Father Aelfden thinks of possible explanations

Father Aelfden had hoped to take a short nap on the bench before the brothers returned from their work. He should have known that sleep would not come to him today.

He would pass the entire night in a church, as he always did on this most liminal night of the year, but in this valley, he was not even certain that he would be safe in the chapel.

Last year on this night, the entire church had, in the words of the Duke, erupted. It was also the night on which Aelfden himself had returned to these hills, and the night on which the holy relic of Saint Catherine had been brought to the kingdom.

There were many possible explanations for what had happened that night, but although Father Aelfden was sophisticated enough of spirit to admit that several of them might simultaneously be true, he had come to believe what Father Brude had first revealed to him: the saint had granted them a miracle and saved them from some evil.

Now the strange church with its legends and its flickering lights was no more, and the relic of the saint reposed in the chapel at the castle, awaiting its place in the abbey church. The relic of the saint abode in the valley, and the protection of God lay over it.

And yet Father Aelfden never let the sun set without reciting a prayer of protection against demons, and on this night most of all, when, it seemed to him, he could almost hear the Unseen howling at the very gates of the Seen.

The door opened suddenly, and Aelfden was so lost in these dark thoughts that a cry was startled out of him.

It was only Brother Myrddin. “Good afternoon, Father,” he said with his peaceable smile. “I’m sorry to wake you.”

“Good afternoon, Brother,” Aelfden said wearily. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

Aelfden found Brother Myrddin rather too sociable for a monk, but there was no doubt he had a way with the people he met. He seemed to leave a trail of hope and faith behind him. Aelfden did not know why the man had not become a priest: he was certainly more suited for tending to a parish than was Aelfden himself.

But Aelfden, who was not sociable in the least, found him exhausting. He decided at that moment that tomorrow morning’s reading from the Rule of Saint Benedict would be the sixth chapter: “On the Spirit of Silence.”

“I finished early,” Myrddin explained without having been asked, “and Brother Fergus didn’t need any help, and Brother Mungo is already cleaning up. So I chose to read until dinner.”

“That is acceptable, if the reading is constructive. What will you choose?”

“I shall read from the very Psalms. We feel a special need for the Lord’s protection today, the other brothers and I,” he said sheepishly. “It seems an ill-​​favored day to us Celts – even though we are all Christians now.”

“It’s true, you’re all Celts, aren’t you?” Aelfden sighed.

He was learning that the Celtic Church was not quite the same as the stolid Church of the continent. The Celts seemed not to have lost the sense of the Unseen, and while it was something of a comfort to him to be surrounded by men who did not scoff at the idea of demons, it was at times disturbing to be surrounded by men who so readily believed in them.

“To the ancient people, this was the last day of the bright half of the year,” Myrddin said. “After the sun sets tonight, it is the dark time. Or would be, if we were still pagans.”

“But since we are not,” Aelfden said patiently, “we may merely look forward to the vigil tonight and Hallowmas tomorrow.

“That is so. But I think I would not sleep even if we did not have the vigil,” Myrddin smiled confidingly.

“It is ancient superstition, Brother.”

Aelfden did not know quite what Myrddin had in mind. He was speaking as much to himself as to the monk, and so he spoke to his own fears. But Myrddin seemed to share them.

“But you have seen demons before, Father, which is what makes us afraid.”

“There is no reason to be afraid. We put our trust in the protection of the Lord.”

“But what do they look like?”

Aelfden scowled. “Is it out of idle curiosity that you ask?”

“But how would we recognize them in our midst?”

“You would not fail to recognize them, Brother. The one I saw was all black and had wings.”

“But what about the others?”

Aelfden stared. “What others?”

“The others that you saw.”

“Who ever told you that I have seen others?”

“Haven’t you?”

“Who ever told you such a story?”

“I don’t know, Father. Perhaps I imagined it. It seemed to me that someone who could speak with such authority of the Unseen must have seen it more than once.”

“You have entirely misunderstood my work if you believe that the Unseen is another word for demons.”

“I do not. Demons are merely part of it. It is everything outside the gates.”

Aelfden felt as if he was slowly being tipped off balance. “What gates?”

“The gates of the Seen.”

“What a strange thing to say,” Aelfden murmured, though he himself had thought the same thing only minutes before.

“Is it? Perhaps it is truly the same thing. The Seen and the Unseen. Just as Good and Evil are one, and Light and Dark, and so on.”

Myrddin continued smiling his placid, slightly foolish smile, as if raw blasphemy were not dripping from his lips.

“Where did you ever hear such nonsense?” Aelfden asked him. “Will you equate Good and Evil?”

“I don’t know. I must have imagined it.”

“Did someone tell you these things?”

“No, I suppose not. I can only have imagined it.”

“It is blasphemy, Brother. Poets and pagan philosophers might enjoy discussing the difference between Light and Dark, but even they would not attempt to deny the distinction between Good and Evil. Our faith reposes on it. Our Holy Bible is based on it, from the first page to the last. Our life as servants of God is dedicated to the establishment of Good and the abhorrence of Evil. If that distinction is erased, everything collapses.”

“Or erupts, one might say,” the monk nodded.

Aelfden sucked his breath in through his nose, but he tried to keep his face impassive. He did not want to lose his composure before his inferior, but the monk had such a wealth of composure just then that even blinking would have put the priest at a disadvantage.

“Brother Myrddin,” he said coldly, “I do not know whether this conversation counts as idle speech, or whether it was necessary to reveal to me the depths of your confusion. However, I am now quite certain that you have been engaged far too much in idle thought and imagination. We are only five here, but if you cannot on your own confine your thoughts to reflections on the teachings of the Lord or on the lives of the saints, then I shall assign one of you to read to the others while your hands are busy with work and your minds are not. But you must see that this would be a hindrance in getting that work done, do you not?”

“Yes, Father.” The monk was no longer smiling.

“Now, if you say that Brother Mungo and Brother Fergus have finished their work or nearly so, I should like you to call them here, and Brother Columba if he is not busy. We shall have a special reading before dinner, led by me, and I hope that you will pay attention.”

“Yes, Father,” the monk said and bowed his head humbly before going out.

Aelfden waited until the sound of Myrddin’s sandals in the gravel outside had faded, and then he let out his breath all at once.

He reminded himself that his nephews and nieces had occasionally accused him of muttering to himself in his sleep. Surely that was the only possible explanation. For weeks he had been sleeping in this chamber with the monks.

He would have to ask the King to hurry work on the dormitory, that he might have a chamber of his own. He did not know what secrets he might already have told. He would not be surprised to learn he had said things that even he wasn’t aware he knew.