by Fuller, John
Soon he fell asleep again, but was immediately woken by his strangely jerking shoulder. He knew that he had somehow strained this shoulder, and now remembered how.
In the early hours of that morning he had gone down to his study, using, upon some whim, the second staircase. This staircase was one that he hardly ever used, being a narrow circular one of stone fitted within a buttress of the house. Its steps were worn and their descent precipitous, around a central stone pillar which it was advisable to cling to with the left hand.
Thus he had descended, his mind not so much on his studies as upon how to remove such traces of them as might provoke awkward questions from the official visitor, due that day if the tides permitted. The dissecting chamber was well enough out of the way. He sometimes couldn’t find it easily himself in the mazes of the house. And the library he always kept locked, too, out of respect for those silent guardians of words, laboriously accumulated. Whatever lay casually in his study that Vane’s eye might light on—a forbidden monograph, perhaps, or a gland in a little dish, brought from the chamber for longer reflection upon its secret properties—he intended that morning to hide away.
But the rhythm of the stone stairs and the coolness of the central pillar beneath his palm distracted him. The pleasure of leaning at a slight angle above his feet as he placed them one after the other at that precise point on each triangular wedge of step to lend at once enough width for momentary balance and enough narrowness for downward spring and propulsion was combined with the pleasure of the friction within the light grip of his hand and kept him moving on even after he had come to the small wooden door that led to his study.
Perhaps he was still not properly awake. He tried to remember if he had known before that the staircase continued beyond that point. But whether he had known or not did not seem to matter, for it indubitably did. On and on he went, faster and faster. As he descended it became cooler, and although the Abbot’s heart raced from the exercise and his shoulders and sides were damp with sweat, he felt about his cheeks the dead cold air of cellars, and the stone beneath his palm was wet.
Round and round he went, now taking two steps at a time. It had become absolutely black so that he could not even see his feet beneath him. He supposed, therefore, that at any moment the stairs might come to an end and that he would be brought up with a jolt. But the continued sense of an unseeable void beneath him and the obsessive movement of his legs carried him on, dizzyingly.
He did not understand how the stairs could continue for so long, or where they might lead. His left shoulder ached, as did the muscles of his shins and the front of his thighs. At times his right shoulder brushed against the circular containing wall of the stairway, and he knew that the descent was narrowing. It was also now less cool and the air less easy to breathe, the pleasant cellary mustiness succeeded by a rank metallic stench. But the stairs went on.
And then there had come into the Abbot’s mind a vague image. It was less a mental embodiment of any ascertainable shape than a substantial, though imprecise, formulation of a sudden unwillingness to precipitate himself further down that winding stone flight. He knew that he might put the image from his mind. He knew very well that in his automatic downward motion assisted by gravity and the concentration of darkness, he might ignore the image, refuse to yield to it.
But there was something about the image that compelled him to yield. And he had yielded, succumbing to a sudden terror that brought out the hairs on his neck and beard and rooted him to the stone above the interminable stairway, his head spinning.
On his way up he counted three thousand and eighty-seven steps before he reached his study door.
This was the reason for his strained shoulder and his difficulty in getting to sleep. But curiously enough, having remembered the reason, the Abbot became drowsy again in contemplation of the unending stairs, and this time the troubling alertness of his fatigued muscles found an appropriate object in his own memory: thus he fell asleep dreaming not of the troublesome visitation of Vane but ofhis descent of the stairs that morning. In the dream it became hot, as though the stones had been lifted from a fire to warm a bed. And in his dream, hot as he was and totally gripped by fear as he passed the three-, the four-, the five-thousandth step, in his willed dream this time the Abbot did not stop.
4
During the following day, Vane covered many sheets of paper in his forthright unhurried hand. Bells rang at the appointed hour for the divine offices, but Vane, who had attended matins after rising, and shaving his finely-sculpted chin as best he could in tepid water, ignored all calls to devotion and kept at his work. At midday he was brought two wooden bowls, one containing ewe’s milk with bread crumbled in it and the other boiled plantains. He ate some of this food without enthusiasm, while reading over the accounts he had made of the morning’s interviews. Flies buzzed in the pane of the one small window through which the sun streamed between the thick stone walls.
Working in the relative coolness of his room all day, Vane did not suffer from the unusual heat. He noticed, though, that most of the novices who came to answer his questions were exhausted and listless. They spoke briefly and without interest, saying no more than was necessary to respond to his interrogation with a dutiful politeness and the appearance of honesty.
In the afternoon he was visited by the Manciple, a lay brother of unpleasing appearance who said least of all. He had a squat heavy head, with dark eyebrows and patches of unshaven bristle on his jowls. He appeared to have almost no neck and kept his face entirely and fixedly on Vane’s, grinning hideously in what appeared to be an equal measure of stupidity and guile. To some questions he simply nodded or assented, when a statement of fact or choice of alternatives had in fact been required of him. At one point he ignored a question altogether and, glancing at the half-eaten bowls over which the flies now crawled in close abandon, asked if there was not some kind of food which Vane particularly craved and which might perhaps be obtained for him? Was he used to meat? They did not have much meat on the island, but every effort would be made to make their distinguished guest comfortable. He had only to give the word.
Vane muttered some reply, put down his pen and warily rubbed his eyes. He felt that he was, in general, getting nowhere. When the Manciple had left, he rose and walked about the room, observing idly the suggestive shapes formed by the cracks and flakes of the whitewashed plaster. Later, after nones, the Abbot returned to make inquiries about his progress, genial but unrelaxed, like the bedside visitor of a sick man.
‘You have no register of pilgrims,’ complained Vane.
The Abbot raised his eyebrows.
‘Should we have such a thing?’ he said, in surprise. ‘Who is to tell who is a pilgrim and who is not?’
‘It would have been advisable,’ said Vane.
‘And laborious,’ replied the Abbot. ‘It would require interrogation of boat passengers, a system of classification. We don’t have the time for such a thing.’
‘Should you not know who is on the island?’ asked Vane.
‘Visitors to the island hardly go unnoticed,’ said the Abbot. ‘They need lodging. Either here or at the farm.’
‘And those who lodge here are pilgrims?’
‘Possibly.’
‘They attend at the well to be cured?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Come,’ urged Vane. ‘The miracles of Saint Lleuddad’s well are the foundation of the abbey’s charter. The well is the object of all the pilgrims who follow the long saint’s road to the island to be cured.’
‘Or to die,’ said the Abbot.
Vane sighed.
‘We seem to have had this conversation before,’ he said.
‘Please don’t misunderstand me,’ said the Abbot. ‘Pilgrimage is a symbolic act, is it not? It is only the outward sign of an inward direction. It is the earnest of our spiritual condition, a manifestation of the natural tendency of life to seek its fulfilment. Life is not a condition for which, I think you will ad
mit, there is any cure.’
‘I hope you would not say such a thing to the Bishop,’ said Vane. ‘There have been many bequests for the upkeep of the well, in gratitude for the cures it has effected.’
‘Or in the hope of the reward of health,’ said the Abbot. ‘The Bishop’s exchequer is heavy with the remorse of the rich.’
‘Heavy enough to support the foundations of this abbey,’ put in Vane.
‘I acknowledge it,’ said the Abbot. ‘But I cannot arrange cures. Cures are not for sale.’
‘Are you saying that there are no cures?’ asked Vane.
‘Perhaps there have been cures, but I do not know in every case what has caused them,’ replied the Abbot.
‘When was there last a cure?’
‘I cannot say.’
Vane frowned and was silent. After a moment he went to his papers on the table and looked through them, picking one folded sheet out with deliberation.
‘I think I should read you this,’ he said. ‘It is only one of many pieces of evidence that has reached the Bishop that something is amiss here, but it will serve to represent them all. And I hope that when I have read it to you, you may have some answer to give me.’
The Abbot inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment.
‘It is one of a number of letters written to his brother in Chester by one William Evans, an innkeeper of means, a widower. He was afflicted with headaches, spells of dizziness and vomiting that became so severe that he decided to leave the inn in the capable hands of his trustworthy tapster and under his brother’s occasional supervision, and to undertake a pilgrimage.’
‘Are there no doctors in Chester?’ interposed the Abbot.
‘Physic could do nothing for him,’ said Vane.
‘I suspect he needed a change of life,’ said the Abbot.
Vane ignored this.
‘I shall read the letter,’ he said. He read it, and the Abbot listened, looking out of the window.
5
Brother Hugh, I told you of the portent of the eel which I waited for two days and grew rheumy in the waiting what with the closeness of the well and the water blood warm and above the knees not fresh like Pin y Wig the rill in Nefyn parish that cures knuckles and hands clean and cool like new ale from the cellar this being not moving and lying still and hard to see the bottom at the end that is deepest where one of our number though an old man and with a terrible crusty mouth and nose still of good sight and fair understanding and a tolerable companion says he saw shapes as it were oranges under the water or another time like hedgehogs without their prickles which makes me fearful to sit there so long were it not for the portent of the eel which they say is certain if it should wrap itself round your legs in a tight embrace will effect a cure be it of small ills like warts or boils or the being unmarried and not liking it which I did ever think a condition to be more praised than regretted or whether of grievous pain of great lameness, chancres, ulcers, blindness and the like the cure of my head being of this degree of hope and gravity so I sat two days for the eel without luck but it happened that a young girl a simpleton was brought in by her mother and stood there in her shift stooping and stirring the water about with her hands as it were a soup of delicate making and the mother standing by and drinking the waters and talking loudly of all the calamities that had ever befallen her and we sat round the edge of the well not able not to listen but nodding at her to show we did listen the girl gave a great shriek and was lifted out with the eel fast around both legs together like a hoop on a barrel and it could not be pristd off by two men within ten minutes and we heard later from the farm that the girl had died of fright so much for the portent of the eel which I now think to be unreliable like the pair of trout in Ffynnon Beris which made their appearance while I was bathing but did in no way lighten my head and I caught a chill moreover from the water which I do believe descended from the mountains with barely melted snow in it though here on the island nothing is cold not even in the night which can be as close as day and in the well is moist so as to bring on a tightness of the chest and difficulty of breathing which greatly affects the oldest among us they being too weak to move elsewhere to cooler places such as the cloisters of the abbey or to the dairy of the farm where indeed better provision may be had as curd cheese freshly made and a manner of herbs in a pot but no ale for it is not drunk nor made and they do not kill their beasts for they only ride them or milk them and I think the beasts become their friends too familiar to kill and too famous to be missed and I long for a great leg of mutton boiled in broth for I think you would not know me thin as I am now and ill not only from the weight and spinning of my head which indeed I am much resigned to but a looseness of digestion from the diet and the waters and a strange feeling over all other feelings like a small fever which the others also complain of and never complained of before though some of us have been together for many months and suffered together too like Walter from Anglesey who was robbed at Fynnon Alhaiarn and Master Hughes who found he could not move his bowels for a week after he had made a collyrium from his scrapings of the columns of Saint Beuno’s chapel in water of the spring there and drank of it mightily though I told him it would bring on the stone and they were truly pagans at Clynnog Fawr and not to be trusted for I was informed they did offer heifers to Saint Beuno like a god of the old world and not a Christian saint and I told Master Hughes who would not believe me but still he is recovered from his costiveness now and might wish some of it again as all our motions are frequent and watery and some take it as a sign of the working of the waters for a flux is as it were a kind of baptismal purging of the inside part of a man which is the unwholesomest part as I heard the Abbot say in a sermon here who speaks strangely and for the most part hardly to be understood as for example the devil is nothing but the world and the flesh which we consume and therefore accommodate though our spirit cannot bear to contain him and strains to dispel him and if we were pure spirit would live only on air like the angels do which Walter from Anglesey reckoned was a poor argument against roasted mutton however there is not much hope of debating the Abbot into a host for we are all too weak and I cannot say that there is much money left between us for none can but ill spare a sixpence to the boatman for the carriage of a letter and he but rarely comes complaining of the tides and the niggardliness of the pilgrims which is as I know a lie for all the pilgrims are overjoyed to reach the island and the shrine of Lleuddad and pay the surly boatman more than he deserves for his little pains so that there are some among us who fear that they may not have enough to return to their homes and hoard their pieces or sew them in their clothes so they may not be tempted to spend them on messes at the farm and instead they fish for eggs that have been cast in the well and eat them with the bent pins that they find which those with warts have bepricked themselves and also cast in the sacred waters for a cure and aggravate their fever with this and similar unwholesomeness which the Abbot has spoken against like the practice of taking the grass that grows about the church wall and eating it between bread for it is reputed to have the pure virtue of the waters uncontaminated by the washing of the sundry limbs and private parts of the pilgrims and this grass they call porfa’r cynddeiriog the grass of the mad and truly they are like so many Nebuchadnezzars that eat it for one such crawled about all night on his fours and moaned like a beast and those that he has awakened talked among themselves and we asked ourselves if we would ever leave the island in good health for it did not seem such a great thing to ask of God who has placed his saints and their acts to guide us and who would not keep us on the island in unhappiness unless for a purpose and what that purpose might be none can tell though the old man with the crusty nose whose name I can never remember took us to see the graves of the pilgrims and their stones were so many pages standing out from the Book of Judgement and all containing every single name that ever was and these the old man claimed were God’s saints and it was a great honour to be buried here though Walter from Anglesey said that we had seen non
e of our number buried who had died in the time we had been there and fell to complaining that the Abbot would require a great offering of gold to secure six feet of the island in perpetuity and that it was no good enquiring of the brothers on any matter whatsoever for they never spoke but moved about with their monstrous hoods up like dancing bears thinking of their own salvation but of no one else’s wherefore I begin to think it is time that I returned to Chester and to the Bell for I am sure your mind is not on selling ale and mine is no longer much on my cure, your devoted brother William.
6
‘Well?’ asked the Abbot, when Vane had finished reading. ‘What is it that you want to know?’
‘There are many questions,’ said Vane, ‘which arise from the sort of thing referred to here and in the other evidence in my possession. What arrangements do you make to bury the dead?’
‘The usual arrangements,’ said the Abbot.
‘What might happen to those who die and are not buried?’ asked Vane.
‘If we cannot recover the body of a drowned man,’ replied the Abbot, ‘then naturally we cannot bury him. No one else who dies here leaves the island. It would be hardly practicable to remove a corpse.’
‘I know the journey by boat is hazardous and no doubt is more so in winter months. But are you saying that all who are ill and die on the island are buried in the island cemetery?’
‘Those who do not drown, yes.’
‘I see. Then William Evans of Chester and Walter Prichard of Anglesey and many others whose names I have here as being reported missing will have found burial places on the island?’
The Abbot shrugged.
‘Unless they have now returned home,’ he said, ‘or have gone elsewhere.’
‘You have not been witness to the anxiety of their families and of the priests in their parishes. That is why you can say such a thing,’ said Vane.