The Oblate's Confession

by William Peak

  The village looks much as it does from our terrace, small, compact, a cluster of toy houses built for a child. On fine days the smoke rises from the roofs in thin gray lines so that the houses seem joined to the sky by lengths of thread. Sometimes you can see women moving about in the open area at the center. I suppose this is meant to be their garth though there is no grass on it. With all the drying racks, it looks more like kitchens.

  The fields too are as you would imagine them, the wheat green and silver when the wind blows, the peas thin and straggly. Chapter was cut short that spring so there would have been people in the fields by the time I reached the crag, but I don’t think I saw Waldhere. I remember this because I remember being disappointed. For some reason I had thought I would be able to reach out and touch him. It was foolish of course, but at the time I believe I had some idea that the picture of Redestone I would see from Dacca's crag would be like any other—things large would become small, things far away, close at-hand: touch the top of the picture and you touch the clouds, the bottom and your finger covers someone looking at the sky. In this way too I had thought I would see Waldhere. I had thought I would tower over him like someone holding his picture.

  You can’t really see the ditch from the crag. Between the fields and the abbey path, the weeds and grasses look thicker and greener than elsewhere, but you can’t really tell it’s the ditch. A stranger would never know unless they opened one of the dikes. When they open a dike, water spills from the ditch and darkens all the rows in that part of the field.

  Beyond the ditch and the abbey path are the fish ponds. From that high up you would think you could see the fish no matter how deep they went but you can’t. Sometimes the water reflects the sky and the clouds overhead and sometimes a bit of the forest, but most of the time it’s too gray or shiny to see anything. Between the ponds and the southern part of Modra nect lies the orchard. Part of the orchard you can’t see because the monastery’s in the way.

  In the spring, when the trees are in bloom, it looks as if the abbey’s floating on a cloud.

  If you stand in the door of the dortoir after Vigil and watch the stars roll back over Modra nect, they all seem to disappear behind the same line of trees. What you are actually looking at is the crest of a long ridge that reaches down from the mountain’s southern peak like an arm. The lower part of this arm rests, elbow to hand, along the abbey’s side of the river, its length carrying the load of our church. When Abbot Agatho had the retaining walls built and the area south of the church filled in to create the terrace, he effectively buried all evidence of this ridge. Except from the crag. From the crag it looks as if the mountain holds our terrace close to its chest like a basket full of earth. The buildings of our monastery sit on top of this basket like four boxes set on top at the last moment: the smaller ones on the far side of the terrace—the abbot’s lodge, dortoir, and refectory—balancing the larger one on the north, our church.

  The walls of our church have always struck me as little short of miraculous: the stones too large, too perfect, their rosy color too uniform, to be the result of craft alone. Yet from the crag it isn’t the walls that impress so much as it is the roof. The thing stretches from the front of our terrace all the way to the back, an impossibly long and perfect pile of hay, its north side stained green by the weather. The same mind that dreamt up such a roof, imagined whole marshes stripped bare to create its length, had a series of crosses woven in at the crest, a sign, apparently, for God alone.

  Below the roof you can see where the stone of the church’s north wall joins that of the ridge, the two so alike in color and form it’s hard to tell where the one ends and the other begins. It is here, against the base of the ridge, that the Meolch ends its long fall down the mountain. This is the sound you hear when you kneel on the north side of the church. The stone of the ridge becomes darker where it is touched by the spray, almost purple. This dark color, along with a stain which I take to be moss, extends up onto the lower portions of the church. Sometimes the mist and spray drift out beyond the ridge and into the light of our fields. When this happens, a small rainbow appears in the air over Wilfrid’s bridge. There is something in the nature of these rainbows that makes them visible only from the crag.

  The coincidence that makes the earth at Redestone the same color as the rock makes it hard to tell our southern buildings are any different from the church. A stranger would guess they too were built of stone. The abbot’s lodge, dortoir, and refectory line up opposite the church like children trying hard to please. From the crag at least, they conceal their faults: you can’t see any of the cracks or weathering. The abbot’s lodge is decidedly smaller than the dortoir and refectory. It sits out in front of the other two at the terrace’s southeastern corner like the abbot himself, short and squat, his flock at his back, watching for the Thief who comes in the night.

  You can’t see the reredorter from the crag but you can see the kitchens. The drying racks look like gibbets, facing out toward the orchard the way they do. I have never liked the sound they make when the wind blows. It is a shame the cooking has to be done so close to the refectory, but where else? If you prepared the food down among the fields, it would be such a job to deliver it to the community, especially in winter. And of course it would arrive cold. So there the kitchens sit, muddy and disreputable, at the very entrance to our otherwise neat and tidy cloister. I have often thought we should put up a wall.

  But there is an advantage to the kitchens’ location, in addition to the convenience I mean. Have you ever sat in Chapter and wondered if Bica’s baking was a personal test for you alone? Of course you have; we all have. It seems so unfair the way that smell invades the refectory just when everyone is hungriest. But I’m afraid it isn’t a test. Not really. God I think has more important things to do with His time. It was from the crag that I first realized this. I was sitting there one morning, thinking about everyone in Chapter, the air over the oven winking and curling with heat, when a chill ran down my back. I pulled my woolens close and, without even thinking about it, envied Father Abbot his seat at the west end of the refectory, his back against that hot and cooking oven.

  Things become so clear when viewed from above. Someone— Father Abbot, Brother Eadbald, possibly even the bishop—placed that oven against the refectory’s west wall not to tempt us, not to test our patience, but, instead, to give Father and the older monks at his end of the hall a nice warm spot to sit in. So simple, so kind. And undoubtedly instructive as well: a relationship which at ground-level had seemed arbitrary and even cruel turns out, upon examination from above, to have a reason, a purpose, to warm someone who, otherwise, might have suffered from the cold.

  I remember I received one such lesson on even my first visit to Dacca’s crag, though I doubt I realized it at the time. I had been lying on the rock for a while, enjoying the hermit’s gift of the view, when the sky—which had hung low and heavy all morning— began to show signs of breaking up. Here and there, as I watched, beams of sunlight pierced the clouds, reached down and began to probe the earth. I was watching one of these troll a patch of gold through an otherwise dark wood when an unexpected movement drew my eye to the terrace. Someone was there. Someone had knelt down, was kneeling down, in front of the church—someone who had no business being there at that time of day.

  When he stood up, I saw that it was the novice, Eosterwine, and that he had something in his hand that required him to get up carefully, gingerly. Since his admission to the abbey, Eosterwine had become attached to Brother Baldwin in his duties as sacristan. Which probably explained why he was up on the terrace at this time of the morning instead of out in the fields where he belonged. Brother must have seen something at Mass he didn’t like, a candlestick improperly polished, an altar cloth in need of repair, and now Eosterwine had paid the price for his master’s displeasure: he had been made to return to the church and fix whatever was wrong. I wondered if Baldwin had made a fuss about it in Chapter. Regardless, everyone must now know
, as I did, that Eosterwine had erred. He was, after all, very late to the peas.

  When the novice passed out of the church’s shadow, he surprised me by casting a long glance across the garth as if

  measuring the distance to the abbot’s lodge. From this I guessed two things. First, it was most likely paten and chalice he carried so carefully before him (in those days sacred vessels were stored in a chest by the abbot’s door); and, second, Eosterwine was thinking about breaking the rules. I knew this because I’d been there. How many times had I looked at that grassy expanse, late for lessons or office, and contemplated a mad dash while no one was looking? It’s no fun being late, temptations multiply.

  And, interestingly, it was at this moment, when Eosterwine was most distracted and I most sympathized with him, that the sky opened up, a beam of light reached down, touched the garth, and, for an instant, turf, stones, daub, and thatch glowed like colored glass.

  Then the light went out.

  As quickly and as quietly as the world had been set afire, the light was extinguished: all colors dead, the garth just a garth again, the walls no longer aflame, the grass no longer glowing. But Eosterwine had seen it and so had I. For the briefest of moments the abbey had been transformed. And to give him credit, Redestone’s newest novice had the grace to kneel and cross himself.

  I remember I looked back at Gwynedd when that happened, hoping he had seen what I had seen, wanting to share it with him, share it with the man who had given me this pleasure. But Father was looking up at something else just then, staring up into the tree I had held onto earlier, studying a bird perhaps or maybe its nest. Still, when he felt my eyes on him, he turned, raised a hand to let me know he was still there, still watching over me; and it was then that I saw it, saw the angry red spot on the back of his hand, and, seeing it, remembered what I had done, the pain that I had caused him.

  XII

  No matter where I am or what I am doing, the smell of green wood burning always makes me happy. In this I am not alone. Everyone's step seems lighter when Father Abbot finally orders us out to clear the ditch, even we ancients up at the head of the procession laughing a little as we march down the abbey path; spring has returned, the winter ended, we have lived to see another year. But the pestilence changed all that. Not the first year. No, that year followed a normal cycle: in spring we cleared the ditch and planted; in summer we cut hay, weeded peas; and, come autumn, those of us that survived the illness brought in the harvest. Except for the pestilence itself, the year of its visitation was like any other. It was the next year, the year after the sickness, that the order of our work grew strained and unnatural: for the first time Sext and None offered no respite from one’s labors, children did the work of men, and the smell of green wood burning meant not the end of winter and cold, but the end of spring and the beginning of wasting heat. It was Brother Cellarer who decided all this, decided the office could be sung in the fields, the ditch cleared after the seed was in the ground. You can see what he would have been thinking. Then as now, the men of the village were responsible for preparing the fields, the brothers the ditch. When both tasks had been accomplished, the two communities joined and the planting began. But that year there weren’t enough villagers left to break and plow the soil by themselves. So, given the amount of rainfall we could expect in an average spring, Brother must have reasoned the ditch could wait till summer; the sowing couldn’t.

  Not that we oblates understood any of this. Two more years would pass before Waldhere and I were deemed old enough for Chapter, and poor Ealhmund never would get to see the community in session. All we knew was that, for some reason, instead of clearing the ditch in spring when it made sense, we were doing so now, after the planting, when our hands and backs were sore and tired, the weeds had grown tall and well-rooted, and the heat made the smell of the reredorter unbearable.

  Still, it was hard not to find some pleasure in the task. Somewhere far up the valley, the furnace master had closed the gate that linked our ditch to the Meolch. Redestone’s water supply was stopped: the mill did not turn, the lavabo did not flow, our reredorter stood over a dry and stinking ditch...and we oblates were up to our knees in muck. We were supposed to be pulling weeds (the monks had been issued shovels and scythes), but the novelty of standing in a place normally full of water made it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. When Brother Osric (who was named cellarer after the death of Father Cuthwine) looked our way, we pulled and yanked with enthusiasm, but, for the most part, we spent our time searching the mud for treasure washed down from the abbey kitchens.

  It was overcast that day and hot. The air was full of smoke from the fires and the smell of green wood burning mixed with that of the reredorter. I had just found a piece of fish bone and was about to show it to Waldhere when I noticed how quiet everything had gotten. I looked up.

  It was a man on a horse. He had already passed through the village and was now nearly even with the first of the ponds. As I watched, a second man became visible behind the horse. He was on foot and hurrying to keep up. The man on the horse seemed unconcerned about the man on the ground, but he did ride slowly. At one point he reached down and scratched a knee. The man behind him was carrying two spears. As he hurried along behind the horse, the shafts of the spears bent up and down in rhythm with his movements.

  The creaking of leather and the clicking of the spears became audible as the two men drew near. I couldn’t see the horseman’s sword because it hung down on the other side of his horse, but I could see his shield. It had been painted green and red in a design I had not seen before. There was something wrong with the man’s face. One side of it was swollen.

  When the horseman drew even with the place where Waldhere and I stood, I could see that I had been wrong about his face. A scar ran down the side of the man’s forehead, crossed his cheekbone, and then buried itself in his beard. Whatever had caused the wound (I imagined a war-axe), had clipped off the end of the man’s eyebrow and a significant portion of the right side of his beard. Neither had grown back and, as a result, the right side of the man’s face looked somehow wider, fatter, than the left.

  The man didn’t look at us as he passed, nor really did he look at anyone. He glanced up at the abbey once or twice but not like most visitors. You could tell he had seen such places before.

  It was Father Prior who broke the spell. He clapped his hands once and everyone jumped. I looked around and someone laughed. Father looked at the brother who had laughed and then, fairly quickly, the sound of shovel and scythe started up again.

  I began pulling weeds but I also glanced over at Waldhere. He looked back and the two of us raised our eyebrows at each other to show how pleased we were with what we had seen. Then

  Waldhere’s eyes grew larger still and a sudden shadow passed over the ground between us. I bent to my work, pulling weeds with a vengeance now, but it made no difference. Whoever was standing behind me, kicked me. I stood up, turned around.

  It was Brother Baldwin. He was standing at the edge of the ditch, glaring down at me, his forehead and cheeks flecked with mud. When he was sure he had my attention, he pointed up at the rider and his companion who had just reached the abbey rise, their figures wavering now in the heat and smoke from the fires. I looked that way and then I looked back at Brother Baldwin. The old monk smiled in a way that scared me. Never taking his eyes off me, he moved his hand through the air before him like a snake.

  I nodded.

  The smile on Brother’s face evaporated. He pointed at me.

  I must have looked surprised because I remember Brother smiling again at that. Then, as if pronouncing judgment, he caused the fingers of his right hand to rain upon the back of his left.

  The message could not have been clearer. That snake, Brother had signed, is your father.

  Ceolwulf did not visit me on that occasion. I saw him once or twice in church but he did not speak to me and may not have known I was there. I remember only that he wore many rings and th
at when he came into church there was a smell that came with him. Waldhere said this was because of the oil he wore but I didn’t believe him. The man who came each year for the iron wore oil but he didn’t smell as good as my father.

  I did not see Ceolwulf leave Redestone. One day his horse and man were simply gone. I did not see them depart.

  XIII

  Everyone loves the story of the hermit and how he refused to accept food from Redestone at the height of that summer’s hunger and actually sent provisions from his own stores back down the mountain to the abbey. Even Father Abbot tells the tale though he must know it isn’t true. I wish Father himself could hear it. I can see him now, sitting by his fire, biting carefully into one of the biscuits I’ve brought him, tilting the cake just so to keep the honey in place, eyes closed, listening, enjoying the story and trying not to laugh for fear of the crumbs. Afterwards he would have reminded me of “crosses to bear.” He always did. He said everyone has one and his were the ideas people have about hermits. “They like to think of us as cut off from the rest of the world, needing nothing and no one. When of course,” he would have laughed, “you know as well as anyone how much I need Botulf’s biscuits.”