing and colliding with one another—he realized his error, the dancer not taller but raised, suspended, the dancer not dancing but dangling, the dancer not a dancer but....

And again he was running, tearing through the fields mindless now of stake or stem, feeling neither obstacle nor blow, hurrying to her though it was of course impossible, too late, the fields great, the river deep, the mountain high between them, and yet he was already hurrying toward her, arms already raised as if to hold her, lift her above the noose’s suffocating embrace, for what else could he do? What else could he do except pray, pray as he never had before, that the heathen would relent, relinquish their devilish plans for her, take his mother down, save her.

And it was that, he told me, that in the end he found the most cruel. For they did. Amazingly, incredibly, after he had taken not more than three or four running strides, as if in answer to his prayers, as if petitioning heaven with him, the heathen lifted their arms toward his mother, torches dancing, sparks rising into the sky, lifted their arms toward her and carefully, gently, took her down, removed his mother’s head from the rope, deposed her, took her down from the tree. And she was still alive. You could see that—faint clearly, unable to walk on her own, men supporting her

on either side, someone else holding their torches—yet alive, his prayers answered, fulfilled, the miracle, his first, performed, accomplished, confirmed.

But then they lifted her up again. At first it looked so gentle, so kind, the men locking arms, cradling her, each clearly taking his position with some pride, an awareness of the responsibility incumbent upon him, lifting in a single movement, all heads turned toward his mother’s, gentle, caring, solicitous, but going the wrong way, the strange procession lit by torches held high as if to see her face, watch for any discomfort it might betray, but turning the wrong way, going not down but out, not down the mountain but out, out onto Dacca’s crag.

And it was then that he knew what they were going to do. As if he controlled the men, as if it were his thoughts that determined their behavior, he knew what was going to happen next, how they would come to a stop at the end of the crag (his mother’s feet suspended above the abyss), how they would stop, hesitate, look at one another, out at the lone torch floating above the fields, back at one other, and then, in accord with some signal he could not perceive (could not imagine), they would begin to move, begin to rock his mother, in unison, back and forth between them, rock her like a baby, arms swinging from side to side, first his mother’s head, then her feet, protruding from their little huddle. And then they were doing it. As in a dream when our worst fears call forth exactly that which we most dread, they were doing it, rocking her, torches held high, the sacred bundle that was his mother rocking back and forth there upon the crag, upon the very tip of Dacca’s crag.

When they threw her there was a moment in which Gwynedd’s mother seemed to rise instead of fall. He told me that, remembered that, how she’d seemed to rise into the torchlight, arms thrown out as if enjoying herself, as if this were all just part of some wild and scary game; and then she’d vanished, disappeared into the vast and echoing darkness that hung, loomed, before the crag. She didn’t say anything. He didn’t hear her scream or anything. Just that one reflexive movement of the arms, a final attempt