The Ornamental Hermit

by Olivier Bosman

  “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of the St Bees scandal before,” the inspector said as a bit of onion fell out of his pie and landed on his chubby chin. “It was big news over here. Perhaps it wasn’t reported on down south. I don’t suppose you lot care much about what goes on up here.”

  “It’s not that. I just don’t read the papers regularly.”

  The inspector raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You don’t read the papers?”

  “Not unless it’s relevant to a case I’m working on. I find them depressing.”

  “How ever did you get to work for Scotland Yard with that attitude?”

  Billings ignored the tone of disapproval in the inspector’s voice. The inspector turned back to face his colleague in the filing room “How you getting on back there, Goodthwaite?” he called.

  “It might help if I knew the precise date, sir,” the constable replied.

  “1881 or 1882 thereabouts.”

  “Perhaps you could fill me in a bit while the constable searches for the report,” Billings proposed.

  “Perhaps I could.” The inspector swallowed the last bit of his pie and wiped his hands on his lap. “Basically what happened, Mr Billings, is that a doctor from St Bees was called out to the priory in order to attend to two monks who had become injured. When the doctor arrived he found the two monks lying ill and feverish in their beds, and after further inspection he saw that their tongues has been sliced off.”

  “Their tongues?” Billings’s heart leapt at the revelation.

  “That’s right, their tongues. The doctor said the prior had told him that the monks had sliced off their own tongues two days before and that the Prior had tried dealing with the injury himself, but that he was unable to avoid the monks’ mouths becoming infected and had no choice but to call for the doctor.”

  “Why did they slice off their tongues?”

  “Well, the Prior was very cagey about that, which is why the doctor informed the police and why an inquiry was launched, which even involved the Bishop of Liverpool having to come over to Whitehaven to testify.”

  “What was the outcome of the inquiry?”

  “The outcome was that the monks had inflicted their own injuries in an attempt to take their vows of silence to an extreme and that the prior was entirely ignorant of this decision and was therefore not to be blamed. The two monks weren’t official members of the order and lived separately from the priory, in some sort of stone hut.”

  “A Celtic cell.”

  “A Celtic cell, that’s right. Well, these two monks, or novices, lived together, you see, in this Celtic cell. One of them was called Pelagius. And the other one...”

  “Brendan?” Billings guessed.

  “That’s right, Brendan. So you have read about this, Mr Billings. Well, something very peculiar was going on between those two monks in that cell. Something very peculiar indeed, if you know what I mean.” He laughed and winked at the detective, but Billings had stopped paying attention. He was still too shocked by the turn of events. “You know what these Catholic clergy are like, Mr Billings,” the inspector continued. “Dirty little buggers, the lot of them!” He laughed again. “What do you think, Goodthwaite?”

  “Sir?”

  “Are you a Catholic?”

  “Church of England, sir.”

  “Good lad! Well, they were expelled, of course.” The inspector turned back to face Billings. “One of them returned several years later and is still there. As for the other, well, he came here to Whitehaven. He was taken in by a tanner, a notorious character by the name of Barnabas Crooke.”

  “Taken in? Do you mean employed?”

  “Well, if you can call it that. Crooke just placed Brendan on the pavement in the middle of King Street – just round the corner from here in fact – where he’d sit all day, with his cap on the floor, begging. He made a very pitiful impression, did Brendan. His eyes, you know? There was something deeply melancholic about them. And the way he’d sit, perfectly still on that cold concrete floor, in all kinds of weather, shivering sometimes, and pale and wet. He attracted a lot of pity and attention and made a fair amount of money in the process, which Crooke then took off him in exchange for food and a bed.”

  “Where is this Barnabas Crooke? Could I speak to him?”

  “He’s gone, I’m afraid. He landed in the house of correction in Peter Street a couple of years ago after an attempted burglary, but disappeared with his son after he was released. Well, good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. They were crooks by name as well as by nature!”

  “So what happened to Brendan?”

  “I don’t know, Mr Billings. He wasn’t seen again after Crooke got arrested. You go that report yet, Goodthwaite?”

  “I think I have, sir.”

  The constable appeared from the filing room walked towards the desk with two reports in his hand.

  “There you go, Mr Billings.” The inspector took the report off the constable and gave it to Billings. “There’s the report about the clothes, and there’s the confession Brendan wrote for us when we pulled him into the station. That should tell you all you need to know about the priory’s scandal.”

  12. Statement taken from Brother Brendan (real name unknown) June 3rd, 1881

  I joined the priory in March 1880. You needn’t know anything about my life before that. Except that it wasn’t much of a life. In fact it was no life at all. It was a period of gestation, a womb in which I grew and developed. My real life started on that cold spring day in 1880 when, after wandering aimlessly through the hills and lakes of Cumberland, I stumbled quite unexpectedly upon the sight of a priory, standing before me on a hill just outside the village of St Bees. The sun broke through the clouds at that moment and when a beam of light illuminated the chapel, I knew immediately what I had to do. Without a moment’s hesitation, I took off all my clothes and walked towards the priory, naked like a newborn babe, freed from all my possessions and my previous incarnation.

  There were five men living in the priory at the time. The four French founders and a young local man called John Morgan Quick, who’d joined as a novice two years previously. They were having breakfast when I knocked on the door and were shocked when I stumbled into the house cold, naked and bleeding. (I had to walk through a bramble bush and up a pebbled path to get to the door, so my feet and shins were cut and covered in blood.)

  “Who are you? What happened to you?” one of the monks said, alarmed and embarrassed, not knowing where to look.

  “I’ve been driven here by God,” I said.

  “Why are you undressed? Where are you clothes?”

  “I have no clothes.”

  “What is your name?”

  “I have no name.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Nowhere. I have no history.”

  “This is not an asylum! We are not a charity!” he cried. “This is a Christian retreat for men who seek to be closer to God. You should go to the police station or the poorhouse if you are in any trouble.”

  I assured them I was not looking for asylum. I told them that I’d received a calling from God and that the Lord had led me here.

  “Please will you put your clothes back on and send us a letter! This is not the way to approach a house of God.”

  I repeated that I had no clothes. I had given up everything as God had commanded me to. I told them that I was only doing what God had asked of me and that if they refused to let me in, I’d sleep on their doorstep until they changed their minds. If they refused to feed me, I’d simply starve outside their gates. They had no choice in the matter. God had decided.

  They gave in after that. They quickly grabbed a spare tunic from a chest and wrapped it around me. Then they fed me some soup and, after some further questioning, they reluctantly agreed to take me on as a novice.

  We rose every morning at three-thirty for vigils and silent prayer. Breakfast was at six-thirty followed by lauds at seven. Mass was at eight. We worked from nine
to noon (we had an apple orchard and we made cider. We also kept bees and cows). Sext was at twelve-fifteen, our midday meal at twelve-thirty then we went back to work until five-thirty. Vespers was at six and Compline at seven-thirty. We retired at eight.

  Before Lauds and Compline, when the brothers retired into their cells to read and study, John Morgan and I were put to clean the house. John Morgan was a simple young lad whose parents had moved to Liverpool from Ireland. He’d had a brain fever at the age of five which left him weak in mind and body. He must’ve been only sixteen or seventeen when his parents dumped him at the priory. The poor lad was forced to live alone amongst these dour middle-aged Frenchmen (some of whom didn’t even speak any English) for two whole years, so when I moved in, he was naturally very happy to have the company of someone his own age.

  He followed me everywhere and talked incessantly. He talked as we scrubbed the floors or emptied and rinsed the pisspots; he talked while we picked the apples or pruned the trees; he talked while we milked or grazed the cows. He talked about everything, what he felt, what he thought, what he saw, what he did. All he hadn’t been able to say in the last two years he now unleashed on me. It drove me to despair. This was supposed to be a silent order and this simpleton’s incessant chatter was restricting my ability to meditate and commune with God.

  I begged the brothers to grant me refuge from our resident imbecile by allowing me to study with them for a couple of hours every day. But they refused. The books which had been imported from the mother abbey in Dijon were fragile and valuable and were not to be touched by a novice. These were not the famous canons to which I had already been exposed in my previous life. These were obscurer texts which were written long ago by people living on the fringes of Christendom. I told them that the daily routine at the priory was too boring and monotonous for me and that I longed desperately for the world of knowledge which lay hidden from me in the library. But the brothers argued that enduring and cherishing this monotony would bring me closer to God. I disagreed. I told them that it was only the body which needed to be punished and exhausted. The mind needed to be enlightened or it would starve. And if the mind starved, then so did the soul. After five months of pleading, the brothers finally gave in.

  Suddenly a whole new world opened up to me. The brothers had been particularly interested in Celtic Christianity (which is why they’d come to Britain in the first place) and their library was filled with books about the Celtic saints. I read all about St Patrick, the enslaved shepherd boy who broke free from his shackles and converted the High Kings of Ireland; and St Kevin who lived in a cave, slept on a bed of rock and prayed for hours submerged to his chin in the icy waters of Glendalough; and the most fascinating saint of them all, St Brendan, who took to the sea in a small leather boat and ventured into the unknown looking for the Isle of the Blessed, making it all the way to America. The priory held a copy of the Navigatio, the book which details his epic journey, and I read it over and over again. The Irish monks had a great tradition of sailing into the unknown. Like the Desert Fathers of Egypt, they saw the sea as their watery desert and they would give themselves over completely to its winds and its currents. It was a tradition which stemmed from the old pagan custom of tying criminals up, putting them in a boat and setting them adrift to be left to the mercy of the gods. What a way to atone!

  The lives of the Irish monks moved me profoundly and I desperately tried to emulate them. Soon I had made myself a new tunic from rough, untreated sheep’s wool, shaved my head in the style of the Irish tonsure and called myself Brendan. (John Morgan, of course, did the same and he took the name Pelagius, after the Romano British ascetic whose real name was probably Morgan – a name I chose for him.) I then begged the brothers to allow me to construct a Celtic cell on their grounds so that I could live in it in solitude and expose my body to the elements, but they started growing tired of my unorthodox ways and told me I was being difficult and contrary and that I should learn some humility and stop romanticizing the past.

  I objected to being called a romantic. I was only looking for hardship. It’s in suffering that we find God. Away from the distractions which bring us pleasure and comfort. Our life in the priory was not hard. This was a feeble, watered down version of what the Desert Fathers had endured. Where was the hardship in getting up every morning at three o’clock, when most of us were already in bed at eight? Where was the hardship in not talking all day, when we could speak all we wanted after Compline? This was a comfortable life we were leading. We were wallowing in comfort and vanity.

  But they didn’t understand. Why did I feel the need to torture myself, they asked. What was I trying to prove to them? They said I was treating suffering as a sport, as a test of endurance, as a spectacle and a freak show. Real suffering doesn’t come in one intense sweep. It is a slow, creeping thing which gradually engulfs you and traps you for the rest of your life. It is unwise to continuously subject your body to pain and discomfort. Our bodies need to be kept strong and healthy, because real hardship affects your soul and you need a strong body to cope with it.

  I ignored them. While they were in their rooms napping, or at the table getting drunk on cider, John Morgan and I were wandering the hills and valleys, looking for flat stones with which to construct our cell. Soon we had built a strong and sturdy bee hive and we had moved in. The brothers tolerated our presence and even brought us food. Despite their many protestations, they were clearly glad to be rid of us and probably also a little curious at our experiment.

  But the experiment failed. It was supposed to be a life of basic simplicity; of not eating or wearing more than was necessary to keep the body alive; of enduring pain and discomfort with serenity; of suffering in stillness. But all this was impossible with John Morgan. I simply could not make him understand what we were trying to achieve. No matter how many times I tried to explain it to him, how many times I reprimanded him, or how I endeavoured to ignore him, John Morgan could not stop from talking. It wasn’t just in his nature to be chatty, there was something wrong with him neurologically. He kept on babbling, repeating the same old nonsense, not caring whether or not he was being listened to. There was no desire to express anything. It was more as if his mouth had been wired to his brain and moved with every thought or perception which occurred in his mind. Even in his sleep, I could see his mouth move and hear him mutter nonsense.

  He did try, though. He was so in awe of me and was so keen to please me, that he hated being told off. He was able to stay quiet for a few minutes after I’d reprimanded him, but then he’d forget himself and he’d start talking again. I wondered whether perhaps it was this condition which led his parents to dispose of him at the priory. The brothers had coped with him by ignoring him and allowing him to wander around the grounds like a babbling maniac, but I could not ignore him. Yet neither did I want to get rid of him. It was easy enough for me to endure the extremes of weather, I had trained my body well enough for that in my previous life, but John Morgan’s noise and presence were part of the elements which I had chosen to subject myself to and I needed to find a way of appreciating and cherishing them. In this, though, I failed.

  Rather than thinking of myself, of considering John Morgan’s noise a problem that I had to learn to deal with, I started thinking that this was a problem for him too, that he must surely be tired of his own talking, that his jaw must surely need a rest. The notion of cutting off his tongue was a frivolous one at first, one borne out of anger and frustration. But as time progressed, that idea seemed to carry greater weight. Silence would bring John Morgan closer to God, as it would me. If I cut my own tongue out first, John Morgan would inevitably follow my example. I could live without a tongue. I had no need for taste or speech. It would be a commitment to God. A sacrifice.

  And so it happened. One morning I took the shears we used in the orchard, stuck out my tongue, lay it on the lower blade, and after counting to five, squeezed my right fist slowly and carefully until I held the dead, bleeding flab o
f meat in the fingers of my left hand. The pain was excruciating, it struck every nerve in my face and it made my stomach turn. But I had meditated beforehand and I took the pain, as I had taught myself to do, cherishing every stinging beat. Then, with a mouth filled with blood, I handed the shears to John Morgan, who had been sitting before me, watching the act with silent awe. (Yes, he was silent then. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I remember it now.) John Morgan took the shears from me and without hesitation, stuck out his tongue and lay it on the blade. I suspect now that John Morgan wasn’t aware of how much the act would hurt. I’d become good at not showing my pain and perhaps I should’ve warned him, because as soon as he started cutting, he cried out like a slaughtered pig and, with his tongue only half cut, he dropped the shears on the ground, got up and ran out of the cell holding his hands to his mouth, the blood seeping through his fingers and staining his tunic. It was John Morgan’s agonized squealing which alerted the brothers.

  I don’t really need to tell you what happened next. The brothers made a botched attempt at stitching John Morgan’s tongue back up and gave us alcohol to rinse our mouths with, but they were unable to fight off infection. They were forced to call for a doctor after a few days and the doctor eventually alerted the police. And so here I am now, in this police station, writing my statement. I am mute and homeless and my infected frenum has caused a vile odour to emanate from my mouth, which continues to repulse other people. But I have no regrets. I did what I did for God, knowing that it would cause me a lifetime of suffering. This has been my commitment, my sacrifice. I shall continue to live my life as though crucified; in struggle, in lowliness of spirit, in good will and spiritual abstinence, in fasting, in penitence, in weeping.