within the outer walls along with the school and the infirmary and the prisoners' quarters.
The stables were within the inner walls. Unlike visitors, horses had been part of their original plans of the founder Sethan. Most of the herds roamed out in the meadows and only rarely came within. The easiest way in and out of the monastery was through the stable gate. It was a mystery to me how anyone could design a large enclosure so that there was only one way in and out, and that at a great distance from anywhere anyone would be and on the opposite side of the place from anywhere anyone would want to go.
The stable gate was a later addition, added apparently by some monk who found the clatter of horses on cobbles intolerable. They were good stables, dry and clean, with water butts standing near.
The best thing about the inside of the monastery was the water clock. I had read of such things but never seen one. It was an ingeniously designed thing, and carefully built.
It measured the divisions of the day accurately so that the monks might give worship nine times a day at the prescribed hour. It stood in the center of the inner courtyard.
When the time was near one of the younger monks would come out and wait, then when the water ran through they would ring a bell and everyone would go through into the great sacristy that took up the whole east side of the monastery. The first time I saw this I was amazed, for monks came rushing silently from every corner, from the cloister walk, down the stairs from the library, out from the kitchens and the storerooms, in from the school, the hospital, and the gardens. Only those who were actually preparing food and those whose duties had them watching the children or the prisoners did not move. It was strange to see so many brown robes swishing across towards the sacristy.
The word monk usually means a solitary worshiper, someone who dedicates themselves whole to a the worship of a god. There was a woman who lived in the hills near Derwen when I was a child who worshiped the Moon Maid. The farmers sent her food when they had spare, and my father sent her a cut whenever he took a roebuck, for such beasts are sacred to that goddess.
Mostly she lived on radishes, which she grew, and trout, which she caught. My father would send me up with the meat, for she had taken a vow to speak to neither man nor married woman. She taught me some very good hymns to the Virgin Huntress, one of which I use to this day when I want to draw out a splinter.
She never said anything to try and draw me to live with her, or live like her, and never said anything to me against the worship of other gods.
These monks were different. They came together to live in community, though each had a private cell where they slept and for their solitary worship. They did quite honestly devote themselves to worshiping their god, but the idea of converting everyone they met to similar worship was never far from their minds. Many of them seemed genuinely unhappy to know that anyone present did not follow their faith. Those who were themselves converts were quite sure in their own minds that once anyone had but heard about the faith in the way they themselves had learned of it they would immediately be converted. I found this really tedious. The faith had little appeal for me. Groveling before a god who desires everyone to praise and magnify him is no respectable thing. One must be polite to all the gods—after all, they are gods. But equally, one is a human being. There is beauty in the worship of the White God, but it has never seemed to me to be a polite or appropriate matter.
The chief among the monks of Thansethan was a man they called Father Gerthmol. He was an Isarnagan, though he had come early to Tir Tanagin. He was thin and stooping, and had a habit Page 37
of looking very deeply into the eyes of whoever he was talking to as if he thought to see into their soul. Many of the children and younger monks quaked in his
The stables were within the inner walls. Unlike visitors, horses had been part of their original plans of the founder Sethan. Most of the herds roamed out in the meadows and only rarely came within. The easiest way in and out of the monastery was through the stable gate. It was a mystery to me how anyone could design a large enclosure so that there was only one way in and out, and that at a great distance from anywhere anyone would be and on the opposite side of the place from anywhere anyone would want to go.
The stable gate was a later addition, added apparently by some monk who found the clatter of horses on cobbles intolerable. They were good stables, dry and clean, with water butts standing near.
The best thing about the inside of the monastery was the water clock. I had read of such things but never seen one. It was an ingeniously designed thing, and carefully built.
It measured the divisions of the day accurately so that the monks might give worship nine times a day at the prescribed hour. It stood in the center of the inner courtyard.
When the time was near one of the younger monks would come out and wait, then when the water ran through they would ring a bell and everyone would go through into the great sacristy that took up the whole east side of the monastery. The first time I saw this I was amazed, for monks came rushing silently from every corner, from the cloister walk, down the stairs from the library, out from the kitchens and the storerooms, in from the school, the hospital, and the gardens. Only those who were actually preparing food and those whose duties had them watching the children or the prisoners did not move. It was strange to see so many brown robes swishing across towards the sacristy.
The word monk usually means a solitary worshiper, someone who dedicates themselves whole to a the worship of a god. There was a woman who lived in the hills near Derwen when I was a child who worshiped the Moon Maid. The farmers sent her food when they had spare, and my father sent her a cut whenever he took a roebuck, for such beasts are sacred to that goddess.
Mostly she lived on radishes, which she grew, and trout, which she caught. My father would send me up with the meat, for she had taken a vow to speak to neither man nor married woman. She taught me some very good hymns to the Virgin Huntress, one of which I use to this day when I want to draw out a splinter.
She never said anything to try and draw me to live with her, or live like her, and never said anything to me against the worship of other gods.
These monks were different. They came together to live in community, though each had a private cell where they slept and for their solitary worship. They did quite honestly devote themselves to worshiping their god, but the idea of converting everyone they met to similar worship was never far from their minds. Many of them seemed genuinely unhappy to know that anyone present did not follow their faith. Those who were themselves converts were quite sure in their own minds that once anyone had but heard about the faith in the way they themselves had learned of it they would immediately be converted. I found this really tedious. The faith had little appeal for me. Groveling before a god who desires everyone to praise and magnify him is no respectable thing. One must be polite to all the gods—after all, they are gods. But equally, one is a human being. There is beauty in the worship of the White God, but it has never seemed to me to be a polite or appropriate matter.
The chief among the monks of Thansethan was a man they called Father Gerthmol. He was an Isarnagan, though he had come early to Tir Tanagin. He was thin and stooping, and had a habit Page 37
of looking very deeply into the eyes of whoever he was talking to as if he thought to see into their soul. Many of the children and younger monks quaked in his
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