The Abbot's Tale

by Conn Iggulden

  ‘I will break bread and take salt with you, of course. Perhaps later I’ll walk over to see the grave and sit a while with him alone, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not. Wulfric, bring in his bags and have one of the lads see to the horse. Wulfric! Move, would you?’

  Wulfric didn’t want to be dismissed, I could see. I gave him a push and he began to complain and shriek. I am afraid I pushed him more roughly then in my temper. It was a solemn moment, of grief and dignity between older brothers – and he ruined it with his high voice. I smacked his head and he ran off with a great screeching wail that made me clench my jaw almost in pain.

  Aldan chuckled and shook his head.

  ‘Ah, Dunstan. I never see my brothers now, do you realise?’

  ‘That sounds . . . bearable,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it is not. It is a hard bond to break, but once it is gone, Dunstan, there is no getting it back. Now, may I enter?’ I bowed in answer. It was strange, but I accepted his authority because he was my older brother and because he looked a little like my father. I did not do it lightly.

  As Aldan ducked his head to pass under the lintel, I saw he wore a sword on his hip, in a scabbard of well-worn metal and leather. I felt a touch of cold at that and considered that I truly did not know him that well. Yet he was alone and we were many. Such was the world I lived in then, that I suspected my own brother of planning murder. I am ashamed.

  5

  Aldan was fairly awkward as he embraced my mother, perhaps because they were quite close in age. Had she been sixty, I think he would have been content to leave her the house and the land until she passed on. I saw no real cruelty in him. Still, he was his father’s eldest son, so there was not much weakness either.

  He brought up the matter after we had eaten, as we sat and sipped at hot wine, enjoying the scent of Italian bay leaves, all the way from the markets of Turin. Wulfric and I had been given our own cups. We felt as if we were grown men, and looked suitably sombre and reflective. The farm lads came in after the meal, to sit around the fire and talk of the old man. They had eaten with their families, though on less formal occasions my mother might have simmered a stew on the fire for them all. She was always soft-hearted, which was part of the reason we had so many dogs.

  Aldan agreed easily that it was too late and already too dark to put his pony and trap back on the road. He seemed to relax a little in the firelight, speaking memories of our father and listening to stories from Threefingers and John of Ower. Heorstan had been loved by those who knew him, feared by a few, respected by his enemies, so they said. Over the next month, some thirty men and women came to tell a tale or pay a debt, or share a memory of him to my mother. They were not all friends to us, but she fed them and many stayed the night. I hung on every word they spoke, and I learned a great many things about how they saw him. It was not such a bad passing, I think. The old man would have been pleased by our grief.

  Aldan, though, had a true claim on the land we owned, not just the memories of an old king’s thane. The very table and the company itself proclaimed that wealth, in bread and fish and meat – enough from hill, field and river to support twelve families. We had eaten goose, and spelt bread, with fresh sage and rosemary, dill and mint, all grown despite the frosts in our sheltered herb garden. My mother had a rare touch for teasing green things from cold earth. Perhaps she brought the old man to her bed in much the same manner.

  ‘My lady,’ Aldan said softly. ‘Some would say it is too soon to talk of my inheritance, though my father is in the ground. Yet I must away in the morning, to Winchester. I should therefore speak of what my father left me as his oldest son – and whether he wrote a will at the end.’

  ‘He did,’ my mother said. ‘There is a copy kept in the archive house at Winchester, or you can read the one I have here if you wish.’

  Aldan nodded slowly and she fetched a leather fold and untied the thongs on it, drawing out a piece of fine vellum. It bore my father’s signature and it was crammed full with tiny letters, no spaces between the words – the work of some miserly law clerk who had wished not to incur the cost of a second sheet.

  My mother watched Aldan read for a time and her kitchen girl refilled all our cups from a jug. I noticed Wulfric was becoming a little glassy-eyed and I tried to wave her off, but he only glared at me and held his out, the bold boy.

  After an age in which empires might have risen, known glories and finally fallen into dust, Aldan folded the sheet, staring into the gloom by the fire. My mother was not a woman to fidget, usually, but she could not keep silent in the face of that perfect calm.

  ‘I have no claim on this land, Aldan,’ she said. ‘Your father, may he rest in heaven, saw fit to provide well enough for me even so. I could take rooms in town, or pay rent to my sister in London. I will not starve or be sore reduced, God bless him. Yet it . . . was my hope to remain in this place while the boys grow to be men. Perhaps as your tenant. Does . . . er, is that what you wanted? Would that fit in with your plans?’ Her movements were quick then, her smile brittle. She looked like a bird watching a fox pad closer to her eggs, helpless and afraid.

  Aldan closed his eyes for a moment, as if he had slipped into a drowse by the fire. He looked the image of my father in that dim light.

  ‘Cyneryth, I know the old man would be furious if I turned you out. Yet this was my father’s only house, God rest him. He sold the one I knew as a boy and I have not had much from his hand. I have not complained, nor asked for some better share. His wealth was his own – and we must all make our way in the world. I understood he had two young boys and a woman he loved, who made him happy.’ He paused to raise his cup to my mother and she dipped her head, pleased. ‘I found a path for myself, in trade and land and fishing crews on the coast. I have wealth enough now to marry and make my own way. I tell you this not out of pride, but so you will know there is no spite in me, on my oath.’

  There was pride, though, oath or not. I could see his delight in himself. He knew very well that we were all waiting on his word – and that only his word mattered in that room. I learned something from him then.

  Aldan paused to sip his wine. Even at such a moment, I was somehow distracted as Wulfric held out his own cup for a third time as our brother went on.

  ‘But I knew my father when he was in his prime – and I saw that man slip away, to become a kinder fellow, less given to temper and calling down the heavens on those who crossed him. I believe you knew a gentle man, perhaps a better one. If that is true, you made him so, Cyneryth. Yet the one who raised me would want his son to have the land. You know that is no lie.’

  He looked up then, to meet her eyes. After a time, my mother nodded. He seemed to relax a fraction more, stretching out his legs.

  ‘You are still young, Mother. I do not doubt you will marry again, perhaps even to bear sons and daughters with a different man. If I left you this house and these acres, would some new husband cross his feet by this fire in a few years? Would he draw a blade on me if I came to collect my inheritance? We cannot know what will happen, so we must be wise today – and not store trouble for the years ahead.’

  ‘You will turn me out, then,’ my mother said, her voice a breath.

  He did not look up from the flames for a long time.

  ‘My father’s will gives you the silver dishes, the tables, the horses – the marriage bed. I could make you an offer from my own coin, if you wish – or you can sell it all in the markets. The house and the fields and pastures are mine, though, with all that grow or live upon them.’

  ‘The thralls are freed by your father’s word,’ she said. ‘You’ll pay them a wage if you want to keep them.’

  ‘As I said, he was a kinder man than he used to be.’

  Aldan’s tone was grudging and I saw that the news had not pleased him. Still, he could have come into that house like a summer storm and thrown us all out. Instead, he gave my mother honour, for all she was a stranger to him. I could not dislike the
man. He was in the right and my father would have known exactly what his will meant when he made it and had it witnessed. There was no question of misunderstanding – Heorstan intended his first son to have the land along with his titles.

  *

  After Aldan had gone, we enjoyed our last Christmas in the old house, with candles lit along the drive and a great bonfire on the old hill. I imagined the sparks flying up like souls and I knew my father was at peace.

  On the road that passed by our white beech gate, I bade my mother farewell. Threefingers had loaded a cart with all she owned and he stared off into the distance as we all embraced. The dogs slunk around us in the road, woebegone curs, with tails all tucked up. Wulfric and I were to walk back to Glastonbury and the abbey school. It was strange to think we would not return to that house, that it would be a place of memory and nevermore our home. I remember I felt great sorrow at that – I have always loved the land, far more than any people on it.

  Threefingers had his old sword on his hip and a hornhandled knife under his seat that had been a gift from my father. He promised he would see Cyneryth to her sister’s in London, though the roads were safe enough then, with Wessex all armed and ready for enemy ships.

  Wulfric and I stood in the road and watched until the cart became a smudge and then just part of the dun line of hills heading east. We had bread, cheese and a pot of blackcurrant jam that we shared as we walked the fields back to the marsh around the Isle of Avalon. The day was cold but clear, with blue skies behind the hill of the Tor. I could see for miles and, to my surprise, I felt a rising excitement. I had not left home to come to that place. I had come home. I was where I was meant to be.

  We waited half a day on that muddy shore for Brother Guido to pole across to us. He was not one I liked and I suspected him of pederasty, for the way his eyes gleamed whenever his gaze fell on boyish skin. I recall one winter game of football in the rain when Wulfric was hanging back from the mass of kicking, yelling boys. Brother Guido came out from the cloisters and scooped up a handful of mud and dust. He rubbed it on Wulfric’s knees and said, ‘There, now you are dirty, boy. Get in!’

  He sat in the stern and rested while we rowed, glancing at us with greedy little eyes as we heaved and grew pink. The waters slipped under us. Glastonbury Abbey grew at our back – still the largest collection of buildings I had ever seen, with windows rounded like the arches of a Roman aqueduct. It was a stone oath in a whole world of rotting wood, thatch and plaster. I welcomed it, as well as the sight of new scaffolding and ropes. There had been rumours of a proper bell tower for months. The very idea of that, the mathematics and the measuring and the pulleys – ah, I remember! It was a window into joy to me as I bent my back. When we’d tied up the boat, I almost ran along the paths in my delight.

  Wulfric had been quiet over the last stretch of our journey, becoming aware that he would soon meet Godwin once again, and masters he did not like. As my spirits rose, I’d seen dismay settle on him like a cloak, growing heavier, so that his shoulders drooped. I could not understand it. The abbey was the place where they took empty jugs and filled them with crystal water, or gold coins, however you wished to see it. They grew green things from the ground and new faith in the boys.

  For my part, I wanted Pythagoras and Euclid. I wanted Archimedes and, dearest of all, Thales of Miletus. I would read his words, that gift of God, and I would know that when two lines cross, the opposite angles are the same – or that the base angles of an isosceles triangle are always equal, always! It was my greatest joy, though I had not then experienced the temptations of the flesh.

  One by one, we met the monks and the secular clergy, dipping our heads to them like solemn adults. Wulfric and I bowed to Aphra and, for the first time, to her daughter. I learned that Alice had joined our merry band to learn the skills of the infirmary that spring. Ah, gentle reader, I had so little experience then. If she had looked like a smiling sack of turnips, she would still have filled my feverish imaginings. If she had looked like her mother, even. Yet Alice was a fine, strong slip of a thing, with broad shoulders and a swan neck that met her collarbone in lines like sails. Well, I have never been a poet. I do not have words to describe the way my heart quickened, the heat I felt leaping up in me. I only know I glanced upon her and lost my heart in an instant.

  I left Wulfric to unpack our things and then raced around the hill to the new tower. I stared for a time at the masons, trying to discern their secrets as they wound string onto spools and held up their thumbs outstretched, with one closed eye staring past. Walls grew on deep foundations, straight and true and square on the corners, woven about with plumb lines and lead bobs.

  I beamed at the workmen and more than one ruffled my hair as they passed, sensing a fascination for their craft. It was not long before I was fetching and carrying stones, following their instructions and sweating, growing dusty and yet satisfied as I heard the bell for Vespers and the lighting of the evening lamps at six. The day had fled from me, the shadows grown long. I knew then that I would be a maker, a creator, to echo God in my life. When I stand naked before Judgement and I am asked how I spent my years, I will say: I built. I made. Poor shadow that I am, I am yet proud of my walls.

  At Vespers, Brother Caspar saw the pale dust in my hair and on my hands. He drew me aside at the end, with Wulfric hovering nearby to see what punishment I had earned for myself.

  ‘What is this?’ Caspar demanded, brushing some piece of grit from my tunic.

  I detested him, and somehow I knew he would interfere in the deep satisfaction I had found that day. I chose not to reply and, as always, his temper was close to the surface. He slapped me across the cheek, turning my head to the side. I jerked back, glaring, ready to go for him as my own anger flared. Only the thought that it would cost me everything held my hand from striking him in return. I could not be cast out from that community, so I bit my tongue.

  I saw Godwin sidling into my view alongside Wulfric, just standing there and enjoying my discomfort.

  ‘You will answer me, Master Dunstan, or I will take you to my study and administer the discipline you lack.’

  I was sullen, but not stupid. My bruises had barely healed during Christmas and I was not keen to earn any new ones.

  ‘I was helping the masons, Brother Caspar,’ I said.

  ‘At whose order? Encarius? You seem to have fooled him with your sly humour and your lies. Did he tell you to “help the masons”?’

  I blinked at the idea that I had fooled anyone.

  ‘No, Brother Caspar. I was interested in the work.’

  ‘Work that could see you crushed or broken, you stupid boy. Yes, that is what you are. Your fits come without warning, do they not? What if you had been lifting a stone over another’s head when your devilment came on you? Should a good man be ruined or killed because of your selfish desires? No! I forbid it, whatever Encarius has allowed.’

  I opened and closed my mouth in indignation.

  ‘Brother Encarius has said nothing at all! I went to the tower scaffold because the craft appeals to me.’ I knew I had flushed deep red and that tears prickled behind my eyes. I could not find a way to avoid the man’s malice, though I saw it too well in him.

  ‘Forbidden! You are not to set foot on the tower site again. Is that understood? I will not have you endangering the masons or the other men – or the boys.’

  He saw the resentment in me and leaned in, so that I could smell him.

  ‘If I hear you have disobeyed me, child, I will see you expelled from this abbey.’

  ‘Well, you must do as you see fit,’ I said, clenching my jaw. It was the closest I dared come to resisting. ‘May I be dismissed, Brother Caspar?’

  He stood back, his eyes glittering. I think my anger surprised him.

  ‘Very well. Away with you now. Just remember what I said.’

  I inclined my head, though I was so furious by then I could hardly breathe.

  Perhaps it is not a surprise that my dreams were
vivid and tormenting that first night back. They began with visions of my father and then of Aphra and Alice, which disturbed me. I sensed my sleep deepening and then I saw the tower of the abbey – complete, as if a year had passed. More, I saw a view as if I soared higher on angel’s wings, so that the land around was revealed and, oh!, I saw no humble little church on a hillside, but the building that stands there today, the great abbey of Glastonbury, with towers and gables and grand halls and bells ringing out over all. I saw hundreds of monks – not just the couple of dozen that I knew, but score upon score in beetle black, making their way to the dawn service. I saw a city on a hill and I knew it had been made by my hand.

  I woke, or half woke, I have never been entirely sure, filled with visions and so excited I had to rise and see. I ran on bare feet, dressed only in a shift, though I did not feel the cold, or even notice it.

  The mists were thick, but I knew the way and had the bright pictures of my dream to guide me. Only once did I falter and it was because I expected a great avenue where there was none. I stumbled on, snagging my feet on sharp stones so that they bled, but uncaring, unfeeling.

  I found myself at the tower scaffold, the wooden spars stretching away into the mists. I took a rope in each hand and I stood for a long time, gazing upwards. I do not know why I climbed in the end, only that a great urgency was upon me, a clear, cold desire that would not be denied. I went up like a Barbary ape, hand over hand, leaping from one pole to another with no sense of fear at the aching drop beneath my feet. The mist was thick around me and I felt as if I climbed Jacob’s Ladder or the Tower of Babel – upward to heaven.

  When I reached the topmost structure, my hands grasped only air and I came close to falling for the first time. I grabbed on in panic and just clung there, panting and sighing and wondering how I would get down again without breaking my neck. The fugue was lifting from me, that daze of visions and colours. I had seen a vast construction, a cathedral of God, the marsh itself drained and made into golden fields. I had climbed and survived, but I was suddenly cold and aching.