“There is still no heir. It’s important to him. He’s proved that he has no problem siring sons - even if one of them is a vicious little thug - but nothing from Eanfleda. Nothing to tie Northumbria and Kent together. I don’t believe she has a physical problem, either. I think it’s in her head. I don’t think the marriage has been consummated.” A door opened and a voice shouted for water, and the mood was broken. “Say nothing of this to anyone, not to anyone at all. We must pray for Cuthbert’s relief, but privately. It’s very inconvenient.” I agreed and we went off to our beds. I was getting used to keeping secrets.
I dreamed of my Mother weeping over a lost child. I cried out in my sleep but I was unintelligible. When I awoke the following morning I could barely remember it at all.
20
Last Night
Sunday was like a holiday for the visiting Irish clergy as we had agreed to respect the Romans’ Sabbath. Hilda had the monastery so well organised that there was nothing for us to do except walk, talk quietly together and enjoy the beautiful Spring weather. Colman found a few small jobs for the brethren to undertake within our own circle and he concentrated the tasks among the younger, more volatile members. He paid particular attention to Mungo, who’d made it plain that he thought some of us were altogether too forgiving of the heretics and blasphemers he saw all around him and, from the direction his eyes took when he voiced these thoughts, he had Colman and me particularly in mind. Whenever possible, he was sent out of the monastery proper to the furthest reaches of the lands on one errand or another in order to ensure - as far as we could - that his opinions were spoken only to himself. It was getting more and more difficult as word about the Synod had spread far and wide and every hour brought more arrivals. These uninvited guests set up camp outside the monastery walls until there was a tented settlement larger than Streanashalch, both in size and population.
To complicate matters, Mungo was a quick and efficient worker and he was back from the most tortuous and pointless assignment only a few minutes after he had left, or so it seemed. Eventually, Colman had to keep him by his side as there was nowhere left he could safely be sent.
Notwithstanding the best efforts of the Abbot on one side and Bishop Agilbert on the other, tension between the two camps mounted during the morning. It became palpable and some physical confrontation took place. It was largely restricted to a little jostling along common paths but there was the concern that it could come to more. The mid-morning Mass of the Romans arrived in time to remove their young men and women from the scene.
As with the Irish the day before, curious non-adherents gathered at the door of the chapel to watch while Agilbert led the grand concelebration of sung High Mass. There were fifteen priests on the altar itself, as many vergers, a flock of servers and a choir of thirty. It wouldn’t have been thought possible that there could be any room for a congregation but the body of the chapel was full with dozens more. It was a service that looked out of place within the simple little chapel, being more suited to a grand Frankish cathedral than a windswept Northumbrian clifftop.
The worst fears of the uninitiated were confirmed. A service conducted in Latin, a tongue most of the lay people would never understand, bells, clouds of incense so the air became thick and choking with it, the celebrants moving around as if in an intricate dance, brightly-coloured vestments, rich ornaments on the altar and - worst of all for the adherents of the Irish Church - something that looked like idolatry: the elevation and adoration of the communion bread as if it was itself sacred - which, of course, the Romans believed it was. Colman took Cuthbert, Cedd, me and a few of the more trusted and experienced monks to the chapel to watch for signs of trouble. We managed to avert it, but only just. A few younger members - and even some older hands - were so incensed by the consecration and elevation that they were on the verge of moving in and disrupting the proceedings. Most were held back by a quiet word and the order to return to their quarters, but four had to be physically restrained. One of the four was Mungo.
Cuthbert had again latched on to me after our morning prayers and he seemed fascinated by the whole performance: the intricacy of the priests’ interaction and movement, the choir rising and swelling as they intoned their responses and their songs of praise, the vergers’ co-ordinated circulation and assistance, even the little interventions of the young servers - and the congregation itself! They stood up, they knelt down, they sat, they knelt down, they stood up again, together, disciplined and without any signal or instruction that he could see. His head swung this way and that, but they were all as one, they all knew when to stand, when to kneel, when to bow their heads, when to raise them again - it was astonishing even though he had seen it before, but the mass of priests concelebrating with Bishop Agilbert made it seem as if he had only fully taken it in for the first time on that day.
Then he spotted Eanfleda, right at the front of the congregation, surrounded by her ladies. His face softened, then there was a yearning in it that would have broken the heart of any who saw it. After a moment he turned and fled back across the yard to our sleeping quarters. I followed him with my spirit and watched sadly as he threw himself onto his bed and wept silent torrents of tears.
The tension between the two communities increased after Mass and threatened to escalate into physical conflict. Colman took it upon himself to take the lead in defusing the situation as Wilfrid had the day before, and confined the most volatile and zealous of our community to their sleeping quarters, leaving the yard and grounds largely free for the Romans to occupy.
Hilda had foreseen the problem and the two camps were kept apart during the mealtimes. The Romans went in two sittings to the convent refectory, we in one and a half to the male monastery.