by Tim Severin
‘Were you at the house of Bladnach the leather-worker last week?’ he asked in a flat tone.
‘Yes, Brother Ailbe,’ I answered. I knew that I had been seen by the townsfolk on my way there and that the librarian could easily check.
‘What were you doing? Did you have permission from anyone to go there, away from the monastery?’
‘No, Brother Ailbe,’ I replied. ‘I went on my own initiative. I wanted to ask the leather-worker if he could teach me some of his craft. In that way I thought I could learn how to repair our leather Bible satchels here in the monastery, and then there would be no need to pay someone for outside skills.’ My answer was a good one. I saw from Ailbe’s expression that he anticipated a favourable response if he put the same proposal to the abb. Anything which saved the monastery money was a welcome suggestion to our abb.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘The idea has merit. But you broke our rule by leaving the monastery without authorisation. In future you are not to visit the town without first asking permission from me or from one of the other senior monks. You are to make amends by going to the chapel and reciting psalm one hundred and nineteen in its entirety, kneeling and cross figel.’
He made a gesture dismissing me. But I stood my ground. It was not because the punishment was severe, though the hundred and nineteenth psalm is notoriously long and would make the cross figel – kneeling with arms outstretched – very painful. I faced down the librarian because a strange and wild spirit of rebellion and superiority was welling up within me. I was overcome with scorn for Brother Ailbe for being so gullible. It had been so easy to dupe him. ‘I just told you a lie,’ I said and I did not bother to hide the contempt in my voice. ‘I did not go to the leatherworker’s house to ask to be his apprentice. I went there to be with his daughter.’ Brother Ailbe, who had been looking rather smug, gaped with surprise, his mouth open and closed without making a sound, and I turned on my heel and left the room. As I did so, I knew that I had irreversibly destroyed my own life. There was no going back on what I had said.
Months later I realised that the spirit of defiance which had overwhelmed me had came from Odinn. It was his odr, the frenzy which throws aside caution and pays no heed to sense or prudence.
As I walked away from the library, I knew that I would be severely punished for breaking monastery discipline, above all for consorting with a female. That was the worst offence of all as far as the senior monks were concerned. But I found some consolation in the thought that at least I had brought Bladnach and his family to the attention of Abb Aidan, and it would be unlikely that Cainnech would risk continuing his abuse of their daughter until the scandal of my behaviour had died down. Maybe he would be warned off for ever.
I underestimated Cainnech’s viciousness. He must have realised that, through Orlaith, I knew about his degenerate behaviour, and he decided that I should be put out of the way for good. That evening Abb Aidan called a conclave of the senior monks to discuss my fate. The meeting was held in the abb’s cell and lasted for several hours. Rather to my surprise, there was no immediate decision on my punishment, nor was I called to give an explanation for my actions. Very late in the evening my friend Colman whispered to me that Senesach wanted to see me, and I was to go, not to his cell, but to the small, newly built oratory on the south side of the monastery. When I arrived, Senesach was waiting for me. He looked so despondent that I felt wretched. I owed so much to him. Yet I had failed to live up to his hopes for me. It was Senesach – it seemed so long ago – who had persuaded the abb that I should be released from slavery as the stonemason’s assistant and given a chance to train as a monk, and Senesach had always been a fair and reasonable teacher. I was sure that if anyone had argued my case for me during the discussion of my transgressions, it would have been Senesach.
‘Thangbrand,’ he began, ‘I don’t have time to discuss with you why you chose to do what you did. But it is evident that you are not suited for life within the community of St Ciaran’s. For that I am heartily sorry. I hope one day you will regain your original humility enough to pray for forgiveness for what you have done. I have asked you here for another reason. During the discussion of your misbehaviour, Brother Ailbe spoke up to say that he believed you may be a thief as well as a fornicator. He claimed that several pages are missing from the library copy of Galen’s De Usum Partium, which you were studying as an exercise to improve your Greek. Did you steal those pages?’
‘No, I did not,’ I replied. ‘I looked at the manuscript, but the pages were already missing when I consulted the text.’ I had a shrewd suspicion who would have stolen them: Galen’s writings were the standard authority for our medical work, and I wondered if Cainnech had taken the missing pages – as monastery physician he had regular and unquestioned access to the volume – and then drawn the librarian’s attention to their absence.
Senesach went on, ‘There was another complaint, a more serious one. Brother Cainnech’ – and here my heart sank as usual – ‘has raised the possibility that you have a Satanic possession. He pointed out that your association with the leather-worker’s daughter has a precedent. When you first came to us you said your name was Thorgils, and we have learned that you were captured at the great battle at Clontarf against the Norsemen. Another Thorgils defiled this monastery in the time of our forefathers. He too came from the north lands. He arrived with his great fleet of warships and terrorised our people. He was an outright heathen and he brought with him his woman, a harlot by the name of Ota. After Thorgils’s troops captured the monastery, this Ota seated herself on the altar and before an audience she uttered prophesies and disported herself lewdly.’
Despite the seriousness of my situation, an image of the Sex Hag sprang into my mind and I could not help smiling,
‘Why do you have that stupid grin on your face?’ Senesach said angrily. His disappointment in me came boiling to the surface. ‘Don’t you understand the gravity of your situation? If either of these accusations is found to be true, you will suffer the same fate as that stupid fool who ran off with the relics a couple of years ago. You can be sure of that. I’ve never told anyone this before, but when our abb condemned that youngster to death, I broke my vow of unquestioning obedience to my abb’s wishes, and asked him to reduce the penalty. You know what he replied? He said that St Colm Cille himself was banished from this country by his abb because he was found guilty of copying a book without the owner’s permission. Stealing the pages themselves, our abb told me, was a far worse crime because the misdeed permanently deprived the owner. So he insisted that the culprit had to suffer the greater penalty.’
‘I am truly sorry that I have distressed you,’ I answered. ‘Neither accusation has any truth in it, and I will await the judgement of Abb Aidan. You have always been kind to me and, whatever happens, I will always remember that fact.’
The finality in my tone must have caught Senesach’s attention, for he looked at me closely and said nothing for several seconds. ‘I will pray for you,’ he said and, after genuflecting to the altar, he turned and strode out of the chapel. I heard the brisk footfalls of his sandals as he marched away, the last memory of the man who had given me the chance of bettering myself. That chance I had taken, but it had led me onto a different path.
NINETEEN
I WAS CERTAIN that the conclave would find me guilty. And, as I had no wish to be left to starve in a pit like my predecessor, that night I gathered together my few belongings – my monk’s travelling cloak, a workmanlike knife that Saer Credine had given me, and a sturdy leather travelling pouch that I had made for myself while sitting in Bladnach’s workshop. I clasped Colman’s hand in farewell, then crept out of our dormitory hut and found my way to the library. I forced the door, and took down the largest of the bible satchels from where it hung on its peg. I knew that it contained a ponderous copy of the Gospel of St Matthew. Sliding the great book out of the case, I took out my knife and with the point I prised out several of the stones which had been inse
t as decoration into the heavy cover. They were four large rock crystals as large as walnuts, and a red-coloured stone about the size of a pigeon’s egg. The stones were of little value in themselves. I just wanted to hurt the monastery in the only way I knew, by stealing something which would cause Abb Aidan a moment of financial pain. I wrapped my booty in a strip of linen rag torn from the Gospel’s slip cover, and dropped it into my satchel. Then I made my way to the earth vallum that marked the monastery boundary, and clambered over it, as I had so many times before on my way to meet Orlaith.
In my flight I had one single advantage over the wretched runaway novice who had been starved to death in a pit. He had been caught because he had fled back to his tuath, and Abb Aidan had easily guessed his destination. This was the natural course for any fugitive. Among the native Irish the only place that an ordinary man or woman has any security is on the territory of their own tuath, among their own kinsfolk, or on the land of an allied tuath which has agreed mutual recognition of rights. But such rights are worthless when confronted with the power of an important abb capable of making his own laws and regulations. So the fugitive had been handed over meekly by his own people and led away to his death. But I had no tuath. I was a foreigner. I had neither clan nor family nor home. So while everyone’s hand was against me, my lack of roots also meant that the abb and his council would have no idea where to send their people to look for me.
For one stupid moment, as I dropped down on the ground on the outer side of the vallum, I thought that I might make a brief visit to Bladnach’s house to say goodbye to Orlaith. But I quickly put the idea out of my mind. It would only make matters worse for her. The monks would surely interrogate her and her family about where I might have gone. It was better that they remained ignorant of any details of my departure, even the hour when I had disappeared. Besides, any time spent visiting Orlaith reduced my chances of getting away cleanly. I had already decided that my best route lay to the west and that meant I had to get across the great river before dawn.
St Ciaran’s stands on the east bank, on the flank of the hill where the great road follows the line of the ridge then dips down to the river crossing. Here the monks had built a bridge, famous for its length and design. It stood on massive tree trunks driven deep into the soft mud as pilings, and approached by a long causeway laid across the marshy ground. Stout cross-pieces of timber held the main structure together, and the surface was made of layers of planks interleaved with brushwood and laid with rammed earth. Everyone used the bridge. The river was so broad, its banks so soft and treacherous and the currents so unpredictable, especially in the winter and spring floods, that the bridge was the natural choice for any traveller. For this reason the monks maintained a toll keeper on the bridge to collect money for the upkeep of the structure, which needed constant maintenance. Few people travelled at night, but the monastery profited from any surplus income, so Abb Aidan insisted that the toll keeper stayed on duty during the hours of darkness. He lived in a small hut on the eastern side of the bridge.
The events on the beach after the battle at Clontarf had taught me that very few of the Irish know how to swim. Those of our men who had escaped the defeat that day did so by swimming out to the longships, and I had seen how few of the Irish fighters had been able to follow them. Even Brian Boruma’s grandson had drowned in the shallows because he was a poor swimmer. By contrast there is hardly a single Norseman who is not taught to swim when he is a boy. It is not just as a matter of survival for a seafaring people. At home in Iceland we considered swimming a sport. Besides the usual swimming races, a favourite game was water wrestling, when the two contestants struggled to hold one another underwater until a victory was declared. Though I was a rather indifferent swimmer by Norse standards, I was positively a human otter when compared to the Irish. Yet my ability to swim was something the monks could not possibly have known. So the bridge, which ought to have proved an obstacle, in fact served me as a friend.
I crept cautiously down to the river bank. A half moon gave enough light for me to select a path. Unfortunately the moonlight was also strong enough for the nightwatchman on the bridge to see me if I attracted his attention. With each step the ground grew softer until I was ankle-deep in the boggy ground. The stagnant water gave off a rich, peaty smell as I gently pulled my feet from the ooze. There was insufficient wind to cover any noise if I blundered so I moved very, very gently, dreading that I would startle a night-nesting bird in the reeds. Very soon I was half walking, half wading. The water was quite warm, and when I was almost out of my depth, I rolled up my travelling cloak and tied it in a bundle with my leather satchel and strapped them both on my back. Then I launched out into the river. I was too cautious to risk swimming the entire width of the river in a single attempt. I knew that my cloak and satchel would soon become a soggy burden, and hamper me. So I swam from piling to piling of the bridge, keeping in the shadow. Each time I reached a piling I hung on quietly, listening for any sounds, feeling the pluck of the current sucking at my body. When I had almost reached the far bank, where the causeway began again, I paused.
This was the riskiest part of the crossing. The west bank of the river was open ground and there was no question of leaving the river here. In the moonlight I would have been in full view. I took a deep breath, submerged, then released my grip. Immediately the current swept me downstream. I lost all sense of direction as I was spun in the eddies. A dozen times I came to the surface for a gulp of air, then let myself sink again. I did not even try to swim. I only surfaced, sucked in air, then used my arms to push myself back underwater. Gradually my strength faded. I knew that I would have to begin to swim again if I was not to drown. The next time I came back to the surface, I glanced up at the moon to find my direction and struck out for the shore. The diving had tired me more than I had anticipated. My arms began to ache, and I wondered if I had left it too late. Cloak and satchel were weighing me down badly. I kept lowering my feet to try to find the ground, only to be disappointed and I was so tired that each time I took a swallow of muddy water. Finally my feet did touch bottom, though it was so soft that I could not support myself, but floundered, lurching and flailing with my arms, for I was too tired to care any longer about keeping silent. I only wanted to reach safety. With a final effort I staggered through the shallows until I could grasp at a clump of sedge grass. I lay there for at least five minutes until I felt strong enough to slither forward on my stomach and pull myself onto firmer ground.
Next morning I must have looked like some ghoul of the marsh. My clothing was slimed with mud, my face and hands scratched and bloody where I had hauled myself face down through the swamp. Occasionally I gave a retching cough to try to dislodge the foul residues in my throat from all the muddy water I had swallowed. Yet I was confident that my crossing of the river had gone undetected. When the abb of St Ciaran’s sent out word that I was to be stopped and brought back to the monastery, his messengers would first go to check with the keeper of the bridge if I had been seen, and then alert the people living on the east side of the river. By the time the news spread to the west bank, I should have put some distance between myself and any pursuit. Equally, I had to admit that my long-term chances of evasion were slim. A single, desperate-looking youth, wandering through the countryside, skulking past villages and hamlets, would be the object of immediate suspicion. If caught, I would be treated as a fugitive thief or an escaped slave and I still had the faint scars of the manacles that had been hammered on my wrists by Donnachad after Clontarf.
An image came to my mind from my childhood in Greenland. It was the memory of my father’s two runners, the Scots slaves Haki and Hekja, and how the two of them would set off each spring and travel up into the moors, barefoot and with no more than a satchel of food between them, and live off the land all summer. And there was the tale, too, of how Karlsefni had set them ashore when he first arrived in Vinland with instructions to scout out the land. They had gone loping off into the wilderness, as if
nothing could have been more normal, and returned safely. If Haki and Hekja could survive in unknown Vinland, then I could do the same in Ireland. I had no idea what lay beyond the great river, but I was determined to do as well as my father’s own slaves. I got up and, bending double, began picking my way through the tussocks of grass towards a line of willow bushes that would provide cover for the first few steps of my flight to the west.
The next five days blur together so I have no way of knowing the order of the events, or what took place on which day. There was the morning when I tripped over a tree root and twisted my ankle so painfully that I thought I was crippled. There was the lake that I came across unexpectedly, forcing a wide detour. I remember standing for at least an hour on the edge of the woods, gazing at the water and wondering whether I should circle around to my left or my right and, having made my decision and started walking, how I spent the next few hours wondering whether I was going in the right direction or doubling back on my path. Then there was the night when I was asleep on the ground as usual, wrapped in my cloak and with my back to a tree trunk, and I was startled awake by what I thought was the howling of wolves. I sat up for the rest of the night, ready to climb the tree, but nothing came closer. At dawn I was so drowsy that I set out carelessly. I had walked for an hour before I noticed that my knife was not in its sheath. Alarmed by the howling, I had pulled the knife out and laid it on the ground beside me. I turned back and retraced my steps. Luckily I found the knife within moments, lying where I had left it.
I never lit a fire. Even if I had carried a flint and steel to make a spark, I would not have risked the telltale smell of wood smoke. The autumn weather was mild so I did not need a fire for warmth, and I had no food which required cooking. I lived off wild fruit. This was the season for all manner of nuts and berries to ripen – hazelnuts, cranberries, blackberries, whortleberries, rowan berries, plums, sloes, wild apples. Of course, I still went hungry and sometimes my gut ached from eating only acid fruit. But I made no attempt to catch the occasional deer or hare that crossed my path. I was as shy as the animals themselves. I crouched back into the undergrowth when I observed them, fearful that the alarmed flight of game would attract hunters who might then find me by accident.
