The Oblate's Confession (30 page)

I scraped a little more dust into the fire-pit, making a sort of game of it, seeing how much I could work into the vent before it quit smoking; and I thought about the similar game Victricius was playing: obeying the abbot, not obeying him, a little dust goes in, a little smoke comes out. Then—as if he’d divined what I was thinking and wished to put an immediate stop to it—Victricius was suddenly beside me, slinging great banners of earth across my pit and, incidentally, my feet as well. Of course I should have been used to such discourtesy by now (if you came between the furnace master and something he wished to do, he could shove you aside as easily as a farmer might his most obstinate cow), but I wasn’t. I stepped back and watched Brother work, thinking about what I could do to him if he wasn’t careful, what I very well
might
do to him.

Not surprisingly, given the strength of Victricius’s assault, my pit quickly gave up the ghost. I expected the furnace master to turn
next to one of those that had burned out during the night (Brother being forever anxious to examine their contents), but on this occasion Victricius surprised me, beginning instead to clear a spot of ground next to the rock-pile. A small thrill ran through me:
a visit from the charcoaler!
I picked up my hoe, began to help Victricius rake the place clean. I always liked it when Stuf showed up.

In the old days, before the pestilence, the monks had made their own charcoal. I had witnessed this, could still remember the gangs of men marching off into the Great North Wood with their sharpened axes, their sledges, the lowing oxen. But it had been a long time now since the abbey could spare such numbers and we had come to depend upon men like Stuf to supply our furnace with fuel. Which, when you think about it, says a great deal about our circumstances, for normally we would never have employed a pagan, not even for work as miserable as charcoaling. Of course no one had actually come right out and told me Stuf was a pagan—then as now people seldom spoke of such things openly—but like all oblates I knew how to read the signs; and with a man like Stuf such signs were legion. Here was a fellow who never bothered to cross himself or bow his head when the Name was mentioned, a filthy inhabitant of the hills who nevertheless refused to show Victricius the respect due a solemnly-professed monk. Why Stuf had even been known to wink at me when the furnace master mispronounced a word! Yet despite this, despite the fact the man was so obvious a cur, a part of me always looked forward to his visits, looked forward to seeing someone behave so outrageously.

Brother set his shovel aside, straightened up, placed his hands on the backs of his hips and, stretching his back, surveyed the space we had cleared. An uninformed observer might have been excused for thinking there was a reason for such attentiveness, that Victricius wanted to make sure this section of yard was swept clear so he could better appreciate the size of the load Stuf would dump there; but in this such an observer would have been wrong. Stuf’s payment was based solely on the
number
of loads he delivered, their size having been predetermined by that of
the dosser we gave him to transport them in. Victricius wasn’t worried about measuring anything, he was simply vain of the appearance of his yard, didn’t like to think of even a pagan finding fault with it.

As if to emphasize this, Brother now nodded at a small drift of dust and pine needles, mimed raking it up with a hoe.

Contemptuously, I swept the stuff away.

When I looked back to see if there was anything else the good brother wanted me to do, the expression on my master’s face gave me pause and I assumed custody of the eyes. After a moment or two, Victricius’s feet moved out of my field of vision and, looking back up, I was pleased to see the danger passed, Brother already intent upon something else, kneeling by one of his pits, beginning to break apart the outer covering. Watching him, I found myself thinking (as I had before) how different the furnace master was from Father Abbot. Here were two men who both came from the same country, both spoke with the same accent, used the same peculiar gestures, yet Father’s ways always struck me as worldly, a sign of broad experience and sophistication, while in Victricius the same manners seemed proof of the opposite, that this was a man out of his depth, a foreigner unequal to the noble culture in which he found himself. And what was more, Father Abbot was considerably taller than Brother Victricius. Of course I knew I should attach no importance to this, but I could see no reason why I shouldn’t someday be tall myself; after all, Ceolwulf was.

It was as I was thinking these thoughts that Victricius’s back straightened suddenly. He cocked his head, seemed to study something in the pit before him, then bent once more to his work. With little else to do, I stepped closer, wondering what had caught the fool’s attention this time.

The ground around my master’s knees was littered with broken bits of fired earth—the remains of the pit’s covering. Looking over his shoulder, I could see that, in removing this, he had exposed an uncommonly fine layer of dark gray ash. Like a man clearing the water before he drinks, Brother was now brushing at this ash with his fingertips. At first I thought the care with which
he did this just another of my master’s pointless preoccupations, but then I noticed—at the very center of the ash—a fiery slip of color. As Victricius brushed at this, the pinkish color grew, blossomed grotesquely outward, became the dome of a child’s head; of course I knew what it really was—the furnace master always placed his pots upside down like this to conserve heat—but, still, this was the first one I had ever seen come out perfectly whole.

Taking care not to injure what he had made, Victricius pulled his pot from its bed of ashes, singing a little piece of psalmody to himself as he did so, “‘You will give me life again, you will pull me up again from the depths of the earth....’”

Instinctively, I sang the antiphon: “‘I will thank you on the lyre, my ever-faithful God, I will play the harp in your honor, Holy One of Israel.
'
”

Victricius’s head spun around, eyes wide, blinking. For a moment he looked at me as if surprised to find himself unalone, then, tentatively, he sang back: “‘My lips shall sing for joy as I play to you, and this soul of mine which...
'
”

A loud noise and a horribly painted man stood at the edge of the yard, arms back, ready to hurl a....

Stuf?

I opened my eyes again.

And it was Stuf. Stuf the charcoal-maker was standing at the edge of the yard, eyes closed, fingers massaging his forehead thoughtfully. On the ground behind him lay the dosser, a telltale cloud of dust still hanging in the air around it.

I looked back at my master, hoping to find him ready to berate the filthy pagan for scaring us so. But, typically, Victricius’s mind had already moved on to the day’s next order of business; the man climbing awkwardly to his feet, the pot still cradled in his arms.

“Why don’t you set that down first?” said Stuf. He looked at me, rolled his eyes.

I looked down, embarrassed for everyone.

When I looked back up, Victricius’s pot was nestled among the canes of the shed’s roof and Brother was once more sweeping the place he and I had already swept earlier. The charcoal-maker
seemed amused by this, the smile on his face making it clear what he thought of a man who swept clean a spot soon to be dirtied by charcoal. I liked the shells. Stuf had sewn a number of snail shells onto the front of his jerkin, their colors alternating between brown and white. The man often decorated his person in this way with things he’d found in the wood. Once he’d even shown up wearing a hat made entirely of mud and leaves. As if remembering this himself, the charcoal-maker now rubbed his forehead, looked at his hand, rubbed it again. Even relieved of his dosser, the man stood in a sort of crouch, head back, arms hanging down in front of him as if still countering the weight. I wondered what it would be like to carry such a load suspended like that across your forehead. Waldhere said it made your eyes pop out, that that was why Brother Egric’s bulged so, because he’d carried such heavy loads before coming to the monastery, but I wasn’t entirely sure I believed Waldhere about this. Still I had to admit such a weight must constrict your thoughts...which probably explained why Stuf remained so stubbornly heathen.

Apparently satisfied with the spot he had cleared for it, Victricius now indicated the charcoal-maker might empty his dosser. With some difficulty—muscles straining as he lifted the basket before his chest—Stuf did so, charcoal clattering out in a great cloud of sparkling black dust. When the dust had settled, the resulting pile appeared, as it always did, smaller than I had expected. The two men looked at each other as if they too were disappointed. Brother picked up the now-empty dosser, raised it easily above his head, shook it out over the pile. One or two stray pieces of charcoal slid out along with a final spray of dust. Brother righted the thing, stuck his head in its mouth, looked around, then tossed it aside, a smudge of soot now decorating his nose. The charcoal-maker didn’t remark upon the soot; he watched the furnace master closely. Victricius squatted down, picked up a piece of charcoal, broke it in two. Inspecting each half, he noticed something on the larger of the two and showed it to Stuf. Stuf looked at it, didn’t say anything. The furnace master waited for a moment and then, when it became clear Stuf wasn’t going to say anything, he looked again
at the piece, shrugged, tossed both halves back onto the pile. He stood up, dusted off his hands.

The charcoal-maker remained silent, eyes locked upon the furnace master.

Victricius noticed Stuf looking at him, returned the look, didn’t say anything.

“Well?”

The furnace master raised his shoulders, stuck out his lower lip. “I want to examine it more closely when Winwæd puts it away.”

“What about my board?” Stuf was supposed to receive a tabulum specifying the amount to be paid for his charcoal out of the abbey stores.

“I said I want to examine it more closely as Winwæd stacks it in the shed.”

The charcoal-maker’s eyebrows rose imploringly.

Brother Victricius didn’t say anything.

“Master, please, this is good charcoal. You know it is good
charcoal.”

“How can I know that until I’ve had time to examine it properly?”

“Master felt it with his hands, looked at it with his eyes; he is a wizard when it comes to charcoal, a sage!”

Brother smiled. “In the meantime you can bring down another load. This isn’t nearly enough.”

“But what if I have nothing to eat!”

The smile became indulgent. “Is that so?”

The charcoal-maker looked at his waist, undid the knot in his belt, tied it tight again.

“Well I’m sure Brother Almoner could find you....”

Stuf spit, his phlegm as black as his charcoal.

The furnace master didn’t say anything. He looked at the place where the charcoal-maker had spit, but he didn’t say anything. Stuf stood with his hands on his hips, a great lord disgusted with his servant, glowering at him. It always went like this, Victricius quietly standing his ground, refusing to issue a tabulum, Stuf dancing
around him, petulant and imperious one moment, fretful and obsequious the next. Of course I knew the charcoal-maker was in the wrong, that—were he a monk—he would be chastised for such immoderation, but, still, I couldn’t help being fascinated by the behavior. I wondered if it was typical of pagans, if, perhaps, having turned their backs on Christ, they had escaped other responsibilities as well, even, it seemed (if the charcoal-maker was any guide), the need to act like a grownup, to be forever quiet, humble, self-restrained.

Stuf spit again, turned away, stared off indignantly up-river. I recognized the look. Victricius held the key, the mysterious runes he scratched upon his “board,” and Stuf had finally faced the fact he could not force said key—or anything else for that matter— from the master of Redestone’s furnace. But he wouldn’t go yet. He never did. Though he had admitted defeat, Stuf would put off leaving as long as possible. I had seen other men, other visitors to the abbey, tarry like this as well. Never the villagers. They knew better. But the people who came from beyond the valley—pilgrims, beggars, the occasional traveler—seemed always to expect more of us, could never quite bring themselves to believe in our indifference to news. And so Stuf dawdled. He scratched behind a knee, toyed with his snail shells, picked up Victricius’s shovel, examined it closely. Already breaking open another pit, the furnace master ignored him. I knew he wanted me to start putting the charcoal away, but I was equally sure he wouldn’t say anything about it in front of Stuf. He was hoping the man would go away, didn’t want to give him anything else to comment upon, another excuse to linger.

Stuf finished his inspection of the shovel, set it aside, worked his shoulders as if trying to ease a stiff muscle. The snail shells made a sound. When the furnace master didn’t look up, Stuf pretended not to care. He let his eyes pass proprietorially over the yard, approving of our charcoal, questioning our ore, studying the bellows, affecting an immense knowledge of furnaces and their design. Then, as if he’d just remembered something that needed attending to, the charcoal-maker glanced back at the shed. “I’ve
seen children make better pots than that,” he declared.

Victricius couldn’t help himself: he tossed a quick glance at the pot he had so carefully placed on the shed roof.