The Long Ships (47 page)

The magister looked sadly at Father Willibald as he reached this point in his narrative, and Father Willibald nodded pensively.

“I have heard tell of this book,” he said, “and know it to be highly regarded by foolish monks and learned nuns.”

“It is as Beelzebub’s own brew,” said the magister, “and yet it is sweeter than honey. It was difficult for me to understand it completely, for it was full of words that do not appear in the Gospels or the epistles, nor in Statius either; but my eagerness to discover its meaning matched my fear at what it might contain. Of its content I will say nothing, save that it was full of details concerning caresses, sweet-smelling substances, strange melodies, and every form of sensual pleasure that man and woman can indulge in. At first I feared lest it might not be a great sin to read about such matters, but then I bethought myself (it was the Devil speaking to me) and decided that what was fit matter for a wise Dean could not be sinful reading for me. This lustful Ovid was, in sooth, a great poet, though wholly of the Devil’s party, and I was surprised to find that his verses remained in my head without my making any effort to memorize them—far more so than the Epistle to the Galatians, though I had struggled most assiduously to memorize that. I continued reading until I heard the Dean’s footsteps outside the house; when he entered, he gave me a sharp drubbing with his stick because I had neglected to meet him with torches and help him home. But I scarcely noticed the pain, for other things were uppermost in my mind; and on two later occasions when he was absent, I stole again into his room, and so read the poem to its end. The result of this was that a great change came over me; for from that time my head was filled with sinful thoughts in most melodious verse. Shortly afterwards, because of my knowledge, I was made magister at the cathedral school, where all went well for me until I received a summons to appear before the Bishop. He told me that the rich merchant Dudo, in the town of Maastricht, a man known for his piety, who had bestowed rich gifts upon the Church, had asked for a godly and learned priest to be sent to him to instruct his son concerning the Christian virtues, and also to teach him to write and reckon; for which post the Bishop had chosen me, because the Dean held me to be the best of the young teachers, and the only one skilled in the difficult art of reckoning. In order that I might also conduct services for the merchant’s household, the good Bishop raised me to the rank of presbyter, with the right to hear confession; and I straightway departed for the town of Maastricht, where I found the Devil awaiting me.”

He clasped his head between his hands, and groaned aloud.

“That is not much of a story, so far as it goes,” said Orm. “But now perhaps it will get better. Let us hear what happened when you met the Devil.”

“I did not meet him in his bodily form,” said the magister, “but it was enough as it was. The merchant Dudo lived in a large house by the river; he welcomed me warmly, and each morning and evening I led his household in prayer. I applied myself with industry to the task of teaching his son, and sometimes Dudo himself would come and listen to us, for he was, in truth, a godly man, and often bade me not to be sparing with my rod. His wife was named Alchmunda. She had a sister who lived in the house with them, a widow called Apostolica. They were both young, and fair to look on. They conducted themselves most modestly and virtuously; when they walked, they moved slowly, with their eyes directed toward their feet, and at prayer-time no one showed greater zeal than they. But since the lewd poet Ovid yet nested in my soul, I dared not glance too closely at them and avoided speaking with them; so all went well until the time came when the merchant had to go on a long business voyage southwards and into Lombardy. Before he set out, he confessed himself to me and vowed to give rich gifts to the Church to ensure his safe return; he delivered parting admonitions to his household, made me promise that I would pray for his safety every day, and so, at last, departed with his servants and horses. His wife and her sister wept loudly as he left; but once he had gone, their weeping quickly ceased, and they now began to conduct themselves otherwise than as they had done before. At household prayers they behaved as piously as ever; but they often came to hear me instructing my pupil at his lessons, sitting whispering together with their eyes on my face. Sometimes they expressed concern lest the child might be overstraining his mind, and suggested that he should go and play, in order, they whispered to me, that they might ask my advice on matters of serious import. They were amazed, they said, that I was such a solemn and earnest young man, in view of my youth, and Mistress Apostolica asked whether it was true that all young priests were timid of women. She said that she and her sister might both now be regarded as poor widows in mourning, and that they were in grievous need of comfort and exhortation. They told me they were both anxious to confess all their sins before Easter, and Alchmunda asked whether I had the power of granting absolution. I replied that the Bishop had given me that power, because, he had explained, this good household was known for its piety, so that its members would, in any case, have few confessions to make. At this they clapped their hands in joy; and from that moment the Devil began to make me his plaything, so that these two women occupied more and more of my thoughts. For their good names’ sake, Dudo had strictly forbidden them ever to walk alone in the town, and had commanded his steward to see that they did not disobey this order; for which reason they often cast glances at me and so, in time, tempted me into the cave of sin. I should, alas, have been steadfast and resisted their entreaties, or else have fled from their presence, as the blessed Joseph did in the house of Potiphar; but Joseph had never read Ovid, so that his situation was less perilous than mine. When I looked at them, my mind was no longer filled with piety and chastity, but rather with lust and sinfulness, so that I trembled when they passed close to me; but I dared do nothing, being as yet youthful and innocent in such matters. But these women, who were as full of sinful thoughts as I, and far less timid, lacked not the courage. One night, when I was lying asleep in my chamber, I was awakened by a woman coming into my bed. I could not speak, being filled with great fear and joy; she whispered that it was beginning to thunder, and that she was much afraid of storms. Then she flung her arms around me and began to kiss me furiously. Suddenly a flash of lightning lit up the room, and I saw that the woman was Apostolica; and although I, too, greatly feared the thunder, I had little time to think of such things now. A short while later, however, after I had enjoyed pleasure with her which far surpassed anything that Ovid had described, I heard the thunderclap just above the roof, and at that I became greatly frightened, for I supposed that God would strike me with His thunderbolt. This, though, did not happen; and on the following night, when Alchmunda came to me as eagerly as her sister had done, there was no thunder at all, and my lust was even greedier than before, so that I surrendered myself to the pleasures of sin with gay courage and a hard heart. These women were of a sweet and gentle temper, never upbraiding me or quarreling with each other, and there was no evil in them, save only their great lust; nor did they ever show fear or remorse at what they had done, apart from their anxiety lest any of the servants should come to suspect what was afoot. But the Devil was strong in them; for what could be more pleasing to him than to cause the downfall of a servant of Christ? When Easter arrived, the whole household came to me in turn to confess their sins. Last of all came Alchmunda and Apostolica. Solemnly they described to me all that had taken place between them and me, and I had no alternative but to pronounce God’s absolution upon them. This was, indeed, a terrible thing for me to have to do; for although I was by now steeped in sin, yet it felt as though I had deliberately betrayed God.”

“I sincerely hope that your conduct underwent a change for the better,” said Father Willibald severely.

“I hoped it would,” replied the magister, “but fate willed it otherwise, as the wisewoman told me when she warned me about my three sins. As yet, however, the Devil had not wholly ensuared my soul, for every day I prayed for the merchant as I had promised to do, that he might be preserved from danger and return safely home; indeed, after a time I prayed for him twice and thrice a day, to soothe the remorse and terror with which my heart was filled. But my terror waxed greater every day, until at last, on the night after the festival of Christ’s resurrection, I could stand it no longer and fled secretly out of the house and the town and made my way, begging, along the weary roads until I came to my home, where my mother was yet living. She was a godly woman, and when I told her of all that had taken place, she wept bitterly; then, however, she began to comfort me, saying that it was no great wonder that women lost their prudence when they saw me, and that such things happened more often than people generally supposed. The only course for me to follow, she continued, was for me to go back to the good Dean and tell him of all that had happened; and she blessed me as I left her to obey her bidding. Dean Rumold stared at me in amazement when I arrived at his house, and asked why I had returned; then, weeping, I gave him a truthful account of the whole matter, from beginning to end. He simmered furiously when he learned that I had read Ovid without his permission; but when I told him what had taken place between me and the two women, he slapped his knee and broke into a thunderous bellow of laughter. He wanted, he said, to know about this business in detail, and whether I had found the women satisfactory; then he sighed, and said that there was no time in life to be compared with youth, and that no deanery in the whole of the Empire was worth the loss of it. But as I proceeded further with my story, his face began to darken, and when I had concluded, he smote the table with his fist and roared that I had behaved most scandalously, and that this was a matter for the Bishop to decide. So we went to the Bishop and told him everything; and he and the Dean agreed that I had acted most wickedly, having doubly betrayed my trust; firstly, in that I had abandoned the post to which I had been appointed, and secondly, in that I had betrayed the secrecy of the confessional by telling my mother what had occurred between me and the women. That I had committed fornication was, of course, a grievous sin, but not an uncommon one, and not to be compared with these others which I had committed, which could only be wiped out by the most rigorous penance. Since, however, I had acted out of youthful folly rather than with evil intent, they would, they said, punish me as mildly as possible; so they gave me three penances to choose from: either to spend a year as chaplain to the lepers in the great hospital at Jülich, or to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and bring thence to the crowning-church oil from the Mount of Olives and water from the river Jordan, or to go as a missionary to convert the Danes. Fortified by their compassion, and fired with the desire to wipe out my sin, I therefore chose the most difficult penance. So they sent me to Bishop Eckard of Hedeby. He received me warmly and soon made me one of his canons, because of my learning; and I remained with him for two years, applying myself assiduously to the cause of piety and teaching in the school that he had founded there, until, again, my fate overtook me, and I committed my second sin.”

“You are a strange kind of priest,” said Orm, “with your sins and your crazed women. But you still have not told us why you came here.”

“Why did you not marry, like a sensible man,” said Ylva, “since your lust for women is so strong?”

“Some men hold that a priest should not marry,” said the magister. “Your own priest, here, is wifeless; though it may be that he is more godly than I and so better able to resist temptation.”

“I have had more important things to bother about than women,” said Father Willibald. “And now, God be praised, I have reached the age where such temptations no longer exist. But the blessed apostles have held differing views on this subject. St. Peter himself was married, and even went so far as to take his wife with him on his travels among the heathens. St. Paul, however, was of another mind and remained unmarried throughout his life; which may be the reason why he traveled farther and wrote more. For many years now godly men have inclined to the opinion of St. Paul, and St. Benedict’s abbots in France now hold that priests should avoid marriage and, if possible, all forms of carnal indulgence. Though it is my belief that it will be some time before all priests can be persuaded to deny themselves to that extent.”

“You speak aright,” said the magister. “I remember that the French Abbot Odo and his pupils preached that marriage was an evil thing for a servant of Christ, and I hold their opinion to be correct on the matter. But the Devil’s cunning is immeasurable, and many are his devices; so that now you see me here, an outcast and a lost wanderer in the wilderness, because I refused to enter into marriage. This was the second of the sins that the witch-woman prophesied would be my lot. And I dare not imagine what the third will be.”

They begged him earnestly to continue with his story, and after Ylva had fortified him with a strong drink, he told them about his second sin.

1.
Black sorcery.

2.
Counting with Arabic numerals, a science little practiced at this time.

TO continue with my story,” proceeded the magister in a melancholy voice, “I must tell you that not far from Hedeby there dwells a woman by the name of Thordis. She is of noble birth, and is one of the richest women in those parts, with broad estates and many herds; and she was born and brought up a heathen. Because of her wealth, she has been married three times, though she is still but young; and all her husbands have died violent deaths in wars or feuds. When the third was killed, she fell into a deep melancholy and came of her own accord to Bishop Eckard to tell him that she desired to seek help from God. The Bishop himself instructed her in the Christian doctrine and subsequently baptized her; after which she attended Mass regularly, riding to church at the head of a large procession of followers with as much noise and clanging of weapons as any warchieftain. Her pride was great and her temper refractory, and at first she refused to allow her followers to divest themselves of their weapons before entering the church; for if they did so, she said, they would make a poor show as they marched down the aisle. Eventually, however, the Bishop succeeded in persuading her to consent to this; and he bade us treat her always with the utmost patience, because she was in a position to do much good to God’s holy Church. Nor can I deny that she came several times to the Bishop with rich gifts. But she was difficult to handle, and especially so toward me. For she had no sooner set eyes on me than she conceived a fierce passion for my body, and on one occasion after Mass she waited alone for me in the porch and asked me to bless her. I did so; whereupon she allowed her eyes to roam over my body and told me that if I would only pay some attention to my hair and beard, as a man should do, I would be fitted for higher duties than that of conducting Mass. ‘You are welcome to visit my house whenever you please,’ she added, ‘and I shall see to it that you do not regret your visit.’ Then she seized me by the ears and kissed me shamelessly, though my deacon was standing beside us; and so I was left in great bewilderment and terror. By God’s help, I had by now become strong at resisting the temptations of women and was determined to conduct myself unimpeachably; besides which, she was not so beautiful as the two women who had led me astray in Maastricht. I had, therefore, no fears of being seduced by her; but I was alarmed lest she might act crazily, and it was a great misfortune that the good Bishop Eckard happened to be away at this time, at a church conference at Mainz. I persuaded the deacon to say nothing of what he had seen, though he laughed much about it in his ignorance and folly; and that evening I prayed to God to help me against this woman. When I rose from my prayers, I felt wonderfully strengthened, and decided that she must have been sent to show me how well I was now able to resist the temptations of the flesh. But the next time she came to the church, I found myself no less fearful of her than before; and while the choir was still singing, I fled as fast as I could into the sacristy, that I might avoid meeting her. But, disdaining all modesty, she pursued me and caught me before I could leave the church, and inquired why I had not been to visit her, despite her invitation that I should do so. I replied that my time was wholly occupied with important duties. ‘Nothing can be more important than this,’ she said, ‘for you are the man I wish to marry, though you are one of the shaven sort; and I should have thought that you would have had better sense than to let me sit and wait for you to come to me, after the evidence I had given you of my affection.’ By this time I was greatly confused and could not at first think of any more courageous reply than that, for various reasons, I could not leave the church while the Bishop was absent. Then, however, my courage rose, and I told her in a determined manner that marriage was not a pleasure in which the servants of Christ could indulge, and that the blessed fathers of the Church would not approve of a woman entering upon marriage for the fourth time. She grew pale as I addressed her, and came menacingly nearer to me while I was yet speaking. ‘Are you a gelding?’ she said, ‘or am I too old to excite you?’ She looked very dangerous in her wrath, so I seized a crucifix and held it before her and began to pray that the evil spirit might be driven out of her; but she snatched it from my hand so violently that she fell over backwards and struck her head against the great robe-chest. But she leaped instantly to her feet, crying loudly for help; and I—I know not what I did. Then my destiny, from which there is no escape, was further fulfilled; for in the fight that now ensued, in the church and the porch and in the square outside, between her men, who were trying to help her, and good men from the town, who were trying to help me, men were killed on both sides, including a subdeacon, who had his head cut off by a sword, and Canon Andreas, who came rushing out of the Bishop’s palace to stop the fight and received a stone on the skull, from which he died the next day. At last the woman was driven off, together with such of her followers as were still able to run; but my despair was great when I surveyed the scene of the battle and reflected that two priests had been killed because of me. When Bishop Eckard returned and heard the news, he found that I was mostly to blame; for, he said, he had strictly ordered that the woman Thordis was to be handled with the utmost care and patience by us all, and I had disobeyed that instruction. I ought, he said, to have complied with her wishes. I begged him to condemn me to the severest possible punishment, for the thought of my sin pained me grievously, even though I knew that I could not have avoided it. I told him of the wisewoman’s prophecy and how I had now committed the second of the three sins of which I was fated to be the author. The Bishop said that he would prefer that I should not be at Hedeby when the time came for me to commit the third; and at last they thought of a fit penance for me to undergo. He bade me make a pilgrimage northwards to the country of the wild Smalanders, to ransom from them God’s zealous servant Father Sebastian, who three years ago was sent to preach the gospel to them, ever since when he has languished there in bitter serfdom. Thither am I now bound, and this is the mission on which I have come. Now you know as much as I do about me and my misfortunes.”