Aelfden slips the scales

“…beato Joanni Baptistae, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, et vobis, fratres…”

Abbot Aelfden’s thoughts had come to rest like a lake in a valley, but the words still flowed from his mouth like a spring. He was doing what he had sworn he would never do. He was sleepwalking through a Mass.

“…peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…”

The sun had already long passed its zenith and was beginning to set behind him, but the sky was still so bright that the colored glass of the great window glared white, and the head of Saint Margaret was sparking stars.

“…Kyrie, eleison; Christe, eleison; Kyrie, eleison…”

He squinted upwards, but he needed his hands for the rite; he could not shade his eyes. He had not slept in nearly three days. His eyes were so dry that at last they began to fill with tears.

“…Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis…”

When he was a boy, he would catch his tears upon his tongue. He had liked the salty taste of them. It was the taste of blood without the iron, of sweat without the dirt, pure…

But now he was a man. He had a beard, and his tears were lost to him.

“…Tu solus Altissimus, Jesu Christe. Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris. Amen.”

At last he could turn towards the people, towards the cool shadows. With the light behind him, they would not see the tears on his face.

“Dominus vobiscum.”

“Et cum spiritu tuo.”

“Oremus.”

He was sleepwalking through a Mass. He was ashamed of himself, but it had seemed urgent that he baptize the elf today and marry these two young people. He did not know what elven magic could do, but he could not leave the elf to stand against an enemy of God without the assistance of God.

“…Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero…”

He had also promised Father Brude that he would take Nothelm Parish in his absence, and that too was a solemn affair to him. He did not know why Brude had desired it – even insisted on it – but it was enough to Aelfden that he had.

And so long as he was priest here, he would marry every couple and baptize every child himself. He had promised God and Brude both.

But so long as he was priest here, he saw, he would need to eat and sleep. Days of fasting and nights of watching could lead to a sort of beatitude when he was a young monk, but as an old priest he found it only made him sick and slow.

“…Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum…”

The unheated chapel was colder than the sunny afternoon outside, but his rivulets of tears were swelled with sweat as they flowed through the hollows of his cheeks. His vestments were heavy and hot, and he had wrapped bandages around his arms to protect the whiteness of his alb in case he were to start bleeding again.

The itching had stopped as soon as he had left the girls’ room, but his skin crawled whenever he thought of it. He would purify the room later, if he still had the strength.

He could have asked Father Brandt to do it, but then he would have to tell Brandt about his suspicions. He wanted to sleep before telling Brandt. He feared he would say too much if he did not. If only Brude were there! Brude seemed to know everything already…

“…per dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. Amen.”

Now for the baptism. With baptism, confirmation, marriage, and communion, the elf would receive four of the Holy Sacraments on the same day. It was just the sort of thing Father Brandt would wink at, and just the sort of thing Aelfden frowned upon. He had to hope that he would be permitted to sleep before Father Brandt got wind of the day’s events. If he had to explain, he might say too much…

He sleepwalked his way through the prayer. He sleepwalked his way through the exorcism. He would have sleepwalked his way through the baptism, except that he had to rouse his mind to determine whether the elf’s name had a special vocative form in Latin – and then he realized he did not know the elf’s name at all.

As he did for the baptism of infants, then, he turned to the sponsors and asked, “What is the name of this… elf?”

Aengus looked at Ethelwyn, and Ethelwyn looked at the Duchess, and the Duchess smiled prettily and blushed.

“You will have to tell us your name now, Friend,” she said. “Just as poor Mouse had to tell Wyn hers when they were married.”

“Poor Mouse?” Ethelwyn whined.

“I don’t have a name,” the elf said simply.

“You must have had one at one time,” Aelfden protested.

“I have it no longer.”

“You may take another, but you must have a name if I am to baptize you.”

“If you are leading the rite, then you must name me, Father. According to my nature.”

The elf smiled, but – exceptionally for him – it was not a teasing smile. His smile had the same mild, trusting faith with which the elf met all the mysteries of God.

Aelfden had brought more than one grown man into the Church, but he had never met one who was at once so familiar with the teachings of the Bible and yet neither believed nor resisted them. Aelfden envied him. It was as if he had been a nascent Christian all along, only waiting for a priest to come and ask him, “Credis in Deum Patrem omnipotentem?”

Aelfden realized he must have been standing dumb for a while, for little Lord Cynewulf piped up, “Can’t you think of one, Father? You should give him a saint’s name if you don’t know, like my little brother.”

The Princess giggled. “Or a dragon’s, like mine.”

“Say! That’s a goo – ” Cynewulf’s comment was cut short by a nudge from Sir Sigefrith.

Moving to the cool, shadowy front of the church had been a temporary relief, but Aelfden was beginning to sweat again. He could not remember the date. He only knew that it was the Tuesday before Lent. He had to think of a saint.

The seconds trickled slowly past, like the sweat down his back. The elf seemed to stare expectantly at him. His blind eyes glared white.

The Apostle Paul had been blinded on the road to Damascus. Paul and the elf had been born sighted and ungodly, and in their blindness they had found the way to God. This was his nature.

Aelfden lifted a hand to the elf’s high shoulder and bid him kneel. He dipped his fingers into the font. The water was so cold! He longed to thrust his arm into it up to the elbow, or both arms, and wash away the blood that soaked the bandages. He longed to plunge his face into the coolness of it and wash away the sweat and tears.

Though he knew the vocative of this name by heart, he dragged his delirious mind back to the sacred duty at hand. There would be many Masses in the lives of himself and of these people, but the elf would only be baptized once.

“Paule, ego baptizo te, in nomine Patris…”

The elf, who could not see his hand coming, closed his eyes and jerked back his head when the cold water touched his brow.

“…et Filii…”

The holy water trickled down the elf’s face, purer than tears.

“…et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

The words pronounced, Aelfden’s mind slipped back into its trance, though his exhausted body quaked with the despair of knowing he still had to get through three sacraments before he could hope to sleep.

The elf’s body was young and alert and graceful, and he stood, smiling again, and opened his eyes.

Aelfden thought dreamily that he had never noticed how blue they were, or how bright, or how they sparkled like stars.

“Father!” the elf gasped.

There had fallen from his eyes as it had been scales: he had received sight, and arisen, and been baptized.