The Burning Land. Bernard Cornwell
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Athelney, Somerset
Not long ago I was in some monastery. I forget where except that it was in the lands that were once Mercia. I was travelling home with a dozen men, it was a wet winter’s day, and all we needed was shelter, food and warmth, but the monks behaved as though a band of Norsemen had arrived at their gate. Uhtred of Bebbanburg was within their walls and such is my reputation that they expected me to start slaughtering them. ‘I just want bread,’ I finally made them understand, ‘cheese if you have it, and some ale.’ I threw money on the hall floor. ‘Bread, cheese, ale, and a warm bed. Nothing more!’
Next morning it was raining like the world was ending and so I waited until the wind and weather had done their worst. I roamed the monastery and eventually found myself in a dank corridor where three miserable-looking monks were copying manuscripts. An older monk, white-haired, sour-faced and resentful, supervised them. He wore a fur stole over his habit, and had a leather quirt with which he doubtless encouraged the industry of the three copyists. ‘They should not be disturbed, lord,’ he dared to chide me. He sat on a stool beside a brazier, the warmth of which did not reach the three scribblers.
‘The latrines haven’t been licked clean,’ I told him, ‘and you look idle.’
So the older monk went quiet and I looked over the shoulders of the ink-stained copyists. One, a slack-faced youth with fat lips and a fatter goitre on his neck, was transcribing a life of Saint Ciaran, which told how a wolf, a badger and a fox had helped build a church in Ireland, and if the young monk believed that nonsense then he was as big a fool as he looked. The second was doing something useful by copying a land grant, though in all probability it was a forgery. Monasteries are adept at inventing old land grants, proving that some ancient half-forgotten king has granted the church a rich estate, thus forcing the rightful owner to either yield the ground or pay a vast sum in compensation. They tried it on me once. A priest brought the documents and I pissed on them, and then I posted twenty sword-warriors on the disputed land and sent word to the bishop that he could come and take it whenever he wished. He never did. Folk tell their children that success lies in working hard and being thrifty, but that is as much nonsense as supposing that a badger, a fox and a wolf could build a church. The way to wealth is to become a Christian bishop or a monastery’s abbot and thus be imbued with heaven’s permission to lie, cheat and steal your way to luxury.
The third young man was copying a chronicle. I moved his quill aside so I could see what he had just written. ‘You can read, lord?’ the old monk asked. He made it sound like an innocent enquiry,