1535
by Bart Rastard
Published 2018
Brother Taylbus was no drinker, and for a member
of the Catholic clergy, this was not a simple nor fickle achievement to boast
of. Neither, he thought, was this born from any delusion of piety. Brother
Taylbus avoided inebriants for one reason alone, to dispel the daemon that had
stalked him since he first learned of sin and the fall of Adam.
One cruel and chilly evening on the feast day of St. Agnes, Brother Taylbus refused all ale, wine, and unholy spirits that were passed his way in the hours following the enormous meal. He tried without fruitition to explain to his fellow brothers that the devil poaches wet and unguarded minds, that drunkedness invites the flesh to sin, and that the fetid stench of expired beer reeks often from their mouths. As he began to recite Proverbs 23:35... do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly... the brothers, having celebrated the lesser known feast days of St. Sebastian, St. Fabian and St. Canute the preceding three nights, took up a volley of brazen laughter of which the Abbot himself was privvy. It took well over an hour to reach its peak, steadily continuing for yet another until, gradually, it began to subside in the resulting contagion of stitches and abdominal cramp. The cloister echoed with it for some time, and Brother Talybus was followed by the sound as he walked sullenly back to his bedchamber. Later the whole performance would be repeated with gusto when red-faced Brother Evesham proclaimed St Agnes herself to be a frigid tease, belched loudly, and promptly fell off his stool into a crumpled heap of beery robes. Sparrows were beginning to awaken when quiet finally fell over the monastery.
The next morning, the Abbot was divinely inspired to undertake a day of spiritual reflection. Ordaining that fresh water was to be supplied to him from the spring a miles walk away in the hills, he carried out venerations from his bed, otherwise undisturbed. The brothers meanwhile were afforded no material aids to their spiritual malignment. Only Brother Taylbus had attended to the Matins,Prime, and Tierce prayers, and even at noon for Sext was he alone until, all together, the brothers appeared for None. Feeling that Brother Taylbus had somehow cheated his way out a hangover, they preceded to tacitly goad him with scripture. Brother Wyatt postulated whether it would be heresy to contradict Ecclesiastes 9:7... go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do... whilst Brother Butterfield preached the merits of the hangover as suffering in the name of God, arguing that the over-indulger of mead suffers to his viscera, and is thus more divine than even the flagellant. The main argument being concerned with the holy merits of affliction down to the core, not just the body's surface. In the absence of the Abbot, Brother Taylbus felt helpless to do anything about his treatment. Opportunities for masked anarchy were rare in the monastery and the brothers took full advantage of the situation. It was in this moment that Brother Taylbus first became known as St. Agnes, on account of his abstinence.
Though it would be false to claim that this mockery did not inflict its own degree of pain and embarrassment in Brother Taylbus, he never once compromised himself in expressing this. In any case, jest and name-calling were infinitely preferable to the wickedness of the daemon that threatened him constantly. Even the passing flicker of an ungodly thought in his mind was sometimes enough to summon it forth from whatever vile domain it resided in. The daemon was crafty. It appeared in many forms whenever sin offered itself to Brother Taylbus, hovering with all the persistent mischief of bluebottles to cow dung. Whilst the forms it took were manyfold, Brother Taylbus had, having been the sole witness of the daemon since childhood, categorised the happenings quite reliably. He called its most frightening manifestation the smiling daemon.
The smiling daemon had no earthly body of its own, preferring instead an itinerant existence among the living, the dead, in animals and in the inanimate. Most recently it had appeared knotted in the trunk of a tree, face tilted slightly down, demanding eye contact and exposing six pristine teeth with an insidious grin.
Brother Taylbus was not to know that the appearance of the daemon was identical to Richard D James from the cover of his 1996 self-titled album.
Neither was he to know that the sounds that sporadically flooded his head were, similarly, all identical to songs from Richard D James' entire discography.
Towards the end of a fine day in late Autumn, Brother Richard Talybus had been designated the task of collecting wild flowers from the monastery meadows. Several of the Brothers were bringing seven virgin village girls to mass and then dinner the same evening, and the Abbot decreed that it would displeaseth God to treat his finest creations with the same brotherly modesty they do each other. The dry sheep intestines, used as birth control and left humorously around the monastery, were hidden away, and slanderous phrases such as te futueo et caballum tuum were to be scratched away to nothing with a bronze belt buckle from the stone walls. Flowers were placed artlessly around, in the dining hall, along the stairway, and most of all in the Brothers bedchambers. Given that a long series of completely indecipherable sounds, exactly matching Aphex Twin - CIRCLONT14 (shrymoming mix), had begun haunting Brother Taylbus as the Abbot summoned him, he accepted the task with a zeal understood only by himself.
...metallic sounds, sometimes hollow and resounding, quick, or other times saturated and echoing as if he was in a cathedral. Unpredictable and ridiculous pulses, evil, filling him with itself, voices hidden inside but distorted, the language of the daemon and music of hell, repetitive, as if he were taking a beating...
The monastery meadow lay only a little way past where the wheat fields met with the remains of an old mill, which had burned down the day the brothers arrived in Wharram Percy and which was now the home of an infamously senile goat. By the time Brother Taylbus had reached the interstice, he had already mouthed to himself the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and was about to begin his third Hail Mary when the heathenly noise deep in his head came to an abrupt end. For a moment he was convinced that it had been the rosary that had banished the daemonic rhythms. Of course, he thought to himself, this certainly seems to have been the case before. He had only his faith to attest to this. Though he also knew that the sounds were always transient, and none of them he had so far experienced lasted longer than it takes to recite the entire rosary. The sun hid itself behind the mill and Brother Taylbus became aware of the quiet vastness of the wheat fields, shivered slightly in the cool shade, and let out a guilty sigh. Somewhere behind a bent column of stone, the goat known locally as Benedict clipped the chalk with his hooves, making a sharp crack not unlike that of an 808 snare sample
One cruel and chilly evening on the feast day of St. Agnes, Brother Taylbus refused all ale, wine, and unholy spirits that were passed his way in the hours following the enormous meal. He tried without fruitition to explain to his fellow brothers that the devil poaches wet and unguarded minds, that drunkedness invites the flesh to sin, and that the fetid stench of expired beer reeks often from their mouths. As he began to recite Proverbs 23:35... do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup and goes down smoothly... the brothers, having celebrated the lesser known feast days of St. Sebastian, St. Fabian and St. Canute the preceding three nights, took up a volley of brazen laughter of which the Abbot himself was privvy. It took well over an hour to reach its peak, steadily continuing for yet another until, gradually, it began to subside in the resulting contagion of stitches and abdominal cramp. The cloister echoed with it for some time, and Brother Talybus was followed by the sound as he walked sullenly back to his bedchamber. Later the whole performance would be repeated with gusto when red-faced Brother Evesham proclaimed St Agnes herself to be a frigid tease, belched loudly, and promptly fell off his stool into a crumpled heap of beery robes. Sparrows were beginning to awaken when quiet finally fell over the monastery.
The next morning, the Abbot was divinely inspired to undertake a day of spiritual reflection. Ordaining that fresh water was to be supplied to him from the spring a miles walk away in the hills, he carried out venerations from his bed, otherwise undisturbed. The brothers meanwhile were afforded no material aids to their spiritual malignment. Only Brother Taylbus had attended to the Matins,Prime, and Tierce prayers, and even at noon for Sext was he alone until, all together, the brothers appeared for None. Feeling that Brother Taylbus had somehow cheated his way out a hangover, they preceded to tacitly goad him with scripture. Brother Wyatt postulated whether it would be heresy to contradict Ecclesiastes 9:7... go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do... whilst Brother Butterfield preached the merits of the hangover as suffering in the name of God, arguing that the over-indulger of mead suffers to his viscera, and is thus more divine than even the flagellant. The main argument being concerned with the holy merits of affliction down to the core, not just the body's surface. In the absence of the Abbot, Brother Taylbus felt helpless to do anything about his treatment. Opportunities for masked anarchy were rare in the monastery and the brothers took full advantage of the situation. It was in this moment that Brother Taylbus first became known as St. Agnes, on account of his abstinence.
Though it would be false to claim that this mockery did not inflict its own degree of pain and embarrassment in Brother Taylbus, he never once compromised himself in expressing this. In any case, jest and name-calling were infinitely preferable to the wickedness of the daemon that threatened him constantly. Even the passing flicker of an ungodly thought in his mind was sometimes enough to summon it forth from whatever vile domain it resided in. The daemon was crafty. It appeared in many forms whenever sin offered itself to Brother Taylbus, hovering with all the persistent mischief of bluebottles to cow dung. Whilst the forms it took were manyfold, Brother Taylbus had, having been the sole witness of the daemon since childhood, categorised the happenings quite reliably. He called its most frightening manifestation the smiling daemon.
The smiling daemon had no earthly body of its own, preferring instead an itinerant existence among the living, the dead, in animals and in the inanimate. Most recently it had appeared knotted in the trunk of a tree, face tilted slightly down, demanding eye contact and exposing six pristine teeth with an insidious grin.
Brother Taylbus was not to know that the appearance of the daemon was identical to Richard D James from the cover of his 1996 self-titled album.
Neither was he to know that the sounds that sporadically flooded his head were, similarly, all identical to songs from Richard D James' entire discography.
Towards the end of a fine day in late Autumn, Brother Richard Talybus had been designated the task of collecting wild flowers from the monastery meadows. Several of the Brothers were bringing seven virgin village girls to mass and then dinner the same evening, and the Abbot decreed that it would displeaseth God to treat his finest creations with the same brotherly modesty they do each other. The dry sheep intestines, used as birth control and left humorously around the monastery, were hidden away, and slanderous phrases such as te futueo et caballum tuum were to be scratched away to nothing with a bronze belt buckle from the stone walls. Flowers were placed artlessly around, in the dining hall, along the stairway, and most of all in the Brothers bedchambers. Given that a long series of completely indecipherable sounds, exactly matching Aphex Twin - CIRCLONT14 (shrymoming mix), had begun haunting Brother Taylbus as the Abbot summoned him, he accepted the task with a zeal understood only by himself.
...metallic sounds, sometimes hollow and resounding, quick, or other times saturated and echoing as if he was in a cathedral. Unpredictable and ridiculous pulses, evil, filling him with itself, voices hidden inside but distorted, the language of the daemon and music of hell, repetitive, as if he were taking a beating...
The monastery meadow lay only a little way past where the wheat fields met with the remains of an old mill, which had burned down the day the brothers arrived in Wharram Percy and which was now the home of an infamously senile goat. By the time Brother Taylbus had reached the interstice, he had already mouthed to himself the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and was about to begin his third Hail Mary when the heathenly noise deep in his head came to an abrupt end. For a moment he was convinced that it had been the rosary that had banished the daemonic rhythms. Of course, he thought to himself, this certainly seems to have been the case before. He had only his faith to attest to this. Though he also knew that the sounds were always transient, and none of them he had so far experienced lasted longer than it takes to recite the entire rosary. The sun hid itself behind the mill and Brother Taylbus became aware of the quiet vastness of the wheat fields, shivered slightly in the cool shade, and let out a guilty sigh. Somewhere behind a bent column of stone, the goat known locally as Benedict clipped the chalk with his hooves, making a sharp crack not unlike that of an 808 snare sample