A Life I Might Have Lead

Something crashed to the floor, the sound reverberating through the echoing halls of the monastery. A strong wind had kicked up in the early hours of the evening and carried driving rain with it from the sea; brother Maynard claimed the storm would rage all night, saying that he felt it in his aching joints.

For his part, Alexander was certain that it would last not because of any legacy of age and hard labour, but rather because, from his studies, he knew that clouds so dark and wind so strong, never faded quickly. Not for the first time, he cursed the necessity of his time in that place, and ran through the numbers in his head again. If his memory was exact, then he would have only a few months left of his planned incarceration in holy orders.

His family was a curious entity, having risen from a hard living to something approaching respectability in so few generations. Thomas, his great-grand father whom he had not known, had been a labourer; Andrew, his grandfather whom he had known well before locking himself away in this forsaken place, a craftsman through his determination and skill; Mark, his father with whom he had hatched this scheme, a merchant with some means, certainly enough to afford his son’s receiving a dignified education.

Even among the nobility, the ability to read and write and do sums was still rare. A lost relic of the ancient world, so the Abbot insisted. In the old days, before the calamity that had stripped Britannia and Éireann of this knowledge. Not that Éireann had ever hosted those ancients, so far as anyone knew. But the old country was none of his concern now. He was to focus solely on completing his education among the monks, awaiting his summons home to rejoin his father in trade.

Brother Wulfgar shuffled past the Scriptorium, humming to himself something that sounded almost like a hymn. Alexander wanted to sneer at him, but marshaled his features and bowed instead, as was only polite. The monk gave a pleasant smile and nodded in return to the greeting without breaking stride. Older monks always seemed to have better things to do then help their acolytes clean the messes they made.

No matter. Alexander would be home before the next frost and well shot of everything clerical save his weekly attendance at church. Though how he could keep his countenance there after what he had learned in this place was beyond him; it would be a necessity, sadly, due to the importance of appearing properly pious so that others would be willing to conduct business. Not to mention the risk to his life of being seen not worshiping.

Supressing a shudder, Alexander gathered the unused parchments together and bound them tightly with a strip of linen. The storm was a worry for the scriptorium if any stray gusts of wind found their way into the space. True, it was well protected as one of the most inner spaces, but the risk was always present that something could go wrong and thus damage the valuable work being done.

Perhaps it would have been more proper to call that work sacred, considering that the gospel was transcribed, illuminated, and bound there. But he could only think of it as valuable. The finest leather, gold leaf, beautiful artworks of the rarest pigments, scrollwork and the combined labours of half the monks and acolytes in residence on just one copy. Hundreds of days, perhaps more if all hours worked by all men were tallied, on just one copy.

Little wonder that the books should hold such interest for… but no, that was just rumour and speculation. A letter describing hints and theories about monsters from the ocean – the wrath of God upon his disobedient children. With a shake of his head, he carefully wrapped a nearly finished copy of the gospel in a water-proofed cloth and stored with other important documents for the local lord.

Word around the abbey was that this particular copy was a gift to the King of Northumbria; an attempt to win favour with him by commissioning something so beautiful as to all but guarantee him entry to the kingdom of Heaven.

“You certainly are taking care of that one,” said a voice from the door. “Looking to endear yourself to the Abbot?”

“Just doing my job, Aethelweard.”

“Right, and the fact that it’s for a king?”

“We don’t know that, I’m of the opinion that it’s to go to the lord’s personal priest. A status symbol more than a gift. It’s not fine enough for the latter I think.”

“Right,” scorn dripped from Aethelweard’s every word. “I forgot how much you know about gifts among the nobility. Forgive my interference.”

Alexander threw his friend a wounded look. Despite the fact that they were all equal within the monastery, there was some knowledge of the lives they have left behind. And Aethelweard was one of those who’s status as a younger son had sent him into God’s service while his brother learned to ride, hunt, and fight. Alexander’s presence as not only an eldest son, but also a commoner, freeman or not, was sometimes irksome to those who would be his betters in the real world.

“I’m sorry,” relented Aethelweard, looking genuinely abashed. “That was ungenerous. Have you heard the news?”

“You’re the first person I’ve spoken to since prayers. What news?”

“The attack on Lindisfarne about two months ago, they say it was men out of the north.”

“Pictish raiders attacked Lindisfarne?”

“No, no,” Aethelweard’s voice pitched up with excitement. “Not the Picts or even the Gaels, you know that Christians would never attack a monastery. Even if they wouldn’t be damned, why take the risk? I’m telling you it was strangers from across the sea to the North. It couldn’t even have been the Franks for the same reason as the Picts and the Gaels.”

Alexander gave Aethelweard his full attention now. The other man was excited, his family was lower nobility and thus he firmly believed he should have been getting a martial education, instead of being forced to read and pray his life away. He was always looking for some hint of a war, but the idea of invaders from across the sea brought back to Alexander the stories that his grandmother had told him about the Tuatha De Danann from the old stories.

“Go on then, tell me your news.”

“There’s little enough, almost a rumour of a rumour in a place like this, you understand. But I overheard the Abbot talking to one of the brothers about it, he said that Lindisfarne had been sacked and it’s chapel burned. Not even the foulest false-kings would dare sack a monastery, you know that.”

It was true. As far as Alexander knew, there had never been such a thing since the heathen kings had come into God’s light. What Christian King would dare order such an attack, and what damned souls would dare to carry it out, thus guaranteeing their damnation? He could not imagine that it would be a fellow Christian, though he himself questioned the teachings, one could not but take precautions against the wrath of the Divine.

“Was there anything else?”

“Honestly, Alexander, I only heard a piece of a rumour discussed by the elders. You now know everything that I do. But what do you think?”

“You said something about Northmen, who are they?”

“I don’t know for certain. There are strangers living north of Frankia, or so I’ve heard. But the ones that I know about are traders, they bring down amber, ivory, and skins and the like. One of my father’s men had had some business with them when he was travelling on the continent, but they were Christian, or had converted. I don’t know any more than that. Unlike the Moors, they’re as fair as you and I.”

More strange tidings. But if that was all, then speculation was the only thing for it. Aethelweard spoke for a time, giving free rein to his fancy and what martial education he had managed to achieve before being sent to the monastery. As Alexander worked, his friend spoke at length about the difficulties of sea travel, and moving soldiers any distance at all.

Aethelweard believed that the northern raiders, whoever they really were, must either be the advanced parties of a new and great empire, or else individuals. Much like the smaller clan strife between the Picts and the Gaels, he thought that these raiders were only after plunder and were not much interested in anything else. It was not a precursor to invasion.

“How do we even know that it was them?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Unless someone had hired Moors, no one would dare attack Lindisfarne. And even that makes no sense, since it would still blacken a king’s soul to work with the heathens, and even more so to have them attack not only fellow Christians but also a place as holy as that. Also, like I said, the Moors are dark skinned, if they had been involved, that would have been mentioned.”

They spoke for a long time, ultimately coming to no great understanding, as Alexander continued to steadily put the Scriptorium to rights. Everything had its place, and certain artifacts must be handled with the most extreme care, lest one of the monks take offense at ill-treatment and express that with the cane.

Tuning his friend’s speculation out, he longed for the time when he would be free from that place. Free to return home, see his parents and siblings. Most in his position longed for the time when they themselves would be the one holding the cane, but he thought that a most useless fantasy. In so doing, he was convinced, the newly minted monk would only extend the cycle of beatings against acolytes. Then again, maybe that was the point. They just liked causing pain… but then why not seek employment as a king’s justice? But that would involve some danger.

With a shake of the head to clear his thoughts, he bid Aethelweard goodnight and went to his own cell. Because it would be foolish to risk any wrath from on high, or to risk getting caught, he said his prayers before crawling onto his pallet and pulling the rough, wool blanket over himself.

-0-

Flashes of lightning as bright and regular as sparks from a blacksmith’s hammer filled his dreams that night. Thunder crashed in great, rolling waves through the heavens, following so close on each flash of lightning like the tolling of a bell as it is struck.

Wind roared in from the sea, hollowing through the dim halls of the abbey as the shutters were blown loose to smash against the walls, adding to the cacophony. Desperate to save the precious parchments and tomes, Alexander struggled to pull closed the shutters his dream had placed in the Scriptorium until a deafening crash of thunder and blinding flash of light put him atop a rocky bluff facing the roiling ocean.

Things lurked beneath the inky black surface as the storm raged.

Ancient things that could tear apart even the mightiest ships. He had a vision then, a trader’s vessel on storm-tossed seas as shadows loomed from the depths and dragged it down. Sentencing the sailors to a watery grave beneath the freezing cold water.

He shuddered to think of it. His sleeping mind throwing up images of the lightning fading from view, consumed by the dark, frothing waves as he was dragged down. Down. Down.

Chanting sounded. Deep and guttural, regular as the hymns sung in church. He understood the meaning if not the words he could not hear. Lusty cries for glory and war blending with the thunder.

In a flash, he could see a monster looming over him. A beast from the depths coming ashore, it’s mighty roaring head thrown towards the heavens as pale creatures with bright swords and clinking mail descended from its back. These were the chanters, they screamed their battle cries as they fell upon earth that suddenly ran with blood as the invaders surged forward, axes and swords and spears held high.

Around him, his sodden cloak flapped in time with the thunder and howls and roars.

Falling to his knees, he tried to remember a prayer. Desperate to drive the devils and demons back into the sea.

They were upon him then. Ripping and tearing. It was his own blood, and those of his father and brothers who were beside him.

Screaming. Thunder. Howling. Crashing. Chanting.

Waking with a start, he threw his blanket – damp with sweat and tears – away and surged to his feet. Sun shone weakly under the door to his cell. He barreled through it, desperate to escape the terror of the dream, and rested his hands on the sill of the open window. Clean hands. Without the blood or mud of his nightmare.

He brought them to his face. They were cold and trembling.

But it had only been a dream.

-0-

“You wish to be released from your duties?” The abbot’s voice was harsh, but then it always was. Alexander knew from experience that the old man could and did speak with great humility to those who held power over him. The lords and merchants who purchased the prayers of the monks for their souls and through whom the monastery maintained itself.

“Yes, Abbot,” he spoke with the utmost respect, hiding not only the lingering fear of the dream but also his distain for this man. A man who hid from the world, accepting riches that were meant for God but only used them to adorn his house. A man who had read, and taught Alexander to read, the words of the prophet that instructed him to leave aside such trappings. “Just for today, I had… a hard night and wish to spend this day in solitary contemplation outside the abbey.”

“A noble thing,” muttered the abbot, still not looking at his acolyte, “to spend time under the eye of God and seek his knowledge. As well as forgiveness for the sins of the night.”

So that was it. The Abbot, despite having been told of the dreams that had scared him, still believed, as he always did, that it was sins of the flesh rather than an unquiet mind. Perhaps he accused to distract himself from his own guilt? He thought that Alexander wanted to be alone with other thoughts, and so it had been more than once, though on that day he wanted only to be alone and collect himself.

It is not often that he was visited by visions such as the ones that had disturbed him. Perhaps it was prophetic, some of the saints had been granted such visions and it was not quite so unbelievable that it might have happened to him.

Fighting the urge to grind his teeth or otherwise show his hatred, Alexander remained as he was, head bowed, and waited. He struggled to forgive, that was the crux of all of the teachings, was it not? To turn the other cheek, to forgive and move on. Never to forget, but to let go all hate and embrace his fellows as brothers.

Just as he had given up hope and consigned himself to a day of harder duties than normal, as penance for his lust, as the Abbot would call it, the older man spoke. “You may go. Take some bread and cheese from the kitchen and make certain you are returned before evening prayers. I will be watching for you.”

Alexander gave his thanks and bowed low. Perhaps this was not the wisest thing to do, the Abbot was not a king, but his vanity was well known, and such displays were often the quickest way to his good graces. Though little enough was known of his past, one of the rumours stated that he had been a forth or fifth scion of a great house once upon a time. And that was why he treated his acolytes the way he did.

“In fact,” added the older man as Alexander turned away from him. “Take Aethelweard also. Solitary contemplation is not entirely without its dangers, and even here you might benefit from a friend’s influence in your prayers.”

Unexpected and kindly, perhaps he had judged too harshly before. Alexander bowed again and thanked and blessed the Abbot for his goodness. Who waved away the gesture with a regal wave that might have given truth to the rumour, and so the acolyte was dismissed.

-0-

The air was thick with humidity, sweat cascaded down his face. Alexander thought he might have been drier if he were under water. But such thoughts brought his dream back to the front of his mind and he shuddered, a cold child suddenly creeping up his spine despite the burning sun.

Lifting his broad, straw hat to wipe the sweat from his brow, he stopped to regard his companion with some amusement. Aethelweard had leapt at his request, and the Abbot’s command, for company with a speed that few other subjects could elicit. Alexander thought he understood why.

Exactly as he predicted, the other youth had grabbed something long and thin from a crack in an ancient tree the moment they passed from sight of the abbey. This was, of course, his training sword. Heavier than the swords carried into combat, it was designed to train skill and reflexes so that the warrior moved faster and more skillfully thanks to the lesser weight of the war blade.

It was a small transgression, though certainly a possession that would earn him lashings from the Abbot; not to mention a lecture about the removal of worldly possessions – maybe even in front of the gold ornaments of the chapel. But it connected Aethelweard to the man he had always expected – wanted – to be. Not a humble monk in a distant monastery, at the edge of the world, but a lord or at least a member of his household.

Of course, he had had the bad luck to be good at Lording – especially in those places where his brother was not. Instead, as he often bemoaned to his friend, of allowing him to act as a most loyal servant to his brother, he had been dismissed. Banished. Abandoned. All for the sake of the peaceful succession.

But he could not forget, nor could he let it go. Though he had long since sought absolution for once having prayed for the deaths of his father and brother, so that might rejoin the world by right of succession. He often prayed to be remembered kindly by them. To not be forgotten. To be welcomed home when his brother realized that their strengths could compliment one another.

“We might have grown to kingship together,” Alexander remembered Aethelweard having said as he watched his friend flow through sword forms beneath the spreading boughs of a large oak tree that overspread the sacred place some miles from the monastery. “He was never a lordly sort of man, my brother. Not lordly in the ways that we were expected to be. Not a hunter or a fighter by nature; but a thinker and a planner. We were opposites. Complimentary. What a force we could have made”

Now, watching his friend throw off his habit and work himself to exhaustion, Alexander thought he finally understood his resentment. He was a warrior without a war. A lord without a fiefdom. A brother missing his other half.

Returning his attention to the matter at hand, he continued to clean the small place of worship: a stone reliquary which claimed to hold the bones of someone very important in the centre of a circle of carefully placed stones. Nothing about the place was large, nor ostentatious. A humble place of solitude and reflection that had probably suited whomever was buried there.

Kneeling in the appropriate posture and clasping his hands before him, the sounds of Aethelweard’s exertions forming a mantra of sorts to focus his mind, he began to think.

In this position, one would think him praying as he had been sent out to do, but though he said the words in the correct order and at the correct times, he had not genuinely prayed in a long time. Through his own readings of the holy texts, he understood that his personal connection with the divine was of greater import than his adherence to doctrine and strictures.

Besides, he imagined his God would forgive him so long as he lived his life according to His virtues. Certain that they carried greater weight than the praises that even Christ had not thought so important. According to his own private understandings.

A calmness, however, settled over his mind as he knelt in that manner and in that place. Questioning everything though he did, there was no denying the power of such a place as this modest, monastic reliquary. Counting his breaths and slowing his heart, he almost forgot about the heat as the sound of Aethelweard’s training faded from notice.

The dream should not have affected him as it did. He must seek to master this feeling, or at least to understand the omens. For an omen it must have been. A heretical thought. But then, all prophets were thought heretical in their own lives. Was he a prophet?

Unlikely. He was a man, the same as he always had been, but may have gifted a single vision. Sworn to a holy order…

Shadows fell across the serene quiet of his mind. Looking up the himself within himself saw a bent old man leaning on a staff, gazing down at him. His beard was long and white as frost; the one eye that could be seen in the shadows cast by his broad hat was the frozen, piercing blue of a winter sky. His hands were old, certainly, but strong as they did not quake as they held his staff.

Behind, and beside, and before the hooded greybeard, a young man stood. His skin and hair and eyes were fair, and dark; brown, white, black, red, blue, grey, brown, black. Atop his head he wore a crown of thorns, and red blood pooled where the thorns touched his skin, shining like precious stones. His hands were held out, nails still imbedded in the flesh, blood dripping from their rusted points.

A third man stood behind, and beside, and before the other two. His hair was red and long, tied back in a warrior’s tight braid. Flashing green eyes sat under an ancient helm; where the old man held a staff, this one bore a spear and rested upon it as though he were waiting for something.

Their eyes, the same and different, blue and green and every colour, stared down at where Alexander kneeled. Not in supplication, but in thought. He understood that as they looked at him, with curiosity and compassion and fierce interest lighting each face in turn. They would not, he was certain, have looked in such a way at a supplicant.

Behind the three who were not three, a storm tossed sea, the very one from his dream, roiled and frothed. An icy wind kicked up, rippling the cloth of the men who stood before him as lightning flashed illuminating two ships with narrow prows and square sails plowing through the churning water.

Coming back to himself with a start, Alexander stared up into the concerned face of Aethelweard. He was dripping wet and staring into his friend’s face as though he had just seen a ghost.

Glancing around, Alexander saw that he was not where he had been. Instead, he now knelt atop a bluff over looking the ocean with a view of the monastery some miles away. His hands were still clasped before him as though in prayer. He did not feel as though he had moved.

“Good God,” said Aethelweard, clearly having been talking for some time without Alexander hearing him. “Come on, come with me. I think you’ve been in the sun too long. What would I have told the Abbot if you went and fell to your death? Don’t you know that these bluffs aren’t stable?”

In a daze, Alexander followed his friend and tried to remember how he had gotten there, nearly a hundred feet from where he had been. There had been a dream… hadn’t there? He must have fallen asleep, though he could not remember every sleep walking before. And what was that dream?

His friend, rattling on about how things like this sometimes happened to battle apprentices and how Alexander only needed rest and cooling down, pulled off his habit and eased him into a wide and shallow pond under the shade of a tree. When he went off to collect the beer, bread, and cheese, Alexander struggled to remember what had happened.

There had been the sea again… but it had not scared him. He had felt… pride? But in what? And there had been a man… three men? Strange, but he could not exactly remember which.

Aethelweard slowly came around to understand that his friend was not ill, the sun had not been too much, and he had simply been in a prayer trance – Alexander was not completely certain if this were true but it sounded like the most reasonable explanation – and stopped clucking like a worried hen.

Time slipped out of mind, as they swam and spoke and laughed. Away from the strictures of the monastery, each felt that they could truly breath. The dreams drifted just out of reach, circling above him like carrion birds, making him talk and laugh just a hair too loud.

With a suddenness that took both by surprise, night fell and a hard wind kicked up from the sea. Frantically, they dried themselves as best they could and gathered their scattered possessions. Aethelweard considered leaving his training sword, secreting it somewhere nearby to the holy site; but Alexander, still uneasy after his dreams, begged him to keep it.

“As the Abbot said, it’s not always safe out here. And the brothers won’t catch you if you hide it in that same tree again. Besides we had better hurry, at this rate we’ll be late for evening prayers.”

Fearing the storm that was brewing over the ocean, they hurried along the overgrown path. Only a few miles to what warmth and safety there was to find in the monastery. They could most definitely beat the rain.

Smoke rose into the sky as they hurried, making both stop dead in their tracks before hurrying them on still faster. Candles and cooking fires meant that fire was always a risk. It devoured manuscripts and letters and wood and relics as though the Devil himself had sent it to destroy the word of God. Even if neither would believe that explanation if it was given to them, still both hurried. They would be needed to combat the fires and salvage the holy texts.

But, cresting the final hill before the long stretch to the monastery, Alexander froze. The image of fire would remain burned into his mind for the rest of his life. The place he had come to so that he might learn and thus advance himself and his family was in flames. And arrayed before it, visible from his point and towards the beach, the other monks surrounded by shockingly tall men in armour.

Many of the brothers lay dead, their blood showing sharply against the green of the grass.

Aethelweard swore vilely beside him in English and Latin. His practice sword shook in his hand, but he remained beside his friend. There was nothing he could do unarmoured and against so many. Only the chapel was in flames, and through his warrior’s eyes he could see the heathens ensuring that the fire remained where it was. The storm clearly making them delay and rethink their plans to return to sea.

Behind the monks and their guards, Alexander saw the two ships. His mind, reeling from what he had seen, focused on them as beautiful. And terrible.

With their square sails and narrow prows mounted with the heads of demons, the Northmen heathens and their ships had sailed out of his dreams and brought the wrath of their gods with them.

Already planning to search through whatever was left of the monastery, to try and salvage something of the monks’ works, or at least find some food, Alexander and Aethelweard turned away towards one of the hermitages.

Plans were at work in Alexander’s mind. Those ships were marvellous… they could brave the open sea and carry so many and yet they seemed so slight.

He must inform the king before anything else, his majesty needed to know that the enemy had struck again after their blasphemy at Lindisfarne. Then he could return home at last. His time in the holy orders had come to an end, he didn’t think anyone would care very much if he abandoned them and returned to his old life given what had happened.

Glancing at Aethelweard, who was staring out at the rain, his face a dark mask, Alexander wondered what was next for his friend. Certainly, if the enemy continued or escalated their raids, then somewhere an heir waited to inherent a fief without his strong right hand. In the morning Alexander would talk to his friend about it, even offer to return to his estate with him if he wanted the company.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. To Alexander’s shaken mind, it sounded almost like laughter.

-0-

Story word count: 4,980

When Vocal asked us to write about what profession we would have had in a past life, I was intrigued. Should I be an explorer? An inventor? An enlightenment era philosopher? But then, I realized that I could lift the past 100, or so, years of my patrilineal history and place it anywhere in the timeline. So, I did.

The names and professions of my forebears in this story are as true to my own history as I could make them. Thomas was a shop assistant, Andrew was a tradesman, Mark would have been a merchant of some kind given that these days he's an accountant, and I would have been sent to receive an education because everyone in my family deeply values education. It would also be a means of furthering our family interests.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading my little what if set a thousand years ago!