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“If it’s where I’m thinking of, then you must turn right by that tree along the end there.” Sniffing back some snot the man here spat, in place of punctuation, as it seemed. “Go down that way until you reach the crossroads at the bottom. If you go straight over and you carry on downhill, it’s on your left across the road, just halfway down.”
Peter was overcome with joy and was likewise amazed at the great providence of God, that his riddle had found so swiftly and so simply its solution. All that had been in the end required of him, so things turned out, was that he ask. He gazed with gratitude upon the ragged pauper who had given him deliverance, and it was then that he first truly saw what was not usual in the man. He was not merely grey or pale as Peter had upon the outset thought him, but was rather without colouring of any kind, more like an image made with charcoal than a living and warm-blooded thing. He was also not only pale, but like to cloudy water so that when the monk made closer study he discovered he could see dark blurs moving across the figure that were traffics on the downhill path that cut across behind it, as if the poor man was made so that he could be seen through, though not clearly. With a tingling that was like an icy brook that trickled down his aching backbone, Peter knew he chattered to a spectre.
He was careful that the sudden fright he felt not show upon his face, lest he affront one who until then had been kindly and most helpfully disposed. Besides, the monk was yet uncertain what the being was he had the conversation of, although he thought it not an evil thing. Perhaps it was a lost soul, neither blessed nor else condemned and so residing in another state, here in its haunts of old. He wondered if it were eternally required to wander thus, or if the spirit knew some further destination, be it heaven or a different place, and to this end he asked where it was bound.
“I trust that your own journey is toward some pure and godly ending?”
Now the ghost looked guilty first, then sly, and in the end composed. Peter made private observation that the wraith’s expressions were as easy seen through as its form. The creature hesitated somewhat as it made reply.
“I’m … well, I’m off to see a friend now, if you want the honest truth. A poor old soul it is, lives all alone on Scarletwell Street corner and without a family to visit ’em. I’ll bid you a good day now, Father, or whatever you’d prefer I call you. Good luck carrying your swag-bag to the centre, now.”
With that the apparition went by Peter and on down the hill, towards where Peter had just intervened between the knave upon his cart and the young girl. The monk stood on the spot and watched him leave, and while he did so wondered what strange chance had made it so the tattered spirit should be gone about the lonely croft-man’s shed near to the dye well, for from how he’d spoken it could be no other place. Since Peter had come here to Hamtun, nothing had occurred that was to his eye only aimless fortune. Rather, it seemed that events had been already set into their place and time, with all their joints and decorations long ordained. While he had felt, upon the corner near the well, that he but viewed again a narrative read many times before, he now thought it more like a plan on parchment that a carpenter had made. His every footstep traced the lines by which he was made part to a design he could not guess. The wandering phantom that had helped him was now some way off and made more difficult to see, so Peter lifted once again his load and hung it on his back, then went along the lane to where the elm tree was. There he turned south and headed down beside the wide street where were many horses led, towards the crossroads that lay near its low end, as he had been told.
About him in their pens that bordered on the path or else come trotting out to join its filthy downhill skid were colts and mares and foals of every kind, so that he thought this must be where the horseflesh dealers made their truck. The smell of all the dung was sweet or like a fruited mash, although it was not pleasant in its sweetness and black flies were everywhere about in whispering thunderheads. The rank air here and the increasing closeness of the day brought out salt floods upon his legs and arms and made his heart fast and his breathing hard, or such was his conclusion. Looking up, he saw the blanketing of cloud above seemed nearer and, more than this, that it was now darker. Peter hoped his quest might soon be done, so that he could the sooner find some lodgings and be indoors if it rained.
The crossroads, when he came to it, had once again the sense that it was seen before, and Peter’s head felt light now with a kind of ringing echo
in his ears. For all he’d pissed or sweated, there’d not been a drop of water past his lips since dawn. He stood there on the crossing’s northwest corner, and looked up along the new street he stood on the brink of, to its east. Here he beheld a scene he recognised that was all smokes and lights, and on the instant understood where he must be. This was the far end of the street where were the forges, that he’d seen the top of on that morning when he’d just arrived and come up from the bridge. If near the place where he stood now were truly England’s centre, then how many hours ago had he been just a little walk from it? But then, had he come straight here he should not have seen the relic temple on the sheep track, nor the bloody well, nor should he have been there to save the child from harm. He stared as though made dumb along the sparking, smouldering lane and marvelled at where fate had brought him.
Peter saw there sooty men who worked in melted gold and old men, almost blinded by their years, stooped over silver filigrees. A man that seemed a dwarf stood with his straining cheeks puffed out and lips pursed tight upon the stem of a long pipe or trumpet, from the end of which there came a swelling bubble that was like one made of soap but all on fire, so Peter knew it for a ball blown in hot glass. He saw the smiling traders who had eyes more bright than all the gems kept in their purses, which they’d spill as glinting droplet-streams into an upturned, spidery palm. He saw the riches of the world fresh from their foundry and knew that, among these splendours, what he carried in his jute bag was a pearl without compare.
He turned the other way and looked instead off to the west, along a street where many of the horses from uphill behind him were now being led. Some fair way further down it on the side where Peter stood, he saw there was a mighty thatched roof risen up, and thought that this was the great hall he’d seen the back of when he was up near the smothering chalk-merchant’s yard. Across from this and on the way’s far side there was a church tower he could see above the building-tops. It might be that the thatched hall was the manor he had heard of, where a prince that was the kin to Offa lived and had a church built for him there upon his land. The good wife he had talked to up the far end of the metal-workers’ street had said there was a church here called Saint Peter’s, that he thought might be the building he saw now.
Go down until you reach the crossroads, so the ghost had said, then pass straight over, where if he continued down the place he sought should be across the street and on his left. Heart hammering still and in a failing light thrown from the rain-clouds gathering above, he went across the hectic byway haltingly, so that he might avoid its trundling wagons until he was safely on its further side. From this new vantage he gazed anxiously across the downhill road towards the east, to see if he might make out by some sign where was the centre that the pauper soul had told him of. Nothing was there saving more pasture and a fenced-out yard that from its din he thought to be a smith’s, although not even this was halfway down the tilt, as he’d been made to think the centre should be. With a sinking worry in his gut he went on down the hill, his tired eyes darting back and forth expectantly about the grounds that were across the way.
The smith’s yard, as he thought, was near the bottom, while up by the crossroads at its other end, there on the corner with the street of metal workers was a smith’s yard also. Nothing was between them and their blackened forges saving only empty and untended mede, and on his cheek now Peter felt an early rain-spot, fat and cold.
He came upon what seemed to him the middle of the sloping way, and stopped to stand upon its edge and gaze across it, to where there was only wilderness. The thudding in his chest was louder, and he knew that he had once or many times before arrived here to find nothing. He was ever in the action of arriving here and finding nothing. Naught but all the drivers and their mounts gone up and down the broad path through a rain that now was spitting heavier. Naught save the idle man who stood outside the smith’s yard, up about the corner this lane had with the gold-workers’ street. Nothing but thistles and a tree and some bare ground, where he had thought to find the soul of all his land enthroned. He did not know if it were tears or sweat or rain that poured now down his face as he inclined it hopelessly toward the gravid sky and asked again what he had asked when at the other cross-path, only now his voice was angry and was tired, as if he did not care who heard.
“Is this the centre?”
All was in that moment stopped to him. Inside his ears the echo had become what was a humming of a kind, as if the halted instant were itself reverberant and rang with all the jewels of circumstance that made for its components. Rain hung motionless or else fell only slowly, with its liquids like to countless studs of opal that were everywhere fixed on the air, and in the coats of horses each hair was a blazing filament of brass. A shine was on the very dung that made it seem the prize of all the earth, and of the fields their bounty, that the flies set there about it were raised up on wings like to the windows of fine churches. On the waste-field there across the halted treasure-slide that was the street, midst weeds become like emerald flame, a man was standing all in white and in one hand he held a polished rod made from fair wood. His hair was like to milk, as was his robe, so that he stood as if a beacon in the scene and was the source of all its light, which painted an exquisite glint on every creature’s eye. His kindly gaze met with the monk’s, and Peter knew it was the friend who had appeared to him in Palestine, who’d charged him with his task and set him on his way. His journey’s alpha was become its omega and in his hearing now there was a roar, as though the pounding of great wings, that Peter thought but his own pulse made amplified. The answer of his question was announced.
Across the stilled enchantment that was on the street, the burning figure threw aloft its arms for joy, whereupon there were bright and blinding pinions opened out to either side. Exultant it called out as in a mighty voice amid tall mountains, that the sounds of it whirled off a thousand ways all at one time. It was the foreign speech that Peter had once heard before, with words that burst as though they were puff-toadstools on his thoughts, to scatter new ideas like drifting spores.
“Iyeexieesst.”
Yes! Yes! Yes, it is I! Yes, I exist! Yes, it is here in this place of excess that with a cross the centre shall be marked. Yes, it is here where is the exit of your journey, where both ye and I are come together. Yes, yes, yes, unto the very limits of existence, yes!
The being now held out his rounded rod as if he pointed it at Peter. Long and pale as though made out of pine, he saw its closer end had been worked to a point, where at the tip for decoration was a blue like cornflowers. Here the monk was puzzled and knew not why he was indicated thus, then saw that it was not at him the staff was aimed, but at a place that was behind him. Now he turned, and as he did it was as though his motion made the spell undone. The rushing sound he heard was not abated, yet the world was moved again, and rain dropped swiftly all about where it had only crawled before.
Behind him, set between what was a horse-shed and the premise of yet one more smith, he saw a wall of stone that had some violets grown out from its cracks, and let in to it was a wooden gate with iron trims that was a little open. Through this Peter saw a glade with swollen graves and tomb-stones raised up from its sods, and past it was a humble building made from dun and craggy stones by which two monks stood talking to each other. He was come upon a church. The dame who wore the Thor-stone and advised him earlier had said there was another church close by that of Saint Peter, which was called Saint Gregory’s. His arm upon the left that held the sack was aching now and so he changed the weighted baggage to his right, although this did not make the aching cease. As though struck dumb he stumbled through what had become a downpour and went in the church-yard’s gate, a little way along its path. The clerics broke off with their discourse and had seen him now, whereon they came towards him, slowly first then quickly, wearing faces of concern. Peter was fallen on his knees, though it were not in grateful prayer at his deliverance but more he found he could not longer stand.
The two friars, who soon came upon him, did their best to help him up and out of the deluge, but they were young and slender men who found he was too heavy. All they could accomplish was to set him on his back for comfort, with his head propped up against the bulged-out siding of a grave. They crouched above him with their habits spread out as they thought to keep the rain from off him, though it made them seem like crows and did not shield him much. Above them Peter saw the underbelly of the brewing storm, like darkened pearls that seethed and boiled and were become a changing and fantastic swim of wrinkles.
Everything was in that moment made alight, and then a frightful thunder boomed so that the monks who nursed him cried out and became more urgent in their questions, asking him where he was from and what it was that brought him here. The lightnings came again to drench the whole sky with their flash and Peter lifted up his arm, though not the left one that was numb, and made a gesture to his bag upon the soaking grass beside him.
When they understood him they pulled wide the jute-cloth neck and took what was inside out in the wind and wet. It was the hand-span of a man and half again across in both directions, roughly hewn from brownish stone so that it was too heavy to be lifted easy in one hand. The silvering rain dripped from its angles and its corners and the priests were now made mystified, as too were they amazed.
“What is it, brother? Can you tell us where you found it?”
Peter spoke, though it was hard, and from their faces had the sound of a delirium. From how they heard it, this was one who’d travelled far across the sea and had been near a place of skulls when he had found his treasure buried there. Unearthed, it was as though an angel had appeared to tell him he must take the relic and deliver it unto the centre of his land. It seemed to them as though he said he had a moment since met with this angel yet again, who had confirmed their small church as the pilgrim’s destination. Much of what the poor man said was lost amongst the rumble of the heavens, and at last they begged that he should tell them where the land was he had been, that had this place of skulls, and where were holy tokens jutted up from out the soil.
Their voices had become a part of the almighty fluttering that filled him, as though come from far away so that he barely heard them. He was
dying. He would not again see Medeshamstede, and he knew it now. Above, the rolling banks of sodden sky were a black silk of Orient that had been crushed into some fissured complication full of crease and shifting crack. He saw now what he had not seen before, that clouds were of a grotesque shape by reason that they were tucked in and had been cunningly compressed. He saw that were they but unfolded they should have a form at once more regular and yet more difficult to be encompassed by the gaze. He did not have the slightest understanding what this odd idea might mean, nor why the feeling was upon him that his years of journey had been naught except a single, briefly-taken step that was now done.
He thought that he had in the last few moments closed his eyes and yet it seemed still that he saw, perhaps mere dreams or memories of sight that were inside the flickering lids. He looked upon the worried brethren squatting over him and at the little church behind them. Just as with his new-found comprehension of the churning, pelting firmament above, so too he noticed for a first time how the corners of a building were made cleverly, that they could be unfolded in a manner whereby the inside of them was out. What he had earlier mistook for carvings over ledges on the church he saw now to be people small like unto mygge-flies, yet then knew that they were large as he but somehow far away. They waved and reached at him, the little men. It seemed to him that he had always known of them. The two monks by his side he could no longer see, although he heard them speaking with him yet, and asking him again whence he had come, his perfect sign to bring.
