The words of Abbot Ségéne returned to the monk. The abbot was a holy and subtle man, but Aidan knew well that his displeasure was not something to be incurred lightly. There had been one brother who had earned Ségéne’s disfavour and he was banished from the community within a week, his head shaved to show he was a monk no longer.
But Oswald was his friend.
A shadow passed above them and Aidan raised his eyes to see Bran flying silently overhead.
“You know that the abbot will not accept you into the community if you bring Bran?”
“So he has told me.” Oswald smiled. “I asked him to show where, in book or the traditions of the saints, it forbade a raven entry into a monastery, and he had to admit that this was nowhere the case. After all, even Father Noah took a raven with him upon the ark, and trusted him with first finding land after the Flood.”
“But the raven didn’t return.”
“True, but Bran is his descendant, and God has sanctified all the creatures of the ark, marking them with his favour, for he saved them from the Flood. This is what I told the abbot, and he could not gainsay it.”
“You said that to Abbot Ségéne?” asked Aidan, incredulous.
“Did I do wrong?”
“Not wrong, exactly. But I would rather die than go against Abbot Ségéne, so you had better get your sword ready, Oswald, for you will have to kill me after I have spoken what I have to tell you.”
The monk stopped and Oswald too came to a halt. Brother Aidan sighed. “This is as like heaven as I believe anywhere to be on this earth. I would not leave it, so I can understand why you would join us. But the abbot has spoken to me, telling me to dissuade you from your wish. I think he wished me to speak as a friend, offering counsel, but I will speak in truth, telling what he told me, and then placing myself at his mercy. For Abbot Ségéne would not have you as a monk, Oswald, but rather he wants you to be king, that you might bring the word of eternal life to your people and thus win them to a hope that, with Edwin’s death, lies in danger of being extinguished. That is what the abbot wishes; that is what he asked me to counsel you. I have spoken straight, not using false words to hide my meaning, as men do before kings, so that you may know the truth of things and make your decision.”
The monk looked at the young prince standing before him. “What will you do, Oswald?”
The ætheling made no answer for many minutes, but thoughts rolled behind his eyes, and his face moved as with a great struggle.
Then he turned to Brother Aidan. “I will go before God and ask him, that he may decide. I will go on the green pilgrimage, into the desert of the sea, and seek his answer there.”
“The abbot will not want you to do that,” said Brother Aidan, “for many make no return from the green pilgrimage, and he would deem it a waste to lose you thus: neither king nor monk, but drowned among the waves.”
“Nevertheless, it is what I will do, for I must know what God wills, or whether he would take me from this life and raise up another to deliver Northumbria from Cadwallon. You have a boat?”
“It is a little thing, a coracle, good for bays and inlets but not the open sea.”
“It will suffice. I seek an answer, not an exile. Come, take me to your boat.”
Brother Aidan stared into Oswald’s face and saw there a light such that he had only seen in a few men before; he would not be gainsaid by any power of the earth and few indeed of the heavens.
The two men walked in silence back to the inlet where Aidan worked the monastery’s tannery. The monk lifted the coracle from where he had stowed it upon the rocks and dropped it into the sea, where it bobbed light and high, riding like a duck.
“You are certain of this?”
“Yes.”
“I will wait for you here.”
Oswald stepped lightly into the coracle, settling himself into it and taking the paddle.
“Give me your blessing, Brother Aidan,” he said.
“I give it you. I give it right gladly,” said the young monk. He watched, not moving, as the young prince paddled out of the inlet and onto the wave-ridged waters of the Sound of Iona. He watched as the coracle bobbed out of sight behind the headland, and for once he took heart from the dark shape that followed it: Bran would not leave his master, even when he took to the waves.
Brother Aidan did not move for many hours, but prayed, his lips moving and the mumble of prayer as constant as the breaking of the waves. The hours of the Office, the Great Work of the monks of the island, came and went, and he knew he should be attending to the work, but he remained where he was. In part, this was for fear of what the abbot might say should he ask where Oswald was and Aidan, bound by obedience, would have to tell him; but the greater reason was the conviction, deep in his soul, that it was the rope of constant, unceasing prayer that held Oswald to this life, and if he should cease, then God would take Oswald as he ventured out upon the green pilgrimage, and not return him.
Oswald, Iding, ætheling of Northumbria, would-be postulant monk, paddled the coracle north up the Sound, the light vessel skimming over the water. Bran flew above him, croaking, then swooped down and settled to bad-tempered grooming of his feathers while clutching the side of the coracle. Every so often a wave would break upon the side of the coracle and sprinkle the raven with salt water, whereupon he would begin his grooming again, but only after a black-eyed stare at Oswald.
“I know you would not be here,” Oswald said to the bird, “but I will not ask you to leave.” He dipped the paddle into the green water, shallow above submerged rocks, pushing the coracle out into the deeper water of the Sound. “I will be glad of company, I think.”
That he held a paddle at all worried Oswald. Many monks set out on the green pilgrimage without paddle or sail, trusting in God to take them where he would, and accepting that that might be beneath the waves and not over them. However, those monks were dealing solely with eternal matters and the salvation of souls; by the very fact of going out on the green pilgrimage they had left all temporal matters behind. But for him it was different.
“When I heard of Eanfrith’s death, it was as if some enemy had made me slave – I felt the chains fall upon my heart and my limbs.” Oswald spoke as he paddled, and Bran the raven listened, his glittering black eyes unblinking. “That was why I came to Brother Aidan to speak: for I had thought to escape the chains of my birth and to leave over the sword, the stink of blood and the screams of men, for the Great Work of the monks and the peace of Iona.”
The raven croaked and Oswald laughed.
“Yes, I know you think me foolish, a wide-eyed boy transfixed by what he has seen, as a lad is when he sees a warrior, shining in battle array, for the first time. I know they are men, with men’s faults; I have heard gossip and rumour, seen anger lay plans for vengeance behind honeyed words, and lust stoked in imagining.”
Bran bobbed his head, as if agreeing with Oswald’s assessment.
“But I have also heard the Great Work, raising prayer to heaven; and books written and made to carry wisdom and beauty to the future; I have seen saints, Bran, walk in the form of men. That is what I would be part of, an unworthy part no doubt, but I can see nothing better for my soul.”
The coracle was emerging from the Sound and here the waters grew choppy as the Atlantic swell split upon the islands of Iona and its far greater parent, Mull. Oswald steered the vessel west. He had in mind the two small islands that lay in the ocean west of Iona, the haunts of seabirds and seals. Only rarely did the men of Mull or the surrounding islands visit, and that was when the birds nested, to harvest eggs. Now, the breeding season was past, and the islands would be quiet. He might land there, and think and pray.
Bran was finding the swell of the open sea not much to his liking. He side-footed his way around the edge of the coracle until he stood behind Oswald, using him as a shield against the spray that broke more regularly now over the boat. For his part, the young prince felt the cold of water and wind settling into his bones.
He had not thought to fetch the waxed cloak and hood that men wore when on the sea, and his own clothes were wet and clung to him. The fierce joy of escape that had settled over him as he took the coracle and paddled away was beginning to ebb, leaving the cold of the open sea.
If God took him, it would be a cold death.
Living amid the islands and seaways of Dal Riada, Oswald had seen many bodies taken from the sea. Even the most sunburned of men emerged from the water pale, as if the sea had washed their souls clean as it took their lives. He hoped it would wash him clean too.
Bran croaked. Oswald awoke from the stupor of coldness and saw what the raven warned of. In the west, the black and rolling face of a storm approached, rising over the sea. Oswald looked back. He was far from Iona, in the middle of the passage to the islands. The sea, already disturbed by the approaching squall, began to whip up around the small boat, flecks of foam curling off wave tops. He looked ahead, to where the long whaleback of Rèidh Eilean and the hump of Stac Mhic Mhurchaidh broke up the advancing waves; he might possibly be able to land on Rèidh Eilean; with the sea running high and rising, any landing on the steep sides of Stac Mhic Mhurchaidh was impossible. But the storm was coming fast, the line of rain moving across the ocean towards him and preceded by an advance guard of squally, gusty winds; Oswald measured distance and time against his own ability to paddle into the teeth of the approaching wind: there was no landfall there. His only chance was to fly before the storm and let it drive him on, using the lightness of the coracle and its ability to ride lightly over the waves to escape the green martyrdom.
Digging the paddle hard into the water, Oswald began to propel the coracle back towards Iona, while Bran croaked and, seeing where they were heading, took to the air, riding the gusty winds with ease. Looking up at him, Oswald laughed with a wild, free delight, the joy that sometimes came on him in battle, when he knew death was very near and yet to laugh in its face was the simplest, most natural thing to do. Now too death approached; the Lord was about to put him to the test, and Oswald welcomed it.
“I have no wings,” he yelled up as the raven swooped overhead, croaking its joy in the face of the oncoming storm, “but I am flying too!”
And in truth, he did seem to be flying as the coracle swooped and soared on the backs of the waves, riding high over the tops, plunging low into the depths, where green hills of water surrounded him and only the glimpse of Bran above told of a world that was not water.
Oswald and the raven fled before the storm.
Brother Aidan, feeling the winds bite and pull at his habit as he prayed, knew that a squall was approaching. He looked to the west, at the dark skies there, then gathered his habit around his knees and rushed across the neck of land at the top of Iona to see if there was any sign of Oswald upon the sea. Standing on the machair, now exposed to the full force of the wind, the monk squinted out to sea. There, bobbing up upon a wave crest, was it a coracle or a seabird, riding the ocean? The dark shape disappeared as quickly as a bird into a trough only to re-emerge as the wave swept in and, closer, he saw the motion of arms, driving a paddle through the water, and knew it for Oswald.
But the storm was behind him, a curtain of rain drawing forward across the sea, and Aidan knew all too well that the coracle would not ride out such weather. His lips moving in prayer, Aidan urged Oswald onwards. He could see the raven, circling above the coracle, but its calls were lost in the rising wind.
Focused as he was on the ætheling’s approach over the sea, Aidan did not hear the approach by land until a hand touched his shoulder, and he all but squealed in shock.
“Brother Aidan, the abbot sent me to ask if you know where is the ætheling, Oswald.” The novice, a boy bare old enough to scrape a few hairs from his chin, looked innocently at the monk. He, in his turn, had been so intent upon delivering his message from the abbot that he did not notice Aidan’s surprise.
“Brother Aidan?”
The monk raised his hand and pointed out to sea. The novice, a boy raised as much on sea as he had been on land, for his folk were island people, followed Aidan’s direction and saw the coracle, and the storm chasing it, and without a word he gathered his patched robes around his knees and ran back to the abbot. He understood all too well what he was seeing.
Aidan remained where he was, the wind lashing his shaven scalp and whipping the hair that hung from his crown down his neck. His prayers increased in pace as the race drew nearer, the words skipping from his tongue but as swiftly pulled away by the wind.
Through his prayers tumbled images: the Lord calming the waters, the still voice after the storm. And through the running words came the thought, unbidden but irresistible: Will you not calm these waters, Lord, that your servant might live? But the storm advanced faster than the coracle, drawing closer to it, and unless the wind changed, there seemed no chance that Oswald could out-run it.
“Where is he?”
Brother Aidan, despite his prayers, had no difficulty in hearing these words, for they were uttered by a man accustomed to being heard. The abbot had come himself, keeping pace with the young novice, and Aidan again pointed out to sea, and Abbot Ségéne turned his eyes to see the storm close down upon the coracle as night falls upon the land.
The abbot’s shoulders slumped. “We are too late,” he said. He looked at Brother Aidan. “You knew?”
The monk nodded. He could not speak.
“We will speak on this later. It makes no odds now.” The abbot drew his hood over his head as the first squalls of rain reached them. “Come.”
Brother Aidan made no move. He could not speak.
“You wish to remain here for a while?” asked the abbot.
The monk’s answer was his silence.
The abbot nodded. “I cannot find it in my heart to care where you are now,” he said. “Why did you not stop him?” He chopped his hand down. “Do not answer. Stay here. Watch for him. Bring me his body when – if – it comes to shore. We will bury Oswald at least.”
Without further glance, Abbot Ségéne, with the young novice trotting behind, made his way back along the track towards the monastery. The rain came, and blotted them from sight. Aidan remained where he was, staring blindly out to sea, his lips moving in the silent prayer that they had not ceased uttering, even when the abbot berated him.
The wool of his habit could no longer shed the water falling upon it, but Aidan barely felt the water trickling down his body. Indeed, he barely felt his body at all; he was reduced to a single prayer: Lord, let him live. Lord, let him live. The squall – one of the short, fierce Atlantic storms that, once passed, left the day washed sea blue – began to lessen, for he was able to see more than a few feet in front of his face. What he saw, though, offered no comfort, for the sea churned in a chaos of froth, stirred by the competing winds that swirled within and around the squall. In truth, Aidan was no longer searching for the coracle but for a corpse, arms outstretched in the characteristic position of the drowned, as if the body was embracing the sea that had taken its life.
The croak was the first thing he heard, the raven’s croak, and Aidan spun around, searching for it, then saw Bran overhead, wings spread then angled downwards as it landed near him. The bird lowered its head and croaked again.
“Where is he? You know, don’t you? Where is he?”
Bran croaked once more, lowering his head and pointing, and then, as if losing patience with the short-sightedness of the earthbound, he took wing again, pushing up through the last of the rain and out over the headland, over the spray of waves breaking on the isle’s northern reach.
Aidan followed the bird with his sight – Lord, let him live. Lord, let him live – watching the dark shape flap firmly onwards until it reached a point not far from shore, where it began to circle.
And there, amid the slowly settling wave spume, Aidan saw the dark circle of the coracle, still afloat upon the water. But the monk could see no man shape moving within the coracle, wielding paddle; only the boat i
tself and the raven above, circling, croaking its call.
The monk did not hesitate. Taking off his habit, he dived into the sea. It was late summer and the season had been warm. The sea did not strip the heat from his body immediately, as it would in winter, but even as he tried to swim out to the coracle through the churn around the isle, he could feel the strength being pulled from his body. He would not have long in the water before strength failed him and he embraced the sea in his dying.
Aidan was an island boy – he had learned to swim near as soon as he had learned to walk. But most of his swimming had been confined to sheltered bays, to striking out for islets and their haul of birds’ eggs, not to breaching the remnants of an Atlantic squall. He felt as if he had been in the water forever, but glancing back, the isle seemed barely further away than when he had first plunged into the sea. However, even if he was making little progress towards the coracle, it was spinning towards him, swooping up and down the waves as easily as a sea duck. The coracle span towards him, then dipped away as the waves parted them, and Aidan struck towards it again. But the receding water pulled it back, before a fresh wave sent the coracle scudding past him, and this time the monk saw it scud through the line of breaking waves into one of the little coves of the isle. Making a final effort, Brother Aidan turned back to land and struck out, adding his own strength to the waves attempting to push themselves up the beach.
So it was that almost together monk and coracle landed upon the Holy Isle, Brother Aidan crawling up onto the narrow beach, the boat rubbing over the sand and finally settling.
Bran landed upon the sand and croaked, lowering his body and pointing his beak at the coracle.
Aidan scrambled to his feet and rushed to the boat.
But as he did so, a face appeared above the rim of the coracle. Brother Aidan slowed and then stopped.
Oswald turned his face to the monk and it was the face of one who has seen death and yet lives: pale and bedraggled, his skin as white as those who had given their lives into the ocean’s embrace, yet a slow fire burned in his eyes.
Oswald: Return of the King Page 12