Pillars of Light Read Free

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1
Priory of St. Michael on the Mount, Cornwall, England

    SUMMER 1187
    I was born a godless creature.
    Two mendicant friars walking the pilgrim’s way towards the Benedictine priory of St. Michael on the Mount found me among the ancient hut circles on the moors overlooking the bay, living off worms and berries and covered head to toe in dark whorls of fur.
    Perhaps that was why my mother abandoned me, thinking me more animal than child. Or perhaps I grew that pelt as a defence against the elements. Either way, the friars decided to carry me off to the priory, to raise me in God’s house and make a civilized man of me. I kicked and fought all the way. I heard later they debated dropping me over the side of the boat in which we made the short crossing between the mainland and island. There have been times when I wished they had.
    They gave me a scratchy hessian robe and a name: Savage. John Savage. I was taken into the priory as an oblate, although I had notbeen formally given up by my parents (if I even had any). The order of Saint Benedict forbids a child to be dedicated before the age of ten. No one knew my age: they made of me a servant and used me at their will.
    Set upon by the older boys, I would snarl and give battle and prove myself the animal they called me, but whenever I tried to run away they would find me and drag me back before I could escape across the causeway that rose magically out of the sea at low tide. Novices, being the lowest in the order, love to have someone lower on whom to vent their frustrations.
    When the falling fits came on me, they thought I was possessed by a devil. When I fell, frothing and talking nonsense, I was unable to fight back: that was when their kicks fell thickest. I would rise an hour later to find bruises all over my body and the afterimages of strange visions in my head.
    Pillars of light and soaring arches, accompanied by the scent of roses. They haunted me, those visions. They haunt me still.
    The day I dropped the reliquary, spilling Saint Felec’s foot bones all over the chapel floor, Brother Jeremiah hit me so hard his hawthorn stick broke in half.
    I’d been in the priory fourteen years by my own reckoning, so no doubt the stick had been weakened by repeated acquaintance with my recalcitrance. I felt exultant, till I realized he now had two weapons. Covering my head, I fell to my knees on the rough slates, cowering amid the shards of bone and wood.
    I swept them towards me. “I’ll mend it so you’ll never be able to tell the difference! And there are always more bones in the graveyard where these came from!” I remembered very well that October morning when the prior had sent the sacristan out into the churchyard to dig up the skeleton of an unknown monk and cut offits foot in order to create the relic of “sacred Saint Felec,” ancient king of drowned Lyonesse.
    I realized too late my error in mentioning this shameful secret, for Brother Jeremiah flew from a state of anger into one of apoplexy.
    “You foul little demon!” he roared. The first stick fell. “Liar! Ingrate!”
Whack!
Shoulder. “You’re a wild thing, possessed by unclean spirits.”
Whack!
Shin. “And if I can’t pray them out of you …”
Whack!
Arm. “I must beat them out!” Spittle shimmered in his grey beard.
    I curled in on myself like a dying wasp. “
Mea culpa
, brother,
mea culpa
!”
    He grimaced and raised both arms as if to beat a giant drum. I prepared myself for the agony to come, but it never did. Instead, a thin, dark man appeared at the door of the chapel and came towards us, the skirts of his black habit kicking up as he ran.
    “Stop! He’s just a boy! Leave him be!”
    Brother Jeremiah gave the newcomer a ghastly smile. “Being a foreigner, you won’t understand our ways, brother. He is a fallen being. We must chastise such a sinner in this world, for else he will not mend his ways, and his soul will be tormented in the next.” When he raised his arm