The Oblate's Confession Read Online Free Page B

smell.
    “What’s that?!”
    The skin on Oftfor’s forehead drew taut like the skin of a drum. He pointed at the inside of his elbow.
    I took a hesitant step closer (the smell was really quite offensive) and was able to see a small dark spot where Oftfor pointed. The thing looked too black to be part of his skin.
    “Did you burn yourself?”
    Oftfor shook his head.
    I came closer still, breathing through my mouth. “Did something bite you?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Well cover it up and we’ll show Father Prior.”
    Oftfor pulled his sleeve down and I turned to go, the bread crowding once more into my thoughts, making me a little angry with Oftfor, this smell, the fact that now, hungry as I was, I was going to have to go without, help him with this.
    “Wait.”
    I turned around, ready to say something.
    The skin on Oftfor’s forehead drew taut once more, then, abruptly, curdled. Looking at me, never taking his eyes off me, he reached down and jerked up his woolens.
    I turned away in disgust.
    A small hand grasped my sleeve.
    More disgust, and, with it now, the first touch of horror. I jerked away. Was there something wrong with Oftfor? Did he think he needed me to stand guard while he made water? I jerked away, spun around, the look on my face daring him to try that again.
    Oftfor appeared as shocked as I, eyebrows raised in a show of almost comic fright.
    I stared at him.
    Oftfor glanced down and, despite myself, despite the fact I knew I didn’t want to, that I would do almost anything to avoid looking down there, I followed his gaze. Along the crease created where Oftfor’s left leg joined his body, a small line of welts stood out like the sting of a whip, rebuke to my curiosity.
    “A rash?” I asked, my voice sounding suddenly different, wrong, a voice belonging to someone else.
    “I don’t know. They weren’t there yesterday.”
    I shrugged, anxious now to leave, to get out of there, the room suddenly too small, its roof too close, the once pleasant sound of rain on thatch now become something else entirely, a mad irreligious chant.
    Oftfor looked back down at his groin, woolens held up around his chin like a bib. “I don’t know Winwaed,” he said, shaking his head like an old man shaking his head over an apple gone bad, “but I think I’m going to die.”

V

     
    In my memory of that night the moon makes a sound as it rises. I know that cannot be, that it’s impossible, but that is the way I remember it. The thing is big, too big, and it seems to make a sort of noise as it rises over the Far Wood. In a fever you can sometimes get a noise like the noise I am remembering. It is a steady sound, constant, irritating, as though someone were humming beneath his breath right behind you. But in a fever of course no one is really humming. You can stop your ears with your fingers but it will make no difference for the sound is not in your ears, it is in your head. This is the sort of sound I remember hearing that night as we came out of Vigil. I don’t think we really heard it. I don’t think it was possible we could have heard the sound that soon, that far away. But that is the way I remember it—the garth, the moon, the mindless sound of someone humming.
    And then of course we entered the dortoir and whether or not we’d really heard the humming out on the garth we certainly heard it then. Though Eadnoth sat at the far end of the hall, there is no doubt in my mind that we heard the humming from the moment we first stepped through the door. And that nothing happened. For that is another strange thing about that night, the fact that, so far as I can recall, no one did anything about it. No one said anything or went down to where Eadnoth sat to remonstrate with him. No one even seemed upset by the fact that Brother had so clearly missed the Vigil.
    Which, looking back on it now, makes a sort of sense. I mean, when you think about it, you can see how this could have happened. The older monks, all