Father Aelfden hears a strange tale

Though the sun had dropped beneath the height of the hills and was low enough to light the clouds from beneath, its light was strong and golden-​​bright. From the height of Thorhold one would see that it had not yet set. Father Aelfden had come too early for Vespers. This meant that he could be alone.

He had just come from the home of a young couple he had married shortly before he had left for Rome. Shortly after he had returned he had been called upon to baptize little Aelfden, their first-​​born son. Two days ago he had attended the child’s death, and only that afternoon he had buried him.

Aelfden had no wife and no children. His own existence was a narrow thing. None of his cares were of the day-​​to-​​day variety. He did not have little, runny noses to wipe, or fields that needed tilled, or mares that threw their shoes, or a wife that scolded or nagged or kissed his thin cheek. He knew nothing of day-​​to-​​day life. Life, as he lived it through the people, was nothing but the crises of birth, marriage, sickness, and death, over and over, endlessly interleaved.

On this and many other evenings he felt a certain dragging despair. Life turned like a wheel, and at times it seemed to him that the only reason why men lived and married and sired children and died was to make it turn again.

More than a thousand years had passed since the death of Christ. At times, in his weariness, Aelfden thought the world was fit for nothing but its own end. There was nothing new under the sun. Time turned like a wheel and went nowhere. Time was the Great Illusion. Life was the Great Vanity.

He was just making up his mind to reconsider his refusal of the Duke’s invitation to dine when he heard the door open at the opposite end of the chapel. His shoulders stiffened and he heard himself sigh. He would not be alone.

The visitor entered silently, genuflected with audible difficultly, and then came walking slowly up to join him at the altar. Father Aelfden did not turn. His parishioners knew not to expect a hearty greeting from him such as they received from Father Brandt. And yet they loved him with a love born of pride in him and awe of him, none of which he felt he deserved.

But this was not one of his parishioners.

“Father Aelfden?” a soft, elderly voice murmured.

Aelfden found himself looking down at a silver-​​haired old man dressed in the simple habit of a monk, and with skin that was red and chapped from the cold.

“Brother!” he gasped.

“Brother Myrddin,” the man supplied.

“A Welshman?”

“You recognize the name, Father?” the old man smiled. “I was told you were a Dane.”

“The patron of this chapel married the daughter of a Welsh princess and has a certain interest in Welsh poetry.”

“Then he must have heard of the bard by that name.”

“If you have heard of him, then he will like to talk with you, Brother. You have come a long way, I think.”

“I have wandered for so many years that there is no distance that matters to me,” the monk chuckled. “In this space of time I could have traveled anywhere, though until now it has always seemed that I have gone nowhere.”

“There are days when I think life itself is so,” Aelfden sighed, to his astonishment. It was unlike him to confide his doubts and dark thoughts to anyone, except perhaps his fellow priests Brandt and Brude. But there was something so honest and endearing about the old man’s bright blue eyes.

“Ah, so have I sometimes thought,” the monk said, “but lately I have felt that I have had a guide leading me somewhere.”

“That is a great gift.”

“May I tell you, Father?” the monk asked humbly. “Perhaps you will know whether I have been guided, or am only a foolish old man.”

“I will hear.”

The old monk told his story, and Aelfden listened with a growing sense of wonder.

“I think you have been guided,” he said softly when Brother Myrddin had finished. “I think these are signs.”

“Of what?”

“I do not yet know. But I think you should tell this tale to the King.”