by Adam Thorpe
The people, as is their wont, soon heard about his holiness and flocked in greater numbers to the simple chapel atop the cliff, though few came down: in those days they lived in awe of such hermits, and some said that the greedy sea-ravens [corvi marini]152 that nested in the cliffs were jealous demons in disguise, awaiting sinners, for they always stood upon the ledge with their black wings spread wide.
Edwyn sometimes accompanied me (by happenstance), or I would find him already present in the cave, and the monster jealousy would work within my entrails; though I said nothing, not wishing to come to blows with an older boy. Our holy master would not allow us to use slates, as in a proper school, but only the fine sand where it was moist. We were working upon the clove curl, a letter which gave me much difficulty, and Edwinn mastered it faster than I, and earned much praise.
I was not an idiot, nor even slow as most peasants be, yet Edwinne merrily called me such, clapping me on the shoulder – whereby my jealousy and resentment grew luxuriant in my small body, for such remarks were manure to their soil, though meant in jest. He was two or three years older than me, and no different from other boys, who jape and jangle and pretend to bite like colts in a meadow; yet was I gnawed and rent.
Furthermore, Edwin did play the harp as if born to it, for not only were his fingers nimble, but he was merry, dry and airy of element, soon waxed to hot anger but also as swiftly cooled: and this is good nurture for minstrelsy. He had a great love for it and gladded with his playing whoever listened, though his voice was not as pretty as mine, and was less steadfast with the notes. I was earthern and moist; lacking both my parents, I would at times draw up the waters from the well of melancholy in my thirst for comfort. I discovered in the playing [of the harp] a door by which I might enter a walled garden enamelled with many brilliant hues, whose motley lustre was further polished by my fingers upon the strings and my singing voice, as a breeze shakes the aspen to silver.
My holy master preferred Edwyn’s playing, for it gladded him more than mine. I redoubled my efforts, but was as the tortoise to the hare. I found grease upon the gut and even spotted upon the sounding board, for Edwynn would sup on fish we had netted and then play without washing his fingers; I told my master but he scolded me, saying I was not the father that chastiseth, and (laughing the while) said that I was as the strings of wolf-gut put into an harp with strings of sheep-gut, that then fret and corrupt and destroy the strings of sheep-gut, as wolves do destroy the flock.153 And I threw down the harp and ran away over the sands, scrambling up the cliff like a goat, but heard no call or rebuke over the ceaseless surge.
Envy is a grievous sin, and corrupteth all: now I know that this truth is what my master meant: not that Edwine was the sheep and I the wolf, but that I was both sheep and wolf, the mild lamb of my soul slowly devoured by the wolf (or rather, the demon within) limb by limb, whose meaty breath is enough to sicken a man, as surely as a mouse is already paralysed by the stare of the owl. I became yet more sullen with my foster-mother, whose crooked spine and hairy arms did make me think she was beastly, though she was kind and seldom gave me blows; when she did so, blood always ran down from my nose, for her arms were like a blacksmith’s. The slender arms of my departed mother, though strong also from field work, were like a scented lady’s in comparison, and I would dream they were taking me in like a lamb to the fold.
4
In that other time, which then lay in the unknown future and now lies in the dim past, I was Muche the mortal sinner on the road to absolute perdition: though but a few years parted him from my innocence, yet might they have been a bottomless trench, so far and strange seemed my childhood!
I made but one attempt (of a kind) to escape, after the Lord had filled my mind with sudden contrition: this being the night before the holy day of [the Purification of] the Blessed Virgin.154 In a dream I saw Richerd the glassworker in the form of an angel with goosedown wings and mantled all over in gold; his eyes were clear glass through which I peered (for this angel was very great) as into a window, or as the horse155 in the buffoon’s play. There I looked down upon a tumultuous feast partaken by heathen idolaters whose meat was the flesh of babes, and the blood even spattered the windows of the angel’s eyes. One of those feasting there raised his look towards me, and beckoned me down: it was Hodd himself, with great leathern wings and black claws, his mouth smeared with the offal of innocents.
I woke in a sweat, vowing to leave instantly, as if my months of outlawry had been but a night in a dangerous inn. I had learned much about the felons’ watch, and the ways of the wood, although I had not penetrated certain corners shielded by thickets or undergrowth: one lay not far behind my hut, and I crept out in the darkness with my harp and could hear the outlaws snoring or muttering in sleep, as if they were an army. Three of them remained awake about the glowing fire, with their bows at hand, as was the custom, murmuring to each other and jesting softly. My heart’s spirit was being drawn out to nourish my fearful, weak brain with such a thudding that it might have turned their heads.
I waited, knowing that eyes are cumbered less with darkness as they catch more lines coming to them through its black vapour, though the beams of the moon (which was but a half) confused and were contrary through the bare branches, as though the Devil were directing its white form.
I flitted to the undergrowth without the crack of a twig, for the angel was with me and rendering me more light and fleet; but on finding the bramble-thicket impassable, and scrutinising a way about it, I heard the familiar peacock shriek – that was no peacock – and the answering by an owl, and knew that I had been descried! Foolishly I plunged away upon a near trail, clutching my harp close betwixt the weft of tree-limbs and gaining much ground in my nimbleness – until of a sudden a dark shape reared before me, arm upraised. Scarce did I know whether this being was human or demonic; and I should have turned to flee, but already I descried a cudgel descending, and raised my precious instrument as if it were a targe, without thinking, for we had practised much swordplay and staveplay – and thereupon the weapon struck the harp’s sounding board a fearsome blow, splintering the very wood that had thus, along with an angel’s wing, protected me from further hurt.
I was seized and taken back to my hut by the creature, who was in truth an ogre, but of a human type, being Littel John. He had destroyed my most precious device, but showed no remorse: he and Hod were rivals, and oft John found disagreement with the leader. Yet Hode allowed him to disagree, I knew not why!
For example, there was a pond or water-hole at the marge of the wood, that one day Litl[e] John looked into in his shagginess (as a great wild boar might while drinking), and said, with a gravity of voice: ‘Ah, I see the divine essence face to face, that is greater than God.’ And Hod burst out laughing, for in truth it was a mere childish [ineptus] echo of his own words. And Little John glared at him in hatred, and cast a stone to shatter the reflection like glass, but said nothing.
For several days I was confined to the hut, chained like a dog, yet not one word of rebuke, nor any word at all, was conveyed to me – neither was I cast into the dragon’s pit. I knew not what Hode felt about his unworthy disciple, and feared meeting the same fate (or worse) as the tregetour or quack, whose bones I fancied I heard creaking in the long nights.
More likely was this the creaking of leather boots, for when I awoke I would find, each morning, the cadavers of woodland creatures laid inside the door, that served as a warning of what night-wrapt perils I might face, if I ventured out alone in such a wild place: these being adders and like venomous snakes; black spiders; a bag of beetles with mouth claws;156 a giant tusked boar; a mangy wolf; and parts of other fearsome beasts such as I had never before seen: a griffin’s head with a great, bloodied beak beside its claws like a lion’s;157 or the face of a savage animal much like a cat yet with sharpened teeth and worms in its eyes. There were also [left]: a bat with leathern wings; the head of a great, staring owl that caused me to cry out in terror and hide myself under
my ragged blanket; and rats bigger even than those in the monastery’s barn. I feared rats greatly, as others fear spiders or bears or imps.158
To think I might have been crawling among all these night terrors in that tangled waste, while the demons and spirits of the wood would likewise have [thronged?] … [hiatus in the MS]. A twisted branch was left, like an arm with a bony wrist and four fingers like boiled leather; and also a piece of birch bark in which the visage of a fiend could be discerned over a beard of ivy, waiting for the unwary to pass below. No more would I consider escaping, not even in the day! Thus, without a word spoken, was my courage and resolve vanquished.
I wept in the hut for my harp, though in truth I wept for my soul, knowing that the harp was stolen, and I the thief, and no repentance was now possible: for ever since I had stole the harp from my holy master the hermit (the which act I shall describe forthwith), keeping it with me over the years in the monastic house [of St Edmund’s], I had thought it a mere borrowing, as money is borrowed, and one day I would return it secretly. This being as false an illusion as believing the sun doth not travel under the earth at night as under a rock, to conceal itself, but is swallowed by a great tortoise, or put out in the waters as a torch might be, to be rekindled each morning by God in His mercy! And now I knew also that the angel had deserted me, after shielding my head with his wing (for though the harp was shattered, it would not have saved me on its own); and I was alone with my contrition and shame.
Then on the fifth or sixth day, Hode entered my hut as if drunken, and began to beat me soundly with a stick as I lay, saying all the while that I was a traitor, and less to him than a snail that is crushed underfoot. And when I wailed in my terror, and admitted I had been tempted by my own miswandering desires away from the true path of Hodd, and pleaded forgiveness, he left off; and weeping from his protuberant eyes, he embraced me as his closest disciple, bidding me play to him as of old. ‘I cannot,’ I cried, my face swollen with bruises. And on asking why not, his lie-hating ears heard me say, ‘My dear harp was broken when I was caught in my foolish escape.’
I said no more, wiping away the blood and tears painted upon my face by that false and horrible tyrant, just as the scar upon his brow was painted by a white-hot iron: for then and there did he describe to me, as to no other disciple, what was done to him for preaching (in the market-squares) of the freedom of the spirit of every man and woman: ‘For this one truth among the world’s innumerable falsities, I was punished as a heretic, by public branding. Alas, I smelt the burning of my own flesh under the pressed iron, little Moche. From thenceforth I vowed destruction upon the Church and its ministers, and that naught should remain of this letter [H], I burnt it anew with a stick from the fire.’
And he bid me touch it, which methinks sent further infection into me: for it felt as hot as a coal from Hell, and yet fatty and slippery as a leper’s flesh.
On learning from others, the next day, of how the instrument had come to grief, Hode called John a rebel and a fool and other cursed names, upon which the giant took up his stave and threatened his leader in the clearing, which caused great consternation among the men, and that I spied on through the chinks in my hut’s wall. ‘Nay,’ Johnne cried, ‘thou art the fool, and being greater than God, thou art a greater fool than any!’
‘Slay me then, for by doing so you might become an even greater fool than myself,’ replied Hod; ‘for without me nothing exists.’ This was a most mysterious thing to say, and even silenced the others, who did believe Hodd in all things. Yet he raised a hand to stop them coming forward and restraining Lyttyl John as he stood warlike and threatening, like a champion in single combat, and so none laid a finger upon him. Then Hod, though without arms of any kind nor further words of rebuke, did cause the felon to cast away his stave, by gazing upon him from a head so fixed it might have been carved, in which his eyes sat prominently under the joined eyebrows.
As the basilisk slays by sight alone, so Hodd made men obey – though whether through fear or evil influence too subtle to detect, I do not know to this day. For strength is not only in muscle or arms or cruelness, but subtle influence. Methinks now that J[o]hn did not fear being torn limb from limb by the other felons (as would have happened), but was weakened by a beam like a moon’s beam travelling from the gaze of the Arch-Devil, striking the crystal within his [John’s] eye,159 and thus causing grief also to the spirit.
For the rebel slunk away like a great wolf into his hut, where he sulked for several days, emerging only when the other outlaws implored him to join in a felony upon the high road, of which I also was ordered to be a part. As the man who kills another on board ship, is bound to the corpse and thrown into the deep, so my soul was bound to Robertt Hodd’s by evil deed.
Nor could the few drops of holy water in my lead amulet save me, since I did not seek to be saved. Only by a great lesson could I be shaken out of my peril. The destruction of my instrument ought to have plunged me into a misery that was nigh to despair, and likewise the understanding that I was a prisoner of Hode’s will; but instead – puffed up by his devilish words concerning my great worth and future distinction – I became a lover of transgressions, and a despiser of all things holy and good.
As a spirited boy entering into manhood, without a father or mother to guide me, I was easy prey to such flattery and guile, like a vagabond youth [juvenis]160 eager to be dubbed a knight, afore tasting battle.
Yet e’en my very first master, seethed in holiness and fasting, had been such a youth, thrown upon the world like myself, and prey to all temptations. For one day, when seated in the sea-cave (I was seven or eight), I asked the hermit about his former life. And it was this account that came to me most hauntingly, after Hod had revealed himself a branded heretic.
‘I was the son of a disinherited knight of pure Norman lineage, but dissolute temperament. Being orphaned at ten after a calamity in which a fire destroyed my home and only I, of the entire household, fled alive, I became a vagabond.’ I was much surprised, being innocent of the world, but the hermit went on: ‘I was adopted by a drunken innkeeper and his malicious wife. After much misery and many blows from the pair’s fists, a morning came when I heard from the yard a great noise outside like the hissing of steel in a blacksmith’s trough, and saw thousands approaching the town in a tumult of songs and shouts, calling on the people to liberate the Holy Lands: the mob was of all ages, but reunited in poverty.
‘I ran after them, determined to go over the sea,161 and on the way through Francia and through the great mountains to the sweltering deserts of Spaigne, the pilgrims hanged or put many Jews to the sword who refused the divinity [of Christ], stubbornly remaining the soldiers of Antichrist, as be their wont; I, however, took no part in these killings, for the Jews erred in ignorance when they brought Jesus to the Cross, and even now they are blind, not knowing what they do.’
He told me that only a handful [of the crusaders] survived, for when those that had not succumbed on the way from fevers came to the sea,162 they believed they would walk upon it fully clad, and instead did summarily drown in the waves. And I asked him, in my ignorance (looking out upon our northerly waves), if he had seen Noah’s Ark upon the mountain, not knowing then that it is to be found in the mountains of [Ar]menia, far beyond the Spaynish sea; and he caressed my hair and said: ‘Not only did I see it, but I heard the first stroke of Noah’s axe, for it is said that all the world heard it.’ And I was amazed, for I was but an ignorant child.
‘I returned home the next year,’ he said, ‘and was lodged with a wealthy relative in Wyndesore, who had somehow learned of my plight. These were happy years, even when I was tortured with headaches and deathly visions, for in my bedroom I had a feather bed and a fine shewer,163 and upon my trenchers lay choice meat, even grapes. And here it was that I discovered by chance this harp, lying in a room unplucked. And mending its broken wolf-gut, and bidding a local minstrel tune it and teach me his skills, I became very adept.
‘At the age of
eighteen I went to Oxenford and studied law. I lived with three other clerks down a damp, ramshackle alleyway near the river, noisome with the loading and unloading of boats, for my wealthy foster-father had died, and his widow was grasping and cared not a fig for her adopted son.’
The saintly hermit my teacher, shame yet colouring his face, then related how his heart had been stirred by a certain young woman (married to a goldsmith of mature years), and how she tore his flesh with goads of lust by promising that she should remain in his power for ever (though she was already married), for his young body pleased her greatly;164 and hers likewise pleased him, for she was the comeliest in the city, if not the whole realm.
Once or twice he came to her in the guise of an intimate lady friend, dressed in a lady’s gown and a shirt sewn with two fine sleeves that he had stolen from his foster-mother; and he sported upon his head a pair of long fair tresses, braided and worn in a net, and covered his face with a veil, that no one might know him save the true lady, whose red mouth he had already pressed as a man, and now pressed as a woman, though he was none such; and he enjoyed the pleasure of her body under her carmine mantle and had his will of her pointed breasts, mistaking a lover’s bliss upon the mattress for the eternal bliss of the Lord’s mercy.165
Then one day amidst all this carnality and youthful foolishness the future hermit heard voices, and was visited by the Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy and Shamefastness, who stretched forth her arm and bid him seek out a wild, isolated place and tend to the mystery of the Word. And so terrified was he by this vision, that he left Oxenforde there and then, taking only his harp, and after the careless life of a ragged minstrel, came to a monastic house near Yve,166 where he told the brothers of his vision, and thereupon they persuaded him to take the cowl. After some years, he became conscious that a zeal for God was lacking among the brothers, who wished to build a lofty stone tower to their church, venally wringing money from the rich and the poor alike that their tower might come nearer to God, when as my master thought it: ‘Its weathercock might more likely touch the black hairs of the Devil’s left hoof, than the soles of Our Eternal Father.’