Dunstan

by Conn Iggulden

  ‘Father, does a bishop not have to command respect? Must he not be stern in the faith, as well as kind in it? Please understand me, I do not mock his good qualities, but if you recall, Archbishop Oda was an iron hand with wayward priests.’

  The eyes of everyone at that table were on me. I found myself flushing, but it was as if I was uncomfortable discussing another man, as if I knew his weaknesses but sought to excuse them. It was, I think, superb.

  ‘I … have heard some of his priests are a little lax in their work, my lord, yes, but Bishop Byrthelm forgives them their shortcomings, as a shepherd must forgive his errant sheep. He turns the other cheek, Your Highness. I cannot fault him for being too forgiving in Christ’s example.’

  ‘No … no, of course not,’ Edgar said, but the gleam of his announcement had gone from him, replaced by a frown. ‘I will think further on it, father. Perhaps there are others.’

  I sought to change the subject and he had given me an opportunity.

  ‘My lord, I know you will wear your father’s crown, but I have some small craft with metal. I wonder if I might be the one to remake it for you. It would be a great honour.’

  Only the fire crackled for a moment. I had seen before how weary a king became of being asked. No doubt Edgar had already experienced a thousand different friends working themselves up to some request or other that only he could grant. It must have been tiresome, but of course my offer was for him. I knew my own skills – and I knew I could make a crown that actually looked like one. As he gazed across at me, no one dared to speak until I went on.

  ‘I … could keep your father’s crown, but make it … more, make it a symbol of a high king of all England.’

  He made the decision quickly, just as his father used to do. I could see Edmund in him and it almost brought tears to my eyes.

  ‘Very well, Dunstan,’ he said. ‘Make me a crown.’

  I do not know how long King Edgar considered Bishop Byrthelm before he ruled against him. Perhaps he made up his mind that evening, or perhaps he sent men to learn more of Byrthelm and decided he did indeed lack the stern dignity an archbishop must have. I imagine I was in his mind then as he looked around. I had stood for him in the Witan. His brother had beaten me and banished me. There was a debt there. Perhaps that was it, or perhaps I was simply the best man he had.

  King Edgar came to Glastonbury that winter, as a penitent, with only a few servants. He ate with the monks in the refectory and attended the services. We did not ask him to rise in the small hours, but he was willing.

  I showed him the sketches I had made for his crown. The materials alone would cost eight hundred pounds, and he only said he would examine them further. I showed him too our scriptorium, where monks laboured by day and night to copy works that would have been lost. Our task was first to worship God, second to preserve. If it is not exposed to damp or mould, vellum lasts an age, but we had copies of ancient works there, three or four thousand years old, each page cracking as it was turned. Our worship was in the work, in the beauty, in the peace of hundreds of hours.

  Edgar saw the quiet discipline of our abbey. He saw our gardens and heard our hymns. He stayed a week with us and, at the end, he asked me to be archbishop of Canterbury. My abbey won it for me, I think, in the end.

  Like Aelfsige before, I would be going to Rome to collect my pallium from the hands of Pope John XII. As I wept and thanked the blushing king, I reminded myself to wrap up warm for the journey.

  37

  I travelled to dear Roma overland, though it was hard going. I considered a route by sea, around Spain and through the Pillars of Hercules, as I believe they are known. Yet in the end, I chose dangers I knew over dangers I did not. I could bring thick cloaks and blankets to cross the Alps, but at sea, I had no control over my fate. No matter how I prepared, I could still be taken by pirates or a storm.

  King Edgar had returned the lands of Glastonbury Abbey to me. I passed them once again into the care of my brother Wulfric as prepositus, or steward. I hoped the old wealth and influence would bring him contentment. I had asked if Wulfric wanted to accompany me to Rome, but he refused, saying he preferred to remain at home and devote himself to his family. My brother had become a quieter, less vital man after my exile. He and Alice never had another child.

  Unlike poor Bishop Aelfsige, I waited until the year was well advanced before charging across Gaul and up through the high mountain passes. We felt the cold, I will not deny it. Yet the road remained clear and there was only a little snow.

  I saw neat rows of graves up on the heights, poor lost travellers buried under mounds of stone with no markers. I prayed at them all, though briefly, then rushed down onto the great plains of the north, as Hannibal had done before me. We had asses and mules with us to bear the weight of our goods, though they were lightly burdened on the way out. My intention was to use some of the gold I had brought with me to purchase works of great rarity. There could be no better source than Rome, I was certain. I hoped for another piece of the True Cross, or perhaps a bone from one of the apostles.

  I confess I was caught by surprise at the way the sun scorched us. I had known hot summers before, but in Italy I understood why the old legions marched a mere twenty-five miles a day, even on good roads. The heat was a trial and we were always parched, it seemed, so that we had to stop at all hours to fill our bottles or let our gasping beasts drink. We learned early on not to cross a stream without dipping our beaks to drink of it.

  In the evenings, I read aloud from my volume of Virgil, or Cicero or Livy, or declaimed from memory. I could recite thousand-line sections of the Iliad and I did so, to the delight of my servants as we made our way south. In those places, I met the ancient peoples – I saw history written in their noble faces, their wide, peasant smiles. It was a joyous time. More than once a great crowd gathered, though it was more for novelty rather than to gain true learning from the greats. Still, I recited for them, beginning to wonder how such minds could have come from among their number.

  Ah, Rome! That city is the ornament of my life, the brooch upon my sleeve. I came into the outskirts of it after three months on the road – and I stayed a year. I saw the columns of the Temple of Saturn, the great senate house where Caesar sat and debated. I saw the Colosseum, which was taller than the great tower of my abbey. I went to the Pantheon, with its extraordinary dome that was a wonder all on its own and held me transfixed before it. There was a man there who told me the dome formed a sphere that would graze the floor on which I stood. I paid him a silver penny and felt I had the better of the bargain.

  With two hefty lads in tow to keep me safe, for Rome could be a little rough on the unwary traveller, I wandered through the forum and over Capitoline Hill, retracing the steps of Caesar’s murderers as they left Pompey’s theatre and walked back to the senate house, holding up their bloody hands in triumph. I can hardly describe the awe I felt to be in that place, to feel that sun on my skin, to smell that ancient air.

  I presented myself at the glorious Lateran Palace on Caelian Hill when I first arrived, though it was some time before Pope John was ready to receive me. His cardinals arranged it all, visiting me in my lodgings and explaining the manners and the rules of meeting their master. In the end, they seemed to assume I would be so overwhelmed as to remember nothing of what they had said, so I was bustled in and whispered at.

  I knelt to receive the pallium cloak of an archbishop and kissed the gold ring held out to me, the ring of St Peter. Pope John raised me up and invited me to lunch with him. His cardinals did not seem pleased at that, but the dear man waved them away like wasps.

  I liked him. He was no fainting cleric, but had led men in war to reclaim papal land. His grip was certainly that of a soldier, as mine was of the forge. I have heard since that the fellow sometimes visited a widow in the city, though he was discreet. Well, I too am a sinner.

  There seemed to be a great deal of bustle around Pope John, so that dishes of food were whisked in and away agai
n with barely time to dip a spoon. Perhaps I was a trifle dazed to be meeting the direct representative of Christ on Earth, the descendant of the Fisherman of Galilee, I don’t know. I actually remember very little of the lunch and it was over much too soon.

  Pope John wished me luck and long life. I kissed the ring again as he dabbed his mouth with a white cloth, then finally allowed his cardinals to move him on to whatever task they had in store for him. I was left alone for a time, staring around me at statues in bronze and marble, lost in wonder. Rome was vivid, somehow, with colours that glowed red and brown and full of life. It was a city of eternal autumn, perhaps.

  I visited the tomb of St Peter in the crypt of the cathedral built in his name. That was a fine stone building, I saw, the equal of my abbey. I noted the pointed arches of windows and wondered what else I had been forced to conceive on my own, that might simply have been told. I wonder sometimes what we have lost over the centuries.

  The best of us add something to the knowledge of man, but they do not keep it to themselves, like those master masons. I made some sketches of the dome of the Pantheon, which I knew no one would believe when I returned home. Even now, I cannot imagine mortar strong enough to hold the weight of itself. That is the way of things, of course. Iron rusts and great minds are dimmed through the generations. The world knew giants once. I hope we will again.

  I lived as a Benedictine for part of that year, though I took rooms when I travelled beyond the city. I must have walked a thousand miles, either as a monk alone, or if I wanted company, with my servants alongside like disciples. I saw the Via Appia and followed it south to Vesuvius, where the ash had settled into mud and stone and buried ancient towns a thousand years before. To stand there was to know Spartacus had hidden on the slopes of the volcano, that Roman galleys had rowed up and down that sea, under that sun. My skin darkened like a peasant and I learned to like the rough wine they made. It was a simpler life, but it was not mine.

  It was not too many months before both my imagination and my hands began to itch. My conscience was like one of the beggar children who tugged at my sleeve and asked for coins. That little voice spoke of home, of duty, of a king’s trust. I was archbishop of Canterbury, responsible for twenty bishops – and who knew how many priests. I was their shepherd, and yet I had lost myself in glories of the old world, not the new one. I felt the sting of that when I understood it. That night, I bought and drank a fat skin of red wine, warmed through by the sun. I felt tears streaming down my face as I finished it and I wiped angrily at them, leaving trails of dust.

  My hands itched because they were idle, which in itself became a torment. When the seasons turned to autumn and winter, my wandering life became less pleasant. A black robe is cold when it gets wet. It slaps at the legs and chafes the knees raw in just a few miles.

  My servants and I took a boat to the ancient island of Capri, where Augustus and Tiberius had palaces, high on the hill. The day was cold and while the others shivered, I found myself bracing against the wind on a hilltop, closing my eyes and tasting salt in the air. I needed to go home. I understood it then.

  When I look back, that year too has parts I do not recall, which is a strange thing for me. I wonder if somehow grief or shame dulled my senses. Death is a part of life, I knew that well enough. I had lost friends and those I loved, my mother, my father. I had endured blisters and storms that cracked thunder and lightning across the hills around me, while I sat and watched the sheer majesty of God’s creation. I took such things home with me, but I could not recall the name of the town where I stayed, or how I had reached that place.

  I returned to Rome to collect my belongings and retrieve the asses and mules. They were rather more heavily laden than they had been before, I will admit. I’d spent every last penny I’d brought, so that we had to hold begging bowls on the return journey, just to eat.

  When you are accompanied by three servants and mules groaning under the weight of statues and books, asking for alms becomes quite the challenge. We starved for most of that journey, but there was always cold, clean water, and I endured.

  Once more I waited for spring to be established before I crossed the Alps. There were blizzards up there that beat at us, so we could hardly see the pass at all. I wanted to tell my servants that Julius Caesar must have known the same route when he set out to conquer Gaul for Rome, but they were surly with me by then and I said nothing.

  I arrived home in the year of our Lord 962, sailing into Portsmouth on a fine day, with the sky as blue as Tuscany. I had to give a fine bronze as the price of our passage, which irritates me now.

  Somehow, I felt almost a stranger in Wessex, with my dark skin and the dust of a thousand miles in every crack and crevice I owned. I went first to Glastonbury, where I was greeted with some affection. I took enough silver from our bursar to pay my servants what they were owed. From there, we went to Winchester, heavy with gifts. The king was in the north, however, so I prevailed upon my men to escort me further, which they did with no good grace at all.

  I put down my packs and bags in Canterbury, in the county of Kent, where Caesar landed, where Augustine brought the faith back to these islands. The cathedral was empty and still that day. Intricate beams formed the ceiling high above and I could hear bats squeaking. In all, it was a fine wooden building.

  As I stood there, with the colours of Rome behind my eyes whenever I closed them, I knew I could raise it higher and in stone. I would build a great cathedral, with a dome and an apse at one end. I saw it all, as another St Peter’s. In that moment, I sank to my knees and gave thanks. I had looked for the forgiveness of my sins and I had wandered lost for a time. In Canterbury, I had my answer. I had found my third great work.

  King Edgar had married the daughter of the earl of Strathclyde, so I heard on my return. It was not a union of love, but of influence and land. I do not believe they had ever met before Edgar made her his wife. Like his brother, perhaps Edgar felt the shadow of his father’s short reign hanging over him. By the time I returned, his wife Fæltha was heavy with child and consumed with the desire to suck a piece of coal she carried in a cloth. It stained the side of her mouth and she made such a performance of her discomfort that I took against her, a little.

  Perhaps I was still raw from memories of the last queen. Poor harmless Fæltha died in childbirth, not three months after I had returned from Rome. She gave a son to her husband, for which we blessed her memory, but honestly, in retrospect, she was a very plain woman.

  Edgar wore black and would not hunt for a month, but I think it was more for the look of the thing rather than true grief. Who knows, though, really, the heart of a king? We live in the midst of death, as I have always said. It is why we carve skulls on doorknobs and posts and the walking sticks of old men. We see death in the loss of sweet daughters and wives and fathers and old friends. Yet the world does not end, even in our grief. The sun comes up, the spring returns – and other families risk all their happiness to bring life into this vale of tears.

  The young prince Edward was as blond as his father and grandfather. His nurse was a great fat slattern of a woman, but she was amply provided with milk. Looking at her, I would have thought a full-grown calf would not have gone hungry. She had no teeth at all and when she wanted a baby to feed, she would shriek ‘Grip it, grip it!’ and make a face remarkably like the features of a young child, folding in on itself until I feared she would disappear entirely.

  I saw the little prince at intervals, but my new duties had me rising at dawn and working deep into the night. I found I could survive on two sleeps of two hours for six weeks at a time, but had then to lie abed for almost a full day to recover. Sleep! It has always been mine enemy. I detest it as I detest the devil. We are given so little time and yet made to waste part of it senseless and snoring.

  On the one hand, I was archbishop of Canterbury, with bishops under me who had to be met and examined closely for error. There were too many priests to see – I felt they were like chicke
ns, there were so many. There were accounts to judge and expenditure to examine. I removed three men from their bishoprics and had them flogged. One I sent to his relatives, two were banished. They confessed their sins when I sat in the quiet with them, with their guilt spilling out as if it had been held by straw. I forgave them, but excommunicated them also. King’s officers took them to the coast.

  I made a point of beginning with that show of my authority, so that I would not have to do it all again. I had learned that much from King Edgar. Yet my true labours were with the abbeys, such places of slackness, lust and sheer sloth as you would not believe. I had not known what a shining beacon Glastonbury had become among them, compared to the rest.

  Even as I engaged Brother Justin to design my cathedral in Canterbury, I set out to visit each of eighty monasteries and abbeys in the kingdom – though barely half were communities worthy of the name. I saw monks and priests living with their wives – and many who were not their wives. I dismissed twelve score of men from whatever vows they claimed to have taken – and you may believe they did not all go quietly! I made the mistake only once of thinking my pallium protected me, on which occasion I was almost killed by a baying mob. I see their red mouths still, as they roared and surrounded me and brandished sticks. They were not so brave when I asked the king for help. He sent forty armed men to my side and I returned like Christ in the temple, scattering their tables!

  I cleaned a stable that Hercules might have recognised, a great steaming pile of ordure and sin that I could not endure. I thought it was the labour of a lifetime, to make every abbey in England follow the Rule of St Benedict. Perhaps that was my fourth great work, I do not know.

  By all accounts, King Edgar kept himself as busy as I was. He was concerned with keeping the realm safe and rode each year into the far north for three or four months at a time. Fully half his Witan councils were held in York or beyond, so that the old kings of Alba could come and heed his words. He was a clever and subtle man, was Edgar. He preferred to talk and discuss, though he could be ruthless if he needed to.