His voice hardened subtly and I wondered if he understood me perfectly well. A king will know many kinds of men, saints and sinners among them. Yet they must be practical fellows themselves, to hold a throne.
‘I do not expect to see you again, Brother Dunstan. Do you understand? This is mercy from me – and the favour that comes from having such advocates to speak on your behalf.’
‘Th-thank you, my lord,’ I stuttered at him, beginning to understand what he was giving me. It was too much to take in and I could feel myself trembling. I felt as if I’d been dragged screaming to the edge of hell, then given my greatest desire. I sensed my inquisition was coming to an end, but still he held me by the hands.
‘Thank your uncle and Lady Elflaed, if you wish.’ Æthelstan made a twitching motion with his swollen hand that was almost obscene. ‘I pluck you out, Dunstan, as one who is too much trouble. I choose not to waste your talents, but I expect you to learn humility. Let forty or fifty years pass now in peaceful labour. Work as God intended for you. Build the abbey Lady Elflaed desires. Grow into the role as abbot, as father to a community. Above all, do not make me regret my appointment. I sense overweening pride in you, Dunstan – and perhaps greatness, if you can master it. Either way, you will not return to Winchester.’
When he let my hands go at last, they felt stiff and cold, so that I flexed them. I bowed to the king in something of a daze, then backed away a pace before turning. Egill was there in my view, smirking. I did not respond to it, knowing that I was still observed.
In the hall outside, Lady Elflaed took me in her arms, tears spilling down her cheeks, the great soft bag. Uncle Athelm was rather more brisk as I told him what the king had said.
‘Well, Dunstan, however it has come about, this is a great honour. You must strive to be worthy of it.’
‘But I am too young to be abbot! And Simeon is still … How am I to remove him, even if they will accept me, which they certainly won’t! Doesn’t an abbot have to be at least thirty?’
‘The king has the authority, Dunstan,’ Elflaed said. ‘The miracle of you being carried down gives him the right. Rome will not question it – and Lord knows that abbey needs a firm hand. Oh, you will do such things! I have been waiting for you to see your path ever since we came to Winchester. Since that regrettable business. You nearly broke my heart, Dunstan, but I see now it was all a test, of us both perhaps. Oh my boy, with my wealth and your strength, we will make the abbey of your vision. I swear it, though it cost me all I have and takes us a lifetime. But tell me, Dunstan. Did you say yes?’
I looked at Lady Elflaed, feeling a little wild and untethered. Her bosom heaved as she stood there, waiting. She and my uncle both seemed to be hanging on my word. It was a heady feeling as we stood together.
‘I said yes. I will be an abbot.’ I heard my own words in stunned disbelief. ‘I will be abbot of Glastonbury,’ I said again, as a breath.
The autumn had come by the time I stood ready to leave. My goods and books would be sent separately, cart upon cart, Lady Elflaed had assured me. I carried only a few of the ones I dared not leave behind, along with a satchel that made me walk almost like a hunchback.
In the shadow of the main gate, I was staring around at the king’s estate, trying to hold it in my memory. I knew I might never see it again and the few years I’d spent there had been mostly happy. I’d seen war at its bloodiest and I knew that had changed me. The smell of the huge funeral pyres after the battle still came to me on the breeze at odd moments, as if it always would.
I turned at the clatter of boots, smiling at the sight of Edmund rushing out into the sun. He laughed to see me and we clasped our right hands, testing sword against hammer until our joints protested.
‘I will miss our late-night talks, Dunstan,’ he said.
We were both awkward. It is hard for some men to admit they are friends.
‘I will miss them too,’ I said.
He stood a little closer and dipped his head, so that I leaned towards him.
‘My brother is a great king. Yet when he takes against a man …’ He winced. ‘He doesn’t know you as I do. I tried to speak to him, to keep you here, but he would not listen.’
I was touched by that.
‘I can’t complain about being made to rise, can I?’
He chuckled and slapped my shoulder.
‘You’ll have them running around like chickens. Perhaps I’ll come out and see that old place when you rebuild it.’
‘I hope so,’ I said.
‘Have the monks mention me in their prayers,’ Edmund said. It was suddenly enough for him. He raised his head to me and galloped off back to whatever he’d been doing before. I can see him as if he stood before me now, in all his youth and strength. God, I miss him still.
18
The boat creaked as Brother Guido poled his way across the salt marshes. I noticed his stare no longer lingered on me as it had in my youth, nor did he ask me to row for him while he sat back to watch young muscles work. I had grown forge-strong. I would have broken him across my knee if he’d so much as laid a hand on it. I actually hoped he would, and I think he sensed my anger, so that he stayed away from his scowling passenger.
As I’d stood on the scrub shore and struck flint and steel to light the torch to bring his little boat, I’d wondered how best to begin my work. I wore a black robe and a cloak over it, to keep me warm. The sun was a pale and reedy thing that day, smeared across clouds and damp. The air tasted of salt and samphire. My mouth had watered at the very thought, and then the boat had come and brother Guido was smothering the torch with damp rags, swearing as he burned himself on hot wool and oil, then poling back without a word, as if I were just a ghost and he had not seen me standing there.
The mists lay deep on the marshes as we eased through, following a narrow waterway. It seemed to last an age as I sat there on the thwarts, my hessian sack of books and my leather satchel clutched to my chest as the cold seeped in. Once more I heard the plop of frogs at our passing and the calls of birds that seemed to cry my memories as they beat into the air.
The little dock was deserted, though I saw it differently from when I had stepped out first, so many years before. I knew I would need dozens of boats and full barges for what I had in mind – and a thousand men to dig and cut stone. Perhaps the marshes themselves could be dammed and made dry, like Moses and the Red Sea.
As I tossed a coin to Guido, he seemed to shrug at me. He had not said a word and so I kept silent. I do not think he recognised me. He might have been rather more nervous if he had. I leaped out onto the dock with the shade of my father at my side, as if I was thirteen again, with Wulfric leaping about like a kid goat.
As I reached the abbey, the Tor loomed somewhere high above me, like a green tower. I felt my breath quicken and I had to stop as excitement swelled. I made myself remember the crowd who had stood around me as I scrabbled on the cliff edge. They had watched me, every one of them. They had broken my hands when I would not fall.
It was enough to douse my mood like the signal torch I’d left behind. I opened the gate with cold hands and cold eyes, ready for them.
I began to see men and women hurrying along, heads down and busy, as I walked through the abbey grounds. It was not quite the deserted place I had expected. In the years I’d been away, it seemed a few strangers had joined that community.
Some touched their forelocks as I passed, showing respect to the robe and tonsure. Among their number, I caught glimpses of faces I recognised – who had stood on that cliff edge and watched me cry out and fall.
The widow of Encarius was the first one I knew for certain. She looked weary, her hands red and gleaming, cracked and sore. I nodded to her and she only dipped her head in her little mob cap and hurried on.
I waited for a moment, holding my breath, convinced she would stop and denounce me. I watched her all the way across the great yard until she vanished into one of the embroidery houses, returning to her labours. I fou
nd myself obscurely disappointed and yet relieved at the same time, as if I’d braced for a blow that hadn’t come and so found myself staggering.
I had changed, of course. I’d grown at least two hands in height and my face had lengthened. I reached up and patted the bald crown of my tonsure. That too would have changed my aspect. In the end, though, perhaps it was just that she thought me far away, or bones in a ditch somewhere.
I shook my head and chuckled, then turned, almost stumbling against Brother Caspar. He muttered an apology, looking me full in the face as he passed. He carried an armful of leather wraps, perhaps two dozen scrolls and quills, all protected from the damp as he took them to some new place. His old switch poked through the centre of the bundle and I wondered if it was the very one he had beaten me with, until I recalled how it had splintered. No doubt he replaced them regularly.
He walked two paces past me and then stopped as if he had been struck.
‘Fetch the abbot for me would you, Brother Caspar?’ I said to his back. ‘I have grave news for him.’
I said it as if I’d never left, as if I’d spoken to him last just that morning, not three years and a great fall before. He turned slowly and I had the pleasure of seeing him pale as he did.
‘I knew it was you,’ he said.
As I waited in polite interest, he cast around for some place to lay down his burden. If you have not been eighteen and strong, I cannot explain how much I wanted him to attack me, how I welcomed it.
There would be many months and years of work to come, now that I had returned. I had a vision of an abbey to build. One thing was certain, however, written in the stars. It would not begin with a beating from Brother Caspar.
I watched as he spotted a cart a dozen yards away, levering his armful into it and stalking back. I think he took a better look at me as he did so, for he wilted just a touch. I was taller than him, which does not mean much. I was broader than him, which meant more. I wanted to kill him, and that meant most of all.
‘Call the abbot!’ Caspar snapped to a gaggle of boys passing by. ‘Quickly!’
‘I asked you to fetch him, Brother Caspar, did I not? I suppose you cannot wait to talk over old times. Is that it? Did you miss me so very much?’
I was still a child then in some ways, to taunt him so. Back in Winchester, Lady Elflaed had wrinkled her brow at me when I’d said I wanted to go in alone. Those people had thought to kill me, where no one else would ever see. It was all too easy to imagine how it might have gone. I never let them see the fear I’d felt as I fell, the horror as Encarius broke under my weight.
I’d watched the life bleed from Encarius and felt only satisfaction at the time. Yet they’d gone back to their lives above, while I had been reduced in mud and filth and blood, crawling through the fields to the road and the lady’s carriage. I think I understood how Lucifer felt to be cast down by such whey-faced, sanctimonious prigs.
‘I knew you had lived,’ Caspar said to me, his voice hoarse with emotion. ‘I knew it when we found your trail, the marks of you crawling through the wet leaves. My friend Encarius dies and the rat who killed him survives, of course.’
‘Ah, I see. Should I have gone meekly to my death, Caspar? Should I have blessed you as you murdered me?’
He flinched at my words, like a twitch. I saw the first touch of fear in his face as he truly looked at me. I was clean and tall and well fed. Had I come to accuse him? To accuse them all? He bit his lip in swelling worry and I smiled gently, chuckling. He backed a step from my expression.
‘If I had come for vengeance, Caspar, you could not find a place to stand, not where you would be safe.’
‘What nonsense is this? What boasting words are these?’ He stepped forward in his temper and poked a finger at me. ‘You come here as a mockery of a monk, tonsured and robed? Where is your shame, boy, your humility?’
‘Ah, brother, where is yours?’ I said, my voice rising to a great growl. ‘Where is yours?’
I took hold of him and we struggled together for a time. He discovered he was not strong enough to break free and I waited until he understood that perfectly well. Then I dragged him by his robe to the cart and took up the switch he had laid down.
The bell in the tower began to toll then, as someone called a warning that could be heard for miles. I smiled at him. Caspar made an incoherent sound as I began to beat him with his own stick. I was thorough. I took my time with it. When the switch broke, I tossed the pieces down and left him at my feet, panting and bloody on the reeds and mud of the yard.
I took a deep breath and looked up to see a number of people I remembered with as much fondness as Caspar. They had come running in answer to the bell’s warning. Aphra was there, gaping at me. Master Gregory of the workshop was staring at Caspar, no doubt recalling how he had broken my hands with neat blows of his hammer. Brother John of the gardens was there, though he had grown so frail and white-haired I wondered if he might have been a ghost. Abbot Simeon pointed a shaking finger at me, overcome. I smiled at him, too.
I turned around the circle of faces, showing myself alive and whole to each one of them who might have remembered me. I was tempted to bow, with Caspar on the ground before me, as if at a performance. I recognised that I was a little drunk on vengeance and so resisted that urge.
Abbot Simeon looked more like a wild hermit, with a long grey beard and hair grown thick with filth. Such men are said to be above the cares of the world, so that the pain of rotting teeth and flesh means nothing to them. In his case, though, it seemed mere madness rather than holiness. He worked his mouth at me, making no sounds, though his gaze passed from mine to the trembling monk who still lay dazed at my feet.
‘You will be hanged,’ Aphra said suddenly. ‘By the law this time.’
It was a surprise to have the accusation come from her. She stood with her hands folded and her jaw jutting. I repressed a shudder of memory.
‘I see. Of what crime am I accused?’ I asked her, genuinely curious.
‘The murder of poor Godwin, of Encarius, of who knows how many others!’
‘Of Father Keats,’ I prompted. ‘He died while I was here, did he not?’
‘You admit it?’ she asked, her eyes widening.
‘I admit to nothing, except Encarius who fell with me. When you gathered together on the cliff, I pleaded with you. I begged you not to kill me, a boy. Did you listen to a word of it? Or were you so certain I was a sinner that there could only be one judgement?’
They did not answer me, though our talk had given Abbot Simeon time to find his creaking voice.
‘Gather him up once more. For all those he killed. For my poor son.’
There were enough new monks there to do it. They had come with axes and knives in answer to the bell, fearing a raid.
I raised my right hand, as if I might bless them.
‘Hold,’ I said. It is strange what works with men, at times. Merely saying a word should not stop them, but if the tone is right, it can be a wall.
I reached into my satchel and removed the leather wrap, a square in dark blue. I had the eyes of them all fastened on it, I could feel them. Certainly they did not rush me when they could have, though I felt a trickle of sweat running down my back at the possibility. I had cut it all rather finer than I’d intended.
‘Gather him up!’ Abbot Simeon screeched at them, pointing to me. I noticed he did not move alone to lay hands on me, so perhaps his madness was not complete. I would have broken his scrawny old neck with one blow, had he come at me.
I showed them a royal seal, the wyvern of Wessex in a wafer of blue wax, thick as a finger almost. Before them all, I snapped the seal in my hands – and of course I thought of the Host and Holy Communion. It had the feel of a ritual, a moment of perfection.
Rain clouds lowered overhead, threatening a downpour. I glanced up and frowned at the thought, wondering if I had felt the first drops. It would not do to see the king’s ink made to run. Still, no one else spoke. They had seen t
he seal and it held them in chains. I held it up to them and began to read.
‘ “Be it known that Dunstan of Baltonsborough, son of Heorstan and Cyneryth, is named Abbot of the Benedictine Community at Glastonbury, under my authority as King of all Britain, to stand over all predecessors and in place of Father Simeon of Anglia, who has served well in the role these many years.” ’
I looked up at the open mouths and wide eyes all around me.
‘There is not much more, beyond the signature of King Æthelstan and various titles. I think it is enough. I will make it available to anyone who wishes to see it. Perhaps away from the mud of the yard, though, eh?’ I chuckled at them, though I hid the satisfaction that swelled in me. I wanted to laugh, to caper in dark delight in that yard, but I could not.
‘I accept the king’s appointment. Now, I will say this. I have returned. The past is the past.’ I paused to glance down at Caspar, whose mass of livid stripes rather gave me the lie on that score. ‘There are forty men arriving tomorrow to begin work – to break down the walls around us, stone from stone. I will reduce this poor stable to beams and spoil. Then we will build something greater in this place. I will see you all individually … What is it, Simeon?’
The old man came at me, almost in a daze himself, trying to rake me with his nails in great sweeps. I was pleased when one of the younger men gathered him up in a cloak, a kindness to him more than me. It took only that touch for his rage to become weeping, the sounds of it fading as he was taken away.
I heard a commotion then, from the rear of the group. A figure came through and I smiled in real pleasure to see Wulfric. He stood with his chest heaving and his hair wild. In his one hand, he carried an axe as if he was actually prepared to use it.
‘You missed my speech, Wulfric,’ I said, though I grinned at him. ‘I’d not thought to see you here.’
‘And there was I, thinking I was coming to save you,’ he said, looking down in amazement at Caspar.