The Monk (Prince Ciaran th Damned Book 3)

by Ruari McCallion

  Eanfleda. The Queen of Northumbria would be in attendance. It wasn’t any sort of surprise, given her famous piety and rumoured part in the generation of this congress. The fifth walker was, I could now see, wearing a clerical habit and so would probably be Romanus, her chaplain. We would meet in good time.

  The top of the hill revealed a view that stretched for miles in all directions. To the west and south were the woods of Northumbria, fresh with the green of early spring under the bright sun. Westwards they stretched unbroken to the Inner Sea: where the border with British Elmet or Strathclyde was couldn’t be discerned from a bird’s eye as it flew from coast to coast. To the south, Oswy’s kingdom reached to the Wash and marched with chastened Mercia and wary Anglia. Eanfleda’s homeland was further south still. Cool and windy Northumbria must have been a shock after the warm and tranquil valleys of Kent. To the east and north was the sea over which had come the English and Saxon.

  There was peace between Northumbria and Strathclyde for the moment but what was happening in the far south, on the borders of Wessex and Gwent? Or Cornwall, the rump of once-great Dumnonia? Was there blood being spilt even now by expansionist Saxons and by British in their desperate defence? Oswy had begun to allow British into his armies - for they were ferocious, if undisciplined fighters - but they were kept in lowly ranks and were barely trusted even there. Maybe it would improve in time. I gazed over the North Sea, whose surface was lightly tickled by a gentle breeze. Half way to the horizon I could see about a dozen boats making their way with determination towards the coast on which I stood, probably bringing another band of settlers to lands they had been led to believe were empty and ripe for exploitation. Those who made a living from ferrying the new arrivals had no motivation to tell their passengers about the small farmers and homesteaders who were here already, with families, children, herds and crops, trying to carve a humble living from land that wasn’t always cooperative.

  I was distracted by the sound of deep buzzing. A bumble bee had emerged from a gorse flower by my knee and the sound of its flight ended as suddenly as it had started as it dived into another blossom in search of nectar, then revived and died again as it went from flower to flower. I had an irrational affection for bumble bees; they were a friendly shape and did no-one any harm. I didn’t know of anyone who had been stung by one and they efficiently fertilised the flowers and plants of the wild parts of the country - of which there were plenty still. They reminded me of a cheerful fat friar or publican, serving simple folk in their simple way. They looked as if they shouldn’t be able to fly, their wings were too small to support that big, hairy body. But obviously no-one had told them, and they went on flying anyway.

  The gorse bush to my left and was being explored by a determined bunch of honey bees, probably from the monastery’s hives. I watched as they efficiently investigated every bloom on the bush in less time than the bumble bee had taken to cover a tenth of its own.

  “We can learn much from observing Nature, can we not?” a voice intruded. A tall young man came striding purposefully up the path towards me. He was very close already and had approached without my noticing. My warrior’s training seemed to be atrophying through lack of use. The young man stood a good hand taller than myself, and I wasn’t small. He had a face that had turned many a female head, young and old. It had more than a trace of arrogance in it, something that could add to the attraction in many eyes in a violent and unpredictable world. He was dressed in a fine soutane with bone buttons that reached from the neck to the hem and he wore a green woven woollen cloak edged in yellow braid, fastened at the neck by a double chain of either gold or highly polished brass and set into finely worked clasps. His blonde hair was cut short and the Crown-of-Thorns tonsure was invisible from face on: nonetheless, there was no mistaking Prior Wilfrid of Ripon, even if his reputation was all that had preceded him.

  “Wilfrid,” I greeted him. “What a surprise. I didn’t think you walked out so much these days.”

  “Let’s not be enemies today, Anselm. It is Anselm, yes? I remember you from my time as a novice. You were kind to me in my doubts and insecurity. I don’t forget,” he smiled disarmingly and offered his hand. “It really is a pleasure to see you again. May we renew our acquaintance in friendship, today at any rate. Confrontation can wait until Monday.” I took his hand and shook it briefly. I remembered - even if Wilfrid did not - how upset Colman and his predecessor Finan had been when this, their brightest star, had attacked their Rule and derided them as isolated, bumbling oafs. In his late teens he had claimed greater knowledge than men twice and even three times his age, gentle and holy men who had shown him nothing but kindness, who had answered his questions patiently for over ten years and had gone out of their way to encourage his vocation. They had even scraped together a little money to supplement that given to him by Eanfleda when it turned out to be insufficient to get him to Rome, and how had he repaid their sacrifice!

  He never came back to Lindisfarne. He took the Roman tonsure in the land of the Franks and turned his back on the brethren who had nurtured him – me included. I had used my Gift to help him learn faster than would have been normally possible; something that I had come to regret. Now we met again, the one young, tall, of splendid appearance with haughty and confident bearing, the other older, shorter, wearing a patched and threadbare habit that had clearly seen better days and, probably, better wearers. My dark and greying hair fell untidily back from my shaved tonsure. An outsider would probably have assumed a master cleric and ageing, and possibly rather slow, retainer. Bright new gold to dull old brass. But I was in no way intimidated by him or deferential. I’d known Wilfrid when he had cried after being beaten, and I’d been to most of the places he’d visited on his pilgrimage before he had even seen a monastery.

  “Monday?” I enquired with mock puzzlement.

  “Monday,” Wilfrid replied. “You wouldn’t have us working on the Sabbath, would you?”

  “Of course,” I replied, “you now keep the new Sabbath while we conform to the tradition handed down by our ancient fathers in Faith.”

  We engaged then in a barbed exchange that got close to insult but never quite crossed the line.

  “You’re as sharp as ever, Anselm,” he smiled, coldly, after an inconclusive discussion on predestination. “But don’t give away too much of your arguments or we shall best you in less than a day.”

  “Our case is our case. What you know of us - and you know a great deal - you don’t believe.” The humming of the bees intruded into the conversation again. “Have you gained any insights as you walked the hills to this spot?” Wilfrid looked around and took a deep breath through flared nostrils.

  “It is beautiful, isn’t it? Not a trace of the farmyard smells of the monastery! You may say that it is especially in the untended country that we’re aware of the Lord’s work but,” he turned his attention back to our immediate vicinity, “consider those bees - and their rustic cousin over there” - he indicated the bumble bee, still scouring the bushes for the tiny drops of nectar which it would take back to its underground hive.

  “Look at the honeybee: see how efficient it is, how organised. They fly from the hive in groups, find blossom and quickly take the nectar back. Then they go out again, and again, and again, to different areas: they are so well marshalled and businesslike. Each creature has a task, knows it well and performs it perfectly, from the queen discharging her duty to be fruitful and multiply to the lowly door wardens who flap their wings all day to keep the hive cool. Once the gatherers have visited a bush or a patch of flowers they won’t come back for a couple of days at least, not until there’s new growth. They produce honey by the pound for us and we, in our turn, care for them. What an example to us all of energy, organisation, cooperation and success!

  “In contrast, regard the solitary bumblebee. It hops from blossom to blossom with no plan - look at it - and revisits blooms that it has already explored for nectar. It doesn’t learn that if it isn’t there now, i
t still won’t be in five minutes. What it gets, it takes away and hides underground: we get nothing from it. It is a waste. Which do you think is better at reaping the harvest?” Wilfrid smiled confidently, supercilious and patronising in his cloister and city-bred superiority.

  “They both have their part. Look -” but he cut across me.

  “Don’t prevaricate, Anselm,” he said impatiently but still with that infuriating smile on his face. “Which is better? Which fulfils His Plan more efficiently? Surely it’s a simple enough question?”

  “Things are rarely that simple. You don’t look far enough, Wilfrid. Come with me over the crest of this hill. Come on, it’s not very far.” Wilfrid sighed, but followed. The further side of the hill faced south-east and presented a different landscape, without the monastery, its farms and their neatly-tended fields. The hill was a riot of gorse, heather and wild flowers, all in bloom - more so than the nearer side had been. There was an insistent buzzing in the air, which came from a group of bumblebees investigating the wild choice of yellow, purple, blue and red blossom. There was no sign of any honeybees, despite the rich harvest the slope offered.

  “What?” demanded Wilfrid.

  “Look. Just a few short steps, and your picture has changed completely. Look at that bush, and that one, and that one. See. There are plenty of bumblebees here, but none of your efficient and organised honeybees. They can’t see over the top of the hill and they don’t investigate it. See what they’re missing.”

  “They take the nectar and hide it underground. It’s useless.”

  “No it isn’t. They help these flowers and plants to grow and flourish, even here, away from man. They help to nurture the land. It’s too far for your honeybees. And,” I continued, “they’re too delicate. The wind would blow them away - it probably has already taken off some more adventurous ones. They need keepers to survive. Turn them loose in this wilderness and they would soon perish. The bumblebee, though; it gets on and multiplies.” I stopped and turned to retrace our steps. “There are many areas that you and your people steer clear of, Wilfrid, we both know it. We go anywhere, even into the heart of darkness. Look and see for yourself, and remember Augustine of Canterbury. He came to these islands expecting to find a land without the word of God, and found instead a vibrant and lively Church that had been flourishing for centuries. We keep turning up in the most unexpected places.”

  At that moment a solitary fat bee buzzed over the hill and past us, its legs bulging with nectar and its fur dusty with pollen. Wilfrid waved an irritable hand but it swung away from him, surprisingly agile for one so plump and laden.

  “You don’t have to control everything, Wilfrid. Some things can get on just fine on their own.” We walked in silence for a while, back towards the monastery.

  “The cities and towns are growing.” Wilfrid’s tone was just short of petulant. “They will spread. Civilisation is returning and with it: order. Your freewheeling, undisciplined days are numbered, Anselm. Any future you and your brothers have is only within the Roman rule and discipline. Your Church will fade away and be forgotten. The ultimate triumph will be ours, because you are so weak, so kind and forgiving. But your kindness is cruel, because it leaves the people in darkness, outside salvation.”

  “We look around and see beauty and goodness. You see darkness and Sin, a burden which no human can avoid because, you say, it’s at the core of our being, the act of creation itself! So you take power over everything, even the most intimate of moments, and fill it with guilt. You fill them with despair and take to yourself the power of forgiveness and administering of God’s grace. What presumption!”

  “And you would let the people be crushed into the power of Hell by your softness! You accuse me of arrogance? You say you care for the people but you leave them to stumble and fall, you don’t put a hand out to save them! We are all born with the weight of Adam’s Sin. Only through the grace of God and guided by the Church can we be saved.”

  “Bright silk vestments and gold a-plenty are not the redeeming sacrifice of the bleeding, broken body of the man on the Cross, who did it of his own volition.”

  “You really believe that man is born good? Look around you! Do you see good in the world, bursting out of everybody? Can you?”

  “Do you see evil everywhere you look? Is it evil that looks back at you from the mirror in the morning? Yes, there is evil in the world, great evil,” I paused, thinking of what I had encountered at the glade above Dumbarton, in the Ballaugh and back in Innisgarbh, as well as other places along the way. “But it is a choice that we make and we all have the power to make it, freely. We ourselves choose whether to do good or ill. There is great good as well, even among the heathens. Don’t they love their children? Don’t they take care of their old and sick? Don’t even they give help and aid to the poor?”

  “Don’t anger me too much, Columbine,” he responded, his voice quivering with anger. On his lips, ‘Columbine’ was a deliberate insult. “It will be the worse for you when we win. You are deep in sin and heresy. For now, the hand of forgiveness is offered to you. Take it, or next time it may come carrying a sword.”

  Further argument could wait for the Synod. I started to draw away from the proud Englishman.

  “I’ll tarry here a while. I like the serenity of this area. Will you stay or return?” Wilfrid turned and began to stride back towards Whitby.

  “I will return to the monastery. I have business with King Oswy and his Queen, when she arrives.”

  “She has arrived.”

  “What’s this? Your famous Sight?” Wilfrid snapped.

  “No. I saw her train approaching a short time before you joined me.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me? I must attend her! She will wonder where I am!” and with that he left, running down the hill in a most undignified fashion.

  “You never asked,” I said to his retreating back. I let him get well ahead and then started back to the monastery myself. I, too, had business with King Oswy and it should be attended to. The thought of the warrior-king dampened my mood a little but didn’t darken it: it was much too nice a day for that. But just then a cloud crossed the sun and I shivered in the sudden gloom. But it, too would pass in time. I would not be downhearted.

  17

  Oswy

  Oswy, King of Northumbria, had unified the two kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira under his rule after the death of his brother. His succession was by no means inevitable, for these were violent times and a student or weakling would not have been tolerated. Oswy had proved himself to those who mattered - his thanes and fighting-men - by years of skilful leadership, fearless fighting, heavy drinking and lusty bedding. He’d mourned his brother genuinely but had taken to the throne eagerly. That eagerness in the early months of his reign had nearly led to disaster at the hands of the rival kingdom of Mercia, under its long-serving, cunning and savage King Penda. Oswy suffered a series of heavy defeats and he had nearly been driven into the hills of Lothian. Bamburgh itself, his brother’s impregnable castle, was under siege for months.

  Those times had taught him greater caution thereafter. He never attacked unless he was sure of victory. He was never sure of victory until he had the advantage in both ground and numbers. He would harry and hound mercilessly until those advantages were gained.

  Against all apparent odds he had broken the Mercian kingdom, which had dominated the country for decades. I knew well what had happened; I had been there, at the Winwaed, when the Mercian army tore itself apart. I had been the unwitting means of its destruction; I had, completely unaware, brought an Apple of Discord in the form of a treasure box, right into the heart of the Mercian camp. I had come in answer to a summons to join the Mercian army when I was hundreds of miles away, across the Narrow Sea and in the foothills of the Alps. The treasure box was one I had taken from the Frankish boy-king Clovis, when he had rewarded me for my service to him by sending a trio of assassins to kill me.

  The Apple of Discord set the Mercian
alliance against itself, as each faction strove to possess it. King Penda, a figure of fear for decades, was beaten to his knees and decapitated right in front of me. As for me, I had faced a terrible foe in the Otherworld, one who had nearly beaten me; I escaped at the cost of shattered sanity. Before the disaster I had seen Oswy’s army approaching, and a second, secret force, working to outflank us. He had had supernatural help on that day, although I don’t know that he had been aware of it – not the force I battled, which was unimaginably evil and used human sacrifice as its source of Power. Whatever his faults, Oswy was not wedded to the Darkness. It was reported that had a vision of the Cross the night before the anticipated battle. He had promised that he would give a child to Christ and establish a dozen monasteries in his kingdom, if he won the day. After the collapse of Mercia – achieved without a blow being struck by the Northumbrian forces – he kept his promises. He treated the monks of Lindisfarne with respect and generosity, attended church most Saturdays, and he had even been known to pray, openly and in public.

  Some of his court and followers retained his people’s old superstitions, however. Quite a few belt-purses held totems of Wodin and Nike, the goddess of victory, as well as other fetishes. Oswy was as committed a Christian as any of his nature could be, seeking victories and power from a God who had proved He could deliver, to a warrior’s satisfaction.

  However, Oswy cursed the day when he had agreed that marriage to a Mercian princess, brought up in Kent, would cement the three kingdoms in alliance. His greatest love, more a wife than a concubine, had died in the late stages of pregnancy but not before she had delivered him two sons. She had been as lusty as he, delighting in the feats of arms that made him King and in the passion of their lovemaking. He missed her, all the more so now that he was landed with the cold fish from Canterbury who now stood before him. There would be no children from this union until he could, at the very least, get into the same bed at the same time as she.