Erin k. Wagner

Short Story by Erin K. Wagner

Ex Caelo

The ship appeared on the seventh Sunday after Pentecost. Its hull was silver and smooth to the touch. There was no deck and no door that anyone could see. Embossed near the prow of the ship, like the king’s head on a coin, was a tiny diagram of the spheres—of the Earth and the sun, the moon, and the planets. These spheres were nestled in concentric circles though the circles did not conform to any diagram that the monks of St. Warwick’s Abbey could produce from their library.

            “Is that our sun?” the abbot asked. He frowned and held his rosary tightly in his hand.

            “When did it come?” a monk wondered.

            “And from where?” another added.

            It was Osmund who had first found it, if found could be said of a ship larger than the shrine he tended. He had gone in the early morning, before Matins, to trim the wicks of the candles and sweep the floor clear of the dirt and grass tracked in by pilgrims. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes with one hand and balanced a small oil lamp in the other. The ring of keys at his belt thumped against his leg in a familiar rhythm. There was a woman sleeping in the doorway, her bare feet black with dirt. A traveler seeking intercession from the patron saint of wanderers and pilgrims.

            Like the sun breaking over the horizon, soft glow superseded by brighter and brighter light, the ship pressed in on his awareness. It sat, or lay, behind the small stone building that housed the shrine. It did not have a deck that he could see, or sails, but he knew it nonetheless to be a ship. He paused in the yard, acutely aware of the cool air on his face and the smell of coming rain. The woman stirred. She coughed and sat up. Seeing him, she held out a hand, unspeaking. In her palm was the penny for a candle to light in prayer. He ignored her and took a step toward the corner of the building.

            The ambient light from the sun still below the horizon caused the ship to shine softly against the gray sky and the gray stone of the monastery. The metal was unlike anything he had ever seen. He might compare it to silver, but it was a poor comparison. As he crept forward, hugging close to the wall of the shrine, he wondered if he might be asleep and dreaming. Or if this might be a vision, so real seemed the reflected light burning his eyes. Osmund heard the pilgrim shuffling behind him. She muttered under her breath.

            “What? What did you say?” he asked, his lips barely moving.

            “Devils shining,” she repeated.

            He pressed his lips together and feigned that he had not heard. The bells signaling Matins began to ring, loud and reverberant. His heart began to beat quickly, his blood to quiver in the hollow of his throat. He reached forward and pressed one finger to the surface of the ship. It was warm to the touch, like water cooling once off the fire.

            “Serva,” he whispered, asking for preservation from whatever saint might hear him. He lowered his hand slowly to his side. The sun broke the horizon and he fled back to the nave of the monastery where his brothers were gathering for prayers.

* * *

            “It was here as you arrived?” The abbot’s voice rasped in his throat. He stood a good thirty paces back from the ship.

            Osmund nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from the manifestation. The pilgrim still crouched in the doorway of the shrine. She would glance at them occasionally then bang the flat of her hand on the door, demanding it to be opened. He tried to ignore her.

            “Before it was full light,” he answered.

            Other brothers had crowded behind Osmund and the abbot, trying to hear what they said. He could feel them, tense and expectant, at his back.

            “Were you thinking on St. Warwick as you approached his shrine?” The abbot’s question seemed strangely removed from the topic at hand.

            Osmund felt at a loss to answer. “Father,” he said, then paused. “Yes. I always approach the shrine with a proper reverence.”

            “We must send for the bishop. And he may send for the archbishop.”

            “What is it, Father?” Osmund spoke with a rising urgency. “Did St. Warwick send it to us?”

            The abbot lowered his head and spoke at the ground. “I pray it is a miracle.”

            When he left, the brothers did not scatter. They huddled together, like tightly-packed livestock, watching the ship lest it move. Osmund went to the door of the shrine and put the key to the lock. The pilgrim rose to her feet, her face solemn. Inside, the room was dusky, lit by the light from the door and from one cloudy window. He imagined the light from the window to be a little brighter, bouncing off the metallic hull of the ship. She pushed past him and knelt down near the reliquary. Her lips fluttered. He took a yellow wax candle from the stores and placed it near to her hand. Then he made the rounds of the candles in the room. As the light glinted off of the brass and iron fixtures, he felt a twinge of guilt. The walls and fixtures looked rusted and worn in the midday light, unlike the glistening of first light against the dark.

            “What do you pray for?” he asked her. He had interrupted her, though, and she only stopped with a short intake of breath before rattling on in a whisper.   

            “The planes are in accordance,” one of the brothers said to him when he left the shrine as if he had joined a conversation half-finished.

            “I do not take your meaning.”

            “What happens here,” he went on eagerly, pointing a finger at the ground and then at the sky, “is reflected in the heavens.”

            “What do you see in the heavens?” Osmund asked.

            The brother smiled and his face was beatific, ruddied. “The moon was haloed last night, crowned with light.”

            “And so? Do you think our small monastery to be paralleled with the celestial body of the moon?”

            “It is not ours to say small,” he answered, almost breathlessly.

            Osmund nodded and thought that he must agree with the proof lying at his back. He could feel the warmth of the ship even now, radiating through his finger and warming his bones. Though he wondered to himself, as he walked slowly back to the cloisters, whether this were something that could be explained by philosophers and auctores. He knew at his core that the ship was no thing of earth. It shone too bright. Silent, it yet whistled too keen in his ears.

            He glanced back at the dark of the shrine and could not see the pilgrim for the shifting shadows.

            “This may draw the attention of the king himself,” the monk said. He was staring into Osmund’s eyes when he turned to face him again.

* * *

            “Musica universalis,” the scribe Thomas picked at his lip with an ink-stained finger. “The text of Boethius. De Musica. That is all we have on the subject.”

            “You copied it?” Osmund peered closely at the manuscript on the slanted desk in front of the scribe. The leaf was half-finished, and he could see the faint prickings up and down the margin of the parchment to help the scribe align his script. He could not read what was written there. The model from which the scribe worked was open at his left hand.

            “I copied some few pages of it.”

            “And did you read it?”

            Thomas looked askance at Oswald. He picked up his pen-knife and shaved the nib of his quill sharp and fine.

            “I know the letters to copy them. I cannot read them.”

            Oswald leaned back, smiling in a mollifying fashion, nodding his head to signal that he knew that would most likely be the case.

            “You wish to learn something of the ship?”

            Oswald hitched his shoulder up, shrugging.

            “The abbot has taken the Boethius to study it. Perhaps you might ask him of it.”

            “Yes,” Oswald said. “Yes, I should.”

            He left the scriptorium with a dragging step. Outside, the light seemed bright, but the air smelled like rain. A panicked thought flitted through his mind. What would become of the ship in rain? He remembered suddenly himself as a child, squatting outside his father’s house, and watching a gentle spring shower melt a bite of bread into a shapeless unappetizing wad. His mother had scolded him for foolishness in wasting food. He had stared at the morsel for a long time, his lips slightly parted, an empty wonder in his head.

            Across the lawn, the pilgrim walked out of the shrine and stretched. He could hear the muscles and bones crack in her back and at her neck. Then she hunched down against the wall, back against the sun-warmed stone, and drew a piece of bread and a leek from a pouch at her belt. She ate with gusto.

            The tail of the ship jutted out behind her and the shrine, glowing, almost humming in its solemn grandeur. Where did one travel in such a ship? It was not made for water or for land. But he had known this already to ask of spheres and heavenly music.  

            The soles of his sandals were loud on the stones as he made his way through the cloisters to the abbot’s room. The door was open and Oswald could see the abbot inside. He stood, a codex propped on the table in front of him. His hands hovered over the page as if hesitant to turn it. Oswald paused in the doorway, staring, until the abbot looked up slowly. He dropped his hand from the codex and rested it on the table.

            “Brother Oswald, did I summon you?” His face, round and gentle, was tired.

            Oswald shook his head and looked at his feet.

            “Then why have you come?”

            “Brother Thomas said that you had taken the text of Boethius. I wished to know something of it. Will this text give answers about the ship?”

            The abbot lifted his hand again. He drew a slow and heavy finger down the page of the manuscript.

            “Can you read?”

            Oswald shook his head again. “Not but my name—and some small part of the mass.”

            “These are good things to know.” The abbot sighed.

            “Father, what does Boethius write of ships?”

            “He does not write of ships. From him we may learn many things. He is a great auctor. But he does not write of ships which appear from nothing.”

            “But of the spheres?” Oswald pressed. “There was an image on the ship, of the spheres. Of our sun and the planets. Does he not write of these things?”

            Loud and sudden, the bells began to ring the hour. The noise shook Oswald and shivered across his skin. The abbot looked upwards, waiting. When the sound had died away, he returned his gaze to Oswald.

            “What do you know of music, brother? Do you know that it is governed by numbers?”

            “I know nothing of these things,” he answered softly.

            “Harmony is the key to this, to music. And so we say the same thing of all realms. There is a realm that is your body and your spirit. These must be in accord, one with another. And this we say is a harmony. This is the musica humana.”

            “And the planes are in accordance,” Oswald repeated what he had heard earlier, what had first driven him to the scriptorium.

            “You know something of this after all.” The abbot smiled and he traced his finger across the script of the manuscript.

            “No. Nothing of substance. I only say what another has told me.”

            “Each realm is a mirror of a realm yet greater.”

            Oswald had seen a mirror once, in the luggage of a lord who, with his retinue, had demanded hospitality from the abbot on their travels. In it, he had seen the picture of a man and that man had been himself. Which of them, his body of flesh or his body of glass, had been the greater?

            “Why do you ask these questions, brother? Is it not enough for you to watch over the miracles of St. Warwick?”

            “Is this not one of them, father? Did you not say that this is a miracle of St. Warwick?”

            The abbot cast his eyes down. Slowly, lifting the manuscript by both sides, he closed it. The pages folded together with a soft hiss of vellum.

            “That is what I pray.”

            “And what is the musica universalis?” He spoke the Latin with a clumsy tongue.

            “The spheres must work in harmony as well, tuned to each other as the note of one musician to another.”

            “And that harmony is reflected here, in our bodies and in our monastery?”

            “That is the question we must ask.” The abbot rested his hands on the closed book. “Is it harmony or disharmony that this ship represents?”

            Oswald tried to find an answer and realized gradually that the abbot did not seek one from him.

            “The archbishop will be here tomorrow or the day after. He will know what it is that we should do.” The abbot’s face did not reflect the confidence of his words.

* * *

            They heard the archbishop’s progression from a long way off. The sound was of reins and tackle jingling, men hallooing and shouting, and bells chiming. It was early in the day, and Oswald was at the shrine, sweeping away the hay and droppings from a bird that had found its way inside. The pilgrim yet remained, but it was not unusual for a supplicant to stay at the shrine for days until their prayer had been answered. She sat in a bundle of clothes and rags at the shrine door, her head turning one way and then another to follow the hectic movements of the brothers.

            It had been three days, more than the abbot had expected, before the archbishop arrived. In that time, Oswald had grown used to the sight of the ship. At night, its soft glow did not fade, and he watched it from the window of his cell. The geese, which had at first given the strange object a wide berth, now crowded in its shadow, pecking at the grasses around its base.

            He left the shrine. The pilgrim grasped at his leg, holding out another penny. He took it. Rubbing the upraised face on the coin with his thumb, he stared at her. Her dark hair was crowded close around her face so he could see little but patches of dirty pale skin.

            “The archbishop is coming,” he told her, not sure what answer he expected of her.    

            She grunted, deep and guttural. The noise jarred his nerves. He shoved the coin into the pouch at his belt and waved for her to help herself to the candle she wanted. She scrambled back into the shadows of the shrine. He propped the broom against the wall of the shrine and went to join his brothers crowded eagerly at the front of the monastery.

            “Who rides with him?” the brother at his side asked.

            Oswald squinted his eyes so that he could better make out the figures on the horses. He swallowed, a lump rising in his throat.

            “The king comes too,” someone whispered before he could say. Frantic, hushed conversation rippled through the crowd.

            The abbot snapped at the cellarer, and the brother ran off. A larger retinue would demand more of the larder.

            “Your Grace,” the abbot bent obsequiously as the first horses trotted onto the lawn. “Your Highness,” he continued rapidly. He seemed unsure of whom to address first.

            The visitors looked similar to Oswald, both thin and sallow-cheeked, a look of long-suffering in their faces. The archbishop’s gowns were dark, cut from a rich fabric. When he dismounted, the hems of his garments kicked up the light dust of the lawn. The king wore boots and a shorter tunic. His hat was perched far back on his head, emphasizing the sharp hawkish curve of his nose. The abbot bounced from one to another, kissing the rings on their hands. 

            “There are provisions laid out in the refectory if you are hungered.” The abbot still stood slightly bent, looking up at the king and archbishop.

            “Let us see the wonder first.” The king’s voice was even, almost uninterested. The archbishop nodded his agreement.

            The abbot smiled, but he looked nervous. “Yes, of course. Your Grace. Your Highness.”

            More men and horses were crowding onto the lawn—lords, grooms, servants, and some hangers-on accumulated during the progression. Oswald pushed his way free of the crowd and hurried in the wake of the honored visitors. He was not alone. Many of the other brothers and a few from the retinue moved in the same direction.

            When he reached the shrine, he was surprised to see the king standing so near to the ship. He raised one hand and placed it on the hull. The archbishop shifted nervously as if he meant to stop him. The king glanced back at the crowd behind him.

            “A ship of iron or steel,” he said and Oswald was unsure who he addressed. “This makes it of such little use.”

            “To our immediate purpose,” the archbishop amended. “But we must consider for what purpose it was intended.”

            The king smiled, sharp and crooked. He nodded his head, dropping his hand from the hull. “Best considered over food and drink.”

            He walked back in the direction of the monastery. The archbishop stepped aside for him, but lingered a moment after, staring at the ship. The onlookers were torn between the visitors and the spectacle of the ship. Many trailed after the king.

            “What do you make of it, my son?”

            Oswald stood silently, then started, surprised to realize that it was he the archbishop addressed. He searched for words.

            “It is from the heavens, is it not, your Grace?”

            “Is it?” The archbishop’s question was heavy. In the glow from the ship, subtle and shifting like a fast-moving sun, his face looked lined and old, his skin almost translucent in its wrinkles.

            Oswald could not answer. He bent his head and saw, from the corner of his eye, the pilgrim watching them. She held her face in her hands as if her jaw ached.

* * *

            The trenchers and plates were empty, soggy with grease and gravy. The king and the archbishop sat at the head and foot of one of the long tables in the refectory. Two of the brothers darted in and out, clearing the dishes and refilling the wine-cups. The abbot sat near the archbishop, and he looked small and nervous in comparison though he was larger in height and girth.

            The archbishop had brought a clerk with him. He stood near the reading-pedestal, two books opened before him. He made little clicking noises in the back of his throat.

            “Musica universalis,” the king repeated. “It is a pretty-sounding thing.” He spoke in French now that he was at table, and Oswald had trouble following him. 

            The archbishop smiled at the wordplay, but the abbot looked uncomfortable. He broke in, his French rough. “But surely we must weigh the issue with some seriousness. If this is a ship from the heavens, as we can suppose only from it being unlike anything we have ever seen, crafted from materials we do not know—”

            “It is arrogance to presume we know all materials of the earth,” the clerk interrupted him. He was flipping pages rapidly now, his eyes scanning the text. “If we consider the season and the corresponding humors…” his voice trailed off.

            “If this is a thing of the heavens,” the archbishop said slowly. “As you and your monks seem to think, what do you think the significance of it?”

            The abbot’s lip quivered, and he did not answer. He looked unwell, the skin beneath his eyes white.

            “It is a thing of God. It is a thing of the saints,” Oswald spoke suddenly, surprising himself. His forehead felt warm and damp. “How can we forget that it has come to the shrine of St. Warwick?”

            The abbot’s eyes narrowed. He pinched his lips together and frowned at Oswald. The king shifted in his seat to look at Oswald, perched on the bench at the table over.

            “Brother,” he said, his English fine and accented to Oswald’s ears. He sounded like London and the city. “Tell me of your saint and why this ship would come to him.”

            Oswald stood up, like a boy called to recite his Latin with the teacher’s paddle hovering near.

            “St. Warwick is the saint of pilgrims, your highness.” Then he struggled for the French word for pilgrim. “Pél—”

              “And tell me,” the king interrupted. “A pilgrim travels to a shrine to ask for health or favor. Why does a pilgrim travel to simply ask blessing on his travel? Would he not be better to stay at home?”

            The abbot’s face flushed red and dark, and Oswald felt his own ears burn. He stammered. “I—” The king’s words felt like a sort of blasphemy.

            “Your highness,” the archbishop raised a hand. The light from the tall windows danced off the rings on his fingers. “Peace.”

            The king laughed. He picked through the candied fruits on the plate before him. Oswald’s ears buzzed. He imagined that it was the humming of the ship.

            “We are always traveling and always pilgrims,” he said, his words loud.

            The king flicked at one of the fruits and it bounced over the table, but he did not look up at Oswald.

            “Quiet, brother,” the abbot hissed.

            Oswald sunk back onto the bench.

            “The question seems to me,” the clerk began as if he had heard none of the preceding conversation. “how we can make use of this vessel. If it is from the heavens, then surely we must use it to travel there ourselves.”

            A heavy silence fell in the refectory. Outside, a goose honked, but it sounded faint and far away.

            “We cannot know that such a thing is possible,” said one of the lords sitting near the king. He had a small book of parchment and a pen. He seemed to be taking notes of the discussion. Oswald wondered if his own words were captured in the ink.

            “And we must heed the warnings of the Scriptures,” the archbishop said, levity gone from his voice. “Faciamus nobis civitatem et turrem, cuius culmen pertingat ad caelum. And so the children of Adam were scattered for daring to ascend too close to heaven.”

            “Surely you do not think us Babel,” the king laughed.

            His laughter echoed in the hall, mocking the grave looks on the faces of the monks.

            “Those who built the tower did not think themselves Babel before it was too late.” The archbishop’s face was stern. He laid his hand flat on the table as if squashing dissent.

            “Surely this was sent to us,” the abbot interjected. “Surely it is not a question of sin if we seek what blessing it has brought us.”

            “If a blessing it has brought,” the archbishop said. He stood up, his dark robes falling close to his lean figure. The clerk seemed to mimic his actions, closing the books and straightening his own jacket. “We cannot be too careful.”

            “Yes, most certainly.” The abbot’s voice was obsequious, anxious.

            “We have traveled a long way and from before sunrise. I must rest. Your Highness, surely you must seek the same.”

            The king threw down his napkin and rose languidly to his feet. “Perceptive, Your Grace, as usual.”

            “We have prepared chambers and beds.” Oswald watched as the abbot ushered both of the dignitaries from the refectory. In their wake, the other lords stretched and got to their feet, seeking out their own accommodations.

            “Your French is very poor,” the clerk said as he passed Oswald, and Oswald could not figure out why the man felt compelled to say it.

* * *

            At dusk, after Vespers, Oswald left the cloisters and walked slowly across the lawn, the key for the shrine at his belt. It felt heavier than it should be, as if drawn toward the ground. The ship shone out like a distant star despite its nearness. The glow illumined the grass closest to it, dark stalks against the sheen of metal. “Caelum,” he whispered, the Latin word awkward on his tongue. The heavens.

            “You cannot sleep in here,” he told the pilgrim as he entered the shrine. The room was dark, and shadows danced back and forth against the far wall. He set down his candle and stepped toward the reliquary. The gold gleamed soft under his hand, and he thought of the bones inside the chest—the finger and knuckle-bones of the saint reaching out towards his own hand.

            The pilgrim hummed under her breath and collected some small odds and ends that she had spread out around her. A few pennies. A length of string. A shawl for her neck. She also tucked a small round shining piece of metal into a pouch at her waist.

            “What do you have there?” he asked, afraid that she had taken some decoration from the shrine. “A penny for a candle and that is an end to bargaining.”

            She cocked her head, then worked herself slowly to her feet, pushing off the ground with her hands curled into fists. She moved oddly. Her bare, dirty feet stood out stark and pale against the shadowed stone floor.

            “A penny to pray,” she answered softly, almost repeating him.

            “And what do you pray for?” He raised the question again, having never received an answer the first day she had arrived.

            She shook her head and moved to the doorway. There, framed against the dying light of day, she seemed larger than her small frame.

            “You come to St. Warwick. Why?”

            His words were angry with all that he felt against the archbishop and the king, against the clerk and his books.

            She did not say anything and ducked out the door.

            He followed after her, but she had moved too quickly. He couldn’t find her on the lawn. The night was growing dark. The sun had sunk below the horizon. Above, stars began to shine through the purpling sky.

            He felt alone.

            Then he realized that it was too dark, the grass and the dirt indistinguishable, the lights from the cloisters shining out too bright. He moved quickly around the corner of the shrine, waiting for the glow and warmth of the ship to break on him, gentle and comforting.

            The ship was gone.

            He clasped his hands together and found that his fingers were trembling. He walked forward slowly, shuffling his feet through the grass.

            Where the ship had been, the grass was pressed flat. There was also a small object, dark and round, that sat in the center of the bent grass. He knelt down, the ground hard under his knees, and reached forward to pick up the object. It was smooth and waxy in his hand.

It was the stub of a candle. He stayed for a long time, kneeling on the grass, staring at the stub, his eyes straining in the dimness. When he finally blinked and stood up, his eyes were wet and hurting. He placed the candle gently in the pouch at his belt and it clinked against the pennies there.

            He must tell the abbot of this change, and the abbot must tell the archbishop and the king. It might wait for morning, he decided. He curled his arms around himself and wandered slowly back to the cloister. The stone halls, the rough wooden door, his narrow bed and the table with the uneven legs beside it. He pulled out the stub of the candle and pressed it into the holder on the table. He struck a spark and carried the spark gently to the charred wick. It took a moment for the wick to catch light.

            He sat down on his bed and watched the light of the candle flicker, moved by small breezes he could not feel. He lay down, one hand pressed under his cheek, and continued to watch it until he fell asleep, imagining its light as a gentle unfamiliar glow. He slept better for it.