The Harrowing

by James Aitcheson

  And it paid, in the end. The summer I was eleven, Bishop Leofgar himself came to visit the manor where we lived. He held lands in three shires, and would tour them all from time to time, although apparently he hadn’t been to ours since before I was born, so it was considered a great honour when the reeve received the news and announced it before everyone. A great celebration was arranged for the bishop’s arrival, and after that there was a procession in which he and all his under-priests entered the church in their fine robes and bestowed blessings and gifts upon the manor. The whole village came to hear the Mass. I’d never seen the like before. All my life had been lived in browns and greens and greys, but suddenly a different world was revealed to me. A glimpse of Heaven. At the head of the procession was carried a silver cross the length of one’s forearm, studded with sparkling stones. On a bier two monks in robes carried a gilded box shaped like a house that shone like the sun. A reliquary, it was, though at the time I didn’t know that. The other churchmen wore richly woven chasubles over their robes, and in the middle of them came the bishop himself.

  In my memory I picture him as being almost as old as I am now, and maybe he was, although to a child’s eyes everyone seems ancient, so probably he wasn’t quite as frail as I thought at the time. He came dressed all in white, I remember, like a saint. In one hand he held a staff, while his fingers were decorated with silver rings engraved with tiny letters, which he took off later on, when it came to the feast that had been prepared in his honour. He obviously didn’t want to get them dirty, and so he laid them out on the long table in front of him, in plain view. Four of them, all in a row from left to right.

  I was there, and my sisters too; the reeve had chosen us along with some of the other children to attend on the bishop and his retinue in the hall where he was being entertained. We were to carry food from the kitchens and take away empty bowls, fetch pitchers of water and ale, see that they had everything they needed and otherwise make ourselves useful. It was a summer’s evening, still hot, and so the hearth fire hadn’t been lit; I remember the great doors had been opened to let in the light, but even so it was dim, and noisy too. There were dozens of people all talking over one another, dogs yapping as they scurried around the table in search of scraps, while in the corner a harpist struggled to make himself heard above it all, and amid all that commotion and with so many people going to and fro, I thought to myself how easy it would be to snatch up one of those rings from the table when no one was looking.

  It was reckless, thinking about it now. If I’d been spotted, that would probably have been it for me, no matter that I was young. The only thing worse than stealing from a bishop is probably stealing from the king himself. I could easily have lost my hand, or worse. But I was thinking about the challenge, not the consequences. That was why I did it, you understand. Not because the things I took were necessarily valuable, although in this case they were, but just to see whether I could. Only later did I seek to profit from it. Back then it was little more than a game, that was all. The more I played, the better I grew, and so I always had to set myself harder and harder tests. And this was a challenge if ever there was one. The silver lay there, inviting me, taunting me to take it if I dared.

  And I couldn’t resist.

  *

  ‘What does this have to do with your friends the outlaws?’ Beorn asks. ‘I thought you were going to tell us about them, not about some bishop and his rings.’

  ‘Please,’ Guthred says. ‘If this is to be my confession, then I want you to hear everything.’

  ‘Let him speak,’ says Oslac. ‘Some tales need time to tell.’

  Beorn doesn’t look happy, but he waves a grudging hand in acquiescence, too tired, it seems, to argue.

  *

  I waited until there was a distraction, a moment when the bishop and those around him were engaged in deep conversation. About the nature of angels, I seem to remember it was. They were gesturing wildly, and one of the older priests was thumping his fist upon the table, either excited by the debate or in objection to something that had been said, causing knives to jump and bowls to rattle.

  Anyway, they paid me no attention as I refilled their ale cups, nor as I set the jug down in front of them, nor as I lifted away their greasy plates. Nor did they notice as with the same hand I slipped one of those silver rings into my palm and walked away.

  I ought to have known I wouldn’t get far.

  In fact I’d barely managed five paces when the bishop cried out in his scratchy voice, ‘My ring! Where is it? Where is it?’

  I thought that was it. I thought they were about to catch me.

  Stools scraped against the floor and there was a shuffle of feet; I turned and saw the bishop’s attendants shouting and waving for silence. One with a deep voice called for the doors to be closed. The harpist had stopped playing; the laughing and singing had ceased, but there was a muttering and murmuring as people heard what was happening. The bishop himself had turned white as a cloud, seemingly frozen to his seat, his eyes filled with horror, while all around him was commotion.

  ‘Everyone stay where you are,’ the reeve bellowed. ‘No one leaves this hall!’

  Of course I was panicking when he said this. Every instinct told me to run, to drop the ring without anyone noticing and get out of there as soon as possible. But I didn’t do that.

  Instead I said, ‘I see it!’

  While everyone turned to look but before they had any idea what was happening, I let the wooden dishes I was carrying fall and hurled myself under the table. I scrambled past the legs of the assembled churchmen, ignoring their shouts of protest, towards one of the reeve’s hounds, which was sniffing at a morsel that had fallen amid the straw and the rushes and the sawdust. It yelped in surprise when it saw me coming, then darted away. For an instant I pretended to fumble in the straw and the sawdust before rough hands grabbed my shoulders and dragged me out from beneath the table and on to my feet. Men were demanding to know what I was doing, and my heart was pounding as I unfurled my fist, and in open palm held the missing ring out towards the bishop, who was sitting across the table.

  ‘Here, Lord Bishop,’ I said, and swallowed because my throat was dry. I hoped no one noticed how I was trembling. ‘It was on the floor. It must have rolled off the table. I saw the dog go near it. You’re lucky he didn’t swallow it.’

  A hush fell across the hall; the hands on my shoulders were withdrawn. The bishop rose from his stool, his look of confusion turning to one of relief.

  ‘My dear boy, bless you,’ he said as one of the other priests plucked it from my palm and laid it before him. ‘These rings were a gift left to me by my predecessor in his will, and to him by his predecessor in turn. If I’d lost one, I’d never have forgiven myself. Truly you are Heaven-sent. What is your name?’

  I told him and said earnestly that I was the miller’s son, the youngest of six, in my eleventh summer, and that I was honoured to serve at his table and humbled to meet him, and that his grace and kindness were well known to everyone.

  ‘And so well spoken,’ he said, smiling gently. ‘We must see that you are rewarded handsomely for your help. Are you a good Christian?’

  To tell the truth, I didn’t understand really what he meant by that. At that age all I knew was that a thousand years ago there’d been a man called Jesus Christ who was killed by the Romans, and that he was the son of the one God, and that we should pray to them and live according to their rules, because if we did those things and forswore all other spirits and superstitions then we would live for ever in their heaven.

  I didn’t say any of that, though. Instead I replied simply that I thought I was, that I tried to be, although it wasn’t easy, and I hoped that answer would please him.

  Bishop Leofgar smiled. ‘Alas, when is it ever easy? Tell me, do you go to church often? Do you receive the sacrament?’

  When I could, I said, although I t
old him that a priest only came to us once every three months, and sometimes less often than that if the weather had been bad and the roads were impassable.

  He nodded sagely. ‘Perhaps there is something I can do. A youth of such virtue and honesty as yourself should be better placed to receive God’s grace. Where is your father? May I speak with him?’

  I said I would fetch him, and he bade me do so. Of course my father, when I found him back at the house, didn’t believe me when I said breathlessly that Bishop Leofgar wanted to see him and that he wanted to reward me, but when I wouldn’t stop harassing him he gave in and let me take him to the feasting hall, where he was surprised to find that I was telling the truth.

  The reeve sent me to the storehouse to bring in another large cheese for the table so I wasn’t there to hear what exactly passed between the two of them, but the substance of it was this: the bishop wanted to provide me with a place in his household, where I would receive schooling in letters and the other arts and one day learn to deliver the sermon. My father must have thought he was joking at first, that a son of his should be considered worthy by someone so exalted, but I think he was glad to be rid of me, for when the bishop and his travelling party took to the road again after their stay three days later, I went with them. No one asked me whether I wanted to go or not; it had been agreed and that was that.

  And so it was that a thief and a liar came to be a priest.

  *

  ‘He took you with him, just like that?’ Merewyn asks. ‘For no other reason than because he thought you’d found his ring?’

  ‘Why not? He was a generous man, and kind-hearted too, a great giver of alms.’ Guthred sighs. ‘I ought to have learned from his example. Maybe if I had, then things would have turned out differently.’

  *

  In some ways life at the church school in Licedfeld was not so unlike life at home. The other children all came from noble families; their fathers were lords or priests or deacons. I was the exception. The outsider, the country boy. The bishop’s favourite, they whispered behind my back, and sniggered and made snide remarks.

  I won’t bore you with the details of my first years there, but suffice to say I made few friends. I didn’t miss home, my father or my brothers, but I did miss my mother. Years later, when I did happen to return, I discovered that she’d died only a few months after I’d gone away.

  I was lonely, but I managed to survive. I concentrated on my studies and, at least to begin with, tried not to draw too much attention to myself. For three years I managed to resist the temptation to steal or do anything that might bring me trouble. The last time had been too close. Now that I’d been granted a chance to better myself, it was only right that I made the most of it.

  After three years at the school my perseverance was rewarded and I was made an ostiary, which is to say a doorkeeper, holder of the keys to the church. I was responsible for opening the doors before Mass and for ringing the bell, and for tidying away the incense and the candles and the altar cloth and locking the building again when I left, which meant that over the months I spent many hours in there by myself.

  Alone, with no one watching over me save for the Lord himself.

  That was when I succumbed.

  My master in those years was a priest named Æthelbald, a humourless man who must have been a little younger than I am now. He was all of six feet tall and maybe more. Thin in the face. Quick to anger. I saw him once tear the wax tablet from a pupil’s hands and strike him around the head when he thought he wasn’t trying hard enough. That said, he was a pious man, eager for us not just to study God’s word in the schoolroom but also to witness how his work was practised in the wider world. Each month he would take his older students with him out from the minster into the shire to help him spread the holy truth and deliver Mass to the folk of the surrounding villages. Everywhere we went there’d always be wise women and superstitious folk looking to obtain pieces of the consecrated Host for their own ends: to ward off evil, or to use in magic rituals or in remedies for ailments of various sorts, because of the power they were convinced it possessed. People would often ask if they could have additional wafers to take away with them – for their small children who were too sick to come, they said, or for their cousins in the next village – and when Master Æthelbald refused they’d try to bargain with him, offering all manner of favours in return. His patience thinning, he would try to explain that to employ Christ’s body and blood for such heathen practices was not only foolish and misguided, but sacrilege too. But they didn’t understand.

  And so I had my idea.

  As ostiary I was one of only a few with access to the strongboxes where the communion bread and wine were kept. All I had to do, if I wanted any of those things, was take them. And that’s what I did. Before each journey I’d make sure to slip half a dozen or so wafers – never so many that they’d be missed – into my coin pouch, and sell them quietly once the Mass was over to those who seemed most desperate, in exchange for a silver coin if they had one, or else for trinkets: a beaded necklace, a clutch of coloured stones, a bone flute, some fishhooks, a pewter brooch – whatever they had to offer. Within a few months I’d acquired more things than I knew what to do with, most of which I had no use for. But I held on to them nonetheless.

  Why did I do it? Out of frustration, I suppose, more than anything.

  For three years I’d worked patiently and without complaint, learning my Latin and the psalter and then the teachings of the Church Fathers, but there was little joy in any of it. Certainly not how Master Æthelbald taught it, anyway. After all that time, I felt I deserved more. We weren’t supposed to have many possessions save for what we needed for our studies; our clothes were simple and the food was always plain: barley bread, cheese, stewed cabbage and boiled carrots, with fish or salted bacon if we were lucky. To have all those things I’d come by, then, made me feel like a lord. Some could be traded at the market, or else they made useful gifts if there was a girl in the congregation who caught my eye.

  I’d be lying, though, if I said I didn’t take a thrill from it as well. It was the joy of doing something I wasn’t supposed to, the danger each time that I might be caught.

  And they did catch me eventually, though it took them many months. The problem was that there were few good hiding places to be found around the church precincts – few, at least, that I could easily reach but which no one else was likely to stumble upon. The more things I acquired, the harder it became to hide them all. The only place I found that was really large enough was the space underneath a loose floorboard in the dormitory, and that was the hoard that Master Æthelbald found. How he did so, I never learned; probably one of the other boys happened to spy me as I was depositing my latest gains, and reported me. I thought I’d been careful, but obviously not careful enough.

  Æthelbald confiscated everything and demanded to know where it had all come from.

  I’d stolen them, I said, which wasn’t far from the truth and yet was much better than telling the truth. Thieving from the Church, selling the Host, knowing full well it would be used for profane purposes: these things were an affront to the Almighty. I didn’t like to imagine what my punishment would be if I admitted all that, and that’s why I lied.

  As it was, they stripped me of my duties, taking away the robes that as ostiary I’d been entitled to wear. For forty days they made me take my lessons and eat my meals alone. They even moved me to a separate dormitory away from the other boys. They made me wear a grey penitent’s smock so that all who saw me would know of my wrongdoing. They forbade me from speaking to anyone unless so instructed by my master or another priest. During that time my daily sustenance consisted of nothing more than bread and weak ale and a single cup of goat’s milk.

  Those forty days were the longest of my life. How I endured them, I don’t know, but I did, though I’ve never been able to stomach goat’s milk since. When it was
over and I was allowed to rejoin my peers it was like stumbling out of doors into sunlight after being bedridden with some long illness. Certainly I was thinner at the end of that time than I’d been at the beginning, but there was one other outcome I hadn’t been expecting, which was that I suddenly had more friends than before. The more pious ones continued to hate me, of course, and took pains to avoid me, in case whatever had caused my soul to become stained should rub off on them. But others who’d previously thought me a simple country lad – pure and diligent, who kept himself to himself – saw me differently. To them I had become a dissenter, a breaker of strictures, a defier of elders, a troublemaker, and in a strange way they revered me for that.

  By and large I enjoyed my newfound reputation and the friends it brought me. There was one, though, whose attention I’d rather have escaped. Wulfnoth, his name was. He was a couple of years younger than me, which I suppose would make him thirteen at the time. He looked up to me in the same way he might an elder brother, although in my eyes he was never anything more than a nuisance. He was quietly spoken but keen-witted and silver-tongued too. He trailed me like a hound, so much so that I came to detest his pox-scarred face with its thick brows and his ridiculous ears protruding like two great serving dishes stuck to the side of his head.