Byzantium

  “Nor did I,” I said, and thought: And now that we are here once more, I wonder what was so important. What were we trying to do? What did it mean?

  “Are you sad, Aidan?” Dugal asked.

  “No, just a little tired,” I said, to avoid further conversation on the subject. “I did not foresee having to answer so many questions.”

  “You have been to Byzantium,” Dugal observed simply, “and they have not. Sure, they are curious. You cannot blame them for that.”

  There was food in the cell—a loaf of brown bread and a little honey mead for our homecoming. I ate alone by the light of a single beeswax candle and went to sleep thinking how quiet it was…only to be awakened at dawn by the tolling of the matin bell signalling the beginning of the daily round.

  I had not heard that sound for a very long time, but the moment I heard it my heart sank—to think that all the time I had been away, the same bell had rung the call to maiden prayers day after day after day, and nothing, absolutely nothing had changed. The monastery was still the same as the day I left; its work went on in the same, unchanging way, as it had before my birth and would after I was dust in an unknown grave.

  Despair, renewed with the morning, washed over me in black waves. I had been to Byzantium, and beyond. I had beheld wonders of unrivalled wealth and power. I had served Arab potentates, and endured the life of a slave. I had loved a Sarazen princess—Christ have mercy, had I been a better man, I would be married now! Oh, Kazimain, forgive this wretch of a fool.

  Truly, I had partaken of life unimaginable to the simple brotherhood of the abbey. And now, here I was, once more among the monks of Kells, and nothing had changed—save myself, and that not for the better.

  I lay on my straw pallet in the pearl-grey light of dawn, staring up at the bleak stone ceiling of my cell, drowning in the futility that whelmed me over and pulled me down and down into the depths of hopelessness. I pressed my eyes shut to stay the tears, but they leaked from beneath my eyelids anyway and rolled down my cheeks.

  How could I brave the day? How could I brave the innocent interest my every word held for those who had remained behind? How could I brave the endless, ignorant questions and satisfy the credulous, ignorant curiosity? What was I to do?

  I remained in my cell until after the bell for prime, and then went to Ruadh’s hut. He was not there, but I went in anyway and sat down on the floor to wait until he came. As I waited, I looked around at the bare stone room with its narrow windhole in the wall and the thin straw sleeping pallet on the floor, the leather bulga hanging by its strap from the wooden peg above the pallet, the shallow basin of water at the foot of the bed, the iron candletree, the stone shelf with its small wooden cross—everything exactly as I remembered it, exactly as it had been the day I had gone away.

  The room spoke a lonely psalm to me, a hymn of desolation and barren futility. I felt like running out again, but presently heard footsteps approaching. A moment later, Ruadh entered the room.

  “There you are, Aidan,” he said, crossing to his chair—as if resuming a discussion that had been diverted by a temporary interruption. “When I did not see you in the hall, nor at prayers, I thought I might find you here.”

  “You always know me better than I know myself,” I told him.

  “I always did,” he said, and smiled. He folded his hands in his lap and gazed at me for a time, smiling to himself. “Welcome home, Aidan,” he breathed at last. “It is good to see you again.”

  “And good to see you, secnab,” I said.

  “Is it?” He lifted an eyebrow inquiringly. “The expression on your face tells a different tale.” He paused, but when I did not deny it, he continued, “I have been talking to Brynach. He says it was your decision to bring the book home with you.”

  “Did he say what led me to that decision?”

  “Yes,” Ruadh answered, “but I would hear it from you.”

  “The pilgrimage failed,” I told him, and all the bitterness I felt came surging up once more. “There was nothing to be done.”

  “He said you spoke to the emperor alone.”

  “I did, yes. What else did Brynach tell you?”

  “He said you saved their lives.”

  That day, once so full in my memory, now seemed remote. I shook my head slowly. Here, in the unvaried simplicity of the abbey, my former life was already dwindling away to nothing.

  I looked at Ruadh—my anamcara, my soul’s good friend—for many years he had patiently listened to my dreams and confessions, guiding me, prodding me, helping me in any of a thousand ways with his wise counsel. He knew me better than any other, but even Ruadh would never understand more than the tiniest fragment of all that had happened. How could I tell him—where could I begin?

  “It was nothing,” I said. “Anyone else would have done the same.”

  We talked a little more—mostly about the abbey and resuming my duties in the scriptorium—and when I rose to leave, Ruadh walked with me outside. “It will take time to return, Aidan. You must not expect to come back as if nothing happened.”

  Over the next days, I avoided talking about the pilgrimage. When anyone asked a question, I replied with vague, dismissive answers, and eventually the brothers stopped asking. Life in the monastery went on, after all, and what was done was done. I resumed my work, and the daily round. The work I had once viewed with such pride and delight was dry tedium to me now, the very scratch of the pen set my teeth on edge and the words I wrote held no meaning. Prayer became merely a way to escape the scriptorium; and though I knelt in the chapel with all the rest, I never opened my heart to God.

  How could I pray? I knew God for what he was: a monstrous betrayer of souls—demanding honour and worship and obedience, demanding life and love, promising protection and healing and sanctuary. And then, when need was greatest and the longed-for sanctuary required…nothing. In return for years of slavish devotion, he gave nothing, less than nothing, in return.

  Each day as I knelt in the chapel, listening to the simple brothers speak their prayers, I thought, Lies! All lies! How can anyone believe a single word?

  Thus, the wounded animal that was my heart sickened and began devouring itself in its misery. I sank further and further beneath the weight of malignant grief. When Brynach and Ddewi departed to return to their abbey in Britain, I did not see them away or say farewell. Dugal chastised me about it later, but I did not care. I was a world of woe unto myself, and the days passed unnoticed and unheeded.

  One day I rose to see that winter had come again to Kells, and realized I had not been aware of the season’s change. The greyness of the land and sky was the greyness of my own benighted soul. Standing before my cell, I looked out across the muddy yard to our little church and recoiled in disgust. After the glittering splendour of Hagia Sophia and the towers of the Great Mosq, our rude stone structure appeared a mean, ill-made thing. I looked around at all the places I had once thought sublime in their humble simplicity, and found them coarse, ugly, vulgar, and repugnant against the glowing reality of all I had seen and done in Byzantium.

  I realized then, to my horror, that the shining verity of my memory was swiftly receding, replaced by emptiness, by a gathering gloom of shadows moving in an ever-increasing void. Soon there would be nothing left—soon not even the shadows would remain, and the darkness would be complete.

  Oh, but once my memories had pulsed with the blood-heat of life. In desperation, I forced myself to recall that once I had walked with kings and conversed in languages never heard in this land. Once I had stood at the prow of a Sea Wolf ship and sailed oceans unknown to seamen here. I had ridden horses through desert lands, and dined on exotic foods in Arab tents. I had roamed Constantinople’s fabled streets, and bowed before the Holy Roman Emperor’s throne. I had been a slave, a spy, a sailor. Advisor and confidant of lords, I had served Arabs, Byzantines, and barbarians. I had worn a captive’s rags, and the silken robes of a Sarazen prince. Once I had held a jewelled knife and taken a li
fe with my own hand. Yes, and once I had held a loving woman in my arms and kissed her warm and willing lips.

  Would that I had died in Byzantium!

  Death would have been far, far better than the gnawing, aching emptiness that was now my life. I bent my head and moaned for the hopelessness of it. That night, I went for the last time to my confessor’s hut.

  77

  I can stay here no longer,” I told him, hopelessness making me blunt.

  “Sure, you surprise me, Aidan. I thought you had left us long ago,” Ruadh replied, then motioned me into his cell and bade me sit. Lowering himself into his chair, he pressed his hands together and asked, “What did you expect to find?”

  His question, like his placid demeanour, took me unawares; I had to ask him to repeat himself, for I was not certain I had heard properly.

  “Your pilgrimage, Aidan—what did you expect to find in Byzantium?”

  “Truly?” I asked, provoked by his subtle insinuation that I was somehow to blame for my misery. “I expected to meet my death,” I answered, and told him of the vision I had dreamed the night before I left.

  “A curious dream, certainly,” Ruadh conceded mildly. He thought for a moment, gazing at the wooden cross on its stone shelf. “Pilgrimage is called the White Martyrdom,” he mused. “Yet, we say the pilgrim seeks not the place of his death, but the place of his resurrection. A curious thing to say,” he observed, “unless the pilgrim was in some way already dead.”

  He let the words do their work. Then, directing his gaze to me, he said, “I have heard from Bryn and Dugal most of what happened. Naturally, they know very little about your sojourn with the Sea Wolves and Sarazens, but I think I understand enough from what they have told me to know how it was with you.” He smiled unexpectedly. “Aidan, you have experienced a life which your brothers can scarce begin to imagine. You have seen more than most men could see in ten lifetimes. You have been richly blessed.”

  “Blessed!” I choked on the word. “Cursed, you mean.”

  Disregarding my outburst, he continued, “So I ask you again, what did you expect?”

  “I expected God to honour his word,” I replied. “That, at least, if nothing else. I thought I could depend on the truth. But I have learned there is no truth. The innocent are everywhere slaughtered—they die pleading for God to save them, and death takes them anyway. Faith’s own guardians are inconstant liars, and Christ’s holy church is a nest of vipers; the emperor, God’s Co-ruler on Earth, is a vile, unholy murderer.”

  “Life is a school of the spirit, Aidan,” Ruadh intoned with gentle insistence. “Learning is our soul’s requirement, and suffering our most persuasive teacher.”

  “Oh, aye, it is a school,” I agreed, feeling the throbbing ache of futility. “It is a terrible school wherein we learn harsh and bitter lessons. We begin by trusting, and learn there is no one worthy of our trust. We learn that we are all alone in this world, and our cries go unheeded. We learn that death is the only certainty. Yes, we all die: most in agony and torment, some in misery, and the fortunate few in peace, but we all die. Death is God’s one answer to all our prayers.”

  “Do not blaspheme, Aidan,” cautioned the secnab sternly.

  “Blaspheme!” I challenged angrily. “Why, I speak the very heart of God’s own truth, brother. How is that blasphemy? We put our trust in the Lord God, and were proved fools for believing. We endured slavery and torture and death, and God lifted not a finger to save us. I saw our own blessed Bishop Cadoc hacked to pieces before my eyes and God—the God he loved and served all his days—did not so much as lift a finger to ease his suffering.”

  Ruadh regarded me severely, his brow creased in disapproval. “As he did nothing when His beloved son died on the cross,” my anamcara pointed out. “We are closest to Christ when sharing the world’s misery. Think you Jesu came to remove our pains? Wherever did you get that notion? The Lord came, not to remove our suffering, but to show us the way through it to the glory beyond. We can overcome our travails. That is the promise of the cross.”

  “A promise worth as much as the empty air,” I said. “Thirteen monks left this abbey, and only four returned. We paid a fearful price—and all for nothing! All our torment accounted for nothing, and accomplished no purpose. No good came of it. The only fortunate ones, that I can see, are the barbarians: they went out for plunder and came back wealthier than they could have imagined. At least they got what they wanted.”

  Ruadh was silent for a time. “Aidan, have you lost your faith?” he asked at last.

  “I did not lose my faith—it was stolen from me,” I growled. “God abandoned me!”

  “So this is why you wish to leave,” the secnab observed. He did not try to dissuade me, and for that I was grateful. “Do you have any idea where you might go?”

  “No,” I said. “I only know that there is no place for me here any more.”

  “I think you are right,” agreed my wise anamcara gently. “I think you should leave.”

  Again, his attitude surprised me. “Truly?”

  “Oh, yes—truly. Anyone who has suffered as you have, and who feels the way you feel, should not remain here.” He regarded me with fatherly compassion. “Winter is a hard time, however. Stay at least until the spring—until Eastertide, say.”

  “And what shall I do until then?” I wondered.

  “Until then,” he replied, “you can use the time to think about what you might like to do when you leave.”

  “Very well,” I agreed. It seemed a sensible plan, and I had no other. “I will stay until the Eastertide.”

  Having made the decision, life became easier for me in some ways. Sure, I did not feel such a Judas. I began looking to the coming spring and thinking where I should go and what I should do. In the end, I decided to return to my own people. Even if I did not stay with them, I could at least remain there until I found a better place. I was still a nobleman of my clan, after all; though it had been many years since I had visited the settlement, they would not turn me away.

  Slowly, the days dwindled down, and like a slow, white tide the long winter receded. Spring came and, with the approach of Eastertide, I began to think what I would tell Dugal; he knew nothing of my decision to leave the abbey. Yet, as often as I prepared myself to raise the subject with him, when the moment came I found better reason to refrain.

  Nevertheless, as the land warmed to a mild and pleasant spring I determined that come what may, I would tell him at the first opportunity. Three days before Easter, I went looking for him, but I could not find him anywhere. One of the brothers told me he thought Dugal was following his seasonal custom, helping the shepherds with the lambing in the next valley.

  I found my friend there, sitting on the hillside, watching the flock. He greeted me warmly, and I sat down beside him. “Brother,” I said, “I have a burden on my heart.”

  “Speak then,” he said, “if it would lighten the load for sharing.” I noticed he did not look at me, but kept his eyes on the sheep as they grazed. Perhaps he already sensed my leaving in the way I had behaved towards him all winter.

  “Dugal, I—” the words stuck in my throat. I swallowed hard and pushed ahead. “Dugal, I am leaving. I cannot—”

  I broke off just then, for Dugal leapt to his feet. “Listen!” he cried, pointing across the valley.

  Looking where he pointed, I saw the figure of a man—a monk, one of the shepherds—flying down the hill as fast as he could run. He was shouting as he ran, but I could not make out the words. “What is he saying?”

  “Shh!” Dugal hissed urgently, cupping a hand to his ear. “Listen!”

  The shout came again and I heard it this time. “Wolves!” I said. “He has seen a wolf.”

  “Not a wolf,” Dugal replied, already turning away. “Sea Wolves!”

  Together we raced back to the abbey, stumbling over the winter stubble in the unploughed fields. We arrived breathless to raise the alarm; within three heartbeats the entire monastery
was in well-ordered upheaval as monks scurried everywhere in a grimly determined effort to hide the abbey’s treasures: the cups and plate used for the Holy Sacraments; candleholders, the altar cloth; the manuscripts and those books precious to us whether or not their covers had any value.

  Fortunately, the warning was timely so that when the dread raiders came in sight, we were ready. Abbot Fraoch would meet them at the gate, and offer the cattle and grain, if they would but leave the buildings unmolested.

  Accordingly, he summoned me to him. “You can speak to them in their own tongue, I believe,” he said.

  “Aye, he speaks like a very Sea Wolf himself,” replied Dugal helpfully.

  “Good,” said the abbot, and related the message I should convey.

  “I will try,” I replied, “though it may not be of any help. They are difficult to persuade at best, and will not listen to anyone when the silverlust is on them.”

  “Do what you can,” the abbot said. “We will uphold you in prayer.”

  Ruadh, taking his place beside the abbot, said, “We will all be praying for you, Aidan.”

  I thought how best to meet the raiders, and decided that if I went out a little way from the gate alone, I might stand the best chance of blunting the attack. Once they reached the abbey, they would not likely hear a word anyone said. So, as the rest of the monks gathered at the gate to watch, I walked out along the trail to meet the marauders face to face.

  I could see them now. Having crossed the stream, they were already striding up the long sloping hill: a raiding party of at least thirty Vikings, the leaf-shaped blades of their long spears glinting in the sunlight as they came.

  I heard a softly rumbling noise behind me. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw the brothers of the abbey kneeling, hands clasped, their voices raised in fervent prayer, beseeching God on my behalf.

  When I turned back, the Sea Wolves were closer. I could make out individuals in the foreranks, and tried to establish which one might be their war leader. The huge, hulking Dane towering over his swordbrothers seemed a likely choice, and then I noticed that beside this giant strode a figure whose gait, whether in daylight or darkness, I would always recognize.