The Oblate's Confession (33 page)

I didn’t say anything.

Eanflaed smiled and, as if I had said something, had said something beautiful, her eyes filled suddenly with tears. “You know they call it Redestone? The village I mean. Outside the valley they don’t call it ‘the village’, or ‘Wilfrid’s village’. They call it ‘Redestone’.”

I nodded uncertainly, never having thought about it before, not seeing why it should matter what people outside the valley called the village.

Eanflaed closed her eyes, lashes dark and wet against her cheek. “Redestone,” she said, as if the word itself were something special, sacred. She opened her eyes, looked at me. “We’re part of the monastery, as much a part of the monastery as your fields or this orchard. You look after us, take care of us. You have to. It’s what you’re here for.”

Not according to my father.

But I didn’t say that. I just looked at her and smiled, an uneasy feeling taking root in the pit of my stomach.

Eanflæd looked away, stared off through the trees, holding herself tight, upper body bobbing in apparent agreement with something. “You’re heroes,” she said, nodding to herself, “heroes.” She looked back at me, cocked an appraising eyebrow. “Of course you don’t look like it. I mean you don’t look like heroes, but that makes it even better, doesn’t it, grander somehow, more
heroic?” She smiled. “I mean you stand up there unarmed don’t you?” She indicated the abbey with a tilt of her chin, looked back at me. “That’s what Mother says. She says all you have is your prayer, and your chanting and fasting. I mean those are all the weapons you have. But it's enough. Just enough. You stand up there and hold Him off you hold off God. You keep Him from getting us, keep Him from coming too close.” The girl looked at me as if expecting something, as if expecting me to say something, and when I didn’t, couldn’t, had no idea what to say, she began to cry, the tears spilling from her like something she was giving me, something she wanted me to have, an offering, a gift. “That’s what I wanted to say,” she said. “That’s what I came for. To tell you thank you. I want to thank you. I Eanflæd, Ealdgyth’s daughter, thank you for your prayers, for your sacrifice.”

I cannot say with any certainty what I did then. Probably I blinked, looked away, tried to appear once more wise and understanding. It is the way of children. But in truth, of course, the only wisdom I possessed was a certainty that this girl was wrong, deluding herself. Not that we didn’t pray for them. We did, then as now. In Chapter Father would tell us of their woes, the weeping wound, the torn palate, and we would pray for them. And in church too, when we offered up prayers for the work, the harvest, we prayed for the village as well, the people who lived in the village. But it wasn’t the same. I mean I knew that. We prayed for Dextra too, during her final illness, and for the sheep. But that wasn’t why we were here. We were here for us. To save us. It wasn’t the same. But I couldn’t say that—the girl so clearly wanting to believe otherwise, wanting to think herself and her family a part of the monastery, that, in some way, we were there
for them,
that we held God at bay
for them.
How could I contradict her? Have you ever looked a young girl in the eye? When they want something, when they want something badly, their eyes have a considerable power. And so I did the easy thing, telling myself it was the right thing, that even Father Abbot would have approved in the face of so tenuous a faith, I nodded. I looked at the girl as if she had said something profound, and I nodded.

The girl smiled. I remember that. As if she knew, as if at some level she knew how unlikely her view of things was, how great an effort she had required of me, she smiled, seemed relieved, bowed her head. I think she might have wanted to kiss me. Or at least my hand. I remember I had that impression. I don’t know what I would have done if she had, don’t know how I should have responded, turned her from such a course, but, as it happened, she did not. The moment passed.

And then a strange fancy came over me. Father Gwynedd had told me about it, the way the monasteries used to be, the way he said some of them still were, mixed, men and women living together—chastely of course but together—and a sudden vision of us as old religious, Eanflæd and me, came over me, our hands worn with the work, knees swollen from praying, the two of us sitting side by side in Chapter, not saying anything, not needing to say anything, just sitting there, quiet, together. I looked at Eanflæd and, outlandish as it was, found the idea suddenly reasonable, apt, and, fool that I was, I acted upon it, I ventured a suggestion. “You should think about entering a monastery,” I said, “a community like ours.”

The look again, the same look as before, so that, for a moment, I thought I might never speak again, might never be so stupid as to give voice to my thoughts again. “Oh no,” she said, smiling as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, as if I had missed the fact she had dark hair instead of light, was a girl and not a boy. “No,” she said, “I want to have babies.” She laughed a little. “You know, lots and lots of babies.”

I assumed custody of the eyes.

“No, really, I’m sorry,” the hand on my knee again, the weight of it, the warmth. “It’s just...” she leaned forward so she could look up into my face. “It’s just that I want to have...well...children.” She smiled, the hand already gone, no longer touching me. “You understand. I want to have children.”

I nodded, trying not to look at her, trying to avoid her eyes, those intense, those demanding, eyes.

“I just....” Eanflæd sat back up, withdrew. “When Mother told
me about you, I don’t know. I thought about it. I did. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how fortunate I was, we are, to have you praying for us, protecting us.”

I looked up, but Eanflæd wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was looking at the sky, had leaned back, braced herself, hands flat out on the ground behind her, so that she could look directly up into the sky. “I wanted to thank you,” she said, “thank someone, for all you do for us.” She closed her eyes, opened them again, pupils white with light from the sky. “You really are wonderful you know, just...wonderful!”

It was two or three days later, standing once more at the top of a ladder in a cherry tree, that I had my vision regarding Ealhmund.

I was thinking about Eanflæd when it happened. Truth be told, I was, in those first days, almost always thinking about Eanflæd. Of course I knew this was wrong, that I should be ashamed of this, but there was something about our encounter, something about having sat with her, been so close to her, that I could not put out of my mind, could not force myself to forget. I pictured her. I pictured her face, the way the freckles lay upon it, the way her lips changed when she smiled, grew thin, dark, the way she cocked her head when she laughed at me. I wondered about her hair, why she didn’t wear her hair up like the other women. I thought about her dress, how nice it was, how soft, the effort someone had put into making it, making something so nice, so soft. I thought about her arms. Of course they had been covered. Before I mean, before she took her shawl off, her arms had been covered. But they weren’t when I sat with her. They had been uncovered, and I thought about that.

And then, because I couldn’t help it, because it came to me as it always did when I thought about Eanflæd, when I pictured her, thought about the way we had sat together, I found myself remembering the other thing, the embarrassing thing, the part that made me feel so ashamed for her. For there was no denying she had
said it. I could still see the way she had looked at me when she said it, the brazenness of her announcement, the utter lack of self-respect. I want to have babies, she had declared, lots and lots of babies.

The first of the day’s breezes moved through the orchard, caused the branches around me to rise and fall, entered the trees at my back, passed on off down the valley. I supposed I too should be moving on, shifting the ladder to another part of the tree, but I didn’t want to. The sun was warm on my head, my hands, the surrounding leaves; I felt no urge to go.

And what if she was a bad girl? What if she did want to have babies, what was wrong with that? I mean I knew what was wrong with that but, at the same time, a part of me sympathized with her, felt what I told myself was a Christian’s necessary compassion for the sinner. After all, she
wasn't
part of Redestone, not really, didn’t live in a monastery, hadn’t grown up in a monastery as I had. How could you expect her to be different from what she was? I blushed to think about it but it was true, they all did it, all of them, all the way back to Eve. I had even seen a woman big with child myself once, down by the river, so I knew this to be true. I supposed, living together the way they did, it was bound to happen, the poor wretches prey to the most disgusting of passions.

Of course the thought itself was lascivious, and even as I thought it I knew I had sinned, could feel the power of the sin swell within me as the tree that day had seemed to swell beneath me in the wind. Which made me feel bad even as, at the same time, it also made me feel good, as if by being bad—by being bad like Eanflæd —I had somehow moved closer to her, had, in fact, stepped between her and something, protected her as she had dreamt I would protect her, dreamt all monks would protect her.

And it was at that moment—as I was feeling this, thinking this—that I saw my fellow oblate, saw Ealhmund. The boy was standing in the very top of a tree way over on the other side of the orchard; and it seemed he was looking at me. Was he looking at me? I squinted my eyes but couldn’t tell, he was too far away. Still, a part of me felt like laughing. Ealhmund never had been well
coordinated and now that he was working for Brother Kitchens he’d grown fat as well, far too fat to try to stand like this in the top of a tree. And then suddenly I had the notion, the idea, that it wasn’t Ealhmund. That what I was looking at was not Ealhmund, not Ealhmund standing in the top of a tree, but a vision of such a thing. And with this thought came another, a warning, a presentiment. He isn’t going to make it. With a certainty that frightened me I suddenly knew,
knew,
that Ealhmund wasn’t going to make it, that he was going to die or be expelled or something but—surely and irrefutably—there was no way the comical thing standing in the tree over there would ever, could ever, become a monk. It was impossible. Ealhmund didn’t stand a chance.

The two of us stood like that for some time—Ealhmund occasionally throwing an arm out for balance, I wondering if he could really see me at such a distance, if, in fact, he was even looking at me. Then, quite unexpectedly, the boy waved. In apparent defiance of awkwardness and propriety alike, Ealhmund released whatever branch he was holding, raised his arm high over his head, and
waved.

A few days later I went back to the place where Eanflæd and I had spoken. I remember there was something rather sad about the spot. Only a very good tracker could have told that anyone had ever sat there, the one person apparently facing the tree, the other turned slightly as if distracted by something, perhaps the abbey. Like all sign, Eanflæd's mark retained a suggestion of the creature that had made it, her order, her softness, the way the grass lay not flat but rounded, full. Of course I didn’t allow myself to get too close, but I did get down on my hands and knees to study the spot, noticing the curve, the suggestion of a shape, the pressure that had formed it. It was as I knelt like this that I first saw the bit of color. I removed a fallen leaf, parted the grasses, and there they were...the stones...the stones Eanflæd had so carefully deposited at her side.

Of course I had been bound to find them. I think a part of me had been expecting to find them all along, had known they would be there, had been looking for them without ever consciously knowing that I was looking for them. Still I was shocked. Like a man coming upon another making water, I thought I should turn my head, avoid looking upon something so private, so exposed.