The Abbot's Tale

by Conn Iggulden

  In one of my classes, I thought the craftsman, Master Gregory, was some friend of Caspar when he handed me a thick rod of cold iron and a file and said, ‘Make me a needle.’ Yet he did the same with a few of the others as well. Though it took me a month and made my fingers grey with metal dust driven deep, I learned how to use a file. That was not a small thing. I liked that old man, with his pots of hoof glue that had to be heated to liquid before they could be used. He used to say that woodwork didn’t really begin until you were ‘bodging’ it – that is, making up for some mistake. Wood was forgiving, he said, which I learned was true. Worked iron was not forgiving. Wrought iron could burn your bones black with all the heat it could hold. The metal came from the earthen ores, separated into limestone slag and molten iron in the bloomer. The forge demanded your respect and your fear. I loved it from the start.

  After the great Masses of the Passion at Easter, the Trinity term came and went. I was lost in my studies then, cramming hymns and skills and the distillation of vitriols into my mind until I woke mumbling lists of rare earths; or hie, haec, hoc-, or the range of flux temperatures when brazing brass and iron. The masters knew they had found a streak of good ore in me. I saw it in their surprise, in their pleasure at my interest. It was a revelation as important as any other in its way – that expert men love their subject. Show them interest, show them fascination, and they see themselves reflected – and then they will move the world for you.

  The year aged to hærfest, that some call ‘autumn’ in the Roman style. I say that now, though I had no real sense of time passing. The days flew from me and it is to my shame that I ignored Wulfric’s troubles. Yet even as I flourished, he began to wither on the vine. I saw the marks of tears on him many times, sometimes the stripes of beatings. I thought Wulfric would endure and be toughened, or that his enemies would tire of tormenting him, perhaps.

  If I am honest, I will say that I did not care greatly, not while the knowledge of the world was pouring into me. It was a time of joy and I was young. I wanted Wulfric to love the abbey household, but if he could not, I wanted him to stay out of my sight.

  In October, Father Clement fell ill, an old man’s ague that brought him low. Encarius was his physician and I saw him look graver and more solemn each long day. A dozen times, Encarius sent me to the infirmary to make some concoction of herbs in hot water for the abbot.

  Rosemary, mustard and lavender were the mildest of those I crushed and mixed, so that Clement could be propped up on pillows and made to lean out over milky waters with a sheet over his head, coughing his lungs to pieces in the fumes. Encarius watched me carefully in my work the first few times, but he saw I was deft and quick and I did not need telling twice. It was not long before he’d send me on my own to make a new bowl, bringing it steaming through the corridors and cloisters like a proud cook.

  As the abbot’s health worsened, I was excused services to aid Encarius. It meant I had the run of the abbey in those times when every other soul was praying in the chapel. There were so few of us then that no one else could slip away, but Wulfric did so anyway, choosing whatever punishment would follow in his desire to see Aphra’s daughter, Alice.

  I made no attempt to hide my clatter, so I did not see them in an embrace. Yet I knew from their scarlet expressions and the way Alice would not meet my eye. The service of Compline was coming to an end, so it must have been nine o’clock in the evening or thereabouts. I upbraided my brother in front of the girl, my anger made more fierce in part because I liked her myself and could hardly believe she had chosen the sniveller over me.

  Wulfric stood with his head bowed, wagging it back and forth as if he disagreed, while tears streamed down his cheeks. I told him he had brought shame on our father’s memory and on our mother’s honour. I said he had abused the trust placed in him by Abbot Clement, that dear man, as he lay on his last bed. Even as I ranted and snarled, new lines of attack occurred to me until I had mentioned almost everyone Wulfric had ever met, as well as a number of saints who would have been appalled at his filthy, carnal appetites.

  Alice fled in the end, though I had directed none of my anger at her. I suppose she took it as criticism even so, as she went wailing into the corridor. The sound choked off so quickly outside that I stopped my own finger pointing and leaned out to see if she had fallen.

  Godwin stood there, facing her with his chest heaving and his eyes wild.

  ‘What’s this, Dunstan? Tormenting the servants now, is it?’ he demanded of me.

  I was ready to go for him then and there. Alice wailed and tried to shove past him, but he held her squirming, like a ratter does with the puppies he does not need, when he presses them down into the barrel and they bob up, shining and still. He held her in that sort of grip, not even looking as he stared at me.

  ‘Dunstan! Where is Alice?’ Wulfric said, coming out into the corridor. He too stood still and Godwin saw the way he looked at Alice and the gaze she returned to him. His brow cleared of anger, leaving something cold and uglier.

  ‘You and Alice, is it?’ Godwin said. ‘Fingering her, were you?’

  Wulfric trembled for an instant, his mouth opening and shutting in indignation before he leaped at the older boy, roaring.

  Godwin clubbed at him and Alice ran as he let go to do it. She half-fell and then scrambled away with a keening cry for her mother. I stepped in as Godwin turned to ward off Wulfric’s wild attack and I landed a great buffet on the side of his jaw that almost spun him round. It surely loosened his teeth for him and spoiled his appetite for more, either as giver or receiver. Dazed, Godwin had to raise his elbows to fend us off. He was shaking his head, over and over, making muffled sounds. I kicked his legs and when he went down, we really laid into him. It was, I have to say, one of the most enjoyable experiences of my young life.

  The end came too soon. Encarius appeared to see where my hot bowl had gone to, and of course we were all lined up and flogged that very evening. Godwin was sent to Brother Caspar, which I found suspicious. I looked to see if Godwin walked stiffly afterwards, but he only grinned at me. I’m sure the monk went easy on him, on account of his father.

  We three boys were made to apologise to Alice in front of her mother, who flushed pink in shame and suspicion. I have to say Wulfric kept very quiet about whatever he had been doing before I came in. Alice too was the picture of innocence, and if she was punished in turn, it was in the privacy of her mother’s rooms off the infirmary.

  Abbot Clement died that night, leaving Prior Simeon to take over as head of our little community until a new abbot could be appointed by the king. Although an abbot is usually a priest, he owes no loyalty to a bishop. That can be a rare freedom or a constraint, depending on who is bishop – and who is king. In the end, there is no ‘Room of Tears’, as there is with a pope, where he is given time to reflect on his new status and presumably to check his robe for gravy before going out. In the Benedictines, the new abbot arrives with his papers sealed by the king’s hand, makes a public oath and just gets on with the work. In its own way, that is a fine thing. Yet from that day, I was aware that Godwin’s father had complete authority over me. The word was that Prior Simeon shared family with the king and would not be ousted by some newcomer from court. It meant no one would gainsay him if he chose to see me expelled. I warned Wulfric and resolved to keep well out of sight and out of trouble while our stripes and bruises healed.

  Alice had brown eyes and pale skin. That is what I remember most about her. As the year grew cold and dark and I fell back into my studies, I could not avoid her completely in that small place. There were times when we passed in the cloisters, or I would see her sitting with her mother on the far side of the refectory. I thought she was aware of me then, even at such a distance. I was certainly aware of her.

  It was the oddest thing, how often she came to mind. I was angry that she had chosen Wulfric, though I’d made her no promises, nor given her any indication of my interest. Yet I felt she had done wrong somehow, i
n choosing the lesser of us. I glared when I passed her, so that she looked at me in confusion.

  I would have said, if I had been asked, that any girl who chose Wulfric would then have been tainted for me. The truth was more complicated, however. I felt light when I thought of her, or hot, or both. I gave her a bag of dried lavender and blushed as if I’d stolen it. I no longer dreamed of her mother’s bag of goose fat, hanging on the door.

  I think I was reading too much into our conspiratorial glances. It has come to me since that she and my brother were still risking the wrath of the prior and Aphra and Encarius to steal glances, kisses, who knows what else? Wulfric had begun to broaden just a touch since our arrival at Glastonbury. Yet he was still the boy who’d run along the path from the dock with a turd slipping down his leg, at least to my eye. I think he didn’t let Alice see the child in him, somehow. When I told her about it, she just frowned and looked away, as if I was the one who had offended! Still, I wanted her for my own. I imagined Wulfric would not have known what to do with her. I used to tell him his opinion didn’t matter because he had not a single wiry hair on his nethers. That year, he rounded on me in a fury and cried that it was not true, that he had twelve, actually! After that, I amused myself by whispering ‘twelve’ to him whenever we passed. Children can be cruel, though it makes me smile even now.

  For that Christmas at the abbey, the tower was finished and the bells rang out for the first time, sounding for miles so that the local village could hear. Abbot Simeon had some idea of penance for our sins and so he forced us out into the bitter cold. Under his instruction, monks and boys and staff all trudged to the top of the Tor, where a frozen wind made those of smaller frame stagger. We wound around and around it, to the crest, then knelt and prayed as the sun rose, welcoming Christ into the world once again. From that high point, we could see for miles, with all the ripples and ridges of the landscape revealed like draped cloth. Against that frosty blast, all heads were bowed, all eyes shut. I knew I had come to kneel close by Alice as the odour of crushed lavender drifted to me on the wind. I took it as an invitation, driven mad by the pounding of my own young blood. I cared not that her mother knelt just behind us, nor noticed. I began to reach across to take her hand and then saw she was already gripping my brother’s thumb in her fingers on the other side. Wulfric had not even opened his eyes in his quivering ecstasy, and I stared at the pair of them, like pale angels on that roof of the world.

  I knew several strong emotions at the sight of that little act of devotion. It was such a small thing, but I wanted to denounce them in front of all, to forgive them and shake my head in great wisdom, to bear Alice off into the woods even. Lust has sometimes been a struggle for me, though I have made it ashes now. I have denied it blood for so long, it moves not. Yet it hurts to recall that afternoon, when I knelt on Glastonbury Tor with an erection of enormous potency.

  I do not know for certain if Godwin also turned and saw Wulfric’s display of longing and devotion on the Tor. I imagine he did, but I must tell the story as it happened to me. My Christmas morning was a quiet walk down, huddled and shivering against the wind. Wulfric and Alice took paths far apart, I noticed, without looking at one another.

  I felt the matron’s eye on me as I walked, watching the ground ahead so I would not fall and go tumbling down the hillside. The Tor is steep in places, so I just bowed my head and clasped my hands into my armpits to preserve them against the cold. I looked up as Aphra came alongside, but thought nothing of it when she reached out to take my hand, examining a graze there. I was always scraped or bruised or blistered in some place. I was more surprised when Aphra pressed my hand and leaned closer to me.

  ‘Come and see me in the infirmary, would you? I have something to ease that scratch.’

  I hardly thought of her words while I was in Latin, or mixing draughts to be sold at the market, nor even in the few moments stolen between classes and service, when I watched the builders packing all their scaffold beams onto carts. The masons had produced a fine and sturdy tower, their entire labour devoted to the glory of God. I found inspiration just in watching them, and they smiled to see me, knowing by then that I was the boy who had been angel-borne. One or two touched their forelocks to me as they passed. They had faith, those men, a fine belief in good and evil – and they knew which was which, on the whole. I have heard it said that such labourers are hardly capable of sin, any more than wolves or children. Yet I think they know enough. There is courage in them that some monks do not understand.

  Towards the evening, Encarius sent me to the infirmary to help Aphra roll bandages or some such chore. She had asked for me, he said. In that moment, I remembered I’d told her I would drop in that day. I hurried along the corridors.

  There was no sign of Alice or my brother. I watched in confusion as Aphra put the locking bar across the only door and took the bag of goose fat off its hook. I gaped at her, thinking to my amazement that the rumour had been true. I was wrong about that, though.

  ‘I saw the way you looked at my daughter, Dunstan, this morning. My Alice who is yet a virgin and an innocent, sweet little thing. She is not for you, do you understand?’

  I stammered and blushed at her, swearing that I would never, though I had certainly thought about it, had never . . .

  ‘I know a young man can twist himself in knots if he has no release. You might need to spend your passions, without no harm. I can help with that.’

  I will not say what followed then. I cannot. Our bovine fumblings and releases both appalled and excited me at the same time. I left the room a lesser man, in every way. I had climbed her, like the Tor, though the view was not as fine.

  More concerning to me was the itch that began a few weeks later, becoming quite all-consuming. I was beset with swollen patches that wept clear lymph and made me ragged. It was a savage torment, not least because it drove me to grind my teeth and almost sob with the struggle of not scratching my groin where others could see. The quick, flicking motion I made when I could not bear the itching any longer was one I had seen before, disappointingly, though I had not understood its significance then. I had seen it in Encarius. I had seen it too in Caspar.

  There were once scholars in the agora of Athens who discussed whether man is an angelic soul fallen into sin, or merely dust, raised by the will of God to something worthier. I suspect I know the answer to that.

  When the itching began, it opened a new avenue of research in the scrolls of Roman and Greek medicine for me. I haunted the archives in any spare hour, alone with my shuttered lamp. When I took down old tomes in Greek on the ailments of the flesh, I saw that the bound pages often fell open in those places that dealt with such intimate trials. In those moments, in the loneliness of my single lamp against the dark, I wondered how many others had succumbed to Aphra’s great enveloping arms and huge bosom. I shudder to think.

  In the new year, I felt reborn, as I always do. At one lunch, Abbot Simeon stood after prayers and held up a fine white scroll written by the king’s scribes, confirming him in his position of power over us. It seemed to give him some satisfaction to read it aloud. Brother Caspar congratulated him as he sat down, but Simeon just sniffed and applied himself to his food.

  I had been born in December, so I was fifteen. I was strong from forge work and the gardens, so even Godwin no longer seemed a match and walked warily around me as we passed. Godwin lined up to be shaved each morning with the monks, his jaw left pink and raw by Brother John’s razor. I had made my own and kept it sharp as regret, shaving with hot water and oil like the Romans.

  Far stranger was that Godwin had begun to apply himself to his studies, so that he seemed less the fool with every passing day. He might have taken a different path. Instead, he earned my enmity. We all make our choices: some for good and some that lead to destruction.

  The first months of that year brought storm after battering storm, tearing shutters and hinges out of stone in their ferocity. The boys huddled in rooms out of the cold, unless
like me, they were made to fetch and carry, to repair broken tiles and leaking roofs. On the eve of Candlemas in February, I was called out to spend hours on a creaking ladder. Forty feet above the ground, I stood with my mouth stuffed full of nails I’d made myself, passing them up to the elderly Brother John above and trying not to catch a glimpse above his knee when the wind whipped his robe about.

  It was raining, in the sort of soft drizzle that chills to the bone. I had both hands on the ladder and stood with my shanks quivering in the cold and wet. Though it was still the morning, it seemed dark, the clouds were so thick overhead. I was so numb I could not feel my lips or the ends of my fingers.

  I heard a scream somewhere not too far off, muffled, but raw in its agony. I knew what it meant in the instant, some note in it. I felt the cold stab at me and I climbed down, though Brother John roared in confusion and anger above.

  On the ground, I could only turn on the spot, seeking, but not knowing where to run. I remember I spat the black iron nails into my hand and put them into a pocket. Nothing teaches value like making each one.

  When the sound came again, I was off, haring across the yard. The new tower loomed at me and I wiped rain and my hair away so I could make out the bundle swinging from the highest point.

  Wulfric turned slowly on a creaking rope, high above the ground. For a moment, I thought he had snapped his neck. He hung slack, his head covered in blood. He could not be dead! I felt a rush of warmth race from my crown to my feet as I stared up, blinking. He was entangled somehow. I had to get him down. I had to save him.

  A dozen yards away from me, Alice shrieked again. Like me, she stood staring up, her eyes wide and helpless. Encarius came running then, the man flinching at the look I turned on him. He drew to a shocked halt as he looked up, his mouth falling open. I saw Encarius bring out his horn-handled knife to cut the boy down. I grabbed his arm.