St. Aidan Founds Lindisfarne Monastery

The sand still held the morning's chill when we stepped from the boat. I had rowed one of the smaller currachs from the mainland, the oar biting into water that smelled of weed and salt. Ahead of us the low island rose, its turf dark and its rocks streaked white with bird droppings. Aidan walked first, his staff tapping the wet stones. He wore the same brown cloak he had worn on the crossing from Iona, the hem stiff with dried salt. Oswald followed a pace behind, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword as though the place might still need guarding.

We had left Bamburgh at first light. The king had pointed across the water the evening before and said the island would be ours. No one asked why he chose this spot over the steadier ground nearer the fortress. The tide had already begun to turn when we reached the narrow stretch of sand that joined the island to the shore. Men carried bundles of thatch and timber on their shoulders. Two of the Irish monks sang as they walked, their voices thin against the wind.

By midday the first posts stood upright in the ground. We dug the holes with knives and the edges of shields, the soil coming up dark and cold. Aidan marked the place for the church with a line drawn in the sand using the end of his staff. He spoke little that first day. When he did speak it was in the Irish tongue, and Oswald stood beside him and turned the words into our own. The king’s voice carried farther than the bishop’s. The men who had come with us from the fortress listened without moving.

That night we slept under the currachs pulled up on the beach. The tide came in twice while we lay there, the water hissing against the wood. I woke once to the sound of waves breaking closer than they had been at dusk. Aidan sat awake on a rock, his back to the wind, watching the line of foam move up the shore. He did not speak when I passed him a skin of water. He only nodded.

The next morning the first English boys arrived. They came barefoot across the sand at low tide, sent by their fathers from the villages near Bamburgh. Aidan set them to gathering stones for the hearth. One of the older monks showed them how to split the wood so it would burn through the night without too much smoke. The boys watched the monks’ hands and copied the motions. By the third day their palms were blistered and they no longer asked when they could return home.

Oswald came every few days. He brought sacks of grain and once a small herd of cattle driven across the flats at the lowest ebb. He stood with Aidan while the bishop pointed out where the refectory should stand and where the sleeping cells would be dug into the bank for shelter. The king listened, then gave orders to the men who had accompanied him. They marked the ground with stakes cut from driftwood. No one questioned the placing of the buildings. The island was small enough that every choice was visible from every other.

Aidan’s voice remained hard for the English to follow. He preached on the beach when the weather allowed, the words rolling out in the Irish rhythm. Oswald stood at his shoulder and repeated each sentence in our tongue. The thegns who had ridden with the king in exile nodded as they heard their own language shaped around the foreign sounds. Some of them had learned a little of the Scots speech during the years away. They filled in the gaps when Oswald paused. The crowd grew each time the tide allowed passage.

One afternoon a storm kept us from crossing back to the mainland. We stayed inside the half-built church, the thatch still loose on the roof beams. Aidan sat on an upturned currach and traced letters in the dirt with a stick while the younger monks watched. He drew the shape of the Easter moon and the days between the fourteenth and the twentieth. The English boys leaned forward, trying to follow. None of them asked why the counting mattered. They only watched the stick move.

By the end of the first month the cells were finished. Each was no wider than a man’s reach, the walls of turf and the roofs of heather. The monks slept on planks raised above the damp ground. Aidan’s cell stood at the end of the row, facing the sea. He kept no fire inside it. At night the light from the main hearth reached only as far as his doorway.