“Why didn’t you kill him for the insult he gave Our Lord?” Mungo asked.
“I do not kill if I can possibly avoid it, and the Lord in His grace enabled me to avoid it,” I replied. “Never kill when maiming is enough; never maim when a beating is enough and never beat when a bruise is enough. We were unable to calm him with words alone, which would have been the best way, so this incident may be cast as a failure.” I considered Mungo, who was still breathing heavily with zealous anger. “But the Lord works His Plan in strange ways sometimes, Mungo. The beating I gave this man will make him more wary of picking a fight with a monk in future. His caution may turn into respect and that respect may make him prepared to listen at last to the Word of God: we may save his soul from Wodin after all, which wouldn’t have been possible if I’d killed him.”
“Could you have killed him? With your bare hands?”
“Yes,” I replied shortly, and we rejoined the others to continue our devotions in a subdued atmosphere. There was no singing now and we started by offering prayers for the salvation of the heathen Englishman.
All bar two of us slept soundly that night, tired after the exertions of the journey and the excitement of the confrontation. Mungo tossed and turned as he dreamed of a hundred different ways in which he would have punished the Englishman for his audacity and his insult. His blood-filled dreams meant that he woke tired, a little irritable and still angry at the heathen’s behaviour.
I saw again the view I’d had of Strathclyde during my coma. I was looking down on its outline from far above the world, observing its great range from where it stretched like a flagpole towards the heart of the Alba in the north, through the fertile central heartlands and on south, south through what had been and would again be Rheged and further on, across the Bay of Sands. I could feel its pride at what it had done, in holding back the English tide from the east and south and then expanding its borders beyond any precedent. The original kingdom itself was a deep red and the areas under its influence or tributary to it were a lighter, pinker shade.
As I watched, the red began to lose its intensity, to fade and be diluted. I could see a raw wound from which blood flowed, first as an intermittent trickle and then growing in strength as it became a stream, a river and finally a flood, gushing and roaring with the huge quantity of blood pouring out from the gaping, bloody maw. I knew that the injury was self-inflicted and the flow of blood threatened to pollute the world: but when it touched Iona it recoiled. It recoiled also as it touched the island of Erin and it was able to seep only slowly and slightly into Northumbria. It poured straight into the heart of Elmet and Mercia, staining them with its poisonous dye.
There were speckles of another, lighter colour: I noticed them and moved easily closer to the gaping source in the north, close to the capital at Dumbarton. As I neared the speckles grew larger, became white against the red of the foul flood and finally resolved themselves into the bodies of children being washed out of the land and into nothingness. They all had wounds where their eyes should be, as had the child in my Vision, and something else: they were all slashed from the base of their ribcage to the groin, and their innocent blood poured out to join the foul gore in which they were borne.
I pulled away in disgust and horror: the children, tens, hundreds, thousands, growing in number as I watched, poured out and I saw Strathclyde’s outlines shiver and wrinkle: the whole kingdom started to collapse, folding in and retreating like a deflating bladder. In time it was reduced to nothing, less than a memory, a legend and a story of fear to frighten misbehaving children, until even that power was gone, into oblivion, loss and void.
“Remember. Remember. Remember the children.”
The remainder of the night I slept soundly and awoke before dawn, rested and refreshed. I remembered the dream clearly. It hadn’t been my normal Sight but I knew it for a true Vision: the parting voice confirmed it. Before I joined my brothers for our worship I offered a quiet prayer to God in my heart. I apologised for the impatience that had nearly drowned me and asked for guidance in discovering what went on at the heart of Strathclyde.
“Would you see a sign? Will nothing less satisfy you?” asked Padhraig. I could make no answer. “Events are unfolding as they should. You must fulfil your purpose. Don’t expect everything to be done for you.”
The Vision retreated as suddenly as it had intruded, leaving just a slight throbbing at my temples rather than a full-blown headache.
“Breakfast time,” I said to Cuthbert and the greatest evangelist of the age followed as meek as lamb.
After breakfast we set off on the last leg to Whitby. There was one more great river to cross, the Tees, and again it took over an hour before we were all ferried safely over. Thereafter we made good time through the rolling countryside. We took the coastal route along the undulating landscape, which ended so abruptly and dramatically in cliffs that plunged a hundred feet to the grumbling sea below. We made our way rapidly, cantering easily across the level ground between the rover-carved inlets.
We made a fine sight, riding out through lightly-wooded country in a sunny Spring morning. The air was sharp, the road was clear and, for the moment, we hadn’t a care in the World. Colman, a cheerful soul anyway, smiled in delight at the beauty of the day. His good spirits spread throughout the company until even Cuthbert, with all his turmoil, was moved to smile. Colman dropped back to ride alongside me and my shadow.
“Do you know a psalm, Cuthbert, a cheerful one that’s in keeping with the beauty of the day?” Cuthbert looked to me.
“Tell me what to do,” he said.
“Do you know any cheerful psalms?” I responded.
“Yes, of course.”
“Lead us then, I pray you: but make it happy. No mention of the valley of the shadow on this beautiful morning.” Colman smiled. Again Cuthbert looked to me and again I encouraged him. He started, hesitantly, to sing in a resonant baritone the twenty-fourth psalm, which was about as cheerful as he got.
After the first line, those who knew it joined in: the rest listened and learned. Next time it was sung the chorus would be swollen with the voices of these who had heard it just the once but would remember as if it had been dinned into their heads a hundred times.