by William Peak
“Because it didn’t work. I mean there was another part, wasn’t there, something about Oswiu, something about long life?”
I thought to myself, Fill his hall with drink, good food, happiness; let the sounds of harp and laughter ring in that place. Give him long life.... “‘Give him long life, God’” I said, “‘for his followers would miss his voice as they do those of the great heroes long gone.’”
“Exactly. Exactly. And it didn’t work, did it? I mean your prayer didn’t work.”
I looked at my father.
“Oswiu’s dead, isn’t he? Wilfrid killed him, as good as killed him, last winter, didn’t he?”
“Sir?”
“Oswiu’s dead, don’t they tell you anything up here? Ecgfrith’s king now, been king over a year, though Wilfrid might as well be.” Oswiu was dead. The man I had prayed for at Mass this morning was dead.
Ceolwulf frowned. “You’re not going to faint again, are you?”
I held onto the windowsill. I wasn’t going to faint.
“Good, good boy. It’s not your fault, not really. I mean you can’t blame yourself, a powerful priest like that. Hell, Wilfrid’s got hundreds of people praying for him, thousands. What are the prayers of a single ab.... You know what I mean, a single boy against all that? I mean you didn’t stand much of a chance, did you?”
I didn’t?
“Oswiu died didn’t he? Perfectly healthy, not much older than I am, and he takes sick and dies. What does that tell you? I mean the man had been out to get him since the beginning.”
“Father Bishop?”
“He’s not your father! You’ve never even met him!”
I blinked.
“No, it’s all right.” Ceolwulf smiled. “I mean it’s all right. I know they teach you to call him that, but he’s not. I mean he’s not your father, I'm your father. He’s a thief. I told you about In-Hrypum, didn’t I?”
I nodded.
“Well, things got worse after In-Hrypum. Wilfrid wasn’t satisfied. Never is satisfied. He kept after them, the northerners, the hair, how they did everything wrong, how bad they were. Got to the point he refused to talk with them, eat food they’d prayed over, sing their songs, that sort of thing. It was embarrassing. But it worked. People began to worry, talk. Some said if you’d had water sprinkled on you by the wrong side, you hadn’t really been saved, and everyone knew what that meant. I mean it was the one thing both sides agreed on. So if priests with the wrong style of hair buried your father, where was he now? And if the wrong type blessed your bread at Mass, who had you eaten? I mean I know it’s all absurd but people really care about such things. Soon enough they were calling each other names, heathen, drawing lines, forming alliances. You can’t imagine how bad it was, the fear, the accusations. You could see how it was going to end. Poor Oswiu, everything he’d ever worked for, the unity, Northumbria, the peace, everything falling apart. There could have been a war you know. Can you believe that? I mean can you imagine people fighting over something like that?”
I tried to imagine Bishop Wilfrid in a shield and helmet, the little man I had pictured building our bridge.
Ceolwulf shook his head. “So Oswiu did it. I mean he had to, Alcfrith left him no room. Of course he thought Streoneshalh was going to work for him, because of Hilda, because she was abbess at Streoneshalh. But it didn’t, couldn’t really when you think about it. Called the northerners stupid. Can you imagine that? Wilfrid I mean. Stands up there in front of the entire assembly and calls the northerners stupid. His hostess was northern, his king!” Ceolwulf looked at me. “Is that what you call courteous? Is that what you call proper?”
Waldhere had been made to kneel before Faults for calling Ealhmund stupid.
Ceolwulf made a face and the whiskers between his lip and chin stuck out at an angle. “They should have strung him up, that’s what they should have done. I mean that’s what I would have done, from the nearest drying rack. But I guess they couldn’t anymore. I mean all the Colmans and Hildas in the world couldn’t make any difference now, could they? Not against Rome. Someone tells you the Empire’s dead, you ask them about the Church, what they think the Church is they think the Empire’s dead. All Wilfrid had to do was point south, remind everyone who was behind him, that all the lands from Rome to Mercia followed his rule, and that was that. Mercia was a nice touch, don’t you think, mentioning Mercia? So what could Oswiu do? St. Peter holds the key, doesn’t he? Everyone knows that. So Rome wins. The great assembly at Streoneshalh is adjourned, Colman sent into exile, and the upstart Wilfrid made bishop in his place.”
Ceolwulf looked down at something on his hand, brushed it off. “Of course after that, everything went to hell. Wilfrid begins interfering with the monasteries, insulting monks, throwing them off their land. Bishops weren’t supposed to do that in those days. I mean monasteries were special places then, safe, respected. Even the king had to ask permission to enter a monastery. But not Wilfrid. What did he care if an abbot’s hat was the same as his? If one of them didn’t abide by Streoneshalh, follow the Roman ways, he was out on his ear. And of course Folian wouldn’t, crazy old man. He loved Redestone.” Ceolwulf looked at me. “You know what he used to say? He’d pour some water out on the ground and, well, you know how the earth around here turns color when you do that, pour water on it? Well Folian loved that! He’d preach about it, said the place was suffused with God’s blood. Suffused.Used to use words like that, suffused! Crazy old man. But not Wilfrid. I mean it certainly wasn’t the blood of Christ he saw. First thing he did, he kicked Folian out and built himself a furnace.”
Ceolwulf paused, looked at me as if expecting me to say something. When I didn’t, he shook his head. “The people were outraged of course. The idea of a holy man touching iron...well it wasn’t done. ‘Neither sword nor scythe.’ And the northern priests had always respected that, except for tools of course. But not Wilfrid. No, his hands were never so clean he couldn’t grab a little metal. And they missed the monks too. The people I mean. I mean they missed the northern monks. Monasteries weren’t monasteries anymore. A pestilence comes now, famine, first thing the monasteries do is close their gates. Redestone didn’t even have gates in Folian’s day. Hell, didn’t even have buildings except for the church!”
I looked out at the Far Wood, remembered the beggars.
“Of course Oswiu tried to fix things. When he saw how bad it’d gotten, how upset people were, he tried to reverse his decision, make Northumbria part of the northern Church again. Wilfrid must have been out of the country, a pilgrimage or something, because I remember for a while it worked. I don’t know whether Oswiu actually forswore Streoneshalh but he might as well have done. Named Chad bishop, didn’t he? Acted as if he’d never heard of anyone named Wilfrid, reverted to the old ways, the original feast days. Not that it worked. Couldn’t really I suppose. Like trying to push back the sea, fighting Rome. Wherever Wilfrid was, he came back. Joined forces with the Mercians and before you know it, Roman monks are showing up all over the place crying out against Oswiu, calling his bishop a fraud. You just can’t beat him. Cut off an arm and Wilfrid sprouts two more. So Chad’s sent off in disgrace, the country’s in an uproar, and Wilfrid is a power to contend with, Rome and Mercia at his back. Poor Oswiu, all he’d ever worked for, all he’d tried to accomplish, undone by a man doesn’t even carry a sword.”
Ceolwulf looked out toward the Far Wood, became silent. I looked out that way too. It made sense in a way, when you thought about it. Why else did we always have to eat so little, even when we weren’t fasting? Why else was the work so hard? Why else was there always so much porridge, never any honey? Why else the canes that cut my hands, the cold in church, the bad smell by the ditch? Why else Baldwin? In a place that was so good and kind and loving, where did all these evils come from? Unless there was someone out there, someone bad, someone whose prayers worked against us, someone who turned fresh to sour, made Father cranky, rain cold, the ox mad. I looked at the fish ponds and t
hought about that. It made you wonder.
“Of course Oswiu died after that.” Ceolwulf was still looking at the Far Wood. “Probably the disappointment that killed him. All his plans, all his dreams.” He shook his head. “And then, as if that weren’t enough, this.” Ceolwulf made a vague gesture toward the orchard. He frowned, looked back at me. “You know they’re going to tell you he gave it to him, don’t you? I mean if they find out. Don’t tell them. You mustn’t tell them, Winwæd, it’s our little secret, all right? What we’ve talked about today? Is our secret, father and son. If you tell them, if your prior or abbot finds out anything about what I’ve said, it will hurt me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded, terrified to think that something I knew could hurt my father.
“It will hurt me, it will hurt your family. And they’d only lie anyway. I mean they’d have to, wouldn’t they? I mean they have to do whatever Bishop Wilfrid tells them to do, don’t they?”
Lie?
“Of course they would. Because that’s what he claims, what Wilfrid claims, that Oswiu gave it to him on his death bed.” Ceolwulf chuckled. “Claims he gave it to him in return for Wilfrid’s promise to take him to Rome. Can you imagine? Oswiu’s dying and suddenly he wants more than anything in the world to go to the one place in the world he hated more than Mercia. Certainly! And of course he wants to go in the company of the only man in the world he ever hated more than Penda. Of course! And in return for this promise, what does Wilfrid expect us to believe Oswiu gave him? My land. Why not? I mean it is only the last bulwark between him and Mercia, what better property to give your sworn enemy and Mercia’s favorite ally. Of course Wilfrid, we believe you, with his dying breath Oswiu made you a gift of my land! Trees can talk, pigs can fly!”
I looked away. I was unaccustomed to seeing someone so visibly angry, so I looked away. Besides, I didn’t need to look at Ceolwulf anymore, it was obvious what he wanted. I mean it should have been all along but I hadn’t seen it up until now. I wasn’t used to this. I wasn’t used to grownups wanting something from me, trying to talk me into something. Usually they just told me what I was to do. I looked away. I could feel Ceolwulf looking at me but I looked away, I looked out the window. Below me Brother Wictbert was doing something in the pollards but I didn’t look at him. I looked at the orchard. Though it was too far away to actually see them, you could tell that the buds had swollen during the night because of the haze. Father Cuthwine had taught me about this. If you looked at a single tree you saw nothing, but if you looked at all the trees together, a sort of reddish haze became visible among the limbs. It meant that spring was coming, that the buds would soon open, flower. But still it seemed funny. I mean it seemed funny that there was something you could see and could not see at the same time.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“You’ll do it?”
“I will pray for you. I’ll learn how from Father Gwynedd and then I’ll pray that you keep the land and Bishop Wilfrid loses it. I’ll do that. I will pray that you win and our bishop loses.”
Ceolwulf smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “I knew you’d say that. The moment I saw you I knew you’d say that, that you were my son, you wouldn’t desert us.” For the second time that day my father reached out, touched my head. “But of course that’s not enough, is it? You’re a warrior’s son so you must know that. I mean a part of you must know already that’s not enough, that it isn’t as easy as that. You don’t just push your enemy back, win a little breathing room, push him back some more. Deep down inside I think you must already know that. I mean I think you must already know what you have to do. I am asking you to pray for our enemy’s death, Winwæd. I am asking you to ask God to kill him, to kill Bishop Wilfrid.”
I am fairly certain I never actually replied to Ceolwulf’s demand. I remember him telling me what he wanted me to do (I remember the way his face looked as he said the words), and then I remember Father Prior rejoining us. I don’t remember anything else in between. Father Prior bundled me off to work or lessons, what-have-you. The man who was my father completed whatever business he had with the abbey, packed his things and rode off as he had come in, my brother walking behind him. Perhaps he hadn’t really expected me to say anything, would have thought a response unnecessary, redundant, my compliance understood. Honor thy father and thy mother. Or perhaps he saw something in my face that made him think an answer unlikely, that I was too stunned by what he asked to say anything. I have no idea what he saw in my face. Or, perhaps, he just thought that it was best not to push it. That he was more likely to get what he wanted if he gave me time, time to think it over, time to miss him, to remember him fondly, to come to think of him as a true father, as a man I knew instead of a man I had merely met. Possibly that is it. Possibly he was smart enough to know that, inevitably, a time would come when I would do anything in my power to defeat the fathers I knew in favor of the father I only thought I knew. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that, except in my dreams, I never saw Ceolwulf again.
XVI
Though my memory is not now what it once was and I sometimes confuse one year with another, I have no reason to believe that spring was any different from those that came before or after it. There would have been days when the air was light and fresh and it was a joy to be alive, and there would have been days when the air was cold and damp and our fingers cracked and bled. I’m sure we dug seed beds, pulled weeds, planted and hoed. Doubtless we thought the world was starting over again, that life was good, fresh, new. We think that every spring.
I do remember the trouble I got into. We feed on stories, don’t we, we monks? The woes of Abraham, the exploits of David, Daniel in the Lion’s Den—these are our daily bread. Small wonder then that, at least at first, the tales I had learned in the abbot’s lodge brought me a sort of following among the younger members of our community, postulants and novices for the most part, to say nothing of my fellow oblates. But fame may be more than fleeting, it may be perilous as well. Overnight I went from fairhaired boy to pariah, brothers turning away from me on the garth, looking down their noses at me. It was Waldhere of all people who saved me, warned me of the fate I risked. Though no one had yet dared report my stories to Chapter, word of their subject-matter, the scent of profanity, a whiff of our impious past, had drifted up to the abbot’s chair. And Father was not pleased. Indeed, he was so displeased he had threatened anyone found repeating such tales—attempting, as he put it, to resurrect the thing buried at such cost beneath our garth—with separation from the Body of Christ.
So I shoved my stories down inside me, buried them next to Ceolwulf’s commission in the place I now constructed for such things. And it was in this, I think, that this spring differed from all others. There were no comets that year, no new stars. The sun rose and set as it always had. But, for the first time in my life, there were secrets. And isn’t it with secrets, the keeping of secrets (and by this I mean true secrets, secrets that carry weight, have the potential to harm, to cure) that childhood comes to an end? Before there are secrets, before we hold a portion of ourselves aloof, separate from the community, then, by definition, we simply are what we are. Food is food, Father Father, and God resides not in Heaven but all around us. But when we begin to keep secrets, we begin also, I think, to step away from Him. Not entirely. Only Hell can separate us entirely from the Kingdom. But with secrets It is placed at a remove. A sort of sundering occurs between our selves and our souls. Where before He was ever-present, now there is this thing, this bad place we carry around inside us like a wall, a bit of rough masonry that stands between us and Creation. Looking back on it now, that spring was different. From that time forward my actions could no longer be trusted—not by me or anyone else. I was my father’s son, I was my bishop’s. And what that meant, I had not a clue.
Not that I didn’t try to work it out. I went about my daily round as before. I worked in the fields, I visited the hermit, I sang the office. But I thought about Ceolwulf almos
t constantly. I thought about his visit. I thought about the request he had made of me. I wondered what I would do about it. That he was my father I could not deny. Prior Dagan himself had called him so, and now I too found myself emphasizing the relationship, reminding myself again and again of his kindness, how he had cared for me when I felt faint, how he had touched my head, how he had loved my mother. At night I would lie in bed and remember the story he had told of the old man who waited each day by the door for the return of his son, how my father had liked that story, how he had liked the man, liked to watch him, to see the way he greeted his son when he came to take him home. Sometimes, as I drifted off to sleep, unaware of the shift from thought to dream, Ceolwulf would become the man, eyes catching the last of the day’s light, happy, contented, delighted by the return of his son.
But then, sometimes, I would wake up terrified, sweaty, certain I had already done it, that I had prayed as my father wished and it had worked, he was dead, the bishop was dead, and I had killed him. I always woke up just after it had happened, just after I had dropped the bishop from Dacca’s crag, fed him some sort of poisonous stone, driven a hoe into his chest. Once—I must admit it here—I had even eaten a portion of him. I had killed the bishop—I can’t remember how now—and then, in my hunger, I had sliced off a piece of his side (which, in the way of dreams, immediately became like a serving of fish) and eaten it. For three days after that I could keep no food down. Father Prior thought it was the porridge, that I had stolen and eaten some of the porridge Botulf had thrown out, but I hadn’t. Everything tasted of flesh—everything was rotten, corrupt, my fault, the evil in me as surely as, in my dream, the bishop had been in me.
But he was my father. I was supposed to love him just as I was supposed to love the bishop. Indeed I found it easier to love Ceolwulf. I knew him, he was flesh and blood; I had touched him, smelled him, sat by his fire. What could I say of this bishop that was causing me so much trouble, who haunted my sleep with his screams and his blood and his grasping fingers? Nothing. He was as distant and removed from my experience as Oswiu or this new king, Ecgfrith. I could no more conjure up an image of him than I could of God. Indeed, when I thought about it, I realized that even in my dreams it wasn’t the bishop I killed, not really. I had no idea what the bishop looked like. The man I killed was his man, the brother he sent each year for the iron. I hadn’t realized I even remembered what he looked like but I did. I could see him now, staring up at me as he fell toward the Meolch, fingers outstretched, mouth open, screaming. Even he, even this stranger, this foreigner whose name I did not know, was more real to me than the man my father wanted dead. How hard could it be to do something like that, to pray for the death of a man you had never seen for the good of a man you had? How hard to honor your father at the expense of your father?