More from the archives

Almost ten years ago I wrote a short story about a cat in a monastery. I called the story "The Prior's Cat" and began writing a series of short stories about the cat. As is often the case with me, I got several stories done, and then started one that got longer and more complicated and the whole project ground to a halt. Again, maybe I will pick it up at some point.

Most of the stories are told from the point of view of the cat. This one is from the perspective of Brother Denys, a rigorous character, who did not want the prior to adopt the cat in the beginning. Denys and the cat do not see eye to eye on many things.

I apologize if you find it a bit preachy. That is one of the things that make these stories problematic ...

The Dream of Brother Denys

Brother Denys wakes with a start. The pallet on his bed is hard, the bedclothes rough, but he usually sleeps well. “The sleep of the just,” he says airily to yawning Brother Alexander, who sometimes struggles with insomnia.

The tiny monastic cell is filled with light, but it does not come through the arched window above the table that serves as a desk or from the oil lamp on the desk itself. The light comes from somewhere else.

Rather, it comes from SomeOne else.

In the open doorway of the cell stands a figure, as of a man, brilliant with light, robes whiter than any fuller could bleach them. Denys cannot not make out the details of the face, nor is he certain that the figure is male. Still he is not frightened. A hand emerges from the light and beckons him to rise and follow. The radiance disappears down the corridor.

Denys clutches his night tunic about himself and pads along, shivering as bare feet touch the cold stone floor. 

The figure of light turns at the end of the corridor, and then leads Denys down a short passage and into the chapel. No candles burn on the altar or along the walls, except for the sanctuary lamp, but there is no darkness. The room is illumined by a living lamp, walking towards the altar.

There before the altar lies what Denys takes to be a pile of altar linens and rope. The figure goes to it, takes one end and ties it around his waist. He sits before the altar, and leans back. Denys now recognizes a backstrap loom like the one his grandmother used, a simple loom tied around the weaver's waist on one end and around a stationary object such as a tree on the other. The warp stretches off into the distance, towards and through the book of the gospels and the tabernacle up to the cross atop the high altar.  Light flashes from the threads as the weaver leans back to adjust the tension, and Denys realizes that they are gold and silver.

Even from a distance, he can smell the sweet cedar of the heddle rod. As it is raised and lowered, the threads of the warp open and close, always closing on one row of the weft laid down by the flying bobbin, incorporating it into the cloth and opening for another.  The bobbin is a great diamond, flashing its own fire, and around it wraps a coarse woolen yarn. The yarn unrolls from a hole in the top of a large spherical basket embroidered with stars, sun and moon. Denys can barely see the end of the warp fastened to the cross, nor can he fathom how the yarn which emerges from the top of the basket wraps itself around the diamond bobbin. But the warp stretches up into the height and the yarn on the shuttle never runs out.

The figure weaves on and on.

As Denys watches, the woolen yarn changes colors. At first the cloth it weaves is brown, gray and white, roughly spun and looking much like the hairs of beasts, irregular and pied. This quickly becomes blue and white. The weaver deftly picks up additional bobbins from the basket and works their threads into the cloth. Patterns emerge. Six-pointed stars and a many-branched candelabrum repeat for a while.

And the weaver weaves on.

The cloth becomes red and then a royal – no, richer. An imperial purple. Gold laurel wreaths appear, disappear and the colors become darker. 

And the weaver weaves on.

New, strange patterns take shape, and the cloth assumes an unfamiliar, wilder texture. The yarn now seems to have silver bells woven into it and it jingles as the bobbins fly faster and faster. Then bands of pure white with a solid but soft gray are followed by sparks from gems and nuggets of gold, silver coins and disks of ivory. Pearls, black and white, form geometric patterns on the gold and silver threads of the warp. 

            And the weaver weaves on.

The yarn appears to turn into vines, and leaves, fruit and nuts cling to the cloth. Seashells made their appearance, and Denys senses the tang of the sea in the air. Feathers flutter into place. A riot of colors bursts forth: shining sections of red, orange, yellow, green, purple. More bells, this time accompanied by beads. 

And the weaver weaves on.

The cloth grows beneath the weaver’s hands as the shuttle flies from side to side, and no matter what appears in or on the yarn that spirals from the top of the basket, the strong threads of the warp open to receive, the heddle tucks it close to what has gone before and opens to receive whatever will come next.

Fingers flying, the weaver smiles at Denys.

“Do you see, Brother Denys? The eternal can weave anything into its fabric.”

            The chapel goes dark.

            Denys wakes with a start. 

          His tiny cell is dark except for pale moonlight through the arched window above the table that serves as a desk. 

Lowering his bare feet to the cold stone floor, he shivers. Ever so softly he opens the closed door and listens.  

A soft breeze draws his attention to an open window in the hall, where Gamaliel, the despised Prior’s Cat, stares at him, immobile.

Denys slips down the dim corridor and into the darkened chapel.

       Nothing lies before the altar. No loom, no weaver, no threads stretching off into darkness, no feathers or pearls or vines, no basket. Just a candle burning steadily in the lamp beside the tabernacle. Hesitantly Denys falls to one knee, crosses himself and leaves, drawing his sleeping tunic close.

“A vision of the night?” he asks himself.

He crawls back into bed, determined to pay the experience no heed.

The next morning he does not even tell the yawning Brother Alexander about it. No need to bother anyone over something so foolish. After all, what could it mean?

Although he does wonder why the Prior’s Cat looks so smug.