Byzantium

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  An instant later, my feet were flying to meet them, shouting, “Harald! Gunnar! It is me, Aidan!”

  The next thing I knew, Harald Bull-Roar’s voice was bellowing in reply, and I was swept into the familiar bone-crushing ritual that passed for welcome among the sea-braving Danes. “I knew we would find you if we kept looking,” Gunnar said proudly. “I told them, and here you are.”

  “Indeed, he told us so often that we could not rest a day until we found you,” Jarl Harald explained. “We have been looking for you since the ice began to melt.”

  The monks, having seen me beswarmed by Vikings, now came running to my defence—though what they thought to do, I cannot guess. Dugal was among the first, and I called to him, “All is well! Tell the others, there is nothing to fear. It is Jarl Harald come to visit!”

  Dugal succeeded in slowing the onrushing monks, who approached uncertainly, gawking at the strange-looking barbarians, and murmuring in low, astonished voices. Taking Harald and Gunnar each by the arm, I led them to where Abbot Fraoch and Ruadh were standing, and said, “I present Jarl Harald Bull-Roar, King of the Danes of Skania, and his karl, Gunnar Warhammer.”

  “Give the king our best greeting, and welcome him in the name of our Lord Christ,” the abbot said. “Tell him he and his men are to be our honoured guests.”

  This I told Harald, resplendent in a blue cloak and handsome trousers of deepest red. He stepped before the assembled monks gleaming with gold and silver at throat and wrist; his long red beard was brushed and its ends braided. He wore seven silver bands on each arm, and seven silver brooches secured his cloak.

  Upon receiving our good abb’s greeting, he inclined his head regally, and motioned to one of his karlar to come near. The man handed him a bulky leather bundle, which Harald took and commenced unwrapping. A moment later, the white blaze of silver dazzled our eyes.

  The monks gasped and murmured in amazement at the sight, and it took me a moment to understand the significance of what I was seeing. “A cumtach?” Yes, but what a book cover! It was solid silver embossed with the image of a cross; a square-cut ruby adorned each of the arms and a cluster of emeralds decorated the centre. “Jarl Harald, truly! I have never seen its equal.”

  “It is for your holy book,” the king declared, placing the treasure in Abbot Fraoch’s hands. He made a bow and explained, “The first cover was lost to the Jarl of Miklagård, a fact which vexes me sorely. This one will serve to replace it, I think. It is made from some of the silver we got in the Sarazen mines. If not for Aeddan, none of us would be alive now to enjoy our treasure.”

  The abbot could hardly believe his ears when I translated the jarl’s words. “It is a rare and magnificent gift, Lord Harald,” replied Fraoch, impressed almost beyond reason. “And completely unexpected. We are at a loss to thank you properly.”

  To this, the Danish king replied, “Do not thank me,” he said. “The treasure is not a gift; we have come to trade and bring that in payment.”

  “Trade?” wondered the abbot when I told him what Harald had said. I looked to Gunnar, who stood at the king’s shoulder fairly trembling with suppressed excitement.

  Turning to me, Harald Bull-Roar declared, “Ever since Aeddan returned to fetch us from the slave pit, Gunnar has not ceased telling us of this God of yours. It is all he talks about. He will have it no other way but that we must build a church for the Christ, and begin worshipping him in Skania.

  “I have vowed to build the church, but we have no one to teach us what to do. Therefore, if we are to get any peace, you must come with us, I think.”

  Before I could think what to say, Gunnar seized me, “Come, brother. I want Ulf to be a priest, and there is no better man to teach him.”

  I looked at Gunnar, the bright happiness of our reunion fading at his words. “Would you had said anything but that,” I told him. “I cannot go with you. I am no priest anymore.”

  “Not a priest?” wondered Gunnar, still smiling. “How can this be?”

  Before I could explain further, Abbot Fraoch spoke up and asked me to entreat the Danemen to stay with us and observe the Easter celebration. Harald, always ready for a feast, readily agreed, and we proceeded into the hall where they were offered cups of mead in welcome.

  The abbot determined to show the Danes around the abbey and explain each and every detail of monastic life, including the Holy Mass which would mark the beginning of our Eastertide feastday observance. Thus, it fell to me to interpret the abb’s instructions. Harald proclaimed himself interested in everything, and it fair exhausted me translating between the two of them. We examined the chapel and oratory, the tower and its bell, the monks’ cells, the guest lodge, and even the interiors of the storehouses. Of all the places they saw, the Danes liked the scriptorium best.

  “Look here!” cried Harald, seizing a new-copied vellum leaf. “It is like the book Aeddan had.”

  The Sea Wolves proceeded to examine the work of all the monks, making much over the cunning designs and beautiful colours of the leaves upon which the scribes toiled. Fraoch insisted on showing them how the pigments were ground and made into ink, how the gold was painstakingly applied, and how the various skins were assembled to make a book. The Danes exclaimed like children, gaining their first glimmering of understanding.

  Owing to this lengthy distraction, it was not until after our evening meal that I found another chance to speak to Gunnar alone. “This is a very good place,” he said approvingly. “We shall build such a place in Skania, I think.”

  “By all means,” I agreed. “But I—”

  “Karin would have liked this,” he said. “Helmuth, too.”

  “It is too bad they could not come with you,” I replied. “But, Gunnar, I cannot—” The look of sadness on Gunnar’s broad face halted me.

  “They died while I was a-viking,” he sighed. “Ylva said it was a bad winter, and the fever got them and they died. First Helmuth and then Karin. Many others died as well—it was very bad, I think.”

  “Gunnar, I am sorry to hear it,” I told him.

  “Heya,” he sighed, shaking his head sadly. We sat together in silence for a moment—but only for a moment, for he suddenly smiled, and said, “But I have a daughter now—born in the spring after I left. She is just like her mother, and I have named her Karin.”

  His smile grew wistful. “Ylva is my wife now, so it is not so bad. Ah, but I miss Karin, Aeddan. She was good to me, and I miss her.” He paused, remembering his good wife, then added, “But everyone dies, and I will see her again in heaven, heya?”

  Despair cast its dark cloak over me, and I said, “You see how unreliable this God is, and yet you still want to build a church? Truly, Gunnar, you are better off without it.”

  Gunnar regarded me in disbelief. “How can you speak so, Aeddan—especially after all we have seen?”

  “It is because of all we have seen that I speak as I do,” I retorted. “God cares nothing for us. Pray if it makes you feel better; do good if it pleases you, but God remains unmoved and unconcerned either way.”

  Gunnar was quiet for a moment, gazing at the little stone chapel. “The people of Skania pray to many gods who neither hear nor care,” Gunnar said. “But I remember the day you told me about Jesu who came to live among the fisherfolk, and was nailed to a tree by the skalds and Romans and hung up to die. And I remember thinking, this Hanging God is unlike any of the others; this god suffers, too, just like his people.

  “I remember also that you told me he was a god of love and not revenge, so that anyone who calls on his name can join him in his great feasting hall. I ask you now, does Odin do this for those who worship him? Does Thor suffer with us?”

  “This is the great glory of our faith,” I murmured, thinking of Ruadh’s words to me—but changing them to reflect Gunnar’s sentiment, “that Christ suffers with us and, through his suffering, draws us near to himself.”

  “Just so!” agreed Gunnar eagerly. “You are a wise man, Aeddan. I knew you would
understand. This is most important, I think.”

  “You find this comforting?”

  “Heya,” he said. “Do you remember when the mine overseer was going to kill us? There we were, our bodies were broken, our skin blackened by the sun—how hot it was! Remember?”

  “Sure, it is not a thing a man easily forgets.”

  “Well, I was thinking this very thing. I was thinking: I am going to die today, but Jesu also died, so he knows how it is with me. And I was thinking, would he know me when I came to him? Yes! Sitting in his hall, he will see me sail into the bay, and he will run down to meet me on the shore; he will wade into the sea and pull my boat onto the sand and welcome me as his wayfaring brother. Why will he do this? Because he too has suffered, and he knows, Aeddan, he knows.” Beaming, Gunnar concluded, “Is that not good news?”

  I agreed that it was, and Gunnar was so full of joy at this thought that I did not have the heart to tell him I could not come and be his priest. Later that night, after our guests had been made as comfortable as possible in the guest lodge, I lay down to sleep and instead found myself thinking how strange it was that Gunnar should come to faith this way.

  Sure, I myself had told him most of what he knew. But he had endured the same hardships, and suffered all that I had suffered, and more—at least, I had not lost wife and friends to fever while a slave in foreign lands—yet Gunnar’s travails created in him a kinship with Christ, while mine produced only separation. This seemed very strange to me. Stranger still, I fell asleep wondering not what was wrong with Gunnar, but what was wrong with me?

  The thought dogged me into the next day. It was Passion Day, the commemoration of Christ’s death, and the beginning of the Eastertide celebrations. The monks do no work on this day, and so we had leisure to entertain our guests. Abbot Fraoch, never one to miss an opportunity of spreading the faith, called me to him and asked me to assemble the Danes so that he could address them. This I did, and he extended to them the invitation to be baptized.

  “Do you think this wise?” I asked, while Harald and the others considered the offer. “They know nothing of Christianity. They have had no instruction.”

  “I merely open the door,” the abb told me. “Let the Good Lord bring in whoever he will.” Lifting a hand to where the Danes conferred, he said, “Look at them, Aidan. They have come here to get a priest and build a church. This is the favourable Day of the Lord! Let them seal their faith—now while the spirit is moving. There will be plenty of time for instruction later.”

  Harald spoke up then, saying, “We have held council over this matter, and it is decided that Gunnar is willing. Therefore, he should be baptized now.”

  I relayed the answer to the abbot, who professed himself well pleased, and at once led the whole body of monks and Danes out from the monastery and down the path to the stream where we often bathed. There, Fraoch put off his robe and strode into the water in his mantle; in order to act as translator for the proceedings, I was required to join him. He called Gunnar into the water, saying, “Let him who would rise with Christ also die with him.”

  Putting off his clothes, Gunnar stepped into the stream and waded to where we stood. The abbot asked him the three needful questions: Do you renounce evil? Do you embrace Christ? Will you remain his faithful servant until the end of your life?

  To each of these Gunnar answered a resounding HEYA! Whereupon we took him by the arms and laid him down in the water and raised him up again into the new life of faith. The abbot took his vial of holy oil and made the sign of the cross on Gunnar’s forehead, saying, “I sign you with the cross of Christ, now and henceforth your lord, redeemer and friend. Go forth, Gunnar Warhammer, and live to God’s glory by the light that is in you.”

  Gunnar embraced me and the abbot both, thanked us, and went up out of the stream rejoicing. He was then given a new white mantle to wear and welcomed by the monks of the abbey as a brother in Christ; then, taken with the wonder of the moment, the brothers began singing to him the baptism blessing:

  Pour down upon him thy grace, Everliving;

  Give to him virtue and growth,

  Give to him strength and guidance,

  Give to him faith and loving kindness,

  That he may stand in thy presence happy

  for ever and ever and three times for ever.

  Amen!

  The entire ritual so impressed the watching Sea Wolves that they all threw off their clothes and clambered into the water to be baptized, too. Harald demanded to be next, and was accorded this honour by the abbot, who summoned Ruadh and Cellach, and some of the others to help. The ceremony occupied us well into the day, and when we gathered at twilight for the Passion Day vespers, it was with the addition of thirty new converts. I translated the words of the prayers and the psalms for them, and they professed to find it all very pleasant, even enjoyable.

  Throughout the evening meal, and the whole of the next day I was made to explain what it all meant as the neophyte Christians wanted to know if they would be invincible in battle now, and forever lucky in all their dealings.

  “No,” I told them. “Indeed, it is the other way entirely. If my life is any example, then you will be supremely unlucky and forever vulnerable to every harm under heaven.”

  The thought sat ill with me, I believe, for I found it hard to sleep and could get no rest for thrashing about on my bed. Some little while before dawn I woke, rose, and left my cell to find that the abbey had vanished in the night. All around me I could see a featureless expanse stretching in every direction flat to the horizon, without feature, without colour, with neither hill, nor rock, nor tree—a desert place of howling wind and bone-aching emptiness.

  What has happened to the abbey? I wondered. Where has everyone gone?

  Even as I struggled to comprehend the enormity of this disaster, I heard high above me the sound of an eagle crying as it flew. I raised my eyes and saw, soaring alone in the empty sky, the great bird, wings outstretched, keen eyes searching for a place to rest.

  Suddenly, I was with that eagle, looking, longing for a place to rest. On and on, searching and searching, but never finding; over wilderness and wasteland the bird soared with only the sound of the wind’s dull whine through wide-spread feathertips for company. I felt the bone-aching weariness dragging on those broad wings as they swept the empty sky, but still that wonderful bird flew on, vistas of emptiness on every side, and never a resting place to be found.

  Then, even as those great, good wings faltered, I glimpsed, far away to the east, the faint ruddy glow of the sun rising above the world-cloaking mist. Higher and higher rose the sun, growing gradually brighter, shining like red-gold in the fireglow of heaven’s forge.

  My eyes were dazzled by the radiance of the sun; I could not bear the sight and had to look away. When I looked back, however, wonder of wonders! It was no longer the sun rising up, but an enormous, gleaming city, arrayed on seven hills: Constantinople—but as I had never seen it, alive with a brilliance of wonders: towers, domes, basilicas, bridges, triumphal arches, churches, and palaces—all of them glittering and gleaming. Each hilltop glowed with perfect splendour, radiant with the light of its own beauty, illumined by the twin fires of faith and holiness: Byzantium, the City of Gold, sparkling like a treasure of unsurpassed magnificence.

  The weary eagle saw the New Rome rising before it, and took heart, lifting its wings with strength renewed. At last, I thought, the worthy bird is saved, for somewhere in such a city the eagle will certainly find a place of rest.

  Closer and closer, the eagle flew, each wingbeat bearing it swiftly nearer to the haven of the golden city. The proud bird, its heart quickening at the sight of such an extravagant reward for its long perseverance, descended, spreading wide its wings as it prepared to land upon the highest tower. But as the eagle swooped lower, the city suddenly changed. Oh, it was not a city at all, but a giant, ravening beast with the hindquarters of a lion, and the foreparts of a dragon, its skin of scaly gold and claws of
glass, and an enormous gaping maw of a mouth lined with swords for teeth.

  The eagle twisted in the air and cried in alarm, beating its wings in retreat. But the golden beast stretched out its long, snake-like neck and plucked the weary bird from the sky as it fled. The jaws shut and the eagle vanished.

  The sharp clash of the great golden beast’s jaws brought me from the dream. I awoke at once, and could still hear the echo receding through the empty air. I looked around at the familiar surroundings of the abbey, my limbs shaking from the swiftly-fading sound. But it was not the snap of monstrous jaws that made me quake within myself; I heard instead the echo of Bishop Cadoc’s dread admonition: All flesh is grass.

  Everyone dies, Gunnar had said. All flesh is grass, said Cadoc. What did you expect, Aidan?

  Did you really think that Christ would blunt the spear-points, deflect the lash, cause the chains to melt away when they touched your skin? Did you expect to walk in sunlight and not feel the heat, or to go without water and not grow thirsty? Did you think that all the hatred would turn to brotherly love the moment you strode into view? Did you think both storms and tempers would calm because of the tonsure on your head?

  Did you believe that God would shield you forever from the hurt and pain of this sin-riven world? That you would be spared the injustice and strife others were forced to endure? That disease would no longer afflict you, that you would live forever untouched by the tribulations of common humanity?

  Fool! All these things Christ suffered, and more. Aidan, you have been blind. You have beheld the truth, stared long upon it, yet failed to perceive so much as the smallest glimpse of all that was shown you. Sure, this is the heart of the great mystery: that God became man, shouldering the weight of suffering so that on the final day none could say, “Who are you to judge the world? What do you know of injustice? What do you know of torture, sickness, poverty? How dare you call yourself a righteous God! What do you know of death?”