The Oblate's Confession

by William Peak

  But just as I get my location fixed, time itself slips away. For though, as I recall it, the encounter took place in the afternoon, late afternoon, the clouds over Modra nect already touched by a westering sun, you must also remember that he found me sitting down, that Stuf came upon me sitting by the river, out where anyone might have seen me. You will explain away such idleness by making the day a Sabbath, saying that, as on the previous occasion, I have recalled a Sabbath memory. But once again we run up against the strangeness of this recollection, for another part of my memory, another part of its dreamlike character, is the sound I remember floating in and out of that glade, rising upon the breeze and, as quickly, dissipating. It was practice, one of Maban’s daily practices, and so of course it could not have been the Sabbath. Even under Godwin, God’s day of rest remained sacrosanct.

  So, for some reason I cannot fathom, on a day in summer (it is warm), I find myself sitting in the shade of the trees by our river. Which, of course, would have made its own contribution to the dreamlike quality of this memory. For you know how it is down there, shadows the color of water, stones still warm to the touch, the air humid yet fresh, smelling distantly of rapids; here and there the sun breaks through, touches one last rock, a green swell of water, causes the rotting husk of a tree on the opposite bank to glow amid the shadows like something special, something almost remembered, just beyond the reach of memory. And then of course there would have been the surprise of seeing Stuf in such a setting, of seeing the black and sooty figure of our charcoaler step into the quiet of that place like (as of course he was) a spirit from

  another world. He had beetle shells in his hair, I remember that. Somewhere he had found the carcasses of a strange and heretofore unheard-of forest beetle and, apparently liking their hue, had woven them like so many brightly colored beads into his dark and greasy hair.

  Had I been praying? Had I been sitting there in that strange half-light cavalierly invoking the wrath of God? I don’t know. Though it would go a long way toward explaining the sense of surprise I recall, the sense of being caught out, exposed, that I felt when I looked up and saw him, saw our charcoaler rear up before me like a wild animal, his face turned suddenly tawny in a stray shaft of light, leaf shadow playing over it like spots, like the marks of some darker, even more savage beast. But the surprise must not have lasted, or, lasting, must immediately have been joined by another, even stronger sensation, for I also remember the sudden excitement, the thrill I felt upon seeing Stuf, as if his physical presence in and of itself conveyed the idea, placed it warm and glowing in my mind, as if, at some level, I already knew, even then,

  what was going to happen, what I would do.

  I must have glanced out at the fields, checked to make sure no one could see us, for I have a memory of Stuf mocking me, spinning around as if trying to catch someone hiding behind him. I asked after the man then, demanded to know how he came to be there, what he thought he was doing down on that side of the terrace. But if I had hoped to put him in his place with these questions, remind him of the path I followed, the community I belonged to, I must have been disappointed for I remember no response. It would have been like Stuf to have said nothing, to have giggled maybe, looked at me as if a close study of my features might reveal an explanation, some clue, some reason, for the existence of something as silly and outrageous as Stuf the charcoal-maker. Surely such behavior would have caused me to question what I was feeling, where my thoughts were leading me, but all I remember doing is going on, changing direction, asking about the one subject I knew would catch and hold Stuf’s attention.

  “How goes it with the charcoal? Did you get your board?”

  You would have thought I had asked after the man’s dying mother. Stuf drew himself up tall, his expression immediately sober, sincere. “I make good charcoal,” he said.

  I assured Stuf I had never doubted it.

  He nodded, paused. “But his excellency wants more.”

  “Abbot Godwin?”

  Again Stuf nodded, apparently reluctant to use any names. “And the little one, the one with the nose.”

  “Brother Prior?”

  “Just so.” Stuf’s face was long now, sorrowful, the face of a saint.

  “But what will you do?” I asked, trying to sound neutral, calm, the way opening up before me like a road, like something God had placed there, a gift, a challenge, something He wanted me to do.

  Stuf looked up at Modra nect, shook his head. “The little father says he will send his own monks into the mountain, build his own clamps, make his own charcoal.”

  “Would he still also use your charcoal?”

  Stuf could not look at me, held his hands out to indicate the hopelessness of his position. Of course it was like a hill person to milk a problem for all it was worth, but I knew Stuf had a legitimate cause for concern. Indeed, I was depending on it.

  “But what if you had help?”

  The man looked at me as if I’d said something in a foreign tongue.

  “Help? Someone to assist you, help you make charcoal?”

  Stuf blinked, frowned, the exertion required to grasp such a concept apparently taking its toll. “I had someone once,” he said, pausing as if to remember, “but she went away.”

  A tide of anger and confusion swept over me.

  Stuf just stood there. When he realized I wasn’t going to say anything more, he leaned in close, his expression almost ludicrously concerned, a man studying a plow that has ceased to plow, a scythe that has lost its edge.

  I leaned back and away from him, the stench of meat on his breath returning me to myself. “Well,” I said, trying to sound calm,

  relaxed, unperturbed. “Was she, was it nice having someone up there with you? I mean didn’t it help, didn’t it help to have a, couldn’t you accomplish more with.... I mean wouldn’t you agree, based upon your experience, it would be nice to have someone up there with you, someone to help you make charcoal?” I could feel myself blush.

  Stuf’s eyes lit up with a sudden understanding. “Oh,” he said. “Oh yes,” nodding now, a monk conferring with another on a fine point of the Rule, “Well it was nice now, wasn’t it? She wasn’t afraid of work, that one, could walk a clamp like a man.” He smiled. “And of course I never got lonely.”

  Images of Eanflæd, terrible images, images of shame and degradation.

  The charcoal-maker laughed.

  I gave him a look and immediately regretted it, the man cringing like a dog. I took a deep breath, told myself not to be taken in by this easy contrition, that hill people were like that, changeable, their sentiments, like their allegiances, as fleeting as cloud shadow. “So,” I began again, congratulating myself on how grownup I had become, “it.... she was a big help. And therefore we can safely assume it would be helpful to have someone up there with you again, preferably someone who knew a little something about charcoal, had worked with it before. Yes?”

  As if to confirm my opinion of him, all signs of remorse vanished from Stuf’s face. He looked at me as if surprised by what I had said, as if it were only now dawning on him what we were talking about, that someone might be made to come up on the mountain and help him, that with such help he might produce more charcoal. Then he looked up toward Modra nect and, in apparent response to this suggestion, said, “Yes, a bad day.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “I have been thinking this. The old one has had a bad day.”

  Of course I could have gotten angry. Victricius would have. The furnace master would have ranted and raved if Stuf had said something like that to him. He hated it when Stuf spoke to things as though they were alive, addressed the river as if he might

  reasonably expect a reply. But I was different. Or at least I was now. I had acquired a new attitude toward the charcoal-maker. From now on I was going to accept him as he was, respect (if not honor) his beliefs, indulge (if not engage in) his ways. Who knew what might be accomplished thereby? This might be the very thing God had in mind for me. A vision of myself a
s one of the great missionary monks rose up before me and I almost missed what Stuf said next.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Stuf looked at me. He looked back up at the mountain. “I said do you see those clouds? The way they’re gathering?”

  A scattering of clouds hung in the sky over Modra nect, small wispy things, dirty blue with just a touch of pink around the edges. Once, years before, when collecting water, I had seen where someone had broken a jar as they lifted it from the river. It was in one of the shallow places and the pieces had sunk together, their arrangement on the rocky bottom still suggesting the shape of a pot.

  “It’s like a broken pot,” I said.

  Stuf snorted, though you could tell he was pleased to have my attention. “More like a broken head,” he said. “Those are his brains.”

  I didn’t say anything, just looked at the man, wanting to get back to the subject of charcoal, how, with help, he might make more charcoal.

  “Allfather did that,” Stuf said, nodding to himself, eyes on the distant clouds. “He killed First One, then hung his brainpan up there for all to see. The roof of the world is the roof of the ice giant’s skull.” Stuf smiled, the image apparently pleasing to him.

  I looked up at the pale dome of the sky. “A giant,” I said, wondering if now maybe we could get back to the subject at hand.

  Stuf turned on me. “You’ve seen brains before, haven’t you? I mean I know they won’t let you eat properly, but you’ve seen brains before haven’t you, the way they look when they first come out? I mean they’ve let you watch when they butcher a pig, haven’t they? Down at the village?”

  I shook my head, the memory of Stuf’s breath for some

  reason taking another stab at my senses.

  “Oh they’re beautiful when they’re fresh, all pink and lumpy. But when they’ve drained, after they’ve set for a while?”

  I tried not to think about it.

  Stuf smiled. “Just like that.” He indicated the clouds with a thrust of his chin. “And see how quiet they look now that the sun’s going down. You know how storms happen in the heat of the day?

  I mean most storms, that’s when most storms happen. Because of the sun? He doesn’t like the sun. It bothers him, disturbs his sleep. First One’s brains churn when they get hot, trying to remember what they’re about, why it is they’re so angry. If it weren’t for the cool of the night, well, who knows?” Stuf stopped for a moment, straightened as if he’d seen a monk. I looked around but there was no one. When I looked back I was surprised to see that he had closed his eyes, cocked his head to the side like a man trying to remember something difficult. When the singing began it was almost as if it were someone other than Stuf singing, the voice high and quavering, birdlike. “But night comes,” sang

  Stuf’s mouth, “day fades, First One sleeps. He dreams...lunacy, nightmare, creeping death.” The charcoal-maker’s eyes popped open. He looked around, found me, smiled as if he’d done something funny. “Of course he will wake up again, someday. He must.” Stuf shook his head, chuckled to himself. “And when that happens...well, when that happens, that will be the end.”

  A light sound, a sound scarcely recognizable as a sound, something just above the sound of the water, the whisper of the breeze, floated in upon us and, as quickly, disappeared. Stuf glanced up toward the abbey, no more disturbed by this reminder of holy office than he would have been by the chatter of a squirrel or the roll of distant thunder. I shuddered, thinking of what I was about to do, how, at one and the same time, it seemed both inconceivable and unavoidable.

  “But what if you had help making the charcoal?” I asked again. “What if, well, what if I came up there to help you? What if you had me?”

  Stuf looked at me and for the first time in my life I saw him as

  he really was, an older man, perhaps as many as thirty winters behind him, all the days he had lived through, all the afflictions, and in that instant I knew, knew as clearly as I knew his name, that Stuf was no fool, that, for all his childish antics, he would no more take me under his wing, risk the wrath of those he did business with, than he would knowingly build his clamp on bad ground, light it before a rain. Heathen or not, I was the child and he the adult, I the novice, he the solemnly-professed monk.

  “The reason I came down here,” he said, “was to find you.”

  A flicker of hope—the idea that he did want me, that this statement signalled deliverance—flared within me and was, as quickly, extinguished. “The hermit sent me,” said Stuf, his voice calm, unhurried, an older man sharing a casual moment with a child. “I have a message for you.”

  I looked away, embarrassed. “Yes?”

  “He asks,” said Stuf, “that you pray for him.”

  XXXI

  Looking back on it now I sometimes wonder if the failure of the wheat didn’t have something to do with it. It was bad enough that there was discontent, that the community had not failed to notice that its abbot did not eat with them, would not join with them in the work of the fields. But to have an oblate remain fat and oily despite their admonitions to the contrary must have seemed, in the face of impending famine, an affront to their authority that neither Maban nor Godwin could safely ignore. If one such nonentity could so blatantly flout convention, what might not the rest of the community contemplate?

  And how easy it was, under such conditions, to direct attention away from their failing and onto Ealhmund. When everyone was hungry and grumbling about their hunger, how satisfying it

  must have been for Brother Prior to point out the fat boy at the end of the row, the one who, despite an otherwise universal shriveling, still managed to find enough to maintain his own bulk, in the process insinuating that, in keeping with the logic of want, it might be Ealhmund alone who, in his secret raids upon the larder, deprived the rest of us of our rightful share, and that therefore, both literally and figuratively, we all suffered for Ealhmund’s sins.

  Of course what this really meant was that Ealhmund suffered. He was made to beg for his food, crawling on his knees from table to table, his bowl held out before him, forbidden to speak, to sign, to do anything other than look up at us with those large uncomprehending eyes of his, those eyes that seemed to ask to be beaten even as they begged to be fed. I remember him lying on the floor before Faults. He had never been allowed in Faults before, but Maban allowed him in for that. He was too fat to lie comfortably on the floor and, after a while, his belly would make strange noises. Maban used to laugh when that happened, ask, as if genuinely concerned, if Ealhmund were hungry, if there were anything he could get him, some honeycakes perhaps? When this, as I suppose it was meant to, elicited still more sounds from the poor boy’s abdomen, Maban would poke him with his shoe. Not hard. Never once did I see Maban actually kick Ealhmund. But he would poke him with the point of his shoe as one might poke a recalcitrant dog.

  I would like to say that my fellow oblate drew comfort from his suffering, grew wise, accepting, detached. We are taught that, aren’t we, that in suffering we become Christ-like, that through suffering we have the opportunity to redeem, if not the world, at least our selves? But what if suffering is just suffering? What if the one who suffers finds neither nobility nor reason in his pain? What if there is only confusion, hurt, loss? We do not expect a horse to learn from its suffering, a cow. Why then a boy like Ealhmund?

  He began to prey upon his former master. Not viciously or vindictively but childishly, lashing out at him as a child lashes out at its playmate without thought or cause, knowing only that it

  wants something and hasn’t got it. Of course there were those who said Botulf had only himself to blame. Botulf had been the first after all, in his capacity as Brother Kitchens, to encourage Ealhmund’s gluttony, pouring treats down the boy as one pours scraps down a pig to ready it for slaughter. For some time before the arrival of Godwin this had been a minor, if constant, concern. Ealhmund had been whipped for his sin and Botulf required to explain himself before Faults. An
d the kitchen master had promised to mend his ways. But of course he hadn’t. He seemed incapable of changing. Brother Botulf was in those days like a wren with a cuckoo’s chick in its nest: standing on the foundling’s massive head, cramming still more food down its throat, ignoring any appeal to common sense.

  But, with the advent of Godwin, all this changed. There were no second chances under his leadership. Maban was not a man to tolerate backsliding. Brother Botulf and his servant Ealhmund were summarily removed from their posts and sent to work in the fields under Brother Cellarer. The quality of the food served in refectory declined markedly and, to the surprise of everyone, Ealhmund remained obstinately fat. Indeed, if anything, he grew larger still, his chest and shoulders swelling out under Brother Osric’s regime to almost equal the size of his belly.

  Of course, as there always is in a monastery sworn to silence, there was talk. Everyone had their theories as to how such a thing had come to pass. Some said a devil dwelt within the boy, others that it was a tumor and that soon it must burst. The only thing everyone agreed upon, Maban’s accusations notwithstanding, was that, if it was pilfering that sustained Ealhmund’s girth, he must have an accomplice, that no boy wearing such a look on his face could be capable of out-and-out thievery.

  Then came the first of the attacks on Brother Botulf.