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  GODRIC

  Frederick Buechner

  1980

  Of Godric, his friends, and Reginald.

  FIVE friends I had, and two of them snakes. Tune and Fairweather they were, thick round as a man's arm, my bedmates and playfellows, keepers of my skimped hearth and hermit's heart till in a grim pet I bade them go that day and nevermore to come again, nevermore to hiss their snakelove when they saw me drawing near or coil themselves for warmth about my shaggy legs. They went. They never came again.

  I spied them now and then, puddling my way home like a drowned man from dark Wear with my ballocks shriveled to beansize in their sack and Old One eye scarce a barnacle's length clear of my belly and crying a mercy. It was him as I sought in freezing Wear to teach a lesson that he never learned nor has to this day learned though wiser, you'd think, for sixty winters' dunking in bone-chilling, treacherous Wear. Not him. I would spy my gentle Tune and watchdog, firetooth Fairweather watching me as still as death in the long grass or under a stone as I hied home sodden on cracked feet, but none of us ever let on that we were seeing what we saw until we saw no longer. I miss them no more or hardly do, past most such sweet grieving now at age above a hundred if I've got time straight for once. For old Godric's now more dead than quick, a pile of dark rags left to steam and scorch now by the fire. It's the missing them now I miss.

  That's two. The third was Roger Mouse, as stout of heart and limb as foul of mouth, plowing the stormy seas for pilfer or prize. He had an eye out ever for the willing maids, and no matter to Mouse were they flaxenlocked Dane or black Spaniard, old as earth or cherryripe for the plucking. No matter to Mouse if the deck was awash and storm in the rigging. He'd play with them at diddelydum the weather be damned and cared not a pin that the eyes of the oars were upon them. What a man was Mouse! What a sinner too was Mouse, but none was ever a fender friend, and what with all the man's great mirth, there was less room left in him for truly mortal sin than in your landlocked, pennypinching chapmen working their cheerless stealth at the fairs where we peddled.

  We had rabbitfur, goosefeather, beeswax, calfskin, garlic and gauds galore. We'd load them cheap the one place and unload them dear the other for any fatrump mistress or dungfoot pilgrim with cockles in his hat that had the pence to squander. We grew rich till one fine day the Saint Esprit was ours with her sharp prow that sliced the waves like cheese. Mouse stood so high he said it blew the caps off men who stood astern when he broke wind. Godric was captain helmsman with a canny nose for weather, and captain Mouse was Godric's charm against the Evil Eye, for, mark you, Mouse's sin smacked less of evil than of larkishness the likes of which Our Lord himself could hardly help but wink at when he spied it out in whore and prodigal.

  I loved Mouse. Together we saved a Christian king from infidels and not a silver coin to split between us for our pains. Years afterward, two hundred miles and more away in my dry hut, I saw Mouse in the eye of my heart go down with Saint Esprit off the Welsh rocks. He cried out the only name he knew me by, which was not Godric, and in the ear of my heart I heard him, helpless.

  Ailred was fourth. They say as a babe he reared up like a lily in his tub and spoke the Pater Noster through nor would take of his mother's teat for the forty days and nights of Lent save Sabbaths. He grew to a sheaf of bones made fast round the middle with a monk's rope.

  The pictish king of Galloway was the devil fleshed. He had the gold eyes of a toad and a forked beard. On cold nights he'd slit a slave's belly open like a sack so he could dabble his feet in the warm bowels. He tied together the limbs of women in labor for sport and drank blood. Ailred went to him. Throned on a rock, the king was picking his teeth with the bone of a weasel when Ailred knelt and watered his shins with tears. They say a light went forth from Ailred then that blinded the king's gold eyes, and a creature was seen passing forth out of the king hung all over with bottles of the blood he'd drunk, and the king swore holy faith from that day on and took him the name of Ailred for his own. Thus with no loss of seed, or purity, my friend got him a son that day upon the rock, and Jesu a forkbeard, pictish knight though blind as a bat from that day on.

  Ailred himself they made abbot after a time at Rievaulx where so great was his meekness the fat monks vied with each other to try it till one day one of them, finding him flat in a swoon from an attack of the stone, plucked him up as weighed no more than the weight of his thin bones and cast him onto the fire. But Ailred forgave him, wouldn't you know. He'd let them harm no hair of the monk's head for the mischief he'd done. Nor was Ailred himself so much as singed.

  He visits me from time to time. You'd never take him for holy. He smells of fish, his smock hiked up to his hips and his long legs lank as a heron's as he picks his way along the banks of Wear coughing his fearsome cough.

  “Peace, Godric,” he says.

  He's all bones. Godric's all rags. They kneel there hours on end under the low thatch without a word to clutter the silence save for the prayers they heave heavenward braided together like a hawser the better to hoist the world a cat's whisker out of the muck. Only once did he do me a bad turn, and that was from love as many a bad turn's been done from before. He sent me Reginald.

  “To put your life on parchment, Godric,” Ailred says. His cough's like the splitting of wood. “To un-bushel the light of your days for the schooling of children. To set them a path to follow.” Did he but know where Godric's path has led or what sights his light has lit, he'd bushel me back fast enough. I've told Mother Reginald tales to rattle his beads and blush his fishbelly tonsure pink as a babe's bum, but he turns them all to treacle with his scratching quill. I scoop out the jakes of my remembrance, and he censes it all with his clerkish screed till it reeks of mass. He brings me broth and plovers' eggs. He freshens my straw when I foul it. If some dream shipwrecks me at night, he's there with his taper to beacon me safe to shore. Just the sight of his sheep-face gives me the cramp.

  I lie with my eyes rolled back to the whites and my jaws agape so he'll think I'm a corpse before he's dug his book from me. Often I speak to him only with the tongue of my hands which he does not understand. I have taught rats to run over him in the dark. But I suffer him. For it was lowly, gentle, dark eyed Ailred sent him.

  The fifth was Gillian. I met her on a Roman hill with Aedwen, my mother, drowsing at my side. She journeyed in our pilgrim band. At each day's end she'd bathe my feet. She crept beneath my cloak.

  I have forgotten my father's face. I have forgotten my own face when I was young. By God's mercy someday I will forget Reginald's face. But her face I'll remember ever. Gillian I will not forget.

  That's five friends, one for each of Jesu's wounds, and Godric bears their mark still on what's left of him as in their time they all bore his on them. What's friendship, when all's done, but the giving and taking of woundsWhen Godric banished Fairweather and Tune, they all three bled for it, and part of Godric snaked off too nevermore to come again. And it's Godric's flesh that Ailred's cough cleaves like an axe. And when brave Mouse went down off Wales, he bore to the bottom the cut of Godric's sharp farewell. And when Gillian vanished in a Dover wood, she took with her all but the husk of Godric's joy.

  Gentle Jesu, Mary's son, be thine the wounds that heal our wounding. Press thy bloody scars to ours that thy dear blood may flow in us and cleanse our sin.

  Be thou in us and we in thee that Godric, Gillian, Ailred, Mouse and thou may be a woundless one at last. And even Reginald if thy great mercy reach so far.

  In God's name Godric prays. Amen.

  Of the family of Godric, his youth, and a sign from the sea.

  AEDLWARD the freeman was my father, and Reginald has it that his name means Keeper of Blessedness. If so, he kept it mostly to himself, more's the pity. I pity Aedlward. If he pitied me, he
never said.

  Aedlward's face I've long since lost, but his back I can still behold. He held his head cocked sideways, and his ears stood out like handles on a pot as he strode forth from the smoke of our hut to work our own scant croft of leeks, parsley, shallots, and the like, or else my lord's wide acres. Endless was the work there was, the seeding, the spreading of dung, reaping and threshing, cutting and storing. In winter there were scythes and plows to mend, the beasts to keep, roofs to patch until your fingers froze. It seems that he was ever striding off in every way but ours so I scarcely had the time to mark the smile or scowl of him. Even the look of his eyes is gone. They were grey as the sea like mine, it's said, only full of kindness, but what matter how kind a man's eye be if he never fixes you with it long enough to learn? He had a way of whistling through his teeth like wind through wattle, and it's like wind that I Remember him. His was a power to thump doors open and shut like wind, a grey gust of a man to make flames fly and scatter chaff. But wind has no power to comfort a child or lend a strong arm to a lad whose bones are weak with growing. If Aedlward and Godric meet in Paradise, they'll meet as strangers do and never know.

  It was fear kept Aedlward from us, and next to God what he feared of all things most was an empty belly. He had good cause. He had seen poor famished folk eat rat and cat and seen grown men suckle their wives for strength enough to ferret nuts to feed them. Bitterer fare than that a man will go to when his belly starts to gnaw itself. So it was his fear we'd starve that made him starve us for that one of all things that we hungered for the most, which was the man himself.

  The man was ever leaving us. If my lord said harrow, he'd harrow, said tinker, he'd tinker or fettle he'd fettle though he was no villein bound to serve but a man born free as any man and paid the rent of our poor roof with pence. But my lord was all there was to save us if the harvest failed, so if the hens no longer sat, I think my father would have laid an egg himself to please my lord. He loved us sure, but like the bread a beggar dreams, his love could never pad the ribs or make the heart grow strong.

  I sometimes see him to this day in dreams. He sits by the hearth, his back as ever turned. His chin has fallen to his chest. He neither sleeps nor wakes. There's a sack of onions on his knee, and his hands hang dark from grubbing in the earth. I huddle close to him to turn him by his great cold ears so I can see him plain at last. But Godric's hands close ever shut on empty air, and even in his dreams that face escapes.

  But Aedwen, my mother, there's another tale. Friend of Blessedness, says scrivener Reginald, and, blessed or not, she was a friend to all. What a lass she must have been with her hair in a braid and her rosy cheeks though it's never as a lass that a man remembers the mother that bore him. I remember her leading a Christmas jig in the churchyard, though, till Tom Ball the priest flew out to scold.

  God in his wrath might keep them jigging the whole year through, Ball said, till they'd jigged to the depths of their waists in the sod. But sweetheart, have pity they went on singing all Christmas Eve till so wrought was poor Ball that he stammered it forth the next morning at mass. “Sweetheart, have pity,” he said when he should have said, “Jesu, have mercy.”

  How Aedwen stuffed her braid in her mouth at that! Or she'd cover her mirth with her hands and shake till you'd think that the fit was upon her. She did the same too when she wept so you'd never be sure which she hid with her hands, her tears or her cackling. I think there were times she herself didn't know, nor does anyone know at times. Laugh till you weep. Weep till there's nothing left but to laugh at your weeping. In the end it's all one.

  It was Burcwen, my sister, that tried her most. Burcwen had ears like Aedlward's which she bound with a cloth at night to lay them flat. It never did. She had long legs and hair in a tangle and a gap between her teeth for squirting cider or perry through if ever the whim should take her. You never knew. She could outrun, outjig, outdevil the lads, and it was lads' toil and lads' sport she fancied. She'd have none of spinning with the women and Aedwen. She loathed staining my lord's wool with woad or vermillion, and her leaves were hard and hat as tiles. Aedwen would box her big ears and Aedlward take a rope to her if he'd strength enough left from his grubbing, but it was no use. Off she'd flee to hunt coney again or bedevil the ox with his great saint's eye.

  Burcwen loved the lads, but it was like another lad herself she loved them. I think she was twelve before she learned they carried under their clothes what she herself was clean without. And when they found her flesh sweet and tried to tumble her, it sent her into a terrible fright and puzzle for thinking she wasn't a lass nor a lad either. There was nothing left for her to be but only Burcwen. So only Burcwen she was, lonely Burcwen, merry and larkish yet but in her own freaked fashion. She'd harry geese and climb high branches. She'd set the swine loose in Tom Ball's garden. She'd tease the hot lads in a way not to flame but to quench them, she thought, mocking their barnyard lust with speech ruder far than any they knew themselves how to muster. Then Aedwen would cover her face with her hands and toss to and fro like a windy tree. Brother William was Burcwen's one fast friend till brother Godric stole her off.

  Godric was older than either with a breach of years between that came of a stillbirth and several small deaths no whit less still. Aedwen had hardly been delivered of William when she waxed great with Burcwen, and the two of them grew up like finger and thumb at first. They made a wry pair. Burcwen was merry and mad. Burcwen was Burcwen. William was owlish from the day he was born.

  When William fixed you with his great round eye, you felt he knew when last you'd done the deed of darkness and the one you'd done it with and where. When Aedlward brought apples or onions back, William would count them out to the last one and any day you liked could tell the number left. And how the boy could talk!

  Words came spilling out of him before he knew their meaning, and if there was none to listen, he'd talk to his own ten toes. He didn't care a fig for what he talked about. One matter would serve him as well as another. He'd prattle of Normans or crops or weather till the spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth, and if you made a move to Flee, there'd come to his eyes a haunted look, and he'd prattle all the faster so you'd find no chink to flee him through. Words were the line that moored him to the world, I think, and he thought if ever the line should break, he'd be forever cast adrift.

  Burcwen was his chief mooring at the start. Day after day they'd sit at sundown on a stile, their faces dark against the crimson sky, and William ever buzzing in her ear. I don't think Burcwen paid much mind to what he said, but the sound alone worked some spell on her the way they say that music will on beasts. It soothed and rested her at least. It gave her peace to gather back the bits and pieces of herself the day had scattered. And I think that William scarcely listened to himself or cared if she paid heed or not, for it wasn't her heed he sought for with his words. It was herself to make fast to against the world's wild winds that sought to blow him out to sea for drowning. The jest of it was that Godric was the one that almost drowned.

  It happened thus. I was a lad of twenty odd and William and Burcwen both but children still. I was off in the fens one April day to set out snares for waterfowl not far from where the Welland flows into the Wash. A stiff breeze blew across the saltings, and the air was watery chill. I see it yet and yet see Godric seeing it as well.

  He was full of glee and daring then with a boy's heart still in the downy breast of a man. His neck hadn't thickened yet, nor his chest swelled to a run, nor his nose fleshed out to the great hook it became, but a bird's beak then. He had the seagrey eyes of Aedlward although with less of kindness in them than a bird's cold glint and cunning. His beard was sparse and short, not yet the great black pricklebush it later grew. His raven hair fell shoulderlong, and save for a skin tied round his waist, he was naked as Father Adam was before his shame. Nor yet knew Godric shame himself. A young beast, sure, but with a beast's young innocence.

  Then far out across the shingle where skycolored sand and wa
ter meet, he spied a shape. Something glittered humped and wet there like a wrecked craft's cargo or a pirate's carcase sewn with gold along the seams or something rarer yet washed up from ancient Roman times, for legend is that Caesar drained old Wash to plow like meadowland and buried treasure there. Through the shallows Godric raced, birdbeaked, his arms stretched out like wings. Splashing silver spray chest high, he was soaked to the bone but never even felt the chill, his blood so full of flame. It was only a fish when he reached it, but ah, such a fish it was!

  Blackbacked and blunt of snout, it lay on its side with its belly glinting in the sun like pearl. Its mouth grinned wide in welcome. Its porpoise eyes were glazed and gay in death. Salted down, it would have served to feed a family all through spring or more, so Godric with his knife set in to gutting it. This was no easy task, for the fish was longer than a man and of a heft to match. Godric's blade was slight, and just to cut the thews and bones that held the head took time. Thus he did not mark the freshening of the breeze and the tide's swift turning till he glanced to find himself upon a spit of sand ringed round with scudding waves.

  But still there was much work to do. He scoured the empty belly clean with brine. He lopped the tail and great three cornered fin. At last he was left with a hundredweight of fillet which he laid across his shoulders so that like a bishop's stole it hung down low to either side. Then up to his breast in surf he started for the shore.

  It boiled him like a turnip in a broth. It knocked him off his feet and pounded him. When he opened up his mouth to cry, it filled his mouth. His burden dragged him under, yet he would not let it go, for though the deep churned dark about him, still deeper in his heart he saw that porpoise eye so blithe in death and heard its voice, or so he thought, say, “Take and eat me, Godric, to thy soul's delight. Hold fast to him who gave his life for thee and thine.” Godric's breath then failed him. He was sucked down by the tide.