The Oblate's Confession (12 page)

In a way I suppose I had always known these things would arrange themselves in this manner, would perhaps have even been able to draw a poor image of such a place. But now I actually saw it. For the first time in my life I saw the place where I lived not as an idea, something I held in my mind like an article of faith, but as a fact, something I could see and point at, something I could understand, almost touch. It was like learning to speak a new language in an instant. Everything was changed, everything different. To this day, when I think of home, I picture what one sees from Dacca’s crag.

As I have said, it is much smaller than you think. Our monastery is surrounded by a great forest. What we call the Far Wood and the Great North Wood are, in reality, a single wood, separated only by the river. Beyond the orchard they join the South Wood to form an enormous waste that covers the land around us and swamps the distant horizons. Our abbey sits on the high ground at the base of Modra nect looking out over this forest like a tiny lighthouse looking out over a vast sea. The Meolch, which drains the mountain at our back and seems so straight when you stand next to it, actually curves as it passes us by. Our lands lie on the inside of this curve, the monastery and the terrace it sits upon at one end, the village at the other, our fields in between. Beyond the village the river straightens out again before entering the Far Wood, falling through a series of short rapids which, at midday,
sparkle from the crag. It is here, in the pools just this side of the rapids, that the women do their wash.

The village looks much as it does from our terrace, small, compact, a cluster of toy houses built for a child. On fine days the smoke rises from the roofs in thin gray lines so that the houses seem joined to the sky by lengths of thread. Sometimes you can see women moving about in the open area at the center. I suppose this is meant to be their garth though there is no grass on it. With all the drying racks, it looks more like kitchens.

The fields too are as you would imagine them, the wheat green and silver when the wind blows, the peas thin and straggly. Chapter was cut short that spring so there would have been people in the fields by the time I reached the crag, but I don’t think I saw Waldhere. I remember this because I remember being disappointed. For some reason I had thought I would be able to reach out and touch him. It was foolish of course, but at the time I believe I had some idea that the picture of Redestone I would see from Dacca's crag would be like any other—things large would become small, things far away, close at-hand: touch the top of the picture and you touch the clouds, the bottom and your finger covers someone looking at the sky. In this way too I had thought I would see Waldhere. I had thought I would tower over him like someone holding his picture.

You can’t really see the ditch from the crag. Between the fields and the abbey path, the weeds and grasses look thicker and greener than elsewhere, but you can’t really tell it’s the ditch. A stranger would never know unless they opened one of the dikes. When they open a dike, water spills from the ditch and darkens all the rows in that part of the field.

Beyond the ditch and the abbey path are the fish ponds. From that high up you would think you could see the fish no matter how deep they went but you can’t. Sometimes the water reflects the sky and the clouds overhead and sometimes a bit of the forest, but most of the time it’s too gray or shiny to see anything. Between the ponds and the southern part of Modra nect lies the orchard. Part of the orchard you can’t see because the monastery’s in the way.

In the spring, when the trees are in bloom, it looks as if the abbey’s floating on a cloud.

If you stand in the door of the dortoir after Vigil and watch the stars roll back over Modra nect, they all seem to disappear behind the same line of trees. What you are actually looking at is the crest of a long ridge that reaches down from the mountain’s southern peak like an arm. The lower part of this arm rests, elbow to hand, along the abbey’s side of the river, its length carrying the load of our church. When Abbot Agatho had the retaining walls built and the area south of the church filled in to create the terrace, he effectively buried all evidence of this ridge. Except from the crag. From the crag it looks as if the mountain holds our terrace close to its chest like a basket full of earth. The buildings of our monastery sit on top of this basket like four boxes set on top at the last moment: the smaller ones on the far side of the terrace—the abbot’s lodge, dortoir, and refectory—balancing the larger one on the north, our church.

The walls of our church have always struck me as little short of miraculous: the stones too large, too perfect, their rosy color too uniform, to be the result of craft alone. Yet from the crag it isn’t the walls that impress so much as it is the roof. The thing stretches from the front of our terrace all the way to the back, an impossibly long and perfect pile of hay, its north side stained green by the weather. The same mind that dreamt up such a roof, imagined whole marshes stripped bare to create its length, had a series of crosses woven in at the crest, a sign, apparently, for God alone.

Below the roof you can see where the stone of the church’s north wall joins that of the ridge, the two so alike in color and form it’s hard to tell where the one ends and the other begins. It is here, against the base of the ridge, that the Meolch ends its long fall down the mountain. This is the sound you hear when you kneel on the north side of the church. The stone of the ridge becomes darker where it is touched by the spray, almost purple. This dark color, along with a stain which I take to be moss, extends up onto the lower portions of the church. Sometimes the mist and
spray drift out beyond the ridge and into the light of our fields. When this happens, a small rainbow appears in the air over Wilfrid’s bridge. There is something in the nature of these rainbows that makes them visible only from the crag.

The coincidence that makes the earth at Redestone the same color as the rock makes it hard to tell our southern buildings are any different from the church. A stranger would guess they too were built of stone. The abbot’s lodge, dortoir, and refectory line up opposite the church like children trying hard to please. From the crag at least, they conceal their faults: you can’t see any of the cracks or weathering. The abbot’s lodge is decidedly smaller than the dortoir and refectory. It sits out in front of the other two at the terrace’s southeastern corner like the abbot himself, short and squat, his flock at his back, watching for the Thief who comes in the night.

You can’t see the reredorter from the crag but you can see the kitchens. The drying racks look like gibbets, facing out toward the orchard the way they do. I have never liked the sound they make when the wind blows. It is a shame the cooking has to be done so close to the refectory, but where else? If you prepared the food down among the fields, it would be such a job to deliver it to the community, especially in winter. And of course it would arrive cold. So there the kitchens sit, muddy and disreputable, at the very entrance to our otherwise neat and tidy cloister. I have often thought we should put up a wall.

But there is an advantage to the kitchens’ location, in addition to the convenience I mean. Have you ever sat in Chapter and wondered if Bica’s baking was a personal test for you alone? Of course you have; we all have. It seems so unfair the way that smell invades the refectory just when everyone is hungriest. But I’m afraid it isn’t a test. Not really. God I think has more important things to do with His time. It was from the crag that I first realized this. I was sitting there one morning, thinking about everyone in Chapter, the air over the oven winking and curling with heat, when a chill ran down my back. I pulled my woolens close and, without even thinking about it, envied Father Abbot his seat at the west
end of the refectory, his back against that hot and cooking oven.

Things become so clear when viewed from above. Someone— Father Abbot, Brother Eadbald, possibly even the bishop—placed that oven against the refectory’s west wall not to tempt us, not to test our patience, but, instead, to give Father and the older monks at his end of the hall a nice warm spot to sit in. So simple, so kind. And undoubtedly instructive as well: a relationship which at ground-level had seemed arbitrary and even cruel turns out, upon examination from above, to have a reason, a purpose, to warm someone who, otherwise, might have suffered from the cold.

I remember I received one such lesson on even my first visit to Dacca’s crag, though I doubt I realized it at the time. I had been lying on the rock for a while, enjoying the hermit’s gift of the view, when the sky—which had hung low and heavy all morning— began to show signs of breaking up. Here and there, as I watched, beams of sunlight pierced the clouds, reached down and began to probe the earth. I was watching one of these troll a patch of gold through an otherwise dark wood when an unexpected movement drew my eye to the terrace. Someone was there. Someone had knelt down, was kneeling down, in front of the church—someone who had no business being there at that time of day.

When he stood up, I saw that it was the novice, Eosterwine, and that he had something in his hand that required him to get up carefully, gingerly. Since his admission to the abbey, Eosterwine had become attached to Brother Baldwin in his duties as sacristan. Which probably explained why he was up on the terrace at this time of the morning instead of out in the fields where he belonged. Brother must have seen something at Mass he didn’t like, a candlestick improperly polished, an altar cloth in need of repair, and now Eosterwine had paid the price for his master’s displeasure: he had been made to return to the church and fix whatever was wrong. I wondered if Baldwin had made a fuss about it in Chapter. Regardless, everyone must now know, as I did, that Eosterwine had erred. He was, after all, very late to the peas.

When the novice passed out of the church’s shadow, he surprised me by casting a long glance across the garth as if

measuring the distance to the abbot’s lodge. From this I guessed two things. First, it was most likely paten and chalice he carried so carefully before him (in those days sacred vessels were stored in a chest by the abbot’s door); and, second, Eosterwine was thinking about breaking the rules. I knew this because I’d been there. How many times had I looked at that grassy expanse, late for lessons or office, and contemplated a mad dash while no one was looking? It’s no fun being late, temptations multiply.

And, interestingly, it was at this moment, when Eosterwine was most distracted and I most sympathized with him, that the sky opened up, a beam of light reached down, touched the garth, and, for an instant, turf, stones, daub, and thatch glowed like colored glass.

Then the light went out.

As quickly and as quietly as the world had been set afire, the light was extinguished: all colors dead, the garth just a garth again, the walls no longer aflame, the grass no longer glowing. But Eosterwine had seen it and so had I. For the briefest of moments the abbey had been transformed. And to give him credit, Redestone’s newest novice had the grace to kneel and cross himself.

I remember I looked back at Gwynedd when that happened, hoping he had seen what I had seen, wanting to share it with him, share it with the man who had given me this pleasure. But Father was looking up at something else just then, staring up into the tree I had held onto earlier, studying a bird perhaps or maybe its nest. Still, when he felt my eyes on him, he turned, raised a hand to let me know he was still there, still watching over me; and it was then that I saw it, saw the angry red spot on the back of his hand, and, seeing it, remembered what I had done, the pain that I had caused him.

No matter where I am or what I am doing, the smell of green wood burning always makes me happy. In this I am not alone. Everyone's step seems lighter when Father Abbot finally orders us out to clear the ditch, even we ancients up at the head of the procession laughing a little as we march down the abbey path; spring has returned, the winter ended, we have lived to see another year. But the pestilence changed all that. Not the first year. No, that year followed a normal cycle: in spring we cleared the ditch and planted; in summer we cut hay, weeded peas; and, come autumn, those of us that survived the illness brought in the harvest. Except for the pestilence itself, the year of its visitation was like any other. It was the next year, the year after the sickness, that the order of our work grew strained and unnatural: for the first time Sext and None
offered no respite from one’s labors, children did the work of men, and the smell of green wood burning meant not the end of winter and cold, but the end of spring and the beginning of wasting heat. It was Brother Cellarer who decided all this, decided the office could be sung in the fields, the ditch cleared after the seed was in the ground. You can see what he would have been thinking. Then as now, the men of the village were responsible for preparing the fields, the brothers the ditch. When both tasks had been accomplished, the two communities joined and the planting began. But that year there weren’t enough villagers left to break and plow the soil by themselves. So, given the amount of rainfall we could expect in an average spring, Brother must have reasoned the ditch could wait till summer; the sowing couldn’t.