Precious Day

The last thing he saw were the bats, following along the cliff and sea, as they did often at the hour of vespers. The glow of the fires did not turn them. Pleni sunt cæli et terra majestátis glóriæ tuæ.

He was too far away for his cries to be heard by those of his brethren who still might live. He was too far away to hear the cries of his brethren: his everyday enemies, one day lovers and friends. He was here, alone and not alone, never alone, bats overhead, cold coming up from the earth after his bones.

He was here. Alone and not alone with two heathen marauders, laughing in temporal victory. They laughed, thinking he prayed for mercy, or for his weak God’s intervention, or for his corporeal salvation. They laughed when he did not meet them with a sword or a spirit fighting in a way they could understand.

He did not care what they thought of him. But he was sorry to think snide Kenwulf, slow Ethelwald and sweet Gregor might think him a recreant, a faintheart, a faltering, traitorous rabbit.

At the first alarm, he ran. He could not shake the sight of the broken white clay of the boy who fell from the roof as he ran. He did not stop running. He did not offer a prayer. He hoarded his breath.

He ran for the scriptorium. Took the half-complete codex from Prior Alfred, wrapped it thrice in nearby calfskins, his long fingers grown clumsy. A leaf, two leaves, falling. He took the codex, the book. He ran. Out past the broken boy, moaning and reaching. Past Eadwald, who strained to move the gate, too late. He ran through the gate. He ran away.

It was not Gregor fallen from the roof, Gregor with hair the colour of toasted lead, unmistakable and unique among the younger brothers. It was not Gregor, thank God.

Through the field of late, thin rye into the blighted orchard—red mush of apple underfoot, orchard swarming with the dread men of the north.

The Northmen were burdened with weapons, unfamiliar terrain and evil. He had the speed and the breath of God to reach the ruby-berried yew in time.

In time to cache the codex. To place the book into the secret barrow, between the roots of the tree. The people of the land swore it was guarded by forces they were ashamed to name. He knew it as guarded by tight fitting stones, by scattering of twig, straw and loam. And by the farther distance he ran, before the adversaries saw him.

He ran until he could not, back and forth, leading and chased. When the defilers grew close, he swerved through a stand of gorse, uncharitably hoping they, too, would feel the thorns. Small birds thrashed against the falling night. He would not take the Northmen towards the village, where children and women prepared for first sleep. They could find their own way, but he would not take them.

He ran until the shaft of an axe, thrust in his faltering path scorched across his chest, stopping him.

Two pagan warriors stood over him and laughed. He hoped, forgive him, that their hands stung from the impact of their trick.

They laughed to see a heaving, gasping monk with scratched, bleeding legs, clasping his hands against the hurt in his chest, looking up at the sky.

There was much red in the gloaming sky. The bats flew and the night fog gathered. He prayed for safety, not for his body, for his soul was already secure, although it shook.

He prayed for the beautiful codex. For it not to be found. Not until the land was not only green again, but also civil. Until the Northmen sunk as devils or their rotten, Satan-worshiping souls came to God. Until those who found the codex would not be burners of words and worlds, but guardians and builders. Beneath thy compassion we take refuge, O God-bearer, do not despise our petitions in time of trouble.

What mercy it was he did not have to run past Gregor. Did not have to explain his choice in what to save.

He prayed for hands like his, to trace the words and illuminations of the codex gently. He prayed for eyes like his, to be astounded at the grace and glory of their labours. He prayed for the colours; indigo, vergaut, orpiment, soot black; he prayed for the fantastical beasts, endless knots and saints. He prayed for toasted lead, stiff like fox pelt beneath fingers.

The ocean was a faint murmuring below. He prayed those to come would see the glory and the joy of the codex and of their labours and of their lives. Their aching shoulders, hunched backs, restless knees. Their reaching, their searching, their quest.

A barn owl passed, wheezing.

He prayed for the safety of their work, their book. Everything was in the book. The Word, yes. The world, yes. And also, as part of it, themselves. Their complaints, their pettiness. Their hidden and spoken thoughts, their jokes and happiness. Their youth, their age, their loneliness. All small before the work.

All small before the work—the families they left behind, the families they never had. The lives they would not have, the lives they did have. What they made of the lives they did have. Always the joy and the glory of it. The beauty and the glory. For this to be seen, he prayed.

It did not matter the colophon was not completed. Let their names be forgotten. They would not be forgotten. It was Ethelwald who ornamented, Eadwald who bound. It was Gregor who wrote the smallest of the letters. It was Kenwulf who mixed the ink of the iron gall. And it was he, Leofdaeg, who ran. If their names were lost, they would still be known through their glorious work.

Their work to bring the word, with beauty. To show the world, the beauty. To honour the word, with beauty. To honour the world, with beauty.

Was this wrong, to want their beauty to last? Was this pride? In his throat and chest, the wings of fear unfurled, beating, trying to break through, claws seeking to pierce.

And if the codex was never found, or found too soon?

Sileat omnis caro mortalis et stet cum timore et tremore neve quidquam terrestre in se meditetur.

It would not matter if those who found the codex tongued the same language in which it was written, or if they spoke only another. If they would see the beauty, they would also see the quiet and the peace. The peace, the quiet, the beauty, joy and glory. Their work would live.

There was the quiet of his sister, lifting candles from the tallow pot. The joy of frost-sweetened parsnip between the teeth. The beauty of the bees working in dew-dripping beans, the pleasure of crushed dill in a palm. The peace in the gentle shadows after the last phrase of a plainchant. He prayed for the world to know these things. He prayed for radiance to reach into the world through the work they left. God willed it.

The wings in his chest wilted, folded.

He prayed.

For the salvation of the great book, for those who came after, for the fine, the gentle, for Gregor, the others, for the beauty of the world, to survive. Fæder ūre þū þē eart on heofonum, Sī þīn nama gehālgod, tō becume þīn rice, gewurþe þīn willa, on erðon swā swā –

Before the heathens took his eyes, the last thing he saw was the bats flying. Into a mist they flew as his body shook under infidel’s grip. The glow of the fires did not turn them. He was given a question for refuge—how to capture that cave-mouse flight, in ink, following the cliff and the sea, into the glory of a vesper light.