Byzantium

The sun skimmed the low hilltops, casting a deep yellow light and blue shadows over the yard; I reached the door as the bell tolled none. Pausing at the door, I stepped aside, and a moment later my fellow scribes began trooping out into the yard. Others came from their various chores, talking loudly as they toiled up the hill to the chapel.

"Returned so soon, Aidan?" I turned to see Cellach, the Master of the Library, watching me, his head held to one side as if pondering a philosophical complexity.

"Ah, Brother Cellach, there is a task I would finish."

"Of course." Cellach started away, tucking his hands into his sleeves.

When everyone had gone, I entered the scriptorium and went to my place. The unfinished manuscript lay on the board. I picked up my pen and stood contemplating the line that I had last been writing. The neat black letters, so graceful in their simplicity, seemed perfectly conceived to carry the weight of their inspired message. Into my mind came a scrap of verse I had written numerous times: Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my Word shall never pass away…

Word of God's Word, I thought, I am the vellum and you are the Scribe. Write what you will, Lord, that all who see me shall behold your grace and majesty!

Laying aside my pen, I sat in the empty room, looking and listening, remembering all that I had learned and practised in this place. I gazed at the clustered tables, each with its bench, and both worn smooth, the hard, hard oak polished through years of constant use. In this room everything was well-ordered and precise: vellum leaves lay flat and square, pens were placed at the top right-hand corner of each table, and inkhorns stood upright in the dirt floor beside each bench.

Thin light slanted in through the narrow windholes high in the four walls. The dying wind whined as it circled the scriptorium, searching among the chinks in the timbers for entrance, but many hands over many years had pressed tufts of raw wool into the cracks, frustrating all but the most savage gales.

I closed my eyes and breathed the air. The room smelled of peat from the small fire of turves glowing red on the hearthstone in the centre of the room. The pungent white smoke drifted up through the smokehole in the roof-thatch.

It had been my chore, when I first came here, to carry the turves, guard those embers, and keep that fire going through the chill winter days. I would sit in the corner on my pile of peat, and watch the faces of the scribes at their labour, all sharp-eyed and keen as they copied out Prophet, Psalm, and Gospel, their pens scritch-scratching on the dry vellum leaves.

I saw the scriptorium now much as I had seen it then: not a room at all, but a fortress entire and sufficient unto itself, a rock against the winds of chaos howling beyond the monastery walls. Order and harmony reigned here.

After prayers, my fellow scribes returned to their work, forsaking their talk at the door. In the scriptorium no voice was ever lifted above a whisper, and then rarely, lest the sound disturb or distract. A momentary lapse in concentration could mean the ruin of a page, and days of meticulous labour.

Taking up my pen once more, I undertook to complete the passage before me, working happily until vespers. We secured our work for the night and left the scriptorium, joining our brothers in the chapel. After prayers, we gathered at table to break bread for our evening meal: a watery stew of brown lentils and salt pork. Brother Fernach read from the Psalms as we ate, and Ruadh read from the Rule of Colum Cille, then dismissed us to our cells for study.

I was reading the Canticle of the Three Youths, to which I applied myself intently, and my diligence was rewarded, for it seemed as if I had only just lit the candles when the bell sounded compline. Laying the book carefully aside, I left the cell and joined the brothers on the way to the chapel. I looked for Dugal among them, but the night was dark and I did not see him. Nor did I see him afterwards.

Prayers were offered for the coming journey, and it put me in mind to make petition myself. So, after the service I sought out Ruadh, our secnab, and requested the night vigil. As second to Abbot Fraoch, it was Ruadh's responsibility to appoint the readers and vigilants each day.

Crossing the yard, I proceeded to a small hut set a little apart from the abbot's lodge. There, I paused at the entrance to the cell and, pulling the oxhide covering aside, I tapped on the door. A moment later, Ruadh bade me enter. I pushed open the narrow door and stepped into a room aglow with candlelight. The air smelled of beeswax and honey. Ruadh was sitting in his chair with his bare toes almost touching the turf fire on the hearthstone at his feet. As I came to stand before him, he put aside the scroll he was reading and stood.

"Sit with me, Aidan," he said, indicating a three-legged stool. "I will not keep you long from your rest."