Lord Jesus Christ, and I thought I had the best of the bargain. No heavier tool to lift than a pen cut from the quill of a gray goose, and the beauty of the red and green and yellow and black inks was a pleasure for my eyes, and how smooth were the sheets of fine white calfskin waiting for me! And how sweet to refresh myself with the Gospel that I copied, there in the little scriptorium, when I could still believe in it!
What a world of grace fell away from me when that pagan man came among us, three weeks before Beltane in the five hundred and seventh year since Christ’s birth.
But no blame to him, poor man; God knows he had the worst of it. The truth is the trouble started well beforehand, and I knew nothing of it, happy and alone as I worked. So blinded with the beauty I made by day, that I never noticed the frightened faces when I joined my brothers and sisters for supper in the refectory of evenings.
And we didn’t speak aloud much—it was a monastery, after all—nor would I have believed in the trouble, had anyone explained it to me. If our community lay in the shadow of the high bare hill Dun Govaun, what harm in that? No rational Christian had anything to fear from a mound of dead stone. If pagans had feared the place in the past, if they’d told stories of babies carried off or folk seduced by small demons—well, they were pagans, weren’t they? At the mercy of darkness, as we brothers and sisters in Christ were not. Though I remember being awakened by the screams of a brother in his nightmares, I do remember that much now; but it signified nothing to me at the time.
When the pagan came, it was neither by day nor night but in the long hour between when the light had not faded, and when we neither fasted nor fed but sat at table with our meal not yet begun, and our brother the Cook had just brought out the oat-kettle, and Liath our Abbess was neither silent nor speaking, for she had just drawn in her breath to lead the grace. The pagans believe such in-between moments make doorways into the next world, you know.
In that unlucky moment the door opened indeed and our brother the Porter led in a young man in very fine clothes, which were perhaps too large for him.
“This is the guest Christ has sent us, who comes requiring meat and shelter for the night,” said the Porter, and he withdrew to his duty. The man stood surveying us all with a pleasant face; and from the dust on his rich garments it was plain he’d traveled far, and from the harp he bore, slung in its case on his back, plain his profession of fili, of chronicler after the manner of the heathens. I thought he looked too young to have learned so much lore as those people are required to know.
“A blessing on this table,” he said, and our Abbess corrected him:
“ Christ’s blessing on this table, and all here.”
“Oh, by all means,” he replied mildly, and smiled at the Abbess.
He dined, then, with us, and revealed that his name was Lewis, that he was indeed a pagan well trained in his craft of relating the old histories, and had come to offer us a bargain: he would give us all he carried in his head, the wonder-tales and songs of the old pagan heroes, in return for food and lodging. Our Abbess looked across at me with the eye of a cat after a mouse,
for both she and I collected these tales avidly (though we did not believe them at all).
So the bargain was made, with the understanding that the pagan should observe no pagan rites whilst among us, especially on the old feast day that was three weeks off, but attend Mass daily instead. To which Lewis agreed, readily, without anger. After dining he was shown the bath-house, and then the guest-house, and he took his leave of us for the evening with the urbane manners of a king’s son, which we thought he must be.
When it grew light next day he met me in the scriptorium, for the purpose of fulfilling his end of the agreement, and settled himself on a stone seat. He took his harp from its
What a world of grace fell away from me when that pagan man came among us, three weeks before Beltane in the five hundred and seventh year since Christ’s birth.
But no blame to him, poor man; God knows he had the worst of it. The truth is the trouble started well beforehand, and I knew nothing of it, happy and alone as I worked. So blinded with the beauty I made by day, that I never noticed the frightened faces when I joined my brothers and sisters for supper in the refectory of evenings.
And we didn’t speak aloud much—it was a monastery, after all—nor would I have believed in the trouble, had anyone explained it to me. If our community lay in the shadow of the high bare hill Dun Govaun, what harm in that? No rational Christian had anything to fear from a mound of dead stone. If pagans had feared the place in the past, if they’d told stories of babies carried off or folk seduced by small demons—well, they were pagans, weren’t they? At the mercy of darkness, as we brothers and sisters in Christ were not. Though I remember being awakened by the screams of a brother in his nightmares, I do remember that much now; but it signified nothing to me at the time.
When the pagan came, it was neither by day nor night but in the long hour between when the light had not faded, and when we neither fasted nor fed but sat at table with our meal not yet begun, and our brother the Cook had just brought out the oat-kettle, and Liath our Abbess was neither silent nor speaking, for she had just drawn in her breath to lead the grace. The pagans believe such in-between moments make doorways into the next world, you know.
In that unlucky moment the door opened indeed and our brother the Porter led in a young man in very fine clothes, which were perhaps too large for him.
“This is the guest Christ has sent us, who comes requiring meat and shelter for the night,” said the Porter, and he withdrew to his duty. The man stood surveying us all with a pleasant face; and from the dust on his rich garments it was plain he’d traveled far, and from the harp he bore, slung in its case on his back, plain his profession of fili, of chronicler after the manner of the heathens. I thought he looked too young to have learned so much lore as those people are required to know.
“A blessing on this table,” he said, and our Abbess corrected him:
“ Christ’s blessing on this table, and all here.”
“Oh, by all means,” he replied mildly, and smiled at the Abbess.
He dined, then, with us, and revealed that his name was Lewis, that he was indeed a pagan well trained in his craft of relating the old histories, and had come to offer us a bargain: he would give us all he carried in his head, the wonder-tales and songs of the old pagan heroes, in return for food and lodging. Our Abbess looked across at me with the eye of a cat after a mouse,
for both she and I collected these tales avidly (though we did not believe them at all).
So the bargain was made, with the understanding that the pagan should observe no pagan rites whilst among us, especially on the old feast day that was three weeks off, but attend Mass daily instead. To which Lewis agreed, readily, without anger. After dining he was shown the bath-house, and then the guest-house, and he took his leave of us for the evening with the urbane manners of a king’s son, which we thought he must be.
When it grew light next day he met me in the scriptorium, for the purpose of fulfilling his end of the agreement, and settled himself on a stone seat. He took his harp from its
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