The Oblate's Confession (22 page)

When Ceolwulf came back into the room he seemed surprised to find me by the bed.

“How do you keep it so clean?” I asked to remind him I’d been given permission.

“Looking for blood?”

I was embarrassed.

Ceolwulf smiled. “When I was your age, I used to do the same thing. Beornwine’s sword.”

I smiled.

“It’s goose-fat,” he said. “You rub it down with goose-fat. You take care of it and it will take care of you, know what I mean?”

I nodded, for a moment imagining myself someone who would someday take care of a sword, would know about goose-fat and such things.

Ceolwulf picked up the sword and hung it from a hook on Father’s wall. He sat down on the bed and patted the place beside him. He looked at me and I looked at him and then he patted the empty place again. I could feel the blood in my cheeks. I didn’t say anything. I sat down next to my father.

“Now where was I?” asked Ceolwulf, smiling to himself. “Streoneshalh,” I whispered. “You were going to tell me about Streoneshalh, what Streoneshalh is.”

Ceolwulf nodded. “Was. What Streoneshalh was. I mean it’s still there, the abbey, but when people talk about it, when they use the word, usually they’re talking about something else, about the assembly that was held there, the decision.” Ceolwulf frowned. “They really haven’t told you about this?”

I shook my head.

He shook his. “Well, Streoneshalh was how they did it, how they stole this place, Redestone I mean. In the old days, before you were born, there weren’t any places like this, any big churches and monasteries the way there are now. It was dangerous here, Deira was dangerous, and people stayed away from it, priests stayed away from it. Especially the hill country. So, for a long time, no one here heard about the Christ. Then a few monks, mostly northern monks, began to wander in. You know what I mean, northern monks? Foreign monks, from Hii.” Ceolwulf laughed. “You should have heard the way they talked. Even Folian, when I knew him, even Folian couldn’t speak properly. Oh he’d learned the language by then, could say most of the words, but he never put them together right. Half the time he ended up saying the opposite of what he meant.” Ceolwulf looked at me. “Not that the other monks sounded any better. I mean there were other monks too, monks who came from the south, Roman monks. Not as many but some. You’ve probably heard of Paulinus.”

I nodded.

Ceolwulf studied the fire. “You could tell them apart. I mean even before they spoke you could tell a Roman from a northern monk, because of the way they cut their hair. And other things too, not important things, just differences, little things. Not that it mattered. I mean who cared how they cut their hair? But then everything changed. Fate, I suppose. What’s good turns bad, what’s bad good. Even Beornwine knew that. And once that’s started.... Well, there’s no point in trying to make the sun run backward. Things only get worse.” Ceolwulf looked at me. “Same with priests as anybody else. I mean they can say they’re different—refuse women, meat, cut their hair funny—but underneath we’re all the same. We all want something someone else has. It’s only natural. And that’s what happened. Especially once the kings got into it. That’s how Streoneshalh happened.”

Ceolwulf nudged a log with his foot, pushed it back toward the center of the fire. “Alcfrith held Deira in those days, and he didn’t like his father.” Ceolwulf laughed, eyes still on the log.

“What under-king does? But he can’t come right out and say that, can he? I mean he can’t just march up there with his army and lay siege to Bamburgh. For one thing he hasn’t got an army, not really. I mean half the men he had weren’t really his. I mean we only stayed with him because of his father. So he can’t fight Oswiu honestly, not in open battle, and he can’t just be obedient because that would go against his nature, so, instead, he tries to undercut him, slip the sword between the sheets so to speak. And there was no better way to do it than with the new religion. You have to understand that Oswiu had encouraged the new religion, supported it. It was the perfect way to bring people together against the Mercians. I mean, because Penda followed the old ways, didn’t he? Thought the Christ a bit of a joke.

“But Penda’s dead now, his son, a Christer if ever there was one, holds Mercia in his place, has made all his subjects obedient to the new ways. But Oswiu’s still confident enough to place Alcfrith in charge of Deira. And Alcfrith of course, being the son of a good man, wants to make trouble, good things going, as they do, bad. So he finds himself a Roman priest, a bit of a fanatic, and he gives him a monastery at In-Hrypum. Doesn’t matter that he’s earlier given it to a group of northern monks because that’s the point isn’t it, to upset things, make things happen? And he certainly does that, I mean he certainly upset things. The new priest hardly arrives before he’s telling all the monks, all the monks already living at In-Hrypum, that they have to change, have to let their hair grow out, start all over again, shave it in the new way, shave it like his. From now on they have to act the way he does, follow his rules, or he’s going to throw them out, take everything they have and put them out in the cold. Now you have to remember they’ve already worked this place, they’ve cleared the land—forty hides— built the buildings, worked the fields, and they consider it theirs. I know they’re not supposed to but you can’t help it—I mean you work a place, turn the earth, cut the trees, even a monk, sooner or later even a monk is going to think a place is his. And here’s this priest, this man they’ve never even heard of, coming in uninvited, and he’s going to throw them out. Because of their hair! And he
does, did. Well over half of them anyway. Some stayed, some decided to change, but most left, most left rather than submit to... submit to this new abbot. Their beds, their tools, their work, everything they’d ever owned, gone, because of this one priest, because of....” Ceolwulf stopped, looked at me. “You don’t have any idea who I’m talking about, do you? No idea who would do such a thing, steal forty hides of land and call himself holy for doing it?”

I shook my head, I could not imagine.

Ceolwulf studied me for a moment. “Do you like me, son? Do you like your father?”

Of course I liked my father. I liked how big he was. I liked how he sat and how he walked. I liked the sound of his voice. He wore pretty things, manly things, the brooch at his shoulder, the belt on his waist, the sword. Father Gwynedd smelled like wood smoke and Father Prior like the front of the refectory when it rained, but Ceolwulf smelled like the oil he wore in his hair, the goose-fat he used to clean his sword. He smelled rich, he smelled like feast days and harvest-time, he smelled good. Of course I liked my
father—I nodded, I loved my father.

Ceolwulf looked at me, looked back at the fire. “It was Wilfrid,” he said. “Your Bishop Wilfrid was the new abbot, the man who stole In-Hrypum.”

The man who was my brother had come to the door. Ceolwulf was with him now and the two men were talking, the man who was my brother leaning in to hear what the man who was my father was saying. I wasn’t listening. I was looking at them but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about the bishop, about Bishop Wilfrid whom we prayed for every day, Bishop Wilfrid who built the bridge and gave us everything we had, Bishop Wilfrid who was my father and Father Abbot’s father and everyone’s father. Bishop Wilfrid who was a thief.

My brother did something that made a noise and Ceolwulf shook his head. He brought a finger to his lips, shook his head,
glanced over at me. I was looking at them. Ceolwulf began to talk once more with my brother.

We never saw the bishop but I loved him. It was easy to love him. Whenever a feast was announced, it was announced in the name of the bishop who gave it to us. When the whole abbey had to fast and pray for some wrong, some problem somewhere I didn’t understand, it was the bishop who lifted the fast, declared himself (through the mouth of his servant Father Abbot) happy with our sacrifice, pleased. The bishop was our shepherd, he watched over us, took care of us, protected us from our enemies. I knew this. Had known it all my life. Father Prior said so. The bishop was the shepherd and we were the flock. But the bishop had done something wrong. My father said so. The bishop had taken a monastery from its rightful owners, turned the monks out into the cold. A shepherd wouldn’t do that, would he, not to the sheep he loved?

“It’s over.”

It was Ceolwulf. He was standing by the bed.

“It’s over. The thing, what do you call it? The hour? It’s over. They’ll be coming soon.”

Terce was over.

“Are you all right?”

I thought about that. I didn’t feel well. It had been a long time since I had eaten and maybe that was it, maybe I just didn’t feel well, the fasting, maybe if I sat still for a while this would pass, I would feel better. I looked up at Ceolwulf and the room tilted to the left. When I opened my eyes again, the room tilted to the right.

Something large and heavy, a hand, forced my head down between my legs. For a moment I felt sick and then I felt better. A pair of sandals was resting under Father’s bed. You could see where his toes had rubbed the leather shiny.

“Are you better now?”

I nodded and my hair moved against my father’s hand.

The pressure at the back of my head relaxed and was gone. I sat up, looked around. Everything looked the same. Father’s chest still rested against the far wall, light still leaked in around the
shutters, the fire still smoked and smoldered. But everything looked different too, as if I’d just woken up and everything that had happened before had been a dream. I looked at my father. He nodded and then, taking both my hands in his, pulled me to my feet and led me over to the window. He opened the shutters.

It was not as bright as I had expected but it was bright. I blinked and then looked again. The sun was well up now, midmorning, and it looked as if it would be a nice day. It had rained during the night and the air was sweet and fragrant. I placed my hands on the windowsill and leaned out. A breeze moved over the surface of the outer wall and the perspiration on my forehead began to dry, the skin there suddenly feeling cool and fresh. I smelled the air. I looked around. Below me a small group of monks was making its way down the abbey path, hoods up, hoes on their shoulders. The two in the back were signing to each other. Someone had left a ladder leaning against one of the pollards and I wondered if I would hear about it at Faults. I thought about Waldhere and Ealhmund. I wondered what they were doing. I
wished I was with them.

“So after In-Hrypum things got worse. You know what I’m saying? Worse, bad.”

I looked at Ceolwulf. He was standing back a little from the window, talking, his face in shadow.

“I mean Wilfrid wouldn’t sit still. The man was born angry. He liked to....” Ceolwulf hesitated. He moved into the light, studied my face. “Are you all right?”

I looked at my father. He had a scar down one side of his face. His hair was shiny with oil. He wore a brooch. I didn’t know what to say.

Ceolwulf joined me in the window. “See that dark place in the trees?” He pointed toward the Far Wood. “Down there, where your path enters the wood?” He moved back to give me a clearer view.

Where the abbey path entered the forest there was a sort of dark place in the trees. It reminded me of the fox’s tunnel.

“All right. Now, look at the top of the forest, the upper part of the trees. Can you see how there’s a break in the tops of the trees

there, above the path? It’s darker, a sort of shadow. Are you tall enough? Can you see that?”

I nodded. I was tall enough.

“Good. Now can you see how that dark place continues on across the top of the trees? See? See how it bends to the right there?”

From the point where the abbey path joined the Far Wood a faint shadow ran out across the roof of the forest. It travelled a short distance and then, as Ceolwulf had indicated, turned to the right.

“That’s the path, the shadow marks the path, the break in the trees. That’s where it meets the river, that bend there? The track follows the river after that. See that. Now, can you see where it goes from there?”

After turning right, the break in the trees continued out across the roof of the wood, then, with distance, became indistinct. I couldn’t see where it went.

“Well you can’t really see it but that’s where our land is, down there, at the far end of that track.” Ceolwulf shook his head, still looking at the forest. “It’s beautiful, Winwæd, beautiful. I wish you could see it.” He looked at me. “Do you remember it at all? Do you remember the spring? Do you remember the watercress?”