Light in the Darkness

He circled behind her, reaching for the scourge that was secreted in the rafters. It was made from reeds in the creek that crossed his path from the monastery, created lovingly in the dark of night when the Abbot was denied the gift of slumber. It rustled drily as he swished it through the air.

"Are you ready for your penance?" he asked with a quavering voice.

"Yes," she replied meekly.

Her shoulders recoiled as her penance began. The landscape of her body was still in dark twilight as the light pink flecks of dawn began to touch her shoulders. It grew brighter and brighter, traveling down her back and over the sweet mounds halfway down her body. Down and down the red dawn broke, reaching over the heights to filter down to the depths. She uttered little cries of pain and pleasure as the dawn spread over her, rising up slightly to meet the source.

The Abbot finished and regarded his work. Long practice has taught him the exact amount of penance the Mother Superior could handle, as the red morning brightened the dark olive landscape. He took a long breath and released it, before moving around in front of her.

She looked at him lost in a trance. "Reverend Abbot, surely you are not done. My sin is great, and deserves chastisement as the great Saint has commanded."

Olive skin quivered as it waited. Swelling curves reached back to welcome their sweet recrimination, their sweep ripening an apple red that flowed downward over her thighs and calves to the floor. Smiling, the Abbot regarded the color that once adorned his head, spread so delicately yet uniformly from ankles to neck. He shook a little bit as he thought to what was next, the ritual of fifteen years in this place between Abbot and Abbess.

"Are you ready for the next step?"

"Yes, Father."

"You must be honest with me. You must not hold back."

"I will not hold back. I will hold back nothing."

The Abbot came around to the Abbess' front. She pulled her long dark hair from its resting place down her chest, running beside her right breast, behind her. Her eyes leaked delicately, running thin, fine trails down her face and off her chin, but she made no effort to brush them away. He trembled with the scourge in his hand, his lip quivering. It was as though he wanted to hold back, to leave this place and run back to his abbey, but he was bound.

"Tell me where the Flann Mahon has been."

"The Red Bear embraced my body, drew me naked against his hairy desire. He pawed my breasts and drank their milk. His nails scratched my mons, provoked me to the mountains of lust, brought me close to the lip of the cliff. Then his member drove deep into my garden house, watering my garden with his fruitful seed, and I bore his cubs, male and female."

"The Flann Mahon pawed your right breast?"

"Yes, Father." It accepted dawn's red kisses, brightening the olive sky gently, stopping short of sunrise.

"The Flann Mahon pawed your left breast?"

"Yes, Father." It accepted the dawn's red kissed, its brown peak turning hard and thick, oozing opaque dew.

"The Flann Mahon pawed your sex?"

"Yes, Father. He reached inside me and enslaved me to his will." The reverse horizon widened as it caught the rays as they fell sharply. The pale sun peeked shyly from its home, growing brighter and wetter as it lifted up, the fire of passion reaching out to burn his eyes as it captured him. The dawning light ran down toward her knees and shins.

She looked at him as her body tingled with its chastisement. His blue eyes were frightened again, as they always were, struggling against his will. These eyes had seen horrors: men butchered like calves, shrieking in despair, vainly clawing to hold their dissected bodies together as their lives flowed away from them. These eyes has seen his reflection after battles against Vikings, his face streaked with blood and feces. Sometimes that vision looked out his mirror.

Her dark eyes held his in an iron grasp. He struggled to free himself, she held him tightly, binding him to her desire and his. They stood as statues: she naked and marked before him, he struggling to move his feet before his hands moved to pull his habit over his head to release his aching manhood. Back and forth the current wavered, until she threw herself across the room, bearing him onto the coarse pallet Niccólo and his wife shared: the bed the Abbot and Abbess hollowed with their lust every week for fifteen years. With a single lunge, her dark, slick valley, made ready by her chastisement, engulfed his aching member, riding it frantically.

After a few strokes, he growled and surrendered to the Flann Mahon within him. Flipping her over, he bore down on her, driving hard into her soft flesh as he had pushed into the Northron King's bodyguard, letting nothing stand in his way. She bucked hard against him, clawing hard red trails on his back, his penance for a life as a warrior, for his departure from his vow. They screamed and moaned in their mating dance that ebbed and flowed for another hour by the sun. The Flann Mahon growled as his seed poured into Lucia. They held each other tightly, and the struggle ended.

They held each other gently, their calm natures restored. Abbot Agostino and Abbess Lucia lay naked on the broad Priest's pallet he shared with his woman and her sister, holding one another, gazing wistfully into each other's eyes.

"I shouldn't be here," he said at last.

"I shouldn't be here, either." A breeze rustled the delicate tree limbs outside the hut.

"I have to keep coming back," she murmured.

"I can't stay away," he admitted.

"I have to be with you, whenever I can, as much as I can."

"We've got to stop. You're over forty. You'll get pregnant again, and you'll be too old; another baby could kill you. I won't lose someone I love like this."

"I gave birth to Mirabella last year without any problems. My mother had ten children and she lives; we have seven children together and I am not diminished. But if your spirit is heavy, my Flann Mahon, we shall find other ways to share our love."

He nodded gravely. "I will accept the death of my little ones as my seed fails to find your little house."

She sat up and gave him a disdaining look. "I don't care what the ancients say, I give my children something unique. Your daughters look like me in every way, the sages must be wrong to say the male has all that is needed for new life. There is no homonculous, man and woman must contribute half. It does not matter if your seed inundates my entire body; we have done no wrong."

A bird sang in the tress outside; he knew Niccólo would be returning soon. She toyed with his grey chest hair. Her lips found his, then traveled down his body to Ouroboros' lair, where they surrounded its tail, pulling it from its introversion, licking and sucking its hybrid sweetness. As she pleased him, she reflected that he needed her like no other, for like the ancient serpent he would be lost in the pain of his past, the meditations in the Scriptorium, and the fear of the future if she did not intervene, swallowing his tail before he could. Her senses overtook her as she reveled in the feel of the hot, slick flesh in her mouth until it spewed its salty seed on her waiting tongue. He sighed as he ejaculated, twitching as she pulled every last drop from him.

Then he caressed her life giving mounds. His questing mouth found a fountain of life, where he sucked and pulled its rich goodness to slake his thirst, gently nipping its supple moistness. Moving to the other side to repeat the process, her free hand came up where it clawed and twisted. His hand wandered into the dragoness' lair, beguiling its shyness until it was seduced, emerging at his commanding touch, to shake and shiver until the warm olive paradise shook with universal bliss once again.

They passed some more time together, barely getting dressed before the Priest's family returned. It was almost dark when they were able to leave; the Abbot escorted the sisters on their long, silent journey back to their monastery, taking his place in their guest house overnight as he had on his twice yearly Visitation.

He awoke in the bright early morning light, but instead of slipping out the door and back home right away, he stopped in the nursery where Sister Agnes greeted him by kissing his hand. The children solemnly followed suit, before the little ones wandered to play and the older ones sat at his feet for stories. A smile came to his lips and the fog cleared from his eyes as the eager faces waiting for him to begin, and he teased them for several minutes, watching them closely. He told them of Naohm Padraig, Corngall, Kelvin, Columban, and Dungal his mentor, who healed him after a seeming death blow from a fracas in Connaught and opened a world of learning, wisdom and peace to him.

Monica, an eight year old replica of Mother Lucia, came close to touch his old scar as he showed it to the children, her eyes heavy with tears hearing of his ancient pain. There were about fifteen other children in the nursery, outcasts of nobility: three resembled Monica and a young boy around six had red hair and blue eyes. A dark-haired three year old sat at his feet, clinging to his calf, and a year old girl with olive skin tottered gleefully around the margin of the space on fragile brown legs, reveling in her freedom of motion.

Abbot Agostino spent over an hour there, dispensing his gruff affection to all the abandoned children, before taking his leave and trudging back the long ten miles to his Abbey and his Scriptorium. Mother Lucia watched him go from her window as she worked on her sewing, still glowing from the previous day's encounter. Friday was a special day of hollowness for her, as her Red Bear left for another week, and she tried to lose herself in her work to salve his absence.

In a month, the Abbot would have to start a long journey south, to visit Papa Sergio in Roma, and the mother abbey of Monte Cassino. Mother Lucia breathed a prayer for his safety, and lamented in advance how she would feel. Shaking herself, she remembered there would be another Thursday meeting soon, and she need not mourn his absence yet. The warmth he gave her returned, and she smiled as she worked.

As he walked, he remembered a frequent conversation they had together, repeated the day before:

"Why can't we live together with our children?" she would say. "Why do we have to stay where we are, apart? Why do I have to send my sons to you when they turn six, and not know how they are? Why can you not embrace your daughters and welcome their love for you? Niccólo and his woman are happy; why can't we be like them and find a nice chapel to live together?"

He would pause before replying: "This is no time to live outside the walls." She would give him a disbelieving look that softened eventually. He gathered her close to him, their bare flesh in maximum contact for a few moments. She felt his shaking as held her protectively, and nestled into his care. "I've seen too much, Dulce, and I will not expose you to danger. I was a soldier where Naomh Padraig walked the earth, throwing myself into battle after battle until I became a great hero, cheered by my fellow warriors. Rivers of blood of the Norsemen and my clan's foes I walked through while my name was Flann Mahon. I set their villages and crops aflame and their gold and their livestock became my new possessions. Then I was struck down, and through the prayers of Naomh Dungal, I was miraculously healed. He opened me to a better way than the sword: I learned the love of learning, of studying sacred scriptures, of studying ancient wisdom, of a combat without sword in the name of the Prince of Peace. I followed Naomh Dungal down through the Saxon and Frankish lands, seeing the Emperor's court at Aachen on the way, until I came here, to the bones of Columban, Attala, Bertulf. All the Abbots of Ebovium were better than I, but here I stay and do the best I can for them, holy men who have never known the horror of war.

"If we lived here together, it would be a paradise, but any day an army could ride over the horizon, burn our crops and our vineyards, take our sons for soldiers and rape our daughters. I have seen it happen too often, and to my shame I took part in it myself once. Their screams still haunt me in the darkest part of the night. No, we cannot live together. In God's houses we are safe for now, and in God's protection we must remain. Only there can we hope to hold up a new Light for the world."

A strong lad of ten with red hair and blue eyes but Abbess' full lips met him at the door. Perhaps Dulce is right, he thought to himself, as the lad guided him silently to the cloister, where a wayward young novice needed reprimanding for quarreling with his monastic brothers. The Abbot dealt with the matter gracefully, and went to the Scriptorium to continue his work copying the New Testament. As he settled on his chair, he sighed and relaxed, at his favorite place once again.

The day was bright and warm, so the work of dipping the quill and tracing elegant letters on parchment was a joy for Abbot Agostino, a comfortable routine of a lifetime. As he worked, visions of Mother Lucia's supple olive skin returned to his wandering mind, disturbing his concentration as he worked out of habit with his mind disengaged. "Dulce," he whispered, "Dulce." His left hand caressed her dark breast once again, teasing the nipple, weighing its heavy fullness.

A novice dropped a codex heavily on the floor, snapping the Abbot's attention back to the present. "Christ, preserve me," he whispered to himself, "I cannot get her out of my mind."

He looked at the passage he was working on, from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, to see if he had made any mistakes. The text leapt out at him:

et ne magnitudo revelationum extollat me datus est mihi stimulus carnis meae angelus Satanae ut me colaphizet propter quod ter Dominum rogavi ut discederet a me et dixit mihi sufficit tibi gratia mea nam virtus in infirmitate perficitur libenter igitur gloriabor in infirmitatibus meis ut inhabitet in me virtus Christi propter quod placeo mihi in infirmitatibus in contumeliis in necessitatibus in persecutionibus in angustiis pro Christo cum enim infirmor tunc potens sum

A thorn in the flesh, he thought. Even Paul had something to struggle with, asking God to take it away three times. What was that thorn? Did he have his Dulce to haunt his nights and stir his loins?

Power and grace through weakness. Abbot Agostino thought he was over his warrior's pride, yet he still thought it was by overpowering his weaknesses that he would grow stronger, even though he left the battlefield long ago. This had not changed over the years in the Monastery, wrestling with his pride and his lust in many long hours of prayer. His life of fasting and discipline, his striving to control his wayward body, were just another strategy of conquest by force, force of will rather than arms. Was Paul saying it was all right not to be perfect? That our every part of our lives could be a path to salvation, even those out of our control?

He put his quill down as the ink dried on the page. The blue sky was hinting at the purple of end of the day; the clouds had left and the mountains stood in sharp relief in the distance. A dove landed on the windowsill, gave him a quizzical look for several moments before flitting away. A rustling of chairs against stone tried to penetrate his consciousness as the other monks in the Scriptorium put aside their work in preparation for the cloister fellowship before Vespers. His stomach growled futilely: the Abbot was fasting that day, and would fast again twice before his next trip to Niccólo the Priest's house.

Adoedatus came over and stood by him silently. He was the brightest of his class, a promising scholar who would soon go to Monte Cassino to study at the great library there after mastering the one of Ebovium. The twelve year old lad was already showing signs of a beard under his cropped red locks, and as the Abbot turned to look at him, he saw a distant reflection absent from his mirror these forty plus years. The boy's face questioned him silently, for speech was forbidden here except at dire need. The older man's smile dawned slowly as he regarded his son.

Agostino reached up to grasp the back of the boy's head to draw him close in an sidelong embrace. The lad was stiff at first, but relaxed a little as the older man held him close. "I've been blessed in my weakness, my son, my thorn in the flesh has brought me more hope than I could ever dream," he whispered into the lad's shoulder.

The sky was growing dim, but in that place was light and hope. Agostino led his son to the cloister, arm over the young man's shoulder, where he conversed with his monks. While seated at his throne during Vespers, a heaviness left him gradually as he prayed, his old wounds ceased throbbing. When it came time to sing the Magnificat, he silently gave thanks for the gift of Lucia, and made his peace with the Flann Mahon.

A Glossary of embedded trivia:

Ebovium: ancient name for the area of Bobbio Abbey, founded by St. Columban in the 7^th

century, and fabled for its library.

Abbot: head of an abbey (monastery)

Agostino: Augustine

Niccólo: Nicholas. Priests of that time could be married and had families, although marriages were not official sacraments at this time, except in case of nobility

Scriptorium: copying room in a monastery, where manuscripts were produced

Mother: head of a convent or monastery of women, aka Abbess

Lucia: light

Agnes: chaste, pure one, lamb (via Latin pun on Agnus: lamb)

Lombards: a north Germanic tribe that gradually moved southward during the Roman Empire days and settling in Northern Italy in the 6^th century. Originally allies of the Byzantines, they fought with the Popes until subjugated by Charlemange and incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire.

Flann: Celtic for "bright red"

Mahon: Celtic for "Bear"

Boetio: Boethius, named after the famous 6^th century Roman philosopher

Lothair I: Grandson of Charlemange, Holy Roman Emperor 840-855.

Sergius II: Pope 844-847

Saracens: Muslim invaders of Italy in the 9^th century, expelled in the early 10^th.

San Pietro: St. Peter's, Rome

Papa: Pope

Gaeta: coastal city in southern Italy, north of Naples, besieged by the Saracens in the late 850s

Laigin: ancient name of Leinster, South Eastern Ireland

Naohm Padraig: St. Patrick of Ireland

Monica: mother of Augustine

Columban: Irish saint, who made a monastic rule of his own; both were observed at Bobbio

Vikings: the Norse invaders struck Ireland as well as England, pillaging monasteries and eventually setting up trading towns such as Dublin

Attala, Bertulf, Dungal: Irish missionary saints associated with Bobbio

Adeodatus: gift of God, after Augustine of Hippo's son

Monte Cassino: primary monastery of the Benedictines, founded by St. Benedict himself in the late 5^th century, located in central Italy

Dulce: sweet

"et ne magnitudo revelationum. . .": the Vulgate passage is 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, where Paul discusses his "thorn in the flesh" Please consult your favorite NT for translation, since they're all copyrighted.