by William Peak
“But of course it couldn’t. I mean it couldn’t go on forever and Father clearly knew that, looking at his feet, trying to let me know as politely as he could that he had to be off. And it was getting on in the day. The air had grown cold.” For some reason Victricius ran his hand over my arm as if fearful that day’s cold might somehow reach me. “Spring is like that where I come from. The days are warm but, by late afternoon, there is a freshness to the air, a chill. So, anyway, the sun must have passed behind a cloud or something because I shivered and it was then that it happened, that Father placed his mantle over me. Of course it was a perfectly natural gesture. I don’t think anyone can doubt that, that, by his nature, Father is a perfectly caring, paternal man and, therefore, the gesture itself was natural, entirely natural and spontaneous. I can still remember the way it felt, its heft, the smell of Father’s body in its wool, the roughness at my neck. And then of course it dawned on me. On both of us I suppose. He had placed his cloak on me.”
Once again Brother became still and I found myself growing annoyed with him, his apparent inability to get to the end of this tale. So Father Abbot had placed his cloak over him, so Brother had gotten to play the role of Elisha in Scripture, had gotten to run away, follow Father Abbot, I didn’t see that it mattered so very
much. After all, it wasn’t as if he had been such a great catch. It wasn’t as if the whole village had risen up, followed Father Abbot, become his disciples. Actually, when you thought about it, you could believe Father Abbot would have been disappointed. To have preached to an entire village and won but this single boy, this whelp, this potter’s dog. Father must have wondered what people would think of him, deliverer of children, messiah to the small and insignificant. “So that was it?” I asked, feigning even less interest now. “You crossed the bridge, went after him, followed Father Abbot?”
Victricius must have thought the answer to my question obvious because he went on as if he’d already given it. “You know,” he said, “I sometimes wonder about those buckets, if they’re still there. I can still see them, just as I placed them among the grasses, the water rocking a bit, reflecting the sky. I wonder if anyone ever found them.”
For some reason I shivered and again Brother touched my arm. “I wish I had something to put over you,” he said, “a cloak or something....” And then he stopped, laughed his little nervous laugh.
I didn’t laugh. I turned my back to the furnace master and pressed the bandage he had given me tight against my eyes. It was an unnecessary cruelty. He had meant nothing by the comment—I am sure of that—and when he had realized what he had said, he had laughed at himself. Yet I turned from him, made it clear how such a notion repelled me. After a moment or two, Victricius started up again, changed the subject, began to tell me about In-Hrypum, what it was like in the monastery at In-Hrypum. You would never have known I had slighted him.
As it turned out I was wrong about the depth of that snowfall. That was no mere drift that stood before our shed: it took two full days for the brothers to get to us, the sounds of their shoveling reaching us first, the strange unnatural clamor of their hellos. Of
course my eyesight returned as Brother had predicted it would. Only in recent years has it begun to fail me again so that now I must lean back from this work if I am to see it. Brother made no more mention of his early life that day or any other day for that matter. At least not within my hearing. And of course I never brought it up. I suppose all those stories are lost now except to God.
XXIV
They say that, even when the weather is fair, those who live on the coast can tell a storm is coming if there is a change in the size and intensity of the waves that beat upon their shore. Likewise, even when to all outward appearances our lives seem calm and clear, nightmares may roll suddenly in upon our sleeping selves so that, by day, we find ourselves like anxious watermen looking out to sea. So now was such a time in my life—the dreams fell one upon another as if driven by some awful storm and, pray as I might, God was disinclined to relieve me of them or give me any sign as to their source or purpose. Then, finally, there came a nightmare that seemed by its very nature so preposterous I felt I could relate it to Father Abbot without fear of repercussion. Still, I was no fool. What oblate is? I decided to tell Father Hermit about it first.
Those of you who know of Father Gwynedd only by the stories that have grown up around his name may wonder at this. Is it true then, you ask, what has been suggested, that he was less than strict in his attention to the Rule, that his faith lacked orthodoxy, precision? Even as I have recorded these remembrances, I have found myself asking similar questions, remembering again the apparent ease with which he faced his life, the humor, the fun. But I believe it is wrong to think that way about the man. It was a different time, a different place, Redestone in those days—we forget how recently we had escaped both temple and grove. And Father was one of those who had made that escape possible. Surely we must grant him and his contemporaries the pardon of their times, their age.
Still I must admit—as I record these stories and remember the man I once knew and as yet so love—that I am beginning to see even at this stage in his life the first subtle signs of the entirely unsubtle change that would eventually come over him and so irrevocably transform our relationship. But of course at the time I was, in the arrogance of youth, blind to such subtleties. Indeed, in my pride, I think I must have thought Father’s increasing failure to rise to the challenge of my transgressions, to condemn my failings as once he would have, an entirely appropriate, even long overdue, recognition of the fact that I was growing up, that it was long since past time for the bonds to be loosened, the strictures relaxed, that I was becoming an adult, a man, worthy not only of respect but of a certain latitude, freedom, the room necessary to move and venture out on my own. What indignities I must have heaped upon him in the name of emancipation!
But I stray from my subject. It is the dream I have set out to tell you about, the dream which, with only minor variations, occasionally visits me even now. The most important and initial sensation is always one of confusion, disaffection, the sense that, in some way I cannot understand, I do not belong here. Of course this is ridiculous. I mean if anyone belongs to a monastery, it is an oblate. But, in the dream, though I know I must, I also know I do not belong here. As if to prove this, as if to make it eminently clear,
I no longer know my way around. I am in a room which ought to be the abbot’s lodge but, instead, wrongly and impossibly, is full of people. Monks I have never seen before scurry back and forth, engaged in some business that makes no sense to me. I assume custody of the eyes and hurry toward a door which should not be there, trying to look busy.
I walk through the door, which, if such a door existed, would lead into the dortoir, and enter instead another room like the first. Here there are fewer monks but they too are busy. Most seem to be carrying something toward the door I have just exited, vague bundles which, in my desire to appear involved, knowledgeable, a part of this ceaseless activity, I ignore. No one says anything, no one smiles or offers a kiss of peace. At the far end of the room there is another door which I no longer expect to lead into the refectory. I cross to it quickly, afraid to hesitate and at the same time afraid to go forward.
I walk through the second door and this time find myself in an empty room. Though I recognize nothing, my mind tells me this is an older abandoned part of the monastery, that trespass here is forbidden, that continuing forward puts me in danger of grave sin. But despite this, I hurry on. I do not know what is going on in the rooms behind me and I’m afraid that if I return to them I will be found out.
Wanting to put as much distance as I can between myself and that possibility, I hurry through the next door and at last find myself in a place I recognize. This is the old stable I think, this must be where, once, they kept the abbey horses. I don’t know why I think this because of course there have never been any abbey horses, never could be any abbey horses, but, for some re
ason, in my dream, I believe there have been, and the idea that I have found their stable, that I have at least heard of this place, comforts me, makes me feel a little less anxious, a little more at home. Also I think it unlikely I will be discovered here. No one would come back here: it is out-of-bounds, off-limits; I am safe here.
With nothing else to do, I begin to explore. The stalls are all open now and empty, a little straw still littering the floor. The place smells faintly of horse. At the far end of the stable, partially concealed behind a stack of old hurdles, there is yet another door. It is heavy and large and for some reason, when I try to open it, it catches at the bottom. By pulling with all my might and stepping it over the place where it catches, I am able to open it just wide enough for my body to squeeze through.
I have come to the end of the monastery. This chamber is so old and uncared-for, parts of the roof have fallen in. Small ineffectual beams of light leak through here and there, illuminating empty space, a dangling bit of spider web, movement. My eyes grow accustomed to the dark and I realize that the greater part of the room is fenced off, creating a single oversized stall. Within this stall stands the largest horse I have ever seen. Waking I will realize the animal was actually bigger than it is possible for a horse to be, but in my dream I seem blind to this. It is just a very big horse, very big and very beautiful. I am afraid of it and, at the same time, I am attracted to it. Somehow I know that this is Father Abbot’s horse, that I am not supposed to be here, probably not even supposed to know that it exists (Why else should it be hidden away like this?), yet I cannot help myself, I like horses, have always liked horses. My father brought me here on a horse like this, a horse that, I now realize, I was equally afraid of, equally attracted to. I cannot help myself, I reach up, going way up on my toes: I try to pat the horse on its nose.
Faster than I would like, the great head swings down, bristly lips blunder against my hand, scour my palm. The animal has mistaken my intentions, has expected a treat. A blast of hot moist air signals its disgust. I want to say I’m sorry, pat its nose, but before I can do anything, say anything, the head has jerked away from me, risen screaming to the ceiling, eyes wild, mane flying, teeth exposed. I try to placate the beast—one hand up, reaching toward it, the other trying to close the door behind me, afraid lest someone hear. As if it knows I seek to contain it, the animal kicks up its heels, throws its massive body against the side wall. Timbers groan, a rafter breaks free of the roof, splits over the horse’s back. Maddened further, the great beast rears, tosses its head, kicks out at the wall. A new crack appears, dust and bits of thatch floating suddenly in the new and sudden light.
And there is nothing I can do—they must hear this! How could anyone not hear this? I want to run, to hide, to be anywhere but here, but there is no way out (behind me the monastery, before the horse), and it’s all my fault. He was contained before, hidden, but now I’ve roused him there’s no stopping him. He will break free, will wreck the place, the entire monastery, maybe even kill people, Eanflæd, Father Abbot, maybe even me!
And then of course I wake up, the fear retreating once more, unexpressed, to my heart. The dream, as I have said, returns occasionally even now. Sometimes the horse is a bull, sometimes its stall stands not at the rear of the monastery but in the middle of Chapter (or even, once, scandalously, in the church), but the story is always the same: the interest and the trepidation, the incitement, the resulting horror. I awaken to a sense of my own guilt and the danger I have brought upon the community. And all of it so familiar, so personal, so mine (I have done this before, been guilty of this before)—and, lying there in my bed, hardly daring to look up, look around me, lest someone see, know, what I have done, I remember, as I am remembering now, the first time I dreamt of the horse, the first time I spoke of its existence, told people about the beast that inhabited my dreams, dwelt in the hidden parts of an unknown yet disturbingly familiar place—my abbey, my cloister.
Nose pressed flat against the refectory floor, the ancient smell of meals past welling up from its surface, the silence, the waiting—it was Faults I think, not Chapter. Yes, yes of course it was Faults. How sly we are even when we wish to appear most forthcoming, how clever, how calculating! To bring this night-dream before them as if I knew nothing of its meaning, as if confessing a flaw, expecting rebuke, penance, that the resulting adulation, the resulting praise, might by the comparison seem all the greater, all the more resounding. For Father Hermit had already told me what the dream meant, what the horse represented. That it was a gift, the gift of my youth, my essence, my energy and enthusiasm, which I and not the abbot restrained, which, indeed, for the good of the abbey, I must release. Next time, Father had said, next time (and I now see that, for all his diminished powers, Father knew then, knew even then, that I would have this dream again, that it would recur), next time he told me, you must throw open that door, release the animal: it is beautiful and it is terrifying but it is you and you must release it for your sake and the sake of the abbey. And so I had braved Faults, repeated the story of my dream for Father Abbot (placing particular emphasis upon the beauty of the horse, its strength, its majesty, wanting these qualities to be remembered when all was said and done, when, finally, its true identity had been revealed), and now I lay on the floor, smelling the smells of rancid butter, spilled porridge, picturing Father Abbot’s face in my mind, the smile of recognition, enlightenment, that must, even now, be spreading across his face.
“Prior Dagan!” It was not the tone I had expected.
“Father.”
“Perhaps the good prior recalls a matter which has been often
on our lips of late?”
“I do Father”
“And that this represented a confidence? That Father was privy to it in his capacity as servant only and had no right to it, no right to display or declare it as he might some possession of his own?”
Silence.
“Father?”
“I have told no one.”
Empty silence—Faults now fully awake, alert, something new in the air, something different and unexpected.
“Perhaps the boy is merely ill.”
Ill? I wasn’t ill. What was Father Abbot talking about? Why had he changed the subject?
“A miasma of the air, some foul exhalation of the earth. The child must be prayed over, made to fast, perform mortifications.” A hesitation here, Father apparently considering his options, who to oversee this task now that Father Prior, the usual choice, was, however temporarily, out of favor.
A bench creaked and I allowed myself to hope. Surely someone would rise to my defense, point out the real meaning of the dream.
“Does someone wish to comment upon this, this delirium?”
Another sound, the clearing of an old man’s throat. “Father?”
All hope exited my chest. There would be no salvation from this quarter.
“Brother Sacristan.”
“Could not the boy’s dream betoken change, some disturbance in the life of our community?”
Another sound of movement, bodies leaning forward, shifting position, attention, from Brother Baldwin back to Father Abbot. Would such a question—suggesting, as it did, dissension—be allowed? Would Father silence Brother, silence one of the oldest members of the community, one of the few men as yet alive from the time before his time?
A small uncharacteristic laugh. “Surely Brother Sacristan does not mean to imply that his father is wrong.”
The uneasy stirring of brothers unaccustomed to dispute and then a sudden and startling whiff of sour breath, the sound of old bones bending beside me.
I was no longer alone.
Brother Baldwin had prostrated himself!
My heart filled with admiration for the man. He might be cruel, he might smell bad and possibly even be bad, but at least he was with me. I was no longer alone. Brother Baldwin had lain down beside me.
“If my question has dishonored Father Abbot, I ask only that my punishment be cert
ain and severe.”
Again the sounds of monks shifting in place as brothers turned toward their father, change in the air now, the sense that such a gesture required a similar grace of their lord.
“Yes.... Yes, but as I think further on this I can see how you could believe such a thing. And while brothers should ‘not presume stubbornly to defend what seemeth right to them, for it must depend rather on the Abbot’s will, so that all obey him in what he considereth best.’ Still, when ‘weighty matters are to be transacted in the monastery, let the Abbot call together the whole community... that all should be called for counsel.”’
A collective sigh of relief as Faults savored Father’s triumph: the perfect reference, the perfect resolution. All was forgiven, the Rule, as it was meant to, having saved us once more.
“But if this is so, if the dream is in some sense valid, possibly even visionary, is not the fact of the buildings, I mean their age, relevant? The boy seemed to think he was in a part of the monastery that was old, didn’t he, no longer used, no longer necessary?”
I had not considered this aspect of the dream. Nor had Father Gwynedd so far as I could recall.
“And is not the nature of the horse of some importance? I mean the boy was at some pains to impress upon us the animal’s comeliness, its nobility, despite the apparent willfullness of its character.”
Now we were getting somewhere.
“Father?”
“Prior Dagan.”
“Perhaps you are right. Perhaps this is the best way to view the.... view such a change.”