18. At Swanspottle Monastery

THROUGH THE GATES OF TIME - Part 18

Swanspottle Monastery had been built in response to the need by Norman monks who supported William the B*****d on his victorious conquest of England in 1066, for them to have somewhere to pray and chant and copy manuscripts. The new king gave them the land and they were handy with stone, so they built one and its very existence passed into the long catalogue of forgotten events that is the back-bone of history.

And it was to this now somewhat weather-beaten (by the twenty-first century) and crumbling stone establishment that Roger with his two inquisitive children and a dribbling medieval monk arrived that Christmas day in the afternoon. It had been a wearing day so far as Roger was concerned, he having visited widely disparate eras in the history of life on Earth before lunch, and he yearned for his hearth (or radiator) and home, a pair of slippers and his favourite foot-stool.

“They’ll take you in here,” he said to Brother Bumptious, knowing full well that the little monk wouldn’t understand him, but apropos this, he was due for a shock.

Once the rear door to the car was opened the tatty Brother Bumptious leapt out and clapped his hands. Gone was his alarm at the speed of a modern motor vehicle and the dribbling associated with that fear. Gone was any trace of the vexation he felt at having to turn down the best part of a delicious Christmas dinner. And joy was spread over his leathery face until he exposed the blackened stumps of his teeth and jabbered what sounded like gratitude in a loud voice before going up to the door of the monastery, examining it closely as if he couldn’t believe his eyes at the way it almost shone with a dull green paint, and then hammering it on his fist as if that was the most natural thing in all the world for him to do.

“He knows this place,” said Apple knowingly, “I can tell. My teacher says that strangers who are lost always look for the familiar and are happy to go back there.”

“Your teacher has a surprising amount of wisdom,” muttered Roger.

Before they could begin a debate on the qualities of a twenty-first century education the door to the monastery swung open and a large, somewhat bloated and majestically hatted monk stood in the jaws of the doorway.

“Well?” he said, frowning because his own Christmas dinner had been disturbed by the loud knocking.

“We found this little monk and he seems to be one of yours,” said Roger, “and we’ve brought him back to you. Look after him, please, and try not to let him go astray because he doesn’t seem to find anything at all familiar.”

He turned to climb back into his car, but the portly monk in the elaborate head gear was having nothing to do with that.

“Please remain!” he bellowed in a voice that was so loud and threatening that it made Frodo whimper.

“Pardon?” asked Roger mildly, “I’m only doing my Christian duty,” he added.

“He does not belong here!” barked the plump monk, “I’ve never seen him before! And there’s a kind of odour coming from him. We do keep our personnel clean here, you know. We even have showers, which we use every week on Tuesdays and Thursdays in pairs, and there are plenty of opportunities for faces to be properly shaved and tonsures smartened up. So he’s not ours.”

Roger’s heart sunk when he heard those words, and then it raised itself again as, distracted by his own verbosity, the plump monk allowed the tiny Bumptious to slip past him and almost run into a corridor behind him, cackling with the sort of glee that is only generated by familiarity.

“Come back here!” thundered the loud monk, and he turned back to Roger.

“I don’t know what your game is, but I’m having none of it!” he snapped, “bringing a tatty old man along and trying to insinuate he belongs here! We’re an honourable order, we keep ourselves antiseptic and we do a great deal of worthy praying and chanting besides spending long periods in worthy private contemplation. No, he doesn’t belong here. You say you found him? I suggest you take him back to where you found him then, and he might eventually find his way to his proper home.”

“Impossible,” Roger told him, “I’m not going back there again, not if you were to pay me in gold and gemstones. He’s a monk and this is a monastery, ergo he belongs here.”

While the debate had been going on Brother Bumptious had been exploring as many corners of the ancient building as he could in the brief time at his disposal and bearing in mind the limited light that shone in.

Doors opened off the first corridor, and he opened them and shut them one at the time, and laughed, even giggled, when he saw the contents of some of them.

“The brothers are at solitary prayer...” began the large monk, beginning to perspire, “they spend Christmas every year in deep and earnest contemplation and prayer to the infant in his manger. Now what’s he doing?”

By then Brother Bumptious had reached the end of the corridor and was standing in front of the door at the far end.

“That’s a store room!” declared the monk, and he stomped off to see what his unwanted visitor was doing. He hadn’t forbidden it so Roger, with Apple and Frodo in tow, followed him.

Brother Bumptious was standing, almost hunched up, by the last door on the left down the corridor. There was a rough wooden knob in the centre of it as well as a worn keyhole, but however hard he pushed, the door wouldn’t budge.

He turned, damp eyed, towards the others and then pushed on the door again.

“It’s a store room,” the resident monk told him, gently now, as if he could see some purpose behind the apparent insanity of the little man. “It’s been a store room for as long as I can remember. There’s a tale, a really old piece of legend, that once upon a time it was the cell of a monk who mysteriously vanished. He was here one day and, in the twinkling of an eyelid, taken from us, by, it is is said, our Lord in golden raiments. Since then no monk has used the cell, saving it for his return.”

“When did this happen?” asked Roger.

“I know!” piped up Apple, “it was hundreds of years ago, and down there, in that corner, is the door to our closet!”

She pointed, but there was no door there, just an indication that an alcove had been bricked up, probably centuries ago.

“No,” sighed Roger, and he turned to the big monk, “he’s home,” he said, “back to the fourteenth century, he hopes, because that’s where we found him.”

“I don’t understand...”

“It’s like this,” Apple said, smiling, “we didn’t see any mammoths but we did see Brother Bumptious, that’s his name, you know, and he somehow got mixed up with us. But it’s all right now that he’s home, but you might have to unlock this door so that he can sleep at night.”

“I don’t understand...” repeated the confused monk.

“You will,” said Roger quietly, “given time. Come on, kids.”

© Peter Rogerson 08.12.20