Cuddy, p.1
Cuddy, page 1
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
FICTION
The Perfect Golden Circle
Male Tears
The Offing
These Darkening Days
The Gallows Pole
Turning Blue
Beastings
Pig Iron
Richard
NON-FICTION
Under the Rock
POETRY
Heathcliff Adrift
For David Atkinson and Anna Barker.
And Cliff, canine co-pilot.
Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Inner Farne. AD 687.
Book I: Saint Cuddy
Dunholme. AD 995.
Book II: The Mason’s Mark
Duresme. AD 1346.
Interlude: The Stone Speaks
The nave. AD 1650.
Book III: The Corpse in The Cathedral
Dunelm. AD 1827.
Book IV: Daft Lad
Durham. AD 2019.
Sources
Notes & Acknowledgements
A Note on the Author
Introduction
Cuthbert was born circa 634 in Dunbar in the Kingdom of Northumbria (now in Scotland). After experiencing a vision while working as a shepherd he entered the monastery in Melrose aged seventeen and became prior there in 661.
He soon became widely known for his humble character, piety, love of the natural world, and for travelling great distances to preach in remote communities.
In 665 he was made prior of Lindisfarne, a North Sea island off the coast of Northumbria, accessible from the mainland via a causeway at low tide. There he spent many years in service.
Seeking a quieter life, Cuthbert retired to a smaller island off Lindisfarne in 676, then shortly afterwards moved to a simple stone structure on the even more remote island of Inner Farne.
A popular and respected figure affectionately known as Cuddy, in 685 he was persuaded to come out of retirement and was consecrated as Bishop of Lindisfarne, but soon returned to his small cell on Inner Farne. After a painful illness he died there on 20 March 687.
Over a decade later Cuthbert’s body was believed to have been found to be intact, and he was declared a saint.
Under attack from Viking invaders, the monks of Lindisfarne fled the island in 793, taking with them the exhumed coffin containing the corpse of Cuthbert and various sacred relics. A long period of wandering then followed, during which a community of acolytes and devotees protected their saint.
His body was moved between various locations, though never found a permanent home. In 995 the ‘Cuthbert community’ finally settled in Durham, where they built the first of a series of churches and then, later, a vast cathedral to house him and his relics. Though his corpse has been exhumed on five more occasions over 1,200 years, and the cathedral the location of much tumult throughout the ages, his shrine remains there today and is a popular destination of international pilgrimage, with St Cuthbert widely recognised as the unofficial patron saint of the north of England.
Prologue
Inner Farne. AD 687.
March 20th. A Sunday.
A rheumy slit glued shut.
My eye.
A gate against eternity.
I open it.
All is as was; stone, sea and sky
pouring in.
The other stays locked
lest the eternal world be rent asunder,
torn in two,
split down the middle
like a mackerel for the smokehouse rack.
And for a long soft moment
one part of me dwells in darkness,
the other in light.
For a moment a part of me lives
in death and the other dies in life.
Limbo silence
then that silence is broken.
A seagull shrieks –
a pubbled white thing of feathers and beak
flung sideways on an unseen western gust,
one of His comic details.
But.
But it cannot be put off any longer. It is time to open the other eye.
To raise the cullis, open the gate. Prise it.
I do.
And I die.
Now here I lie,
something tickling at my elbow.
It is a large spider
climbing the waxy incline of my cold and lifeless limb.
Even here in death I feel it.
Even here in death I serve a purpose as all things living serve you
o lord.
I think: what I would like now more than anything is to be licked about the face by dogs or nipped at the toes by Coldingham crabs or nuzzled at the earlobes by seals or otters who waddle over low-tide banks, trail-dragging patterns from seabed to skyline, tresses of kelp draped across the head of one or two as if in anticipation of a gaudy performance, others barking with throaty delight, black eyes as black as peat clods, sea-swollen bodies shifting on the hissing sand. The sun over the land.
Strange the way the dead mind works.
Such curious cravings.
Such
queer notions.
Otherwise, as I say, all is as was, save for the tones of the brothers who now talk as if I am somehow suddenly blind to their busyness, deaf to their quibbles and squabbles, impervious to their bird-fowl clucking just because I’ve finally passed over.
The Bishop, it’s the Bishop, Cuddy.
Daresay I detect a competitive edge to their sudden mourning too.
He is dead.
O lord he is dead.
O lord he is dead and now we are dead with him.
O lord he is dead and now we are dead with him, deliver us as one to your kingdom of heaven. Guide us, praise be. Christ receive him.
Their voices overlapping in a chorus of lament, each outdoing the last.
o! Cuddy this and o! Cuddy that
On and on
and on and
on.
And not for the
first time
I drift
of
f.
Now see how they rush about the rock with their oils and their bandages,
their tinctures and their amulets and their wailing:
o woe o woe
wool cassocks flapping like the skirts of fisherwomen in a gale –
see how they sob as they stumble in prayer, hear how they wail like harpies,
their words lost on the wind like tallow wick flames snuffed by the night.
O Lord
o lord
o.
I mean. What a performance. What rot.
And the din
the din
echoing round the priory walls
like the cries of purgatory itself –
boom voice and sorry spittle
flooding the halls,
bouncing from stone to stone
and out across the water,
where the first boats
have already docked,
double-tied on a
choppy tide,
here to take
me home.
Death is a surprise party you knew all
along was to be thrown in your honour.
Well now.
You should have been here a candle or two ago.
The scenes of despair amongst the monks at my final days of retreat
to this bluff in the foaming ocean was quite the picture.
Granted, death comes only once,
and they are alarmed,
but I’m glad you’re here now, dear friend,
to join me in the amber of the moment,
holding my cracked and callused hand as
we stride forth into the fevered hinterland.
And though my palms may be
weathered and withered,
they are safe
as I straddle chasms,
walk across the burning plain.
Spew flames.
I am sun and moon and rain.
Tomorrow’s skeleton swathed in silk.
But you.
You
can call me
Cuddy.
BOOK I
Saint Cuddy
Dunholme. AD 995.
‘A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine.
From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord deliver us.’
Eighth-century prayer
I
‘Medcaut, the “Island of the Tides”, the Angles’ name for Lindisfarne.’
Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies
‘A vast prospect of sands, mud-flats and sea, stretching away south and east into a great bight and north and west to a far whiteness of breakers rolling in on an endless front from the North Sea; and in the middle distance of sands and flats a long low island.’
A Naturalist on Lindisfarne by Richard Perry
‘Twice every twenty-four hours the sea throws a glimmering girdle around its sandy perimeter. It takes five hours to complete the cycle of rising and falling tides.’
Lindisfarne Landscapes by Sheila Mackay
‘The name Lindisfarne is said to come from the Old English “lindon”, meaning water, and “faron”, meaning island – though no one is certain. Druids lived on the island before Christians.’
100 Days on Holy Island: A Writer’s Exile by Peter Mortimer
‘The island took its name from the Lindis, a brook not more than two feet in breadth, which emptied itself into the sea from the opposite shore. Farne is the Celtic Fahren, a place of retreat.’
Saint Cuthbert, with an Account of the State in which his Remains were found upon the opening of his Tomb in Durham Cathedral by James Raine
‘In the first centuries after the Romans left Britain, political and cultural dominance was established by the Northumbrian centres around Jarrow and Lindisfarne.’
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (Introduction) translated and collated by Anne Savage
‘Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, in Northumberland was founded in 635 … this event marked the beginning of remarkable monastic developments in Northumbria, the influence of which spread south over much of England and eventually beyond, to the continent of Europe.’
Monasteries in the Landscape by Mick Aston
‘The new monasteries were deliberately built on islands or the coast as sanctuaries of learning.’
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (Introduction) translated and collated by Anne Savage
‘The [original] Priory would have been sheltered below and behind a great ridge of volcanic rock to the south, the Heugh, which lies between it and the sea.’
Monasteries in the Landscape by Mick Aston
‘He was carried by ship to our island, but first his whole body was washed, his head wrapped in a head cloth and an obley placed upon his holy breast. He was robed in his priestly garments, wearing his shoes in readiness to meet Christ.’
Two Lives of St Cuthbert by Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne
‘We placed the body of our venerable father in the boat and bore it across to Lindisfarne, where it was received by choirs of singers and a great crowd that had turned out to meet it.’
Herefrith of Lindisfarne
‘If necessity compels you to choose between two evils, I would much rather that you take my bones from their tomb and carry them away with you to whatever place of rest God may decree, rather than to iniquity and put your necks under the yokes of schismatics.’
Cuthbert, from Life of Cuthbert by Bede
‘Contrary to his wishes, Cuthbert was buried in a stone coffin.’
Lindisfarne Priory: English Heritage Guidebook
‘The seventh-century coffin was a work of great art that showed how Cuthbert and his contemporaries imagined their Gods, angels, the apostles and God’s mother … it was almost certainly painted and made even more vivid, even more of a rich focus for devotion.’
To the Island of Tides: A Journey to Lindisfarne by Alistair Moffat
‘They were not willing to lose the fame and honour which would accrue to the place where his body was laid. He charged them, however, that if ever they had to flee the island, they should take his body with them.’
St Aidan and St Cuthbert by Henry Kelsey
‘There had been no significant attacks from the sea for over two hundred years, and none were expected.’
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (Introduction) translated and collated by Anne Savage
‘Dire forewarning came over the land of the Northumbrians, and miserably terrified the people: there were excessive whirlwinds and lightnings, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air.’
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
‘The monks dismantled the timbers of their first church and packed them onto carts; they lugged their ancient stone cross out of the ground and added it to the load. They dug up and disinterred the bones of their founder … Finally they prepared a great chest, a travelling coffin covered in hides to guard against the elements. This would transport the now antique coffin-reliquary, concealed within whose angelic, apostolic carvings lay the community’s most precious and revered essence: the miracle-working, sanctuary-granting, divine portal that was the incorrupt corpse of St Cuthbert.’
St Cuthbert’s Corpse: A Life After Death by David Willem
‘Other important treasures were placed in the wooden coffin: the head of King Oswald, the bones of Aidan and the bones of Eate of Melrose.’
St Cuthbert of Durham by Philip Nixon
‘His splendid burial deposit, including silk vestments, a gold and garnet pectoral cross, an ivory comb, a small gospel book and a silver-plated portable reliquary suggests his was an opulent milieu.’
The New Cambridge Medieval History I c.500–c.700 ed. Paul Fouracre
‘It was because St Cuthbert was so passionately venerated that, in 793, before the men called “the wolfcoats” and “the berserks” could do his remains any harm, the Lindisfarne monks, knowing that precious shrines were a favourite target of the Viking sea-raiders, took his body from Lindisfarne and spent seven years wandering with it, looking for a safe place of refuge.’
A History of Britain: 1 by Simon Schama
‘So great a blast of trial beat upon the church that many of the brethren chose to depart from the place than be in the midst of such danger.’
Bede
‘They left Lindisfarne to flee from the barbarians.’
The Historical Works of Symeon of Durham
‘Sea-raiders from Scandinavia roared onto the scene.’
Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies
‘The Danes came, burning and ravaging.’
St Aidan and St Cuthbert by Henry Kelsey
‘The sudden appearance of the Vikings was violent. Lindisfarne and the monastery were sacked.’
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
‘The pagans from the Northern region came with a naval armament to Britain, like stinging hornets, and overran the county in all directions, like fierce wolves, plundering, tearing, and killing not only sheep and oxen, but priests and Levites, and choirs of monks and nuns … ’
The Historical Works of Symeon of Durham
‘The ravaging of heathen men destroyed God’s church at Lindisfarne through brutal robbery and slaughter.’
Alcuin of York writing to King Ethelred of Northumbria
‘ … some of the brethren they killed; some they carried off in chains; many they cast out, naked and loaded with insults; some they drowned in the sea.’
The Historical Works of Symeon of Durham
‘Never before has terror appeared in Britain such as we have now suffered from a pagan race.’
Alcuin of York writing to King Ethelred of Northumbria
‘Pouring down the coast they destroyed Lindisfarne.’
Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe by Norman Davies
‘The raiders were out for plunder and to show their power to conquer. The island was chosen carefully as easy pickings and as an example. They took any silver and gold that had been left, smashed altars and broke down the high cross placed there.’
Fire of the North: The Life of St Cuthbert by David Adam
‘How could it not be thought that a blood price was coming down to the people from the north?’
The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are by Michael Pye
‘Behold, the church of Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all ornaments. The place more vulnerable than all in Britain is given to pagan people to plunder.’
Alcuin of York writing to King Ethelred of Northumbria
‘On every road lay the corpses of clergy and laity, noblemen and commoners, women, youngsters and babies. Indeed there was no village or highway where the dead did not lie.’
Journal of Ecclesiastical History by S. Coupland
‘The heathen defiled God’s holy places and spilled the blood of saints all around the altar, destroyed the houses of our hopes. They trod on the bodies of the saints in God’s temple like they were treading on shit in the open street.’
Alcuin of York writing to King Ethelred of Northumbria
‘We can be confident that the psychological damage was immense – the most sacred centre of Northumbria had been violated.’
From Holy Island to Durham: The Contexts and Meanings of the Lindisfarne Gospels by Richard Gameson
‘A man could no more forget the Vikings than his own bloody image in the mirror.’
The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are by Michael Pye
‘A terrible famine gripped the land, caused mainly by the ceaseless ravages of the Vikings.’
St Cuthbert of Durham by Philip Nixon
‘Most of the already – severely – depopulated community were carried off by plague; the short incumbency of Cuthbert as Bishop of Lindisfarne was itself troubled by disunity, and the interregnum that followed.’
From Holy Island to Durham: The Contexts and Meanings of the Lindisfarne Gospels by Richard Gameson
