Her hands were blue as Father's lips with woad from dyeing fustian for my lord, and she seized me with blue fingers round the wrists.
“Godric, you know the world,” she said. “You're wise in worldly ways. You've months before you join your ship. By the paps that gave you suck and now hang flat as sandal soles, I pray you come with me to Rome. Think how my Aedlward rattles with the cold!”
And then again she hid her face and shook.
Did she truly dream her dream? Or did she only feign it as a way to flee her grief a while, to flee poor William's gabbling too and the wounding ways of me and Burcwen? Such were the sinful thoughts I had at least. Rut I said I'd think on it and let her know.
Why should I go to Rome? I asked myself. To free my father's soul? To please my mother To flee, like her, the loving pains of home? To flee myself? Saint Mary, pray for us. Undo our snarl of false and true. And in the end, I said I'd go.
I asked Burcwen to come too, for this time it was not the voyage of my life that was at stake as theretofore but one that had a known and certain end. And Aedwen too would be along lest in the lonely dark we should forget that we were kin. And most of all I craved my sister's company, the ease and mirth we'd known in younger days. Even William gave us leave. He'd have to stay behind to work his croft and serve my lord, he said, but needed none to dandle him the time we were away.
But Burcwen said she would not go, and it was I her words were aimed to strike.
“Let those who will go dallying,” she said. “My friend and I must husband here at home.” But by the look of her red ears and trembling lip, I knew it was herself her shaft struck deepest.
How the waters rose, and Godric spoke of time, and the road to Rome.
AILRED was with me when old Wear went mad. Weeks of rain and melting snow had harried him to where he leaped his banks and roared through rocks and trees until my cell was all but ringed about. Then more rain lashed him on to greater fury still, and we woke at dawn to find him growling at our door.
Up to our knees in rolling surge we waded to the little church I'd hacked and hammered out of wood in honor of Our Lady years before. I was only a lad of eighty odd and Ailred but a babe of forty, give or take, yet still it was no easy task to scramble to the roof. I got there first and hauled up Ailred afterward, who barked his shins along the way. I scraped my own arm raw against the eave. So abbot and hermit there we were, perched high like two old ravens in the wet to croak the time away till Wear grew calm. Monk Reginald was gone, praise God, so we were spared the gaggling of a goose.
Poor Ailred's cough was fierce. Brecch! Brecch! he'd go till tears ran down his cheeks and his bones clattered, for he was little more than bones. It was the crack of woodsmen axeing oak, and if he tried to speak, it started worse, so I spoke most. Perhaps it was my thought our time was running out that put the matter in my mind, but time was what I spoke about while gentle Ailred listened. His way of listening was itself a kind of talking, though. Say what you will, it said. I hear, I pardon, all.
“Ailred, I know hours well enough,” I said. “Stick a twig into the soil and watch the shadow turn. That's hours. Or take old Wear out there. Let him rise another inch or two, and either we'll grow gills or shipwreck sure. That's hours for you. It's inch by inch and hour by hour to death. It's hours gone and hours still to go. No puzzle there. A child can count it out. But what is time itself, dear friend? What is the sea where hours float? Am I daft, or is it true there's no such thing as hours past and other hours still to pass, but all of them instead are all at once and never gone? Is there no time lost that ever was Is there no time yet to come that's not here now?” BRECCH! It shook him so, I had to snatch him in my arms for fear he'd tumble off our roost. Somewhere beyond the clouds the sun was dimly up. The light and churning waters both were grey. Ailred drew his cloak about his ears. His jaws shook fierce with cold but somehow shook his message out. “We're old, we're old,” he said.
“Yes!” I cried. “Perhaps it comes with growing old, these eyes that see as clear what used to be as now they see what is, or even clearer yet. Mine even see what will be too. When I was sailoring, I used to see the weather three days off, and now I sometimes see the deaths of men that still have years to live. The lad that brings me eggs, for one. He brings me pails of Wear as well, and more than eggs and pails. His name is Perkin. Surely as I see the saucy way he winks when he kneels down for blessing, I see the held he'll fall on battling for a king that's not yet crowned. And this same patch of earth where I've lived now more winters through than I can count, I know how it will look when I am dust. The candles. The felled trees. The throngs of strangers in strange garb that come to pray.” I closed my eyes to curtain off the sight.
“But oh, the times that were, they're worse!” I cried. “For now I'm long past mending them. Yet still they flood their banks like Wear and roar at me. Oh Ailred, is the past a sea old men can founder in before their time and drown ”
I thought of Noah on his deck with all the world awash. He had a beard like mine, an anchor for a nose and swimming eyes. “Did Noah cast a glance astern like me” I said. “Did Noah, dreaming in his ark, still tramp the earth that forty days and nights had swallowed up? While waiting for the dove to bring some sprig of hope, did Noah travel in his mind like Godric roads still flooded fathoms deep in time? What sort of hermit can he be who has a heart that gads about the very world he's left behind for Christ ”
That little house I'd built Our Lady was my ark, and in all the watery waste of Wear that lapped us round, Ailred seemed my only sprig of hope. The rain made seaweed of our beards. The chill wind flapped our clothes like sails. Who would have guessed that he was master of the Rievaulx monks? Who would have thought that people journeyed miles to touch my hem. Breech! Breech! His hacking doubled him in half. I took his hand.
“I once saw Rome,” I said. “I took my mother. We plodded many a mile. I plod them still.”
And as I told him how we went, what used to be became what was, as now again it dots become what is.
It is the Lady month of May, and all is green. I mark the snowy fleece of lambs. Strawberry leaves I mark, and campion, and bluebells blue for Mary, and churchbells too that shake the high blue timbers of the sky. Cuckoos sing and throstles. The thickets buzz with bees. Barefoot lads prod sweetbreathed beasts with creamy flanks to market fairs. Oxen haul carts of stone for Norman keeps. As we near London, minstrels and chapmen jostle tinkers, quacks, and nuns. Priests with banners lead pilgrims like ourselves who tote long staffs with hooks to hang their bottles on. LIVE! LIVE! I hear Mouse cry again, for everything we see breathes bold with life. Even old Aedwen is a girl again.
Sometimes there's a stream to ford or a rain filled pit where folk have delved for clay to mend their walls, and then I set her on my back where she rides as light as air and lighter still for all the cares she's left at home. Else, see her at my side gay as a serf let out of bond. If it's fair, we sleep by hedges. If it storms, there's monks to take us in or taverns. They're wretched places, taverns, full of whores and mice and brawls, but it's no matter. Louts thump their flasks against the board to beat a tune for some plump lass to jig to till her pippins jounce like piglings in a sack. Then see them pop the seams at last to cool their rosy snorters in the air! Old Aedwen hides her face and shakes and shakes. And pilgrim Godric goggles like an owl.
We ship from Dover. A priest thieves Aedwen's bedding on the waves, but she's too busy puking to mind much. “Poor Aedlward's in Purgatory. I'm in Hell!” she wails, and after we have docked in France, she says for many days the earth keeps pitching still as though the world's itself a deck gone wild. And so it is.
All roads lead to Rome, they say, and ours leads us a crooked way. Great cities come and go. In Tours I catch a flux. In Lyons Aedwen twists her foot so I must load her on my back again. In Genoa a man found murdering a maid with child is cruelly punished. We watch them rope his arms and legs to four hot horses, then drive them to a rage with rods till each p
ulls hard a different way. But the man is young and stout and will not tear until the hangman risks their flying hooves to hack him with a sword about the joints, whereat he comes apart at last, and Aedwen swoons.
Except that there they have no end, the pains of Hell can be no sharper than the pains we suffer here, nor the Fiend himself more fiendish than a man. Oh Queen of Heaven, pray for us. Have pity on the pitiless for thy dear Son our Savior s sake.
At home the leaves are falling sere when we behold at last the seven hills of Rome.
Ailred touched my sleeve. He aimed a bony finger at the sky. The rain had nearly stopped. A ragged cloud had blown apart to bare a patch of blue no bigger than a hand. And through that rent a blessed shaft of sun shot down. It was as if a dove came winging back with olive in his mouth.
“You speak of time, Godric,” Ailred said. His cough for once was gone. “Time is a storm. Times past and times to come, they heave and flow and leap their bounds like Wear. Hours are clouds that change their shapes before your eyes. A dragon fades into a maiden's scarf. A monkey's grin becomes an angry fist. But beyond time's storm and clouds there's timelessness. Godric, the Lord of Heaven changes not, and even when our view's most dark, he's there above us fair and golden as the sun.” And so it is.
“God's never gone,” my gentle, ailing Ailred said. “It's only men go blind.”
We heard a shout and looked around. It was Reginald poling toward us on a raft. His cowl hung soaked about his ears. His gills were green. He struck our chapel with the hollow thwack of wood on wood and helped us down.
“At last you're good for something, monk,” I said. For once, when he embraced me, I was almost glad.
Of Rome, a maiden, and a bear.
JACOB labored seven years to win fair Rachel for la bride, but when he woke upon the marriage bed, he found the rascal Lot had slipped her weakeyed sister in her place. Thus was it when we came to Rome. We'd traveled months to reach the Holy City, but in its place we found unholy wreck. “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return,” says God to Adam for his sins. But before we're dust, we're rot and worms and stench like wretches' bodies hung in chains. And so she was, poor Rome. Bits of flesh still clung to her like rags. Her very grin was ghoulish. She was a corpse without a shroud.
The heavy air was hard to breathe and swarmed with biting nits. Offal floated in the Tiber where poor folk drank. Dark windows stared at us like empty sockets. Rough stairs and archways beckoned us to evil courts. The reek of dung was everywhere. In tumbled shops they vended holy wares like trinkets. A coin would buy a splinter of our Savior's cross, a thimble of the Blessed Virgin's milk, or locks from good Saint Peter's pate. From crannies in the walls the painted eyes of saints gazed out at beggars, whores, and barefoot monks with candles in their hands. Knights on their way to wrest Jerusalem from the Turks stomped by in hauberks made of countless rings of steel. We saw great cardinals robed in red with perfumed kerchiefs at their lips and tresses oiled in ringlets.
Once we could have touched the Pope himself. He rode a milk white mule with purple saddle cloth and silver bridle. We knelt to ask his blessing, but though he glanced our way, I think it was not we he saw. His eye was sharp and vexed as though he sought some face he could not find or feared to find. When Aedwen reached her hand to him, his white mule startled and might have pitched him to the stones but for a monk who seized the rein to gentle him. We could have been a pair of Roman cats for all the Holy Father knew.
All this was the flesh that clung like tatters to the bones of Rome. The bones were sadder still. The bones were Caesar's.
Less than a score of years before, a Norman duke that held his fiefdom from the Pope had come and sacked the place. Before him, wild men from the north and hairy Huns and Lombards all had spent their fury there. The city Caesar knew lay heaped in ruins, and Aedwen gave a Roman with a crooked back a copper brooch to show us what was left.
Through groves of shattered columns he led the way, gabbling in a tongue we did not know of glories past and gone. He showed us terraces where kings had supped now gone to weeds and creeping vines. He showed us temples strewn with gods more broken than the horse torn wretch in Genoa. He limped through marble limbs and heads and skirts and pointed out a monstrous font where once, he told by pointing at his mouth, the priests had served the gods their meat but now was turned into a stinking jakes.
I carried Aedwen on my shoulders up a hill where goats leapt at their lecheries and dropped their berries through the fallen halls where Caesar and his lords had hatched the laws that ruled the world. Poor folk grew cabbage there and tethered dogs to poles to howl the ravens off. Roaring like a lion through his yellowed teeth and making at us with his claws as if to tear our flesh, he took us to a roofless shell as vast as all of Bishop's Lynn, and there I guessed was where in Peter's day they cast poor Christian folk to savage beasts. I wept and Aedwen too except she had no tears but only that dry grief that shook her like the wind. She had not even strength enough by then to hide her face, so I hid mine instead, thus not to seem to goggle at her pain. When I peeped out again, our guide had gone and taken off the net of cheese we'd bought to sup upon.
Why did we weep? I asked myself. We wept for all that grandeur gone. We wept for martyrs cruelly slain. We wept for Christ, who suffered death upon a tree and suffers still to see our suffering. But more than anything, I think, we wept for us, and so it ever is with tears. Whatever be their outward cause, within the chancel of the heart it's we ourselves for whom they finally fall.
We'd tramped so far from home and found so little for our pains. We'd started forth so full of hope and gaiety who now sat sore of foot among the rubble of those brutish lists. Still darker yet, we'd come to pray to God for mercy on my father's soul, and lo, save only for those heaps of marble limbs and heads, we found no God in Rome. If God was there, then like the Pope the eyes he cast on us were blind.
And yet to pray we'd come and pray we did. We climbed Saint Peter's stairs upon our knees and stopped at each to plead for Aedlward. Inside, the church was full of smoke. Gold vessels gleamed. Holy paintings glowed upon the walls as priests moved by with tapers. Some were pilgrims like ourselves. Some, I think, were only there for shelter. A crone so old she looked like Caesar's nurse sat selling badges crossed with Peter's keys to stitch upon our cloaks. A lass so young the tender breasts she bared were scarcely more than pigeon eggs made clear enough the wares she sold although she spoke no word I understood. A silk capped cardinal with pretty boys in cowls to serve him sang mass at the high altar like a love sick maid, and from his hands we took the blood and flesh of Christ. A trapped bird beat his wings above.
Aedwen and I lay flat upon the paving stones where underneath they say the bones of Peter rest.
“Holy Jesu, gentle Lord,” I prayed, “have pity, for thy friend the fisherman's sake, on my poor father. His great ears were always cold in life, and now in Purgatory's thrall they're like to freeze. Cast down thy nets and fish him from the icy depths. Forgive him all he ever did or left undone that was not pleasing in thy sight. Oh haul him up that he may sing thy praise in Paradise!”
I breathed my words into the chill, grey stone, but the lips of him I prayed to, like the stones themselves, were still. When you butt the bottom of the sea, there is no farther you can fall.
Now shift your gaze.
See Godric and his mother trudging home.
Somewhere along the way they come upon a grove of fig trees on a hill. They pluck some fruit and sit them down to sup. The fruit is sweet, and sweet and warm the sun. Aedwen leans against a twisted trunk and buzzes off to slumber like a bee. Godric only sits and stares. He's empty as a drum inside his skin, but there's a kind of peace in emptiness. No fear or hope awakes in him. He thinks no thoughts. He hardly breathes. His eyes alone are live.
Slowly then, before he knows a name for it or cares, a shape heaves into view among the farther trees. It's dark and shaggy with a clumsy gait. It halts to sniff the air. It turns and rolls it
s head about and gapes, then raises up and plants among the leaves its snout and two great paws. And only then does Godric see it for a bear.
With snuffing greed it gobbles up the fruit, then claws another branch for more until the juice runs dripping from its chops. The sod beneath is thick with fallen figs, and plumping down on all four pads again, it roots and wallows in them like a set. At last, with swollen paunch, it lumbers off a pace or two, turns tail and there, in Godric's view, voids all that sweetness out its hinder part. Then Godric turns to see if Aedwen saw and finds a maiden at her side.
How can an old man sing a young man's song but croakingly? What colors can he find in words to limn a face so fresh it blooms within him still? Say flaxen hair? Say eyes of periwinkle blue? Say lily brow and throat, and cheeks the tender rose of shells? Say, rather, only wondrous fair and seemly, then say no more lest old man's wind should puff the dream away. She smiled at me. She said her name was Gillian.
“You are the bear, dear heart,” she said. “The figs are Christ's sweet grace and charity. You've supped on him for years and years, then spewed him out your nether end in lust and lies and thievery. Thus by your sinning, like the loathly bear, you turn to dung the precious fruit that else would make you whole. Repent and mend your ways, I pray, lest all be lost.”
“Oh Gillian, stay and be my strength!” I cried, but before my lips were closed, she'd gone, and there was Aedwen staring at me like an owl.
“Did you see her, Mother, where she went” I cried. “The maid that came and spoke with me?”
“I saw no maid. Lie down,” she said. “These Romish figs have turned your Saxon brain.”
Of a band of pilgrims and a parting in a wood.
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