Godric

by Frederick Buechner

  Of Ranulf Flambard and a dream come true.

  FLAMBARD'S hands hung at his sides like hams. His belly was a sail puffed great with wind. His feet were cockboats and his stride so long you couldn't walk with him but feel you were a puppy on a string. On top he wore that crop of flaming hair from which some said he got his name. Flambard in Norman means the flame or torch. Some say, however, that they named him thus because what was on fire was his greed. The more it swallowed up, the more it blazed. Not all the gold and power in the land could keep it fed. And yet to me he ever was most bounteous, as Reginald truly said. I think perhaps he saw in me the seeds of what he was himself and sought to water them.

  “You've learned to read and write,” he said. “That's well. But don't stop there, my friend. Pile stone on stone. That's how a man must build his life. Keep piling till your battlements o'er top all else. 'For unto everyone who hath will more be given,' as our Savior said. Christ Jesu never spoke a wiser word. Might begets might and riches riches. That and no other is the truly golden rule.”

  It pleased him many times to take me with him through the Durham streets and show me what he'd wrought and planned on next.

  “These walls are tumbling down, you see,” he said. “For one, they're old as sin. For two, uncounted years of frost have worked their way into the joints and cracked them wide. The town will soon lie open like a woman dozing in a field with legs apart. Already I have masons working night and day to make them safe again. Believe me, scholar Godric, Ranulf Flambard won't be diddled by some villain while he sleeps.”

  Sometimes we'd go on foot. Sometimes he'd have his servants fetch me forth a horse, and we'd go trotting side by side. But either way his wineskin always came along. Each time we stopped, he'd take a swallow deep enough to drown a cat yet never stumbled or grew thick of tongue.

  “To ford the Wear, men wet their feet,” he said. He pointed down from where we stood high on the hill where men on scaffolds worked to raise the nave. “To wet the feet is fine for beasts, not men. I'll have them throw a bridge from bank to bank.” He waved one huge, red hand as if to throw it there himself. “Then let Wear rage and spew his fill, we'll cross no whit less dry.”

  Another time he tramped me through the poor, mean huts that clustered near where the cathedral stands. He said, “One wayward spark would be enough to set them all ablaze. And what of God's house then? Of Cuthbert's bones? That piece of Jesu's manger, Moses' rod, and all the other holy gauds folk travel miles to see? Six months from now I'll have this ground all clear, and not one hovel left to tell the tale.”

  “But the poor who dwell here now, my lord?” I said. “What's to become of them?”

  He said, “I'll give them alms to go starve somewhere else. It's not the poor that Flambard's famed for using ill. It's other fat, rich rogues like him.”

  The lofty nave was where we sat the day he spoke to me of times to come, a flagon at his side. The masons with their hammers made a lofty din. They wound stone high on hoists. White dust lay everywhere like snow.

  “Godric,” he said, “this place will stand a thousand years. Just think what changes it will see! Wonders we can scarcely dream will come to pass. Time was, men had to heave such stones as these by hand. Now they have wheels and rope. What will they have five hundred years from now or ten to make their labor lighter still? We travel now by foot or horse or ox drawn carts. Someday perhaps we'll make us wings and fly like birds. We'll fix our carts with sails. We'll learn to snare the power of the sun in nets, turn winter into summer, night to day. Godric, we've got kings to rule us now, some well, some ill. The day will come we'll rule ourselves for good. You'll see.” He filled another cup.

  “Godric,” he said, and drained it off, “but breathe one word of this, I'll have you hanged. But this I say into your secret ear. You know where God rules now? Not in churches hewn of stone like this, nor yet in Heaven if the truth be known. He rules within the privy parts and wit of men. With privities we make us others like ourselves as God made Adam once. With wit we'll make a new and wondrous world as God made this one long ago that now grows old and stinks.”

  He turned his flagon upside down. “Hey nonny!” he said, “the well's gone dry.” Then cupped his mouth and shouted to a mason high above, “Don't work too fast. There's lots of time!” Then added just to me, “And lots I mean to fill it with.”

  He filled it full enough, but there was less time than he thought. In fifteen years his health began to fail. He had them carry his great bulk into the church where he did penance for his grievous sins and left his ring upon the altar as earnest of his vows to mend. When he grew worse, he gave his riches to the poor. He even paid his debts. Then praying to a God he must have hoped by then ruled elsewhere than the carcasses of mortal men, the flame went out at last, and Flambard died.

  All this came later though. Those days when J first knew him, he was hale. He loved the chase and often had me come along. I'd ride a chestnut mare and he a broad beamed roan of seventeen hand to bear his weight. He dubbed him Rufus for the king and wetted down his mash with wine to heat his blood. I cantered in his train of priests and lords and servants chanting Latin verbs or verses that I'd learned in school.

  “Don't be so monkish, Godric!” he once cried. “No beast was ever caught with psalms!” and I cried back, “So please my lord, I'd sooner that the beast caught me than face my master with my work undone.”

  One fair, warm day the Bishop laid a feast for us within the wood. When drink had made him merry, he stripped for wrestling with his friends. His chest was thick with golden hair, his legs and arms like trunks of trees. He snorted like a bull. One by one he threw them all who challenged him, then poured a wine flask on his head to keep him cool. This done, he laid him down against a rock and fell asleep.

  The forest door was dappled by the sun. The air was sweet. The leaves were newly green. When I had wandered off a way, I paused to listen to the sounds of spring. A bird piped from some hidden perch. Back where the Bishop and his huntsmen dozed, I heard the nickering of their steeds. Small, bright winged creatures buzzed above a pool of rain. And farther off, as soft as sea in shells, a quiet, mirthful murmuring. I thought, could it be voices calling me? Or elf folk dancing in a ring?

  I left the path and followed with my ears until the thicket grew so dense I had to crawl on hands and knees. I barked my shins on roots and stones, but still the murmur, ever louder, drew me on. Then all at once I pushed a low hung branch aside, and there before me lay the place that Cuthbert showed me in my dream.

  There was the Wear. There were his rocky banks. There was the little rise where you could see him bend. And there, looped from a branch like Elric's chains, were my two friends. I knew them in a trice. They raised their heads and shot their crimson tongues at me for love, and from that day I knew that here was where I'd live whatever years were left, and here I'd die.

  And when I asked his leave to make my cell there, Flambard knew it too.

  “Well, Godric, I had grander dreams for you, he said. ”I thought you'd heap up riches such that folk would gather in the streets and bare their heads to see you pass. I thought you'd come at last to serve the King.

  “And so I shall, my lord,” I said. “The King.

  He took my meaning then, I think. “If ever he should cast you out, you come see me,” he said, whereat he seized me in his arms and hugged me like a bear.

  How Godric filled his time, and certain holy sights he saw.

  I'VE lived at Finchale fifty years, and thus my near a hundred, give or take, are split in two, The first half teems with places that I saw and deeds I did and folk I knew. The second half I've dwelled here by myself. Three times only have I left, such as the day I went to Christmas Mass at Durham. Except for those the monks give plaited crosses to, I've scarcely seen a living soul apart from Reginald, and Ailred now and then, and Perkin, God be praised. The lad is twenty some and started bringing eggs to me when he himself was little bigger than an egg. So, by the recko
ning of men, one half my life has been an empty box. Yet if they only understood, it's been the fuller of the two. Three things I've filled it with: what used to be, what might have been, and, for the third, what may be yet and in some measure is already had we only eyes to see.

  Voices that I haven't heard since I was young call out to me. Faces long since faded bloom afresh. Legs that barely hold me up grow strong again in dreams to carry me wherever I would go and where I wouldn't too.

  “That hermit Godric!” people say. “How holy must he be to rest in one place, rooted like a tree, so he may raise his shaggy arms to God alone while holy thoughts nest in his leaves like birds.”

  They do not guess that in my mind I'm never still. Seven times seven are the seas I've sailed in less times than it takes to tell. I can draw my breath on Dover Road and puff it out again in Rome. And oh the thoughts that come to roost in this old skull!

  When I'm awake, I'm master of them well enough. Let some woman that I lay with once come chirping lechery in my memory's ear, I've but to clap my hands and she will usually fly away. Or let some ancient grievance croak, some long forgotten hunger whet his beak for more, some foolish pride start preening in the sun, and I've such arms as these old pot lids that I wear for vest, or icy Wear, or holy prayer, to fend them off. But hermits sleep like other men, alas, and in the dark all men go mad.

  Oh what a crop of sons the seed I've spilled in dreams would raise! How many silken coverlets I'd need to cover all the naked flesh I've dallied with in lust though lying all alone the while in rags with calluses thick as cobbles on my knees from prayer. Sometimes maids whom, in the daylight world, I held in such esteem I wouldn't have so much as thought to kiss them save in greeting or farewell, in sleep I've sported with so shamelessly that when I waked, I wept to think on what I'd done. Even to the priest who comes to shrive me now and then, I can't bring myself to name their names. Dear Lord, strew herbs upon my hermit's dreams to make them sweet. Have daylight mercy on my midnight soul.

  After such fashion I fill the box of empty years with thinking back on how things were some good, some bad and dreaming into life again what's dead and gone. The things that might have been have less in them of sin, perhaps, and yet they're still sadder in their way. An old man's thoughts are long. He falters back to all the crossroads of the years and wonders how he would have fared if he'd gone right instead of left.

  Suppose I'd not strung Burcwen from a branch that day but taken her along? Suppose some other man than Mouse had ferried me to Fame? What if I'd stayed with Falkes de Granvill and grown rich? Where would I be if Gillian hadn't left me in the wood, or if I'd taken me a wife and settled down? Our children's children's children now might be the ones to bring me eggs and comb the cobwebs from my beard. Say Mouse and I had never fought. Say Aedlward had lived to be not just my father but my friend.

  Was it God who led me on the way I went, or was his will that I should take some different turn? Life's a list. Good tilts with ill. The de Granvills of the world grow fat. Poor folk eat earth. Even in his church, the Lord is mocked by lustful, greedy monks and priests that steal. Men travel leagues to see the arm of some dead martyr in a silver sleeve that wouldn't lift a hand to save a living child that's fallen in a well. King wars with Pope, and mighty lords attack the King. Bishops like Flambard are but mighty lords themselves with crosses hung about their necks. When Stephen and Matilda strove together for the crown not long ago, the land went lawless. Castles were filled with fiends that burned and tore and flayed men's flesh for gold while God and all his angels seemed to sleep.

  All that is out where men can see. Inside, the same old woes go on. Folk lie sick with none to nurse them. Good men die before their time. Their wives and children weep with none to care. The old go daft with loneliness. The young turn sour. Faith's forsaken. Hope takes wing. And charity, the greatest of the three, is scarce as water in a drought.

  And what has Godric done for God or fellowmen through all of this? Godric's war is all within. For fifty years the only foe he's battled with has been himself. Above all else, he's prayed.

  What's prayer? It's shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish in the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else waves would dash him on the rocks, or he would drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard.

  Once I knelt outside my cell at dawn. A mist from Wear had hung the leaves with pearls. I'd scattered ashes on my head. For days I'd eaten nothing but a broth of wild angelica that Elric said kept demons off. “Fair Queen of Heaven,” I prayed, “God's turned his back on us for sin. The world is dark. Oh thou, his lady mother, take our cause. Beseech him to forget his wrath. Thou knowest from thy days on earth how hard it is to be a man. If thou wilt only kneel before his throne, he must again be merciful for sure. Hail Mary, Mother, pray for us.

  I raised my eyes. A lady all in sky blue mist stood nigh. She wore a golden crown. Her eyes were pearls. Her voice was like clear water in a brook. And then it was she taught her song to me. Its last words were Our Lady, maiden, springtime's flower, deliver Godric from this hour. “Deliver every one of us!” I cried. “Deliver all who call on thee!” Her face grew soft with holy mirth. She bowed her head most graciously and smiled. Then she was gone.

  Another time I lay awake at night. Tune was, sleeping in his jar. The moon was full. “Lord God,” I prayed. “How useless is my life. My flesh is ever prey to lust and pride and sloth. I let folk call me Holy Father though I know myself to be of all God's sinful sons most foul. Even as I speak to thee, a thousand wanton dreams are set to fall on me when I am done. Oh send some saint to save my soul. Teach me how to serve thee right.”

  Then all at once a shaft of moonlight clove my cell, and in it stood the body of a man. By the leather girdle round his waist, I knew him for the Baptist. He cried, “Burn! Burn! Serve man and God as fire does by driving back the night. Let thy very rage against thy sin burst into flame. Dwell here alone and by hot striving to be pure become a torch to light men's way and scorch the wings of fiends. Seek not saints to ease thy spirit's pain that thou mayst better serve. Thy pain's itself thy service. Godric, burn for God!”

  Tune raised his head and hissed. A cloud passed by the hazy moon, and all was black.

  One summer day I lay upon the grass. I'd sinned, no matter how, and in sin's wake there came a kind of drowsy peace so deep I hadn't even will enough to loathe myself. I had no mind to pray. I scarcely had a mind at all, just eyes to see the greenwood overhead, just flesh to feel the sun.

  A light breeze blew from Wear that tossed the trees, and as I lay there watching them, they formed a face of shadows and of leaves. It was a man's green, leafy face. He gazed at me from high above. And as the branches nodded in the air, he opened up his mouth to speak. No sound came from his lips, but by their shape I knew it was my name.

  His was the holiest face I ever saw. My very name turned holy on his tongue. If he had bade me rise and follow to the end of time, I would have gone. If he had bade me die for him, I would have died. When I deserved it least, God gave me most. I think it was the Savior's face itself I saw.

  Of those who joined Godric at Finchale and a grievous loss.

  I'D lived at Finchale just about a year when I waked one morning to a armor falling down a stair. It was a sight I'll not forget.

  An ox drawn cart came lumbering through the trees. A cow was tethered at the rear. The cart was loaded high with pots, an upturned table, bedding, several chairs. There were some geese and chickens too. God knows what else. We'd had much rain that spring, and thus the man that led the ox looked made of mud. A pair of women wrapped in cloaks against the chill bounced
up and down as creaking wheels struck rock and rut. One of them, half hid by bedding, spied me first. She raised her arm and called my name.

  “There's Godric sure as life!” I heard her cry. “I'd know that great snout anywhere.”

  The voice was Aedwen's. At her side sat Burcwen with a grey goose in her lap. The man tramped on so caked and spattered I could barely see his face, but it was William right enough.

  They'd come. I hadn't known they would, but so they had. We laughed, as kinsmen do, with laughter rooted deep in time. We wept with tears no shallower. We hugged and jigged. And then at last they told their tale.

  Littlefair's wife, Joan, had given tidings of me to a friend from York, who on a trip to Nottingham bestowed them on her aunt, and she in turn on Tom Ball's widow, who made such haste to hand them on to Aedwen that she stumbled on a stile and broke her toe. Thus women's gossip makes the world grow small, and thus they knew both that I lived and where. So much for that.

  Then one fine day their house burned down. Not then, but later, Burcwen told me how.

  “Godric,” she said, “I'm sure they set if off for spite. They've always spoken nastiness of Will and me. We've neither of us ever wed. They say we lie together. So we do. But doesn't Mother lie there too, and like as not between? We're not like royalty with beds for each. One does for all. And Godric, by our Savior's wounds I swear he's never touched me in the night unless by chance in tossing or in getting up to piss. It was at night the fire came. I sniffed the smoke before the flames broke out. Thank God for that. It gave us time to save our goods. We stood there in the dark and watched it burn. Mother swears a part of her burned with it. Godric, ever since, she rattles when she breathes. Her eyes grow dim. Those rogues that thieved her of her house made up for it by adding ten years to her age. May fiery rats gnaw on their bones in Hell!”