Credo, p.1
Credo, page 1
CREDO
Melvyn Bragg
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in 1996 by Hodder and Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © 1996 Melvyn Bragg
The right of Melvyn Bragg to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Epub ISBN 978 1 84894 261 5
Book ISBN 978 0 340 66706 4
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
An Hachette UK company
338 Euston Road
London NWl 3BH
www.hodder.co.uk
To the memory of my father
STANLEY BRAGG
CONTENTS
Credo
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Book Two
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Book Three
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Book Four
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Book Five
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Book Six
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Book Seven
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Afterword
About the Author
Also by Melvyn Bragg
Another of the king’s chief men signified his agreement with this prudent argument, and went on to say: ‘Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thegns and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it.’
Bede, A History of the English Church and People
Book II, Chapter 13
PROLOGUE
A.D. 647
He went up the mountain as God had commanded and it was there that the miracle happened.
Though only half the way through Lent, Donal felt that his fasting had already turned into starving.
The rocks, almost white under the clear, late-winter sun, glinted marble and granite. He tacked around them carefully to avoid scraping his bare shanks. The wasting monk went slowly, weakly, bowed with hunger and the burden of sin from three score years. The devils gave him no rest.
‘Unto thee will I cry, O Lord my Rock. Be not silent to me, lest, if Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.’ First he mumbled the words of the psalm in his heavily accented Latin and then he spoke them more firmly. Finally, growing fearful of the silence about him, he called them out. As he did so he stood still and surveyed the stony landscape as barren, he believed, as any wilderness in Israel. ‘Save thy people and bless thine inheritance,’ he spoke the last verse desperately. ‘Feed them also and lift them up for ever.’ Feed them. Feed me. If an eagle came now with cooked meat in its beak to drop into my mouth, as happened to St Brendan, would I eat? God help me, God forgive me, I would.
It was not a high mountain, few were in that part of the world, but his weakness made a cliff of every incline. He wanted to scratch the skin from his belly to distract that greedy sinful part of him from its malevolent aches and cries for food. The devils were in his belly, champing on his guts, screaming for meat.
Donal thought, as slowly he steered himself higher, of the heavenly feast with the angels which was promised God’s chosen. Every sort of meat, game, beer, mead, bread. Just bread would do, a mouth blessed with fresh bread and then milk to soak it and pulp it and ease it down to that craving craven belly. The munch of fresh bread: for a moment the recollection of its smothering fragrance threatened to overwhelm him.
He rubbed the sweat from his brow on to his lips. They were parched and he could hear no sound of water. His legs were in pain: across his chest was a force clamped like a succubus.
It was a mistake to stop, even to pause. His devils raced into his resting mind, tempting him not only with food and drink but with the sins of the flesh he had never wholly conquered: of lust and envy. ‘Unto thee will I cry, O Lord my Rock.’
He was near to sobbing, a frail old man, straggle-grey-haired, in commonest monk’s robes, tattered and dirty, legs half numb but used to raw weather. He would never be rid of his sins, he thought. He would never sit at the right hand of God. Was it really God or the Devil himself who had sent him away from the household and up this bitter trackless mountain?
A picture of Christ in the wilderness went through his mind. The devil had urged Him to take all He saw before Him . . . Donal put his hands over his eyes – had he seen Christ accept what the devil offered? That would never be forgiven; not by all the interventions of all the saints.
Suddenly he was at the top of the mountain and before him was a large rock slanted from the ground in such a way as to make a shelter from the rising wind. Donal lay there and trembled. All his limbs felt pinched and cramped. In this awesome and unvisited place, he felt at the edge of the world.
What worth was he? How could he be certain that the pit would not claim him and the fires and smokes of hell consume him for ever more? He plucked a stalk of the tough grass and sucked on it for the water. But was there not food in the grass? And was this not breaking his most holy promised fast, promised not only to Christ but to the memory of St Columbanus? Oh, it was all the devil’s work. What hope had he, an insignificant creature on the outer edge of God’s understanding, to expect the grace of a miracle? Why had he listened to a dream? What soil of sin was that? What a fool to let the devil tempt him into such vanity. Donal whimpered on helplessly, cold now and giddy with emptiness.
His poor thoughts scattered across his past as patternless as a handful of pebbles thrown carelessly into a lake. His mother had soothed his childhood sobbing with a song charmed by gods he had made her abandon. The Devil sent the song into his ear now, lulling and poisoning a spirit enfeebled by vanity. His mother had died unhappy with her new God, her son’s God. She longed for the old ways. Donal put his hands over his ears but he could not keep her pagan song away. His will could not prevent sensual excitement gripping his flesh. He wanted to cry out as Christ had cried out on the cross but how could he dare? Merely a life spent in humblest obedience, how could he dare? Oh, little vain unworthy slave.
When he woke the sun was hot on his face. His limbs no longer ached. His belly felt full. There was a soft, warm entrancement in his mind.
She came towards him with the sun behind her, her robe ice-white streamered with gold, around her neck a golden torque, golden armlets along her white arms and, encircling her head, a ring of fine twisted white gold from which her black
‘Donal,’ she said, and the word of his name moved his spirit with a longing so deep that his eyes sparkled with tears. Her tone so silvery soft dispersed all his fears. ‘Listen to me. Listen to every word and repeat none. See all that I am and tell none. Do all the things I say and question none. This—’ she held forward the fragment of wood and Donal felt pushed back, as if a force were propelling him away ‘—this is the greatest treasure on earth. This is from the cross on which Our Lord suffered and on which He died before His glorious resurrection and ascent into heaven. God seeks out the humblest,’ she smiled again and once more tears surged into Donal’s eyes ‘and sometimes those who think themselves wholly unworthy. But He sees into the soul of those whose struggle is hard and whose rewards are meagre, whose fears are so terrible and whose salvation they fear for ever in doubt. These are also true servants, Donal. These are God’s secret messengers, unsuspected because so unassuming.’ She held out the fragment. ‘You are one of these.
‘This is for you. It is for you to pass on. When you leave this mountain you will see a young girl, a virgin, a child. There will come a time when she will have great use for this gift of God. Its meaning will be revealed as her life lengthens. When I go you will find it beside your right hand. Take it up.’ Once more she smiled and Donal’s arms reached out to her, but she was gone.
He began to shiver. The sun fled from his face and seemed to flee from the sky itself as the clouds bundled across the lower heaven, lead-grey and turbulent. His limbs shook as if he were in a fit. He stood up and tried to slap and stamp himself warm. He remembered her final instruction and collapsed on to his knees and scrambled for the divine gift. Yes, there it was, lodged beside a small glittering marbled rock. No longer than his thumb, no wider than his smallest finger. ‘Take it up,’ she had said. ‘Take it up.’ His courage failed and then the memory of her smile fortified him. He held it in the palm of his hand, unable to think or act at all.
Eventually, after putting down the fragment, with difficulty Donal tore a square from the hem of his coarse habit. He reached out to regain it. His hand hovered and of its own volition made the sign of the cross. When he picked up the fragment, a burn of ice went through his body. He wrapped it up with all the care he could summon, reciting the psalm of David which had helped him up the mountain.
Hunger was gone. Thirst gone. All fear gone. He strode down towards the household, oblivious of the pellets of hail which his devils spitefully hurled on him. No devil could stop a miracle! They hurtled around him in vain. Donal moved quickly so that his heart would not burst. For if he paused at all, he knew that he would be overcome by the joy of the gift given him, he was certain, by the Mother of the Son of Almighty God. No, he would not talk of it. No, he would not mention Her. Yes, he would be humble dumb which was why he had been chosen.
But it had happened! And to him! To Donal, to the most unworthy and insignificant of the brothers and sisters in Christ. In this remotest of spots, he had been granted a Visitation, and he had proof. He chanted the Magnificat and came down the last fall of the slope like a deer. Her smile would be with him until his earthly death.
The little girl was at the gate of the compound, a distaff in her hand which looked too big for her, but which she handled skilfully. She was no more than six years old. Her thick, untidy, deep-red hair, uncut, scrambled down her back and all but obscured the rather tight, dark decisive face with the disturbingly pale blue eyes. Her large wolfhound – big enough for her to treat as a pony – snarled viciously but the little girl lightly slapped its jaws and silenced it. She was Bega, daughter of Cathal, princess of the household.
Donal put his hand tight around the cloth which bound the fragment and walked towards her, full of the power of God. In all the slaughter and plague, in all the famine and murders of this world, Bega, with your name which sounds like the giver of the honey of life, in all the torments which may come to you, God will be with you. Christ will be with you. He feared she might have second sight and charged himself not to let his guard drop. To give to Bega the fragment of the True Cross at the right time was now his mission on earth.
She smiled at grim-faced old Donal and let him take her hand and lead her through the gate.
BOOK ONE
CONNACHTA,
WESTERN GALWAY,
IRELAND
A.D. 657
CHAPTER ONE
Was this what a soul felt like, she wondered, as it sped from the body? The sense of speed shot through her like a streak of fear. There was no steady state of heaven, only a racing army of puff-white clouds; no earth, but the fathomless ocean pulsing no more than the thickness of an ox’s skin beneath her.
The wind that came out of this great sea which went to the ends of the earth, the wind that came from the resting place of the night sun and the edge of creation itself, roared and slapped into their single square sail. It lifted the slight wicker-framed boat to the tops of the long waves, hurling them towards the shore.
If saints felt like this, Bega thought, then that might be a good reason for seeking out their arduous path. Cathleen, her childhood teacher, had often urged her to do this, and even Donal had hinted at it several times. But it was all much more simple than that, she reflected, as she held the side of the boat, the oars safely in, Congal the fisherman securely at the steering oar: it was something that made you want to sing in your eyes and your heart as well as in your throat and mouth. When white clouds broke, the winter sun hit the water, making the white crests glitter. It plumbed the ocean for deeper blues and greens. In this new world, Bega searched for the word to describe the agony of pleasure this speed, this ocean which faced the sunset, this great God of a wind gave her. Freedom. Yes, freedom. She smiled softly to herself: that was the truth of her feeling, the secret joy which possessed her so completely and made her helpless in its grip. It was her first time at sea.
Padric stood beside the mast, clasping it with one hand, ignoring the constraining looks of Congal. What force this fragile small boat had when combined with the powers through which God governed the world, he thought. This little boat, which could be carried by two and could carry six and now carried half that number plus a few glistering fish, still squirming for life in the bottom, slithering silver. This tiny craft multiplied by a hundred, a thousand, could fling an army on to an enemy shore so rapidly and so powerfully that the men would leap off and go into battle like giants. This is how the Germanic Tribes had fallen on his home country, Britain, Padric reflected.
As he stood full in the power of the boat’s speed, he could imagine again – as so often haunted him – those pagan warriors skim from the eastern seas on to the long white strands of Northumbria which now they called their own and on across to Rheged on the Western shore where the last of the Britons, his father’s people, Arthur’s people, were now threatened with extinction.
Padric dreamed of defeating them, and of claiming back the whole of the island for those to whom it rightfully belonged. But his father had felt that he needed the strength of true Christianity and scholarship such as could now be found only in Ireland. He had lived there for some time and counted among his tasks the education of Princess Bega.
Now it was time to go home. He wanted to start the battle to restore the kingdom of Rheged which had existed before the Romans. The desire had been growing. In the sting of salt and the bucking of the ox-skin sealed boat as it flew for the shore, the force outside himself fired an equal force within himself and he felt sure.
The invaders would be thrown back. He, Padric of Rheged, would drive them back across the sea which had brought them unwelcome to seize a land not their own.
He turned and smiled at Bega, but her eyes were closed and he had to shout out her name to claim her attention. For a moment he caught the compelling image of this strong-featured young – woman, dark face upturned, calmly blissful, hair wild as the waves, lean body braced against the speed, spellbound, utterly unlike the childish mischief, the tease who had tagged his last two years. Padric was surprised to find her beautiful. He held out his hand.
Bega looked at Congal – could she stand? He shook his head but smiled. Padric stood above her, slim, even spare, lighter than her brothers, but taller, with long hair much redder than her own and almost as wild. Both were Celts, he British, she of the Irish strain. A sadness in repose lay within both of them as if they sensed that time was shortening for that ancient race.
