Open Writing

The Wedding

I was mucking out the stye of my sow Helga, an excellent pig and a good mother to her litter. I scratched her back and she grunted at me for the sheer pleasure of a bit of attention. God has given us dominion over the animals but mine always respond to a little kindness and do their best for me as a result.

I’ve never needed to whack an animal or a slave either. In fact, I married my slave Aoife – best thing I ever did.

There was a rush of footsteps behind me. It was Aoife, breathless and very pregnant.

“Rik, you must come. Change into a clean habit, you can’t come like that. You smell worse than Helga.”

“Must come where, why?” I said reasonably.

“Great news – there’s a Lothian boat at the beach. It has brought a Christian priest.”

“Yes?”

“We can be properly married now,” she said.

A Christian marriage has always been Aoife’s dearest wish.

I went quickly to the house, washed my hands and face in rainwater at the barrel, and slipped into my favorite shirt, the one with the cross on the pocket.

I took Aoife’s hand and we went down to the beach together.

A rotund man, of middle age, with red hair, was wading through the water. He was tonsured, clad in a worn brown robe, much stained with food and other detritus.

“Blessings upon you good people,” he said, holding his hand in the air and making a ward.

“May I have the honor of knowing whom I address?” I asked.

“Father Cuthbert,” he said. “A priest in Christ’s service once based on the banks of Liffey River, on the coast of Erin, now a roamer doing the Lord’s work.”

“Welcome to my fair isle, father. I’m Rik, lord of the settlement.” I hesitated briefly and then plunged on “… and this is my wife, Aoife, a Christian woman. She has set her heart on having a priest say the marriage sacrament.”

The priest looked at her swollen middle and then looked back at me. “It seems I’ve arrived a little late for that,” he said.

Aoife stifled a sob. I thought quickly. “This is a small island but it is a fertile haven, a safe refuge guarded by these northern seas. It is quiet here, a good life. We thrive though we do not have a priest.”

I paused and looked around me. “I have set aside a small area of land near the burn for a chapel, perhaps also a school and a hospice for the sick.

“I thought to build the chapel with local stone, facing south, in the shape of a cross. The west wing of the cross would serve as the priest’s quarters.

“I would endow the priest with a living and people would pay him to teach the children their letters and their numbers. He could read to them from the Holy Scriptures.

“Naturally, those who wished to convert to Christianity could be baptized in the waters of the burn, which are soft and clean and beautiful to drink.”

I can’t remember when I made so long a speech. Aoife was looking at me with amazement. Boris, my dog, was wagging his tail.

The priest regarded me carefully, an idea starting to grow in his mind.

“Who would you have for a priest, if there are no Christians here?”

“I would need advice on somebody suitable. He shouldn’t be too old and he would need to be kind to children. We have a lot of children here.”

“Could I see the land you had in mind for the chapel?”

“Follow me,” I said. “We can talk along the way.”

When the priest saw the favored spot I had in mind, with the wooded hills behind it, he was impressed. “I know just the priest for the task,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Me,” he said, with absolute conviction.

“Father Cuthbert,” I said. “As a humble island lord, I need my marriage to Aoife put to rights in the sight of her God – my God, too.”

“Everybody’s God,” said Cuthbert. “It will be done and I’m the cleric to do it.

“You have done nothing wrong. What you have is a normal, natural marriage.

“I’ve seen a lot of these. All it needs is the blessing of a priest. Give me an hour or two and come to the chapel land with Aoife.”

I took Aoife’s hand. She was trembling. I could feel excitement running through her.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The baby. It kicked,” she said. “I think he’s pleased.”

When we returned to the lot by the burn, dressed in our finest garments, Boris wearing a daisy chain interwoven through his collar, the priest had set up a wedge of stones to form an altar. On it was set a beaker of water.
“Holy water,” the priest said. “One of the tools of the trade.”

He raised his hand above our heads and chanted in a sing-song voice, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ I accept your natural union and I bless it as a sacramental marriage. Amen.”

And that was all there was to it.

Aoife and I finally came to the sacrament of marriage, her magnificently pregnant, both of us splashed with holy water on a lovely afternoon with an exaltation of larks calling high above, and Boris, my hunting dog as Aoife’s attendant.