I remember a plump maid once with apples in her cheeks and drooping lids. She'd finished telling all her fleshly sins and knelt for shriving when all at once she flung her clothes above her head and nimble as a tumbler at a fair went topsy turvy with her bum aloft. I had my own sport then. Tune was sleeping in his jar but at my call shot forth and lunged at her. Hey nonny nonny off she went then! Nor did she stop, I'll vow, till Orkney rocks.
The monks do the sieving, as I say, and send to Godric only those deemed worthy, though I'd guess that if a gallows rat should slip a coin into their cowls, they'd send him too. And to each they give a cross of plaited straw to be his proof they've sent him. Else Reginald will drive them off.
To touch me and to feel my touch they come. To take at my hands whatever of Christ or comfort such hands have. Of their own, my hands have nothing more than any man's and less now at this tottering, lamewit age of mine when most of what I ever had is more than mostly spent. But it's as if my hands are gloves, and in them other hands than mine, and those the ones that folk appear with roods of straw to seek. It's holiness they hunger for, and if by some mad grace it's mine to give, if I've a holy hand inside my hand to touch them with, I'll touch them day and night. Sweet Christ, what other use are idle hermits for?
But then from time to time a day will dawn when suddenly my blood runs chill for thinking that what holiness I have is mine to keep lest, losing it, I lose the hand within my hand, my own heart's heart, my own life's life. And then I fend them off like leeches come to suck my blood. Reginald lets them in. I scowl at them. Or will not speak. Or feign some fatal ill or sleep.
Or sometimes, fierce with rage, I'll even crouch on hands and knees and shake my hair and beard into a snarl and roar at them. And sometimes even then, so great their need, they'll risk their skins by kneeling down to kiss me as they might a leper.
How Godric became Deric and sailed the seas with Roger Mouse.
WE stood on the deck of Saint Esprit, myself and Mouse. She was running free before a wind that shook our beards, and Mouse kept his cap pulled down about his ears. He had his arm around my shoulder and smelled of onions. Once in a while the sea would crest, but mostly it was great blue hills with foam for heather. A swell would rise and glitter in the sun, then slide and sink into a dale. A dale would heave into a hill.
“The waves are like the years the way they melt!” Mouse called against the wind. “Great Alfred's arse, while yet we can, we better. . .” and then when a gust blew off his nether words, he sang it out for fair. “LIVE! LIVE!” he cried. And such was Mouse. He lived and gave me lessons in the art.
He called me by the name I'd told him there at Fame. Gudericus, I said, when asked. He said it was too much to mouth and chopped it down to Deric. So Deric I was to him from that day forth, nor did he ever know of Godric. Why did I play him false like that? I think in some way it was Cuthbert's doing. “Do good,” he bade me. He laid that holy charge on Godric's head. But goodness was not Godric's meat. Wealth was he after and sport and hazard, so rather than deny the old saint's bidding, he denied his proper name instead.
The boat Mouse sailed me in to Farne did not belong to him but to a Newcastle shipwright by the name of Curran that he let her from. Curran was growing dim of wit with age so it took no greater trick to gull him of his craft than the leaky tale of how we'd lost her in a squall that splintered her against the rocks. A broad beamed, lumpish thing she was, forever thumped by every wave, but we hugged the shore with her, and she served us for a year or two of seaborne sharping. We hauled fish in her, wool and hides. We put in at fairs. What we picked up from the dullard Scots for groats we'd peddle off for pence from Yarmouth south to Ramsgate, then turn back and try to fill our purse the other way. Here or there we'd hire louts to help with loading, then keep them on as crew until the time came round to pay them for their pains. When that day dawned, we'd go ashore and in some pothouse ply them so with beer their brains were all awash, then leave them there to wonder when they waked if Mouse and Deric both were nothing but a dream.
One of these, a rogue named Colin we'd already gulled some months before, we chanced upon again inside a Portsmouth stews. Mouse had a meaty wench with painted pippins and I a wall eyed beauty with one hand lopped off for thieving when Colin came clomping in and spotted us. It was fox and geese then down the lane, and Colin with a wicked blade and Mouse and I as bare as birth, our goosenecks flapping. Thanks be to God we somehow got away and cast off before he sniffed us out again. And so it ever was, for from the start my Mouse and I had luck.
We traded Curran's tub for shares in other craft, each fleeter and stouter than the last, and each time cast our cozening peddlers' nets still wider yet till we were catching gulls and boobies as far afield as Flanders, Denmark, France. And thus we saw the world, did Mouse and Deric, as also did the world see us. I won't say either side was better for the sight, but ah, what times we had! Such romps and routs and carefree sinning that if we'd died, unshriven as we were, we'd both be dangling now on red hot hooks in Hell. What's more we soon grew rich as well. By the time that I was thirty odd and Mouse's beard already showed a sprig or two of grey, we owned each one a moiety of the Saint Esprit. She had a red sail and a high, sharp prow and a proper crew by then that we paid proper wages. And after a time, along with all our hides and fish, we took to stowing pilgrims too.
From Bristol we'd haul them to Santiago de Compostela in seven days and back in five with the wind our way. They'd gather on the shore all swaddled in their shaggy robes and round felt hats, armed with their staffs and bedding and bottles. A priest would bless their setting forth. He even threw another blessing in for free to cover both the Saint Esprit and Mouse and me. We'd load them then. The old and sick we'd swing aboard with ropes, the rest would clamber on the best they could with the freshening breeze to toss the women's skirts on high, and how the crew would squint and crane to see what they could see. They were Venetian seamen mostly, as brown and spry as apes, and naked save for clouts to hide their lechery. As the anchor was weighed, a pilgrim often leapt upon a barrel at the mast and with a cross clutched to his breast would lead them in a parting psalm. “Had not the Lord been on our side, the proudful waters would have swamped our souls,” he'd chant when we put out. Months later when we moored again, “Praise to the good Christ and Virgin kind.” In between they'd leave their sins with good Saint lames in Spain and also, if their luck was lean, their pence and chattels in the holds of pirates.
Many times we were bearded and sacked. It happened most at night, and often they were merchant seamen like ourselves instead of true sea robbers. They'd draw along as if for news or succor, and the next we knew, they'd have their grapples out. Sometimes they wouldn't stop at honest thieving either but would take some poor folk off to sell as slaves. At Narbonne, on the coast of France, they say a pair of Christian souls that Jesus died to save would buy a mule. Mouse and Deric they'd bind fast with ropes so there was nothing we could do but lie there gasping on the deck like fish.
Deric it was who, shame to say, from master villains such as these learned how to work some villainy of his own. Before the Saint Esprit put off, he'd hide himself aboard so not a pilgrim ever saw his face. Then when they were several days from shore and it was night, he'd grime his face and knot his hair and with a handful of the crew would man the cockboat that we towed astern. Then he'd have them row around amidships where the pilgrims slept, throw up a ladder, and therewith lead his men aboard with daggers clenched between their teeth and howling like a pack of fiends from Hell. “Help! Pirates! Help!” the pilgrims cried.
To dupe them further, Deric and his men would lash Mouse to the mast where he would feign to curse and threaten while they shook each pilgrim like a sack until the last few groats came tumbling out. Then over the side into the cock again to split with Mouse some later time, nor any pilgrim ever saw the ruse.
Sometimes Mouse would play the pirate's part and Deric let himself be bound, and then they'd play the gammon ou
t the same except that Mouse found pence less sweet than certain other fruit. Right there beneath the stars, in sight of God and man, I've seen him so caught up in tumbling pilgrim maids he'd clean forget the other treasure he was there to take. One time my anger grew so hot I broke my bonds and doused him with a pail of chill, grey sea. But Mouse was plunged so deep into his work, I think he never even knew.
Nonetheless our fights were few those first, far days. We loved each other, Mouse and I, and our love was born of need, for so it always is with mortal folk. God's love's all gift, for God has need of naught, but human folk love one another for the way they fill each other's emptiness. I needed Mouse for his strength and mirth and daring. Mouse needed me for my mettle and my wit. Even when the stars were mostly hid, I knew to plot a course by stars, and my parrot beak was ever keen to peck the weather's secret out. I could sniff a gale some three days off, and though we voyaged leagues away from home, I always knew when rain came trickling through my father's thatch or when the sun shone bright on Burcwen's hair.
Such was Godric's roistering at sea. His neck grew thick. His chest grew deep. His beard bloomed to a wild black bush. His wealth piled up like dung. He feared God little, men still less. He wenched and broiled. He peddled, gulled and stole. He helmed the Saint Esprit through many a black and windy sea. And yet. And yet. In the midst of all those stormy times there were moments too of calm when every now and then he'd set his sails again for Fame.
The holy isle would rise with pinnacles and sheer, grey cliffs all laden soft with birds. Her air was white with wings. Her silence broken only by their cries. Her winds were chill and sweet with salt.
I'd scale ashore and find the fish shaped rock. I'd dig down with a spade so I'd be sure my trove was safe, then lay with it whatever more I had while Mouse kept watch on deck below. He'd tell the crew the lie I first told him, how I was there for penance for my sins. Thus if they chanced to spy me kneeling at my work, perhaps they even thought he told the truth. Who knows? In some way deeper than he knew, perhaps he did.
Once I thought I saw Saint Cuthbert's hare. He was crouched above me on the ledge, but when I called to him, he fled. And once I thought I saw the holy saint himself.
I was scattering pebbles on the fresh turned soil to hide my tracks, my fingers stiff with cold, when something caused the birds to fear. A host of them rose up and filled the air. They creaked and swirled and scattered down, and it was in their midst I thought I saw him stand. His beard and cloak were white as they. He was leaning on a stick as if he'd traveled far. I thought his face was full of grief.
I reached my hands to him, but when I moved, the birds flew off, unfurled above the water like a flag. Where they had been, there was no more to see but only heather and a pile of stones. I knelt there till my beard froze stiff with tears.
How Godric journeyed home again and Aedwen's dream.
WITH red sail ragged and a battered hull, the Saint Esprit was in a sorry state, so we put in at Newcastle and docked at Curran's wharf for caulk and patching. Then Mouse and I went off our separate ways to meet again in six months' time. Mouse had a mind, he said, to live like royalty a while, so he got his beard clipped short and bought a mantle trimmed with fox and crimson boots. He bought himself a dappled mare as well and set off at a trot like a Norman baron.
But Godric took a plainer way. Not only had he buried all he had on Fame, but that was Deric's wealth, not Godric's, and even if he'd stowed it in a wallet round his neck, he'd not have touched a coin. For even as he felt the soil beneath his feet, it was with Godric's feet he felt it, and Godric's was the face he set for home, clad only in his salt stiff cloak and seaman's leggings.
It was as Cuthbert said. When a man leaves home, some scrap of his heart waits there against his coming back, and it was to find that scrap again that he tramped through all those miles of Norfolk weather. Repentance also is a turning back, a going home, says Reginald. But no such godly tack as that did Godric trim to. He carried in his heart an empty place that only those he'd left behind could fill, and to that end alone he journeyed.
But when he reached his father's house at last, it was a house without a father. Aedwen told him, and her eyes told more, no longer blue but blear and hooded. At first she did not know him for her son but like a stranger's stammered forth his name a time or two, then ran her fingers down his bearded cheeks as if to comb the puzzle out.
“Those whiskers have been twelve years blooming, Mother,” he said. “The snout the same.” And then she knew.
“He's dead, Godric,” she said, nor was there any need to say the one she meant.
The sadness was I'd lost a father I had never fully found. It's like a tune that ends before you've heard it out. Your whole life through you search to catch the strain, and seek the face you've lost in strangers' faces.
“The grey cob kicked him in the groin while he was fettling,” Aedwen said. “For weeks he spat out blood. When he made water, that was bloody too. Godric, he could not even stand but on his hands and knees would crawl out to the croft and grub. One day we found him mad with fever. He thought there was a famine. He was eating earth. He died as he was calling out your name, Godric. Six years ago come Whitsuntide we buried him. The stone is there.”
Aedwen hid her face and shook. A wife has but so many tears to shed. When I took her in my arms, she was so spare I feared she'd break.
And Burcwen. How can I tell of Burcwen? It was as if the self same sun that had dried up my mother's life had greened my sister's. What had come out like leaves along her boughs was not the loveliness that fires the flesh of such as Mouse but loveliness like shade a man finds peace and coolness in.
“You've kept your word then, Godric,” Burcwen said. “You've come with treasure in your sack to build us that great house you said and make us rich.”
We stood beside my father's stone where I had laid a gillyflower down.
“There lies my treasure, Burcwen,” I said. “I think he never even knew.”
“Perhaps he knows,” she said.
“You'll be wedding some man soon,” I said, “and settling in his house.”
“Only the Man in the Moon,” she said. “I'll have no other. I'll dangle where you hung me till he cuts me down.”
“And what till then?” I asked.
“Don't be afraid, Godric,” Burcwen said. “I won't chase after you a second time. The child I was is buried deep as Tom Ball buried Father,” but when I turned to look at her, it was a pleading child I saw.
She did not speak her plea, for like our prayers to God, the deepest prayers we humans ask of one another speak but silence for their tongue. Yet I heard her wordless praying well, and in my heart I pondered what she asked.
What would become of a maid at sea with Pirates How could she ever understand why Deric buried wealth on Farne that would have made their fortune else? Where was a man with strength enough to lie alone on windwashed decks when such a one as she lay near with empty arms? So, like Almighty God himself, without a word, for both our sakes, I told her no.
I could as well have struck her. She paled and took her eyes from mine. She knelt to move my flower on the stone. And when she rose, a door had closed between us, whether to Hell or Heaven who can tell?
“Fiddledeedee,” she said and laughed a small, bent laugh. “I'd never leave here in a thousand year and him with no one else to keep him.” Thus she wanted me to think it was for William's sake she stayed at home, but I saw deeper. She stayed at home because once more I would not take her thence. It was her woman's pride that I had hurt and not her love that made her cleave to William.
And yet in some sad, cradling way she loved him too. Will Wagtongue was the name they called him by. As spiders spin out threads to swing on to some neighboring wall, so William spun out words to bridge him to his neighbors. Yet when they saw him floating near, they'd fly for shelter since, as spiders wrap their prey with silk, so William sought to bind folk fast with talk.
Poor soul, the m
ore he tried to prate his loneliness away, the lonelier they left him. Nor did he ever learn to play. As most folk work to live, he lived to work, to grub, to patch and heave and gather. When all the rest had quit the fields for supper, Will Wagtongue drudged on still. I see him tread the furrows, dark and spent against the flaming sky. I hear his footfall heavy at the door. I watch as Burcwen stands to greet him.
Friend she calls him, not William or brother, as if so he will know he has at least one friend. “Friend, sup,” she says. She hands a bowl to him. She squats beside him at the hearth, her hair aglow. He spoons his broth and prattles all the while. The juice runs down his chin. She wipes it clean. “Save your breath to munch with, friend,” she says. Perhaps he laughs a lentil in her eye, then gently thumbs it out.
She loves him for his need of her. She loves him for his needing of her need. She loves him as a flax to staunch her wounds.
She shies a glance at sailor Godric.
“I'd never leave him in a thousand year,” her silence says, and silently the sailor says Amen.
“Your father lies beneath a stone,” old Aedwen mumbles, dozing at her wheel, and Godric thinks how it's a stone as well they're all beneath. The stone is need and hurt and gall and tongue tied longing, for that's the stone that kinship always bears, yet the loss of it would press more grievous still.
After such fashion weeks went by till one day Aedwen told a dream. “Your father came to me,” she said. “He's in Purgatory for his sins, though few enough they were, if you ask me. Godric, his lips were blue, his poor feet sore with kibes. It's endless ice and winter there. His moans were piteous. 'Wife,' says he, 'for Jesu's sake have mercy. Hie thee to Rome and there at Peter's tomb pray for my soul's unfettering. Then I may fly to Paradise at last that else must tarry here to freeze my cullions off. Almighty God is never deaf, they say, to Pilgrims' cries.' ”
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