The Wanderer and the Way 16
The Dream of the Rood
This is Chapter 16 of The Wanderer and the Way
The days of their journey assumed a pattern now. Four men rode in the van and four in the rear. Hathus led the main party, and Agnes rode always by his side. Observing that Agnes did not easily bear the heat, Hathus changed the order of the day, rising and setting out as soon as there was light enough for the road, breaking briefly in the middle of the morning, delaying the midday break and meal until the heat grew oppressive, and then finding some shaded spot, preferably by water, were they took a long break until the day began to cool, and then another march until there was only time to set up camp before the light failed. This meant that the time of fellowship was moved from the evening to the heat of the day. Then, if the spot was cooled enough by shade and water, Agnes would sing to them.
These occasions produced much merriment, for the songs that Agnes knew were mostly Anglish. She soon exhausted the repertoire with which she had charmed the hall for the king’s visit, for she had had little opportunity to learn any Latin or Hispanic songs during her days in Iria Flavia. When they begged her for other songs, she had only the Anglish and Welisc songs of her youth to offer them. And so, while all were charmed by the mere sound of her voice and by the wistful loveliness that came over her face when her singing was for the sake of the song alone and not trying to charm a hall, they soon begged her to translate her songs into Latin for them. This she did ably—an ear for languages seemed to be one of her particular gifts—but imperfectly, for her Latin, though sufficient for everyday use, was missing both the vocabulary and the structure of Latin verse.
On the third day after her attempted escape, when it seemed that she was quite recovered from both the effects of the surgeon’s draught and the effects of her ill-advised nighttime flight, she set out to sing them The Dream of the Rood. They quickly demanded to know the meaning so that at each verse end, she had to stop and puzzle through the translation of sense and meter into Latin. This effort excited the interest of the poets among them, and being soldiers there were several of their company who reckoned themselves gifted in poetry. Thus they would take Agnes’s poor translations and debate them among themselves, pressing her for explanations of the original words and then rivaling each other in composing the meaning according to the manner of Virgil or Ovid or Juvenal, while others protested that the style of the latter was inappropriate to use in a poem about the holy cross.
Their verses, once composed, were submitted to Agnes for her adjudication, though she protested that she was no fit judge since she knew little Latin and had never heard a word of Roman verse or of any Latin verse at all except for the psalms. This led to further debate as to whether the style of Jerome might be the better choice for a religious work, with the supporters of the Roman poets pointing out that Jerome’s verses were translations and that Jerome should, in any case, be disqualified as a Roman poet on the ground of his Illyrian ancestry, which others protested was a strange prejudice for a Visigothic poet to hold.
With all this, Agnes made slow progress with her singing of The Dream of the Rood, and the entertainment stretched into the rest period of the second day. As Theodemir watched her, trying as much as possible to do so without desire, or at least without the outward appearance of desiring her, he saw her slowly begin to tire of their attention and of their contests, which came more and more to have the aspect of courtship rather than fellowship. And then, at about the eighth hour of the day, she suddenly looked at him and said, “Oh, I can’t possibly tell you which is best. It is too hot, and I am too weary. And I know nothing of Latin verse, as I have told you. But you have among you someone much more fitted to judge the matter than I am. Theodemir was a student in Rome. He had spoken Latin from his birth and surely knows all the great Latin poets. Let him judge between you, for I will not!”
Theodemir had indeed formed an opinion on the matter. Among the aspiring poets, there was only one who had any kind of ear for the poetic form. It was the one who had, to much derision, championed the style of Juvenal, though his own verse had none of the verve of his master. But while he sat pondering how to express this judgment in a way that might make him one friend without making him four or five enemies, another voice began to sing a marching song, and soon the others joined in, and Theodemir’s judgment on the matter of Latin translation of The Dream of the Rood was never sought. Only by the fire that night, as they were composing themselves for sleep, did the subject of The Dream of the Rood come up again, and that was when the junior Juvenal begged Agnes to sing them the poem again, in Anglish, without translation, so that they could hear the sound and the rhythm of it. This she did, with that same sweet, wistful melancholy that seemed to have become the natural tenor of her voice, and they lay beneath their blankets, entranced, and when the song ended, drifted blissfully into sleep.
The first part of their journey took them through hilly country, which meant some labor was required to get the carts up the steeper part of the track but otherwise provided an endless variety to the eye, whenever any man’s eye was able to distract itself from Agnes. It also provided plenty of opportunities to find cool and shaded spots in which to rest. But before long, the hills around them grew less, and the trees grew fewer until they were traversing the great flat endless plain of the Douro, the very baked and barren landscape on which Theodemir, on his trek from Rome, had finally lost all conviction in his previous vocation, finding himself deprived of all the spiritual comforts that he had been promised as a recompense for the physical comforts he had given up. But when he looked again on this vast, hot, dry expanse, it was not the memory of his own past suffering that came to him, nor yet a dread for himself in crossing them again. All he thought was how hard it would be for the northern-born Agnes to endure the days that were to come, where not only would the heat be greater than in the mountains, but neither shade nor water would be readily found.
Nor was there much prospect of meeting with human hospitality, for the Christian population of this region had been withdrawn behind the shelter of the coastal mountains where they could be more easily defended against Moorish raids. The area was in Asturian hands, but it was treated more as a buffer zone against the Moors than as a place for peaceful or productive occupation.
Salvation came in the form of a moon, which had been waxing full, and now provided, for the period of its rising, enough light with which to travel on the long, straight road that stretched across the plain. Hathus thus ordered another change in the order of the day, and this allowed them to continue their progress without exhausting Agnes. Though their course and destination were determined by Theodemir’s embassy to the court of King Charles, the whole of the effort and enterprise in following that course was now devoted to the care and safety of Agnes. But this scheme was not without its drawbacks, for it meant that they were trying to sleep in the middle of the bright, hot day, which permitted only fitful and restless sleep and soon had them tired and snappish with each other.
On the fourth day, they had some relief, for they found an abandoned village where there were still roofs on the houses and thus had a bit of shade and a measure of darkness for their sleep, though the heat was no less. To a man, they would rather have slept cool by night and ridden through the heat of the day, but they were so convinced that their current practice was kinder to Agnes that any man who had suggested a change would have found himself despised by comrades. It was on the day following the night in the village, when the best that could be said of their mood was that it had not deteriorated as much from the day before as had previously been the case, that there appeared on the road before them the form of a man on foot approaching from the east.
As his form emerged from the haze of heat, they saw that he was dressed as a pilgrim, with a simple brown robe belted with a knotted string, a battered hat upon his head, and a staff in his hand, the only possession he had. Theodemir saw in this traveler all that he had suffered on these same plains and imagined that, when met, the man must express all the same disappointments and despair that had been his own lot when he had crossed these baking plains. But such proved not to be the case when the stranger was met. As they drew near to him, he paused and waited on the road for them, taking off his hat with a sweeping gesture and crying in a loud, if somewhat dry and cracked voice, “Well met, lords. I had just been thinking how sweet it would be to find a sip of water and a friendly face on this blasted plain, and at once the Lord provides!”
He was a young man. Theodemir guessed they were of similar age. His face was leathery, and his hands and feet were large and carried the marks of hard labor and far traveling, and yet there was a brightness of spirit about him, an irrepressible merriment that it seemed no trial could quash. Theodemir saw in him exactly the man that he had expected to become when he had set out on his long trek. He began to tell himself that the stranger could not possibly have traveled as far as he had done by the time he had reached the plains of Douro on his own journey, or he would surely have become as jaded and disconsolate as he himself had been upon these dry plains. And yet he saw the lie of this immediately, for the pilgrim was clearly a superlative man of the road just as Elswyth was a superlative lady of the hall. Well, if I had been on the road as long as he, Theodemir then told himself, I should be as stout and as merry as he. My only fault was that I did not persevere long enough. He looked then at Agnes to see if she looked upon the stranger with admiration and welcome instead of the scolding indifference with which she had greeted him at Witteric’s gate. And it seemed to him, to his dismay, that she did indeed greet the stranger with gladness.
“Welcome, traveler,” Hathus said to the stranger. “We can spare a sip or two for a fellow Christian, though we would be glad to know how much further we must go to find sweet water on this road.”
“Have no fear, lord,” the stranger replied. “Before the day is over, you will come upon the sweet waters of the Arlanzón, where I took my last sip this morning. God provides. God provides most sweetly. I am Pelagius, a pilgrim of God. It came to me in a dream that I was to go to Asturias and present myself to a bishop there whom I might serve.”
“I am Hathus,” Hathus replied, “A captain in the service of Alfonso the Chaste, King of Asturias. It is my honor to present Lady Agnes, a lady of Northumbria, and Lord Theodemir, a lord of Iria Flavia and much besides.”
Appropriate salutations were exchanged. The party dismounted, and a halt was called to give them all a chance to drink now that the prospect of water was close ahead of them. Pelagius seemed well acquainted with the manners customary to such meetings. He must, therefore, Theodemir decided, be a man of noble birth like himself who had given up rank and possessions to serve God. Yet Pelagius was beaming with that very spiritual joy which Theodemir had been promised and had not received while he, Theodemir, had put on again all the luxuries and privileges and pretensions that he was heir to, though he had not found joy in them either.
“Lords,” Pelagius continued, once the formalities were concluded, “since you are men of Asturias, perhaps you can commend to me a bishop who I might serve and a road that will bring me to him.”
“I believe you have already found the road you seek,” Hathus said. “Our party set out from the churchyard of the Church of Santa Maria of Iria Flavia, and we made our confessions to the bishop of Iria Flavia himself. Bishop Quendulf is a worthy man who I know is anxious to find a man of God to seek for the bones of the Apostle James the Great, who was the apostle to Hispania.”
At these words, Theodemir felt a stab of jealousy again, which puzzled him greatly. Here was a vocation recommended to another, which he had done everything in his power to avoid. Surely it should be a matter of satisfaction to him if another should be asked to take up this search in his stead. His ambition, after all, was to serve Alphonso by a successful embassy to the court of Charles, King of the Franks, to marry Agnes, and to settle with her on the fine estates that Alphonso had promised to him. And yet it was in his heart to shout out that this vocation also was his and was not to be given to another but to be left idle until he returned to attend to it.
Pelagius greeted Agnes joyfully, praising God for her beauty in a way that seemed to trouble her not at all, so that it seemed to Theodemir that every man alive had the art of pleasing her but himself. He cursed himself for this notion, for he could think of one man at least who stood lower than himself in Agnes’s esteem. No! Two men: Witteric and the Northman who had been her husband. She thought even less of that pair than she did of him. There was some hope in that, he supposed. On the other hand, it certainly felt to him that of the whole company gathered on that spot, he ranked not only behind Hathus and Pelagius in her esteem, but behind twenty soldiers and a half-score of cart drivers as well.
Pelagius turned his attention to Theodemir, greeting him with a beaming smile. The pilgrim’s bluff face was rather flat, and his nose looked like it had once resided slightly to the right of its current position. He was, by any measure, a rather ugly man, and yet a kind of living joy animated him in a way that was as irresistible in its way as the loveliness of Agnes’s features. Nothing had so far been said of the purpose of their journey, which perhaps had made Pelagius assume that Theodemir was a person of lesser importance behind Hathus and Agnes rather than the whole purpose of the caravan, as he was in fact. But it had been part of Hathus’s instructions at the beginning of their journey that they were not to discuss their purpose or destination with any they met on the road since some fair part of their security lay in these things remaining unknown. And so Theodemir could not explain his status to Pelagius, and he was prepared to put him off with a snub if the pilgrim asked. But Pelagius did not ask. He seemed to have no interest in the purpose of their journey at all. He did, however, have some interest in Theodemir.
“Theodemir of Iria Flavia?” he asked, “Are you not the pilgrim that I have heard spoken of along the road?”
“I once walked this way in pilgrim dress,” Theodemir replied haughtily. He was preparing a haughty explanation of why he now appeared on the same road on horseback and in fine clothes and with so many attendants and so well supplied. But again Pelagius did not ask. Instead he cried out, “Well met, brother, well met,” and embraced Theodemir in a bear hug that felt like it came from a man much larger than the wiry pilgrim. And while Theodemir had been searching for some topic of conversation that did not touch on either his mission or his reversion to wealth and position, he found that he had no need of it, for Pelagius left him and went on through all the company, greeting every soldier and cart driver joyfully, as if they were all long-lost companions.
By the end of it, half the company were begging the pilgrim to turn about and journey with them for the sake of fellowship, and Pelagius was putting them off merrily, saying that God had sent him to serve a bishop in Asturias, and now that he had the name and the location of such a bishop, he must not delay but hurry on the road before him.
“He might betray us to Witteric,” Theodemir said to Hathus covertly as Pelagius was explaining his purpose to the disappointed men.
“Witteric knows where we are going,” Hathus replied, looking curiously at Theodemir as if doubting his sanity.
“He does not know that Agnes is with us,” Theodemir insisted.
“And what would you have me do with him, then?” Hathus asked.
“Could we swear him to secrecy, at least?” Theodemir asked.
“The best way to keep a secret is to let no man know that you have one,” Hathus replied. “It is not to Witteric that he goes, but Qundulf. Witteric takes no more interest in Quendulf’s affairs than he must. The chance that he and Pelagius should even meet is slim, and suppose he did tell Witteric that Agnes is with us, which Witteric surely already supposes, we would be halfway to Aachen before he could put together a party to pursue us. No, let the man be. He is no danger to us. Rather, he is a blessing, for he had given me news of the road ahead.”
And so they parted from the pilgrim with joy in their hearts and came at last to the river Arlanzón and camped there in the coolness of its banks and refreshed themselves.
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