Poor Small, he could not help himself. He didn't paint his face like some I've seen nor seek out men to use him for a maid, but Mistress Small they called him, and the lads were always making sport of him to see him blush and roll his cow eyes heavenward. It's the voice of this same Small that echoes still in Godric's ears. E e e e e k! E e e e e k! he cried as if they sought to ravish him, and in the knock kneed manner of a maid fled down Saint Margaret's darkling nave.
It happened thus. It was fair time, as I say. The town was full. Merchants were there from many parishes with tents and stalls and painted flags, and others from as far away as Flanders with their wines, dyes, hides, furs, herbs and wares of every sort too rare to name. Cattle and swine thronged through the streets till you walked up to your shins in dung. Notaries were busy with their wax to seal contracts and bargains, and whores flocked everywhere to seal some bargains of their own wherever there were walls or bits of ground left dry enough to prop their bums against Jack Ploughman's huff and puff. From miles around the rich and poor alike came out to gawk at dogs in kerchiefs standing on their heads or bears that jigged and one sick lion riding on a sumpter mule, his great tongue lolling. Magicians drew live doves out of the air as easy as thimble riggers drew pence out of dunces' pockets, and the Jews in their horned caps and yellow badges sat in booths to weigh out silver at the rates of gold.
A Jew named Haggai sparked the tinder of that moiling time. As chance would have it, in years and heft he was about the same as Peregrine Small, and like Small too he had a yellow, silken beard. Haggai turned Christian, that's where it began. Perhaps he turned to Jesu truly in his heart, ruing the bloody mischief of the cross the Jews had wrought. Perhaps it was because he was so fair of hair and face he hoped in time to pass for Saxon. Perhaps, since nothing human's not a broth of false and true, it was the two at once.
In any case no less a high and mighty lord would be the one to baptize him than Ranulf Flambard, Chancellor, who'd traveled north to do the business of the king. King William Redhead's business ever was to milk the land of gold and silver till it cried for mercy, and Flambard, called the Torch, was he that pulled the teats for him till they hung dry. Flambard was as sharp a rogue as ever broke wind in a mitre, nor was this the last that Godric heard of him, for their sails were set on courses doomed to cross again. But one day's evil is enough each day, and that day's sprang from Haggai's hallowing.
The Jews caught scent of it and flew into a heathen rage. They wanted Haggai's blood for playIng false, and to draw it they were hot to batter down Saint Margaret's door. This door was bolted fast against the hurly burly of the fair, but the Jews thumped on it with their fists and feet and pikes till all the Christian folk within believed their hour had come and called for help.
What came was more than help or less. Christians came and Jews came, both magicians, whores and thieves and all who'd traveled to the fair to buy or sell or gawk. Everybody with a nose for heydiddlediddle and danger ran to fill the square, and Godric too, his own great beak a quiver. He'd bought the hair of women cheap at nunneries where it was cropped and when the ruckus started up was selling it dear to Joans and Jills to plait into their own thin tresses. Saint Margaret's door fell down at last. The crowd pressed in like sheep. And Godric too.
Inside there was a churchly dusk and quiet. Flambard and Haggai both had fled. A flock of Christians cowered around the stoup. A stout priest raised his arms in vain for peace. And then, for want of other foe, the crowd turned on itself. They went to it pellmell. The vengeful Jews were routed soon. Then it was Christian fists that bloodied Christian snouts, and Christian staffs that cracked hard Christian pates like nuts. I myself was mounted on some knightly tomb, crowing like a cock and laying about me with a stick to clobber all who threatened me when all at once I heard a feeble mewing at my feet and turned to find this Peregrine Small crouched down for shelter there behind the tomb.
“Stand up like a man, weaver!” I cried and thwacked him hard across the back to stir him. Puddling the floor for fright, he stood, and, be it ever on my head, a brace of aproned Yorkshire cobblers saw him then and took him with his yellow beard for Haggai.
They set up a cry and in seconds tore the clothes off poor Small's back. They aimed to mock how he was circumcised and work God knows what other mischief on his flesh, and had they only held him long enough to find his parts as whole as theirs, it might have saved his skin. But Small broke free and Bed them naked down the nave. His soft flesh flickered white as milk as through Saint Margaret's shade he hooted e e e e k! with what by then was half of Yorkshire on his tail.
He doubled back then as I've seen hares do. Who can say but that he thought to find in me his only friend? And so I might have been indeed, but even as he threw himself into my arms, the pack was on him. The cobblers stabbed him with their awls in throat, breast, belly while Godric, drenched in blood, fell back beneath his broad beamed, spouting corpse.
The folly of the mob killed Small, and greater follies followed still.
First, word went round it was the Jews that killed him. They said that Small had come upon a Jew dishonoring a Christian tomb and pointed to the puddle Small himself had made to prove that they were right. When Small set out to drive the villain off, they said, six other Jews leapt forth. These six, it seems, the doughty Small did battle with, unaided and unarmed, till one crept up by stealth to pin him from behind while yet another jabbed him in the side just where the Roman lance pierced Christ. Thus weaver Small died Peregrine the Martyr.
Second, they claimed the blood of martyred Small worked miracles. A man born dumb prayed three whole Aves through aloud without one fault when but a drop of it was placed upon his tongue. A silver coin that chanced to fall in it was turned to gold, and from the holes the awls had dug, a mist was seen to rise that shaped itself into a holy cross.
Third, there were folk that vied to give as much as six French knives or a pair of ivory combs for a scrap no bigger than a leaf of the garment Small had bled upon. That garment was peddler Godric's Own, of course, for Small had bled and died in Godric's arms. He peddled it off in bits and pieces to the last dank thread, then slit a cat's throat on another still and peddled off as much again.
Who knows? He might be peddling cat gore still but that the mighty Flambard called a halt. Already a score or more of Jews had paid for Small's death with their skins, and Flambard feared that as the martyr's fame spread farther yet, more Jews would fall to Christian zeal. He knew that each Jew fallen was a 7ew the less to lay a golden egg whenever William Redhead cackled, so Flambard sent the word if Godric wasn't gone from Bishop's Lynn before the sun went down, he'd never see it up again. And Godric went.
He paid for passage on a boat bound north and after three days' up wind battling reached an isle girt round with cliffs so steep there was no place to moor except an iron ring embedded in the stone. He had them make fast there, then scrambled up the rocks to wait until the boat was gone to work his stealth.
Thus, Master Reginald, set down in your book how it was through a martyr's death that godly Godric's peddling prospered and how the chancellor of an anointed king was the one by whom he first set foot on holy Farne.
How Godric fared on the holy isle of Farne.
HERE is what I found on Fame. I found an old H man sleeping on a bed of stone. Campion was everywhere and grey winged gulls. His lips were still, but had he opened them to speak my name, I think that I'd have followed to the world's far rim. Later, I saw him bent over a spade. I called to him, but he did not even raise his head. When I reached the place where he had stood, I found him gone. I wept and wept I do not know how long. Then as I'd come to do, I buried all my wealth from Bishop's Lynn between a clump of heather and a fish shaped rock.
I'd brought some cheese but had no stomach for it then. I'd told the boatman I wanted to do penance for my sins and bade him come to fetch me the next day. He said he would. He was a tall, rough fellow with a salty tongue, and yet I knew I trusted him.
Great as my need for penance was, I watched the birds instead. There were black backed guillemots with crimson feet and gulls and terns so thick you would have thought that Farne itself had wings. The rocks were limed with droppings, the sea air salt and soft with spray. I stood and heard above the surf the creaking sadness of the gulls. A little way apart rose great stone pinnacles like fingers from the sea, some broken off, some with their summits lost in cloud. If Aedlward's had been a giant's hand and turned to stone for birds to nest on, I think it would have looked like that. I wondered if the old man watched it too. That night I saw him yet again.
Whether or not I dreamed, I did not know, but I saw him pick a moonlit path to where I lay and then sit down. He put a finger to his lips and only then I saw he held a sleeping hare with silken ears laid hat against his fur.
“I swooned for hunger once,” he said, “and this one stroked me with his tongue until I waked. Glythwin is his name. He shall pray for you, Godric. Perhaps you know that when hares pray, the ears of God grow long as theirs to hear.
“Thank him for me then, Father,” I said.
“When hares nip, though, the sting is sharp,” he said. “The night I died, they waved lit torches to and fro from that high ledge behind you there to tell my monks on Lindisfarne the news. Would you believe it, though? There was not one of them awake. So Glythwin sank his teeth into the abbot”s toe. You should have seen the jig he did with one foot tucked beneath him like a stork!“
“You say that you were dead, and yet you saw?” I said.
“Not only saw but laughed,” he said, “till tears ran down.
“Would I be right that you're a ghost then, Father, and you haunt this place?”
“Ah well, and if it comes to that,” he said, “your shadow fell here long before your foot, and that's a kind of haunting too. Farne had long been calling you, I mean, before you heard at last and came.”
“I heard no call, Father,” I said. “I came here as a stranger, and I came by chance.”
“Was it as a stranger and by chance you wept?” he said, then let me wonder at his words a while before he spoke again. “When a man leaves home, he leaves behind some scrap of his heart. Is it not so, Godric?”
I thought of Burcwen waiting with her basket in the rain and how I kissed my father's head, and nodded yes.
“It's the same with a place a man is going to,” he said. “Only then he sends a scrap of his heart ahead.'' ”It's true there's something fetching here,“ I said, ”but I had no aim to come, Father, nor have I any aim to stay.“
“Nor shall you either,” he said. “Your heart's no guillemot to make this isle your rookery. It was right you came to fold your wings a while and get your bearings for the flight to come. But your true nesting place lies farther on.”
“Lies where ” I asked.
He said, “Godric, this much at least I know for sure. Until you reach it, every other place you find will fret you like a cage.”
The hare had come awake. He raised his ears. The old man set him on the ground. He hopped to where I lay and crouched there with the stars behind his head, I wondered if already he was saying prayers for me and how you prayed with four legs and a tail.
“You know my name, Father,” I said. “Now may I ask what yours may be?”
“I never liked it much,” he said. “It always makes me think of how a frog sounds plopping in a pond. Cuth bert! But that's the way they christened me.”
“Holy Mother of God!” I cried. “Then you're the holy saint himself!”
“Ah well,” he said. “To Gossip Guillemot I'm just a bald head like an egg. To God, who knows ” Since holiness was all he knew, I think he did not know his own. I went to my knees before him then, for from ancient Saxon times Saint Cuthbert's fame and fear were great.
“Oh forgive me, your worship, for I have sinned,” I said. “Bless me, for if I'm not yet damned for good and all, I've only got a spiderleg to go.” Then I told him the tale of Peregrine Small and how I slew a cat for blood and sold false relies off for true to honest folk at Bishop's Lynn. My eyes were filled with tears of shame.
For a wonder, it was the cat he asked me of. What manner of cat, he said, and had it suffered cruelly?
“Only a common street cat, sire,” I said. “Some bony beggar cat with ragged ears and twisted tail. As to his suffering, I fear I thought no more of that than of a pig's at sticking time. I think he didn't die at once, but even there I can't be sure.”
Cuthbert gave a cry and, gathering up the hare again, knelt down. The moon made silver of them both as Cuthbert prayed.
“O thou who art the sparrow's friend,” he said, “have mercy on this world that knows not even when it sins. O holy dove, descend and roost on Godric here so that a heart may hatch in him at last. Amen.”
Then he rose and placed his hand on me, nor was it any ghostly hand but warm and strong with life. “Godric, thy sins are all forgiven thee,” he said. “Go now. Do good. For there's no good a man does in this world, however small, but bears sweet fruit though he may never taste of it himself.”
“Father, will we meet again?” I said and grasped the hem of his coarse cloak.
“You will see Farne again,” he said, “for where your treasure is, there shall your heart be too.” Then before I could speak more, I fell into a sleep so deep I did not wake till well past dawn.
The boatman's foot was in my ribs.
“Rise up, man!” he said. “Or else the birds will shit you white as a Farne rock.”
The sky was grey behind him. I could see his mast whip back and forth above the ledge. The man grinned down at me through crooked teeth. I asked him who he was.
“I'm Roger Mouse,” he said. It was the first I ever heard the name of him who was to be my first fast friend.
How Godric met a boar and a leper and how' people sought him in his cell.
I CAN no longer hold my water and itch in places I haven't scratched these twenty years for the clownish stiffness in my bones. It's Reginald that has to swab my bum and deems the task a means of grace. I've got an old dam's dugs. My privities hang loose as poultry from a hook. My head wags to and fro. There's times my speech comes out so thick and gobbled I'd as well to save my wind. But the jest is bitterer yet, for deep inside this wrecked and ravaged hull, there sails a young man still.
How I rage at times to smite with these same fists I scarce can clench! How I long, when woods are green, to lark and leap on shanks grown dry as sticks! Let a maid but pass my way with sport in her eye and her braid a swinging, and I burn for her although my wick's long since burnt out and in my heart's eye see her as the elders saw Susanna at her bath her belly pale and soft as whey, her pippins, her slender limbs and thistledown. So ever and again young Godric's dreams well up to flood old Godric's prayers, or prayers and dreams reach God in such a snarl he has to comb the tangle out, and who knows which he counts more dear.
Is he asleep, old Godric? Is he awake? Does he himself know which? He lies there staring at a crack. He mumbles holiness. They say he first saw light in Bastard William's day, and now it's Henry Second, Becket's bane, that calls the tune from France.
They say that Godric's body's scored from when the Devil, shaped like a wild boar, fetched him down and tore him. They say he healed a leper with a kiss. They kneel there waiting for him to rise or stir while Godric mocks them in his peacock heart.
What can such whispering gawkers know of hot, foul breath, he thinks, of slobbered tusks and eyes like coals? Fierce from a thicket it sprang on him with snuffling rage, but Godric knew it for the Prince of Darkness by the golden circlet on its brow and signed it with the cross. From snout and pizzle blood spewed forth. Then, as it screamed, its maw filled up with flames till there was nothing left of it except a stench so vile that Godric swooned.
And let them say what cost the kiss I gave one rainy day on Dover Road.
I see the shape approaching still. Its clothes are patched with white and on its head a tall red hat all b
ent and faded pale from years of weather. Frick frack, frick frack its rattle goes, and as I climb the bank to let it pass, the very mist shrinks back to Bee its touch. The mire is gullied deep, and as it nears my perch, it trips and topples to the ground. It tries to rise but flounders down again. It whimpers like a child that's being flogged. The rain is pelting hard, and flat on its belly in the muck it might well drown for all I know. So less from pity than from fear to have a murder on my soul, I go to help it to its feet. As I bend down, it turns to face me. Then I see it has no face.
I can't say if it was a man I kissed or maid or why I kissed at all. I've seen them make the sick eat broth by holding it so close the savor draws them on. Maybe misery has a savor too so if you're near enough, sick though you be with sin, your heart can't help but sup. In any case, I closed my eyes against that foul and ashen thing that once was human flesh like mine and kissed its pain. When it reached out to me, I fled till I was far enough away to puke my loathing in a ditch.
The tale they tell is of a leper cleansed. I do not know nor seek to know, for pride lies one way, rue the other. But from that time the word went forth that there was healing in my hands. Something was in my hands at least and rests there yet though they're all knotted now and stiff like claws. Folk come from miles to have me touch them. Could I but touch the churlishness within myself or kiss old Godric clean!
Here's how it happens when they come. They go to the monks at Durham first. “Where be the way to the hermit?” they ask. They say, “We're here to see the one as cools his holy bum in Wear come sun or snow.” “To what end see him?” ask the monks, for to some I could be just as well a hanging or a calf that's got two heads. Others would sell me fowl, or have me bless some trinket, or take a snippet of my beard back home to keep off warts. And some there are who come to try me if they can.
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