I worked in a little scriptorium with some thirty other monks, all scratching and painting from sunrise to sunset. I used my English silver to pay for new lamps for us as the days became too short, in part because I would have gone mad without work to fill the hours. The monastic life is in repetition and ritual, and it creates a great peace in a man. I could not feel it that year, with all my plans and all my waiting for my brother to find his nerve. I did not fool myself. I knew his softness could undo us all.
As Christmas passed and the new year began, I sent Wulfric a single, stern command, then waited, setting aside new work and instead walking deep into the countryside around the city. I had learned a few words of the Flemish tongue, though I was still mostly a deaf-mute where Latin and Greek were not spoken. It was isolating – and Latin is a cold tongue in some ways. The structure of it seeps into the mind and reorders, I think. I missed the old words, with all their Wessex richness.
In March, a single ship came in from home, showing a lashed and splintered spar from some storm endured on the grey. I went down to it from the abbey as soon as I heard bells sound. The first one was always an event each year, as it was the herald of work and wealth for the merchant houses. It woke the whole city, just about.
This particular ship was barely bigger than the barges, which might have explained why it was limping into harbour. I was just one of a crowd that gathered, waiting for news or letters, or trade goods they had ordered the previous autumn and waited for all winter.
I had begun to understand some of the words they spoke to one another in their excitement. Yet I stood like a crow amongst those people, dressed in black. I felt their glances alighting on me and sliding away like snowflakes on cold cloth. I was not of them and I wore my dignity like a cloak.
The captain himself stepped across to the dock, if that name is not too grand for the master of such a small craft. He fetched out a bundle of letters and called each one, often collecting a few coins for his trouble. I passed over a couple of silvers and took a single letter away with me. I could feel the cold wrap against my skin as I went.
I could not wait, so I undid the cords and looked for the wyvern crest. Wulfric and I had agreed a different seal for success, a Wessex oak. I sank back against a wall when I saw it, as if I had been struck and lost my wits. My vision swam and I could not see. I hardly dared to open it after so long spent staring, but when I did, it was just three lines.
‘The poor bird has gone from our garden. It is a great sin to hurt innocent creatures. I wish we had not.’
Wulfric had not put his name to those lines, though I knew his hand well enough. I felt irritation at his mealy-mouthed regrets. I knew only satisfaction at having brought her low.
I have said I cannot defend all I have done, but as I write, I feel I should. Slavery was not unknown to me, though the thralls on my father’s farms were well treated. I think the truth is that I hated without limit, as a child can wish his parents into the fires of hell.
That is the comparison. When I was six or eight years old and my mother refused some sweet, or smacked me, I would lie in the darkness and clench my fists and wish such vengeance upon her that I thought I would burst my heart. No one hates as a child can hate.
I read those three lines from my brother a hundred times, but I could tease no more meaning from them. I think I ran to my cell in the abbey there, to write my reply. Before I began, I readied my codes and tables, then took a deep breath to calm my nerves, holding out my hands before me. They were steady, I was pleased to see. Yet I knew I had to be careful, that I had to write every word as if it would be read by my worst enemy, aloud, to a vengeful king. With those bonds on me, I composed my answer, the work of an entire day. I was still banished, still in exile. I had not regained my abbey, nor was I bishop of Worcester once again. Yet I knew joy, and I gave thanks.
It seemed at first that Wulfric would not reply to me, as if our business was done. I wrote two letters a day and sent them out on every ship that left for London, but for weeks no response came. In the end, I wrote in clear that I needed to see him once more – and to my astonishment, I received a pert little note from his wife Alice, saying that he wished to hear nothing more from me. As if I would be satisfied with that!
I wrote to my mother for news and included a letter to Wulfric in case his little wife was throwing them in the fire. It was a risk, so I wrote without code and used the most innocent of terms, knowing my mother would not be able to resist running a hot knife under the wax seal. There are ways, if you are curious and have time enough.
Still Wulfric did not answer. My mother wrote back and forth to say she’d handed him the letter and had I heard even in my exile that the queen had vanished? The king was in tatters and believed she had run off with some other man. My mother’s indignation was a pleasure to read, so that I hugged her sheets to me and laughed. I knew better, even if my younger brother had turned his face from me.
I settled into my life with a greater sense of peace than I had known before, though I will admit I found Ghent somewhat stifling. I began to make plans to travel to Rome, to see the tomb of St Peter there and the heart of the Church. I had heard of Roman ruins too that intrigued me.
I felt almost free, somehow, with all my responsibilities torn away. I had funds and my health. I was still a monk and a priest – no mere king could cut those knots, once tied. With my vengeance against Elgiva behind me, I was able to look forward at last. It was a rebirth, and I found myself whistling as I worked and planned to see the great centre of Western Christianity. From Rome, Emperor Constantine had spread the true faith across the world, to places of beasts and giants.
I still went to the docks when a new ship came in, though my business then was as bursar for the abbey, to bargain for the best cloth and seamstresses. Abbot Reynault had been impressed with my work and he too seemed to sense a change in my fortunes, my mood, so that he smiled now to see me.
I did not notice Wulfric at first. I was buying a loaf of fresh bread from the market stalls there, when he stepped off a barge and took me by the shoulder.
I turned and felt delight that he had come, at last. I did not understand his pale skin, his frowns and look of strain. I embraced him there, and those who knew me by then all smiled in response, at the sight of such honest affection.
‘Brother, I thought I might never see you again,’ I said.
‘It is not for love of you, Dunstan. We are … I do not know how to say it. Walk with me and I will tell you.’
I took my basket in the crook of my arms and walked the streets of the city. I did not worry about being overheard. English was not well known in Ghent, after all.
‘Are we betrayed?’ I asked him, suspecting the worst from his grim looks.
‘We might as well be,’ he said. ‘I had a letter from one of my suppliers in Dublin. He had no idea of my interest, but he told me the extraordinary news that a slave girl claimed to be the queen – and that she had been believed. We are undone, Brother!’
‘Pax, Wulfric. Be calm and tell me all. Was there more?’
‘He puts in the small events of the city at the end of his accounts. Murders and raids, usually. It is an old habit with him. Of course, I wrote back immediately, asking for more detail. He said only that he’d heard it in a tavern, that a girl with a brand on her cheek had convinced a family she was the missing queen.’
‘She was branded?’
He nodded, looking away.
‘They do it when a slave tries to run.’
I breathed out. There were apples in my basket and I offered him one. He would have refused, I could see, but hunger changed his mind. We leaned against a wall together in a quiet road, after looking to see we were not below a window.
‘It won’t be long before someone offers to bring her back to her husband,’ I said. ‘Will she know you were involved, Wulfric? Or me?’
‘I can’t say for certain. She saw my face, but she may not have known me.’
I
eyed him, with his one arm and the line of pink scar on his forehead.
‘I think she might have heard of you, Wulfric,’ I said.
To my surprise, he grabbed me by the front of my robe suddenly, pressing his knuckles painfully into my chest.
‘Tell me what to do, Dun! Alice and Cyneryth are all I have. They will not be spared for what we did! If this gets out, if it becomes known …’
I saw his desperation. He shook me like a terrier with a rat until I gripped his wrist and pushed him away, my own temper rising to heat at his treatment, no matter the cause.
‘Be calm, Brother! Walk with me, before the whole town comes to hear who is shouting.’
I led him further away, into the fields around the city, though some were about as wet as our Glastonbury marsh that year, after all the rains. Still, there was a raised track, so I could be sure we were not overheard.
‘Is Skinner around?’
‘I know where he has a room with his son, above a foundry.’
‘I paid him enough to buy land and live in peace,’ I said, almost indignant at the way that man wasted the chances I gave him.
Wulfric shrugged.
‘He says he paid his debts. He seems less … hunted and better fed. Yet he remains, with that son of his who never speaks.’
‘Good. Because you know how this will end, Wulfric. Oh, don’t pretend now! You are my brother. If someone comes to threaten you, should I stay quiet? Do you expect me to remain in the shadows while they put your wife and daughter in irons? Will it be you who tells your daughter we could not save her? No, Wulfric. I brought you into this. I will tell you how it must be, now. Give the task to Skinner. Offer to fill his mouth with gold. Where do the ships from Ireland come to shore? The main port.’
‘There is more than one, Dunstan. There must be a score of fishing ports where they could land.’
‘They won’t try to hide,’ I said gently. ‘If your friend is right, they’ll take her to Dublin and then to Winchester or London. The Irish will hope for whatever reward she promised, so they won’t sneak about like thieves. If that witch has persuaded them, they’ll come like glad hounds at her side.’
‘Bristol then, perhaps. Yes, I’d say Bristol. God, how can we be sure?’
‘Don’t blaspheme, Wulfric! I will pray and they will come to us. Skinner will do whatever has to be done. Ireland was not far enough before. Perhaps he’ll put her on a ship to Greece. There are many slaves there – and they do not speak her tongue. Yes, that is what we should do.’
I stared into my brother’s eyes, wondering if he understood. Knowing is not a simple thing, like a torch lit or dark. A man can hear something, but want so desperately not to understand it, that it is gone, in a breath, like frost by a fire. We are a valley of shadows, I sometimes think. No one knows how far down we go.
For me, I felt my course was clear. I might have wished to walk a different path, but I could not go back and make a better choice. No. All I could do at that moment was save Wulfric and his little family.
I saw the relief in him as he passed the worry onto my shoulders. I think he did understand the king’s whore could not be allowed to reach her husband once again. All our lives were forfeit if she did. It was a tragedy worthy of ancient Greece in the end. Each step took me deeper into regret, but I could not turn away and let Wulfric and his dear wife and child be destroyed.
I had begun that path to answer an injury to the Church. I pressed on to protect my brother and his child. I suppose the most terrible events can be woven from honest threads. An evil man would have ordered her killed and spared himself the worry and the work. I tell you, it was my own kind nature that pulled me into that sucking marsh – and once I was in, I could not escape.
I wrote my letter to Skinner, including a handful of coins as proof of my intention. I had paid him before and I promised to make him a rich man, if he completed the work. As I took Wulfric back to the docks, I reminded him to have bags by the door, to be ready to run with his family, if our plans went wrong.
I wanted to go with him, but I had seen what happened to a man returned from banishment, when Leofa was killed, years before. Fate was a fickle woman – that much we knew. Wulfric promised to pray each night and write when it was over. All I had done was take command and give my blessing, but that was enough. I had made his decision for him, taken the burden. I waited then, left behind. Alone, in Ghent.
I heard nothing for months as my third year of exile wore on – and wore at me like a whetstone drawn over my skin. It did not sit easily to have events unfold without my eye on them! Skinner knew his letters – as a forger, he’d learned them early, of course. Yet I dared not write to him, even if I’d known where to send it. As a scorching summer baked the monastery, I still did not know if Wulfric had been taken, so that I might expect soldiers to come for me, or perhaps that he had been killed. For all I knew, Skinner was singing in a cell, telling King Edwy that Father Dunstan was behind it all.
I gave up my previous thoughts of visiting Rome. The Dunstan who had dreamed of seeing ancient temples was lost to worry. I bit my fingernails until they bled. I picked at my toenails as well when I lay down, until they were taken with such swellings and pus that I could hardly walk. I spent some time with the herbalist then, preparing poultices and using a fine pair of shears to cut my nails. They had no forge of their own in that abbey, but there was a first-rate smith on the outskirts of the city. He spoke neither English nor Latin nor Greek, unfortunately, while I could only ask the simplest of questions about his health.
The letter that came at last was from my mother. She had sealed it with the symbol of a Wessex oak, but I had no idea if she knew it meant victory or disaster. I opened it with shaking hands and read.
It had not gone well. Skinner and his son had hired an old soldier to attend them. I don’t suppose Skinner had explained in much detail – and I knew his son had not. The three of them had spotted the lady in question, branded on the cheek as a thrall, just as we’d been told. The queen stepped off that boat from Dublin with two men. She’d walked like a free woman despite the brand, without even a rope on her. Skinner had followed them away from the docks at Bristol, where there had been too many witnesses. They’d kept them in sight as far as a lonely stretch of road, not far from Gloucester, some miles inland.
The two men with Elgiva had not given her up without a fight. Yet Skinner knew how to cut and the soldier was an old hand. The Irish had been down in moments. Of course, the queen began to scream for help. It seemed the soldier had put a knife in her as well, in his panic. In return, Skinner cut the fellow’s throat and then he and his boy ran, just raced away into the woods before they found themselves hanged by a mob or taken by the local reeve.
Skinner and his son had lived like wild things for days while bands of men from the port searched for the murderers, yet never found them. I wish I could say such grisly deeds were rare, but the roads are dangerous and always have been. Man is a fallen creature, born of sin. The wonder is when we are more, not less than our natures. Wolves can be cruel and so can we, but only man raises cathedrals and paints in gold.
It took over a month for the pair to make their way back to London, with Skinner hot with fever and exhaustion when he reached the shop. He’d crawled through a ditch, my mother said. Some brackish water had got into his open face and swelled it to a great yellow boil.
My mother and Alice had treated him and heard the whole story. I was not pleased at that. It was not that I thought Wulfric or I were in danger; more that a boy of any age likes his mother to be proud of him. I could read her disappointment in every line, her dismay and her hurt. She had been delighted in me before, when I was made abbot, bishop, treasurer. All of that had been taken. All of that was gone.
I read the letter a dozen times. Then I put the cursed thing in the fire, took up my purse of silver coins and went into town to drink myself to oblivion. I do not remember much of the night, though I had been badly beaten when I awoke
in a gutter, without a single coin left. I might have frozen to death and it would have been my ending. Perhaps I would have welcomed it in that moment.
The news reached London that the lost queen had been found. King Edwy rode to where her body had been wrapped and had her brought to a church nearby. I heard he spent the evening with her, brandy in hand, with candles burning.
They found him creaking on a rope in the morning, his life gone from the world, his soul gone to hell. It was another month before I heard the news from Wulfric’s shaking hand. I wrote one last letter, to King Edgar, then collected my small bag of belongings, bade farewell to Abbot Reynault and made my way down to the docks. I turned my back on Ghent and went home. I will admit I wept when I saw the white cliffs once more. I am not ashamed of that.
36
I’d seen King Edwy crowned; I saw him buried, three years after. I did not think I’d be in time to witness his funeral, though I hurried back and we had fair summer winds blowing west along the Channel. I wonder now if the Almighty aided my return, so I could stand unabashed before all those toad-eating lickspittles who remembered me. They knew only too well how I’d left them and in what state. I could see it in their eyes and in their flushed faces as I came in and took my place. No one dared say a word about my banishment. You may be sure there was no cruel laughter as the screen closed and the sacred mysteries began.
I was not used to being in the congregation in those days, blind to the Mass. At least I could understand the Latin, denied to many of those in that cathedral. I did not need the sound of bells to know when to kneel and pray. I thanked God for my deliverance, like Jonah from the Whale, like Joseph from slavery.
Edwy had lain for weeks in a chilled crypt while Archbishop Oda argued with other bishops as to whether they could give a Christian burial to a hanged man. The strain of it wore at the archbishop and he fell ill with a summer cold that reduced him terribly. He was delighted to see me, but I saw how he had aged in the years of my exile. It shocked me, somehow, as if I’d expected them all to remain exactly as I remembered them.