The Oblate's Confession (13 page)

Not that we oblates understood any of this. Two more years would pass before Waldhere and I were deemed old enough for Chapter, and poor Ealhmund never would get to see the community in session. All we knew was that, for some reason, instead of clearing the ditch in spring when it made sense, we were doing so
now, after the planting, when our hands and backs were sore and tired, the weeds had grown tall and well-rooted, and the heat made the smell of the reredorter unbearable.

Still, it was hard not to find some pleasure in the task. Somewhere far up the valley, the furnace master had closed the gate that linked our ditch to the Meolch. Redestone’s water supply was stopped: the mill did not turn, the lavabo did not flow, our reredorter stood over a dry and stinking ditch...and we oblates were up to our knees in muck. We were supposed to be pulling weeds (the monks had been issued shovels and scythes), but the novelty of standing in a place normally full of water made it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. When Brother Osric (who was named cellarer after the death of Father Cuthwine) looked our way, we pulled and yanked with enthusiasm, but, for the most part, we spent our time searching the mud for treasure washed down from the abbey kitchens.

It was overcast that day and hot. The air was full of smoke from the fires and the smell of green wood burning mixed with that of the reredorter. I had just found a piece of fish bone and was about to show it to Waldhere when I noticed how quiet everything had gotten. I looked up.

It was a man on a horse. He had already passed through the village and was now nearly even with the first of the ponds. As I watched, a second man became visible behind the horse. He was on foot and hurrying to keep up. The man on the horse seemed unconcerned about the man on the ground, but he did ride slowly. At one point he reached down and scratched a knee. The man behind him was carrying two spears. As he hurried along behind the horse, the shafts of the spears bent up and down in rhythm with his movements.

The creaking of leather and the clicking of the spears became audible as the two men drew near. I couldn’t see the horseman’s sword because it hung down on the other side of his horse, but I could see his shield. It had been painted green and red in a design I had not seen before. There was something wrong with the man’s face. One side of it was swollen.

When the horseman drew even with the place where Waldhere and I stood, I could see that I had been wrong about his face. A scar ran down the side of the man’s forehead, crossed his cheekbone, and then buried itself in his beard. Whatever had caused the wound (I imagined a war-axe), had clipped off the end of the man’s eyebrow and a significant portion of the right side of his beard. Neither had grown back and, as a result, the right side of the man’s face looked somehow wider, fatter, than the left.

The man didn’t look at us as he passed, nor really did he look at anyone. He glanced up at the abbey once or twice but not like most visitors. You could tell he had seen such places before.

It was Father Prior who broke the spell. He clapped his hands once and everyone jumped. I looked around and someone laughed. Father looked at the brother who had laughed and then, fairly quickly, the sound of shovel and scythe started up again.

I began pulling weeds but I also glanced over at Waldhere. He looked back and the two of us raised our eyebrows at each other to show how pleased we were with what we had seen. Then

Waldhere’s eyes grew larger still and a sudden shadow passed over the ground between us. I bent to my work, pulling weeds with a vengeance now, but it made no difference. Whoever was standing behind me, kicked me. I stood up, turned around.

It was Brother Baldwin. He was standing at the edge of the ditch, glaring down at me, his forehead and cheeks flecked with mud. When he was sure he had my attention, he pointed up at the rider and his companion who had just reached the abbey rise, their figures wavering now in the heat and smoke from the fires. I looked that way and then I looked back at Brother Baldwin. The old monk smiled in a way that scared me. Never taking his eyes off me, he moved his hand through the air before him like a snake.

I nodded.

The smile on Brother’s face evaporated. He pointed at me.

I must have looked surprised because I remember Brother smiling again at that. Then, as if pronouncing judgment, he caused the fingers of his right hand to rain upon the back of his left.

The message could not have been clearer.
That snake
, Brother had signed,
is your father.

Ceolwulf did not visit me on that occasion. I saw him once or twice in church but he did not speak to me and may not have known I was there. I remember only that he wore many rings and that when he came into church there was a smell that came with him. Waldhere said this was because of the oil he wore but I didn’t believe him. The man who came each year for the iron wore oil but he didn’t smell as good as my father.

I did not see Ceolwulf leave Redestone. One day his horse and man were simply gone. I did not see them depart.

Everyone loves the story of the hermit and how he refused to accept food from Redestone at the height of that summer’s hunger and actually sent provisions from his own stores back down the mountain to the abbey. Even Father Abbot tells the tale though he must know it isn’t true. I wish Father himself could hear it. I can see him now, sitting by his fire, biting carefully into one of the biscuits I’ve brought him, tilting the cake just so to keep the honey in place, eyes closed, listening, enjoying the story and trying not to laugh for fear of the crumbs. Afterwards he would have reminded me of “crosses to bear.” He always did. He said everyone has one and his were the ideas people have about hermits. “They like to think of us as cut off from the rest of the world, needing nothing and no one. When of course,” he would have laughed, “you know
as well as anyone how much I need Botulf’s biscuits.”

But Father did try to be self-sufficient. Often as not, when he wasn’t praying, he could be found foraging on his mountaintop, looking for mushrooms or berries, whatever manna God and the wood would provide. He even used to fish on occasion, though I think he did this more for the love of angling than anything else: I never saw him catch anything. But you would hardly have called his larder full. I have no idea how the story of his charity during the hunger got started, but I can assure you I never carried any food back down the mountain. What little he was able to collect from the forest around him wasn’t enough to sustain his own person and would have proven of little assistance (and even less palatability) to the monks of Redestone.

But he did try. I can still see the old man holding up some plant he’s found, brushing the dirt from its roots with his free hand and asking if I remember its name. If I could then, I can’t now. I learned many things from the hermit, lessons about the practice of a religious life, lessons about death; but when I try to bring back the name of the plant he made soup from, or the one he preferred for his tea, there is nothing, that wax having long since melted. Which is interesting when you think about it. Did I have my own ideas of what a hermit should be? Was there something about the pleasure the poor man took in finding some seed or herb that I found embarrassing, unmanly? I don’t know. I hope not. I pray I wasn’t one of the crosses he bore.

Still, I did go with the hermit whenever he went foraging, and it is for this reason that it should have come as no surprise— when he suggested a walk that morning—that I picked up my gathering basket, slipped its strap up over my shoulder. But he looked surprised. The old man’s eyes grew wide and he shook his head as if he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to look for food on such a day. Of course I knew he was making fun of me. It was one of the things I liked about the hermit, the way he poked fun at me, but still I was surprised. We always carried the baskets when we went for a walk.

It is in the nature of mountains that, paradoxically, as one
climbs nearer the sun, the air carries less warmth. But that morning, despite the chill, despite the fact I wore my hood up, kept my hands muffled in my sleeves, the hermit strode along bareheaded, his enthusiasm for the sights we passed along the way apparently all that was necessary to keep him warm. At one point I even remember him directing my attention to the sky, asking if I didn’t think the clouds overhead looked like animals chasing one another. When I agreed, he said the hill people called such weather “The Hunt.” I became quiet then. Father Prior said we weren’t supposed to talk about the hill people.

After we had been walking for a while, the sound of some great large thing rushing through the wood built up suddenly behind us. Before I could get too scared, the leaves on the trees around us began to pop and dance and a lone raindrop broke fat and cold against my cheek. It had been dry since the haying and I was pleased at the thought of a shower but, as it happened, this one did not last. As if God had shaken a branch once and then moved on, the rain stopped. When the sun came back out, the
leaves around us sparkled in the light.

We were in a part of the forest I didn’t know when the hermit stopped to look at some tracks. I was always a little nervous when we entered parts of the wood I didn’t know. On another such walk the hermit had announced, as if it were nothing at all, that we were now on the Cumbrogi side of the mountain. Hoping to hurry him along, I knelt down beside the old man to see what he was looking at.

There wasn’t much. Or quite a bit I supposed, if you understood such things. The surface of the path was a fine gray dust, pocked here and there by the redder craters of raindrops. Pressed into the dust and scattered across it like leaves on a pond were innumerable tracks. I glanced back over my shoulder. Behind us two sets of prints, pure and white, floated unerringly up to Father and me. Why couldn’t animals walk like that, straight and true?

I looked back at the ground in front of us. There was deer track of course, there always was, but I no longer took any pride in identifying deer track: deer track never made any sense—these for
instance, each separate, individual, as if a herd of one-legged animals had spronged through here, each striking the ground once and at odd angles to its fellows before vanishing, apparently bodily, into thin air. And then there was the bird. The thing began birdlike enough at the side of the trail, scratching and scuffling along, but when I followed it, hoping to find the place where walking ended and flying began, the creature developed a subterranean nature, its tracks diving beneath those of a dog like some sort of bird-footed mole. It was always like this. Animal tracks made about as much sense to me as the patterns left by raindrops.

But not to the hermit. With an agility that surprised me, he was suddenly on his feet and pulling me onto mine. Before I could ask what was wrong, he had a finger to his lips and was pushing me, roughly, up into the wood. We went a little distance, tripping over fallen limbs and making quite a bit of noise, and then he made me lie down behind a log. Once he was sure I couldn't be seen from the trail, he lay down beside me. I looked at the hermit carefully but he didn’t say anything. He rose up on one elbow and
watched the path below.

For a while we lay like that—I more than a little afraid, the hermit watching. It was cold and damp where we lay and, more than anything, I wanted to be somewhere else. But we couldn’t move, probably shouldn’t even breathe, so I stayed where I was and tried, very hard, to be still. After a while, either from fright or cold or a combination of the two, I began to shiver. The hermit looked at me. Something in his face made me think it might be all right to speak. “Cumbrogi?” I whispered.