Richard Blake - The Sword of Damascus

Mine was hardly luxurious, but this place was bleak to the point of uninhabited. The cot was of bare boards. The one blanket was folded ostentatiously on the table, which was devoid of writing materials. There was a wooden cross hung on the wall. That was just beside the window – which was wide-sodding-open to the courtyard.

‘God-bothering shitbag!’ I snarled softly. Little wonder it was always so cold. ‘No consideration for others,’ I muttered again. ‘Just self, self, self.’ I thought of pulling the shutters to. Then again, Cuthbert would only reopen them, and wouldn’t take kindly to the attack on his humility. I looked round the room. It really was bare. I couldn’t see so much as a teaching note, let alone a penknife. I could feel the advance warnings of another shivering attack, and was about to go when I saw the box. The candle was at the far side of the room, and the box was the same colour as the bed boards under which it had been pushed. It’s more of a surprise that I saw it at all than that I’d almost missed it. I stared at it a moment, wondering if it was worth the effort of bending down. But old habits die hard. If something was worth any degree of concealment, it was worth looking at. I opened the wind shield and pressed the candle into shape until its flame was clear. Setting it on the edge of the bed, I bent creakily forward and pulled the box into the open. About fifteen inches square, it had been adapted from some original use that I couldn’t guess. There was no lid. Instead, a mass of stained rags covered whatever lay within. I sat carefully down on the floor. Taking care not to disturb any arrangement that might have been methodical, I lifted out the rags so far as possible in a single mass.

Oh, joy! I hadn’t been so lucky with snooping since that time in Ctesiphon when, got up as a Nestorian bishop, I let myself into the diplomatic archive and found those letters that helped us win the Persian War. First thing I saw was a dildo. It was a big, alarming thing – twelve inches of finely stitched leather over a thick wooden dowel. I picked it up and sniffed. It had the smell of recent use. I sniggered and blotted the cold out of mind. I’d think about this thing stuffed up his arse as often as I saw Cuthbert in prayers. The way he walked about so stiffly, perhaps he had it with him in prayers. Remembering its position in the box, I put it on the floor. Ditto with the many-headed whip coiled up beside the dildo. That showed signs of less frequent use. Underneath was a little book of parchment sheets sewn together. There was no name or other details on the binding. I opened it at random and held it up to get what help there was from the guttering flame of the candle. It was the buggery small writing you get on parchment, and I thought at first it was beyond my old eyes. But I squinted hard and found a distance where the neat lines of blurriness resolved themselves into something legible:

Puer decens decor floris gemma micans uelis noris quia tui decus oris fuit mihi fax amoris…

So it went on in a paean of love to some unnamed boy. As it didn’t even try to keep to any of the quantitative rules, I’ll not call it poetry. Still, it had a nice accentual rhythm, and the end-rhymes were interesting. Was this something Cuthbert had picked up on his travels before settling in Jarrow? Was it his own work? Hard to say. The script had a vaguely English look about it, and Cuthbert was a native. One thing, though, I could say, was that he’d have every word of this stuff whispered back to him the next time we sat together in prayers. That would wipe the pious look off his face.

I carried on looking into the box. The revelations were not exhausted. There was a bag of silver coins. They were the crude, heavily clipped money issued by the French kings. I counted thirty of them. I’d learned all I needed to know about Cuthbert’s vow of celibacy. So much now, I’d found, for his vow of poverty.

Then, right at the bottom of the box, hidden under more of those disgusting rags, I found a canvas document pouch. Weighing about half a pound, it had once been sealed. It reminded me strongly of the pouches used in the Empire for sending out confidential instructions to provincial governors or generals in the field. The seals were now cut away. In their place, the pouch was closed with a set of tight knots. I pressed it all over, trying to guess the nature of the documents it contained. Of course, I didn’t get much further than knowing they were written on parchment. Given time, I could get the knots undone. Getting them retied would be the problem. My hands might still be up to that sort of work – but not here, not now. I’d keep quiet for the moment, I decided, on the poetry. Instead, I’d come back with Wilfred. I knew he’d have scruples about snooping. I also knew I could get round those easily enough. I’d already lectured him half to death about a historian’s need for an enquiring mind.

I was just about to put everything back as I’d found it when I heard voices in the corridor outside. Oh shit! I thought. It was Cuthbert, back already.

There was a time when I’d have heard the voices long before they were directly outside. But age is a terrible thing. There were perhaps four beats of my rather uncertain heart between hearing the voices and hearing the rattle of a hand on the latch. There wasn’t time to squeeze myself under the bed. Even if I could get under there – some doubt to put it mildly – and then not wheeze away like a snuffling hog, getting out would surely be beyond me.

I thought of trying my confused act when the door opened. Looking blank and talking nonsense had got me out of trouble more than once during my escape from the Empire, and again on the roads through France. Or perhaps I should just heave myself up and confront them. More fun to do this later – but now might have its enjoyable side.

But the hand rattled the latch and then pulled back. Cuthbert was standing outside in deep conversation. I turned my good ear towards the door and strained to hear what was said. Gradually, the muffled whispering resolved itself into the jumbling of Latin with English that even the foreign monks have taken to using.

‘You saw it? You saw it with your own eyes?’ he was asking in a hushed but exalted tone. ‘You saw the knife held aloft? You saw the spurting of blood and heard the long, terrified scream? You saw the bright, hopeful manhood severed from the body? You saw it held before terrified, barely comprehending eyes?’

‘No, Master,’ came the mournful reply. It was Edward. His own voice was coming on to break, and I’d have known it anywhere. ‘The Old One got Brother Joseph to put an arrow in his heart before the knife could fall. I heard My Lord Abbot call that a sin,’ he added.

‘Sinful indeed!’ said Cuthbert, now indignant. His hand brushed the latch again. I braced myself for the effort of getting up. But the door remained shut. ‘To every one of us,’ he said, in his lecturing voice, ‘God has appointed a certain end. We must each of us face our end with cheerful faith in the love of Jesus Christ. For anyone to frustrate that end is a damnable sin – utterly damnable. I thank you, boy, for telling me about the sin and its attendant circumstances. The sin I will take up first thing in the morning with Benedict himself. His indulgence of Brother Aelric’s ways grows increasingly scandalous. This must end in any event. But you have now given me a most opportune means of smoothing any scruples in My Lord Abbot’s heart.

‘But let us turn back to the attendant circumstances. You saw the slitting of the belly and the pulling out of intestines. Was there much blood? Did the boy scream? Was there a cloth soaked in vinegar held to his face?’

From the tone of Edward’s answer, I now had no doubt it had been wank on his sleeve. Next time the lazy wretch misconstrued Cicero, I’d have the arse off him so viciously he wouldn’t sit down for a month of Sundays. For the moment, though, he was getting me out of trouble with Cuthbert. That door hadn’t yet opened, and probably wouldn’t.