excerpt
to the tiny chapel and monks’ refectory above the monastery ruins. Finten, with
the girth but not the disposition of a jolly monk, puffed and panted to keep up
with the abbot.
Shortly after sunrise, Father Finten hurried down to the beach, his tan cassock of
sheep’s wool blowing above his knees. A shock of unruly reddish-yellow hair blew
from behind the stubble of his shaved St. John’s tonsure, and his scraggly beard
groped about his face like strands of frayed hemp.
Unless I can get these dawdling Brothers out to sea before ebb tide, we’ll spend
another day and night on this rock-strewn island. Father Finten cupped his mouth
to shout above the wind. “Brothers, Brothers. Hurry. We must be away.”
Brother Lorcan, a midget of a lad, stood high on the cliff as a lookout above the
harbour. Gazing out to sea, he seemed not to hear.
Come on, Brother Lorcan. Dear Lord, can he not hear me? … Ring the bell. Lord.
No. We must go silently. Father Finten mumbled under his breath. Finten was twenty-
six, much younger than many priests of the order, but older than the teenaged
Brothers he travelled with.
A shrieking pair of gulls swooped down to squabble over a dead crab at the water
line. More gulls arrived and soon there was a battle royal.
Finten covered his ears. Screams of terror from a terrible time seized his mind.
Twenty years earlier, his mother and three older sisters had been torn apart by Viking
monsters. He had crawled beneath a pile of kitchen rags, afraid to breathe. When he
peeked out at the blood spattered walls, his baby sister Ossia ‘Little Deer’ hung over
the shoulder of a Norseman. Finten’s elder brother Senan rushed in to tackle six
huge men. As Senan was brutally knocked out, a hairy hand seized Finten by the hair
and pulled him from his hiding place.
Brother Ailan, the cook, trying to carry too much at once, pulled Finten back to
the present. The bucket Ailan dropped splashed water onto the path as it rolled several
yards to crash against a large rock. Father Finten shook his head and muttered
through tears “Clumsy oaf”.
Finten still felt the whips, hunger, and pain. In his mind, he saw Senan, chained to
a bench and pulling on the big oar, while he, far too young to row, carried the water
bucket from slave to slave. The filled pail was heavy. Water slopped over the edge.
From somewhere above he felt a slap and a kick, then more slaps, kicks, and laughter,
as the pail slipped from his grasp and rattled, empty, down the sloping deck.
A young Brother hurried down the path carrying sleeping gear and a basket of
fresh-baked bread. He stopped and balanced his load to pick up the empty water
bucket, which he handed to the smiling Brother Ailan. “Are you not awake yet,
Brother? Did you not have a good night?”
“Thank you, Brother Rordan. I slept.”
Finten remembered the countless terrible nights when he learned to dread the
dark. Norsemen did unspeakable things to boy slaves in the dark.
Brother Rordan paused as he passed the troubled priest. “Are you all right, Father?”
“Thank you, Brother. Get on with you now.”
Finten’s rebellious brother, Senan, had been torn from him and sold to Danelaw
pig farmers.
Manolis Aligizakis 