The Oblate's Confession

by William Peak

  Apparently satisfied with the spot he had cleared for it, Victricius now indicated the charcoal-maker might empty his dosser. With some difficulty—muscles straining as he lifted the basket before his chest—Stuf did so, charcoal clattering out in a great cloud of sparkling black dust. When the dust had settled, the resulting pile appeared, as it always did, smaller than I had expected. The two men looked at each other as if they too were disappointed. Brother picked up the now-empty dosser, raised it easily above his head, shook it out over the pile. One or two stray pieces of charcoal slid out along with a final spray of dust. Brother righted the thing, stuck his head in its mouth, looked around, then tossed it aside, a smudge of soot now decorating his nose. The charcoal-maker didn’t remark upon the soot; he watched the furnace master closely. Victricius squatted down, picked up a piece of charcoal, broke it in two. Inspecting each half, he noticed something on the larger of the two and showed it to Stuf. Stuf looked at it, didn’t say anything. The furnace master waited for a moment and then, when it became clear Stuf wasn’t going to say anything, he looked again at the piece, shrugged, tossed both halves back onto the pile. He stood up, dusted off his hands.

  The charcoal-maker remained silent, eyes locked upon the furnace master.

  Victricius noticed Stuf looking at him, returned the look, didn’t say anything.

  “Well?”

  The furnace master raised his shoulders, stuck out his lower lip. “I want to examine it more closely when Winwæd puts it away.”

  “What about my board?” Stuf was supposed to receive a tabulum specifying the amount to be paid for his charcoal out of the abbey stores.

  “I said I want to examine it more closely as Winwæd stacks it in the shed.”

  The charcoal-maker’s eyebrows rose imploringly.

  Brother Victricius didn’t say anything.

  “Master, please, this is good charcoal. You know it is good charcoal.”

  “How can I know that until I’ve had time to examine it properly?”

  “Master felt it with his hands, looked at it with his eyes; he is a wizard when it comes to charcoal, a sage!”

  Brother smiled. “In the meantime you can bring down another load. This isn’t nearly enough.”

  “But what if I have nothing to eat!”

  The smile became indulgent. “Is that so?”

  The charcoal-maker looked at his waist, undid the knot in his belt, tied it tight again.

  “Well I’m sure Brother Almoner could find you....”

  Stuf spit, his phlegm as black as his charcoal.

  The furnace master didn’t say anything. He looked at the place where the charcoal-maker had spit, but he didn’t say anything. Stuf stood with his hands on his hips, a great lord disgusted with his servant, glowering at him. It always went like this, Victricius quietly standing his ground, refusing to issue a tabulum, Stuf dancing around him, petulant and imperious one moment, fretful and obsequious the next. Of course I knew the charcoal-maker was in the wrong, that—were he a monk—he would be chastised for such immoderation, but, still, I couldn’t help being fascinated by the behavior. I wondered if it was typical of pagans, if, perhaps, having turned their backs on Christ, they had escaped other responsibilities as well, even, it seemed (if the charcoal-maker was any guide), the need to act like a grownup, to be forever quiet, humble, self-restrained.

  Stuf spit again, turned away, stared off indignantly up-river. I recognized the look. Victricius held the key, the mysterious runes he scratched upon his “board,” and Stuf had finally faced the fact he could not force said key—or anything else for that matter— from the master of Redestone’s furnace. But he wouldn’t go yet. He never did. Though he had admitted defeat, Stuf would put off leaving as long as possible. I had seen other men, other visitors to the abbey, tarry like this as well. Never the villagers. They knew better. But the people who came from beyond the valley—pilgrims, beggars, the occasional traveler—seemed always to expect more of us, could never quite bring themselves to believe in our indifference to news. And so Stuf dawdled. He scratched behind a knee, toyed with his snail shells, picked up Victricius’s shovel, examined it closely. Already breaking open another pit, the furnace master ignored him. I knew he wanted me to start putting the charcoal away, but I was equally sure he wouldn’t say anything about it in front of Stuf. He was hoping the man would go away, didn’t want to give him anything else to comment upon, another excuse to linger.

  Stuf finished his inspection of the shovel, set it aside, worked his shoulders as if trying to ease a stiff muscle. The snail shells made a sound. When the furnace master didn’t look up, Stuf pretended not to care. He let his eyes pass proprietorially over the yard, approving of our charcoal, questioning our ore, studying the bellows, affecting an immense knowledge of furnaces and their design. Then, as if he’d just remembered something that needed attending to, the charcoal-maker glanced back at the shed. “I’ve seen children make better pots than that,” he declared.

  Victricius couldn’t help himself: he tossed a quick glance at the pot he had so carefully placed on the shed roof.

  Stuf smiled, a hit. “Yes, at Verbanum they don’t even use kilns. Clay fires itself! A day in the sun and they’re ready for hot oil.”

  “I doubt even the Verbana are as stupid as that.”

  Stuf pretended surprise but was clearly pleased to have gotten a response. “Well I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head doubtfully, “perhaps I did get that wrong. But they’re good pots, you must admit. I think both my pots came from Verbanum.”

  Victricius smiled but didn’t say anything. We both knew Stuf’s pots came from Caul. All the abbey’s ceramics did.

  Stuf saw the furnace master smile, glanced in my direction and caught me smiling as well. He frowned, looked back at Victricius who was once again calmly digging out his pit. “Well, anyway, I don’t think they cure them in the ground like that. I don’t think anyone does that. They know you do that down at Redestone?”

  Stuf was perfectly capable of blabbing about the fire-pits to Brother Cellarer, but the furnace master seemed unconcerned. Using index fingers only, he was teasing a sliver of pottery from the ashes, bending a little to the left as he did so.

  The charcoal-maker snorted derisively. “Osric always claiming everything belongs to God, so stingy with his seed, and here you are breaking up perfectly good pots, sticking them in the ground like so many onions! I don’t understand this silly Rule of yours.”

  The furnace master looked up at that, eyes flashing.

  Stuf became immediately interested in something on the ground by his feet.

  Victricius pursed his lips, shook his head, then seemed to lose interest. He looked back down at the bits and pieces of pottery on the ground before him, began to rearrange them as if curious to see what sort of pot they would have made. When the charcoal-maker saw this, he tossed an impish grin in my direction, picked up his dosser and announced it was time for him to go.

  The furnace master nodded perfunctorily.

  Stuf moved to the far side of the yard, looked up the path before him, seemed to think about it, then, as if delivering himself of some final piece of wisdom, addressed the furnace master. “Of course I really shouldn’t speak on matters such as this,” he said, nodding toward Victricius’s shards, “woman’s work after all. But, then again, you wouldn’t know about that, would you? Women I mean.” A big smile, a final shift of the basket, and the charcoal-maker turned and was gone.

  Later that day, for some reason I can only guess at, I found myself asking Victricius what I had never asked before: why he risked so much just to make a rather poor pot. His answer surprised me. “Oh I’ll be punished,” he said, “I know that. But won’t Father Abbot be proud of me!”

  XX

  Those of you who remember Agatho’s abbacy may perceive the occasional knot in this record, as if the year had looped back on itself and winter followed spring, summer autumn. But I fear that’s the way my mind works these d
ays, the stories falling from me like leaves from a tree, one after the other, with little regard for order or precedence. Of course I could go back and rearrange things, try to place these chapters in some sort of proper sequence, but at my age I find little interest in doing so. I make the usual excuses for this of course, telling myself it is God’s will, that such disorder may, in fact, follow some higher order known only to Him; but, truth be told, I am probably just being lazy. These days I feel less and less inclined to anything like real work.

  Yet even so indulgent an approach can cause its author

  problems. For what am I to do with Eanflæd, where am I to place her story? Hers is hardly some feeble phantom rising unexpectedly from memory. Indeed—may God forgive me—had I recorded Eanflæd’s name every time it occurred to me naturally, by now I fear I should long since have copied it out many more times than I have His. Yet surely it does belong here, this being by way of a confession. And so I choose to write it now (and even after all these years—may God forgive me yet again—I must admit, take pleasure in the act).

  Of course Waldhere will appreciate the fact I was on a ladder when I met her, that I was—as he will doubtless someday preach—caught thus between heaven and earth, the sacred and the profane. Similarly, Father Cellarer will point out the occasion found me gathering wool instead of cherries, that it was through idleness that the Devil ensnared me. And of course they would both be right. But I should like to note I was ordered onto that ladder, that my being there was a result of obedience, and which of us—when it comes to it—finding himself looking out over the top of the orchard like that, the abbey seeming to float upon a green and leafy sea, which of us has not fallen prey to daydream? Of course I have no idea what I was really thinking about, where my thoughts had wandered that particular late summer day, but, for the sake of chronicle, let us say they went to Rome. It makes sense. Father Abbot was only recently returned therefrom, and, staring absently across the treetops at Redestone, my mind may well have made the leap from its rosy walls to those of the holy see—the crowded streets, the narrow alleyways, buildings stacked one behind another (or so Father claimed) like so many sheaves at harvest.

  “Would you like some water?”

  I grasped the ladder, clung to it as in a high wind. The girl again.

  “It’s good, cold.”

  What did she want? Why did she keep coming back?

  “Sir?”

  I looked out across the tops of the trees, saw nothing, tried to

  appear interested in nothing. Sir. No one had ever called me “sir” before.

  “Brother?”

  I looked down.

  “Water,” she said, holding the bucket up as if uncertain I knew the word.

  Again I looked out over the treetops, tried to imagine what I should do, what Father Gwynedd would do, Father Prior. Nothing? Perhaps nothing? If I ignored the girl, would she go away? She had the day before.

  I began to pick cherries. Slowly at first, and then with more confidence, I picked cherries. I heard movement but I did not look down. I worked. I tried not to fall. The day had acquired an unwonted breeziness, the top of my ladder rising and settling against its branch like a ship at sea.

  After a while the sounds of movement ceased below me and I told myself I was glad she was gone, that at least that was taken care of. I continued to pick cherries. I did not look at Redestone. I did not stare off across the top of the orchard. I was a good boy. I picked cherries. When the time came to move the ladder, I thought it would be all right to take one last look at her, to make sure she really was leaving, that she had indeed quit the orchard, was now making her way back down the abbey path toward the village. Awkwardly, hooking an arm through the ladder, I turned halfway around, looked out toward the ditch, hoping to catch a glimpse of blue, the dark head bobbing along, receding into afternoon light. But there was nothing, no one, the path empty, the emptiness itself somehow threatening, vertiginous. I reached back with my free hand, felt nothing, felt the world fall away from me, reached once more and caught a desperate purchase. Twisted now—back to ladder, feet still facing it—I took a deep breath, looked down.

  And the world spun.

  Or seemed to. The girl was still there—as I had feared she must be—sitting now on the ground by my ladder, but between us, impossibly, the air turned, revolved, gray spots wheeling round a dark and pretty crown. Then, as if sensing my fear, the dark head shifted, looked up...and suddenly I understood everything, saw the weed in her hand, the tufts of seed, realized what this was, what all this was that turned in the air between us, clung to her hair, the various parts of her costume. I frowned, looked back out at the ditch. Silliness. It was all just a silly girlish game!

  I turned back around.

  Carefully, like a man who has regained his faith in up and down, like a man at the top of a very tall ladder, I turned back around, faced once more the ladder’s rungs. I took a big breath. The limbs in my vicinity seemed to remonstrate with me, their outer branches clearly empty of cherries. I thought about this, studied the near flank of Modra nect (blue now with shadow), looked up at Dacca’s crag. No answers came to me.

  I began to pick cherries, or pretended to, turning leaves over I’d already inspected, finding nothing, knowing there was nothing to find. Soon it would be Vespers and they would come looking for me, might come looking even before Vespers. I had to do something, must do something soon, the feeling of this growing in me, an itch that had to be looked to, soothed, before it became too nettlesome to ignore. The afternoon grew still more windy, my ladder rising and falling against its branch like something alive, breathing. The rung I stood on hardened beneath me, turned to iron, set the soles of my feet atingling. My hands grew damp, slippery. An image of myself tumbling from the tree rose before me, began to taunt me, the sight of myself lying on the ground in front of the girl, all elbows and knees, skirts hiked up indecently.

  When, finally, I gave up and climbed down, I was surprised to discover I no longer knew how to descend a ladder, my knees getting in the way, my rump swaying unnaturally.

  “May I talk to you?”

  She had spread her shawl on the ground beneath her, bucket placed to one side like someone intending to eat their supper in the field. Already I regretted having set my basket down, the impression it gave of a meal about to be shared. The girl had looked at the cherries and smiled. She had not made room for me on the shawl. I stood before her, uncertain of what to do with my hands, where to place my feet, achingly aware of the figure I presented, both to her and to anyone who might happen into the orchard.

  The girl nodded as if I had said something. She smiled. “I understand about the not talking,” she said, “the silence.”

  I could have cried. I could have gotten down on my hands and knees and paid her homage. She understood! I wouldn’t have to use any of the silly hand gestures, try to explain everything—the wonderful creature understood!

  “You can speak only to God.”

  Well, that of course wasn’t precisely true.... But I liked the sound of it. On her lips it sounded somehow better, finer, almost heroic. I stood a little taller.

  “Oh! The water!” The girl rose to her knees, wrapping her skirts about her expertly. I didn’t really want any water, was suddenly surprisingly uncertain how one went about drinking water (Do you bend over? Do you take the ladle directly from her hand? Should I close my eyes?), but what could I do?

  From her knees, the girl lifted the ladle to me so that I had a sudden vision of Brother Sighere and the time he had had to beg for his food. Taking the ladle from her, I spilled most of the water. The girl seemed not to notice. She looked down, waited while I drank. I have no idea what that water tasted like. It could have been full of mud for all I knew or cared.

  When I was done, the girl took the ladle from me, returned it to the bucket, thankfully offered me no more. With a simple movement of hand and skirt, she settled herself once more on the ground. Her hair was dark and long a
nd moved as she moved, back and forth. Her arms were uncovered. For some reason my mind kept returning to the way she had slipped her skirts beneath her as she sat down, the movement practiced, graceful, arresting.

  “Don’t you want to sit?”

  Didn’t I want to sit?

  The girl glanced at the ground before me as if giving me a hint.

  I looked around, peopled the orchard with a hundred monks, remembered again my hands, was again uncertain what to do with my hands. I looked at the girl, tried to smile, found myself incapable of smiling, and, not knowing what else to do, desperate for something to do, sat down, collapsed onto the ground, knees sticking out like donkey’s ears.

  The girl smiled. I smiled. I thought my cheeks would crack from the effort, but I did it, I smiled.

  “I am Eanflæd, Ealdgyth’s daughter.”

  Still I smiled, the grin now apparently a permanent fixture on my face.

  The girl nodded, the suggestion of a doubt hovering at her brow.

  “You may call me Eanflæd,” she said. “I mean if you.... I mean if you could...” and then she laughed. I had never heard a girl laugh before, have, I suppose, never heard a girl laugh since. It is different from our laughter, lighter, fresher, a small brook descending a gentle slope, birch leaves in the wind. I couldn’t help myself, hearing it, I laughed too.