“Until we meet in Hell!” he cried across the rail and spat.
“Where Mouse stands, Hell is there!” I shouted back the best I could with three teeth gone. Somehow then I floundered through the swells till, broken both of heart and flesh, I reached the shore at last. It was the first I ever touched the selfsame earth our blessed Savior trod.
The last I saw of Mouse was standing on the deck with one hand raised to shade his eyes. It was as if, for all his wrath, he wanted to make sure I'd landed safe. And thus it came about that with the help of Mouse I saved a city and a king but lost a friend whose like I never found again nor ever hope to find.
Of Wear and Perkin and Godric's tomb.
HERE are the sounds of Wear. It rattles stone on stone. It sucks its teeth. It sings. It hisses like the rain. It roars. It laughs. It claps its hands. Sometimes I think it prays. In winter, through the ice, I've seen it moving swift and black as Tune, without a sound.
Here are the sights of Wear. It falls in braids. It parts at rocks and tumbles round them white as down or flashes over them in silver quilts. It tosses fallen trees like bits of straw yet spins a single leaf as gentle as a maid. Sometimes it coils for rest in darkling pools and sometimes leaps its banks and shatters in the air. In autumn I've seen it breathe a mist so thick and grey you'd never know old Wear was there at all.
Each day, for years and years, I've gone and sat in it. Usually at dusk I clamber down and slowly sink myself to where it laps against my breast. Is it too much to say, in winter, that I die? Something of me dies at least.
First there's the fiery sting of cold that almost stops my breath, the aching torment in my limbs. I think I may go mad, my wits so outraged that they seek to flee my skull like rats a ship that's going down. I puff. I gasp. Then inch by inch a blessed numbness comes. I have no legs, no arms. My very heart grows still. These floating hands are not my hands. The ancient flesh I wear is rags for all I feel of it.
“Praise, praise!” I croak. Praise God for all that's holy, cold, and dark. Praise him for all we lose, for all the river of the years bears off. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. Praise him for emptiness. And as you race to spill into the sea, praise him yourself, old Wear. Praise him for dying and the peace of death.
In the little church I built of wood for Mary, I hollowed out a place for him. Perkin brings him by the pail and pours him in. Now that I can hardly walk, I crawl to meet him there. He takes me in his chilly lap to wash me of my sins. Or I kneel down beside him till within his depths I see a star.
Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary's star. Within that little pool of Wear she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
It's where I baptised Perkin too. Perkin's not a friend, and hence I did not name him with the five. Ailred. Mouse. The snakes. And Gillian even. What made them friends was this. Fancy us each perched on a different rock in Wear. The water races in between with strength enough to kill. But each of us reached out to touch the other, and our friendship was the comfort of that touch.
With Perkin, it is something else. Instead of standing on a different rock from mine, he is the rock I stand on as perhaps in some way I am also his. I never got a maid with child, or if I did, I never heard. So Perkin is the son I never had.
He's a saucy lad, green eyed and ruddy cheeked and fair. He has no special wit with words. His clothes need washing, and his hair's a snarl. He tries to grow a beard, but all that sprouts is thistledown. Often he makes sport of me. He apes my limp and goes gub gub to show me how I stammer when I'm overwrought. He doesn't give a whit for holy church, and when I have him kneel for blessing as he goes, he rolls his eyes at me and gapes. Yet how to tell the fathoms that I feel?
Now that I've traveled all these leagues from birth with just an inch or two to creep till death, Perkin is the years I'll never see, and thus my son. But he's the hands that bring me food and drink as well, the arm I need to walk, the lips that teach me cheer, and thus he is my father too.
He helped me make my tomb. He was only a lad of ten or so and I still able then to wield a mallet. I found a great square stone as hard as hint to last. Week after week we pounded it and scraped. We chiseled deep and polished as we went. We never lost a thumb like Ralph the mason, but many a nail turned black from where the mallet missed. The flying powder turned our hair to white. And all the time we'd chat like squirrels or sing so full of mirth that if some stranger happened by, he'd never guess we toiled to hollow out a place where one of us would shortly lie.
Reginald would shake his head and chide.
“For sure, Father,” he'd say, “it is not seemly thus. Durham's full of monks who'd deem this task an honor. Or if you choose to make your grave yourself as Jesu hauled his cross up Calvary, there are fitter folk to help you than this popinjay.”
Once, as he scolded, Perkin crept behind and wound a vine about his feet so when he made to go, he tripped and sprawled. In courtesy to the robe he wore, I tried to keep a stately face but failed when Perkin climbed a tree and hooted like an owl.
And then the lid. We happened on a slab of rock that Wear had sliced and trimmed it up to size. Then Reginald came to help us put it into place, but just as we were hoisting it, Perkin made us set it down.
“A tomb's like a shirt,” he said. “Don't stitch it up until you're sure it's cut to fit. Climb in and see, old man.”
Old man is what he calls me to this day, and Reginald always rolls his eyes and groans at it, though as for me, I do not mind. I'm old. I am a man, or was one once. So where's the harm In any case, I did as I was bade. With one of them beneath each arm, I managed to climb in and lay me down.
“Why look!” cried Perkin. “See, there's room enough for two!” and quick as a wink he clambered in and stretched himself the other way from me. His toe just missed my eye. We didn't tarry long, but while we did, I watched the sky and thought how when my time comes round to lie there till the angel sounds his horn, my tomb will seem less lonely far for knowing that my boy once lay there too.
When I was Perkin's age, I could not write my name, but by that time I'd learned, and thus we carved the letters in that set together in a row spell Godric out. Perkin said there should be something more and with a white stone scratched a likeness of my face, but years of rain have long since washed it out. It was no loss. The face was mostly nose and beard and looked more like a lobster than a man.
He also said we should carve in the year and place where I was born, but I said no. As a man dies many times before he's dead, so does he wend from birth to birth until, by grace, he comes alive at last. Not Wear but far away another river saw the birth of me that mattered most, and the year was the year that Deric died and Godric swam away from Mouse and first set foot upon the holy shore.
Of Jerusalem and what befell Godric there.
DEAR Jesu, teach me how to pray. I know but little Latin like the priests. Except for Baldwin, I've never spoken to a king apart from thee. I've never learned to wrap my tongue round courtly talk. The only words I know are words of earth and wood and stone fit best for rough, unlettered folk like me. When people come to gawk at me, or Reginald comes, or Durham monks, the air is so a buzz with words that, when they go, I sometimes do not speak for days. I use my hands instead. One finger set upon my lips means food, and two mean drink. A wagging back and forth before my eyes means go. A single hand outstretched means come. Dear Lord, were I in such a wise to pray, I'd have to have a spider's limbs for hands enough to stretch my need to thee.
What can I tell thee thou dost not already know? What can I ask of thee thou wilt not give unasked if that's thy will? Yet I must ask thee even so. The time I saw Jerusalem, for one. With all that lies upon thy heart, dost thou remember that? Didst thou, who saidst God's eye is on the sparrow, cast thine eye on me? A friar with a cross led
me and other palmers to the sites where thou didst cruelly suffer here on earth. At each we stopped and knelt. And every time we did, I felt thy presence near as breath. Oh wert thou near in truth, or was it only that I wished it so?
The friar took us to the court where Pilate had thee flogged and showed us traces of thy blood and fingerprints upon the stone. Then didst thou hear me as I called thy name? Didst mark the tears that trickled down my beard? Oh dost thou hear and mark me now, sweet King? Old Godric has to hope that hope or else his heart, which by thy grace has thumped these hundred years, must crack at last. Amen.
Jerusalem flashed awesome in the sun when I came from Jaffa that first day on foot. She was spread upon the hills, her white walls marked with trees and shrubbery that dived to valleys dark and deep. Her rocky slopes were strewn with olive groves, her domes and towers painted gold and blue. Her roofs were rose and white and green. She was so fair I saw at once how men could die for her as Franks and Turks are dying still, God knows. Still battered from my fight with Mouse, I entered through her gates as in a dream. If so, it was a dream of thee.
How different she was from Rome. Rome was the sights you paid a crook back guide to show. Rome was the broken bones of ancient times. Rome was goats and owls where once great Caesar's palace stood. Even the holiness of Rome was of another age, for all that passes now for holy there seems dim beside the Rome where Paul and Peter bled. Rome was a city men had built and other men had razed and burned. Jerusalem is God's.
When thou camest riding in upon an ass and the folk all welcomed thee with shouts of praise and palms, thou saidst if they were still, the very stones would cry aloud instead. And so they do. The streets. The walls. The earth itself. All cries. Rome and her glory were of all things dead. Jerusalem is still alive with thee.
I was the most alone I've ever been. I'd left the Saint Esprit and Mouse for good. Deric was no more. Home was a thousand miles away. Of all the pilgrims, knights, and infidels that thronged the streets, there was not even one I knew. Like a snail that hauls his shell upon his back, I carried all I was on mine. And how life loads us down!
Burcwen's bitterness and William's humble kissing of my hand the dawn I left as if he thought he was not worthy even to be called his brother's friend. The lady Hedwic weeping in the night. The cat whose throat I'd slit for martyr's blood in Bishop's Lynn. Poor weaver Small who might be weaving still had I not found him crouched behind that tomb and made him stand to catch the Yorkshire cobblers' murderous eyes. The poor I'd cropped to make them sprout for Baron Falkes, the ones I'd pirated with Mouse. There was no cruel nor witless wrong I ever worked that didn't weigh me down.
And add to that the good I might have done but shirked. Old Cherryman, the priest, who groaned all night remembering his fallen sons. How painless had it been to speak some word of comfort in the dark that might have eased his pain a bit. The wife with child who swung upon her husband's feet. I might have somehow succored her. And all the beggars that I saw in Rome and everywhere, the rack ribbed children and the blind, the lepers with their loathsome sores. How could I bury treasure deep on Farne that might have bought for each a pennysworth of hope?
Dear Christ, have mercy on my soul. And Aedlward, have mercy too. I've chided you for failing as a father, too spent from grubbing to have any love to spend on me. Maybe it was the other way around, and it was I that failed you as a son. Did I ever bring you broth? Was any word I ever spoke a word to cheer your weariness All this, and more than this, I bore upon my back from holy place to holy place.
I saw the spot Our Lady met thee carrying thy cross. She swooned and fell. I saw where thou didst wash the dusty feet of those who, when the soldiers came to haul thee off to death, took to their wellwashed heels. With a candle in my hand I climbed the hill on which they nailed thee to a tree, thy tender flesh so rent and torn it was more full of wounds than ever was a dovehouse full of holes. In a round shaped church of stone where knights kept vigil, I saw thy Holy Sepulchre itself, the very shelf they set thy body on. How dark those three days must have been that thou didst lie in death, nor any savior at God's throne to plead man's cause! I kissed a piece of chat same stone the angel rolled away to set thee free, and at another church they'd built where thou didst rise to God, I kissed thy footprints in the rock and through an opening in the roof beheld the very channel in the sky that thou didst sail to Paradise.
Then I tramped to the river Jordan where the Baptist baptised thee. A chapel stood on stilts to mark the spot. They were singing mass inside. The voices sounded faraway and soft. Dusk fell. A rope was stretched from bank to bank to help the cripples in who came to bathe in hope the water thou hadst cleansed as it cleansed thee would make their bent limbs straight again.
A long necked bird with spindle legs picked through the rushes at the river's edge. There was no one there but him and me and, dimly seen above, the evening star. I stood and watched the Jordan flow a while, not rough like Wear but flat and still. Then waded in.
Oh Lord, the coolness of the river's touch! The way it mirrored back the clouds as if I bathed in sky. I waded out to where the water reached my neck, my beard outspread, my garments floating free. I let my hands bob up like corks. At sixteen stone or more, I felt I had, myself, no weight at all. The soul, set free from flesh at last, must know such peace.
And oh, the heart, the heart! In Jordan to my chin, I knew not if I laughed or wept but only that the untold weight of sin upon my heart was gone. I ducked my head beneath, and in the dark I thought I heard that porpoise voice again that spoke to me the day I nearly drowned in Wash. “Take, eat me, Godric, to thy soul's delight. Hold fast to him who gave his life for thee and thine. When I came up again, I cried like one gone daft for joy.
“Be fools for Christ,” said the Apostle Paul, and thus I was thy bearded Saxon fool and clown for sure. Nothing I ever knew before and nothing I have ever come to know from then till now can match the holy mirth and madness of that time. Many's the sin I've clipped to since. Many's the dark and savage night of doubt. Many's the prayer I haven't prayed, the friend I've hurt, the kindness left undone. But this I know. The Godric that waded out of Jordan soaked and dripping wet that day was not the Godric that went wading in.
O Thou that asketh much of him to whom thou givest much, have mercy. Remember me not for the ill I've done but for the good I've dreamed. Help me to be not just the old and foolish one thou seest now but once again a fool for thee. Help me to pray. Help me whatever way thou canst, dear Christ and Lord. Amen.
Of Deric's treasure and Godric's feet.
JESU walked barefoot up to Calvary, and ever since that day he washed my sins away in Jordan, I've gone unshod to honor him. Unshod, I journeyed home again. Unshod, I tramped the length of England north. Unshod, I found my way once more to Fame, dug Deric's treasure up, and had myself rowed back to shore with two fat sacks I'd strapped across my neck. Their weight was such the boatman charged me half as much again for the return. It was the last time in my life I ever had a coin to pay.
It was the last time too that I saw Farne except in dreams. A mist so thick hung round it that Cuthbert could have stood a yard away and I'd have never seen him. Only the craggy pinnacles rose free, and as we rowed away, a great white bird reared up on top of one and flapped his wings at me as if to say farewell.
A bitter winter rain was falling when we beached, and I took shelter where a tumbled rock gave space enough beneath for me to sit and rest my feet. They were a sight to see! All scabbed and hard and stiff with cold they were, with bloody places where I'd cut them clambering up Fame, the nails grown thick and dark as horn. They looked more claws than feet, and though their grief was mine, I gazed at them as though they were not mine at all. I held them in my hands. I spoke to them.
“Poor feet,” I said, “I've used you ill for Jesu's sake. I've tramped with you a thousand miles and more without a scrap of hide to ease your way. I've brought you to this place. I've cut all lines adrift that moored me to the life I knew. I'v
e set myself adrift. So lead me now, old feet. Take me the way that I must go for Jesu's sake. Godric, who's been merciless to you, casts him upon your mercy now.” They did as they were bid. As if some other spirit quickened them, they set themselves upon the road again, and for many days, through rain, through icy moors and woods, they bore me till we reached at last a small, rough church near Bishop Auckland built of stones that some say came from Roman walls. At once I knew it for the place to lay my treasure down for good. I thanked my feet for bringing me. I entered in.
The cold without was nothing to the cold within. The air itself was frozen still as stone. My breath came out in little puffs. No priest was there nor any moving thing except a single candle that swayed upon the altar. I sought to warm my hands at it, but they were grown so numb I could have burned the fingers off and never known. I flung the sacks from off my neck and set them by the candle on the cloth. The priest would come at last and find them there. What he would do with Deric's wealth was God's to know. My only care was that it reach the poor that Deric wrung it from and thus God's will be done at last. Never a man more gladly gave his all away since squat Zaccheus told Our Lord he'd pay back double all he'd ever thieved and leaped down from his sycamore for joy. But even as I made to go, I heard a clatter at my back and turned. Ah Godric, the sights a man has seen he cannot give away like coins, and in the wallet of my heart I finger this one still.
Down from the door I'd entered by there came what seemed at first a beard with legs and arms, a hoary pricklebush that ran. But for the beard, I would have thought a child, such was his height. But for the holy words, I would have thought a fiend.
“In Jesu's name, be off!” he cried. “Be gone!” And as he ran, he clapped his hands before him in the air in such a way as lads chase after butterflies to catch them on the wing.
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