by Joan Aiken
"Are we on an island, my father?" I asked.
My tongue and jaws felt stiff and strange, as if from disuse; I found that I had to clear my throat twice before I could speak.
The blue-eyed monk turned to regard me intently.
"Why, yes, my boy, this is the island of St. Just de Seignanx, and you are here in the monastery of St. Just. I am very glad that you have found your tongue at last," he added, smiling. "It has been a long time that you were off there, in a brown study!"
"My father?" I stammered. "Pardon me. I do not understand you."
"Never mind!" he said quickly, and in a gentle tone. "We will now go in to Vespers, where you may wish to thank our Father in heaven for giving you back the power of speech. After Vespers I imagine that Father Vespasian will want to speak to you." As he pronounced this name a guarded, anxious expression came over his face, but he gestured me to go ahead of him, laying a finger on his lips for silence.
We had been walking along a grassy path between stone buildings. Now we passed through a heavy wooden doorway into a spacious warm kitchen with flagged floor, brick ovens, and herbs hanging from the rafters to dry. Then, from a door on the far side of the kitchen, into a grassy cloister with a stone-arched, cobbled walkway surrounding it on all four sides. Other black-robed monks were hastening in silence round the walk of the cloister to an arched doorway on the distant side; this, I found, led us into a high-roofed chapel, where the service of Vespers was conducted.
I stood and knelt by my friend, the blue-eyed monk, and, as he had suggested, found relief from my state of much puzzlement and confusion in thanking God very sincerely for having restored me to life and awareness, and brought me to this peaceful holy spot, though I added that I would be obliged if He would see fit to furnish me with a little more explanation as to where, exactly, I was, and how I had come here.
When Vespers had ended the monks went to supper, which they ate seated at long bare tables in a large hall next to the kitchen. I followed my friend, sat down beside him, and received a bowl of bean soup (very good) and a hunk of brown bread. While we consumed our soup in silence a white-robed novice, standing in a pulpit, read aloud a portion of the Scriptures. Nobody paid me any special attention or behaved as if my presence there were an odd thing; indeed, they seemed to treat me as if they were well used to my being among them, and took me quite for granted. I counted about thirty monks and half a dozen novices. The service and Scriptures had been read in Latin, but at the conclusion of the meal a tall monk with iron-gray hair, deep-set eyes, and a lantern-jawed, almost skull-shaped face made a number of announcements in the French language. These I was able to understand, for the tutor who taught me in my grandfather's house had obliged me to read a portion of French daily as well as instructing me in the grammar. (Indeed, many Spanish people spoke French as readily as their own language at that time, since, when I was a small child, the French armies had been in Spain for nearly seven years until we and the English at last drove them out.)
When he had finished reading his notices the skull-faced man asked if there were any questions. My friend raised his hand silently.
"Well, Father Antoine?"
"Father Abbot, I thought you would wish to be informed that the shipwrecked boy has at last recovered the use of speech."
"Indeed? Has he so? What has he said?"
The Abbots voice was cold, and strangely disengaged, as if, though he asked the question, he had no interest in hearing the answer. But his eyes shone very brightly. Father Antoine replied: "Just before Vespers, my father, he asked if we were on an island. That is all he said. But later I observed that, during Vespers, he made the correct responses."
"Very well. I will interrogate him. You may bring him to my lodge in ten minutes."
The Abbots lodge, it seemed, stood at some distance from the frater, or monks' dining room, where we had eaten supper. Father Antoine led me along a narrow alley, going in the opposite direction from the cloisters and chapel. We passed between a number of ruined buildings and a derelict cloister overgrown with thistles. „
"The Abbey is not so large as it was once," my guide explained in a low voice. "Two hundred years ago this was the old infirmary cloister and sickrooms. Now, alas, there are fewer monks than formerly."
"Where is this Abbey, my father?"
"On an island off the coast, my child, not far from St. Jean. But now, hush!" He laid his finger to his lips once more. "We are a Cistercian order, and must observe the rule of silence save when speech is absolutely necessary. Besides, here we are at the Abbot's parlor. Now: Do not be afraid, child, but answer clearly and sensibly any question Father Vespasian may put to you." He paused, then added quickly, "If—for any reason—you are unable to answer, simply tell the Abbot that you do not know without—without hesitating, or becoming nervous. He is—he can be—somewhat hasty, if—if he thinks that people are not being reasonable. Ahem! That is all! Now, I will be waiting for you, close by."
The look on his face seemed to me anxious, though his tone was meant to be reassuring. He tapped on a door, and when the Abbots voice called "Enter!" put his head round and said, "Here is the boy, Father Abbot. Ahem! With your permission I will wait and pull the weeds out of this path (which is becoming somewhat overgrown) and then escort the boy back to the novices' dorter, when you have finished with him."
"Very well, Father Antoine. Come in, boy. Stand there."
The Abbot's parlor was supplied with two different desks, one for sitting, one for standing; also two wooden armchairs, a prie-dieu, and many shelves of books, in many different languages. A window looked out onto the weed-grown disused cloister. On the wall opposite the window hung a picture. It was a representation of the raising of Lazarus, very skillfully painted. Lazarus was depicted as coming up out of his grave at the Divine summons: two angels were pulling him up by his arms, three devils were grasping him by the legs and waist, so as to hold him back. The sight of this picture somehow dismayed me; the details, especially of the devils, were so very vivid.
The floor of the room was of stone, covered with rush matting, which was much worn in one strip, as if the owner there walked up and down, hour after hour, day after day.
The Abbot, sitting behind his desk, gestured me where I should stand, in front of the picture. The thought of it behind my back made me uncomfortable. I cannot say why. But I tried not to think about it.
"So, boy: You have at last decided to speak?"
The question inside me, which had been rising up all through Vespers and through the meal, now burst forth from me.
"Please tell me, Father Abbot, how long have I been silent? How long have I been in this place?"
I was thinking of my poor grandfather, so many miles away in Spain, waiting to hear from me, wondering what had become of me.
"Be quiet!" snapped Father Vespasian. "It is for me to ask the questions, and for you to answer! Not the other way round. Just because you have now recovered the use of your tongue is no reason to employ it ill—advisedly."
This, to me, seemed most unfair. How was I to learn about my condition and my whereabouts, if I might not ask questions? And it was, after all, only by chance that I came to be in this place, I was not a member of the Order. However, making an effort, I kept silent, and gazed at him with no great humbleness or docility; I daresay my feelings were plain to read on my face, for he gave me a long and chilling look out of deep-set greenish eyes before adding coldly and gently, "You have been beaten several times before this, for obduracy in your silence; it would be well for you if you did not now incur further punishment for unbridled speech."
Beaten several times? What could he mean? I had no recollection of such beatings. But I took firm hold of my tongue and, in spite of wild curiosity, remained silent.
"Your name?" he then inquired.
"It is Felix Brooke, Father."
"Tiens. An English name. Are you, then, English?"
"Yes, sir, my father was English, an officer in Wellington
s army under Sir John Moore. But my mother was Spanish. And I was born in Spain and have lived at my grandfathers house in Galicia, both my parents being dead."
"So. But the ship that you were in was sailing from England to Spain?"
"I was returning to Spain from England, where I had visited my fathers family."
His first two questions I had answered easily enough. But this third one I found harder; I replied slowly and with some difficulty. Pulling the later episodes of the journey from my clogged and slow-moving mind seemed almost as hard as dragging those waterlogged bales of woolen goods from the pounding waves. Now, casting my memory back to England, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with sadness, for I recalled how, hoping for friendly and welcoming cousins or other relatives in England, I had, when I arrived at my family home, found only an old, mad grandfather, who mistook me for my dead father, the son he had always detested, and who bawled insults at me.
"You had visited your English relations and were returning to Spain on the ship Euzkadif
"I presume so, my father," I answered him hesitantly. "My recollections of the journey, after embarkation, are very slight."
"If you have nothing sensible to say, remain silent!" he said sharply. "I want no untruths."
I observed that, when he was annoyed, his greenish eyes had a habit of sliding very rapidly to and fro; faster, indeed, than one would have thought it possible for human eyes to move; and he began to tap fast and irritably on his desktop with an ivory ruler.
I remained silent.
"You can recall the shipwreck?"
"Only indistinctly, sir. And then ... after I was ashore ... something very, very frightening happened..." I paused, struggling to grasp at memory, but the door was blocked, and would not open.
"Father Antoine, who had gone down to the shore with other members of the Community to help the sailors, said that you suddenly came running out of the sand dunes as if you were being pursued; looked around you wildly, then went to help pull on the rope just before it broke."
"That I do not remember at all."
"Come, now! What happened to you among the sand dunes? You have recalled the rest clearly enough. Exert your mind, boy. Make an effort, I command you!"
Why should it be of such importance to him, I wondered. His voice was low, but very intense, his brows drew together until they resembled an overhanging cliff, and in the shadowed hollows below them his eyes seemed to shine at me with a queer reddish gleam.
"Look at this paper, boy!" he commanded me, and on a paper in front of him he drew a very exact circle. Obediently I lowered my eyes to it. For a strange series of moments the circle on the flat surface of the paper seemed to become a hollow, a well, a chasm, out of which white smoke came pouring.... I shook my head to clear my sight, then looked up at the Abbot again. For a second or two his eyes seemed veiled by the white vapor, then they glowed at me, even brighter than before.
"What happened to you on that shore? And where have you been since then? Where has your soul been hiding since that day? In what realm? Under whose dominion?"
I was filled with dread—he seemed so strange. Obediently I exerted myself, until it felt as if my own forehead were tied into knots—but still no memory would return.
"Truly, I do not know, Father!" The words came out of me in a terrified gasp.
The Abbot stared at me, hunched forward like a bird of prey. Then, by stages, a change came over him. Several violent tremors passed through his body, his eyes blazed like lamps, he appeared to grow several inches taller, and a high, hissing voice came from him, utterly different from that in which he had at first addressed me:
"Do not try me too far, boy! It is your duty to remember when I order you. Remember, I say! Or I will have you beaten again, and much more severely. I must know where you have been! How can you stand there like a mule, saying I do not know? We shall have to try whether a rope's end, stiffened with tar, cannot jolt the memory out of you!"
I gazed at him struck dumb with fright, my hands clenched at my sides, my tongue locked to the roof of my mouth. There seemed something truly inhuman, infernal, about him, especially about his eyes, glimmering with that uncanny reddish glow.
Greatly to my relief, at this juncture I heard a light tap on the door, and Father Antoine thrust his head round.
"I did not summon you, Father Antoine," said the Abbot angrily. But his voice lost its shrill unearthly tone and his eyes their red glare; he appeared more human.
"Ahem! No, my father—I know—but the messen gers are here from the Bishop of Bayonne; I remember you said you wished to be informed at once—"
"Oh—oh. Yes. Certainly. Take the boy away, then, for the present, Father Antoine. I will interrogate him again. He is being stupidly obstinate—he refuses to exert his memory, or to tell what he remembers. If he continues to refuse, he must be severely punished."
"Memory often returns very imperfectly at first, in such cases," put in Father Antoine quickly and diffidently. "It may well be that, in a few more days—" The Abbot's eyes began to dart to and fro again, his hand to ply the ivory ruler with that unnatural speed. Fortunately at this moment I heard voices and footsteps outside; Father Vespasian's attention was diverted, and Father Antoine made haste to pull me away.
Holding my arm tightly he hurried me through the ruined cloister and back to the novices' frater. I had a most urgent wish to ask him questions about the Abbot—about the frightening interview which I had just undergone—but, shaking his head, placing his finger on his lips, he handed me over to a small brown-faced, brown-haired monk who was superintending the white-robed novices as they filed upstairs to bed. For the first time it struck me that I, too, wore a plain white wool habit, cut rather short and narrow, with a dark scapular over it.
"Here is your boy, Father Domitian; he's to talk no more now. I'll have him again in the morning."
"Did Father Vespasian—?"
Father Antoine merely nodded his head up and down a great many times, significantly, saying nothing at all. The other monk received this with a glance of wide-eyed comprehension, looked at me, I thought, with pity, and then gestured me to get into line with the other boys and young men. We climbed a flight of stone stairs to an upper room, made our ablutions, said our evening prayers, and lay down upon narrow wooden cots covered with straw palliasses.
The rest soon slept, but not I.
My mind was churning with questions. It seemed as if that period of time away from myself—why? how had it happened? and for how long?—had proved such a rest for my body that now sleep was not necessary for me.
I lay in the dark, listening to the others breathing, and the distant sound of surf, and surveyed what I knew of myself. I was Felix Brooke, traveling from England to Spain to rejoin my Spanish grandfather, the Conde de Cabezada, who had written me a kind and loving letter. I was aged thirteen years—or perhaps more now? My journey to Spain had been interrupted by a shipwreck. I could remember the wild howl of the wind, the fusillade of hailstones, the mast breaking with a crack like a pistol shot.
But after that all remained obscure, like a dream that, on awakening, hovers mockingly out of reach. Something dire had happened to me on the shore.... What had it been? How in the world had I arrived at this French monastery? How long had I been resident here? And—an even more important question—how soon would I be able to leave?
In the end, after many hours of uneasy tossing and turning, I suppose I slept. But not for long.
Shortly after two in the morning, while yet it was black dark, the monastery bell clanged to summon us from our beds, and we shuffled sleepily down the stone stairs and across the cloister to the chapel for the Night Office. This service was followed by half an hour of silent prayer (during which I prayed very heartily to God that He would soon set me back on my road to Galicia and my grandfather's house, or, if not, at least explain to me what His purpose was for me); then came the early-morning office of Lauds, which was succeeded by Mass.
Feeli
ng by then somewhat hollow, not to say light-headed, I was glad to accompany the others to the frater, where we breakfasted frugally on brown bread and hot milk. Then back to the chapel for the service of Prime, by which time dawn was breaking; the eastern sky glowed redly through the chapel windows.
Then, for the novices, followed an hour of instruction from Father Domitian, which was succeeded by a further hour of silent study and reading. After which we returned to the chapel for Terce and High Mass. The monastery clock was chiming the hour of nine and the sun had climbed high when Father Antoine again came in search of me.
Nodding kindly and meaningfully, he said to me in a low voice, "I have leave from Prior Anselm to take you down to the seashore to gather kelp for Father Mathieu in the garden. Come, you can help me harness the asses."
Delighted to perform so simple and normal a task, and to escape awhile from the monastic timetable, which was beginning to make me feel somewhat hemmed in, I laid down the Life of St. Dogmael that I had been attempting to study, and eagerly followed him. We went to the stables which lay in the angle between kitchen and garden, and there harnessed two sleepy furry brown asses to a light garden cart made of plaited withies. Leading the asses (who were decidedly reluctant to budge from their quarters), we made our way past a porter, through a great arched gateway, and down a steep track from which the cliff fell away abruptly on either side.
I gasped at the keen, fresh air, and at the prospect before me. Encased inside the monastery's walls, submerged in its orderly program of worship, study, prayer, study, and worship, I had almost forgotten the close presence of the sea outside and all around. Now its blueness hit me like a blow. A wide vista of coast lay before me, stretching away in either direction: Two vast sandy bays, divided by a rocky causeway, extended below us, with white lines of surf like ermine borders dwindling into the distance, far as the eye could see.