To the Island of Tides

by Alistair Moffat

  On the summit the wind was vicious, carrying grains of sand that stung my face and neck even when I sat down on the sheltered bench in the lee of the Lantern Chapel. I pulled up my hood to keep out the worst of it. In precisely the same place, for the same reason, Cuthbert and his brother monks will also have pulled up their hoods. In strong winds, the candles in their draughty stone chapel will have guttered and flickered as they knelt to their morning devotions. These moments that reach across millennia touched me, reinforcing the notion that Lindisfarne was like an open history book.

  Down at the harbour the morning was stirring. I saw the headlights of a pick-up, and two men unlock one of the upturned boats used as a store. Far out to sea a curved sliver of sun showed over the grey horizon and in moments its first rays caught the topmost towers of the priory ruins. Very quickly, a warming yellow light flooded the island.

  Piercing the shrieking wind, another sound came ringing down the ages. High in the tower of St Mary’s a bell was tolling. It was 7.30 a.m. I remember being surprised when I saw a notice advertising a daily service of communion at 8 a.m., every weekday. For fourteen centuries, the worship of God had not ceased in the place where Aidan founded his monastery. On the far horizon, a long bank of cloud hid the morning sun, and when I stood up to move off the Heugh the wind pushed hard at my back, forcing me to steady myself. In case they blew off, I took off my glasses and wiped bleary sand-stung eyes. The inscription spoke truth: Wild Lindisfarne.

  To my surprise, I met small groups of people, twos and threes, bending against the wind, on their way through the village to communion at St Mary’s. In the close, I asked two women if I could watch the service, sitting at the back of the church, and they nodded, smiling, without breaking step. And so, unexpectedly summoned by bells, I sat down in a pew and the service began almost immediately. While the gale raged outside, a congregation of fourteen souls, none of whom had taken off their coats or anoraks, sat in the eastern end of the church, near the altar, and with her back to me a lady in a thick purple coat gave readings and led the opening prayers. Up on the summit of the Heugh, the foul weather had driven out all my efforts to settle, and instead I found myself in the peace and comforting rhythms of a Christian service, much moved by the quiet piety and constancy of a handful of hardy people who sat murmuring the responses to prayers.

  Once the reader had closed her Bible and sat down, a priest stood up. I hadn’t noticed her when I came in but she was a striking figure for whom the word ‘venerable’ might have been coined. Small, stooped and with a shock of thick, white hair, the priest wore a green cope over a white surplice that had the Chi Rho symbol embroidered on the back. The first two letters of Christ’s name in the Greek alphabet, they had been stitched in the style of the Lindisfarne Gospels. Not having an order of service, and knowing little of the rituals of the Church of England, I did not have much sense of the detail of what was happening, but the tone of it was unmistakable. Even though many of the congregation were probably islanders (the tide was still shut) and came to morning communion often, it did not look like a daily routine; instead, there was real warmth and engagement. After a recital of what might have been the Nicene Creed, everyone shook hands with everyone else.

  When the priest moved towards the altar, she turned to face the congregation and, in a gesture that provoked an ancestral shiver (to which I had no right, as a failed Scottish Presbyterian), crossed herself. With the reader, who appeared to have a role as an assistant, the priest prepared the wine and the white wafers for the ceremony of communion. Once all had been blessed and the rumble of the Lord’s Prayer subsided, the congregation knelt at the altar rail to receive the body and blood of Christ. In the past, I used to wonder at the literal nature of this ritual, with its prayer about eating ‘the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ’, but on that stormy morning it moved me very much. Faith is far from simple, I suspect, but in this warmly lit little church it seemed like both a bastion and a refuge from the tumult of the world.

  Once all had resumed their seats, the priest appeared to eat the wafers and drink the wine that was left. Perhaps having been sanctified, they could not simply have been discarded. And then she blessed the congregation and the service was over. Sitting on a pew at the back of the church, I waited for everyone to leave. For some reason, I wanted to be alone as I lit more candles for the little ones, for Hannah, Grace and Hugo.

  When I left the shelter of the porch, the wind had dropped and I walked down to the shore. The tide had retreated far enough to allow safe passage across the sand and rocks to Hobthrush, St Cuthbert’s Isle. For such a breezy day, I was surprised to see so many cars streaming across the causeway, but reckoned few would want to spend time on the islet, where there was little to see.

  Certainly by 678, and likely long before then, Eata had sent for Cuthbert. The old abbot wanted him to give up his hermetic life, wandering the secret tracts of solitude on the moors and mosses of the Kyloe Hills and beyond, and to re-enter monastic life as Prior of Lindisfarne. Cuthbert’s unquestioned piety will have given him authority, something that may have been much needed after the convulsions of the Synod of Whitby in 664. Unwilling to accept that all should conform to the liturgical and political dominance of the church in Rome and the papacy, Bishop Colman and a number of monks withdrew from Lindisfarne to return to Iona, the west of Scotland and Ireland. Despite their ejection from Ripon a decade before for refusing to accept Rome and Wilfred’s control, Eata and Cuthbert were left with little choice. The island community had to conform after the king of Northumbria had ruled in favour of the papacy at Whitby.

  Both a bishop and an abbot, Eata had a see as well as a community to administer, and during his inevitable absences as he travelled around Lindisfarne’s vast patrimony in the north of England and southern Scotland Cuthbert was left to guide his brother monks and sit in judgement when disputes arose. The early sources are surprisingly frank about his difficulties, and here is a passage from Bede’s prose Life:

  Now there were certain brethren in the monastery who preferred to conform to their older usage rather than to the monastic rule. Nevertheless he overcame these by his modest virtue and patience, and by daily effort he gradually converted them to a better state of mind. In fact very often during debates in the chapter of the brethren concerning the rule, when he was assailed by the bitter insults of his opponents, he would rise up suddenly and, with calm mind and countenance, go out, thus dissolving the chapter, but none the less on the following day, as if he had suffered no repulse the day before, he would give the same instruction as before to the same audience until, as we have said, he gradually converted them to things he desired.

  Except he may not have desired them, at least not wholeheartedly. Cuthbert had been ordained and taught by Boisil in the Irish tradition at Old Melrose, had worn the Druidic tonsure, and his asceticism and hankering after the hermetic life derived from Celtic rather than Roman impulses. Eventually, and perhaps not surprisingly, these disputes seem to have worn down the prior’s patience. Bede noted, ‘At the same time he kept a cheerful countenance though sorrows overtook him, so that it was made clear to all that, by the inward consolation of the Holy Spirit, he was enabled to despise outward vexations.’ But not endlessly, and it eventually became too much for Cuthbert.

  Bede again:

  Now after he had completed many years in that same monastery, he joyfully entered into the remote solitudes which he had long desired, sought, and prayed for, with the goodwill of that same abbot and also the brethren . . . Now indeed at the first beginning of his solitary life, he retired to a certain place in the outer precincts of the monastery which seemed to be more secluded.

  It was not the first time Cuthbert had sought the solitary life, something Bede probably knew but chose to ignore, and this time he was careful to point out that permission had been granted. This certain place was the islet of Hobthrush. On that windy morning, I picked a cautious way between slippery, seaweed-covered boulders to reach it
at low tide. Little more than a small outcrop of black dolerite rock, Bede wrote that it was more secluded, ‘secretior’. Remembering the different meaning of the noun ‘seclusion’, a simpler translation of the original Latin might be ‘more solitary’, more deserted, a diseart. The early morning high tide had heaped seaweed on the smooth rocky shelves that led like giant steps to the grassy area where the wooden cross had been planted. The flattish area was not much larger than a tennis court, and to its south-west a dark hump of rock rose like a bulwark against the waves. On it a plaque quoted Psalm 93:

  Mightier than the thunders of many waters,

  Mightier than the waves of the sea,

  The Lord on high is mighty!

  By the time I had scrambled up to the cross, I saw that it had been raised at the eastern, altar end of a small rectangle of masonry, the foundations of a medieval chapel that had been dedicated to St Cuthbert long after his death. In the 1880s, Major-General Sir William Crossman, an amateur archaeologist, had unearthed more medieval ruins and near them what he believed to be ‘the site of the cell to which St Cuthbert was wont to retire’. This may or may not have been an oratory, and Crossman recorded that it lay in the south-east corner of the islet, but unfortunately I could see nothing of it. Instead I sat on the low wall of the medieval chapel, opposite the tall wooden cross, looking back at Lindisfarne, the Heugh, St Mary’s and the ruins of the priory.

  Even though the wind had dropped dramatically, there were few who ventured down to the beach and so far none had attempted to cross to the islet. Perhaps I would be left alone with my thoughts, to find some peace in precisely the place Cuthbert had when he fled the rancorous disputes of the monastic chapter. I am not certain what I expected from walking where he walked, perhaps only some time by myself to think about the past and what might be a worthwhile way of looking at the future. I smiled to think that it was not the secret of life I sought, but the secret of death.

  Unfortunately, I noticed a couple moving through the sands and rocks towards the islet. They were walking quickly and I could make out a tall man wearing shorts and a woman wrapped in a bright sky-blue parka and matching trousers. Speaking a language I didn’t recognise, they quickly scouted the location, taking only moments to look around, and before they left the man came up to the wooden cross to give it a good shake. Maybe he was anxious about how secure it was in this exposed place. Then he beckoned to his partner to take a photograph of him in front of it. And to my open-mouthed horror, he stretched out his arms in an imitation of the crucified Christ. I was appalled, but not being a Christian I could scarcely accuse this lout of blasphemy, though he was certainly being grossly disrespectful. I am afraid I didn’t conceal my anger, but before ‘Hey! You!’ could develop into anything else the couple trotted off back to the beach without a backward glance.

  Much annoyed at becoming annoyed, I sat back down on the wall head, but this time looked out to sea and across the southern sands to the Northumberland coast. Its seamarks are dominated by the looming mass of Bamburgh Castle. Heavily restored by the wealthy industrialist William Armstrong after 1894, it is a magnificent fortress perched on a large, steep-sided dolerite outcrop. It was rarely captured by force and for centuries was the capital place of the kingdom of Northumbria, a fact announced by surprising roadside signs outside the tiny village.

  In Cuthbert’s time, a wooden stockade crowned the great rock, and inside it timber halls, long lost under the medieval cobbles and Armstong’s rebuilding, housed the royal retinue. As the winds whipped the waves of the North Sea and howled around their walls, fires blazed, warriors feasted and bards sang of the power of the kings and their queens. Bebbanburh is the earliest recorded Anglian name for Bamburgh and it remembers Aethelfrith’s queen, Bebba. The summit of the rock was large enough to accommodate hundreds of people: servants and grooms, and soldiers to defend it. When Aidan chose to found his monastery on Lindisfarne, his decision was much influenced by secular as well as spiritual considerations. The saint’s mission to convert and re-convert the Anglian population of Northumbria needed royal support that was close at hand.

  Aethelfrith’s spectacular gains in the north after his victory at Addinston in Upper Lauderdale in 603 were matched by expansion to the south. When Ida first took over the British fortress of Din Guauroy, the older name for Bamburgh, Aelle was carving out the kingdom of Deira. Like Bernicia, the name is from Old Welsh and derives from derw, ‘the oak tree’. At first Deira extended from the mouth of the River Tees down the Yorkshire coast as far as the Humber. Some time after 603 Aethelfrith annexed Aelle’s young kingdom to become the first ruler of Bernicia and Deira, what was called the land of the Northanhymbra, the people north of the Humber. It grew into the most powerful of all the emerging Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and its rulers were the first to call themselves Bretwaldas, ‘Britain-rulers’.

  In 616, after the death of Aethelfrith in a battle fought near Chester against the Welsh kings, Aelle’s son, Edwin, engineered a reversal, the takeover of Bernicia by Deira. He had also conquered the British kingdom of Ebrauc based at Eboracum, York, and begun to adopt Roman forms and customs. The great basilica of the imperial city still stood and there is evidence that it was used by Deiran kings. When he made his royal progress around his expanded kingdom, Edwin basked in the borrowed authority of Rome when he had the imperial symbol of the tufa carried before his retinue. On Edwin’s death in 633, Oswald came back from exile in the Celtic west of Scotland and reasserted Bernician claims to the twin kingdoms, and it was he who invited Aidan to come from Iona to Lindisfarne. Until the early decades of the eighth century, direct descendants of Aethelfrith and Aelle were kings in Northumbria as it grew in power and its reach extended over much of northern and western Britain. When Cuthbert retreated to Hobthrush and looked out over the sands to Bamburgh, he knew that his monastery had been deliberately placed at the centre of political power.

  Thinking about the balance between sacred and secular, I found myself guilty of assuming a modern dichotomy. We have long looked at Church and State as linked but separate, but of course Cuthbert and the kings in their halls at Bebbanburh made no such distinction. God was not compartmentalised and the role of priests limited to Sunday services, funerals, baptisms and weddings. Instead the powers of Church and State worked together, as Northumbria expanded in all directions. Conquest and subjugation were God’s will, the work of His Church, and the bishops of Lindisfarne understood that their role was deeply political. Most prominent churchmen were, in any case, aristocrats. All of this bore in on Cuthbert as he argued with his brother monks, trying to persuade them to abandon Irish Celtic practices and conform to the teachings of Rome, and especially to the uniform dating of the great festival at Easter, something disputed only by the king’s enemies. All had to be united in pursuit of Northumbrian glory. If kings succeeded, so did God, and great crosses were raised to His glory at Ruthwell, Bewcastle and in other conquered territories. Even though the native British believed themselves to be devout Christians – the Baptised – there is a sense of conversion to the true faith in the process of Northumbrian expansion.

  Well aware of all of this, Cuthbert was beginning to withdraw when he came to Hobthrush, built his oratory and began to pray, shivering in the sand-stinging winds and the cold rain. But he did not stray far from the centre of power, not then and not later in his hermetic life. In trying to look at the past like a competent historian, trying to put myself physically and emotionally in the mindset of people in the past, it occurred to me that Cuthbert might have been ambivalent. He dearly wished to flee the world of dispute and raw politics, and focus all of his will and self-denial on making certain of his place with God in heaven, but not entirely. Hobthrush was, after all, like Lindisfarne, a tidal island. Perhaps somewhat conflicted, he recognised that in himself, and set up his hermitages close to the centre of power and not in the wastes beyond the Kyloe Hills or even further afield. Turning this over as I sat on the wall head was comforting. Cuthbert’s dev
otion and bodily privation were real enough and a world I could never enter, but his doubts and unwillingness to leave the world of politics brought him closer, made him appear a little less saintly, less remote. God was nearer on Hobthrush, but so were the halls of Bamburgh.

  Needing to move and warm up, I walked around the perimeter of the little islet, and only a few yards out to sea two seals were playing. Their dog-like heads bobbed above the surface and one seemed to flip on its back before diving under. Before I returned to Lindisfarne, I did something that surprised me. Without thinking why, I stepped back into the rectangle of the small chapel and, looking at the wooden cross, I felt myself begin to think about some long-held responsibilities.

  None of my three children asked to be born; Lindsay and I wanted to have a family and we decided to bring them into the world. That bound us with welcome and wonderful ties of a love I had not experienced before, and all my life I have known that I would die to save any of them. But now Adam, Helen and Beth are all in their thirties, adults who have made their own way, have taken their own decisions, and while we will offer any and all sorts of help they are no longer our responsibility. Soon Grace will have cousins, we hope, and their lives all wait to be lived. Now, I realised, I had come to this beautiful place to begin to learn how to leave them, to learn how to live what remains of the rest of my life and how to die when the time comes. On this little scrap of rock, Cuthbert had been doing something similar: beginning to leave the world and learn how to die. And so in front of the cross, very awkwardly, I spoke to him – out loud, my words blown out to sea by the wind. Like him, I would begin to spend more time alone, not working or writing but thinking, talking to myself, confronting honestly the darknesses of past wrongs, failures and regrets and accommodating them. If I could do that, then what is left might just be happier, saying goodbye to Lindsay and my children easier to bear. Across fourteen centuries, it seemed as though a long-dead saint was becoming my soul-friend.