Avalon

by Anya Seton

  Merewyn clenched her hands beneath her cloak, and said steadily, "My Lord Abbot, I want only information. We've been captured so long, and just escaped. We know nothing of our homeland. Can you tell me is the atheling Lord Rumon still here?"

  The Abbot was startled. So indeed was Orm. Who was Rumon? When he was a child at Langarfoss, was there not someone called Rumon, who came to visit with a skald?

  "Lord Rumon left here, some years ago," said the Abbot, after a pause. "I hardly knew him. I was prior then. Segegar was Abbot, he who is now the Bishop of Bath and Wells."

  Merewyn's fingernails bit into her palms. What did she care about the Bishop of Bath and Wells! She spoke with control. "Lord Rumon is at Court then with King Ethelred?"

  "Oh, I shouldn't think so, lady," answered the Abbot with a thin smile. "The King's Men are not composed of priests, nor yet," he added, "of warriors" — and instantly checked himself. It was not wise to seem critical of the King. "Madam," he said anxious to get rid of them, and also observing with annoyance that the girl had plucked a climbing rose from outside the window and was scattering the petals over his Turkey rug. "Madam, I trust you'll be comfortable at the hostel. And it does now occur to me that an old Irish monk called Finian may know something of Lord Rumon. Brother Finian lives in one of the

  new cells we've built halfway up the Tor. I'm sure you'll find him."

  The Abbot rose and smiled dismissal, a smile which faded as he saw Thora stamping the rose petals into his rug and singing a breathy little song. "Your daughter —" said the Abbot who had a passion for tidiness. "She is simple-minded?"

  Merewyn winced and colored. "No!" she said angrily. "She's been bewitched by a pagan fiend!"

  The Abbot made the sign of the cross as he stepped back quickly. "You have my sympathy, lady." He disappeared through a painted curtain into his own quarters.

  "Come on, Mother," said Orm, who saw that there were tears in Merewyn's eyes; desolation in her face. "That's all you'll get from him, whatever it was you wanted."

  "I'd like to find Rumon," said Merewyn in a small voice. The courage and authority she had shown since landing were dimmed.

  She let Orm propel herself and Thora out of the Abbot's lodgings.

  They wandered back towards the hostel and heard the monks chanting for Nones, as they passed the great church. "These Christians do a lot of singing and praying," Orm remarked. "Not a life I'd Hke."

  "No," Merewyn agreed, and sighed. "But they've got something we haven't. I used to have it. I've lost it."

  This did not interest Orm, who was eager for his dinner. "Why do you want to find a Lord Rumon, Mother?" he asked as they went through the precinct gates.

  "Because —" she said in a dragging voice, "I once loved him very much. Later — too late — he loved me. He sailed to the West — sailed finally back to Iceland, trying to find me. I was married to Sigurd, oh, I loved your father, never forget that — but he's dead."

  "Your friend Rumon may also be dead." Orm spoke tartly, and husded his mother towards the hostel.

  "I don't think so," she said. "I believe I'd know somehow."

  She yanked her arm from Orm's, and spoke with sudden resoki-uon. "Take care of Thora, see that she gets her meal when you do. I'm going to find Brother Finian!"

  Merewyn went up the Tor on foot, as she had with Rumon years ago. Halfway up she saw a modest cluster of stone huts, which had not been there before. She approached the nearest one, and knocked on the wooden door.

  It was opened briskly by a monk. "You want to buy candles for St. Michael? You want permission to make pilgrimage to the top o' the Tor?" said the monk. "That'll be fourpence."

  Merewyn shook her head. "I want to find Brother Finian."

  "Last cell down," said the monk pointing, and putting away the candles he had been ready to sell, "but you know he's gone blind?"

  "No," said Merewyn, this time faintly. "I don't know anything about Brother Finian."

  "Two years ago he lost his sight, but he's sharp enough for all that. Three o' us here we care for him, whilst we collect from the pilgrims."

  "Wouldn't he do better in the Infirmary?"

  "He didn't want to be there, and our old Abbot — Segegar that was — said he might as well live here, if it suited htm. Which it does."

  Merewyn said "Thank you," and walked uncertainly to the last stone hut. Its occupant was sitting on a stool outside the door, sniffing the autumn air. His scalp was mottled above the grizzled fringe of tonsure. There were deep crow's feet around his closed eyes. Yet there was an expression of peace on the long-lipped Celtic face.

  "Brother Finian?" asked Merewyn.

  "Sure and that's who / am," he answered. "And who may you be. Lady?" He cocked his head, and smiled. He was accustomed to occasional female visitors, especially those from the Irish group who lived by the Meare.

  "I am the Lady Merewyn," she said, "of royal British blood."

  Finian started. He touched his cross, and murmured, "Jesu, Domine —"

  "Have you heard of me?" she asked, astonished.

  "Aye, my daughter," said Finian. He thought of the frantic chase with Rumon, looking for this woman through Devonshire, through Cornwall, and he thought of the tragic ending at Padstow.

  "I'm trying to find Lord Rumon," said Merewyn hesitantly, puzzled by the monk and expecting disappointment again. "The Abbott said you might know about Rumon."

  "Come here," said Finian. "Gi' me yer hand!"

  She obeyed, and the blind monk felt all over her hand carefully. Then he reached up and touched her face. Since his blindness, he had learned to understand things about people if he could touch them. As the earthly sight had gone, it seemed as though an eye had opened in his mind.

  "Ye're in trouble again," he said. "Poor child, why be ye looking for Rumon when ye didn't want him in Iceland?"

  "You know that?" She was appalled and excited.

  "I know that, and many thing else too. There's another stool in the cell, it's special for the ones who come to see me. 'Tis a luxury permitted by the Abbot. Fetch the stool and sit here, i' the sun." He raised his wrinkled face, and spread his arms out as though the sun would give him blessing.

  Merewyn saw rain clouds gathering behind the Tor, but she said nothing as she scurried into the dark hut and brought out the other stool.

  Finian groped for her hand again as she sat down beside him.

  "Is Rumon dead?" she asked in a white, dry voice.

  "Wasn't a month ago," said Finian. "I'd a message from him." He gave her hand a pat. "Years ago, m'daughter," he chuckled, "I met ye on the way to here, an' ye were lookin' fur Rumon then."

  "To be sure" she suddenly remembered the subprior who had

  been guiding foreign pilgrims to Glastonbury. "And you found him for me —" she added hopefully. "Where is he now?"

  "At Tavistock Abbey in Devon, m'dear, and they think a lot o' him too. Lord Ordulf fair dotes on him."

  "What's he doing there? I thought he'd be at Court." Finian felt her hand suddenly tremble. "J^^u!" she added. "Lord Ordulf — Queen Alfrida's brother? I thought Rumon was finished with Alfrida forever!"

  "So he is," said Finian gently. "And 'tis a long story, bur afore I tell it —" He hesitated, then decided that she must get the bitter draught down at once.

  "Rumon," he said, "was ordained by Dunstan, several years afore our blessed Archibshop died in '88. Rumon is a Benedictine monk, m'child, and you must not think of him in any fleshly way."

  She was silent, staring up at the Tor where the clouds were growing blacker. "It's going to rain," she said. "May we sit inside your cell. Brother Finian? And you'll tell me the saga of Rumon?" She used the Norse word with a deliberate, and sad irony.

  Once inside his whitewashed little hut, Finian stood up before the empty fireplace while she sat hunched on a stool, her head bowed against her clasped hands.

  Finian said that having seen Rumon but a few times during the years after his return from Iceland, he naturally
did not know all the details, but the substance was this.

  Rumon had stopped in Glastonbury, then traveled east to Canterbury and visited Archbishop Dunstan. Rumon immediately entered the novitiate, and in due course took his final vows. He then asked permission to become a hermit somewhere.

  "I know what happened," said Finian, "because the dear old Archbishop, knowing how fond I was of Rumon and that I had gone to Padstow with him —"

  "Padstow?" she interrupted with a gasp. "You were at Padstow?"

  "Aye," said Finian solemnly. "We got there just after the Viking raid, when ye were captured, yer servants killed."

  Merewyn shuddered. There was a silence. He heard her breathing sharpen. "Did you talk to anyone at Padstow? Was there anyone left?"

  "Did Rumon not tell ye when ye saw him in Iceland?"

  "No, we hardly spoke, and I didn't ask. I dorCt want to think of what happened at Padstow. It's a long-ago nightmare. Forgotten."

  The old monk reflected; had his eyes been open and sighted there would have been a quizzical glint in them.

  "Ye are afeard," he said. "Ye're passing yerself off, as ye once did unknowing, as a British lady of high birth. For why do ye do this?"

  "Because," she said in a rush, "I want to help Orm and Thora; knowledge of my true birth would make it impossible. England is so terrified of the Norsemen."

  " 'Tis the truth. And why not? Vikings've raided and plundered and murdered and burned everywhere in the South. Ethelred he buys them off for a time, but they come back. And they say the Danelaw might be rising, I hear these things even in me cell. I understand your reasoning," added Finian slowly. "An' nobody in England knows who ye really are, except Rumon and me, who'll never mention it. Dunstan knew, but he's gone on to his reward, God rest his soul."

  Merewyn got up and began pacing the clay floor. "Ketil-Firebeard loas my father. I grew fond of him, despite the dreadful things he did to my mother. And I loved Sigurd, my husband, but they're dead. And they died as heathens. I wish to forget it."

  Finian sighed. He understood the turmoil she was in, and her wish to forget her recent years; but forgetting was none too easy, nor was starting life over again easy. He guessed that she had

  hoped to find Rumon still unwed and powerful by reason of some position at Court. That she had, however foolishly, counted on the love which had sent Rumon a-thirsting after her to Ireland; to unknown lands in the West, and finally to Iceland, where she had not been glad to see him. Up and down, up and down, Finian thought, like a child's seesaw. But now the seesaw was broken.

  "Ye're ambitious for yer children," he stated. "How many?"

  "Two. A boy and girl. Though it is for Orm I want help."

  "And for yerself? Waiting lady to the Queen? Ye were once."

  "One can have influence when living in Court circles, I learned that long ago. This Queen of Ethelred's is from the Danelaw, isn't she?"

  "Aye, from York. But she's a shadow, a little ghost. I saw her some years back when she came here on pilgrimage. Praying at the shrines that her infants would live. She's had one every year. 'Tis something the King can do, it seems. Make babies."

  "Can't he do anything else?" she asked, staring at the serene old face with its shut eyes.

  "The King is a coward, God help him," said Finian calmly. "An' he's the tool of any vicious man who wants to use him. He's always been afraid of his mother, and felt guilty for young Edward's murder. Rumon told me that after the murder, Alfrida beat Ethelred with a candle. So now he's afraid o' candles and they use fish-oil lamps at Court."

  They were both quiet while rain spattered around the hut. Merewyn sat down on the stool, and said, "What did Rumon do after he was ordained? Did he become a hermit?"

  "In a manner o' speaking. Our beloved Dunstan spent many a prayerful night for Brother Rumon, whose whole life he well knew. Then he sent him to the Lizard, at the tip o' Cornwall — I expect ye know it?"

  She shook her head, and realizing that Finian could not see, said, "No, that's a long way from Padstow."

  "There was still a heathen bunch down there, making blood sacrifices on standing stones. Rumon, when he was shipwrecked from France, had been with them a while. Dunstan never forgot anything important, and the state of Christendom in Cornwall had always disturbed him. He sent Rumon down there as a missionary. Rumon had now vowed obedience of course, and he went right off.

  "Three years later he came back here to Glaston, and we talked for hours. He had lived in a wattle-and-daub hut he had built near a fine spring. He had converted and baptized sixty people and started a church. He had made them pull down their standing stones, and help him carve crosses. He traveled up and down the east coast o' Cornwall. I believe there were four parishes named for him, only I think the Cornish called him 'Ruan,' some priest having confused his name with an early saint. Rumon smiled when he told me, and said that since leaving Provence he'd never heard his real name pronounced exactly.

  "I could see then," Finian added, "that Rumon's smile'd become very sweet. It warmed ye. Nor was he vainglorious over his successes, he gave all credit to the glory of God Triumphant, and to the Holy Ghost. When he was living as a hermit in Cornwall, a dove had flown in and landed on, the roof of his well, which he thereafter deemed sacred. He put a cross on the well. He'd sometimes had visions of the Holy Ghost, he told me."

  "So," said Merewyn slowly, "then what did he do?"

  "Dunstan sent a priest to replace him, and Brother Rumon traveled back to Canterbury in early spring. 'Twas 988, the year the Archbishop died, on May 19th. A holy death he had while he was chanting a psalm, but before this he had a further order for Rumon, who he thought should give up a missionary life which had become too easy and remote. He thought Rumon's soul should meet more challenge." Finian smiled, "Our sainted Dunstan was ever concerned with what was best for a soul. Tavistock Abbey badly needed a Brother who could write Latin

  and make illuminations. It also needed a harpist who would set the pitch for the chants and accompany the carols on festival days. Rumon, as ye know, had both talents."

  "Yes," she said. "No wonder they think so much of him at Tavistock."

  " 'Tis not so much for that, 'tis for something happened three years ago. The Vikings came up the Tamar to Tavistock Abbey. Lord Ordulf was at Lydford, an' by this time Rumon was in charge of the Abbey. When those Norse pirates went a-stravag-ing and yelling into the church, Rumon felt fury come on him. He told me this himself. He'd never felt anything like it before. He ran for his sword, which he had put in the sacristy, an' when he saw them climbing the altar to get at the beautiful gold crucifix, when he saw 'em jumping high to grab down the silver dove, emblem o' the Holy Ghost, he attacked them, alone. The other monks were afeared — trying to hide."

  "Rumon attacked the Vikings," she said in a shaken, wondering voice. ^''Rumon ..."

  "Aye," said Finian. "An' he killed two o' 'em."

  Her mouth went dry. She could only whisper, "Rumon shed blood in the Abbey church ..."

  "He did. There're times, m'daughter, when a man must fight fur what he beheves in."

  "What happened?" she whispered. "Why didn't they kill

  "A miracle, it might be, but on the airthly plane, they seem to've been so astonished by a Christian monk giving them battle, and besides he'd killed their leader, that they scuttled out o' the church, giving Rumon time enough to take the relics, the treasure an' the silver dove to Rumonsleigh, inland — a parish he'd founded."

  "And then?"

  "Oh, the Vikings came back that night wi' reinforcements and burned the Abbey and monastery, but they got no real plunder; Rumon had saved what belonged to the church. It

  seems that they've nearly rebuilt the whole Abbey now, an' Lord Ordulf he keeps a guard around it all the time — fighting men. 'Tis a pity," added Finian, "that the King doesn't copy his uncle. Anybody but a rabbit would know 'twouldn't work to keep paying off those divvils. An' now they're landing from Normandy too."

  "The Normans
are Norsemen?" asked Merewyn absently, trying to understand how Rumon could so much have altered.

  "The Normans were Norsemen once," said Finian, "but they've got 'emselves Frenchified. The King o' France he gave 'em Normandy, an' they were quiet for a bit, but that Danish King Sweyn, he's stirred 'em up to want conquests. England's the HkeHest conquest, because we don't fight together an' we've got the Danelaw already."

  Merewyn sighed deeply. "I wonder if I went to see Rumon, if — even now —"

  "He'd help ye at Court? I doubt that he could, if he would. An' to see him, ye must first ask pairmission, m' dear. Have ye no other place to go?"

  Her answer came from some deep part of her, through a layer of thought which was combatting disappointment. "Romsey Abbey, I suppose," she said. "They'll remember that my Aunt Merwinna was Abbess there —" She stopped short. "But she wasn't really my aunt — Oh Blessed Mary —"

  Finian heard her discouragement, and was sorry. He reflected that Dunstan had kept her secret. And her ambitions were not for herself, but her son. That was no mortal sin, hardly even venial. And the poor woman had endured much.

  "Elfled is now Abbess o' Romsey," he said quietly. "Did ye know her?"

  Merewyn started. "She was my dear friend."

  "Then go back there, child, an' I think it pairhaps better that ye don't tell her yer true story. The Vikings raided Romsey too, but the nuns escaped to Winchester. The Danish King

  Sweyn was on his way to London, and scarce bodiered wi' Romsey where he found poor pickings."

  "Blessed Mary —" said Merewyn again. "Is there no peace in this country where I so longed to return?"

  Finian was growing tired. He groped for the other stool and sat down. "Well, m'dear, many think that this year looo from the bairth o' Lord Jesus Christ'll bring the end o' the world. Ye must hve one day at a time, never forgetting the Mass, prayers, an' submission to God's will fur us. 'Tis loike the loss o' me sight. God's Will."