A Whispered Name

by William Brodrick

  ‘I followed you, too,’ he said, head still bowed. ‘I followed you out of hell. You saved my life when it was least worth saving –’ his shoulders sank, and his voice all but faded away – ‘you took my place.’

  There was no other sound, save the clink of the mast head lines and that faint fluttering of tiny flags. When John Lindsay looked up, his face crushed and unrecognisable, Brendan rose, huge in the gloom.

  ‘When Seosamh took your place,’ he said, eyes on the woven cloth, ‘you became my brother.’

  * * *

  Despite the tradition of an all-night vigil, Myriam invited the weary to sleep, to be fresh for the crossing at sunrise. Anselm had no idea how long he stayed. He seemed to have entered a floating universe where time did not run, where the darkness had a pulse and the real world was itself a memory. When he got up to leave, only Brendan and John remained, kinsmen at either end of a table: near to one another, yet so very far apart.

  Anselm had no recollection of sleeping. He lay on his bed, eyes upon the depth of night, committing to memory the passage he’d chosen from the Apocalypse. The sea was astoundingly silent, more a breathing presence. When a sliver of morning touched the horizon he went outside into a vast, growing murmur. He could see nothing, just the jagged outline of bent trees. But something was out there, greater than the bay, greater than the black sky. At the appointed hour, Kate came to meet him. She arrived as when he’d first seen her: in a long black coat, her thick auburn hair gathered tight, her face pale.

  In a faint light that picked out the gathering of decks, cabins and wrapped sails, Anselm and his five companions stepped off the harbour into a small fishing boat. The pilot, a short wiry man with face wrinkles like scars, nodded to each of them in silence, doffing a rumpled woollen cap.

  2

  Anselm leaned on the prow, his cowl pulled tight around his face. Occasionally waves slapped on the fore timbers, sending a spray on to the deck. They were heading into a luminous vapour that neither rested on the sea nor rose from it. He could see nothing distinct, just the lines of foam like cut string. But then … vague dark rocks like smudges of black ink appeared in the mist. A hint of brown and green glowed with the rising sun, but then faded into grey, subsiding into the water where it joined the air. Collapsed gable ends, still white, flashed briefly. A rocky wall straggled into the sky as if it were built on nothing … but as they entered the haze a field took substance, grounding the stones. Quilted cloud lay upon a hillside with fallen houses spaced like broken ribs. Waves thundered on to a scree heaped at the base of a spectacular cliff. Sea birds circled on the breeze, their long wings held wide and still.

  So this is Inisdúr, thought Anselm, the one place on earth where the land and the sea are one.

  The pilot knew his route like Anselm knew Larkwood. One arm hung loosely on the wheel as he guided them through stacks and part-submerged tables of granite. Rounding a headland, they entered a cove where the water became calm, changing colour from blue-grey to green. Without seeming to look at what he was doing, the pilot moored along a stone wharf built against the rock. The wharf followed the cove, losing height until it met a small beach fronting steps that led to a track.

  Seosamh came that way, thought Anselm, his eyes following the path that wound up a gentle incline to the brow of a low hill. This is the route we will take.

  Anselm was right. As the dawn grew stronger, Brendan and John led the way. From some natural sense of correctness everyone else kept some distance behind them. Side by side, the family elders began their pilgrimage. Each of them had a stick, but they leaned more on each other, pausing at intervals to dredge up strength. They passed half-standing walls and gaping doorways, the stony vestiges of a long-forgotten life. Finally Kate and Sabine helped them, and Anselm took the arm of Myriam. They moved as one gathered assembly, bound together in a relentless, dogged march to a place of stunning tranquillity.

  The farm of Muiris and Róisín Ó Flannagáin lay within the arms of a natural embankment, unprotected from the sounds of the sea but free from the wind. Waves hammered the rocks with rousing violence, but here, in the hollow, a breeze seemed to saunter round the hillside. A low cottage hugged the land. The roof was roughly intact but the windows had perished long ago. A timber door hung aslant. Beyond, the farm’s walls lay in tumbled ruin … except one.

  Brendan and Kate unfastened a wooden gate to a circular field. Like hesitant intruders, unsure of their bearings, everyone walked towards the centre, looked around in bewilderment.

  Angular stones, smooth boulders, rough rocks, pebbles … every kind of unyielding substance … had been brought together and balanced, miraculously. This wall should fall, thought Anselm, sensing the frailty. But it won’t, because of the paradox of true strength. The great depended upon the small. It was perfect. A scraping sound made him swing around.

  Brendan was on his knees. His wide cap hid his head and face so Anselm only saw the activity of his fingers: he was tearing at the land that he’d made. It was an overwhelming sight. Without a word, he forced his nails into the soil; he pulled at the roots of grass; he opened up the darkness in the ground. When a small hole had been fashioned, Kate and Myriam helped him to his feet. Brendan leaned between them, exhausted, his hands cut and shaking.

  The morning had grown stronger now. Colours were deepening. Anselm could make out the delicate yellow of lichen on the wall. It was like lace, but no one could have invented the pattern, or made it. A soft clink came from his side.

  John had taken Seosamh’s identity tags out of his coat pocket. He held them up for a long time, so long that Anselm thought he was back in that beating darkness of the parlour … only now there was a growing tide of light. The wind carried the distant clamour of birds around the cliffs. Bending forward, Sabine’s arm around him, John lowered the red and green discs into the land. Then Brendan sank once more to his knees.

  ‘“If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen,”’ recited Anselm, his voice loud. ‘“To anyone who is victorious I will give the hidden manna. And I will give him a white stone, and on it will be a new name, known only to him who receives it.”’

  Thus the righteous enter into glory, thought Anselm, looking beyond the wall, the salt-bitten fields, and into a very distant mist, the mist out of which Inisdúr had appeared, a mysterious mist that would come to reclaim it.

  3

  Kate lightly tugged Anselm’s sleeve and whispered, ‘Let me show you something.’

  They left the others at the farm, to refreshments that had been brought up the day before. The compact rooms had been swept clean so there was a sense of homeliness and of Róisín’s welcome; and an echo of Muiris, who had built the place with his father.

  ‘Don’t turn around until I say so,’ said Kate.

  Anselm followed his guide along a sandy path that ran along the embankment. Kate moved quickly, following an old expertise. This was still her island. She knew its moods and temper. And she knew its anatomy, for she left the path and drew Anselm upon a ravaged slope covered in scattered rocks. The land became steep. Against the sky, rising from the ground like the arched back of a whale, was Kate’s objective, an outcrop of granite. She stood upon it like a conqueror, her auburn hair loose and flying in the wind. She was a girl again, the girl who’d fled the island but had come back to find it anew. When Anselm clambered on his hands and knees to her side, she said, ‘Now you can look.’

  Out of breath, he turned and gazed below, to the place he’d come from.

  Dawn had died. The day had woken. The Following was over.

  All around, as far as the eye could see, were the pastel shades of Róisín’s weaving. The colours were almost transparent, and would have crumbled if a mortal hand could touch them. It was a landscape of frightening delicacy. But standing out, shockingly bright, was Seosamh’s Field. The green was lush, with livid shadows and a blue bruising that shifted with the whims of the breeze. It was like a graveyard without graves. A memorial without a monument. I
t was simply and majestically alive.

  Anselm breathed in slowly until his chest ached. He called upon Herbert to witness this verdure, along with Major Glanville, Lieutenant Oakley, Regimental Sergeant Major Joyce, Private Elliot, Captain Sheridan, all those involved in the review process, Harold Shaw and his eleven nameless companions … Lisette Papinau, John Lindsay … and the strangely powerful presence of a man hardly mentioned in the trial papers – a Chaplain who’d been present at the beginning and end of Seosamh’s adventure into dying: Father Maguire. Anselm threw back his head and soared on the savage, joyous lift of the wind.

  ‘The island belongs to Seosamh, now,’ said Kate, from far, far below.

  Epilogue

  When Anselm came down from that island Sinai he was a different man, changed by what he’d seen. Perhaps the greatest transformation, though, was that of Kate Seymour. Up there, sitting on that exposed outcrop, arms around her knees, hair scattered by the wind, she made a decision. The name on the white stone of her baptism had been scripted in Gaelic: C-á-i-t. She’d renounced it, discreetly, on entering Trinity College, Dublin. It was part of the turning away from Inisdúr towards a modern life, an up-to-date life, away – she’d come to realise in these past months – from the secret grief of Róisín and her desperate attachment to the fields. The person who now came down to the wharf with Anselm was Cáit Ó Flannagáin. ‘I just might introduce my husband to another woman,’ she’d joked, seriously.

  Anselm knew enough about mountain visions to be very cautious when he got to the bottom. Things were never quite as clear. Doubt often settled in. It required faith to abide by simple insights. This wariness was almost anticipatory, almost prophetic. And he sensed the approach of its fulfilment when, on a cold December morning, he saw Sylvester picking his way between the white crosses and aspens, coming towards the hives.

  ‘Hail, Keeper of the Gate,’ said Anselm, meeting him at the edge of the clearing, ‘welcome to the communion of saints.’

  They sat on the pew and the old man folded his arms tight. The hood of his cloak hid most of his face. Anselm could only see a pointed nose.

  ‘I’m sorry about the address,’ muttered Sylvester.

  ‘No matter,’ replied Anselm. ‘Losing it helped everyone in the end.’

  ‘I didn’t lose it.’

  Anselm leaned back, lifting his eyes to the branches spread like fingers across the pale sky. Now is the time of awakening, he thought. Now is the time when the secret thoughts of all will be laid bare. This is the Following of Herbert Moore.

  ‘I’ve known about the execution of Joseph Flanagan since nineteen twenty-five,’ said Sylvester. ‘When young Kate Seymour came with her questions, I didn’t know who she was … and I thought her true interest lay long before the court martial of nineteen seventeen. You see, Anselm, that’s not where Herbert’s story begins.’

  The Gatekeeper drew back his cowl and passed a bony hand across his angular cranium. Strong blue veins crawled above large ears towards white fluff. ‘I feared for him, and I feared for you.’ He turned, bringing his watery eyes on to Anselm. ‘I didn’t want to see her disappointment on your face.’ Lowering his head, he added, sadly, ‘But I’ve seen it … even if you try to hide it from yourself.’

  ‘When I was a novice, back in nineteen twenty-five, Herbert suggested we have a chat,’ began Sylvester after a long pause. ‘In those days we didn’t talk very much, but on this occasion we used no hand signs. You see, I’d been asking for stories of the war, so he thought he’d tell me one. We came to those trees over there –’ he pointed towards the aspens – ‘back then, no one had died, so no one had been buried. It was just a copse. And Herbert and I stood among these thin trees and he said, “Now I’m going to tell you about sacrifice and shame.” I don’t know why he picked this spot, but it was as though we stood among witnesses. And this is what he told me.’

  Herbert’s military career began in May 1914 as a second lieutenant with the 22nd Lancers, explained Sylvester. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was shot in the June and by August Herbert was with the British Expeditionary Force in France. They were outnumbered and driven back from Mons. Amongst all that chaos, Herbert’s unit took part in a vital rearguard action at Le Cateau. The objective was to buy time while the army made its retreat. Unfortunately, Herbert joined the withdrawal a fraction too soon.

  ‘He was on the edge of a cornfield,’ said Sylvester, one hand on his neck. ‘Men to his right, front and left were shot, all in a split second, caught in a spray of machine-gun fire. Herbert didn’t even decide to move. He found himself crawling away and then running. And once he’d gone a few hundred yards, he couldn’t come back. It was too late. He’d left his men. That was the thing. And he was an officer.

  ‘Herbert calmed himself and quickly rejoined what was left of his Company, but it was too late. A sergeant had seen him run. He was arrested at St Quentin, court-martialled for cowardice and cashiered.

  ‘There was a quite dreadful ceremony afterwards involving every officer in the battalion, and one Private, its newest recruit.’ With one hand Sylvester made motions in the air as if he held a knife. ‘The Private cut off his badges and buttons – anything that showed rank or a connection with the regiment – and then, starting with the lowest rank, all the officers turned around in silence, showing him their backs, finishing with the Commanding Officer. Without giving a salute, the Private marched away, leaving the door open. Herbert then walked outside alone, forever an outsider. The family were so devastated by the cashiering that they sold their home and moved out of the area. The Moores had lived in Cumberland for two hundred years.

  ‘Herbert had nothing to do with what happened next. He wasn’t even consulted. But the family were well connected. And they weren’t going to accept the verdict or the sentence without a fight. As far as they were concerned, the court martial should never have taken place: Herbert had only been commissioned for three and a half months and he’d gone missing for a very short time. It was unnecessary, they said. So they wrote a few letters to people of influence. A London barrister who did a lot of work for the government looked at the papers. “How can you run away from a retreat?” he said. A General close to the family concurred. So a petition was drawn up. For the King.’ Sylvester paused, as if to give the monarch time to think. ‘Herbert received a pardon and was quietly commissioned into another regiment. It was as though nothing had happened.

  ‘But for Herbert it was a momentous conclusion. He felt he’d been saved in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. And then one day he had to judge a man for what he’d done himself … only, of course, Joseph Flanagan hadn’t done anything of the kind. He’d been innocent, whereas Herbert had been guilty. That was why he wore young Doyle’s tags all his life. He’d felt he was no different. He’d escaped, only he didn’t deserve it.

  ‘That’s what Herbert told me, over there.’ Sylvester raised a bony hand, gesturing towards the crowded aspens. ‘We were silent for a long while … and then I noticed he was crying. I told him that was all over … that even Moses had killed a man, with the hands that would receive the Law … but he became distraught, as I’d never seen him before, or saw him since. And do you know, Anselm, I sensed there was … something else … unrelated to Joseph Flanagan or his own shame.’

  ‘Did you ask him what it was?’ whispered Anselm, feeling the anguish of that breaking down in Sylvester’s frail voice, sensing it in the awful stillness of the trees that had witnessed Herbert’s only public collapse.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said the Gatekeeper, shaking his head, ‘that would have been impossible … and wrong. From that day onwards, though, I often thought about it. And I came to think this: there were two profound experiences at the centre of Herbert’s life, each the opposite of the other. The first was Joseph Flanagan, whose sacrifice transformed him. The second, this other … well, I can only guess … but I believe it was a brutal memory of war, something that bound him to all that was heartbreaking and meani
ngless. It could have transformed him, too, but it didn’t. That, Anselm, is the magnitude of Herbert’s faith. He’d looked into the abyss and still believed …’

  The Gatekeeper stood up and started checking his pockets with the look of confusion that settled upon him whenever the phone rang. Finally he took out a small strip of leather and two drawing pins, enclosing them in a shaking hand. For the first time since Anselm had known Sylvester, the old fellow seemed charged with a quite particular authority. His lines of age brought a lifetime of profound solitude and silence into his trembling voice.

  ‘I said I feared for you,’ he began, ‘but I feared for Herbert, too. He was a wonderful man. He cared for everyone he met, as though he was meant to meet them. He understood joy and sorrow, accepting both without clinging to the one or complaining about the other. He never once condemned a man or a woman in my hearing. He lived as if every moment were his last, investing it with love and meaning. And as I’ve got older I’ve looked as much to the saints I’ve known as to the names upon the calendar.’ He glanced around the hives, nodding at each of them as though from long acquaintance. ‘Anselm, do you think Herbert might join their number, if only here in this remote place seen by none but you?’

  Anselm took the leather strip. Written upon it was Herbert’s name in unsurpassable copperplate. With the drawing pins he attached it to the bench, in the centre of the backrest.

  Anselm didn’t know what to say. But it was a Gilbertine habit not to reply immediately; to keep counsel for a while. He sat down, watching Sylvester leave the aspens and find the trail back to the monastery.

  This was the end of Herbert’s Following, he thought; and the beginning of my awakening. It was a numbing experience, permitting the clear-sightedness that comes with vulnerability. He now profoundly understood Larkwood’s inspiration: triumph out of failure, forgiveness over condemnation, light from dark. And whatever Herbert had done or failed to do at the outset of his great journey, he’d ended his life a shining, transparent man. And it was at this point, in a stranded car, when neither of them was going anywhere, that Herbert gave to Anselm two small gifts – an understanding of accidents and of fidelity to the flame. He saw once more his lined, simple face: a love greater than himself had burned there, and brightly. Quite suddenly, Anselm felt a flush of gratitude – for all the good that had come his way ever since he’d opened his eyes on the puzzle of living, the wanting to do it well, and the recognition that it was an art to be learned, sometimes painfully. Running through the trees and crosses, he called out to the old man who’d first met Herbert Moore at a ruin by a stream.