15 Cadmon Druce Chapter

Cadmon Druce

Richard of Llandaff, trained in the shadow of the cathedral of Saint Teilo in Wales, once chaplain to the estate of Tastoff in old Mercia and now Chaplain of Norbury Manor, learned cleric in a sea of knightly ignorance, opened his personal book to the last entry and summarily read the words inscribed. They concerned the recent knightings, the mesnie, and the leave taking. There were also words describing the person of Lady Em and the dignity with which she said her farewells to her husband, Lord William. There, the cramped, precise, paper conserving handwriting ended.

The chaplain opened the cover of his ink well and carefully plucked the end of his quill to remove any dried ink remaining in the channel. He dipped the pen, placed his hand in position to write, and paused as was his habit, to form his thoughts. His style of writing was straightforward, contemplative, but not inventive. He wrote of history, such food not for the imprecise mouths of troubadours. His words must be pure and untainted, with fictions omitted, with news from afar trusted only if heard twice to the same account, and then balanced against prudent wit. Impartiality was important. He had, himself, read too many histories where the author invented more than reported, sending later scholars into fits of frustration. His history would not contain such fictions.

He decided to begin as he usually did. Simply.

"A great knight has arrived in Norbury," he wrote in his mind, testing the words. Then, he blotted the ink from the pen and laid the quill aside, stopped by the inadequacy of the beginning. In the person of Cadmon Druce, he felt he had truly met one of the great persons of the world. The impression came unbidden, naturally, and strangely, did not evoke any feelings of jealousy, envy or disparagement, emotions with which, though base, he had to honestly credit himself when confronted by the supposed great persons of the realm. Cadmon's greatness came from within, like a spark of the divine. In him, God lived more strongly than within any other man he had ever met, though, by all accounts, the knight attended services as a formality, something done for the sake of good manners rather than true conviction. He doubted if Cadmon ever prayed, and yet....

How could he convey to coming generations the true import of such a person? Could they ever taste the cider of this year's harvest, sipped warm and fresh, with hearth logs crackling at one's feet, though he describe it 'til death? No, such things can only fall as shadows of the rounded, tangible objects they represent. Ultimately, words fail. They describe only shadows.

Necessarily, he must represent Cadmon Druce as a shadow, though if ever there was a man deserving of more rounded telling, it was he, but words can, with precision, tell only what is viewed from without. Of what is within, the scholar can only attempt approximations based on common understandings between himself and his reader. Yet, if he did not attempt the task, nothing would be remembered. Better to salvage the cheese by slicing away the bad than tossing the whole cake to the pigs.

Chaplain pulled his linen lined wool garment closer about him and stared out the window at gray skies. He sighed quietly and closed his eyes, composing his words, thinking about what to write, how to state the thing, how to say the most with the least. How to be simultaneously honest and perceptive.

Cadmon Druce stood apart from other knights, not only by appearance, but by bearing and learning. In stature, he was above middle height, well proportioned, lean, possessing immense strength, coordination, and grace. His brow and eyes accorded great intelligence, wisdom. He appeared to have the patience of Atlas, and like Atlas, spent much of his time alone. In skill of arms, he had no peer. In the tenets of chivalry, he possessed all attributes a knight could aspire to, but displayed not the smallest hint of affectation. He simply was, unselfconsciously moving among men with a code of his own, a code at once setting him apart from, but not above, his peers, welling from some inner font of conduct. But because he seemed not the least interested or conscious of the gap, the other men flocked to him, when he would have them, like children around a story teller. Cadmon set an example to them all, but seemed wholly uninterested in the status accorded him, a fact which probably allowed even the most puffed up knights to attend him without loss of prestige. Truly, he was an extraordinary man, secretive and self contained, but extraordinary nonetheless. A leader with no desire to lead.

Where did he come from, not by country, but by breeding? The shape of the man told of no one origin. Cadmon had, in form, a head well fitted to helm or crown, somewhere between Nordic and Roman, both races having liberally spread their seed in the Isle. His eyes, like his hair were brown, but not the soft brown of Italy. The brown came from farther north, France or the Netherlands, perhaps.

His muscle lay just beneath the skin, not with the flayed look of Mediterranean sailors, but with the fluid solidity of a deer. At forty, no part withered or sagged. A few scars appeared during bathing, though no marks of major wounds. His skin was tanned from much exposure to sun, but the base complexion was fair.

Many knights kept falcons and other animals. Weasels, dogs, big cats, wolves, owls, and horses, most of the cargo of the ark, completed the accoutrements of knights, nobles, rich merchants, and virtually everyone who could afford the luxury. But no one ever kept an animal in the manner Cadmon Druce kept the old destrier he affectionately called Squire Horse. He spoke and referred to the horse as he would of another man, always by name. His tone and word invariably conveyed dignity, respect, and affection. In another man, such behavior would breed suspicions of all kinds, but in Cadmon, it merely completed the enigma. Everyone in the manor now referred to the old war horse as Squire Horse, and few, if any, thought anything odd about it.

The old people who said they remembered Cadmon in his youth proclaimed him a prodigy at eighteen, able to best the most renowned knights of the region, but preferring, on the whole, to avoid contests. Some said he avoided single combat because his assurance of winning only pitted him against the best, and he could ill afford to incur the rancor of those in whose service he would spend his years. Others said that the contests bored him after a time. One old cobbler claimed the knight seemed to flow into battle like a dammed stream suddenly breaking its confines, the resulting total force unleashed as uncontrollable, and as unstoppable, as a flood, and that the young knight feared the loosing of such power because his judgments at those times tended toward murderous absolutes. Altogether, the stories of young Cadmon proclaimed a gifted youth of extraordinary ability.

Judging from observations of his full adulthood, Cadmon had turned out, as a knight, if anything, surpassing the promise of youth, but with a bizarre, inexorable twist toward self allegiance. Self allegiance to such a degree exceeded all understanding, and what exceeded understanding became a thing for people to ignore, much as a dog ignores the scurrying of mice in walls it knows it can never penetrate. Thus, a man is left alone, and in this world, a man alone is truly alone, suspect perhaps, and with no one to watch one's back on the road, in danger. Yet, Cadmon seemed to have weathered the consequences well.

The breadth and depth of his learning was another thing which set him apart, though few were sufficiently equipped to appreciate the span. Lady Em had noticed, he was sure, but no one in the manor had the benefit of a measuring stick sufficient to determine the depth. Everyone knew Cadmon owned several books, no two of which were written in the same language. Beyond that, they could apprehend little.

Chaplain tilted his head, remembering. On several occasions during contemplative walks, he had met Cadmon on the wall, thoughtfully scanning the countryside around, and had engaged him in conversation. Cadmon's quiet, self-assured voice still echoed in memory. He had, without the slightest effort to impress, kept up with virtually every subject of learning available for discussion. Beyond this, he had obviously restrained himself from pushing deeper into many areas, probably out of deference for a chaplain's meager understanding. The only area where Cadmon's knowledge waned lay in current events. In this, Cadmon had probed deeply, exacting precise responses about names, places, attitudes and intentions, news, suspicions, and so forth. When the knight at last felt he had sufficiently plumbed an avenue, he would smile in his close-lipped way, and move on to another subject as the conversation ordained.

The breadth of his questions should have conveyed, to an astute mind, some purpose touching upon the reason for his appearance in Norbury, but all that a chaplain's deductive mind could divine was that the knight had been away for a long time and simply wished to catch up on the daily life of an unsteady kingdom in civil conflict.

Inarguably, the largest question in everyone's mind concerned the reason for Cadmon's presence in Norbury after all these years. He spoke not of it, and if asked pointedly, avoided a satisfactory answer, though the listener only surmised the deficiency after the conversation had ended. Most certainly, something of importance had dislodged him from his haunts on the continent, from those many places where he seemed to have lived. Like the leviathan at the bottom of the sea, at depths where only the fiercest of tempests could cause disturbance, something of great import must have dislodged Cadmon. But was the tempest one of personal or national nature? Did it affect only the person of Cadmon, or was it a tidal bore which would unsteady many small boats in its wake? Cadmon would not deign to say. Perhaps the time was not yet neigh.

Chaplain glanced at a small painting of a saint, the only decoration, save a rood, a small wooden cross, on the walls of his chamber. The eyes of the saint were opaque. He was simply a man of paint. The eyes said nothing, conveyed nothing. There, too, the artist had failed to convey the inner workings, capturing only the external form. Such were the limitations of Man and Art. Such were the limitations of his history.

As far as he could determine, Cadmon was a nearly perfect amalgam of desirable human qualities. Whatever his hidden demons may be, whatever violent currents tossed the vessel of Cadmon in youth, they lay quiet now, suppressed, sunken beneath dark, placid waters. He was timeless, placeless, independent of politics, culture, and race, a mind in consummate balance with body, as at peace with the world as a tree, as rooted in the flow of life as an underground aquifer. He was a blend of wines distilled into a substance greater than its constituent parts. He was a brandy of a man.

Chaplain leaned back in his chair, flexing his limbs and fingers, shaking off the cold. He contemplated closing the waxed parchment shutter, but that would halve the light in the room. As he thought about the merits of trading warmth for light, two ravens flew past. He watched for them to return, but was disappointed. They were swift, momentarily captivating, dark comets in a winter sky. He ruminated upon their flight. In the wink of an eye, their lives had mingled with his own, like actors entering from stage right and exiting from stage left, no lines being said. How many lives touched him in this way? He felt strangely empty.

Again, the figure of Cadmon stepped into his mind.

"A saint's forbearance, the magnanimity of a king," chaplain muttered aloud. But where was the flaw, the Achilles heel, the Judas hair? Nothing of Earth moves with absolute perfection. Where was the secret rot of Cadmon Druce?

Picking up his quill, Chaplain again dipped its point into the ink, and with melancholy conviction, began to write.

End of Chapter 15 (Next Chapter)

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