Godric

by Frederick Buechner

  He darted to and fro. He kicked at things I could not see. He jumped atop a tomb to swat at them. The stoup got in between, and one way first, then roundabout, he played at ring a rosy in a rage until he brought his fist down hard and shattered holy water gone to ice.

  “I bid thee, in principio, fall dead!” he cried. Then crouched and seemed to pick some creature from the floor. “See how I've got him by the tail!”

  It was the first he'd taken heed of me, but you'd have thought he'd known me all his life and knew he'd find me there the way he spoke. Between his thumb and finger he held something up for me to see, who couldn't see a thing, though from the moving of his wrist I saw he swung it back and forth.

  “This kind's the worst,” he said. “They're always small and crabbed like this. See how its tongue lolls out and drips! You mark the stench ”

  I marked it well enough but would have thought it was the stench of him who spoke. I doubt he'd washed since the Confessor's day, he looked that old. His wild white beard and hair were snarled with knots and bits of straw and filth. His eyes were ferret sharp. His nose was pinched. He wore a leather thong about his brow. His feet were lashed around with skins. He stood no higher than my chest. He shook his unseen prey at me.

  “I spied him creeping through the door,” he said. “His master, Satan, sent him here to shit on holy things. Or if a maid should happen by to pray, he'd steal beneath her skirts and work such feats of lechery there to drive her mad. Here's how to deal with such as he.”

  So saying, he seemed to lay the creature on the floor again, drew up one bony shank and stomped down hard with all his might not once or twice but full three times.

  “In nomine Patris!” he cried first, then “Filii!” then “Spiritus Sancti!” third. “My work is done. The priest can mop the carcass up. And little enough the thanks I'll get.” He paused, then said, “Speak, man. What's in these sacks you've left?”

  “It's alms long overdue,” I said. “It's for the poor.”

  He said, “Then see the poorest of them all. See a poor body starved and bruised within an inch of death for Christ.”

  He pulled his rags apart, and there beneath I saw no flesh but only bones with caked and sallow skin drawn tight. He wore an undercoat of rusty chains that must have weighed four stone. I saw where they had scraped him raw.

  “For every mouthful I don't eat or drink, Christ gets a mouthful more,” he said. “I live on roots and nuts. My drink is rain. Sometimes I roll in nettles or thrash myself with willow wands. For every hour that I sting with pain, Christ stings an hour less. I've got a man's parts same as any man, but save for passing water with, I might as well have none at all. The bliss that I've forsworn on earth but adds to his in Paradise. The children that I never got to keep me now I'm old, the friends I could have made for cheer, they all are his as well. I live alone with wolves and trees. My roof's the leaky sky. I can give to Jesu nothing that I have, for I have nothing left to give, but every worldly good I've ever given up, they're all my gift to him.

  “And every demon that I slay is too!” he cried. “There's yet another at the pyx! See him slobber as he bares his bum and squats!” He ran and snatched the empty air again, then swung his arm to dash its brains out on the wall.

  Then suddenly he gave a piteous wail and crumpled to the floor.

  “He pissed his poison in my ear!” he moaned. “I fear I'm lost.”

  For the first time then I saw how frail he was. He lay there small and spent. His breath was labored like a feverish child's. I held him in my arms. His smell was foul. All the strength he'd chased his demons with was gone, and he could scarcely raise his eyes.

  “Are you another come to torture me?” He spoke so soft that I could barely hear.

  “I am your friend,” I said. “I'll take you home.”

  “You'll bide with me a while?” he said. “They're cruelest when I'm weak. They mock at God and Christ. They utter foulness of Our Lady. The lusts and doubts and terrors that they flail me with bite worse than wasps.”

  “I'll bide a while,” I said. “But tell me first your name. Where do you dwell ”

  “You're not another fiend?” he said. His eyes were dark with fear.

  I said, “No more, I hope, than any man.”

  He said, “My name is Elric then. I'm an anchorite at Wulsingham. I'll show you where I dwell if you'll but help me there.”

  I crouched to take him on my back, and when he was aboard, his arms about my neck, he spoke again. “You've left one burden at the altar there and taken on another worse.”

  “The first weighed more,” I said, and it was true. The guilt of Deric's wealth lay heavier far than one old man I bore for charity.

  The rain had turned to snow. Before I'd borne him very far, the church was lost to sight in it. He had no breath to spare but with one bony finger pointed me to right or left. Our way led past a hut where a ragged dog leapt forth to bare his teeth and snap at us, but a woman with a shawl about her head came out and when she saw us, crossed herself, and called him off. Some few miles on, we came upon two men out chopping wood. One of them set down his axe and made a ball of snow to hurl at us for spore, but the other, squinting through the Bakes, spoke something in his ear, and both took off their caps and bowed for blessing as we passed.

  Elric it was, of course, they honored thus, and yet because I wore him like a garment on my back, they honored me as well. It seemed to me the two of us made one. I was the frozen feet, the flesh that bore him like an ass. He was the eyes that spied our way, the soul. What matter if he was half daft and sick and smelled of whiskered age and rot? His very weakness was so much my strength I felt as if without him I'd be only half a man.

  The woods grew thicker as we went. What path there was, the snow soon covered it. Wolves howled. The icy branches creaked. The old man's grasp had grown so limp I had to double over at the waist to keep him on. His frozen finger no longer pointed how to go but bobbled useless as a stick. I had to guess the way. It wasn't till we reached a tall and craggy ledge of rock that finally he spoke again.

  “Praise God, the cairn!” he breathed into my ear. And there it was a mound of stones piled shoulder high. On top of it a wooden cross. Behind, the opening of a rock hewn cave.

  I laid him on a heap of skins within and where the earth was blackened made a fire. Without, the wind was wild. Snow danced and glittered at the door. The day was growing dark. The rocky walls were hung with drying herbs and roots and charms to fend the demons off. A cup and bowl were all there was for cheer. Smoke stung my eyes and made them weep. I fetched a cup of snow, and when the fire melted it, I held it to his lips. He drank.

  “I'm better now, thanks be to you,” he said. “The warmth will give me back my strength. The fiends won't come as long as there is firelight. You needn't stay if you've a mind to go. But if you want a place to rest your bones, you're welcome here.”

  “Father,” I said, “which would you have me do ” An anchorite would choose to be alone, I thought. I had no wish to wreck his peace. And yet he might have need of me, and sure it was that I had need to find some roof against the bitter night.

  “I'd have you stay a while,” he said, and so I did.

  Two years I stayed, and if I never truly loved that small, fierce man whose only love was Christ, I came to love the life I learned from him. And though I often chafe at it and roar with rage, there's part of me, deep down, that loves it yet.

  Of Elric, demons, and how Godric First saw Wear.

  ELRIC had studied with the monks. He wrote and read. He knew the Gospels back and forth. He had the psalms by heart. An oak grew near his cave with one great branch he'd climb to like a squirrel and perch there till he'd sung them through. He sang in Latin, but, for me, he put them into speech I understood.

  “God keeps me as a shepherd keeps his flock. I want for nought,” he said. “I bleat with hunger, and he pastures me in meadows green. I'm thirsty, and he leads me forth to water cool and deep and still. He
hoists me to my feet when I am weak. Down goodly ways he guides me with his crook, for he himself is good. Yea, even when I lose my way in shadows dark as death, I will not fear, for he is ever close at hand with rod and staff to succor me.”

  “Godric,” he said, his whiskers stained with berry juice, “beware the shadows. Never think they're not afoot because the day is fair. Scratch fair, find foul. So goes the world. A blue eyed maid comes in and kneels by you in church as chaste and pure as angels are. Your very heart sings praise to God that such as she adorn this wretched earth. Your eyes fill up with holy tears to see her at her prayers. But then, by chance, you touch her with your knee, or else she casts a sidelong glance at you and smiles, and all at once the one eyed fiend beneath your clothes rears up his lustful head. But for the others praying there, you'd throw her on her back and tup her like a ram though Jesu, carved in wood, looks down on you and bleeds. For what's the blood of Christ to him whose own blood seethes like water in a pot?”

  Another time as we were dipping from the spring, he tapped himself upon the brow and said, “My skull's a chapel. So is yours. The thoughts go in and out like godly folk to mass. But what of hands that itch for gold? What of feet that burn to stray down all the soft and leafy paths to Hell, the truant heart that hungers for the love of mortal flesh? A man can't live his life within his skull. His other members harry him. They drag him forth. The Devil and his minions lie in wait without.

  “But worship me, and I'll reward you well,” the Prince of Darkness cries. 'The Prince of Peace, who's he? Your life's to live, not give away to him who's dead and gone these many years and gives you not a groatsworth in return. Christ says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” If you would rather follow me, take up a sack to put your treasure in instead.“”

  A mouse would nip him or a cramp. Sometimes he'd spew blood. “The fiends again!” he'd cry. “But they have other tricks far worse. Once I was praying at my cairn. Christ came himself, all robed in white. Each finger was a candleflame. His head was ringed with fire.

  “'Since all are sinners, I damn the ones I choose to damn and save the rest,' Christ said. 'So are my justice and my mercy both upheld. Thou, Elric, I have chosen to damn. Through all eternity thy fate shall be to suffer pain unspeakable and thus to show my glory forth.'

  “I said, 'O Lord, I am a sinner sure. I rate no less. Yet night and day I've served thee all these years as best I could. I've sought to quell my wayward flesh with chains and scarcely food enough to fill a gnat. All earthly loves I have foregone for love of thee. Canst thou not find it of thy grace to damn some sinner worse than I instead?'

  “Christ's laugh was terrible to hear. 'Is that how Elric does my will to love his neighbor as himself?' he said. 'For this thou shalt be doubly damned. Thou mayst as well go gobble up what brutish greedy joys thou wilt while yet thou canst, for the very moment thou dost breathe thy last, thy torment shall begin.'

  “Was this the sinners' friend, I thought, the one who healed the sick in Galilee and prayed his Father to forgive us for we know not what we do? All hope was fled. The one who sits upon mercy seat had proved himself most merciless of all. I would have hanged myself, except I feared to hasten my fiery doom. And then the priest who shrived me saved my soul.

  “'Poor fool,' he said, 'the Devil often comes in such a guise. Our Lord would never speak so cruel. The next time, take a piece of dung and fling it in his face. Then you will see.'

  “So when Christ came again, or so I thought, I winged a turd that caught him on the snout, and sure enough he was not the Christ. His white robe fell, and underneath he wore a pizzle like a mule. He had a pointed tail and serpents' scales. He howled at me and fled. Thus does the Devil seek to thwart our faith with lies. Godric, be ever on your guard.”

  I knew there was some truth in what the old man taught. Devils plague the world like rats indeed. With yellowed teeth they nibble at our souls. They leave their droppings on our holiest ground. They make foul nests in us and gnaw in two the stoutest bonds of love. I thought of the bitter blows I'd had with Mouse. I thought how Burcwen sought to wound me when she didn't come to say farewell the dawn I left the manor of my lord. I remembered my wretchedness the day I prayed for Aedlward in Rome and thought that Jesu had answered me when al the while it was some devil blocked my ears. These devils turn our love to lust, our humbleness to pride that we are humbled so, our hope in God we cannot see to doubt that God is there to see at all or cares a whit if we be saved or lost. Such fiendish wiles as these old Elric saw and taught me well, but there was also much he did not see.

  Shadows he saw everywhere, but never light. Devils were his everlasting prey. With rocks he brained them. He smoked them out with evil-smelling herbs or pelted them with dung. He lashed them from his flesh.

  “But what of angels?” I asked him once. “Tell Me of them.”

  He crouched there chewing on a root. He cocked his head at me and spat.

  “Each devil keeps a pair of golden wings to gull poor simpletons like you,” he said. “Beneath their angel gowns, there hung like bulls and stink.”

  Nor did he heed me when I told him how it must have been an angle led me first to Farne. I did not speak of Gillian, of how she bathed my feet and crept beneath my cloak, for fear he'd say she only tempted me to lust. The way the porpoise spoke to me, the way my poor feet guided me to where I rid myself of Deric's wealth if I had told how angels tended me at times like these, he would have mocked me for a dunce.

  Poor Elric, he was old and sick. Even when he ate, he grew more thin. He said there was a demon in his belly that sucked all nourishment. He showed me how a man could feel the creature's hard, round head inside by setting a hand beneath his nether ribs. Sometimes he would roar with pain and retch. But from all he said, I think that even when his health was sound, he'd ever been a grim and bitter man.

  “Rejoice!” says the Apostle Paul. “Rejoice ye always in the Lord. Again I say rejoice!” I think that Elric never did. He had no doubt that there were joys awaiting him in Paradise for all his grief on earth, but he'd lived so long in pain and penitence I feared that when his time for bliss came round at last, he'd find he'd lost the art.

  Perched in his oak, he'd sing his psalms. “Make joyful music to the Lord with harp and horn and melody! Let the salt sea shout! Let all the waves toss high and clap their wild blue hands! Let shaggy mountains stomp their feet!” But he looked so sour even as he sang, it was as if the sound of all those merry revels hurt his ears.

  I did what I could to cheer him. When he grew too weak to walk, I served him hand and foot. I fed him milk to sooth the demon in his belly. I washed away his bloody flux. When he saw devils pissing on his cairn or dancing lewdly when he prayed, I'd make as if to drive them off. I was his Reginald though God well knows I had more thankfulness from him than ever Reginald has had from me.

  I told Elric once about a dream I had. I dreamed of Wear though I had yet to see it with my waking eyes. I saw its rocky banks and heard its song. I wandered through green shade. I touched the bark of trees. Cuthbert was there. He took a stick and pointed to a patch of ground whence you could see the river's bend. Ferns stirred and snowy campion. I took at once his meaning. This was where I was to roost at last. Was it not so? I asked without a word. He nodded yes.

  With nothing but this silent nod, he made me know that like a guillemot in flight to Fame, I must not tarry anywhere until I found that certain place where I belonged though I should tramp a thousand miles. He broke his stick in half and set the two parts on the earth where they became a pair of snakes. Fairweather was the name of one, the other Tune. I knew them well as I knew mine was Godric. Cuthbert winked one eye at me. He waved farewell.

  When I told Elric of my dream, for once he didn't say that I'd been cozened by the fiend. He said, “You'll be a hermit then like me. Those trees will be your house. You'll wear the river for your scarf. The sky will be your cap, the rain your cloak. The snakes will teach you watchfulness. In time, by grace, y
ou even may find happiness as I have found it here.”

  “I never knew you had,” I said.

  “Nor yet did I till now I know that I must leave it soon. I'll miss it sore when I am dead and gone. How many things I'll miss!”

  Months later he caught an ague so fierce that even by the fire where I'd laid him wrapped in skins, he shook with cold. Many times he tried to speak to me, but his chattering teeth would not be still. At last he got his message out.

  “See them in the shadows there,” he said. “They thrash their tails and wring their spiny claws for grief. You'd almost think they were good Christian folk the way they weep.”

  “Perhaps they weep for you,” I said.

  He said, “Who knows ” then clutched me by the arm to draw me near. “May God have mercy on my soul,” he whispered soft. “I fear in Paradise I'll even miss the fiends.”

  They were the last words Elric ever spoke. I buried him beside his cairn without his chains. The chains I looped about the oak branch where he'd sung his psalms. To see them hanging empty there cost me the only tears for him I paid. The next day I was up before the sun to seek a place I had no cause, except my dream, to know there was on earth.

  How Godric went to Durham, saw two graves, and nearly died.

  BISHOP Pudsey summons me to Christmas mass at Durham. I think he means in part to honor me, in part to bring some kind of honor on himself by fishing up old Godric none have seen away from Wear for twenty years and more. I can scarcely hobble with a stick. The weather's foul. I'd sooner have a barber draw my three or four last teeth than go. But Reginald says I must for Jesu's sake. Even Perkin chides. He says, “What good is it to live a hundred years, old man, if no one gets a chance to gawk at you but rats and owls?” So in the end I go. My peace goes too.

  “First we'll have to swab you down,” says Perkin. “Else they'll think it's not a man we've brought to mass but the ancient, mildewed carcass of a bear.”