Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne Monastery
This one monk who saw the desecration has survived as he escaped into the tower to ring the warning. But it all happened so quickly there was no warning. Now, I see it will be our task to bury the dead.
I tell him, “I was a monk in another time in another place, I was known then as Brother Eleazar, so this borrowed robe isn’t uncomfortable for me, it is only too long. And for that, I grieve for the one who wore it before me. You called him, Brother Jabari, from Egypt?”
“Brother Eleazar, Brother Jabari’s body isn’t here among these. He was dark skinned. Even with the distortion of death, I can see he isn’t here. And I didn’t see him killed.”
“He was probably the last one they slew because his robe was on the top of the heap of monk’s robes they took with them.”
“I watched the marauders from the crack of the tower door, and they started with the abbot, taking his garb, then running him through with the spear. Here is his body.”
The monk shows me to the top step, right in front of the altar. It is the body of an older man. We each take a moment to speak our prayers aloud. Then, it is he who breaks our longer silence.
“I am Brother Ealdwin.”
“Brother Ealdwin, ’Old friend’ that is, though you don’t seem that old. Sorry we meet in this hard time. It is a grueling task before us.”
“Maybe not gruesome, so much, as my own chance to bid these, my friends, a glorious journey now that they are set free from earthly bonds.”
“So let me help you with the hard work of it.”
Brother Ealdwin goes into the vestry to look for linens to use as shrouds, and he returns, miffed by the thorough looting of every little corner.
“Why would they take every fiber of fabric? First, they took the abbot’s priestly garb, dazzled they seemed by the fine silks and the deep blues of the dyes, but then, they took the clothes of the common monks as well, and now even the vestry was raided!”
I know they trade in fabrics, and some, like I was recently, are, wearing mostly raw skins of hunted beasts. But I can tell you, if I were ever to see a Viking in a monk’s robe with a chism on his head, I would be appalled.
(Continues Tuesday, July 1)
Lazarus Ink 