Brethren,
I send tidings of great sadness. Most of my fellow monks at Lindisfarne lie dead—victims of a fierce and savage attack from a pagan race. They came from the sea and attacked like stinging hornets, like ravening wolves; they made raids on all sides, slaying not only cattle but priests and monks. They came to the Holy church at Lindisfarne and laid all to waste, trampled the Holy places with polluted feet, dug down the altars, and bore away the treasures of the church. Some of the brethren they slew, some they carried away captive, some they drove out naked after mocking and vexing them. Some they drowned in the sea.
Our waters run with blood, our faces with tears after this unholy desecration. The cover of our great Gospel has been rent from the Holy book, but the word of the Lord remains. Look to your treasures, look to your lives, look to the sea.
In Christ,
Aelfwic
“And this is what brings you to St. Ewolda’s,” said Cyneburga, laying the letter on the table. She had been summoned from her private prayers to meet with this stranger and was not well disposed to show him sympathy.
“Yes, Mother Abbess. We received the news at Glastonbury just a few weeks ago,” said the monk. He was dressed in a traveling cloak and had arrived on foot at the abbey that morning, along with two heavily laden servants. “Beaduwulf, our father abbot, fears a similar attack could come to Glastonbury and has instructed me to hide certain of the abbey’s treasures in foundations that are less likely to . . . interest the infidels.”
“So our poverty has attracted you,” said the abbess. “Not because you, as one of the wealthiest monasteries in the land, wish to aid us in our need but because you find our destitution convenient.”
“Such a small foundation, with so few brothers and sisters, might well avoid the grasp of these monsters,” said the monk, ignoring Cyneburga’s jab.
“Six,” said the abbess.
“Six?”
“We have six brothers and sisters—as devoted to our Lord Christ as any at Glastonbury. The only difference between our foundation and yours is that while we all hunger for righteousness, we also hunger.”
“I have not come to discuss wealth or poverty,” said the monk, throwing off his hood for the first time and rising from his somewhat stooped position to his impressive full height. “I bear relics that are beyond value and Beaduwulf has decreed that one of these shall rest with you for a time. You should show nothing but thanks and humility. You should fall on your knees before this treasure and pray to the God of your salvation, giving thanks for Beaduwulf and his generosity, giving thanks that your suffering has brought the divine into your midst. You have been chosen and yours is not to complain of poverty; yours is to say only ‘Let it be according to thy word,’ and take the blessed burden you are called to protect.”
Cyneburga had passed sixty-two years on the earth. The daughter of a traveling merchant, she had been converted to Christianity by one of the sisters of St. Ewolda’s and had entered the monastery at seventeen. She had seen almost fifty years of daily prayer and worship and had risen to the post of abbess in this foundation that, since the death of Wigbert more than two hundred years ago, had always been ruled by women, as a way to honor St. Ewolda. In all her dealings with monks and nuns over those years, in all her interactions with servants and farmers and cooks, in her meetings with priests and bishops—never had anyone spoken to her like this young monk of Glastonbury. She rose out of her chair and was opening her mouth to berate his insolence when she felt a hand on her shoulder. There was no one else in the room, and Cyneburga knew instantly it was the same hand she had felt when she stood outside the monastery as a young woman, trying to decide whether she wished to pass through that gate and commit her life to Christ. Immediately her anger melted away and she fell to her knees.
“Forgive me, brother,” she said. “I have allowed my worldly frustrations to cloud my vision of what God calls me to do. What protection we can give through the power of St. Ewolda we shall bestow upon whatever treasures Beaduwulf trusts to our care.”
“One treasure only shall rest here in your keeping, good Cyneburga, one most suited to your care, for though it may appear humble and of little worth, it is nonetheless touched by God.”
“Show me this treasure,” said Cyneburga, “and I will protect it, even with my life.”
“Beaduwulf thanks you, Mother Abbess. By taking this charge you are serving God as few will ever have the chance to do.”
The monk stepped out of the small hut in which he and the abbess had been speaking and summoned the two servants, who stood waiting in the yard. It took no more than a few minutes to unpack the treasure that had been sent from its home in Glastonbury and set it before the abbess.
“This is not what I expected,” said Cyneburga.
“The gifts of God rarely are,” replied the monk.
April 12, 2016
THIRD TUESDAY AFTER EASTER
The first time he saw her, he mistook her for a statue. The dean had mentioned the idea of a sculpture show in the chapter house, and when Arthur noticed the door standing open, he glanced in and saw a figure, silhouetted in the afternoon light that streamed down from above. Not the Virgin Mary, he thought, but perhaps Helen—Helen the mother of Constantine and discoverer of the True Cross. Her face was raised to the light, and her eyes seemed fixed on the empty stone panel above the bishop’s seat. And then she moved. Arthur felt he should look away, that he had intruded on some moment of intimacy, but something about the way the sun gleamed in her loose blond hair and the puzzled expression on her face as she consulted the worn booklet in her hand held him entranced. Who was she? Not some rare tourist—the chapter house was open to the public only on Sundays. She must be someone with permission from the dean to stand immobile in beams of sunlight. Arthur was just about to back away and head toward the library when she spoke.
“I don’t suppose you know where the painting is?” she said calmly, as if she were continuing a conversation already begun rather than turning to confront a man staring at her from the doorway.
“The . . . the painting?” said Arthur, stepping from the shadows of the cloister into the light of the chapter house.
“The portrait of Bishop Gladwyn and the Holy Grail.”
Arthur felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. How could this stranger know about Gladwyn’s portrait?