The Oblate's Confession (16 page)

By the time I reached the bottom of the last loop in the path, I could see there was a scattering of parchment-colored leaves still clinging to the outer branches of the trees in the grove, which meant they were oaks. Father Hermit said oaks were the wise old men of the forest for they sometimes retained their leaves like this late into the year, holding them close against the coming cold. And maybe that was what I had seen. Maybe it had just been some dead leaves blowing in the wind.

But, once again, the day would teach me that perceptions arrived at from distance are not to be trusted. When I was about halfway up that last section of path, the movement became visible
again and there was no doubting then what it was: a small piece of cloth—undyed, weathered—beating from the top of a tall pole.

I knelt down again. I didn’t like this. This was too much like my story, signals left for people, warnings. I looked back down at the wood, for some reason certain this was where my enemy lay. At this distance the leafless trees formed a single gray mass, marked here and there by the darker patches of pine. There was no way I would be able to see anyone hiding down there.

I looked back at the grove. The place certainly looked empty. Though I was still too low to see the ground they stood upon, I could see the trees well now, their limbs gesticulating in the wind. Beyond them it looked as if there was nothing, just moving sky. To my left the ridge dropped away from me, back down toward the point at which I had first seen the holly, first joined this path. Again I found myself thinking about the back of a horse, though now it seemed I stood near the animal’s head, looking down its neck toward distant hindquarters. Which made me think this must be the ridge’s uppermost point, that the grove must mark that point, sit upon it.... Which meant that beyond the grove, just the other side of these trees....

If I stuck to this path, crawled up there on my hands and knees, no one down in the wood would be able to see me because of the grass; and then I could slip through the grove, out the other side, and disappear down the far slope before anyone even knew I was gone!

I liked the idea. If there were Cumbrogi down there, it had every chance of fooling them; and, if there weren’t, well, it would be fun to crawl up there anyway, pretending there were.

I started out, keeping low, the grass on either side of me so tall I was reminded of crawling up through the fox’s tunnel. Though I was afraid, I was also a little happy. The farther I went without any sign or sound from the wood, the more difficult it became for me to believe there really were any Cumbrogi down there. After all, I hadn’t actually seen anything. Most likely I was going to reach the top of the path, explore an abandoned encampment (or maybe even a fort!), and then hurry home with exciting news.

There were worse ways to spend an interval.

As I drew near the grove, the sound of the wind blowing through the trees grew loud, a mad rattling of dead leaves that unsettled me. Still, Father Gwynedd had taught me to attend to sound, that you could learn from it, that it too was a form of sign. When the noise became very loud, I judged myself close enough to stand up, risk a second look.

And that was when I saw it. That was when I saw the wagon.

Of course I’ve thought about this before. I’ve thought about what might have happened, what perhaps would have happened, had my mind not been in thrall to the story I was telling it, the notion I had of myself as some sort of hero, the little boy who was going to warn everyone of the bad people traipsing about on Modra nect. If I hadn’t been half-playing, half-believing, there were Cumbrogi down in the wood watching me, I wouldn’t have crawled up there like that, wouldn’t have waited till the last possible moment to stand, look at what lay before me. I don’t think the wagon would have had such an effect upon me then, for it would have come into view gradually as things do when one climbs toward them. I would have had time to become comfortable with it, note the familiar shape, recognize and identify the thing long before I saw it whole. But standing up as I did close like that, almost on top of it, there was no time for thinking, no time for context or understanding.

I had an unbroken view of the thing. I’m sure of that. No branches, no leaves, intruded upon that vision. And immediately behind the wagon there must have been a corresponding break in the trees, for I remember it seemed to float before moving clouds like an image of itself, at once perfect and improbable, furniture of dream and of nightmare.

I walked up to it.

As if it
were
a dream, as if I were part of the dream, I walked up to the wagon. I walked up to it and carefully, almost reverentially, I reached out and touched it.

It was real.

I had been playing at driving my imaginary oxen for some time when it happened, when the sound of the wind blowing through the trees abruptly changed, and—as if a signal had been given— the spell was broken. I remembered myself, remembered where I was, what I was doing, whom I had feared. I glanced to the right, the direction my ear told me should concern me, and seeing something, seeing something I did not want to see, immediately looked forward again, tried to pretend there had been nothing there, that I hadn’t seen the figure standing at the edge of the grove. Perhaps if he didn’t know I knew he was there he wouldn’t move too quickly. Perhaps—if I was very fast—there was still time,

I could still escape, get away.

But then it was all too much for me and despite myself, despite what I thought it was, indeed because of what I thought it was, what I most feared, I turned and looked Death in the eye.

And it was Father Gwynedd.

Father Gwynedd was standing just inside the ring of trees— hair, beard, woolens, everything, blown sideways by the wind— eyes alone steady: looking at me.

When we returned to the grove, we brought three brothers and Father Prior with us.

Of course by then I had some understanding of what it was that I had done, what it was that I had trifled with. Father Gwynedd had begun my instruction immediately upon finding me in the grove. The ridge-top wasn’t, he had explained, a Cumbrogi holding at all. The grove and wagon belonged to the hill people, served as a place of worship for them, were, in point of fact, what they worshipped. He had pointed at the wagon then and—rather sternly for him—declared it to be proscribed. “You must treat such sign as you would the bear’s,” he said. “Caution! Danger!”

Later, after we’d come back to the grove, I found myself
thinking quite a bit about that warning. At the time it hadn’t bothered me unduly—someone was always pointing out how perilous the world was to oblates. But since then everyone had been behaving so strangely. Weren’t we supposed to seek out pagans? Weren’t we supposed to find them, convert them to the one true Faith? Father Abbot was always sending someone out “to save the hill people,” and here I’d found some for them close-at-hand and you’d have thought I’d told them the world was coming to an end. Brother Swidbert was so scared he trembled constantly, his hood pulled down over his face like a man already dead. He’d gotten ill during the night and, despite the wind, you could hear the sounds he made, like a skin bursting. And Brother Hewald was worse. Except for the office, he never moved, standing with his arms stretched out like the Christ’s, staring down at the distant wood. He’d stood like that during the sickness too, and though I now knew it to be a form of prayer, I still didn’t like it. I didn’t like anything that reminded me of the sickness. And what did it say about our situation that he chose to pray again like this now, here, when everything else seemed otherwise so perfectly ordinary? These were monks. What could be so bad it could scare a monk?

I looked over at Father Prior. Eyes closed, back held rigidly erect, he was kneeling by the wagon as he had been ever since Ter-ce, praying diligently. Behind him, clouds tumbled past the ridge-top like frightened sheep. I thought about this, wondered about the difference between what was going on behind Father and what was going on within him. The way he held his head reminded me a little of the time Waldhere and I had heard something and, peeking through the window at Chapter, seen Father Prior in earnest discussion with our lord abbot. And maybe that was it. Maybe Brother Hewald’s stance, Father Prior’s wrinkled brow, weren’t so much signs of prayer as of discussion, even of argument. Maybe that was why the monks were so afraid, because they knew what they were up against, knew what God was capable of, what He might do to such a heathen place.

And it was at that moment—even as I contemplated the power that sets all things in motion—that the clouds behind Father Prior
abruptly froze in place and everything else—wagon, trees, Father Prior, Brother Hewald—began slowly, gracefully, to revolve back around in the opposite direction, back around me.

I shut my eyes.

Of course it was probably the hunger. We’d been fasting for two days now, and when you went that long without food you had to expect this sort of thing to happen. Still a part of me wondered if it might not be more than that. There were those that believed fasting made one susceptible to visions—even Waldhere believed this. Was it possible that what I was seeing, witnessing, was real? Could this be what it would look like, the effect of so much prayer: the grove’s profanity being unwound like a dirty bandage from around the top of this ridge?

Or, worse, might this be preliminary to Whirlwind?

I kept my eyes shut tight, joined my prayer to that of those around me.

Dead leaves rattled in the trees overhead.

A raven called somewhere off in the distance.

But, otherwise, nothing happened.

I opened my eyes. I opened my eyes and, mercifully, everything was as it should be: the circle of oaks had ceased to revolve, Father Dagan knelt where he had been kneeling, and though my forehead felt unusually cool and damp, I felt better. Surely everything was going to be all right.

And it was then, as if God had made a particularly good point in their argument, that an entirely new set of wrinkles appeared on Father Prior’s brow. He looked puzzled, uncertain. He looked worse than that.

I waited.

For a moment or two nothing happened. A finger rubbed another, the upper part of a leg twitched, but, otherwise, nothing. Then—so quickly it frightened me—my lord prior’s eyes flew open and, twisting his head around violently, he cast a wild glance down at the far wood.

Of course I looked that way too but there was nothing to see, neither painted men nor blinding light. I looked back at Father and
was surprised to find him looking at me. He smiled. I smiled. Then, embarrassed for him, I assumed custody of the eyes.

Later that afternoon it began to snow. I crawled under the wagon but the monks remained out in the open. The snow came down in big wet flakes that melted as soon as they touched the ground. There was something in the nature of this snow (God’s silence descending upon our own) that dampened all sound. A hill person would have thought the monks mad, that they looked like nothing so much as big dumb statues amid all that swirling snow; but I knew better. I knew that quietly, internally, they were calling down Power onto this place.

Prior Dagan was the first to give up, climb in under the wagon. He settled himself against the inside of a wheel, pulled his hood down over his face and became quite still. After a while I could tell from the sound of his breathing that he had fallen asleep. Which didn’t bother me. The others were still awake and Father deserved his rest: he’d been keeping the long watch ever since he’d learned of the grove. The snow continued to fall, big white flakes drifting
down out of an unnaturally flat dark sky.