As he spoke, the monk tried to rise and I gave him a great kick that made him curl up once again. It was most unchristian of me, I accept that. Yet it served to demonstrate my authority. The Church must demand obedience. In that way, Caspar was a fine lesson.
Wulfric and I looked at each other, and I found much to like in the strong young man I saw before me. Sixteen months younger than me, I realised he was seventeen and resembled our father more than I did myself. Yet the ‘T’-shaped scar on his scalp served to remind me I had also seen his skull laid bare. I shuddered.
‘The king has appointed me abbot, Wulfric. He told me to clear out the old and bring in the new. I will need a reeve.’
‘A reeve?’ he said faintly.
‘Well, what do you do here?’
‘Our shop supplies the abbey. Cloth for embroidery, altarpieces, robes and habits. I measure and I cut and we have looms in London to make it all. I … have a serving lad to help me when I need two hands.’
It was less than I had hoped for him. He looked at his feet as he saw my disappointment. I tried to imagine life without an arm, how hard it must have been. I felt my own anger kindling once again at the thought.
‘You’ve survived then, Brother. I am sorry I could not do more for you.’
‘Sorry? You saved my life, Dun! If not for you, I would never have lived to marry and father a daughter.’
‘Truly?’ I asked him in surprise. ‘I am an uncle?’
He showed me an expression of such honest and simple joy that I stepped away from Brother Caspar and his miserable coughing to embrace Wulfric. It felt strange, but I had missed him.
When I let go, I looked back at those who still stood around me, like calves stunned for slaughter.
‘Well? You have all heard the king’s appointment. Go about your business. I will see each one of you in time.’
Aphra was among the first to turn on her heel and leave. The years I’d spent away had not been kind to her, I noticed. The rest drifted off in twos and threes, leaving Master Gregory of the workshop to stand alone, his cap in both hands before him. I was not surprised he’d remained, not really. Before smashing my hands with his hammer, we’d got on very well and I knew him for a straight sort.
‘I don’t … know all the truth of what went on,’ he said, looking at the ground.
Wulfric stared coldly at him, though whether it was on my behalf or for his own concerns, I did not know. I had so much to learn.
‘So I … um, I thought I’d say I was sorry,’ Gregory said. He looked up at me through eyebrows that had only grown thicker in my time away. He seemed otherwise unchanged by the years. Perhaps I was weak. Perhaps I was just overcome with the emotion of the moment and seeing my brother alive if not whole. Or perhaps it was the power of Christ in me.
‘I forgive you, Master Gregory,’ I said.
‘Thank you, abbot,’ he said, dipping his head.
I watched him walk off with a lighter step than some of the others who remembered me. I was not completely sure I did forgive him, but I’d need craftsmen and he was a fine, skilled hand. My first thought of having him held down for me to break his fingers with his own hammer seemed beneath me, after just a moment’s reflection.
‘Come on, Brother,’ I said to Wulfric. ‘Broach a cask of ale with me. Tell me about this wife and daughter of yours. I’ll tell you how I rode at the king’s side in battle.’
I may have wanted to impress him, a little. The world called me a man and an abbot, but I was still young and unsure of myself. Wulfric looked awed by my words and I swelled a touch in pride. I had no wife and child – and I would not. Forgive me my small vanity.
I turned to go and started as I realised there was another standing in the gloom. I felt a shiver of fear as I saw it was Encarius’ widow. Of all of them, she had the clearest cause to hate me. I saw it in her eyes as she sketched a brief curtsy to a new abbot. I remembered too that she had been happy enough to see my hands broken and for me to fall to my death. I stood tall at the thought. I would not be ashamed in front of my enemies. They had gaped upon me with their mouths, like ravening and roaring lions. Yet they had not broken me.
‘Have you come to ask for my forgiveness?’ I said. Perhaps I meant to goad her, preferring to have my enemies declare themselves. Yet she shook her head and gestured at Caspar, sitting up with a groan on the yard.
‘He is my husband now,’ she said, looking almost ashamed.
‘Ah, I see. Well, you should go to him. Come, Wulfric. I want to know everything that has happened.’
We left Caspar to be tended by his wife on the ground behind us, bloody and swollen. As I walked away, it began to rain in a great torrent, which pleased me. I had come back to Glastonbury with a king’s authority. There are worse homecomings.
19
I could not part the salt marshes like the Red Sea. I did not have to. Lady Elflaed sent me the king’s master mason, a man named Justin whom I liked almost from the first. He’d looked a little scornful while I interviewed him in the abbot’s study. I’d let him have his doubts for a moment, then begun to question him on his understanding of geometry. It was something of a pleasure to see him begin to sweat and get out a slate to help him with the calculations.
‘How do you know so much about triangle frames?’ he asked.
‘I read Pythagoras and Euclid. Did you think these things sprang out of the air? They are the works of men, Master Justin, not angels. Believe me, I would know.’
He had a particular genius for solving problems as they arose, which made him immensely valuable to me. It galled that he would not take my silver as his pay, however. When I pressed him, he admitted to some attachment to the king’s purse. A man cannot have two masters, he told me. I told him a simple man could not. An educated man could have three or four. He raised his eyebrow at that and yet said nothing, choosing not to disagree. As I say, I liked him.
Caesar had built his bridge across the Rhine with trunks driven into the mud by pyramid frames. One log raised above another in the frame, drawn up on pulleys, then allowed to drop as a hammer blow, driving in the bridge piles. That had worked even in a rushing river, whereas we could lay great depths of reeds in temporary beds. I told Master Justin we had it easy compared to the men of Rome, and he looked askance at me, raising one eyebrow again.
It took weeks just to prepare the track of the bridge we would build. With Lady Elflaed’s coin, we put the word out and hired two hundred Wessex men, all young and poor enough to be willing to risk their lives for good pay. Master Justin was still unsatisfied. He developed a habit of throwing his hands up and saying some problem or other was madness, was completely impossible, then finding a way to do it that was both neat and clever.
By Laetare Sunday in Lent, we had a dozen yards of track at most, a pier to nowhere. Our workers had learned the vital skills – and made most of the worst errors. It went faster after that. By the time Pentecost was past, we had our bridge, our wooden road, our dry land across the marsh. Six hundred piles had been driven deep into the sucking mud. Thick beams and planking made a causeway across the marsh for the first time in all the history of the isle.
Four men had drowned when a frame tipped up and held them under. Another vanished into a hole and we never found him. One of the strangest days was when I was called across to witness a body pulled out of the thick mud that no one knew, a man so long dead that his skin was as dark as a saddle and shone, while strange things crept in him, living in his flesh. That stranger was reburied with his old bow and hunter’s skins on the edge of the marsh, with Christian prayers said over him and a good wooden cross to mark the spot. Though we had no inkling of his name, I’m sure he knew his own when it was called.
Though I was but newly ordained, it fell to me to offer Mass for those lost souls. I compensated their families as well, when they could be found, but the truth is, construction is not unlike the movements of an army. Men die when they move stones and wood. That is just the truth of it
. We spent only a little time in mourning and the work went on.
When it was finished, Master Justin and I were amongst the first to walk the entire distance. Where once I had been poled through reeds and mists, now reached a stretch of new and yellow oak, as sturdy as a spire. Only Brother Guido seemed unhappy about the bridge and that was because he was made to dig the gardens rather than pole his little boat.
The true work began after that. We had already engaged masons and stonecutters at a great quarry near Bath. Huge blocks of golden limestone had sat uncomplaining for months, too heavy to travel over those marshes, though they do say the blocks for the old stone circles were carried by barge – bigger than anything we used.
I had to work to hide my happiness, so that others saw me as the abbot, a man of God and dignity, myself a servant. Yet I was home! I was back in my beloved Wessex, with a new workshop built alongside the chapel, with my own forge that puffed away at all hours of the day and night.
Once we could roll carts in and out of the site, the old abbey was reduced with extraordinary speed around me, the cottages rebuilt some distance from where we would create a great ark in stone. The design came first from my mind – from the visions I’d had. To those dreamed images, the masons joined an understanding of rubble cores and flint facings, of limestone and proper ratios in dimensions. From Master Justin, I learned that there is little mystery to why one building appears fine and graceful, while another seems short or a dull block. There are rules to their dimensions known to masters, but not to mere journeymen or apprentices. I learned at his feet for a time and my mind filled with the golden mean and the rule of thirds, a hundred new things.
In the evenings, I insisted the monks eat together. The refectory then was makeshift, the old one reduced to beams and tile. Yet it was always the heart of our abbey, with the chapel. We came together to break bread and that had more than a little significance.
I did little else at first beyond that single order to remind them they were one household, though of great size and with varied interests. I thought to let the monks settle for a while, accepting my authority over them – or perhaps the king’s, over us all. Poor Simeon had walked away in the night, to join a community of hermits at Clewer. I did not see him again and I’m pleased for it. His mind had deserted him by the end.
I experienced the first rebellion from my little community when I placed sturdy fellows at the door to our refectory, turning away the women and children. It hurt me to do it, but I knew better than most what foulness can come from the indulgence of desires. Christ did not marry – and I saw one path writ clear for those who would reside in my abbey. Despite my youth, I would be father to them – abba, as it is in Aramaic. The rules of St Benedict were perfectly conceived, but not much observed. Prayer and work! There can be no better course for men to control their base desires.
We enforced the old rule of the meal as a time of silence after that, with just one voice reading aloud. I saw then how peaceful it became, just men alone in contemplation. I saw too how my mind would leap ahead as I nodded over my bowl, thinking of all I had to do the next day. In that way, I was not a fine example. We are all sinners.
The abbey ground was cleared before the Advent fast began, which was a relief. Enormous holes had been dug at Master Justin’s order to make foundations, so that there were valleys where once had stood the old bell tower and the grain stores. I was peering into one of those when I saw Brother Caspar hurrying past me, head down and mouth set into a thin line. He had not spoken a word to me since I had beaten him, and I felt the pang of regret that is only possible in a victor.
‘Brother Caspar, a moment!’ I called.
He missed a step as he considered whether he could pretend not to have heard, but I strode over to him. He flinched as I came into range, and it was that which made me decide to put it right.
‘Brother Caspar, would you fetch me a whip?’ I said.
He looked suspiciously at me and I saw he thought I would use it on him.
‘It is for my penance, Brother Caspar. St Benedict’s rule forbids us to strike one another in anger. I have sinned, Brother Caspar. I must suffer.’
He moved quickly enough then, I noticed. Nor did he return alone. Word spread quickly in that small place and Aphra was just one of those who came out into the evening gloom to see what I was about. I saw too that Master Justin was there, with a mug of ale and a piece of bread in his hand. His supper was forgotten as he looked on the concerns of monks.
Caspar returned with a whip I had not seen before, used to drive oxen when they are most stubborn. It had small brass pellets tied to the end of each strand. As a prick spur will set a horse to bleeding, I had no doubt they would be cruel.
I clenched my jaw over any censure. I had to pay the price of what I had done to Caspar, the humiliation I had given out. Most importantly, it had to be in public. My authority could not come from fear.
I stripped myself to the waist and took up the flail, feeling the weight of it.
‘As a sinner, I ask for penance, Lord, for forgiveness, and the strength to endure. I ask to be forgiven my ill-treatment of Brother Caspar when I first arrived. He deserved better from his abbot, or from any man. I was cruel, Lord. I beg your mercy.’
I began to whip the flail across, left and right, over and over as I prayed aloud. It drew blood quickly and stung, though it was not too bad at first. I could feel heated lines dribbling down me, then saw bright spots spattering. I felt a warmth gathering over my back, almost like a healing touch, so that the pain dwindled away and I could gaze steadily at those who watched me.
Aphra looked afraid, as if she saw something she could not understand. Master Justin appeared amused at first, then troubled, so that he turned away. The blood rained from me in fat drops and the heat grew worse, becoming a different kind of hurt. I was striking myself with fire and I could not bear it.
I stopped, panting hard in choking, short breaths. My head was down and the pain was as bad as anything I have known. I held out the flail to Caspar.
‘Lay on, brother,’ I said to him. ‘If you would forgive me my sin.’
A greater man might have handed the flail back to me. Instead, he took it up and laid on with such enthusiasm I was driven to my knees and thought I might pass out before he was done. I could hardly see for dizziness and agony, and it took some time for me to realise it had stopped. I staggered up once again to find him panting almost as hard as I was. Flogging a man is exhausting work. He held out the flail and I took it from him. Yet there was awe in his eyes and I reached out stiffly with my left hand and patted him on the shoulder. Then I handed the flail back to him and closed his fingers over it.
‘Again, brother,’ I murmured to him.
Once more I hoped for some decency in the old bastard, but instead he walked around me as I stood facing the crowd, by then every soul on the island. He began again and it was extraordinary how the pain soared and burned the wounds that were already there.
Caspar looked white as he came to face me. Some of the men in the crowd called out for him to stop, growling that I’d done enough. I noticed none of the women’s voices joined them, but they have always been more cruel.
I could see indecision in Caspar’s face. He sensed the mood of the crowd turning against him, but he was spiteful enough to want a third go at flogging me in front of them all. Yet always it was with my permission. That undermined him. If I had been a prisoner, or tied to a post, I’m sure he would have gone on all night. As it was, his own shame and the mutters of the crowd forced him to hand back the flail. I held it out to him, making sure they all saw, though when he shook his head, I was so relieved I could have wept.
‘I forgive you,’ Caspar said. He looked into my eyes and suddenly sobbed as he turned away. I was dazed from pain and loss of blood, and I could not understand the change in him.
Wulfric came forward to drape a cloak around my shoulders, though he had trouble with only one arm, so I had to help him
with it. I could not walk on my own, but he suppported me as best he could, while I hissed at every touch. We went back to the infirmary then, where Aphra tended my wounds, stitching and wiping them clean without a single word.
It is quite extraordinary how my authority over that community underwent a change after that. Aphra did a fair job of keeping the wounds clean, and though I moved stiffly and could neither hammer nor gild nor stitch over the following month, most of my work was in planning and keeping the community out of trouble, which did not need another strong back.
I had achieved much by allowing Caspar to wield the flail, though I felt the single experience of it was enough – for him and for me. A few weeks later, he came to me with the flail in his hand and asked humbly if I wished for him to resume the labour. I’m afraid I was quite sharp with him.
Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year, in cold and dark, in the sense of wonder that is Christ coming into the world. Adventus in Latin, or Parousia in Greek – it is a time of penitence and prayer, with only a little food and all the chapels and churches laid about with green boughs.
Much of the building work stopped as our labourers went home to their families. We were, once again, a smaller group, ready to welcome the birth of Our Saviour and endure the winter months that follow.
In that quieter time, I turned my mind to the problem that had troubled me almost since the moment we began work. Lady Elflaed had sent me back with a satchel of gold and silver that I’d thought would be enough on its own to build the abbey.
I had not reckoned on the cost of dressed stones of the size and quality we required. Nor had I understood how paying two hundred men and a dozen master masons could eat through a king’s ransom in just a few months. Prayer had not kept that satchel full, though you may be sure I’d tried it, once I saw the way the levels were dropping.
As Advent began, I found myself sharpening a fresh quill to write to my patroness for another donation to the cause. I listed all the costs we had incurred, but it seemed not the sort of thing that might inspire Lady Elflaed to reach more deeply into her strongbox. I knew her well enough to understand she wanted glories and choirs and prayers soaring to heaven, not a list of tons of rubble and how many thousand dressed flints and bricks lay in our stores. Still, I had to ask. I sent three of our lads across the causeway with instructions to reach a good road and go thence to Winchester and the lady’s house. With that done, it was a sombre group which came at my request to the new school we’d built.