The Oblate's Confession (9 page)

The next time we stopped was at Ælfhelm’s Shrine, though we didn’t call it that then. There was no cross in those days, no circle of stones, and the only trees of any size were four or five oaks that grew at one side of the path. A spring rose from the ground among these trees to form a small pool—really little more than a puddle—its surface at that time of year sprinkled with catkins.

Still it was holy ground. Brother Tatwine said so, which made me feel both safe and a little sad. Father Dagan had said there was nothing worse than dying by yourself, all alone on a mountainside, no one to hold your hand, no one to kiss you good-bye. A part of me had always envied Ælfhelm because of his songs, but when I looked at this place, I was glad God had decided Ælfhelm should make it holy and not I.

Of course in those days everyone knew how Brother Ælfhelm had come by his songs because of the chestnut. Despite what the Rule says about possessions, Brother was allowed to—in a sense
—own
the thing (certainly it was considered
his),
wearing it openly on a thong around his neck. Father Dagan said this was permissible because the chestnut served as a reminder both to Ælfhelm and the community of God’s power, and that its value, therefore, was essentially spiritual and not material. Lest some
future generation think such a judgment specious, I will give a brief account of the story here.

Before he became a monk, Brother Ælfhelm had lived as a swineherd in a part of Bernicia that was then otherwise uninhabited. The moon came and went, years came and went, but Ælfhelm hardly ever saw another soul. Then, one day, a snowstorm drove a band of lonely men to his hut. Now Ælfhelm was not a little afraid when he saw these men for they carried great shields and battle-axes. But the swineherd was not so far removed from civilization that he had not heard of the new faith, and— mindful he should “show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares....”—he suffered them to enter, offering them what food and comfort he could.

After a while, the men—warmed by drink and Ælfhelm’s fire— begged a favor of the swineherd. It was, they explained, a custom among their people to pass a brooch belonging to their host as they sang their drinking songs, whichsoever man held the brooch being the one whose turn it was to sing. Now at this news Ælfhelm was greatly affrighted, for he was a poor man, his cloak held in place by a simple knot: he did not own a brooch. Still, his guests insisted he give them something; so, fearful lest they hurt him, he picked a large unblemished chestnut from the stores he kept for his animals and let them use that.

Slowly, ever so slowly, that chestnut made its way around the fire, each man taking his turn, singing his songs, then passing it on to the next with all the honor due a great jewel. Eventually the chestnut reached the man next to Ælfhelm, and it was then that the poor swineherd realized that he too would be expected to sing, that, indeed, this was likely the purpose of his guests’ strange custom, for it assured their host the honor of the last song. But Ælfhelm did not want to sing. He was terrified of singing. The swineherd, as the saying goes, “had a mouth full of teeth,” and his guests had been drinking. Who knew what offense they might take when they heard his ill-natured voice, his rough country songs?

Still, there was little he could do. Even as he thought these thoughts, the man next to him brought his lay to an eloquent
inventive close. Toasts were drunk, compliments paid, more wood placed upon the fire; and then, quite simply, like someone passing a piece of bread, the man next to Ælfhelm handed him the chestnut. As he stood to sing, the poor swineherd offered up a silent plea that the new God might save him, give him a song that would please these men, keep them from killing him. Then, having no idea what would come out of his mouth, Ælfhelm began to sing:

Great is the Earth,

And He Who made it.

Great the Sky,

Great the Sea.

The Night rolls back,

Day is revealed,

And all is as it should be,

All is as it should be,

Should be, should be.

All is as it should be—

That is my song,

The song of the Earth,

The dream of the Sky.

 

Of course the rest of the story is well known. The men, as it happened, belonged to Bishop Wilfrid. They were so impressed with Ælfhelm’s song, they presented him to their lord, who, in turn, had the swineherd placed at Redestone that his poetry might please the community and convince the ignorant. For there was no doubt that Ælfhelm’s songs were miraculous. The brother himself admitted as much. Father Prior asked him to sing for us once, and, afterward, he told us the story of the chestnut and the gift it symbolized. His songs, he said, always arrived without warning or effort. He would be washing or weeding or performing some other perfectly ordinary task when, suddenly, he would realize he had been repeating some phrase under his breath, something entirely new, something which, even as he repeated it, even as it assumed
the rhythms of his work, would, apparently of its own accord, give birth to still more phrases, the phrases assembling themselves into lines and verses, until, before he knew it, before his very eyes, a song had appeared. It was always like that, he said, his songs arriving when he least expected them. It was as if God wanted to make it perfectly clear they were a gift.

“Don’t you bother him.”

A shiver ran down my spine. Was Tatwine speaking of Ælfhelm?

“When he prays I mean,” said Brother, eyes studying the pool. “You leave the hermit alone. He has better things to do than worry about some boy.”

I assumed custody of the eyes. It wasn’t fair for Tatwine to talk that way. I never bothered anyone.

For a while we sat in silence. Then, quite unexpectedly, Tatwine said, “He could have stopped it you know. The pestilence I mean. He could have stopped it if, you know, if Ælfhelm had reached him in time.” Brother glanced at the far bank of the pool and I guessed this was where the body had been found. He looked back at me. “You’ll ask him to pray for me, won’t you? I mean, he should pray for everyone of course but, whenever you think of it, a little prayer for me?”

I looked at Brother and nodded. No one had ever wanted anything from me before.

Tatwine regarded me for a moment longer, then he looked back at the place Ælfhelm had made holy. “I first noticed it about a month ago,” he said.

The spring?

Tatwine nodded at a small sapling and held his hand out, palm-down. “It was only about this high then.” He looked at me. “It’s a chestnut,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to the thong.”

 

We didn’t stop for Sext but climbed on, singing as we went.

After a while the air grew cold and dark and—the overhanging wood notwithstanding—you could tell that the day had become cloudy. A fine mist began to fall and then, rather abruptly, Tatwine stopped. When I caught up with him, I saw that we had happened upon someone’s camp—one or two broken pots, the remains of a shelter, and, hanging from a pole by a small stream, a tattered piece of cloth, black markings on a white field. Despite the mist, the fire was still smoking. Someone had left this place in a hurry. Had they heard us?

All the noise we’d made as we’d climbed came suddenly clanking and clattering back to me.

How could they not have heard us?

And if that were true, didn’t it mean they must still be nearby, that, perhaps even now, they watched, readied their leap?

I leapt, and then realized it had just been Tatwine turning around to say something.

Brother seemed distracted. He made a show of bringing a finger to his lips.

What?!

He indicated the stream with his chin and I froze.
There was someone there, someone sitting by the stream!

I looked back at Tatwine wanting reassurance, some reason for hope, but Brother continued to stare grimly at the figure by the stream.

Carefully—fearful lest the turning of my head make a noise—I looked back that way. The man appeared to be asleep—eyes closed, head forward, hands resting in his lap—but I knew this could just be a trick. And I wondered if that was it, if the men who had made this camp—Cumbrogi, beggars, what-have-you—if they might not have left this ancient as bait, the perfect bait for religious sworn to help such creatures—the poor, the old, the halt and blind. And there was something about his head I didn’t like either, something wrong and, at the same time, vaguely—perhaps even disturbingly—familiar.

And it was then that I noticed the stubble and a great sense of relief washed over me: The man wasn’t bald, just poorly shaved!

This was our hermit—our hermit in need of a razor, but our hermit nonetheless!

I looked over at Tatwine and—proud of myself now, secure, one adult speaking to another of a child—I raised my hands and placed them palm-to-palm against my ear,
Asleep?

Tatwine’s hands rose in a similar gesture but stopped before his face,
Praying.
Then a single finger broke free to tap, once more, his lips.

We unpacked the loaves and tabula and placed them in neat piles by the fire. Then we sat and waited for the hermit to finish his prayers.

He prayed for a long time. Watching him, I found myself wondering about hermits, wondering what their prayer might be like, my speculations growing vague, indefinite, as the waiting extended and I grew drowsy, the hermit’s figure slowly merging with its surroundings, becoming first a pot, round and gray, then a stump, an old gray stump sitting by an old gray stream.

When I woke up, the hermit and Brother Tatwine were standing by the fire, talking quietly. It had stopped raining and I was cold and tired. I wondered when we would eat.

“It won’t take that long, really.”

“Father, look at your fire. It’s going to take some time to get that going again. Maybe if the boy hadn’t dawdled so....”

The hermit glanced over in my direction. He was taller than I had expected. And dirtier. His woolens looked as if he had slept on the ground.

“But a welcome, a proper welcome. Even the Rule requires as much.”

Brother Tatwine shook his head. “Forgive me, Father, we can’t. If we’re to make it back before dark, we must leave now.”

I stood up, liking the idea of making it back before dark.

The hermit noticed me move and a row of teeth appeared in his ratty, unkempt beard. He looked back at Tatwine.

Tatwine held his hands out. “Besides,” he said, “there’ll be plenty of time next time. He’s so slow, he’ll have to spend the night.”

Spend the night!

But an elder had spoken, a pronouncement been made: to question it now would only provoke a charge of pride, possibly even a mention at Faults. I said nothing. Tatwine handed me my now-empty scrip, we knelt before the hermit, received his blessing, and then we left. I remember, as we hurried off, he called after us. “Pray for me,” he yelled.
Pray for me,
as though we were the holy men and he some farmer we’d passed in a field.

Climbing down Modra nect was easier than climbing up. Brother Tatwine called out to me regularly, apprising me of certain landmarks, ordering me to pay attention to the turns, to beware of false paths, but my mind was on the hermit. He hadn’t been what I had expected. Far from it. Despite Father Prior’s warning, perhaps even because of it, I had been expecting someone special. I had (it seemed silly now) pictured a man dressed all in white, a figure out of Scripture who would welcome us with milk and honey, speak differently from other men, more brightly, more gaily, perhaps even laugh aloud. Why there had even been a part of me that had hoped—being special himself—the hermit might recognize something special in me, a kindred spirit perhaps, one with whom his own might correspond.