The Oblate's Confession (34 page)

But I did not look away. I did not replace the fallen leaf, fold back the grasses, leave the stones as Eanflæd had left them. God forgive me, I picked them up; I picked them up and held them in the palm of my hand.

They were a pale color, I remember that well, pale as if washed with blood, and they were light, lighter than I had expected. How could something so light, so negligible, carry the weight of so much that was vile, forbidden, impossible? For the idea was there already, complete and inescapable. How could I do such a thing? How could I not?

I put the stones in my mouth.

Before I could change my mind, I put the stones that had been
Eanflæd's mouth in my mouth. I began to suck on them.

When I think of Father now and the gifts he gave me, my mind rises of its own not to tracking or prayer, or even love, but to the crag, to that lone bit of rock sticking like the finger of God out over the valley of Redestone. When things got bad, when I was tired or hungry, frustrated or feeling alone, the crag was always there. I could look at it, dream of it, know that soon, tomorrow or the next day, I would climb there, rise above Redestone and its small concerns, look out upon a wider world.

Have you ever noticed how, even at a distance, you can identify someone by his gait, his posture, the way he holds his head? If you are like me (and as I grow older I realize that it is in such things that, like true brothers, we are so very much alike), no matter how poor your eyesight, you can still identify the one who dips
as he walks as Brother James, the one with the bad hand as Deacon Hæmgils, and that shuffling form at the far end of the field, the yoke balanced so carelessly across his shoulders, as the new boy, what is his name?, Eafa, bringing you cold water on a hot day. If we who are old and diminished can so easily distinguish those who may otherwise hold little interest for us, how much more easily did I, then young and possessed of the powers of youth, find it to pick out Eanflæd's form among the many that moved in those days about Wilfrid’s village.

And the crag was so much better for this. There was a place behind the church, just inside the angle created by the outer wall of the apse, that allowed me the occasional furtive privacy, the opportunity to stare out over the fields unseen, imagine the life of the village, its inhabitants, their world. But it was an uncomfortable spot, the threat of discovery real, close at hand. No such fears intruded upon the crag. There the day proceeded at its own pace, my mind left to wander where it would, with Ceolwulf on some distant march, with Eanflæd in some other, some wholly
unowned and unpeopled orchard. I would sit and dream of these things and, whenever I descried movement in the village (two women making their way, laughingly, down to the river, a basket of wash slung between them; a man carrying materials out to repair a fence), I would lock upon it, search it for those features I now recognized as Eanflæd's, the loose hair, the blue dress, the way she seemed always ready to spin, turn, as if, inside her, music played.

I was sitting thus one day, dreaming of who knows what, when, quite unexpectedly, I heard something on the mountain behind me. I did not move. As desperately as I wanted to, I did not turn my head, look. The exposed animal’s only covert Father called it—stillness, immobility. Second only to silence.

Another noise reached my ear, then another, drawing closer. I felt myself grow irritated. Whoever it was, they were certainly going out of their way to make themselves heard.

“It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s just me.”

I turned around, looked back down the length of the crag. The hermit was standing by the last tree, one hand on his chest, trying to smile even as he caught his breath. “I thought I might find you here,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“May I join you?”

I shrugged, looked back at Redestone. The place seemed suddenly different, paler, as if the day had grown cloudy. Behind me the careful tread of bare feet on bare rock. I would have loved to turn around, watch that creeping progress (an old man doing something he could not have done for a very long time now), but I was afraid he would smile, mistake my disdain for concern. When he finally did sit down I made no room for him and instantly regretted it as he gave me the kiss of peace. I looked away, embarrassed, angry.

“Are you all right?”

Nothing. A slight shrug of one shoulder. Would they never learn?

“Well,” the hands on the knees now, fingers drumming, “I
suppose this isn’t a good time to talk about prayer.”

For a moment I looked at the hermit, my eyes telling him everything he needed to know about
that
subject.

Father didn’t say anything, eyebrows alone affecting surprise.

I looked away. Down in the village there was movement, someone beating out a bolster. She stood downwind of the last house, legs well apart, taking long swatting strikes at the thing. Too big, too old. Someone else was mucking out the stalls. A boy,
I thought, maybe a girl. I looked at the house I had decided was Eanflæd's, willed it to breathe, move, give evidence of life, habitation. But there was nothing, the churn stood idle by the door, the window remained dark, uninteresting, the garden untended. “You never say anything about praying for people,” I said, still looking at the house. “I mean about praying for other people.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I looked at the hermit. He seemed genuinely surprised. “I mean that’s what you’re supposed to be so good at, isn’t it? I mean isn’t that why I have to carry all these tabula up here, so you
can pray for people, other people?”

The hermit blinked, thought about it for a moment, looked down at Redestone as if seeking guidance. “Yes,” he said, eyes still on the abbey, “yes...well, yes, of course it is.”

“Then why don’t you ever teach me about that? All we ever do is talk about ourselves. That’s all this really is, isn’t it?” I looked out at Redestone but included Modra nect in my complaint. “I mean all we’re really interested in is us, isn’t it, in saving ourselves?”

“Is something wrong, Winwæd? Has something happened?” Why did everything always have to be something else, why couldn’t it just be what you said it was?

“Are you all right?”

I looked back at the village. “I’m all right.” For a while I didn’t say anything. I thought about it but I didn’t know what I could say, what would be right. I noticed I was pulling on my sleeves again and stopped. It was bad for the cloth. “Did you know they call this place ‘Redestone’? I mean outside the valley, they call it
‘Redestone’.” I looked at Father but had to look away, his face so mournful, so concerned. I looked out at the sky, noticed the clouds, four long streamers stretching from west to east, the weather about to turn. “Not just the monastery,” I said, still watching the sky, trying to appear casual, indifferent, “but the village too. I mean they don’t know any better, do they? They call the village ‘Redestone,’ and the fields I guess, and...who knows....” I looked at Father again. “Maybe even the mountain. I mean maybe they even call the mountain ‘Redestone,’ the people outside the valley.”

The hermit didn’t say anything. He looked at me as if thinking about something else and then he seemed to remember what I had said. “I doubt it,” he said, eyes still studying me, “not the mountain. The mountain’s been ‘Modra nect’ for a long time now. A long time.”

I didn’t say anything. They were all like that, the way things had been were the way they’d always be. But I wasn’t so sure anymore. I’d been thinking about it a lot lately. “But it makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean when you think about it. I mean there really isn’t anything else is there, just trees.” I braced myself on the rock and leaned out as far as I could. There was always a breeze at the crag, sometimes moving from right to left and sometimes rising straight up out of the valley below. Today the air moved from right to left and you could smell the rain in it, the clouds. It made a shiver run up my back. “I mean it’s all a waste isn’t it?” I indicated the South Wood with my chin. “I mean as far as you can see there’s nothing, is there, forest, trees? And then there’s this one place, this one little place everybody calls ‘Redestone’. We’re all here, I don’t know...”—for some reason I shivered again—“... together.”

The hermit didn’t say anything. I looked over at the Far Wood, my eyes tracing the dark space through the trees, not even thinking about it anymore, not even conscious of what I was doing.

“You
have
been praying, haven’t you?”

I looked back at the hermit, the bottoms of my feet suddenly cold. It had nothing to do with prayer yet the question bothered
me, frightened me, as if somehow it did.

The hermit nodded though I hadn’t said anything. “You’ve been trying again, haven’t you?”

I looked away, didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about how frustrating it was.

“At the river?”

You could stare at the thing all day, God didn’t care.

“With me it was forgiveness.”

I’m sorry?

“Forgiveness.” He shook his head, looked around as if noticing for the first time where he sat, the crag, the valley below. “I had hardened my heart.”

“You had hardened your heart?”

The hermit looked at me, the smile thin, rueful. “But that’s the way it is, isn’t it, prayer?”

“Against what?”

“You think it's not working, empty, dry, and then one day you notice it’s gone, resentment, envy, some sin that’s stuck in your side for years.” He shook his head, apparently still amazed. “You don’t even feel it, do you?” He looked at me as if expecting confirmation. “At first I mean, you don’t even feel it, realize it’s happened. One day it’s just gone, sloughed off like an old skin, like a cloak you need no more and—now that it’s summer—can’t imagine ever being cold enough to need again.”

“Against what? You hardened your heart against what?”

But the hermit was ignoring me now, looking down at the abbey, amused, thoughtful. “And then of course there’s the final temptation. You want to believe you’ve done it, that all the denial and sacrifice has paid off, that, somehow, you’ve
earned
this.” He shook his head, smiled, looked at me. “But of course we know better, don’t we?”

We do?

The hermit nodded. “It’s the secret writing. The quiet messages God has placed in our souls during those moments when, somehow, impossibly, we’ve kept our tabula clean.”

Oh, that. “But you still haven’t told me what you hardened
your heart against.”

The hermit looked out at the valley, the South Wood. “You know I’ve never been out here before.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The crag?” He nodded as if approving of its placement. “I’ve never been out here before.”

“But you...?”

The hermit smiled, still studying the view. “I know, but I never came out here. I mean, I’ve never walked out here, sat on the crag before. It’s nice, isn’t it?”

He was changing subjects too quickly for me, I couldn’t keep up.

“So you want to learn how to pray for other people.”

It was like throwing a rope to a drowning man. I nodded.

“Tell me about your prayer now, how does it proceed?”

How does it proceed? It doesn’t
proceed
at all. I could sit for entire intervals by the river and nothing happened. Or everything did. Eanflæd, cherries, food, Ceolwulf, my mother, Baldwin, the bishop—all of them, all of them and everything came floating down that river, barges full of them, but never God. God was the only one who seemed uninterested in my stream. How I missed those days when He had been everywhere, when I was little and He had seemed always to hold my hand as I walked across the garth, to wrap me beneath His wing at night. But things had changed. I wasn’t sure how or why, or even when, but they had. He wasn’t there. Or, worse, He had left, departed, abandoned me. My prayer was, as Father said, empty, dry. At the very time I needed Him most, God wasn’t there.

“It doesn’t go well?”

I looked at him and for a moment all the frustration, all the failure, hopelessness, welled up in me, rose to the surface as if somehow, in some way I could not understand, Father could actually fix this, would actually be able to help me, change all this, make everything better. But that, of course, was the thinking of a child. I shook my head, looked away. “I have trouble,” I said. “I have trouble...keeping my tabulum clean.”—this last
contemptuous, derisive, the very idea of a tabulum!