John The Old Saxon

Chapter 3

Athelney Abbey, 904 AD

Athelney Abbey, 904 ADI am an old man and can no longer hold the quill in my arthritic fingers. So, I have enlisted a young scribe, Brother Otmar, to set down my words. The youth has a keen mind and a steady hand. Also, he is of kindly disposition, only too eager to help this aged monk. All that is required is to rack my memory, for I will refer to a time more than a lifetime ago.

Gandersheim, Old Saxony, 830 AD

Gandersheim, Old Saxony, 830 ADI will try to remember my first conversation with John word for word. We lay on an ice-cold flagged floor in a dungeon, close around our ankle an iron band chained to a ring in a damp stone wall, dripping rivulets of water. Defeated, captured, I was flogged and flung into the grim depths of a Frankish castle along with eight of my comrades.

“Don’t worry, we’ll soon be out of here,” were John’s first improbable words to me. I must have given him an evil glare because he hissed, “Suit yourself, but I’m telling you—”

“What?” I snarled, “that these chains will shed themselves and the guards will let us go, perhaps with a flask of wine in our hands?” He seemed impervious to the sarcasm and impatience of a twenty-year-old.

“I was saying, my family will have us released any day now.”

“Either that or they’ll bind us to a tree and riddle us with arrows.”

The truth is, I blamed him and his damned way with words for our plight. If he hadn’t stirred the sleeping wolf in our breasts, preying on our festering resentment of the Franks, we would have been out free to breathe fresh air, likely tilling our fields. The bonds of kindred and clan are strong among the Saxons, and notwithstanding our many divisions, he found a way to make us unite and revolt. We were of the same age. If I try hard, I can recall his words ringing in my ears on the fateful day I agreed to join him.

“Never forget the Blood Court of Verden, brothers, after Widukind defeated a Frankish army at the Battle of Suntel. What did Charlemagne do? You all know! He ordered the beheading of 4500 rebel Saxons on a single day. Let us fight to avenge them!”

Nobody cheered louder than I. He could not have known about the family connection but he had referred to my grandsire and a m******e that occurred forty-eight years before, during the Saxon Wars. The prisoner lying next to me was a Christian, but he artfully roused the wolf by reminding our folk of Charlemagne’s edict Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae which asserted, If any one of the race of the Saxons hereafter concealed among them shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized, and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan, let him be punished by death. Lying on that pitiless, cold stone floor, lashing out with bare feet at intrepid rats approaching their unprotected toes, each one of our other companions secretly worshipped Woden.

Capitulatio de partibus SaxoniaeIf any one of the race of the Saxons hereafter concealed among them shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized, and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan, let him be punished by death. John should have known that the Franks were better armed and organised than the ill-disciplined but courageous rebels he had mustered. His stirring speeches tugged at the hearts and minds of our oppressed folk. He spoke of a glorious opportunity because, not for the first time, our count, Wala, was aiding Lothair I, the eldest son of Louis the Pious, in rebellion against his father. In that May, 830, a short-lived uprising involving those of both clerical and lay orders as well as three elder sons of Louis, succeeded in forcing Empress Judith into monastic confinement. John declared this the perfect chance to overthrow the Franks. It might have been, had the rebellion lasted longer. As it was, the rebels managed to put pressure on Louis the Pious to abdicate. But their success was not enduring, for Wala finished in exile in a high mountainous region near Lake Geneva. With the undivided attention of the Franks in Saxony given to our uprising, our hopes were dashed on the battlefield.

I must admit that the tall, muscular figure lying beside me fought ferociously. I had wielded my axe close enough to him to admire the s*******r he effected. If all of our warriors had been so valiant, we would have carried the day. John only surrendered when the remnants of our force were surrounded by a ring of spearmen. Give him his due, he called out in a ringing voice to lay down our arms. Thanks to his discretion that day, I have reached this ripe old age.

Only in that dungeon did we get to talking where he confided that he was the black sheep of his family. The youngest of four children, his eldest brother was the same Wala who had rebelled against the emperor. His father Egbert was a count at the Frankish court, where John had grown up and studied before rebelling and running away, refusing to take monastic vows like his two brothers. His youthful dream, quashed in that dungeon, was to become a warrior and liberate Old Saxony. With hindsight, we were laughably idealistic hot-headed youths back then. And both were sons of a noble family. Perhaps that is why we became lifelong friends.

As I am a venerable monk, I should spare a word about John’s mother, Ida of Herzfeld. I would say that it was thanks to her influence that John grew into the man we came to respect and admire. She was the daughter of a count close to Charlemagne and received her education at his court. He gave her in marriage to a favourite lord, Egbert, and bestowed on her a great fortune in estates to recompense her father’s services. She was a saintly woman who devoted her life to the poor following the death of her husband in 811. But I am getting ahead of myself. I will return to Ida later in my narrative.

Two days after my first exchange with John, his words came true. Despite my scepticism, we were bundled outdoors and menaced in the courtyard.

“We’re going for a country stroll,” the officer jested, but there was no humour in his next words. “On our journey, if any man is stupid enough to run away, he will be caught. In that case”—there was an evil glint in his eye—“he’ll lose a foot. I’ll chop it off myself! Clear?” He bellowed, repeating the question and waving an axe. None of us doubted the sincerity of his threat.

They handed back our shoes. “You’ll be needing these,” and even this sounded ominous. Six and a half days of t*****e began as we jogged along on the trot whilst our captors, brandishing canes to discourage laggards, rode beside us. Only our thin linen protected us from those stinging wands. The weaker among us wore shirts dappled with bloodstains. “No cheese for malingerers!” the Frank bawled with gusto. That admonition kept us on our toes. We needed the hard, black rye bread and the rocklike goat’s cheese to replenish our dwindling energy, but it was water we craved most. Six leagues a day, due south, they required of us. Whence and to what fate was not revealed.

After six and a half days, we arrived at our destination, although we knew it not. I had admired the beauty of the woodlands fringing the broad swirling river, which later I learnt was the Fulda. The monastery, founded a little more than half a century before, lay before us.

“Your new home, brothers,” sneered the officer. “The Duke has given you a choice: either become monks or die. What is it to be? Those among you not wishing to wear the habit, step forward now!” Unsurprisingly, nobody moved a tired muscle to advance. “Right! Prepare to be tonsured.” They made us kneel, tugged at our hair and carved it away with their daggers. It hurt like hell and I’m convinced they relished nicking as many scalps as possible.

When his tormentor had finished, John, knelt next to me, muttered, “This is my father’s doing, I’ll wager. He always wanted me to be a monk, like my brothers.”

“Better a monk than a corpse,” I whispered back, running my hand over my sore head. The soldier had done a poor job with his knife. I felt the stubble against my palm. “Maybe the brothers will supply us with razors,” I said—correctly, as it turned out. We dragged our aching bones through the monastery gates and admired the stone buildings we grew to know and love. The abbey had everything necessary for monastic life. Looking back, the founder, Sturm, had chosen a magnificent remote location amid luxuriant surroundings. Yet, inside the walls nothing was lacking, the facilities included workshops for a variety of trades, stables, pigsties, pens, beehives, a smithy, furnaces, ovens and, of course, a chapel.

We were greeted by a prior, whose first action was to send for the infirmarian, which was the measure of this kindly monk. He had spied the blood-soaked linen on our backs and called for a soothing balm to treat the raw wheals. His second action was to enquire who among us could read and write. The only man to raise his hand stood next to me: my friend, John. The day had not passed before they put him to the test to demonstrate how learned and refined he was. It ensured his entry to the scriptorium, which proved to be a formative experience for him, whereas they consigned me to the chandler to learn the craft of candle-making.

The irony of our forced march of forty leagues, I discovered later, was that the place we had departed from, Gandersheim, was soon destined to have a monastery or, rather, a convent. On reflection, none of our motley crew would have graced a nunnery!

Within the first year, only one of our band left the monastery, for we were happy there. Fulda provided everything a man might need in exchange for service and dedication to prayer. I am pleased to think that we each grew into worthy brothers in Christ. Except, as I said, for one, a certain Gangolf who did not leave of his free will, but was banished for persistent petty thievery. He was likely destined to die in abject poverty in some squalid and ill-famed quarter. I know that Brother Irmgard had a secret hankering to worship Woden, but he wisely kept his sinful desires to himself. I caught him giving pieces of bread to a crow he frequented too often, but I never remarked on the sacred bird, contenting myself with a wry smile. However, I must not ramble and will, instead, relate something of John’s life at Fulda.