I’d be lying, though, if I said I didn’t take a thrill from it as well. It was the joy of doing something I wasn’t supposed to, the danger each time that I might be caught.
And they did catch me eventually, though it took them many months. The problem was that there were few good hiding places to be found around the church precincts – few, at least, that I could easily reach but which no one else was likely to stumble upon. The more things I acquired, the harder it became to hide them all. The only place I found that was really large enough was the space underneath a loose floorboard in the dormitory, and that was the hoard that Master ?thelbald found. How he did so, I never learned; probably one of the other boys happened to spy me as I was depositing my latest gains, and reported me. I thought I’d been careful, but obviously not careful enough.
?thelbald confiscated everything and demanded to know where it had all come from.
I’d stolen them, I said, which wasn’t far from the truth and yet was much better than telling the truth. Thieving from the Church, selling the Host, knowing full well it would be used for profane purposes: these things were an affront to the Almighty. I didn’t like to imagine what my punishment would be if I admitted all that, and that’s why I lied.
As it was, they stripped me of my duties, taking away the robes that as ostiary I’d been entitled to wear. For forty days they made me take my lessons and eat my meals alone. They even moved me to a separate dormitory away from the other boys. They made me wear a grey penitent’s smock so that all who saw me would know of my wrongdoing. They forbade me from speaking to anyone unless so instructed by my master or another priest. During that time my daily sustenance consisted of nothing more than bread and weak ale and a single cup of goat’s milk.
Those forty days were the longest of my life. How I endured them, I don’t know, but I did, though I’ve never been able to stomach goat’s milk since. When it was over and I was allowed to rejoin my peers it was like stumbling out of doors into sunlight after being bedridden with some long illness. Certainly I was thinner at the end of that time than I’d been at the beginning, but there was one other outcome I hadn’t been expecting, which was that I suddenly had more friends than before. The more pious ones continued to hate me, of course, and took pains to avoid me, in case whatever had caused my soul to become stained should rub off on them. But others who’d previously thought me a simple country lad – pure and diligent, who kept himself to himself – saw me differently. To them I had become a dissenter, a breaker of strictures, a defier of elders, a troublemaker, and in a strange way they revered me for that.
By and large I enjoyed my newfound reputation and the friends it brought me. There was one, though, whose attention I’d rather have escaped. Wulfnoth, his name was. He was a couple of years younger than me, which I suppose would make him thirteen at the time. He looked up to me in the same way he might an elder brother, although in my eyes he was never anything more than a nuisance. He was quietly spoken but keen-witted and silver-tongued too. He trailed me like a hound, so much so that I came to detest his pox-scarred face with its thick brows and his ridiculous ears protruding like two great serving dishes stuck to the side of his head.
Had he tried, he could have been a good student, I think. He was clever enough, but easily bored, which meant he often turned his attention to other things. Usually these were small matters, such as hiding our master’s quill and stylus before a class, but not always. One summer’s morning he took some two dozen pots of honey from the storehouse and smeared their contents underneath the benches where we sat in the schoolroom. As the sun climbed higher and the day grew warmer, we were besieged by wasps, and ?thelbald was stung several times on the arm and was in too much pain to continue, which meant we had no more lessons that day.
How did I know it was him? Because he came and told me afterwards.
‘I did it,’ he said, beaming proudly as if he’d done us all a favour. He wasn’t the bragging sort, so I can only guess he was looking for approval and thought I might be the one to give it.
Instead I said he’d been foolish, and that nothing good would come of what he’d done. Sure enough one of the deacons quickly discovered what had caused the sudden plague of insects. He demanded to know who the culprit was, and when no one confessed his gaze turned upon me. I knew then that I was for it. I protested, of course, but he wouldn’t listen. He subjected me to ten strokes of the birch rod and then, straight afterwards, set me to work. He found me a pail and brush and cloth and made me clean the schoolroom from top to bottom while the stingers and the flies buzzed around my head.
‘You should have told him it was me,’ Wulfnoth said later that day, when I returned to the dormitory and gingerly sat down upon my bed. My arse was still hurting; my arms felt about to drop from my shoulders, and I was ready to collapse from the heat.