2

Wulfric was sitting on a little flat bed in the infirmary, chattering away to the matronly sort and calling her ‘Mother Aphra’ as she wrapped his foot. I noticed she was careful to add small blessed medals under each layer, so my brother would heal twice as fast as some poor churl without them. She sprinkled holy water on him as well. It had great powers of healing, she said, when I asked in suspicion what she was doing.

The abbey was an oddly relaxed place then, with a few married and unmarried women tending the brothers, and half the men not ordained nor even formal Benedictines. The cellarer was paid a wage, if you can believe that. They had a small grant of land, but it was hardly enough to raise food to feed themselves. For the most part, they survived on gifts from wealthy families. I think they would have withered in a generation if I had not been taken by shaking sickness and brought amongst them to be cured.

I edged closer to my brother, honestly just to see if Wulfric had managed to clean himself while he’d been away from me. I don’t like to talk about my own illness. It was a nuisance for a while, then. I fell down on occasion and I twitched and shook. I’m told I stuttered as well each time, before. Strange, but a vital part of me is one I do not experience and cannot recall. It does not happen often, thank God, though it unmans me and makes me a child when it does, so perhaps they are all one time too many. Yet of the two of us, I did not feel the weak brother. I sat there in a room of cool beech benches and piles of folded linen, watching a woman make an invalid of Wulfric while he simpered and pretended he could not see my glower.

‘Father says my brother Dunstan can be cured here, with the relicts you have. He says the abbey has bones from St David and St Patrick – and a blessed sapphire.’

Aphra seemed pleased the boy knew so much. She patted his leg as she split the bandage and tied it in a neat knot.

‘Wiggle your toes for me, blossom. There, you’ll be right as rain in a few days, or sooner if you pray at the shrine. I’ll get a crutch for you.’

‘There’s no need, ma’am. I can walk well enough,’ he said, showing her his courage and yet somehow still making a little squeal as he put his weight on. I saw her slip him an apple as well and I watched where he put it, though he thought he hid it from me.

‘There are dozens of crutches and walking sticks down in the cloisters, from those who came here and were healed.’ She whistled up one of the urchins from the water-landing, all snot and elbows. ‘Fetch one of the crutches, James, one of the good ones for this dear lad.’

He raced off and the great, bovine creature turned her head towards us once more.

‘We could make a bit of coin selling them, I dare say, but Abbot Clement says they’re to be left where they are – to carry word of what we do here, so more will come. They are evidence of our faith, he says. God knows, we do need the money the pilgrims bring, just to keep body and soul together. Canterbury gets them all, of course, from Rome even. If the faith had come first to Wessex instead of Kent, we wouldn’t be struggling to feed ourselves each winter, I tell you that!’

She rattled on and I nodded and smiled, irritated by her. The boy James returned with a rough-carved crutch that was a little too large for my brother, so that Wulfric had to stand lopsided, with his bad foot tucked up behind. I saw a gleam of devilment in the urchin’s eyes as he looked him over and I took it as an insult. I gestured for young James to go ahead, then helped him along with my boot. He rubbed the tail bone down there and glared, but he knew then to be wary of me – and that I wouldn’t take kindly to Wulfric being mocked. God knows, Wulfric was a trial, but he was also my brother.

We were taken through some open cloisters with a chill wind nipping at us, then through a great refectory where a dozen monks sat with heads bowed over their plates. One of their number stood at a lectern to read Augustine’s sermons at them. I took it all in as best I could, but I think my decision was made even then. My father had been a thane to kings. My uncle was a bishop. We were not royal ourselves, but still so far above churls or slaves they might have been a different breed. Earls, churls and thralls make our Wessex England. Or thanes, common men and slaves – with kings above all, as God ordained. Yet Heorstan was long retired, too far from power, too old to place me with a court household, or even in a position to be noticed by one. He had no titles to grant the second batch of his sons, and my life would be one of hard labour and working someone else’s land. The abbey was a place where learning lay – from pulleys and Latin to secret alchemies. I could hear the sound of a smith beating iron somewhere not too far away. It was my bell, and it rang for me.

I considered my future as we ate that evening, honoured at a long table where the abbot sat and engaged my father in talk. Every other seat was filled, of course. The monks desired to know anything they might hear of the world, informed of it by visits like ours. I had thought the marshes cut the abbey off, but Abbot Clement talked with energy and interest of King Æthelstan and all he was doing to secure the realm and keep the Danes out of it. Across from me, Wulfric chewed with his jaw so widely open I could both hear and see each mouthful being made to paste. I tried to kick him under the table, but it was too far.

I would have found a way on my own to broach the subject of joining the classes at the abbey, but there was no need. I had no inkling the talk was in part for my benefit, innocent that I was. I suspect my father had sold me before I even broke bread that night.

Clement described the dozen boys who attended the school there, keeping the hours of the abbey day and learning their prayers, as well as plants and all manner of crafts. The words were like gushing water to me, and I turned to my father and found he was already smiling at my expression, his eyes lost in wrinkles. It is how I remember him best, that affection.

‘Would you then have room for another, Father Clement?’ Heorstan said.

I stopped breathing. The abbot inclined his head as if in thought, the old fraud.

‘For both lads, my lord, if you would have it so?’

This had not occurred to me, that I might have to share the wonders of this place with Wulfric. I began to shake my head, but my opinion was not sought and the two men continued to discuss the arrangement as if they sat alone.

Abbot Clement went a little pink around the gills after a time. He cleared his throat, drawing one finger through a puddle of ale on the tabletop.

‘My lord Heorstan, if it is your will, I will undertake to add your boys to our classes here, to instruct and discipline them, to return them to you as young men. Yet . . . I recall St Augustinus taught Latin in Rome for a time. His classes were always packed, but the custom then was to take payment on the last day of the term. On that day, his benches were always mysteriously empty. It has been good habit ever since to collect the fee on the first day rather than the last, though no insult is intended, on my very honour.’

I turned to see a frown darken my father’s expression. I knew Clement was on shaky ground, though it was the poverty of the abbey driving him to it. To risk even a suggestion that we might not pay was a perilous path. I turned a look of scorn on the abbot, just as I imagined my father doing. At my side, I flinched from a sharp movement from him, but it was just a pouch being tossed the length of the table.

Abbot Clement did not open it, barely fondling the coins as he made it disappear. I am sure he made a fair guess by weight alone. My father’s pride would have doubled whatever he might have been asked. Perhaps that had always been Clement’s intention, for he was a cunning man – and sharp enough to cut himself. He and my father exchanged a nod and the matter was not raised again.

Wulfric was gaping, his eyes wide enough to show the whites as he turned from Father to me to Abbot Clement, with no sense of decorum at all. I did not care. Joy filled me and I pushed my wooden plate away with food still on it.

My father left the following morning. Wulfric and I awoke at dawn, though the monks had been up and working long before. We rubbed water on our faces and peed in a halfbarrel the monks used for bleaching wool. Wulfric splashed the floor, of course. I cleaned it up with a rag, so that he was first into the sun.

Abbot Clement stood with my father, still a big man in his furs despite his age. Both of them were smiling at something as Wulfric and I came into the yard.

‘I will see you again at Christmas,’ Heorstan said sternly to us. ‘Work hard in the meantime. Behave. Pray every day and do not neglect your souls, though your flesh withers. Tell the truth, boys. Do as you are told.’

Wulfric and I stood side by side and stared at our sandals in the dust, just waiting to be dismissed. I didn’t know I would never see the old man again.

I wish I could make my young self look up that last time, to hold every moment of that morning as a jewel – but I cannot. That lout, that thick-headed clod of thirteen, was thinking of all the things he might learn at the abbey. Our family home was not a dozen miles from Glastonbury and it did not seem too far. I think boys are never truly away from home when they can walk back.

My father did not embrace either of us. I do not think he ever did, which is only right when a man is preparing sons for the world. My mother embraced me all the time and it is true I miss her with more tenderness, but we are given our roles in this grief-ridden vale and there is no changing them. A father gives strength and makes a man. A mother tempers that iron with tears and her love. Too much of either makes weakness.

Heorstan was too old to survive another winter, that was just the truth of it. He did not live to see the next Christmas. He gave me a good start. A man cannot ask for more.

Abbot Clement gave me over to the care of a Brother Caspar, who loomed thin, but even taller than me. He took me to a little empty schoolroom, where he settled himself as I stood there, with much clearing of throat and fussing with quills and papers.

It broke my heart to look through the window and see Wulfric tripping nervously off to the Prime service. I had to stand there and listen to a cadaver in his thirties scratching a blunt quill, sharpening it poorly, all the while breathing through a softly whispering nostril.

I was asked to describe my illness in more detail than I ever had before. I made the mistake of saying it came on sometimes when I was weary and hungry. I should have said it was worst when I slept well and ate like a lord.

Brother Caspar wanted to see one of my trembling agues, and of course I could not produce one for him. My hands were steady, my mind relaxed and unclouded, as he stared and waited, tutting to himself and smoothing a quill through his hand, over and over.

‘Your father fears a curse,’ he said, ‘or perhaps that a demon has you in its grip. If the last is true, the creature would hide from us, just as it seems to be doing now. Oh, I see your insolence, boy – and I wonder at its source. I wonder if he hears me, your friend.’

‘I have no friend, Brother Caspar,’ I said, looking to see if I might get past him if he leaped at me. There was always that sense in Caspar, that madness might lurk in him, that he might go for a man’s throat with no warning at all. He was too bright in the eye to breathe easily in his presence.

‘I can’t waste days and weeks on you!’ he snapped. ‘We must bring him out. Up, boy, from your slothful waste of a morning. Run around the yard for me, while I read.’

I have never been slow to hate a man I thought a fool. In my innocence then, I took his words as a challenge. My body had not once let me down and I could not imagine it doing so. I believe I smiled as I began to run, which was the last such expression for quite some time.

I set off while the monks were still in the Prime service. I was sweating freely by the time the brothers trooped out of the chapel to breakfast, passing me with curious glances as I ran, though saying nothing. It seemed not long before they were streaming out once more, heading to the workshops and gardens. St Benedict’s Rule is for work and prayer. It makes for healthy, long-lived men, though admittedly liable to ill temper.

I ran on, consumed by pride, while the morning passed, with no sign of Brother Caspar noticing as I began to stagger. Again and again I rallied my will. I counted in dozens and hundreds and reached four hundred circuits around that yard, eventually six hundred or thereabouts. I lost count. The sweat fell like coins from me, while my eyes stung so with salt that I could hardly see.

I ran until the Terce prayers were called around nine, three hours after Prime. I had been waiting for that bell to toll, telling myself I would hold on for it, even if I had to run on bloody bones. When it sounded, I felt such a wave of relief it was almost an ecstasy. I drew to a halt and, without a warning or a sound, there was Brother Caspar standing before me in his black robe. He said not a word at first, but raised my eyelid with a cold thumb and peered at me like a man examining a horse for sale. He shook his head in disgust and, as I heaved for breath, he kicked my legs away.

‘Show yourself, creature,’ he said softly, looking down on me.

I tried to scramble to my feet when I saw a stick in his hand, but he laid about me with as much force and energy as a madman. After a time, I recall the stick splintering and breaking into sharp pieces, though he still flailed and whipped in a frenzy, almost shrieking with his own exertion. Spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth. It looked like the white froth you see sometimes in spring grass, where creeping green things protect themselves from the sun.

‘Show yourself,’ he said again, panting almost as hard as me.

I remember seeing his spittle and then the world became too bright and I fell away. I suppose I did show myself to him in the fit that followed, so bright and huge it was a kind of death.

In the infirmary, I ate soft-boiled eggs and green cabbage soup until I thought my bowels might burst for the noxious wind they produced. I remember my irrational fear that such foul odours might be taken as more evidence of possession by devils, or some evil thing rotting away the heart of me. I did not want to earn the attentions of Brother Caspar again. When the air became oppressive, I clenched myself tighter than a drum, then hobbled over to the open window. Gently, I prised my buttocks apart to expel the bad air in silence, or with no more than a soft whistle. Aphra had a dozen duties and bustled in and out. I was always safely back in bed when I heard her steps coming.

I must have done it a dozen times over the course of that afternoon. I was not quite in my right mind, I think. My vision was blurred and my left eye was swollen. I saw only the bright window. I did not know there was a classroom across the yard. The boys at their lessons had a very good view of me creeping stealthily up and turning round, then parting my cheeks to the open air.

It was Brother Encarius who was teaching that class across the way; it was his lesson I disturbed by reducing his pupils to hysterics with my antics. I believe he had to cane every one of them, and it was that exertion that gave him colour when he came to see the cause of the disruption. Perhaps he thought I was doing it for a lark, then, a wilful, vulgar boy. He came to stand over me and winced visibly.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I’d heard, of course, in this small place. Brother Caspar is . . . a right enthusiastic seeker after truth.’ He sounded almost apologetic, but I did not reply, having learned to be wary. Encarius waited for a time before he went on.

‘The shaking sickness is fascinating, is it not? My own brother was overtaken and made senseless by fits, not too different from yours, I believe. He came to them after he was struck in a raid on our village and left for dead, at just a few years old. His skull was oddly dented ever after. He used to rest his thumb in it while he read. Just here.’ He indicated a spot, while I glowered in silence. ‘When it came, his fit would leave him senseless and weak for a whole day.’

Still, I stared at him. I would give them nothing. He seemed to sense the rage behind my glare and flushed a shade deeper.

‘Dunstan, is it? I have made a hobby of the physic. If you tell me you have suffered any similar wound in your life, I could petition Abbot Clement for permission to study you. Instead of you continuing your work with Brother Caspar.’

He gave me no clue at all that he wanted me to lie, leaving it up to me to catch his meaning. I liked him then, Encarius. It is hard to believe he was only twenty. I was seven years younger and I thought of him as grown, not one who blushed like a girl and did not yet shave all his jaw, but just the top lip and the point of his chin.

‘My mother said I fell when I was young,’ I told him. ‘She said I struck my head on the hearthstone, hard enough to knock me out for two days. She used to tell me she thought I would never wake.’

He seemed delighted, did Encarius. He reached out and examined my forehead, looking for some sign of the old wound. I imagine he was disappointed. He patted my leg as well, though I pulled back in case he was one of those who liked lads in the way of women. I was wrong about that, thank goodness. He didn’t like boys; he didn’t even like women.

‘What happened to your brother?’ I asked suddenly. I maintained my scowl, but I had never met another who had seen something like my shaking and I wanted to know. Encarius bowed his head and I guessed before he spoke.

‘He died young, just a year older than you are now. He would wrench his joints apart in his fits and had to be tied down . . .’ He trailed off as he considered his audience. ‘Yet for all his roaring and pain, I never saw a devil in him. I know they can be invited in by some unwary soul, but my brother was so young – a good boy. Did you ever give up your soul, Dunstan? I see great anger in you today – instead of penitence and forgiveness. Did you ever rage aloud and wish destruction on your enemies, no matter what it cost? If you did, your shaking could be unholy, an abomination. I could not help you then, except at peril of my own soul.’

I was too used to dissembling to look at him in surprise, though he had called me right. ‘Never,’ I said, holding his gaze. ‘I confess I am a poor sinner, but my soul is mine.’ That is the key to the lock, with monks. If you claim to be an innocent, they will suspect the sin of pride. Claim instead to be a lowly, wretched creature – and they will love you for it, knowing you for one of their own.

‘Then in the name of St Luke, patron of healers – and the angel Raphael, whose name means “God heals” – I will attempt to help you, as God wills it, with prayer and the medicines of plants and natural earths.’

I did not like the sound of the last part. When I look back on that morning, with my choice to be beaten by Caspar or dosed by Encarius, honestly there is a part of me that wishes I had chosen the beatings.

‘I will pray with you now, Dunstan, then leave you to rest and recover. When I am gone, please don’t go to the window again. The boys find it amusing.’

I looked up at him in appalled shock, my face burning. There was no twitch of mockery in his expression, only stern interest. He was always a humourless man.

Brother Encarius laid his hand on the crown of my head and I was content to stare down at the coarse blanket, ashamed and furious. He prayed over me for a time, while I planned vengeance on Caspar. I did not know then what it would be, only that it would be terrible.