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ISSUE TWO: BY STONE. BY WOOD. BY WATER.
James Robertson

James Robertson

Kentigern and the Madman

A voice came through the wet, aching wood

where the madman lay − not of burn, bird or fox

nor the cry of taken prey but something half

forgotten that still buzzed in his mud-clogged ear.

 

He heard it again, rose from his damp leaf bed, knew it:

a man at prayer, his own old calling before he fled the world,

the endless ask of God. Who am I? And You − what, where?

O my God, my God, why have You forsaken me?

 

Poor fool, the mad one thought. Thorn whips and thick branch cudgels

made a torment of his refuge. Toadlike he crawled

towards the kneeler on his mossy hassock; squatted arse-naked

to observe. Kentigern looked up, saw an echo of himself.

 

What kind of man is this? Before he spoke the words the vision said,

‘I am Lailoken, most wretched of the earth. All men’s sins

are on my head, the blood of every war drips from my heels.

Pray for me, Kentigern, you who still can. Petition your God for my release.’

 

The day flooded the forest. Kentigern offered up prayer after prayer

but back came nothing, even when he asked the birds for silence.

His saintliness exhausted, he thought a dark thought:

I suffer for the wrongs that have been done − yet not by me. 

 

He stood, stretched, went to wash his face in a deep, black pool.

The water broke him into shards. He shuddered.

What if he were as lost as that lost soul? If the prayerless,

bookless ones he ministered to were better loved by God?

 

A deer took fright at his frightened eyes; it scattered twigs and slipped

on bog as it fled. Kentigern dozed, woke with a start.

The crazy ape was back, yelling, hooked in the fork of an ancient oak.

‘Give me the body and blood of Christ,’ he cried, ‘for today I am to die.’

 

‘How will you die?’ Three times Kentigern quizzed him, three times

received reply: ‘By stone.’ ‘By wood.’ ‘By water.’ Kentigern said,

‘You lie. No man can have three different deaths.’ But out of pity

and to shut him up he served him the holy bread and wine.

 

Then Lailoken was free, and ran for his life. At the edge of the trees,

where the river flowed and the hut people lived, wild boys gave chase,

rock-pelting him till he flew from the bank and fell. A fisherman’s stake

rose from the water to spit him. His torn mouth opened in pain. The river flowed in.

 

 

 

 

 

Header Image Credit:  Marianne Mitchelson

James Robertson
James Robertson

James Robertson is a poet, editor, translator and novelist. His most recent novel, News of the Dead, was awarded the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2022. He stays in Angus.