Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [207]
“There may be. I will see,” he said quickly, unable to bear the spectacle any longer. He could not look into her eyes.
She nodded slowly. He felt wretched, almost as though he had committed violence against her frail body.
“You will tell me when it is possible,” she murmured sadly. Her submissiveness gently quenched the little flame of hope she had allowed to exalt her.
He nodded. “Of course.”
A few moments later, they rejoined the others.
The abbess was showing Aelfwald the latest treasure that had come to the abbey. It was a book of the Gospels – a huge, leather-bound volume, its cover studded with magnificent jewels in the shape of a cross and its pages splendidly illuminated.
Over the centuries, the art of book illumination had been brought to its wonderful flowering in the Saxon north of England and the monasteries of Celtic Ireland, culminating in such masterpieces as the great Book of Kells, completed only a few generations before, and the Gospels from Lindisfarne, the holy monastic island off the coast of Northumbria; the brilliant scholarship and craftsmanship of Mercia was well known; and in southern Britain, too, there was a fine school of illumination at Canterbury, now being emulated at Alfred’s Winchester. But the invasions of the heathen Danes had destroyed most of the schools in the northern half of the country, and this magnificent volume had only recently been rescued from a monastery in Mercia: it made a splendid addition to the treasures of Wilton.
The abbess was pointing to the finely written text. Most of the uncial scripts used in England derived either from the Celtic Irish or the continental Frankish school known as Carolingian.
“See,” she remarked, “the Mercian monk has adapted the Carolingian script – good, square lettering.”
Aelfwald said nothing. All scripts were as one to him, for like most Saxon nobles, he could neither read nor write – a shortcoming for which King Alfred, who was painfully learning these arts himself, had several times taken him to task.
But Aelfwald’s eye had been caught by something else. And it was causing him to smile.
Osric was twelve years old. A short, serious little boy, his two most noticeable features were his large grey eyes and his small hands with stubby thumbs, both of which he had inherited from his father, who was a carpenter working on Aelfwald’s estate. Some years previously when, rather to Aelfwald’s surprise, his second son Aelfwine had decided that he wished to become a monk, the thane had set up a small monastic cell for six monks on his estate near Twyneham, down on the coast, and installed Aelfwine there, hoping that in time he would change his mind. So far, the young man had not. And when the carpenter confided to his lord that his young son Osric had a similar ambition, the thane in his cheerful way had sent the boy down there too. “At least Aelfwine can keep an eye on him and let us know as soon as he’s had enough,” he remarked to the carpenter. That had been almost a year ago.
But when, three days ago, Osric had come to visit his parents, the thane had noticed that the boy did not seem to he happy. The reports of him from Aelfwine had been good, and neither the carpenter nor the thane had been able to discover what was the matter. Perhaps, Aelfwald guessed, the boy regretted his decision, but was too proud, or too frightened, to say so.
He had kept young Osric with him for several days, and though he had repeatedly asked him: “Are you certain you wish to be a monk?” the boy had always assured him that he did. It still seemed to Aelfwald that the boy was unhappy, but whatever his secret, it was obvious that no one was going to find out.
But now, suddenly, Osric’s face was shining. As he studied the illuminated book, followed the careful penwork, the exquisite choice of reds and blues, the gold leaf applied around the elaborate capitals, it was clear that the boy was lost to the world. It was not surprising that Osric, descendant of countless generations of craftsmen, should have been moved by such workmanship;