by Heide Goody
Brother Clement closed his eyes and shook his head.
“It matters not. As with the transubstantiation of the wine, the blessing of the bread – be it communion or ice-cream wafer – makes it suitable for the liturgical act. I am put in mind of a miracle which is most pertinent to our current situation.”
“Oh, goody,” muttered Brother Henry.
“The miracle of the herrings,” said Brother Clement.
“I could eat herring,” said Brother Lionel. “Mush it up with my gums.”
“I don’t recall that particular miracle,” said Bastian.
“It is truly astounding,” said Brother Clement. “That wisest of monks, St Thomas Aquinas, lay dying in his bed and, as a last request, asked his brothers to bring him some herring. The monks did not imagine they would find any, as they were far from the coast, but went out into the street to buy some. They found a fishmonger with his basket of wares and asked him if he had any herring. The fishmonger was doubtful, and said that he only had sardines. The fishmonger opened his basket to check and – lo! – there were herring within and St Thomas was able to enjoy his final meal.”
Brother Clement looked to his fellow monks for their reaction.
“Is that it?” said Brother Lionel.
“What do you mean, ‘Is that it?’” said Brother Clement. “It was a miracle.”
Brother Henry looked up from his puzzles.
“The miracle was that the fishmonger – a man whose job it is to sell fish – happened to have some fish?”
“Yes, but he didn’t think he had any herring.”
“Oh, so it’s the miracle of ‘sorry mate, I haven’t got any of them. Let me check. Oh, I have. My mistake’?”
“Such scepticism!” Brother Clement snorted. “There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. There are holy signs and wonders all arou– Oh, my goodness! Look!”
Brother Clement stood up in the boat, pointing.
“What?” said Bastian.
“There! On the water! Isn’t that a pelican?”
“I think it’s a gull. A big fat gull. Sit down before you tip us over.”
“No,” Brother Clement insisted. “It’s a pelican.”
“We don’t get them round here.”
“Christian symbol of sacrifice and sustenance. It’s a sign.”
“It’s a sign it’s lost,” said Brother Henry. “The nearest pelicans are in Africa.”
“No. No. Did not St Thomas Aquinas himself in his hymn describe our Lord as ‘loving divine pelican, able to provide nourishment from his breast’?”
“Did he?” said Bastian.
“We are truly saved, brothers. This is a sign! This –”
In the act of declamation, Brother Clement put a foot on the gunwale, slipped and pitched forward into the sea.
“Well, that shut him up,” said Brother Henry.
Brother Clement surfaced in a burst of spray and loud gasping.
“Are you all right there, brother?” called Brother Lionel.
Bastian looked down at the floundering monk.
“Does anyone know if Brother Clement can swim?” he asked.
“Can you swim, brother?” called Brother Lionel.
Brother Clement gave a watery cry that didn’t settle the matter one way or the other.
“Looks like someone will have to save him,” said Brother Henry without much urgency.
“Oh, Hell.” Bastian gathered up the hem of his habit to disrobe.
“Don’t leap in after him,” said Brother Lionel. “He’ll drag you down. Well-documented fact. Best to save someone who’s already unconscious. It’s dangerous otherwise.”
“That’s soon sorted,” said Brother Henry, knelt up in the boat and raised one of the oars like a club. “Oi! Clement!”
The drowning sacristan glanced upwards and Brother Henry struck downwards.
“Is it always this bright?” Rutspud attempted to shield his eyes from the glare of ‘outside’.
Stephen, rechecking the harness around his waist, looked up at the rolling clouds above.
“This is what’s called ‘overcast’,” he said. “Fairly normal for the UK, but sometimes it clears.”
“Clears?”
Stephen nodded and clipped the rope and descender to his harness.
“You know, the clouds clear away.”
“And what’s above them?”
“Nothing,” shrugged Stephen. “The sky. The sun.”
“Sun?”
“Yeah. A big ball of flaming gas half a million miles across. You know, the sun.”
“And beyond that?”
“Space, the galaxies, the infinite universe.”
A shiver ran up Rutspud’s knobbly spine. He was vaguely familiar with the cosmology of the mortal world, but he couldn’t quite cope with the notion of places without ceilings. He felt a terrible vertigo, the sense of a massive abyss above him.
“What is all this stuff?” Rutspud kicked at the equipment on the ground to distract himself.
“Abseiling gear. Helmet. Ropes. Flare gun. Manfred insisted.”
“And all this to collect some piddly ‘bird’ eggs?”
“We’re hungry. A few guillemot or gull eggs could save us from starvation.”
Rutspud peered down the cliff that edged the cove. Surf ebbed through sharp, angled rocks at the base.
“Seems like a lot of effort for very little gain,” he said.
Stephen grunted and, slowly feeding the rope through the descender device at his waist, lowered himself over the edge.
“I mean,” Rutspud called down to him, “if they were big eggs, I’d understand. You ever seen the egg of the Ziz?”
“Ziz?”
“Monstrous bird. Supposedly going to be the main course at the banquet at the end of time.”
“And it’s real?”
“Mate, I was there when one of its eggs broke. Five dozen castles of Hell washed away in a flood of rotten egg gubbins.”
“You’re making it up. There’s no such bird,” shouted Stephen.
“Sure,” Rutspud muttered. “Eggs big enough to squash a forest are stupid, but big balls of burning gas, oh no, they’re perfectly sensible.”
Bastian, soaking and panting for breath, hauled Brother Clement up onto the stony beach. Brother Clement was pale but for a surprisingly square bruise blossoming on his forehead.
While Brothers Lionel and Henry brought the rowing boat onto the shore, Bastian pulled away a strand of seaweed and put his ear to Brother Clement’s chest.
“Thank God,” he sighed, eyes closed with relief. “He’s breathing. He’s breathing!”
“Of course he is,” said Brother Henry. “I didn’t hit him that hard.”
“No,” said Bastian, “but you can still run up to get Brother Gillespie and tell him why you saw fit to clonk a drowning man over the head.”
Brother Henry tutted at this additional chore but, nonetheless, with a soggy-hemmed dressing-gown wrapped about him, began to walk up the path.
“Well, I think I’m all done here,” said Brother Lionel with a pout of his gummy mouth. “Fishing was a failure. Always said it would be.”
“You’re going nowhere,” said Bastian. “You’re going to wait until Brother Clement comes round and give him the bad news.”
“What bad news?” said Brother Lionel in pretend surprise.
“That you let go of the fishing line and that our church silver is currently at the bottom of the Irish Sea.”
“Pah. Always with the negativity, you young uns. What about the good news?”
“Good news?” said Bastian.
Brother Lionel gestured to the dozen spider crabs that were still latched onto Brother Clement’s sodden habit.
“It’s crab for tea!”
Stephen grunted and sidled further along the cliff face. Those crevices and cracks, which had looked like promising nesting sites, had proved to be either unused or abandoned. From his position between the clifft
op and the sea, he could now see there were a number of nesting birds on the opposite cliff, but he couldn’t access them without climbing back up and repositioning his tether on the other side of the inlet.
“How many have you got so far?” Rutspud shouted down to him.
“None!” Stephen replied.
“None? As in not one?”
“Yes,” Stephen yelled. “Not a single one.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem?” Stephen readjusted his footing on the rock, putting all his weight on the line. “The problem is there are no eggs!”
“Well, you should look for some!”
“Oh! You think?”
“Yes!”
Stephen swore under his breath and inched along further, struggling to maintain purchase on the wet, mossy rock.
“Wait a moment,” he said. “I think I’ve found something.”
It wasn’t much of a nest. For a start, it was in a poor location, on a jutting ledge rather than in any sort of protective nook. It was surprising that the wind hadn’t already whipped it away. The construction materials were an unusual combination. The base of the nest seemed to be formed primarily from the top half of a sheep’s skull, the walls resting upon it composed of scraps of paper, fragments of plastic, shreds of car tyre and a bizarre assortment of spoons, pencils, fish remains and a single rubber glove. The whole thing was held together with artlessly placed globules of mud.
Stephen climbed a little and peered down into the nest. Two mottled green eggs sat in the base of the sheep skull, rolling back and forth as the wind buffeted the pathetic nest. They weren’t the eggs of any species Stephen recognised.
He hesitated and found himself weighing up the pros and cons of taking the eggs.
Con: There were only two eggs. It hardly seemed worth it.
Pro: A spoonful of omelette for each of the brothers was far better than no omelette at all.
Con: It seemed oddly heartless to steal the eggs from such a plainly rubbish nest. A mother bird with such awful nest-building skills deserved every bit of help she could get.
Pro: Clearly the builder of that nest was an unfit parent. It would be a kindness to end this tragedy now.
Con: If this nest-building was typical of the species then the species was, in all likelihood, endangered.
Pro: Any bird which was such a piss-poor nest-builder after millions of years of evolution probably deserved to go extinct.
Con: But look at them! Aw! Little eggs! Soon to be cute little chicks! The circle of life!
Pro: Stephen was hungry.
Stephen reached down but, as his fingertips brushed against the lip of nest, a white and yellow blur dove down out of the sky at him. Orange feet slapped him in the face and he instinctively pulled away from the squawking and frantic uncoordinated flapping of large wings.
“Did you find something?” shouted Rutspud.
Stephen lost his footing and he fell away from the cliff edge. The rope at his harness tightened but, as he pitched back, he felt the entire harness slipping.
“No! No!” he shouted, as he flipped over, head downwards, and the harness, perhaps never designed to be worn over monk’s robes, slid off Stephen’s hips and down his legs. Some still-functioning sliver of his terrified mind made the life-saving decision to bend his legs and the loose harness caught under Stephen’s knees.
Stephen screamed as he dangled upside down above the rocky surf while the demented, shrieking bird flapped around his knees.
“Oh, God!” he yelled. “Help me! Help me!”
“What?” shouted Rutspud.
“Jesus! Help me! Pull me up!”
“Have you found any eggs?” said Rutspud.
“Just do it!”
Manfred looked at the haul from the fishing trip, his eyes agleam.
“It certainly beats marsh rabbit,” he said, poking playfully at one of the crabs in the tub of water. “Yes, you do, Mr Snippy. You certainly do.”
“Anything beats roasted rat,” said Bastian. “In fact, nothing beats roasted rat. Literally having nothing is better than roasted rat. You can cook these up?”
“Absolutely. I’m thinking of a Hawaiian recipe with coriander and basil, flaked ginger, pepper, breadcrumbs and a little oil.”
“We have those things?”
“Or something a bit like them, I’m sure. Get the gas-fired barbecue out in the cloisters, brother, and put on your best grass skirt.”
“Eh?”
Manfred grinned.
“We’re having a luau!”
Stephen lay out on the ground, his fingers clutching instinctively at the grass beneath him. He was still breathless and a tiny bit terrified but, mostly, he felt an exhilaration and gratitude at his continued survival. The late afternoon sky, cloudy and grey though it was, had never looked more beautiful.
“So,” said Rutspud, squatting beside him and methodically pulling apart a clover, “I notice that prayer doesn’t work.”
“What’s that?” said Stephen.
“Prayer. There you were, shouting out for the Almighty – ‘Help me, help me’ – and nothing happened. The Big Guy didn’t step in to save you.”
“I’m alive, aren’t I?”
“Yeah. That’s because I pulled you up.”
“Maybe God sent you to help me.”
Rutspud blew the remains of the clover off his palm.
“Are you trying to piss me off?”
Stephen sat up and looked at Rutspud. I’m chatting with a demon, he thought to himself. A real, red, sort of scaly demon. With little horns and everything. It was a continual surprise, one he was unable to get over.
“Prayer works,” he said. “Maybe not in the way some people might think. It’s not like magic wishes. It’s not a demand that God bend the laws of nature for our personal gain. Prayer is the opening of oneself to the divine, spiritually accepting there is something beyond this merely physical world. I think I should pray for you.”
Rutspud sprang to his feet.
“Woah, puny human scum! Pray for me? Pray for me?”
“Worth a shot. You’ve got kitten-shaped worries. Maybe this is your only solution.”
“No, it’s not,” said Rutspud fiercely. “It sounds like an invitation to blow up the universe. Pray for a demon? That’s like matter and anti-matter, water and electricity … er, zippers and male genitalia.”
“Have faith,” said Stephen and put his hands together.
“Fine!” snapped Rutspud. “But don’t expect me to stay in the blast radius. I’m hiding behind that rock.”
Rutspud scuttled away rapidly, towards a large outcrop of stone. Stephen waited until he was out of sight.
“Okay?” he called out. “I’m going to start now.”
“Er, Stephen?” Rutspud replied.
“Yes?”
“I think you’d better come see this.”
“What is it?” said Stephen.
“I don’t know. Possibly dinner.”
The Hawaiian luau had started out so promisingly.
Manfred had fashioned grass skirts for the brothers and a surprising number agreed to wear them. Brother Henry had produced a pair of Hawaiian print shirts from his personal trunk and given one apiece to Manfred and Father Eustace. Brother Vernon had set up the poles for a limbo competition in the centre of the cloisters. Brother Clement, the mildly concussed father of the feast, had been placed in a deck chair, a half coconut containing nothing but fresh water and a cocktail umbrella placed in his hand. The only problem was Manfred’s inability to get the barbecue started. While he fiddled with gas valves, knobs and lighters, the prepared crabs sat cold and uncooked on the grill. Monks circled hungrily and Manfred’s promises that they would be cooking in no time at all and that there was a surprise dessert for afters did little to appease the ravenous men.
Bastian decided it was time to provide some welcome distraction. He rested his display boards against the nearest stonework balustrade and got out
his laser pointer pen.
“Brothers!” he said loudly. “While Brother Manfred gets our feast underway, I would like to deliver a short presentation.”
Two dozen starving monks turned unhurriedly to look at him.
“Presentation?” said Brother Lionel.
“How Not To Die!” declared Bastian grandiosely. “Thirty minutes of edification that could save your life.”
“I’ll be dead in thirty minutes if I don’t get any food,” said Brother Henry.
“First up,” said Bastian, revealing the next presentation board, “what’s safe to eat and what’s not.”
“Beard!” shouted Father Eustace apropos of nothing at all.
“No, Father Abbot,” said Bastian. “Lichen and moulds. Did you know there are any number of moulds, fungi and lichen growing in and around St Cadfan’s?”
“You want us to lick rocks for our supper?” said Brother Henry.
“I’m game,” said Brother Lionel. “I like food you can lick.”
“But which are safe?” asked Bastian. He played his laser pointer over his presentation board. “Look at these two pictures. One of these is perfectly nutritious, the other poisonous. But which is which? Hmmm? Anyone care to take a guess?”
Brother Huey sat cross-legged in the lee of the rock. A piece of string ran from his hand to a stick propping up the edge of a cardboard box some six yards away. Underneath the box, an unperturbed rabbit sat munching on a chunk of carrot.
“Can we eat it?” said Rutspud.
“If you can catch it,” said Stephen faintly.
“I didn’t mean the long-eared kitten monster. I meant this one.”
“No,” said Stephen with a quiet forcefulness.
He approached Brother Huey. The old monk’s robe was damp with condensation. His skin was the same grey as the clouds above. His eyes were closed. He looked like he was just taking a nap although his face looked more peaceful in death than Stephen had ever seen it in life.
“Do you think he’s started to go off?” said Rutspud.
“No, that’s just his feet. They’ve always smelled like that.”
“So he’s still good for eating?”
“We don’t eat the dead!”
“Oh. I see. Why?”