The Oblate's Confession (20 page)

For a moment Ceolwulf stared again into the fire. “It could have gone either way. I mean you can see that now, looking back on it, you can see how badly it could have gone. I wish you could have seen their fires that night, there were so many of them, like stars they said, like looking down into a pool full of stars. But we surprised them and that was an advantage. Maybe the numbers too, an advantage I mean. While all of us had our hands full, hack and swing, hack and swing, most of them had little to do, the second and third ranks caught between river and battle, no place to go, nothing to do—try to move forward and you shove your own men into the battle, move back and you’re up to your ass in water.” Ceolwulf smiled. “And it was then”—the smile grew larger— “it was then that the river began to rise.

“Of course it was your Christ did it, or that’s what the priests all claimed. Hell I’d claim it too, the way it rained and rained and then, at just the right moment, began to flood.” Ceolwulf studied the furnishings in Father Abbot’s room. “You know sometimes they call Him ‘Prince of the Sky’, ‘Heavenly Warrior’, that sort of thing. The priests I mean. Notice they don’t do it around here much but they sure do up at Bamburgh. And I don’t know, when you think about it...I mean you have to admit it was a piece of work. Like someone knew what they were doing, knew the difference between the front and the rear.”

Ceolwulf looked at me again. “Funny place, the rear, time on your hands. You can hear the sounds, the yelling, the clanging, you can hear the screams, but you can’t do anything about it. All the fear, none of the action. Then, all of a sudden, your one advantage, the fact that you
are
in the rear, that behind you all is safe, is taken from you. A man who was sitting down, jumps up”— Ceolwulf jumped up, hands behind him—“hands on his backsides.” He pointed at the fire, “A fire sputters, catches again, sputters, goes out. Then, right in front of you, the first small trickle of water runs across the ground.” Ceolwulf sat back down, a funny
look on his face. “They would have held up their feet at first. Laughed. Glanced at one another. But it wasn’t funny. Not really. They all must have known what it meant. The river was rising, would probably continue to rise, and there was no place to go, no place to go but forward.

“Well you can see how it must have been after that, once it got started, the men in the back beginning to push forward, grumbling, trying to stay out of the water, the men in front of them pushing forward too, word spreading as it does, men at the very front beginning to realize something is going on, something behind them. You don’t like that, the feeling something is going on behind you, nobody likes that, it makes you nervous. So, probably about then, probably not long after someone first noticed the water, someone way up at the front got the wind up and turned and ran. Probably someone didn’t even know what was happening. Afterwards no one ever knows who it was. Funny, I mean you know someone was standing there, next to him, behind him, someone must have seen it, but no one ever tells.” Ceolwulf
laughed. “Maybe it’s because they can’t. Had to turn tail to tell tale.”

Ceolwulf smiled to himself, then became serious again. “You can see it before it happens you know, little things. The eyes no longer on you, not really, the feet sidestepping. It’s easy to kill a man when he’s fighting like that, backwards, mind on the rear, thinking with his heels. Must have been strange though, men at the front beginning to shift backwards, press into those behind them, they in turn pressing into those behind them and so on until, finally, someone escaping us came up against someone escaping the water. There was a struggle maybe, men pressing forward, men pressing back, yelling, swearing, I don’t know, swinging swords. Probably could have gone either way but it didn’t. We must have seemed worse than the water. Anyway, the tide turned. Everybody began moving backwards, slowly at first and then more quickly, backwards, toward the river.

“Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a rout. There were too many of them for that, they couldn’t move that quickly. Those in the rear
would have had time to think about it, to wander in, wade in, eyes wide, feeling their way, praying for shallows. Maybe a spear fell among them, who knows, an arrow—there were arrows that day. Whatever, something began to hurry them along, they began to take bigger steps, forget where they were, what lay ahead of them, striding out to get away from the fighting. Then, one by one, they would have struck the deeper water—the shout, an arm thrown back, already too late, the channel already beneath them, the press upon them.” Ceolwulf shook his head. “Ugly scene then, always is, men beginning to step on one another, climb over each other. Embarrassing what they’ll do at the end, the way they’ll claw at each other, do anything to get away—same men brave otherwise.” Ceolwulf thought about that for a moment, laughed. “When I came to, the place looked like someplace somebody’s building a fort, you know, a big old fort, the water full of logs they’ve floated down.” Ceolwulf chuckled. “Bobbing up against one another, turning, jamming up the eddies.” He shook his head. “People tell you they sank are fools. Lots of people claim that, that the river’s full of treasure, the bodies sank because they were weighted down with gold. Fools. There wasn’t any gold. I’d have gotten my share, wouldn’t I have? I don’t know, I guess the other people had it, the ones that got away, or Oswiu. But the bodies floated. Hell everything floated—shit, blankets, firewood—you had to clear a place just to get a drink of water.”

“What about the smell? The smell you smelled when you first got there?”

“What? Oh, yes, I was going to tell you about the smell. Well, that was the funny thing, that was the thing that made everyone laugh. Every battle has one, something funny happens I mean. Cow mistaken for the enemy, speared to death, a path that’s supposed to take you to the rear, takes you to the front, that sort of thing. The best I ever heard was the man whose army ran away from him. I wasn’t there, but the way they tell it he was standing on a little rise, shouting at the enemy, boasting of his superior numbers, of how he would carry the day, while all the while his men were deserting behind him, running away right and left in full
view of the enemy, the fool still going on, unaware of it, giving his pretty little speech while, right behind him, one by one, his army was melting away. Finally I guess there was just him standing out there all by himself. I would have loved to have seen the look on his face when he finally realized what was going on, turned around and saw there wasn’t anyone there.”

Ceolwulf shook his head. “Anyway, that was the funny thing that time, the beans. When the light got better you could see them, they were everywhere. I don’t know, I suppose the rain had gotten to them, spoiled them or something, fermented. You ever smell beans when they’ve gotten like that, gone off like that?” Ceolwulf closed his eyes and shook his head like a man smelling something he didn’t like. “Shoo that stinks! Anyhow, I guess they’d distributed them anyhow, I don’t know, maybe didn’t know they were bad. But it hadn’t taken long to figure it out. I guess some of the men threw theirs in the river and some up into the forest. That was what we’d smelled, what we’d marched through, it really had been all around us!” Ceolwulf laughed. “Beans! But a lot of them hadn’t even bothered, just pitched them out wherever they were, beans everywhere, stinking up the ground, mashing underfoot. Whole camp stunk of it, and then afterwards of course there were the dead too. But it was the beans that were funny.” Ceolwulf shook his head at the memory. “Whew was that a stink!

“But it was the river I was telling you about. It’s the river that’s important. The river saved the day that day, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. They had us three-to-one, some say five-to-one, and that river just sucked them down, wrapped her coils around them and pulled them down.” Ceolwulf smiled. “That’s what it was like, a snake, a big old mud snake swollen with food.” He shook his head. “It was something. That river really saved the day.”

Ceolwulf moved his shoulders once, loosening them, and then he stood up. He stretched—hands balled into fists, reaching up toward the roof. I watched him stretch and thought about getting up and stretching myself, though of course I didn’t. I could tell the story was over but I didn’t mind. It had been a good story,
a very good story, and I knew that Waldhere and Ealhmund would like it. I could see myself telling it to Waldhere and Ealhmund, how they would look, how I would look. I was sure I wouldn’t forget anything.

Ceolwulf walked over to the window. He didn’t walk like other men, head down, thinking, praying. He walked like a man who already knew everything he needed to know, didn’t need to think about anything, pray about anything. When he got to the window, he turned around, the brooch at his shoulder glinting in the light, eyes cold and white. I wondered if, someday, I would be as tall as he.

“Have they told you how you came by your name?”

I was embarrassed. I knew it was a funny name, that no one had a name like mine, but I didn’t want to talk about that now.

“Well, have they?”

I shook my head. “Father Prior says there’s a river with the same....”

Ceolwulf smiled.

For a moment I wasn’t sure I understood, and then....

He nodded. “It was the Winwæd that rose that day at Gaius Field.”

I smiled.

“At Yeavering, men raise their cups at the mention of your name.”

Ceolwulf was showing me his sword when the bell rang. I started to get up but he stopped me.

“Terce,” I said. “It’s Terce. I have to go now.”

Ceolwulf just looked at me.

“You know, the office? When we chant?”

Ceolwulf shook his head. “But you don’t have to go, you’re not a monk. You’re a....an....”

“An oblate.”

Ceolwulf looked at me as if I’d said something wrong.

“I have to go too, oblates have to go too.” I started to get up again but Ceolwulf’s hand was still on my shoulder. Outside the bell had stopped ringing.

“You don’t really want to go, do you?”

I glanced toward the door. I didn’t want to go, he was right, but I had to, it was Terce. If I didn’t hurry I was going to be late.

“What difference does it make if you miss this...this Terce? I mean just once?”

I looked at Ceolwulf. Was he serious?

“I mean how important can Terce be?”

Father Prior said that it was very important. He said the office was the way the abbey breathed.

“It’s not as if it were a Mass or something.”

“Father Prior says it’s like breathing. He says....”

“Prior Dagan won’t mind if you miss it once, just this once.”

I wasn’t so sure.

“Besides, I don’t want you to go.”

Again I just looked at him.

“Really, I’m enjoying this.”

He did seem to be. Ceolwulf, the companion of kings, the man who was my father, seemed honestly to be enjoying my company.

“You are my son. I may not ever get to see you again. Don’t leave me for something you get to do every day.”

I may not ever get to see you again.

“I am asking you to stay.”

“I will,” I said, wishing I could stand up to say it. I didn’t care if Father punished me. I didn’t care if I had to beg for my food. I didn’t care if the lord abbot made me kneel before Faults and confess my sin. Ceolwulf was my father and a guest at our abbey:
I
would not disappoint him.

Ceolwulf smiled. “That’s my boy, that’s my boy!” He rubbed his hands on his knees as he had when I first came in. “Now where was I?”

“You were telling me about your sword, about how it got its name.”

Ceolwulf glanced at the sword lying on the bed beside him. “That, yes that. Well, that will have to wait. Right now it is important that you learn about us, about our family.”

Our family.

Ceolwulf got up and walked over to the window. He placed both hands on the sill and leaned out. He looked to his left, toward the village, and to his right, toward the reredorter and the mountain. He pulled his head back in, reached out, pulled the shutters to behind him. For a moment there was just a place where the light leaking around the edges of the shutters struck something dark; then, slowly, I began to see my father again, the face, the eyes. He was doing something with his hand, maybe tapping at his lips, maybe rubbing his nose. He said something.

“Sir?”