Her ears were red with anger. Her eyes were bright. Her face and shape had softened since I'd seen her last, more like a woman now and less a lad in skirts. Her lips were more a woman's too. I thought of how she'd pressed them once to mine to breathe life back in me so long before.
I helped William build a hut for them. It looked more fit for beasts than men but kept the weather out. It gave on Wear, and Aedwen sat for hours in the door to watch it how.
She said, “There's two things charm the eyes like wizardry. One's dames, but dames I've seen enough to last my life. The other's water. I watch that river till I think I even hear him sing.”
When I asked her what he sang, she said, “He sings that all things pass. He sings that winter passes. Then comes spring. The old king dies, they crown a new. Pink cheeked lads and lasses shrivel up like apples on a shelf. There's not a man alive today but time, like Wear, will carry him off too.''
I said, “It sounds a sad song then.”
“What? Are you daft!” she said. “Can't you hear him chuckle while he sings? And well he may. Who wants a life that never ends? Not me, that's sure. Who wants a sun that never shuts his eye? Death's like the night we need to rest our bones.”
“That we may wake refreshed in Paradise,” I said.
She said, “Or never wake at all. Who knows? I only know that life's like porridge. It's good to eat when eating's what you want, but the time comes when you've had your fill.”
I said, “The dead shall live again. That's holy faith.”
She was nothing like as old as I am now, but sitting in the doorway there, she seemed to me the oldest thing alive. Her eyes were hooded like a hawk's. She had more wrinkles than an old clay wall has cracks.
“Godric,” she said, “I'll tell you this. I've labored all my life. I've baked and brewed. I've woven, spun, and dyed. I've kept my husband's house and raised his young. And many other things besides. So where was time for holiness? What strength was left for faith? Let monks and nuns and priests have care of that. The dead shall rise? The Lord himself will sit as justicer in manor court It may be true for all I know. But in the meanwhile bread, beer, work, and rest at night, they're truth enough for me.”
“But the river of the years will wash all these away at last as you've just said. So where's truth then?” I asked.
“Perhaps truth passes too,” she said. “Perhaps that's why the river laughs until he wets the rocks with tears.” She laughed herself then, or she wept. Whichever one, she hid it with her hands.
So months went by. William worked the ox to till a bit of ground. He kept the cow. He helped me hew the wood for Mary's chapel. And like his hands, his tongue, of course, was never still. As birds must flap their wings to stay aloft, he flapped it on and on as if, were ever he to stop, he'd perish in the fall.
I speak a word. My friend speaks back. Then I again, then he, and thus we make a bridge of words so each may fetch across the ditch that lies between what's in his heart. But William never paused enough to let the other have his say, for fear, I guess, his friend might flee away instead. Thus no bridge ever crossed from him to anyone. Of all the men I ever knew, I think my brother was the loneliest.
“He works until he drops,” said Burcwen. “All the years you were away, he cared for us.” I caught the chiding in her words. “Husband, father, brother, he was all three of them at once. He'd give his life if we had need or it. He'd do the same for you.”
I said, “You love him, Burcwen. Thank God you do. He has no other.”
Her face grew pale. She turned her face away and with one finger in the dust drew rings. At last she spoke.
“Godric,” she said, “he drives me daft. He's dull as he is good and true. He's never had a sinful thought. I don't believe he thinks at all. He may well be some kind of cloddish saint, but, God forgive me, every time I see him come, the heart within me turns to stone.” Tears filled her eyes. She said, “I've wasted my whole life on him.”
For pity then I took her in my arms. “No life's wasted when it's spent for charity,” I said.
She said, “My youth is spent. I'll look like Aedwen soon. There's no man cares a fig for me.”
I said, “You're fairer than you ever were. There's many men would take you in a trice.” “But not the one I want,” she said.
“Who's he?” No sooner had I asked it than I saw at once she did not wish to tell her love. She bit her lip and blushed.
“The Man in the Moon,” she said, then gathered up her skirts and ran away.
Winter came. Old Wear froze hard. Snow fell on snow. The woods were still. William trapped small game, but food was scarce. The three of them dwelled in their house, I in my cell. We dug a path between, but it would often lie for days untrod. God was the cause, for he and I were like a couple newly wed. I ever spoke my love to him. I bared my heart for him to cleanse. I sought to please him any way I could, and since there were no richesIcould give to him whose coffers hold the sun and moon, I'd give instead by taking from myself.
Elric taught me this. The fire that I didn't build for heat, the wool for warmth I went without, the food I didn't eat all these were like the trinkets that a man gives to a maid. More precious still, I gave him all the cheer I might have had with other mortals like myself. Sitting by a flaming hearth with bowls of broth and talk of times gone by, how we'd have laughed the winter wind to shame! And yet, instead, I gave it like a bright and fiery gem for God to pin upon his gown or deck some starless corner of the sky.
Knowing what I was about, my kinfolk rarely came to trouble me. They'd always thought me queer as a two headed calf, and this was but one further proof. The only times we met were those I chose. Except for one black, bitter night.
William woke me.
“Mother's calling out for you,” he said. “She says the river's beating at the door to take her off. Come quick!” For once, he had no other word to say, and in his silence I could hear his dread.
They had her swaddled like a child in Burcwen's lap. At first she didn't know me for her son.
“You're Wear!” she cried. “I know you by your icy hand. Your eyes stream down. You smell of death and damp. Be gone!”
But Burcwen soothed her. She said, “It's only Godric, Mother. He's come to say goodnight.”
I said, “My dear, don't be afraid. Wear's frozen stiff outside. You're safe.”
“Do you remember when we went to Rome?” she said. Her voice came quiet now. She took me by the hand. “Mile after mile we tramped. Green hills. Blue sky. Sometimes you hauled me on your back. Remember Cherryman the priest and Peg? How was that mason called?”
I said his name was Ralph.
“And dainty Maud,” she said. “She had an ivory spoon, I think. You plucked me figs.” I said, “How many years ago that was.”
“As many as a dog has fleas,” she said, then seemed to doze a while as Burcwen smoothed her sparse, white hair. Snow beat upon the roof.
“Come, let's away, my mother said at last, her eyes still shut. ”Hitch on your pack. Who knows what dangers lie ahead, but in such goodly company as this we've nought to fear. “We've nought indeed,” I said.
She raised her hand and touched my beard. “And if I twist my foot again,” she said, “you'll carry me for sure?”
I said, “As sure as sun will rise and though you journey farther than the moon.”
“Then all is well,” she said, and in her daughter's arms she died with both her bearded sons at either hand.
Of what befell one summer's day.
MY mother lay in hallowed ground at Durham. I had my snakes and God. Burcwen and William had each other. Wear sang his song. And thus we dwelled for many months. A stranger would have said we dwelled in peace, and in some measure that was so. But sometimes when the sea is calm, a splash, a spewing up of foam, makes clear that monsters churn below.
One summer's day I sat upon a messy bank. Fairweather lay along a branch. Tune was coiled about my leg and slept. For fear of waking him, I kep
t as still as death and turned my thoughts to prayer. I praised the Lord for warmth and greenery. I praised him for the shaggy earth, untouched by Adam's fall, that feeds us with his crops though we as Adam's sons deserve to starve and gives us such a soft, sweet couch to rest our heads. I thanked him for the faithfulness of ox and cow and hen who serve our needs though we are often cruel to them.
Then as I sat praying there, I saw my sister come though she did not see me. She walked along the riverbank and when she reached a spot not far away sat down upon a rock. She let the water play about her feet. She picked a pebble up and cast it in.
Why was it that I didn't call to her? It would have wakened Tune, but what of that? I'd often wakened him before, nor did he ever love me less. It's true it would have stopped my prayers, but the sight of her had driven God already from my heart. I don't know why I didn't call. Perhaps it was because we shared a silent peace which I was loath to break with words as louts break glass with stones. Perhaps I feared the turn our words might take out there alone with no one else to hear. In any case, I held my tongue.
After a while she rose and walked a little farther on. Now and then she'd stop to gather flowers as she went. The sun grew warm. She doffed her cloak. A thrush sang somewhere in the leaves. She paused to hear, then knelt down at the water's edge and splashed some coolness in her face. Then rose again and, laying all her clothes aside, went wading into Wear.
Within my mind she stands there yet. Her naked limbs are shapely. Her virgin breasts are pale and soft as doves. Her hair is bright with sun. She stoops to cup some water in her hand. Susanna never bathed more chaste and fair than she, all unaware that not far off the hidden elders looked on her with lust.
Lust is the ape that gibbers in our loins. Tame him as we will by day, he rages all the wilder in our dreams by night, just when we think we're safe from him, he raises up his ugly head and smirks, and there's no river in the world flows cold and strong enough to strike him down. Almighty God, why dost thou deck men out with such a loathsome toy? Burcwen is a fair, white bird in Wear while, hidden on the bank, her brother burns.
From that day forth I kept away from her. She could not know it was myself I fled. She thought she must have been the one to do some wrong for which I chastened her. As I shunned her, she took to shunning me. She cast her eyes upon the ground. She seldom spoke. She took to eating less and less till one day William came to me.
He said, “I fear our sister ails. Some lettuce or a parsnip's all she takes for days on end. Water is her only drink. Perhaps she grieves for Mother. I don't know. Women's ways are ever strange. A radish now and then. She won't have meat or bread. I hear her moaning in the night. I offered her some hare I'd caught. She turned away. She cooks for me but takes none for herself. Her legs and arms become like sticks. Can it be some witch has cast a spell on her? They say that sometimes maids that have no man to lie with pine away like this. Or else. . .” and on and on. If I had told him what I knew to be the cause, he'd not have heard. He wasn't listening to himself, I think, still less to me.
I prayed, “Dear God, help me to be some help to her. Anoint my eyes that I may see my sister as a soul in need. Oh open thou the door I've closed between us two that I may tender her the love of Christ.”
One day at dusk I came upon her at the spring. She was as William said. Her eyes were fever bright and she herself so lean she could have been a sailor shipwrecked on a raft for weeks. My bowels within me stirred for pity and remorse, and when she started off to go, as if the sight of her would make me wroth, I stayed her with my hand.
“My dear,” I said, “I've used you ill. The sin is mine. Forgive me if you can. Stay here and let me speak my heart.”
“Your heart?” she said.
Just then I chanced to notice William on his way to fill his jar so I could only whisper in her ear, “Come later when he's off to bed.” She nodded gravely that she would.
Reginald, when you sit down to write my life, write this. The worst that Godric ever did, he did for love. Nor was it of an earthy sort that seeks its own but love that gives itself away for the beloved's sake, and thus, when all is said and done, the love that God himself commands.
There was no moon that night, and when she came, it was so dark I thought at first the sound I heard was but the wind until she spoke.
“Since the Man in the Moon would never come to me,” she said, “I've come to him.” And then I knew.
How long we lay there, I can't tell. We had the loneliness of years to fill and years of unsaid words at last to say. She told me how the dawn I left in Falkes de Granvill's train, she had not come to bid farewell in hopes I'd go to seek her and be left behind. I told her how her staying off had wounded me.
She said she nearly swooned the day I asked if she would come to Rome but feared that Aedwen on our way might sniff her secret out. I said how many times I'd dreamed about her swinging from that tree as I tramped on, not daring to look back lest I should cut her loose again so she might leave my lord's with me. I spoke of all the windy nights I lay on deck and thought of her. She spoke of how she'd lie awake and weep for fear I'd drown.
I think there was no time like these we did not live again, and in the end I even told how, to my shame, I'd watched her bathe in Wear. She said, “Dear heart, the shame is mine, for from the start I knew that you were there.”
And thus we talked the time away, nor was it only words that passed between us till at last for weariness we fell asleep in one another's arms.
As on the night that Aedwen died, what wakened me was William's voice. He stood outside my cell.
“Burcwen's gone!” he cried. “Did you hear her pass this way? I fear the fever's made her daft. Who knows what mischief she may do herself?”
I could not see the hand before my face, but William's dread I saw. I said, “I've been asleep an hour or more. Since then I've heard no sound.” That much at least was true. “I'm sure there is no cause for fear. She probably couldn't sleep, that's all. She rose to count the stars. As like as not she's waiting now to see the sun rise over Wear.”
“Those rocks are treacherous at night,” my brother said. “I'll go and look for her.”
I said, “She'll soon come home, you'll see. You'd best go back to bed.” But he had gone by then, and off there somewhere in the night he kept on calling out her name as sometimes to this day I wake and think I hear him calling still.
“Burcwen! Burcwen!” he cried out, now near, now far the kind of lonely, longing plaint that dogs make, baying at the moon.
She took my hand and set it on her lips as if she feared that she might answer otherwise, and then, so soft that she could hardly hear, I said, “May God have mercy on our souls.”
For three days William wasn't seen, as if the dark had swallowed him. And so it had.
A pair of Flambard's monks came out to fish a mile or so downstream and found him floating on his face where Wear had dug a little pool. His arms were flung out wide. Trout nibbled at his clothes. The monks said there was bleeding at his brow. He must have stumbled on the rocks that night and cracked his pate as he fell in. Wear did the rest. And thus Will Wagtongue's tongue at last was still.
So, Reginald, when you come to write out Godric's sine, be sure, although he struck no blow himself, to set down murder with the rest.
Of what became of Burcwen, Godric's second sight, and the departure of two old friends.
AFTER William's death, life never was the same again. Till then I thought that by God's grace and praying night and day I'd curbed my grosser sins at last. Then all at once they broke their bonds. I lay with her whom ties of tenderness and love and holy law, all three, forbade. When William asked if she was there, I foully lied. I lied again by telling him she'd probably gone to Wear to watch the sun come up. I let her place my hand upon her lips which else she might have opened to cry out the truth to him. And thus I sent my brother to his grave as sure as if I'd felled him with an axe.
If up till then I'd drawn a
part from other folk to be alone with God, from that day forth I shut the door and bolted it. In part I thought to save myself from the calling of the world to sin. In even greater part, I think, I sought to save the world from me. For months I talked to none except Our Lord in tears and penitence. Even Tune and Fairweather, when they came slithering up for love, I turned away without a word. Like Elric, I took to flogging my back raw with sticks. When nights were coldest, I'd go down and sit in Wear in hope s that having drowned poor William, Wear might drown the fiend in me. I fasted. I had them fettle me my iron vest.
And Burcwen. For better than a year she lived on in the house that William made. She grew so thin her cheeks went hollow. The flesh around her mouth and eyes shrank back till you could see the skull beneath the skin. We rarely met, and when we did, we could not speak for shame. I left a cheese once at her door to put some flesh back on her bones, but when I happened by again, the droppings and the greasy crumbs made plain that those who' d nibbled them had had long tails and yellow teeth.
Another time when I was on my knees at night between my cell and Wear, I thought I saw a slender shadow stir. If it was Burcwen, though, she never came. In winter when the snow and ice were fierce, we shook beneath our different roofs alone, and that's what Hell is like, I think. It's cold and shame and shaking. And worst of all, it's loneliness.
For weeks I saw no trace of her. At last I went and looked inside her door. The room was empty. On a shelf lay William's cap and the shirt he'd drowned in washed and folded neat. She'd strewn them with some flowers, withered now. “A kind of cloddish saint” she called him once. This was a shrine she'd made for him with relies watered by her tears. I found no sign that she'd been there for days, and when I gazed upon the bed where she and Aedwen and my brother used to lie, I thought how now for all I knew she'd left this world to sleep with them in death. I walked along by Wear in fear I'd find her as the monks found William or lying like a wounded doe who'd starved for want of food. Then one day as I was hewing wood, she came.
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