The Oblate's Confession (56 page)

Who knows why I turned from the path I was meant to follow that day, chose instead to delay my arrival at the hermit’s camp, visit first the crag? It may have been nothing more than a childish desire to exercise my newfound freedom, put it to the test, watch it fly. Or, equally childlike, I may have wanted to look one final time upon the place I had just escaped, lord it over Maban from what was, after all, a fairly distant (and safe) height. I don’t know, memory fails me here. All I know for sure is that I remember climbing—as I should have climbed, as I had been ordered to climb—up the path, toward the hermit, and the next thing I remember I am already seated on the crag, a gray and racing sky overhead, the world and all its treasure spread out at my feet. There must have been a deer somewhere on the mountain above me because I remember that too, have long associated the wild smell of deer with that day—the fresh smell of the sky, the pines,

the rock, and the musky smell of deer. And of course the wind. I remember the wind, remember how surprised it seemed to find me there, the way it investigated my surfaces, a blind man trying to see, understand, with the tips of his fingers. Down in the valley nothing moved. Despite the wind that blew where I was, the world below remained hushed, still. The trees along the Meolch did not bend, the banner Brother Prior had placed over Godwin’s lodgings did not fly. If it hadn’t been for the river, the leaden glint of its waters, the suggestion of movement, sound, rising to me from its rapids, I might have thought all of Redestone an illusion, the picture of a monastery and its fields instead of the real and breathing place that it was.

I looked down toward the village, the house I had always believed to be Eanflæd's. On a ridge below me, a stand of pine had put out new growth which now partially blocked my view, but I could still see the door, the one window, the rather poorly kept garden. I wondered what Eanflæd was doing. Though there was little smoke rising from the roof, for some reason I pictured her cooking, body bent over a steaming array of pots, sleeves rolled up, cheeks moist and pink with effort. The vision pleased me. There seemed nothing wrong with it. From such a distance, how could my thoughts be anything other than pure? I wanted only what was best for her, that she might be happy and healthy, that she might have plenty of good food to eat.

Pleased with myself, I continued my survey: the ponds, the orchard, the South Wood. I found myself struck again by the size and extent of the latter. From the terrace you cannot help but feel if you were only a little taller, a little higher up, you might see to the far edge of the wood, perhaps even to that golden land the sun so likes to tarry over in winter. But from the crag such delusions fall away. Despite your vantage point, the wood marches on, vast, unending, indifferent. Everything—all that your precious world holds: church and cloister, terrace and fields—seems by comparison small and insignificant.

I looked back at the place made small by that comparison and found myself unexpectedly touched by its smallness. There was,

after all, something endearing about such an enterprise, a world carved from the wilderness, sustaining itself upon the fruits of its labors, the strength of its devotions. I looked at the fields, the rows set off by long puddles reflecting gray sky, and I prayed that the rainy weather might cease, that the ground might dry, the harvest be brought in before the rot commence. From the crag, the sanctuary provided by the mountain, I found I could afford to be generous. Redestone looked a sweet place, however small, a benign place, however rigorous. I liked the way its buildings looked inward upon themselves, the doors and windows of dortoir and refectory opening onto the garth, the church returning their gaze, all of them safe and warm beneath their thatch, backs to the rest of the world, stones and daub faintly glowing. I remembered my dream, the rattle of the wagon, Eanflæd, the cherry blossoms. From the crag, I found it difficult to understand the apprehension that dream had caused me. How had I ever seen Redestone as malevolent? Surrounded on all sides by danger—opposing armies, devil worship, the wood—she nevertheless turned her eyes inward, kept watch not for evil but for God. You had to admire the audacity of such a place, the audacity of the men who built and sustained it. Those men had fed and clothed me. They cared for me. From up here it was easy to love them. Why I could almost love Father Abbot. Certainly I wished him well. I was, I suddenly realized, changed. The weeks of prayer and self-denial had had their inevitable effect. Almost despite myself, I had become a better person than I had been.

Absently, I let my eye wander on up the valley. At a little distance above the abbey mill, a spill of rock from the mountain’s flank joins the river and the forest briefly changes character, becoming mostly sycamores. Here I lingered, regarding for a moment the spot where once I had been in the habit of praying, associating it in my mind with my present location, the lessons Father Hermit had taught me. A prickling, the suggestion of an anxiety, and I moved on. Still farther up-river I was able to pick out the break in the trees that marked the yard, and was relieved to see no evidence of the accident that had taken place there. I thought

about Victricius, missed him. In an odd sort of way he and I had been very much alike—both of us sometimes awkward, uncomfortable in community, certainly different, set apart. True, his had been a difficult service, but he had never beaten me. I could have done worse. Indeed, I found myself thinking I would pray for Brother during my sojourn upon the mountain, that his cause would become mine. The thought cheered me. I rather liked the idea of myself as Victricius’s champion. From now on people were going to have to answer to me if they wanted to say anything against the little man from Gaul.

Above the furnace, the wooded bank of the river is marked by an unnaturally straight line cut through the trees. This line marks the path our race follows as it rises to meet its source at the falls of the Meolch. Thinking about Victricius, I now directed my attention to this spot, remembering a time when, after a particularly bad flood, Brother and I had hiked up there to check on the gate. The thing I remembered best from that day was what it had felt like to stand at the top of the race and stare down its line of sight toward the yard. With the air around me full of vapor and the sound of the falls, it had been easy to imagine what had happened during the flood. Upon encountering the open sluice-gate, the swell of water had turned a portion of its fury upon the path thus exposed, roaring down the race toward our work-place. This secondary torrent had then ignored the way the race bends at the yard and, instead, plunged straight ahead, back down to the river, in the process ripping out flags, undermining the furnace, and carrying off the greater part of our charcoal. Eventually of course the waters had subsided, but not before they’d gouged out an entirely new channel back down to the Meolch, a channel down which our race continued to uselessly pour. At a time when all the world gave evidence of an excess of water, Redestone went without: the mill did not turn, the moss on the lavabo had grown dusty and dry, Brother Kitchen’s drains did not drain, and the ditch had begun to smell. Victricius, I remembered, took one look at the sluice-gate— half-buried in silt and sand—and pronounced it salvageable. Without so much as a glance at the rest of the wonderful destruction

wrought by the flood, he had turned and begun the march back down to the yard. “Come on,” he’d called back to me, “we’ll need shovels!”

Above the falls the river turns behind a long ridge and is no longer visible from the crag, though the valley that carries it can still be followed as it rises into the mountain. At a point hazy with distance, a pale ochre scar is just visible against the dark green of the valley’s far wall. I can’t remember what this really is—a cliff, the opening to a cave, I’m not sure—but I do remember Father Hermit telling me that it was a forbidden place, that the hill people still sometimes visited there, believing it to be the lair of a particularly strong demon. Above this, the valley continues to rise, narrowing as it winds up into the mountain until, having risen till it can rise no more, it buries its snout in the saddle that connects Modra nect’s southern and northern peaks. Here it was that my praying self had once perceived a great and flimsy dam, had reached for it and, in my arrogance, pulled it down.

Perhaps it was my memory of the damage caused to the sluice-gate by the flood, or maybe it was just the opportunity provided by the crag to reconstruct something which, heretofore, I had only seen in my mind, but, for whatever reason, I now found myself absently retracing the route God’s wrath would have taken as it poured down out of the mountain. I thought the high valleys would have filled first and, thinking it, watched as, one by one, they did, the red-hot vein of God’s displeasure creeping slowly down Modra nect’s brow. At the pagan site the livid stream flared momentarily as if undecided about its course, then, however reluctantly, moved on, great swaths of forest catching fire as it passed, rocky outcrops losing their grip upon the mountain, sliding off to join and swell the flood. A final turn and the leading edge of the flow swept into view; hot and roaring, voracious, engulfing rocks and rapids, it raced toward the falls.

And then I saw it. Sitting there on the crag, legs dangling beneath me, the wind still playing at my woolens, I saw it, saw what would have happened next, the pale thin line cut through the trees, the path provided, the easy slope, the yard, the furnace, Brother

Victricius.

But that was absurd!

I looked away, down toward the village, refusing to see what I had seen and yet seeing it still, the sluice-gate, the sudden arrival of the flow, the inevitable diversion, the inevitable consequence. Was it possible? Could my prayer—unatoned for, unconfessed— have routed God’s fury toward Victricius? No! No, I would not have it! I had prayed against Wilfrid, not the furnace master!

Still a part of me would not leave it alone. Who, I found myself thinking, who had stood the most to lose from Victricius’s death? And silently, almost serenely, the answer rose before me like a dark unwanted sun. Wilfrid. Yes, Wilfrid surely. Without our furnace master, Redestone could produce no iron. And without Redestone’s iron Wilfrid became, at least so far as Ecgfrith was concerned, next to nothing, powerless. The king could and had attacked him openly. There was even said to have been advantage in it. Many still remembered the forced expulsions, the shame of the Roman tonsure, the appropriations of land and title, the insults, the pride. Without iron, Wilfrid had few friends, many enemies. The latest reports had him in full retreat, hounded and harassed from country to country just as (and here I could no longer pretend otherwise) I had prayed he might be.

And if that were true, if it really had been my prayer that had brought all this about, then what might not be next? What else lay in the path of God’s destruction—the terrace, our crops, Eanflæd, Father Dagan, Redestone itself?!

And I was up and running, up and running toward the hermit and his camp, toward the one priest, the one father I knew who— without threat of exposure or expulsion—could absolve me of all this, save me and the world from all that I had put in motion.

The camp that day, when I finally reached it, looked exactly as it had the first time I’d seen it. There was Father’s hut, tumble-down and forlorn, Father’s pots, Father’s fire, and there, sitting by

the stream like an old stump, like something that never moved, was Father himself. Of course I should have waited. If my life on the mountain had taught me anything it was this, that I should not disturb the hermit when he was at prayer. But I couldn’t help myself. Forgetting everything in my relief at seeing him, forgetting even my prayer, the confession I had to make, I ran to him, ran to him and threw myself down on the ground beside him. “Father!” I shouted. “Father, it’s me, Winwæd! I’m back!”

I’ll never forget the look he threw me, eyes wide in astonishment, face pale, almost comically distraught. But he pulled himself together for my sake, visibly composed himself. “Yes,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to discover me sitting on the ground beside him, “Yes, of course it is you.” Then he looked away as if he’d heard something, a bird maybe.

I followed his gaze impatiently, saw nothing. “Father, I have to talk with you,” I said. “You have to hear my confession.”

Again the old man’s head spun around, again he looked at me. For a moment he hesitated, frowning, then, in a voice full of suspicion and disapproval, he said, “You’re not Edgar. Where’s Brother Edgar with my biscuits and honey?”