The Oblate's Confession

by William Peak

  “It was around Loidis...” Ceolwulf hesitated. “You know... maybe Christ really did want all those little girls, you think? I mean, why’s he like little girls so much?”

  “The Christ loves all children.” Father Prior said so.

  Ceolwulf cocked an eyebrow at me. “Well, maybe, it certainly did rain. Buckets. Two days, three days, might never have caught him otherwise. On the fourth day, still raining, Penda finally stopped. Why march in weather when you’re winning?” Ceolwulf’s smile wasn’t nice. “Only desperate men march in weather. We marched in weather. Caught up with him at a place called Gaius Field. Just a bend in the river really, I don’t know, maybe somebody named Gaius held it once. Anyway, they stopped there. Didn’t burn the place this time because of the rain. Nice farm. Bottom-land. Two or three out-buildings, a granary, and the one main building. By the time I got there it was already dark. Tond-here took me up to the top of the ridge so I could see them, so many campfires down there it looked like stars, the main building lit up in the center. We sat there for a long time, sounds coming up to us—laughter, singing—the kind of sounds you hear when things are going well, no real resistance, plenty of women for the thanes, farm animals for everyone else.”

  Ceolwulf chuckled for a moment, then became serious. “We took them just before sun-up. Early morning. Just enough light to move without noise. It had stopped raining but everything was still wet, slippery. I remember we could smell them before we saw them, moving down through the trees. Armies always stink but this one was particularly bad—all that damp wool, the piss, and something else, we didn’t know what, a terrible smell. As we got closer it got so bad you couldn’t help feeling they were all around you, like the smell, all around you. Then, finally, the fog began to lift and we could see them, hundreds of them, thousands, the ground littered with bodies.” Ceolwulf looked at me. “That’s what they sing about it now, that it looked like a battle already won— smoke in the air, bodies littering the field, stench of death—but it’s not true. People like songs like that but it doesn’t really look like that, not at the time it doesn’t. At the time it just looks bad, impossible—I don’t care if they were sleeping. I mean I don’t care if they were all lying around on the ground, sleeping. That many men, looking out at that many men: it’ll put the wind up you.

  “But we took them. Took them just before sun-up. Best time really. Catch a man in the middle of his dreams, bed still warm, air cold, spirits low. Catch a man like that he hasn’t had time to remind himself of who he is, who his friends are, what they will think of him. Like a child really, all he knows is his sleep’s been broken and more than anything else he wants it back. Like a child.

  “It was sun-up, just before, mist everywhere, everything gray and wet. I remember there was a shout, I don’t know, somebody caught a guard, somebody taking a piss, I don’t know, but I remember there was a shout and everyone was running forward, and then I was running forward, swinging my sword, yelling. I killed four men before I had to face anyone standing up. Everyone did. Dead bodies everywhere, tripping over them, slipping in the blood. I saw a man trip over his own guts, stand up, trip again. I saw a man with one leg trying to get to his feet. Comical really, though at the time you don’t think that. I was swinging at someone, the fourth or fifth man, when something hard hit me, stunned me really. For a moment it was as if I were somewhere else, the story of a battle instead of the battle itself, everything moving slowly as it does when you want someone to hurry up and finish the story, and then, all of a sudden, there was a great rush of sound and I realized the man I’d been hacking at was already dead and there was another man, a man with an ax, looking at me. I turned toward the man with the ax and it was then I felt the blood. It was all over me really—you know how facial wounds are—my beard must have been red, my neck. The front of my shield certainly was.”

  Ceolwulf smiled as if he’d remembered something funny.

  “Peculiar thing about wounds, some wounds, they help you instead of hurt you. But you have to work fast before the shock wears off. That was what was wrong with the man that hit me. Shock. Maybe he was young, maybe he’d never hit anybody with an ax before, maybe he was still half asleep, but instead of finishing the job as he should have, he just stood there like an idiot, eyes wide, mouth working. Used to be a one-eyed man in Oswiu’s hall talked about it. Somebody’d hit him too, an ax, a club, I can’t remember, but instead of gouging his eye or splitting it, the thing had squeezed it somehow, pinched it, because it had popped out.” Ceolwulf chuckled. “‘Like a plum from a pie,’ he said, popped from his face ‘like a plum from a pie.’ And then of course it just hung there, by its cord, dangled against his cheek.

  “Well you can imagine. Same thing happened to him happened to me—his opponent so surprised by a man standing there with his eye hanging out he hesitated for a moment, forgot what he was doing. Before he remembered, he was dead. That’s the advantage. A wound like that affects the people around you more than it does you. And of course it makes you angry. The old man claimed he killed twenty before it was over, said he held his eye out in front of him like a lantern, turning it this way and that, seeking them out. Of course it didn’t really work anymore. Later, after the battle was over, he tried to put it back in but it didn’t work anymore, couldn’t see anything with it. Used to laugh and say he’d probably put it in wrong, upside down or something. Anyway, he had to cut it off and after that he wore a cloth over that eye.”

  Ceolwulf fingered the whiskers along his scar. “Ugly isn’t it? My eyebrow used to go all the way out to here.” He pointed at a spot beside the crease. “Saved my life though. I’m not saying I remembered the old man’s story, I’m not saying I didn’t. All I know for sure is suddenly no one was moving around me, that idiot standing there like somebody waiting for orders. I gave him orders. I sank my sword into him, opened him up from top to chops, each eye watching me as it went down. Hell I don’t blame him! My cheek was opened up to here, wasn’t it, back teeth showing? Must have looked like my ear was grinning! Why I could stick out my tongue without ever opening my mouth, wiggle it like a snake. They shat all over themselves getting out of my way, cattle really, sheep. Never felt so brave, so sure of myself. But of course it didn’t last, couldn’t I suppose. Killed two more I think, maybe three, then I don’t remember anything after that.” Ceolwulf looked at me. “Flesh wounds do that to you. No matter how strong you are, how big, the strength drains from you with the blood. Anyhow, after it was over, they told me I’d killed eight men, Ethelhere among them, but I don’t know. That seems like a lot of men.”

  Ceolwulf got up and walked over to the window. Earlier they had been working in the pollards but the sounds had stopped now. Ceolwulf looked out that way anyway.

  “What about the smell?” I asked. “What about the smell you smelled? What was that?”

  Ceolwulf looked at me, the light from the window making his face pale. “The smell?”

  “The bad smell you smelled at the beginning.”

  “Oh, that.” Ceolwulf smiled. “Well, I didn’t find out about that till later, afterwards. There were Eyra women there that time, sometimes there are, sometimes there aren’t. Anyhow, one of them nursed me. Not much to look at and her poultices stank, but she knew what she was doing.” Ceolwulf looked at the fire. “It’s the fire you want to keep out of a wound like that, the heat. It’s when they turn red-hot you know you’re in trouble. But the woman knew what she was doing. She bathed me and tended me and, slowly, the hole knit itself shut.

  “Of course for a long time I couldn’t talk. Tried to but half the time air just blew out of my cheek. She didn’t like it. Said I shouldn’t do it, it was bad for the wound, but I don’t think that was it. I think she just didn’t like the sound it made. Anyhow I lay there for a long time with nothing to do, couldn’t talk to anybody, didn’t have the strength for any work. People would come by and talk to me but all I could do was nod or shake my head, maybe point a finger at something.” Ceolwulf had
sat back down by the fire and now he looked at me. “It makes people uncomfortable you know, the not talking. It shows a lack of courtesy. No one wanted to sit with me, no one wanted to talk with me, or at least not long. I couldn't carry on my share of the conversation. But, even so, I began to hear what had happened.”

  For a moment Ceolwulf stared again into the fire. “It could have gone either way. I mean you can see that now, looking back on it, you can see how badly it could have gone. I wish you could have seen their fires that night, there were so many of them, like stars they said, like looking down into a pool full of stars. But we surprised them and that was an advantage. Maybe the numbers too, an advantage I mean. While all of us had our hands full, hack and swing, hack and swing, most of them had little to do, the second and third ranks caught between river and battle, no place to go, nothing to do—try to move forward and you shove your own men into the battle, move back and you’re up to your ass in water.” Ceolwulf smiled. “And it was then”—the smile grew larger— “it was then that the river began to rise.

  “Of course it was your Christ did it, or that’s what the priests all claimed. Hell I’d claim it too, the way it rained and rained and then, at just the right moment, began to flood.” Ceolwulf studied the furnishings in Father Abbot’s room. “You know sometimes they call Him ‘Prince of the Sky’, ‘Heavenly Warrior’, that sort of thing. The priests I mean. Notice they don’t do it around here much but they sure do up at Bamburgh. And I don’t know, when you think about it...I mean you have to admit it was a piece of work. Like someone knew what they were doing, knew the difference between the front and the rear.”

  Ceolwulf looked at me again. “Funny place, the rear, time on your hands. You can hear the sounds, the yelling, the clanging, you can hear the screams, but you can’t do anything about it. All the fear, none of the action. Then, all of a sudden, your one advantage, the fact that you are in the rear, that behind you all is safe, is taken from you. A man who was sitting down, jumps up”— Ceolwulf jumped up, hands behind him—“hands on his backsides.” He pointed at the fire, “A fire sputters, catches again, sputters, goes out. Then, right in front of you, the first small trickle of water runs across the ground.” Ceolwulf sat back down, a funny look on his face. “They would have held up their feet at first. Laughed. Glanced at one another. But it wasn’t funny. Not really. They all must have known what it meant. The river was rising, would probably continue to rise, and there was no place to go, no place to go but forward.

  “Well you can see how it must have been after that, once it got started, the men in the back beginning to push forward, grumbling, trying to stay out of the water, the men in front of them pushing forward too, word spreading as it does, men at the very front beginning to realize something is going on, something behind them. You don’t like that, the feeling something is going on behind you, nobody likes that, it makes you nervous. So, probably about then, probably not long after someone first noticed the water, someone way up at the front got the wind up and turned and ran. Probably someone didn’t even know what was happening. Afterwards no one ever knows who it was. Funny, I mean you know someone was standing there, next to him, behind him, someone must have seen it, but no one ever tells.” Ceolwulf laughed. “Maybe it’s because they can’t. Had to turn tail to tell tale.”

  Ceolwulf smiled to himself, then became serious again. “You can see it before it happens you know, little things. The eyes no longer on you, not really, the feet sidestepping. It’s easy to kill a man when he’s fighting like that, backwards, mind on the rear, thinking with his heels. Must have been strange though, men at the front beginning to shift backwards, press into those behind them, they in turn pressing into those behind them and so on until, finally, someone escaping us came up against someone escaping the water. There was a struggle maybe, men pressing forward, men pressing back, yelling, swearing, I don’t know, swinging swords. Probably could have gone either way but it didn’t. We must have seemed worse than the water. Anyway, the tide turned. Everybody began moving backwards, slowly at first and then more quickly, backwards, toward the river.

  “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a rout. There were too many of them for that, they couldn’t move that quickly. Those in the rear would have had time to think about it, to wander in, wade in, eyes wide, feeling their way, praying for shallows. Maybe a spear fell among them, who knows, an arrow—there were arrows that day. Whatever, something began to hurry them along, they began to take bigger steps, forget where they were, what lay ahead of them, striding out to get away from the fighting. Then, one by one, they would have struck the deeper water—the shout, an arm thrown back, already too late, the channel already beneath them, the press upon them.” Ceolwulf shook his head. “Ugly scene then, always is, men beginning to step on one another, climb over each other. Embarrassing what they’ll do at the end, the way they’ll claw at each other, do anything to get away—same men brave otherwise.” Ceolwulf thought about that for a moment, laughed. “When I came to, the place looked like someplace somebody’s building a fort, you know, a big old fort, the water full of logs they’ve floated down.” Ceolwulf chuckled. “Bobbing up against one another, turning, jamming up the eddies.” He shook his head. “People tell you they sank are fools. Lots of people claim that, that the river’s full of treasure, the bodies sank because they were weighted down with gold. Fools. There wasn’t any gold. I’d have gotten my share, wouldn’t I have? I don’t know, I guess the other people had it, the ones that got away, or Oswiu. But the bodies floated. Hell everything floated—shit, blankets, firewood—you had to clear a place just to get a drink of water.”

  “What about the smell? The smell you smelled when you first got there?”

  “What? Oh, yes, I was going to tell you about the smell. Well, that was the funny thing, that was the thing that made everyone laugh. Every battle has one, something funny happens I mean. Cow mistaken for the enemy, speared to death, a path that’s supposed to take you to the rear, takes you to the front, that sort of thing. The best I ever heard was the man whose army ran away from him. I wasn’t there, but the way they tell it he was standing on a little rise, shouting at the enemy, boasting of his superior numbers, of how he would carry the day, while all the while his men were deserting behind him, running away right and left in full view of the enemy, the fool still going on, unaware of it, giving his pretty little speech while, right behind him, one by one, his army was melting away. Finally I guess there was just him standing out there all by himself. I would have loved to have seen the look on his face when he finally realized what was going on, turned around and saw there wasn’t anyone there.”

  Ceolwulf shook his head. “Anyway, that was the funny thing that time, the beans. When the light got better you could see them, they were everywhere. I don’t know, I suppose the rain had gotten to them, spoiled them or something, fermented. You ever smell beans when they’ve gotten like that, gone off like that?” Ceolwulf closed his eyes and shook his head like a man smelling something he didn’t like. “Shoo that stinks! Anyhow, I guess they’d distributed them anyhow, I don’t know, maybe didn’t know they were bad. But it hadn’t taken long to figure it out. I guess some of the men threw theirs in the river and some up into the forest. That was what we’d smelled, what we’d marched through, it really had been all around us!” Ceolwulf laughed. “Beans! But a lot of them hadn’t even bothered, just pitched them out wherever they were, beans everywhere, stinking up the ground, mashing underfoot. Whole camp stunk of it, and then afterwards of course there were the dead too. But it was the beans that were funny.” Ceolwulf shook his head at the memory. “Whew was that a stink!

  “But it was the river I was telling you about. It’s the river that’s important. The river saved the day that day, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. They had us three-to-one, some say five-to-one, and that river just sucked them down, wrapped her coils around them and pulled them down.” Ceolwulf smiled. “That’s what it was like, a snake, a big old mud sn
ake swollen with food.” He shook his head. “It was something. That river really saved the day.”

  Ceolwulf moved his shoulders once, loosening them, and then he stood up. He stretched—hands balled into fists, reaching up toward the roof. I watched him stretch and thought about getting up and stretching myself, though of course I didn’t. I could tell the story was over but I didn’t mind. It had been a good story, a very good story, and I knew that Waldhere and Ealhmund would like it. I could see myself telling it to Waldhere and Ealhmund, how they would look, how I would look. I was sure I wouldn’t forget anything.

  Ceolwulf walked over to the window. He didn’t walk like other men, head down, thinking, praying. He walked like a man who already knew everything he needed to know, didn’t need to think about anything, pray about anything. When he got to the window, he turned around, the brooch at his shoulder glinting in the light, eyes cold and white. I wondered if, someday, I would be as tall as he.

  “Have they told you how you came by your name?”

  I was embarrassed. I knew it was a funny name, that no one had a name like mine, but I didn’t want to talk about that now.

  “Well, have they?”

  I shook my head. “Father Prior says there’s a river with the same....”

  Ceolwulf smiled.

  For a moment I wasn’t sure I understood, and then....

  He nodded. “It was the Winwæd that rose that day at Gaius Field.”