“Let us praise the Lord with song,” cried Colman, “let us rejoice in the beauty and wonder of creation. I would hear something from His new harvest: Diarmuid, sing a song of praise that your own people have created. Raise your voice now and glorify the Lord.” Diarmuid was one of the younger monks, a Scot from Dalriada. The motion of his horse made his voice uneven but even so, he sang in a pure tenor so sweetly as to lift the hearts of his companions with a song from the islands of the west, sung in the lilting rhythm familiar to me from my childhood.
So we passed a good few miles, the joy of singing lifting the spirits of nearly all. Only the face of Mungo remained dark and angry on the beautiful day. When we slowed to a trot, and then to a walk as we picked our way up another hill he brought his horse up alongside mine.
“Where did you learn that skill?”
“What skill, singing?” My mind was far away, walking over the hills of Donegal and Dalriada. Hills that were harsher than those of Northumbria but no less beautiful.
“No,” Mungo continued, irritably. “The fighting skill that enabled you to best the Englishman.” I looked into his face: his eyes were burning.
“Oh, I had another life before I was reborn. I learned many things while I wandered, lost and without hope, before I was rescued by a monk from Iona.”
“You could have killed him. Why didn’t you?”
“Who?’
“The Englishman,” Mungo said, “the brute last night who attacked our Abbott and insulted Our Lord. I would have killed him for what he did.” I glanced at him again.
“I told you why I didn’t. I have killed before, Mungo. I have killed often. I have killed Vandals and Moors in southern Spain, Christians in northern Spain and in the land of the Franks, nameless enemies in Italy and the lands of Byzantium and the far east, beyond the Middle Sea, and in Britain, too. I have killed so many and so often. I’ve had enough of killing.”
“I would have killed him if I had had your skill. It is a Gift from God and should be used for His holy work. All God’s enemies should perish and be sent urgently to stand and be judged at His great Throne,” he said obstinately.
“Maybe, then, it is just as well that the Lord has not given you the power to confront the soldier. I said last night that we may convert him to Christ. Isn’t it better to give him the chance to come to God than to send him unredeemed to the torments of Hell?”
“He trampled on the Scriptures.”
“He is a pagan and he was drunk. He knew the offence but it was aimed at us, not at the Lord.”
“We must defend the Word of the Lord against those who would defame it.”
“We must indeed do so, and spread His word wherever we can: but we must do so with love and charity, and by example. One who is converted by the sword alone will lapse as soon as the sword is taken away.”
“He is a blasphemer. He is an offence in the sight of the Lord.”
“The Lord is more than capable of taking care of Himself: ‘Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord.’ I treated him gentler than he deserved because I wish, when my time comes, to be treated more gently than I deserve, too. I fought against God’s church, remember, but I was spared. Do you not think that God would have caused the Englishman to dash his brains out against a stone, or stumble on a pitchfork in that pile of straw if it had been His will?”
“You fought against the decadence of Rome. I would have killed the Englishman, in God’s name.”
“I chose not to and I would do the same again. I seek to save souls, not condemn them.” I spurred my horse forward to Colman with Cuthbert close behind. Mungo dropped back, his expression still dark.
We passed through the village of Streanashalch, at the bottom of the hill from the monastery of Whitby, in late afternoon. Half a dozen small boats were pulled up on the shore and our passing barely merited a glance: the fishing people of the settlement were dour and serious folk, unimpressed by much. Another group of travel-stained monks on their way to Whitby impressed them not at all. They’d seen increasing numbers passing through in the last few weeks including the retinue of several Roman Priors, a number of Abbots and at least one Bishop. And, while they welcomed our trade, they knew that more would come from the Romans. The Irish clerics, sworn to poverty, were more likely to beg favours than pay good coin, they believed - this despite their excellent and profitable relations with Whitby monastery. They would believe the gossip of strangers sooner than the evidence of their own eyes and would regard their neighbours as the exceptions. So we rode on without pause and approached the monastery two or three hours before sunset, which was just as well: it was Friday and the Irish Sabbath ran from sundown of that evening to the same time the following day. The Evening and the Morning, as the Bible said.
Whitby was a double monastery, with the nunnery extending from one side of the chapel and the monks buildings and lands to the other. It was run in accordance with the Irish rule, although with less emphasis on solitude and hermitry; there were no beehive cells at Whitby. The two sexes lived and slept separately and any commingling was watched over carefully by Abbess Hilda. They made up a community engaged with the world, trading with it, building up a quasi-religious outer settlement similar to Melrose; outside the monastery proper and evangelising the neighbouring countryside.
We were greeted warmly by our brother monks and some elderly nuns and shown where to stable the horses. After attending to our mounts’ needs we were in the process of preparing sleeping areas within the stables when one of the resident monks came and interrupted us. We weren’t to stay with the animals, he informed us, as sleeping quarters had been prepared in the monastery proper.
There then followed an exchange, which became a debate, which became an argument and was fast becoming heated in the typical Irish way when a tall and imposing woman entered the building, attended by a monk and two of the elderly nuns who had greeted us. She clapped her hands for attention and the babble ceased immediately.
“What is going on here?” Abbess Hilda asked. The babble broke out again straight away as everyone tried to put their points at once: she raised her hands for silence again and it followed just as fast. There was an air of authority about her that even Colman respected.
“Cerdic,” she said to the resident monk, “I sent you to settle our guests in the area prepared for them - a simple enough task, I would have thought. Now I find you in the middle of a bear-pit and in need of my intervention. My time is short and would be better spent elsewhere. Explain yourself.”
“They wouldn’t do as I told them,” he said resentfully. “I came to take them over to the sleeping quarters and they won’t come.” Hilda nodded.