what was done was done. I resumed my work, and the daily round. The work I had once viewed with such pride and delight was dry tedium to me now, the very scratch of the pen set my teeth on edge and the words I wrote held no meaning. Prayer became merely a way to escape the scriptorium; and though I knelt in the chapel with all the rest, I never opened my heart to God.
How could I pray? I knew God for what he was: a monstrous betrayer of souls-demanding honour and worship and obedience, demanding life and love, promising protection and healing and sanctuary. And then, when need was greatest and the longed-for sanctuary required…nothing. In return for years of slavish devotion, he gave nothing, less than nothing, in return.
Each day as I knelt in the chapel, listening to the simple brothers speak their prayers, I thought, Lies! All lies! How can anyone believe a single word?
Thus, the wounded animal that was my heart sickened and began devouring itself in its misery. I sank further and further beneath the weight of malignant grief. When Brynach and Ddewi departed to return to their abbey in Britain, I did not see them away or say farewell. Dugal chastised me about it later, but I did not care. I was a world of woe unto myself, and the days passed unnoticed and unheeded.
One day I rose to see that winter had come again to Kells, and realized I had not been aware of the season's change. The greyness of the land and sky was the greyness of my own benighted soul. Standing before my cell, I looked out across the muddy yard to our little church and recoiled in disgust. After the glittering splendour of Hagia Sophia and the towers of the Great Mosq, our rude stone structure appeared a mean, ill-made thing. I looked around at all the places I had once thought sublime in their humble simplicity, and found them coarse, ugly, vulgar, and repugnant against the glowing reality of all I had seen and done in Byzantium.
I realized then, to my horror, that the shining verity of my memory was swiftly receding, replaced by emptiness, by a gathering gloom of shadows moving in an ever-increasing void. Soon there would be nothing left- soon not even the shadows would remain, and the darkness would be complete.
Oh, but once my memories had pulsed with the blood-heat of life. In desperation, I forced myself to recall that once I had walked with kings and conversed in languages never heard in this land. Once I had stood at the prow of a Sea Wolf ship and sailed oceans unknown to seamen here. I had ridden horses through desert lands, and dined on exotic foods in Arab tents. I had roamed Constantinople's fabled streets, and bowed before the Holy Roman Emperor's throne. I had been a slave, a spy, a sailor. Advisor and confidant of lords, I had served Arabs, Byzantines, and barbarians. I had worn a captive's rags, and the silken robes of a Sarazen prince. Once I had held a jewelled knife and taken a life with my own hand. Yes, and once I had held a loving woman in my arms and kissed her warm and willing lips.
Would that I had died in Byzantium!
Death would have been far, far better than the gnawing, aching emptiness that was now my life. I bent my head and moaned for the hopelessness of it. That night, I went for the last time to my confessor's hut.
77
I can stay here no longer,' I told him, hopelessness making me blunt.
'Sure, you surprise me, Aidan. I thought you had left us long ago,' Ruadh replied, then motioned me into his cell and bade me sit. Lowering himself into his chair, he pressed his hands together and asked, 'What did you expect to find?'
His question, like his placid demeanour, took me unawares; I had to ask him to repeat himself, for I was not certain I had heard properly.
'Your pilgrimage, Aidan-what did you expect to find in Byzantium?'
'Truly?' I asked, provoked by his subtle insinuation that I was somehow to blame for my misery. 'I expected to meet my death,' I answered, and told him of the vision I had dreamed the night before I left.
'A curious dream, certainly,' Ruadh conceded mildly. He thought for a moment, gazing at the wooden cross on its stone shelf. 'Pilgrimage is called the White Martyrdom,' he mused. 'Yet, we say the pilgrim seeks not the place of his death, but the place of his resurrection. A curious thing to say,' he observed, 'unless the pilgrim was in some way already dead.'
He let the words do their work. Then, directing his gaze to me, he said, 'I have heard from Bryn and Dugal most of what happened. Naturally, they know very little about your sojourn with the Sea Wolves and Sarazens, but I think I understand enough from what they have told me to know how it was with you.' He smiled unexpectedly. 'Aidan, you have experienced a life which your brothers can scarce begin to imagine. You have seen more than most men could see in ten lifetimes. You have been richly blessed.'
'Blessed!' I choked on the word. 'Cursed, you mean.'
Disregarding my outburst, he continued, 'So I ask you again, what did you expect?'
'I expected God to honour his word,' I replied. 'That, at least, if nothing else. I thought I could depend on the truth. But I have learned there is no truth. The innocent are everywhere slaughtered-they die pleading for God to save them, and death takes them anyway. Faith's own guardians are inconstant liars, and Christ's holy church is a nest of vipers; the emperor, God's Co-ruler on Earth, is a vile, unholy murderer.'
'Life is a school of the spirit, Aidan,' Ruadh intoned with gentle insistence. 'Learning is our soul's requirement, and suffering our most persuasive teacher.'
'Oh, aye, it is a school,' I agreed, feeling the throbbing ache of futility. 'It is a terrible school wherein we learn harsh and bitter lessons. We begin by trusting, and learn there is no one worthy of our trust. We learn that we are all alone in this world, and our cries go unheeded. We learn that death is the only certainty. Yes, we all die: most in agony and torment, some in misery, and the fortunate few in peace, but we all die. Death is God's one answer to all our prayers.'
'Do not blaspheme, Aidan,' cautioned the secnab sternly.
'Blaspheme!' I challenged angrily. 'Why, I speak the very heart of God's own truth, brother. How is that blasphemy? We put our trust in the Lord God, and were proved fools for believing. We endured slavery and torture and death, and God lifted not a finger to save us. I saw our own blessed Bishop Cadoc hacked to pieces before my eyes and God-the God he loved and served all his days-did not so much as lift a finger to ease his suffering.'
Ruadh regarded me severely, his brow creased in disapproval. 'As he did nothing when His beloved son died on the cross,' my anamcara pointed out. 'We are closest to Christ when sharing the world's misery. Think you Jesu came to remove our pains? Wherever did you get that notion? The Lord came, not to remove our suffering, but to show us the way through it to the glory beyond. We can overcome our travails. That is the promise of the cross.'
'A promise worth as much as the empty air,' I said. 'Thirteen monks left this abbey, and only four returned. We paid a fearful price-and all for nothing! All our torment accounted for nothing, and accomplished no purpose. No good came of it. The only fortunate ones, that I can see, are the barbarians: they went out for plunder and came back wealthier than they could have imagined. At least they got what they wanted.'
Ruadh was silent for a time. 'Aidan, have you lost your faith?' he asked at last.
'I did not lose my faith-it was stolen from me,' I growled. 'God abandoned me!'
'So this is why you wish to leave,' the secnab observed. He did not try to dissuade me, and for that I was grateful. 'Do you have any idea where you might go?'
'No,' I said. 'I only know that there is no place for me here any more.'
'I think you are right,' agreed my wise anamcara gently. 'I think you should leave.'
Again, his attitude surprised me. 'Truly?'
'Oh, yes-truly. Anyone who has suffered as you have, and who feels the way you feel, should not remain here.' He regarded me with fatherly compassion. 'Winter is a hard time, however. Stay at least until the spring-until Eastertide, say.'
'And what shall I do until then?' I wondered.
'Until then,' he replied, 'you can use the time to think about what you might like to do when you leave.'
'Very well,' I agreed. It seemed a sensible plan, and I had no other. 'I will stay until the Eastertide.'
Having made the decision, life became easier for me in some ways. Sure, I did not feel such a Judas. I began looking to the coming spring and thinking where I should go and what I should do. In the end, I decided to return to
