Burcwen found him. He awoke upon the strand to find her lips on his to breathe life back in him. His head was cradled in her lap. All said it was a miracle, and so I think it may have been. Three lessons Godric learned that day.
The first was that the sea's a killer, nor did he ever from that day forget nor fail again to keep an eye cocked on the waves' salt treachery.
The second was he learned that Burcwen's heart was his. Less and less as months passed by did she seek William out or sit astride their sundown stile to hear him buzz his need at her. More and more it was Godric that she sought for soothing, and he her. They spoke but little. Once she laid her fingers on his lips and said it was her breath they breathed. Who knows but it was so?
Lesson three was that he learned whose voice he'd heard beneath the waves and whose the eye that gazed at him so merrily. He learned that it was Jesu saved him from the sea, though saved him why or saved for what deep end he did not learn, nor has he ever learned it to this day.
How Reginald asked and Godric answered and the Blessed Virgin's song.
AEDWEN named you well, Father, says Reginald II in his coddling lilt.
I say, “Father my bum.”
“A holy name for a babe born to be holy,” he says.
“Fiddle my faddle,” I say or nothing at all in words but something instead in the fingertalk he doesn't know. He's better off not knowing, if he only knew.
“The god means God. That's plain as your nose, I mean no slight. The vic is Saxon reign. So God and ric in sum means God reigns, Godric. It means God reigns in you. It means when God comes down at last to weigh the souls of men, he'll not find Godric's wanting, Father Godric.”
“Fetch me a bowl to puke in,” I tell him. He's got him such a honeyed way I'm ever out to sour it.
“Godric will have his little jest,” says Reginald.
So then I teach him other ways to read my name. “God's god for sure. You hit that square. But ric is Erse for wreck,” I say, not knowing Erse from arse. “God's wreck I be, it means. God's wrecked Godric for his sins. Or Godric's sins have made a wreck of God.”
Reginald throws up his hands, his palms as pale and soft as cheese.
“There's other ways as well,” I say. “Rip Godric up another seam, and what you get is go and drick.”
“What's drick?” says Reginald.
“A foul Welsh word not fit for monkish ears,” I say.
“How great is your humilitas, Father,” Reginald says.
I say, “Yet, Mother, not so great as is my drick.” Why is it that the best in him calls forth the worst in me?
“When were you born, Father?” he says.
“The year of my birth.”
“What manner of man is John the Baptist when he visits you in dreams ”
“Something between a goat and a Jew.”
“Is it true you see what's happening years ahead and miles away, Father?”
“I see a man and maid a tumble on your grave.”
“They say the Blessed Virgin taught you songs.”
I open my mouth and croak like one who's had his tongue snipped out for swearing false. Eck, eck, I sing, twiddling my eyelids like a beggar playing blind.
When was I born They say it was the year before the Bastard William beached his Normans at Pevensey, slaying Harold with a sunset shaft shot through his eye, then stomping down the golden Wessex dragon in the mud. They tell that Harold's mother said she'd give its weight in gold to have the body of her son laid deep in holy ground, but William buried it instead in Saxon soil that Harold hallowed by his falling there. Then William up and had them crown him king at Westminster on Christmas day, and when the Aethling joined with Dane and Scot to cast him out, stark William marched his Normans north and harried the land from sea to sea. Men, women, children, all, he put them to the sword in bitter cold. He slew their beasts and burned their crops and set aflame their towns until the folk cried mercy and the land was his. Thus Godric first saw light at a dark time, and the manger of his birth was death.
But all is light for Reginald. What do they know of dark and death, he and his brother Durham monks Saint Benedict would twitch inside his tomb to see them water down his rule. No wonder that the hands of monks are soft the way they've got them brewers, barbers, tailors, cooks to do their bidding and husbandmen to work their soil. No meat for monks unless they ail, says Benedict, so half the monks and more plead sick each day and gather in the misericorde to stuff their mouths with mutton till the fat runs down. The Loft, they call it, and mighty high and lofty are their ways. They copy their books and say their prayers, and if some wandering duke or prince comes by, they turn their cloisters to an inn to please his grace and bend their knees as deep as if to kiss my lord the bishop's ring.
And it's this same soft Reginald that asks of John the Baptist, what I've seen of him in dreams. I've seen a man all clad in rags and anger still although a kinsman of Our Lord as well as a high saint. I've seen a shaft of light aslant through dark, a fierce lance tilted to the heart of things, a flail, a knout. How do you tell of such a one as John to such as Reginald, who'd have him be a godly gelding like himself? “Abide alone,” John told me once. “Make thy place in wilderness as I did mine that the Lord may house thee. Make roots and grubs thy only fare that the Lord may feed thee. Make chilly Wear thy Jordan that the Lord may warm thee. Thus friendless, roofless, blue with cold, yet singing praise, the world may learn of thee the glory and the grace of God.”
I say, “Mark me now, Reginald. Hear this.”
He sets down the eggs he's brought and squats beside me in the straw so he may catch the words he thinks will come out weak because he thinks that Godric's weak and old as Adam's shoe.
“WRITE THIS DOWN IN YOUR BOOK!” I cry with all the strength I have. Then see him clap his hands to his ears and rock back on his heels. But then he rocks back close again, for when I speak a second time, I barely mumble in my beard. Thus I play him like a fish. He looks a fish. His mouth's agape. His eyes are flat.
I say, “Then if you want it, here's my life.” You'd think it was the sacrament I tendered him, the seemly way he bows his head to hear.
I say, “I started out as rough a peasant's brat and full of cockadoodledoo as any. I worked uncleanness with the best of them or worst. I tumbled all the maids would suffer me and some that scratched and tore like weasels in a net. I planted horns on many a goodman's brow and jellied lads with tales about it afterward. I took up peddling as my trade. I cozened and tricked the way a baker yeasts his leaves till they are less of bread than air. I passed off old for new. I let out pence at usury. I swore me false. A flatterer I was. A wanderer. I thieved and pirated. I went to sea. Such things as happened then are better left unsaid.”
Reginald's eyes are rolled up in his head so all that shows is white. He crosses himself and like a herring in a basket gasps for air. Yet I've spared him things far worse for the sake of sparing Godric too. I've spared him wasted Burcwen nibbling like a hare on grass and leaves. I've spared him William calling out along the darkened banks of Wear for what he'll never find. I've spared him two that lay as one in one another's arms and never spoke a word.
“There's much you're better not to know,” I say, “but know you this. Know Godric's no true hermit but a gadabout within his mind, a lecher in his dreams. Self seeking he is and peacock proud. A hypocrite. A ravener of alms and dainty too. A slothful, greedy bear. Not worthy to be called a servant of the Lord when he treats such servants as he has himself like dung, like Reginald. All this and worse than this go say of Godric in your book.”
Poor Reginald's tears run trickling down his cheeks like tallow. He asks for sweet, and bitter's all he has from me. Have I no honeyed crumb to take the taste away?
“Well, but say this also if you like,” I say. “Say yes, it's true that Mary came. She came though who knows why. Clad all in skyblue mantling with the crown of Heaven on her head. She smiled at me.” And then I raised up on one elbow in the straw an
d sang:
Saint, Mary, virgin dame.
Mother of Jesu Christ, of God his Lamb,
Take, shield, and do thy Godric bring
To thee where Christ Is King.
Our Lady, maiden, springtime's flower,
Deliver Godric from this hour.
For Ailred's sake I sang it to the monk he sent. And what I said to him is so. It was indeed the Blessed Virgin taught it me.
How Godric left home.
“FAREWELL, Father. Mother, farewell, ”I said.
Aedwen took and slowly turned my face from side to side as if to rummage it for something there she'd lost or feared to lose. She gave me a sack of berries and a wool cap. She wept no fears, and not a word came from her lips.
Aedlward, my father, was sitting by the fire. He did not rise. He only raised one hand, then spoke the only word of all the words he ever spoke to me that I remember still as his.
“You'll have your way, Godric,” he said, and to this day that word he spoke and that raised hand are stitched together in my mind.
I believe my way went from that hand as a path goes from a door, and though many a mile that way has led me since, with many a turn and crossroad in between, if ever I should trace it back, it's to my father's hand that it would lead. I kissed him on his head then, for he'd turned away to watch the flames. He smelled of oxen and of rain. It was the last I ever saw of him.
Tom Ball came by to bless me. Ball was a heavy, slow paced man who had one eye that veered off on a starboard tack so you never knew for sure which way he looked. He entered our house splashed high with mud, for our yard was always a bog through spring. He sweated like a horse.
He laid his hands on me and blessed my eyes to see God's image deep in every man. He blessed my ears to hear the cry especially of the poor. He blessed my lips to speak no word but Gospel truth. He warned against the Devil and his snares with always that one eye of his skewed off as if to watch for snares himself.
“This life of ours is like a street that passes many doors,” Ball said, “nor think you all the doors I mean are wood. Every day's a door and every night. When a man throws wide his arms to you in friendship, it's a door he opens same as when a woman opens hers in wantonness. The street forks out, and there's two doors to choose between. The meadow that tempts you rest your bones and dream a while. The rackribbed child that begs for scraps the dogs have left. The sea that calls a man to travel far. They all are doors, some God's and some the Fiend's. So choose with care which ones you take, my son, and one day who can say you'll reach the holy door itself.”
“Which one is that, Father?” I asked for courtesy, for I was hot to leave. I was on my knees before him and with his one straight eye he held me there.
“Heaven's door, Godric,” he said.
“And will I know it if I reach that far?”
“Perhaps you won't,” Ball said. “Perhaps you will. But go now, Godric. The peace of God go with you too. Tom Ball will keep you in his prayers.”
So if my father's hand is the door from which my way went forth, please God the door it leads me to may be the one Saint Peter keeps. And blessed be he who knows it when he comes to it, for not all do, I think. Often when my way has led me not to the great door itself, God knows, but past some little glimpse of it, it wasn't for years I knew the worth of what I'd glimpsed, and then too late. Fool that I was, I thought that day that it was only home I left.
The only one who wept was he who had least cause for tears, and that was William. He'd have crowed like a cock on a dunghill if he'd been anybody else, for now with Godric going off, Burcwen would be his again. How he must have missed her those last years! Ever since that day she found me on the sands of Wash half drowned and loved me for the breath she'd breathed into my lips, he'd been busy as a sailor in a gale to find some other place to moor.
With Burcwen gone, he'd searched to find some other friend. Old folk he'd tried with nothing else to do, he thought, but please a lad like him, and younger folk he hoped would have him and be proud, and others his same age to play with at bowls and stick and stone. But in the end his endless chatter drove them all away. Nor young nor old had time enough for the time that William needed nor room in their heart's quiet for one who never could be still. Yet now, though Godric's leaving gave him Burcwen back, he wept to see him go.
As I passed the lower sheepfold, I found Burcwen waiting there. She had no cloak nor shoes upon her feet but carried a basket on her arm.
“I'm going with thee, Godric,” she said.
I said, “And so's the Man in the Moon thine uncle, child.”
The wind blew rain about, and my lord's fat sheep were huddled with their backs to it. Against her cheek, my sister's hair was wet, and there was wildness in her eye.
“See what I've got,” she said and from her basket drew a length of hemp. “Unless I go, I'll hang myself. They'll bury me at the crossroads with a stake drove through my heart.”
I said, “Just standing out here in the rain you'll catch your death.”
“It's my life I'm here to catch before it gets away,” she said. “My life's with you, Godric.”
“And so is mine with you,” I said, “and one day I'll come back with wealth enough to build us a great house where we'll live out our days in peace.”
“The Man in the Moon must be your uncle too,” she said.
“But for now, your life is here,” I said, “and my life's mine to find and fashion where I may. So Godric goes,” I said, “and Burcwen stays.” I raised her chin so she could read the firmness in my face. “Dear heart, farewell,” I said, and when I left, she made no move to follow me.
After I had gone some fifty paces, though, I heard her calling through the wind. With a lad's quick skill, she'd shinnied up a tree and tied one rope end fast around a branch and with the other sought to make a hangman's knot.
“Stay see me jump!” she called, then something else the wind blew off. I saw she laughed, and laughter too was part of what was choking me, but there was madness in our mirth, for I was daring her to die and Burcwen daring me to drive her to. So then I ran to save her while i still had time.
I plucked her off her branch like a treed cat, and we scuffled, laughing in the rain, while I trussed her underneath the arms and hoisted her until she hung there dangling from her tree again. When she saw that there was nothing she could do, she went so grave and still she could have been an angel overhead. Her virgin breasts were bared where she had torn her clothes, her head a flower bending on its stem.
“Look in the basket, Godric,” she said in a small voice, “and take the parting gift I brought.” It was a cross she'd whittled from two bits of wood and bound with strands of her own hair. I hung it round my neck, and there it hangs still to this day, the hair as bright and soft as it was then.
“You've foxed me fair this time,” she said, “but other times will come and slyer foxes.” “And so they will,” I said.
“Farewell then, Godric,” she said from where she hung. She wanly Aapped her arms at me like wings. “May the Man in the Moon watch over you till next we meet.”
I've wondered since if maybe why she brought that rope was not to hang herself but so I'd have the means to make her stay. I think that in some corner of her heart she wanted to be bound against her own wild will to go with me as in the wilds of me I yearned to cut her down so she could come.
But off I went and never gave another backward glance lest like Lot's wife I'd turn into a pillar salt as my own tears.
Of Peregrine Small and how Godric came to prosper in trade.
I THINK of Fairweather and Tune, of Fairweather with his tongue of flame and sleepy, faithful Tune. Have they withstood the years. Do they drape themselves like garlands over dead limbs still and coil themselves for sun on rocks too high for Wear to wet? Have they found it in their hearts to pardon Godric?
If they but knew, it was not the coldness but the warmth of Godric's bowels for them that made him drive them off. It's hard
to fasten on the airy love of God when such as earthy Tune with jewels for eyes slips on his belly through the dust to pay his loving court. Tune slept in a jar, but at my every entering he'd rear his head and shuttle to and fro to weave my welcome.
Fairweather guarded me. Whenever a man drew near, or monk or maid, he was fierce to strike and swift to sting. The trouble was he guarded me from God as well. Let God himself approach me down the path I made of prayers, and such a hissing would break forth from Fairweather then you would have thought the King of Glory was my foe. For love of me, Fairweather warded off the love of God, and since I loved Fairweather for his care, I had to banish him with Tune.
I paid a smith to fettle me from the lids of two great pots the iron vest I wear to fret the devil in my flesh, and when I walk, it sounds to warn the world I'm near the way that Ailred's cough warns me of him. Do my snake friends listen still for Godric clanking through the trees, or Godric's clank and Ailred's cough like the chanting back and forth of monks at mass Does Godric listen still for them He listens surely. There's no doubt of that. Rut ah, there are so many sounds!
All those years ago Tom Ball blessed my ears to hear the poor cry out for help, and I still hear them right enough. I hear them when the mouse squeals in the owl's cruel claw. I hear them when the famished wolf howls hunger at the moon. I hear them when old Wear goes rattling past in weariness, and in the keening of the wind, and when the rain beats hollow on my roof. In all such sounds I hear the poor folk's bitter need and in the dimtongued silence too. But when melody wells up in thrushes' throats, and bees buzz honeysong, and rock and river clap like hands in summer sun, then misery's drowned in minstrelsy, and Godric's glad in spite of all. Yet sometimes too he's sad in spite of all, God knows, for there are other voices than the poor's.
One is the voice of Peregrine Small, a weaver late of Bishop's Lynn, where I went to peddle at the fair not many months from when I left my sister dangling like a Christmas goose. Small's cloth was of a weft so fine you could have pulled it through a lady's ring, and he himself was scarce less dainty. He had a man's parts and a silken yellow beard, but when he walked, he swayed his hams from side to side, and when he opened up his bearded lips, it was the simper of a maid came forth.
Godric Page 2