The Rood and the Torc Page 8

  “And you, brother Kristinge,” she said, turning her eyes on the younger monk, making his flush deepen. “Not Irish, nor a Celt, I should think. There is something Norse in your blood. Swedish, perhaps? Or a Dane?”

  At that moment, they found themselves at the edge of a small garden where the monks were experimenting with a cultivated variety of pea. Most of the plants had been harvested, but some pods remained on the vines to dry and seed for the next year’s crop. “Frisian, mother Telchild,” Kristinge answered.

  “Another from the Frisii? Yet I am not wholly wrong that you have more Northern blood.”

  “My mother was a Dane,” Kristinge replied. Her questions had caught him off guard. They were at once both casual and probing, comforting and intimidating. He kept his answers brief.

  “A strange marriage even in this day,” Telchild said. Again her gentle manner and soft voice belied the shrewdness of her guesses. “You must, then, be of the blood of a clan-chief?”

  “My father was King Finn,” Kristinge answered. “And my mother the queen Hildeburh, a Danish princess.” Again he found himself blushing. He had already revealed far more than he had intended. Not only Willimond but Walbert himself had warned him against making his heritage widely known. Yet something about this abbess disarmed him. Did he have to fear her? Even if he did, he could not imagine telling her anything less than she asked. He ignored Willimond’s warning glances and went on. “My brother was Finnlaf, who was killed in battle with the Danes.” How odd those words sounded on his tongue. My father… my mother… my brother… He wondered as he spoke how much Telchild knew of them.

  “A tragic tale,” the abbess said, answering his unspoken question. Their eyes met and she guessed his thoughts. “Yes. It is a tale that is known among us. A wandering poet came to Paris not long after the fall of Finnsburg and told us a long lay of the death of Finn and Finnlaf. Daelga was his name.”

  Kristinge took a sharp breath and found his heart racing at the mention of the old bard. Beside him, Willimond was also listening intently.

  “He told the tale only once,” Telchild went on, “as though he needed to tell it more than we needed to hear it. And then he entered the monastery and gave up the life of a bard. He died a monk just a few months later.”

  There was a long, somber silence. “Is his grave nearby?” Willimond finally asked. Kristinge noticed tears in the older monk’s eyes, and then realized that he himself was crying.

  “Yes,” Telchild answered. “You knew him then? I will see that you are taken to the grave later.”

  “Thank you,” Willimond said. Then they fell silent. A short time later, Begga returned with a hot loaf of bread and a flask of wine.

  “We will break bread together,” Telchild said. She administered the sacred elements of communion in silence, and the three of them together entered into the Mystery. Only after the sacrament was over did they continue the conversation.

  “You have a message for me from Walbert?” the abbess finally asked.

  Kristinge had already forgotten about the messages he carried, but he nodded in response to her questions. He removed from his pack a small scroll and handed it to Telchild. She unrolled it and read it through silently. Kristinge avoided the temptation of trying to lean over and read it. He was glad when Telchild explained. “A great surprise.”

  “What is it?” Kristinge asked.

  “Walbert asks if we might send some sisters to Luxeuil to found a monastery for women.” The contents of the message left Kristinge somewhat disappointed. After the recent death of Sigibert III, and all of his own questions about his heritage as the son of Finn, he expected the letter to have political implications. Still, he listened as Telchild went on. The letter was obviously interesting to her. “He says the need there is great among the mountain peasants as well as the nearby aristocracy.” Her eyes glanced heavenward as she pondered the situation. “I shall have to pray about this. There are some sisters here who are capable of the task. And yet…” she paused. “Well there are some wealthy patrons who would like abbeys in other regions. Queen Balthild herself would have us found a monastery at Chelles. I wonder if we would find the necessary patronage in a place so removed as Luxeuil. So far from anything.” Then she shook her head and shrugged, causing a light rippling of her long hair. In the bright afternoon sun, Kristinge could now see the remnants of Irish red in her tresses. “But come. This is not a concern of yours. And it is time we returned.” She rose, and Kristinge and Willimond stood with her.

  “Unless I have forgotten,” she said as they walked, “the poet Daelga said nothing about Finn having a second son.” She didn’t wait for a response. “Friesland is a small kingdom. It is too small for two kings. I wonder if even Francia might be better off had Clovis not divided the kingdom among so many sons. So your story comes as no wonder. Perhaps Daelga himself did not even know of you. I should think it wise, then,” she said, turning now directly toward Kristinge, “if you take care to keep the same secret. At least until you know more where you stand in that realm. I understand you are going there now; that you will not be returning to Luxeuil.”

  “You are very astute,” Willimond said, answering for Kristinge.

  “Ah,” she laughed. “Not so. Walbert mentioned in his letter what your destination was, and asked if you might be housed here and given some provision for your journey. Two requests I would hope Brother Agilbert will already have seen to without any request from Walbert. Though with Agilbert, one cannot always be sure.”

  They were nearly around the wall now, and as they approached the front entrance Kristinge saw a young woman sitting on the hard ground beside the gate. She was dressed in a tattered and filthy robe, and her wild bright red hair hung limply all around, half covering her face. Her forehead and hands were smudged in dirt, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her breasts as she rocked from side to side. It was an odd scene at a monastery, and Kristinge found himself staring at her, unable to take his eyes off. A local peasant looking for charity? he wondered.

  “Sister Osanne,” Telchild explained in a low voice.

  “Sister?” Kristinge mumbled in surprise. A monk?

  “Yes,” Telchild affirmed. In a soft whisper, she explained Osanne’s story as they approached. “She was an Irish princess, the youngest of three. When she decided to dedicate herself to the Lord at an early age, her pagan parents were greatly angered. They refused. Against her objections, they betrothed her to a wicked Frankish prince named Ebroin—a scoundrel in the service of King Clovis. Osanne had no choice. But when he violated her weeks before their wedding, she escaped from him and fled here.”

  “Is she—?” Kristinge paused, unsure how to ask.

  “Ill of mind? Is that the phrase you seek?” Telchild responded. “Yes. She has not yet recovered from what she was put through. At times she is very lucid, though still somber. At other times, she gets like this. All we can do is love her and be patient. I believe, though, that God will one day heal her mind and she will be a great saint. Certainly she will know compassion.”

  As they approached the gate, Kristinge watched Osanne closely, though he tried hard not to stare. He heard her mumbling to herself.

  “And Kristinge,” Telchild added, stopping him with a touch on his shoulder. She looked directly into his eyes now. “We believe that she is also a prophetess.”

  As if on cue, Osanne lifted her head. Her candle eyes flickered at the sight of the approaching group, then turned to Kristinge and grew brighter. He returned her look, mesmerized now by the mystery that surrounded her. Her hair, matted as it was and filled with leaves, still looked soft. For the first time, he realized how young she was. Despite her haunted expression, she couldn’t have been older than he was. From her eyes, he guessed she was even younger, only sixteen. He remembered his own mother, and the young children of Lopystre whom he had grown up playing with—the girl Blostma who had told him bedtime stories as a child. He remembered the young chieftain’s daughter to who
m he had innocently sung many years ago. Kristinge had a sudden longing to lift Osanne in his arms. When she called him, he obeyed.

  “You,” she said, her eyes glittering at Kristinge as her right hand flashed out in a pointing gesture that was slightly off target. “Sit.” Kristinge looked over at the abbess for council. Her nod told him to obey. He turned back to the former princess. “Sit,” she said again. He dropped hesitantly to his knees. What was he to think of this? A prophetess? Yet he consented. Osanne was looking in his eyes now, her orbs flashing with some hidden gift. “Closer,” she whispered. He inched forward on his knees. His muscles tensed as she put her hands on his forehead, but he did not pull away. She held him for a moment, then stroked his eyes shut with her fingers. He began to relax in her touch, but almost at once she cried out in pain. Kristinge winced and tried to pull away, but her grip on his face was firm. For a brief second, he was afraid she was going to poke out his eyes. “The pain. The pain,” she moaned. “Fire everywhere. Flames and destruction. Oh the women. And the church. The church, too, is in flames.”

  Kristinge recoiled, but she did not let go. “It is passed. Ashes, now. All ashes. The village lies in ruins. Black. Nothing remains. The angel has departed,” she shuttered, then sighed as if in great anguish of sorrow. An instant later, however, she began again. “But no. I see another has returned. A bright beacon in the darkness. Kings and princes. A wound ring of shining gold. A new church. It rises from the ashes. It grows and grows. Oh the light! It shines before kings. Throughout the nation.” She sighed again. “Ah. But it is not you. A new church. But no. Not you. You will build no church. One who comes after you will build it. You will build no church. No church. You are just a voice crying in the wilderness. ‘Prepare the way.’ Yes. You are the one who will go ahead. You will prepare the way for ones who come after you. I see you laying the stones around the Cornerstone. Setting the foundation. But the one who comes after will build. He will build. And you… you…” she shivered and fell silent, rocking back and forth. As quickly as she had called him, she removed her hands from Kristinge’s head and wrapped her arms once more about her body. Her eyes were closed.

  Wait, Kristinge wanted to shout. She had touched a nerve. What do you mean? How was he returning to Friesland? As a monk or king? What did she mean he was not the one who would build a church? Was he to wear the torc instead? Was that the shining gold? You can’t do this, he protested. He looked to Telchild for help, but she offered none. A new question arose in his mind now. Was this really a prophecy? Or just the ravings of an unwell mind? Kristinge already had too many questions to wrestle with, without more being piled on. He turned to Willimond, but his old mentor had nothing to offer either. He looked back at Osanne. She was rocking back and forth, staring ahead, eyes on some unknown distance, leaving Kristinge to wonder. Not for the last time, he began to envy the simplicity to be found in weeding a garden.

  CHAPTER 5:

  The Long-Haired King

  Several days later many hundreds of leagues away, as Kristinge lay on the mead bench of Frotha’s hall trying unsuccessfully to sleep, the memory of that incident still brought unease. He could not ignore it. The encounter with the princess-turned-prophetess Osanne had shaken him more than anything that had happened since his departure from Luxeuil. It terrified him. Fire and ashes? Was that what she had seen? What had it meant? Had she been looking into Kristinge’s past? Or into his future? And what had she seen at the end that had so frightened her? Why did he feel the same fear? He had tried to forget what she said, to convince himself that there was no truth to her vision. After all, not even the abbess had known the meaning of what Osanne foresaw. But still the memory of her touch on his face was painful.

  Nor had the unexpected meeting with Osanne been his only encounter near Paris. It was the first of many. After so many years cloistered at Luxeuil, the world had suddenly come crashing in on him. Not that Luxeuil had made any attempt at complete seclusion. It was not a hermitage, nor a monastery like those of the ancients where one might go thirty years without seeing any face save those of his fellow monks. Columbanus had not been one to flee the world. He had chosen the site of Annegray in the Vosges mountains because of the inhabitants there, not to escape them. When he and his fellow Irish monks had met robbers coming to steal their last bite of food, they had greeted them with echoes of the same charity that Christ had shown on the cross.

  Kristinge, however, had experienced little of that turmoil himself. His time at Luxeuil had been one of work and study. Raids had become infrequent, and with the departure of its founder the kings of Francia had ceased to care about the dealings of that such a small monastery. If even half the tales of Columbanus were true then life at Luxeuil had grown considerably calmer during Walbert’s tenure. Thus Kristinge been ill prepared for his own encounter with the new

  Frankish king—an encounter only too similar to those that had filled the life of Columbanus. Nor had he expected that Frankish city to be the first place he would see a face he knew, one of the few people from his Frisian past he still remembered.

  After his meeting with Osanne, the young monk had retained enough of his wits to deliver to Telchild Walbert’s messages for the other monasteries near Paris. The abbess had promised to see to their delivery, then had given Kristinge and Willimond to the keeping of Brother Agilbert who let them spend a few moments at Daelga’s grave before leading them to the men’s cloister. There, because of their robes, the guests had been treated as brothers of Jouarre and put to work. Kristinge had earned his meal not by singing but by laboring with the other monks. Yet it was work for which he had been glad, and he had fallen easily into its routine. He had almost forgotten the cathartic effect that labor had on the soul.

  Only at the end of the day did Jouarre present Kristinge with something unfamiliar. As a younger monastery, it had been founded with the Benedictine rule in mind. Monks were housed in large dormitories rather than small private cells such as those at Annegray. Between the unfamiliar environment of crowded bodies, the loud breathing, and the echoes in his ears of the strange prophetesses pronouncing his fate, Kristinge slept poorly. Had he not been once more within monastic walls, he might have risen much later. Alas, he was awaked well before dawn and by the time the sun was near to rising he had already joined Jouarre in Matins, and was ready to depart. After prayer, Agilbert led them to the gate where he provided them with a small satchel of light fare to keep them from starving over the next few days as they sought passage from Paris to Danemark. There they had found waiting for them the Abbess Telchild. Accompanying the abbess was another female monk named Beatrice. Older than Telchild by several years, she had gray wispy hair and a wrinkled face to match the wide, leathery hands that gripped several scrolls and a large satchel of goods.

  “We will walk with you,” Telchild explained. “I must speak with Queen Balthild while she is in Paris. I had hoped to start on the journey tomorrow, but we will take your presence here as God’s provision and begin the journey today instead. That is, if you will consent to allowing us to accompany you. I can give you no command.”

  “Command or no, you are more than welcome,” Willimond replied.

  Kristinge, however, had caught something else in Telchild’s comment. “The queen?”

  Now Telchild turned her smile upon Kristinge. “You are surprised?”

  “No,” Kristinge lied, not wanted to offend the abbess with any unintended insinuations. An instant later, with a blush of guilt and embarrassment, he confessed, “Yes. A little.”

  “Surprised that an abbess would be interested in speaking with the queen, or that she would be allowed to speak with the queen?”

  Both, Kristinge thought, but he did not voice his opinion aloud.

  “Balthild is a holy woman,” Telchild explained. “Come with me in Paris and you will meet her.”

  Before Kristinge could answer, Telchild had begun to walk. It could be nearly a two-day journey by foot to Paris, yet here was the abbess se
tting out as though for a morning stroll. The others took a few quick steps and joined her. When they had set a good pace, the abbess began to tell them more. “The queen was slave girl. A Saxon. Whether taken in a raid or sold by her parents, she has never told me and I do not ask. I know only that Clovis bought her for his own pleasures, and by the time he had tired of her he found that she was too wise to be easily gotten rid of. So he took her as a wife and made her his queen. Now he gets his pleasure elsewhere.”

  Kristinge looked at Telchild in surprise as she spoke. The abbess’s voice was as close to contempt as Kristinge could imagine from one so gentle and holy. Here was an unabashedly critical appraisal of a powerful king: a king who wielded enough might and influence that if he ordered the destruction of Jouarre there were none who could stand in his way. And yet Kristinge’s impression was that Telchild would have said the same thing even were Clovis present with them. Here was picture of what Columbanus must have been like—and perhaps an explanation of why the old Irish Abbot had also eventually lost the sympathies of the ruling powers of Francia.

  “Her generosity is great,” Telchild went on, oblivious of Kristinge’s thoughts. “She has used her authority and wealth to purchase the freedom of many of her fellow slaves, and she is one of Jouarre’s greatest benefactors. She has even spoken of starting a new monastery at Chelles, and I believe she will succeed, though she will get no help from the king.” Again the abbess shook her head. “Clovis thinks nothing of our work. There have been Frankish kings in the past who aided the monasteries, though most have given in the names of their queens. Even Childebert aided Columbanus for many years. But not Clovis. He would just as soon tear Jouarre down as give us a single coin. I fear little stands in his way except God himself—and Queen Balthild. I would warn you about Clovis. What they say is true; he is insane.”