Hodd Read online

  I stopped plucking, and bent to hear him: his breath being foul, as with many who fast, and none of those bread-givers having entered in to wash the filth that defiled his bed as it defiles an unnursed infant’s bed, there was a great fumosity of stench: yet I felt in the presence of sweetness, as though walking in an orchard where a multitude of apples putrefy upon the grass. ‘Pray, give me water,’ was all I heard. And perceiving a bowl of wood upon a rocky shelf, I held it beneath a meagre trickle [of water] that bled at the back of the cave, as it always had done e’en in the driest month, and brought it to his mouth. How eagerly did he drink! I wondered then why no one was with him as a nurse, who might want succour to their soul, and earn blessings thereby; and an answer swiftly came, and other answers too.

  He drank his fill, and laid his head back, seeming comforted as he gazed upon my face – for that is the greatest medicine of music. I told him that I had returned, not for his forgiveness – for I had not expected him to be still in this miserable world – but that I might begin to make amends, by returning what I had thieved, e’en though it was too late; then to hasten me to the holy house at Whitby, to deny all pleasures of the flesh within a stony cell, and pray steadfastedly for my one true spiritual master’s soul, that the Devil had lured me from into the worst vice and crime imaginable – e’en to believing that Jesus was not the Son of God! ‘For how could He be, when there was no God, to the vicious heretics I fell among? Instead, I find thee still living, and all I wish is to comfort thee, and to keep vigil by thee, master, and to keep you tenderly, until such time as God wills to welcome you into His bosom.’

  Then after a long silence, in which the hermit seemed to sleep, he oped his ravelled eyelids again and spoke so soft as he held my hand in his, that his words were near drowned by the sea-surge without, rock-dimmed though it was. ‘You call me spiritual master, that am near spirit, and wish to be pure spirit: yet I cannot shake off this filthy body, for the Lord keeps me in this state of pain and suffering, that I might purge myself of my great wrong.’ One by one these words were squeezed from his lips like pebbles, and I was astonied to hear of this great wrong, for he was a true ascetic and the holiest I have ever known.

  Indeed, I wished him to speak of mine own wrong, not any of his, if the truth be told: for so little advanced was I in humility, that I was as a prince that plays at being a beggar. My wretched and shameless deeds, starting with the theft of the harp, and the ungrateful abandoning of this holy man,394 elbowed each other to be first at the door of my thoughts.

  Then a face appeared again at the opening, of a woman honest and comely-looking; and with similar words babbled, more bread was thrown, with a piece of fish that smelt stale. No answer made the hermit, but merely a sighing, and the woman’s face disappeared. I said how foolish the common folk were, to cast food like coins into a pond, and not take proper care of him: but he waved his hand, dismissing my derision. ‘I will not have them nearer,’ he declared, in so small a voice that I must crouch to hear: ‘not even monks or priests, for all is decayed and nothing pure and whole. It was writ in Heaven that my pupil must return. Now I might depart in peace, for you must be my confessor, Edwyn.’

  A flame of jealousy fretted through all my veins then, and I stood, ready to depart. All his mind was on my rival, and it seemed he had quite forgot me – this idea worse than if he had berated me and cursed me! Thus our chief humour haunts us always, by use and long custom made to be our companion – as some like ale, and others wine, and so forth. I said to him: ‘I am not Edwyn,’ and once more said my true name. ‘Thou art Edwine,’ he replied, ‘for I had no other pupil, and thou must confess me.’

  Then I saw that he had confounded, in his delirium, Edwine and myself, as we might be two almonds [crushed] in a caudle of milk: for the chamber of his memory was no doubt shrunk or infected. I was wretchedly pricked to the heart as with a barbed point, and wept silently beside him, hiding my face. Ne’er was there more miserable creature in the world! He groaned and held a hand to his chest, as there were sore beatings there, and I was affrighted, thinking him to be breathing his last.

  He fixed his eyes upon me, as the dying do, very roundly: and this brought me to a confusion; for the force of that look had entered my eyes and already put the demons within me to strong flight, some creeping into my nether parts as toads creep away from the light into dim and moist corners. Feeling pain from these fiends’ tiny bristles and claws, I knelt at his side, and held his hand, struggling with my grief and sorrow. He whispered to me: ‘What say ye, Edwynne?’ And I replied that as one who had committed a great and mortal sin, and had not yet done penance withal, how could I confess him, in my iniquity?

  ‘As best thou mayest,’ he said. So comforted was I by this, that the pain of the demons’ horns in my toes and fingers ebbed, as if milk and honey had entered there, and I nodded and said, ‘So be it, master. I shall confess thee, though I am no priest, but a miserable wretch who hath neglected virtue, denied God, believed that the soul hath no existence proper to itself, conjectured that both Hell and Heaven are cozening inventions, and likewise all that is writ in the divine Scriptures, and also sinfulness itself.’

  ‘Then art thou worthy to hear me,’ he said; ‘for what priest is not full of crimes?’ And true it is, that too many priests are unworthy, for some are unlettered, or haunt taverns and are drunken, or wear jackets instead of cassocks; and most hasten through the offices as if they mean naught.

  So he confessed, and I must set it down here, that you may see how merciful are the ways of God, that even the greatest sinner may return to Him after sufficient penance, as it was revealed through Christ Jesus for all time.

  He said to me, ever hoarsely and painfully: ‘You know already that at the age of eighteen I went to Oxenforde and studied law, and lived with three other clerks near the river, in a noisome alleyway, and how my heart was stirred by a certain young woman, married to a goldsmith of mature years. And how, goaded by lust, I came to her in the guise of an intimate lady friend, dressed in a lady’s gown, to allay suspicion. I had pressed her red mouth as a man and now as a woman, and the pleasure of her flesh was mine. Many the song I sang to her with my harp, of birds and garlands and flushed cheeks the colour of plucked roses, and suchlike foolery.

  ‘Alas, one day after enticing me thus with her comeliness, she held up my woman’s dress and laughed at my nakedness, saying I was no more to her than a basket of pears, being prettier as a woman than as a man; and that my privy parts were ever drooping and forwelked, like a buckthorn berry above two grape pips, and other such poisonous untruths, that such women ever interlace in their remarks. For it was just as rumour had it, that she was steeped in carnal lust, and had no scruples, and had early plucked every petal of the flower of virginity and satiated herself on the worst debauchery: and now she was weary of my attentions in the midst of other like and e’en handsomer youths.

  ‘I protested violently, smiting her upon the face. Then whetting her tongue well upon her teeth, she threatened to pour out my corruption openly before her husband, and to tell him how I had lured her through enchantment, and violently forced her to deceive him.

  ‘Returning to my lodgings in tears, there I conferred with my three companions; and we went to a low tavern near our hostel and drank much ale and became merry, the three others laughing and saying that I must consult a sorcerer – meaning it in jangling jest, for they were without malice and drunken. Foolishly I did so, there being at that time in Oxenford a sorcerer famed among the clerks for his powers; and so excited was I by the love of her, that one would call it anyway by the name of sorcery, for I was bewitched.

  ‘Of such horrible degree was the witchcraft he soon performed, that my lady died in her bed the same night, strangled as by a ghostly hand, and with scratches maiming her face so that it was more ribbons [than flesh]: these scratches being neither human nor a fiend’s, but those of a cat – for the sorcerer had taken a living cat and flayed its black hide and stretched it
out, eating the warm meat at a lonely cross-ways one dark night, and muttered evil invocations as I lay carnally upon the skin in the open space nearby, that the spirit of the cat might carry my smell to the woman as she slept, binding her in hot desire to my flesh for ever. Instead, the cat’s spirit stifled her, as cats stifle infants in their cradles: for the feline spirit had met with Satan upon the way, and was filled with wrath and guile from his pricks, and was fatted by man’s enemy to an enormous size.

  ‘Learning about her death, I fled the town straightway; but my three companions were arrested the following day, along with the sorcerer. And there being no doubt of the latter’s guilt, the wicked man confessed; and those in the tavern who had witnessed our foolish words, gave testimony against my companions, who were quite innocent of any guilty deed or action. Nevertheless, they were taken outside the town walls and hanged, while the sorcerer was burned to ashes near them, with the skin of the cat tied about his head.395

  ‘So it was not as I had told you before, that I left Oxenfford after a vision of the Virgin Mary! I did indeed, however, become a ragged minstrel, and then a brother at the holy house near Saxmund[ham], before falling into a wandering life that led to this sea-battered place, where I came forwandred.’396

  This was indeed a grievous crime, I said, for it had killed three young men innocent of it, and even the lady might not have deserved such a terrible turn, as to be strangled and mutilated by the Devil, for all her lechery. He wept tears, then, that burned their salt upon his wizened face. Indeed, I felt that he had revealed to me a foul ulcer within him that I could not cut out, the confession being too great a burden even for an angel’s broad shoulders to carry away.

  Then with painful gesticulation, he bid me fetch a heavy black stone that was in a niche behind his head, and after carrying it to the light and examining it (at his insistence), I saw it was a snake stone: that is, a fossil397 carved with a spiral shape that some say is a figure of the sun, and others a snake curled like an adder sleeping in sunlight. No finer or larger of these carved fossils had I ever seen, though as a boy I would sometimes find them broke upon the beach or the cliffs. They are said to be the remains of a great temple of the giants, that was covered all over with such carvings, and scattered by God’s wrath upon the strand, for he hateth all idols and false temples.

  And the hermit said, so soft that I must again put my ear near his lips: ‘Look ye, how our lives fall away as into a whirlpool, beginning pliant and full, then diminishing day by day until we reach the centre, wherein we disappear. Now I have made my confession, I may pass into the Lord’s arms. For this, thou must carry me in the night to the sea’s marge, with this snake stone tied about my chest so that it cannot fall, and leave me there.’ I protested that the boundless waters would rise and stifle him, the tide being pulled high by the moon at that season: but to no avail. ‘I have need no longer of life and breath,’ he said, ‘for by fasting and prayers I have earned His favour; and if not, then I must meet my punishment. My soul is restless as a horse that smells battle!’

  A plump woman’s red face appearing at the opening, and more bread being thrown, I would have bid the pilgrim go away, but was stayed by the hermit’s hand. ‘Wilt thou do this?’ he asked, in a hoarse whisper. ‘For I have endured too many winters, Edwyn, waiting for thee.’ And knowing how many hermits, in their vow of absolute poverty, do reject also any funeral rites, and leave themselves to die in the open air in remote places, like beasts, I might have agreed – but for this fact: that he believed me to be Edwynne, my rival in his affections. I could not bring him succour in this wise, for jealousy was ever my companion.

  ‘Nay,’ I declared, ‘for I tell thee, master, in God’s name I am not Edwyne, and never have been, for Edwine is far away; and whether living or dead, I know not, and care little!’ He stared at me much troubled and distressed, before saying: ‘Who art thou, then, for I think I know thee?’ ‘O master,’ I cried, so that my voice echoed in the cave, and came again to my ears like a report of one’s own misdeeds: ‘I am the son of that humble house to which you first came and were succoured by, for my mother and father gave thee food and drink; and when my father was slain by the king’s men, you saved my mother from violation. And in thanks ever after we brought you bread, and you tutored me as your first pupil. Wherefore should you forget this, and my name? I owe you all my first learning, without which I would have remained a simple peasant. I am not Edwyne, master, and cannot feign him as a player might, for if indeed I must aid God in pulling the holy soul from your mouth, as though I am a midwife to its newborn innocence, I must do it in my own guise!’

  So fervently did I speak, that he frowned and began to tremble as if a thunder-clap had sounded in his ear; and to my amazement, he covered his face with his filthy rag as gossips oft cover their faces with their aprons in jesting shame – revealing thereby his soiled loins. ‘Thou art the fruit of my other great sin,’ he wailed, ‘that burns me now as the white-hot iron of the ordeal.’ I fell upon my knees, dreading what I should hear. ‘What dost thou mean, master?’

  ‘Not master, not master, but another e’en closer,’ said he, with many groans and silences between his words: ‘I broke the sacred vows of your mother’s fresh widowhood, tempting her (weakened as she was by her sorrow) into infidelity, and refusing to wed her after. Shame was visited upon her at your birth, for you were born a full year after her husband’s death; yet none knew the culprit.’ I would have spoken, but so great was my astonishment that I choked upon the first syllable, and my mouth was as though filled with lime.

  He went on: ‘The cunning fiend had led me to her humble door as my first temptation, yet was I not truly pricked until the king’s men slew her husband but weeks later; then she came to visit me, eager to be my devoted disciple. But instead of behaving with discretion, and shutting her in a cell hidden from my sight, as the Blessed Christina was shut from the sight of the good Roger of St Alban’s, I failed to resist the temptations of the flesh, and enjoyed the pleasures of it incontinently. Thou art indeed my ill-gotten son, and now you are returned to torment me, for e’er from the beginning were you thrust upon me as penance by your mother – threatening me always in the way women do – when I would have had you cast for ever from my sight, though of my own substance!’

  6

  No words might describe my feelings at this moment; but hearing a scuffle at the rocks, I looked up, and saw the plump dame’s hideous face leering at us for an instant, before it withdrew, having heard [everything]. All natural affection, of father and son, was withered between us at birth, for that relation lay unsanctified by the proper office of matrimony: indeed, I now understood why the hermit had always seemed circumspect [cautus] with me, and in a great heaviness at times – no doubt in his heart wishing me drowned in the sea, yet never able to refuse me as a master might refuse his pupil.

  No tears came to my face, but rather, a great heat that flowed over it and made me swoon. Finding myself upon the floor of the cave, with stale bread and fish at my nose, I rose and staggered to my feet, his words rushing into the ventricles of my memory with a horrible force. Astonied was I to find him crawling upon the piled rocks, towards the light, yet unable to climb further in his profound feebleness, so that he sprawled upon them quite naked, groaning the whiles. ‘I beseech thee,’ I cried, ‘if thou art my true father, let me show thee a son’s loving-kindness, that God pardon us both for our misdeeds!’

  And so saying, I took the wretched man in my arms, and covered him into decency with my cloak, and sat with him there in the cave upon the rocks, as the Virgin held her dead Son across her knees, for he was as light as a leaf in his dying.

  We might have remained thus, full peacefully, weeping and murmuring prayers and blessings upon each other (though he could but barely speak, having exhausted his spirits), till the hour I might have left my father to God’s mercy in the waves, at his request; but for the woman who overheard us. For soon over the sea-surge I heard another clamour, wh
ich was of many men and women, come to crowd at the cave-mouth; and soon they were tearing away the rocks to see better, though none dared enter.

  Fearfully I retreated with my father to the very depths of the cave, wherein we lay upon the cold stone, in the darkness. And the voices grew with the light as the rocks were pulled away, just as the stone was pulled from Our Lord’s sepulchre: yet neither angels nor disciples were they, but common and vulgar folk, knowing not right from wrong but only feasting on their own curiosity, their cries rebounding all about us as I held my father tight.

  I knew not whether they were come to punish us for the scandal, or worship us as a miracle, for they only cried over and over as gulls screech together above a shoal or a fisherman’s boat: ‘Lo, show us, show yourselves to us, pray show us!’ And they were so many at the greater opening, several of whose faces were familiar to me in my memory, that they thickened the darkness within by shielding the sky’s light. Yet so great a respect had they for the hermit’s powers, that none ventured over the threshold: for as I learned later, they had been told that any person entering who was not of a similar holiness to the dweller within, would be shrivelled up by God’s bolt.

  Then seeing how great was the press upon the first row, and all the rocks now torn away that the broad cleft was fully as it was before, I stepped forward into view with my father in my arms, and walked towards them over the cave floor at the pace of a funeral.