Lindisfarne became a place of immense richness. To provide an additional and prestigious focus for the cult of Cuthbert, Bishop Eadfrith painted one of the greatest works of art in our history, the Lindisfarne Gospels. Around the year 700, this glorious object was made on the island with extraordinary and unexpected skill. Not only would there have been a well-furnished library and plants grown to make pigments, but there were also monks who were able to create a tooled and bejewelled metalwork cover and who could bind the pages of calfskin. The great gospel book is an unlikely achievement for a community who lived in leaky wooden huts on a windy, sandy little island off the cold shoulder of the Northumbrian coast.
This beautiful book and other gilded treasures attracted unwelcome attention. In 793 the Vikings attacked the monastery, one of the first raids on the British mainland. Known as the Sons of Death, these pagan warriors eventually forced the community to abandon Lindisfarne. For about one hundred and fifty years, the Congregation of St Cuthbert wandered northern England, carrying with them the coffin, relics and treasures of St Cuthbert. In 995 all three were finally enshrined at Durham and by the early eleventh century the great cathedral had begun to rise.
In 1083 the old Anglian congregation was replaced by Benedictine monks and all links with Lindisfarne were in danger of being severed. The powerful prince-bishops of Durham determined to re-forge the relationship with the island where Cuthbert had spent the last years of his life. A priory was founded on the site of Aidan’s original monastery and its ruins dominate the modern village. The new church was built opposite the parish church of St Mary. The priory had been raised over the ruins of an earlier Anglian church. Very little can now be seen of the monastery where Aidan, Cuthbert and Eadfrith walked through their exemplary lives.
When Henry VIII’s dynastic difficulties persuaded him to dissolve England’s monasteries, Lindisfarne was quickly deserted, despite its venerable origins. After 1537, the island became a naval base in the sporadic wars with Scotland and stone was robbed out of the priory to build a fortress on the castle rock. Nevertheless, much of the priory church remained intact as late as the 1780s, when it was visited by antiquarians and artists. By the 1820s, the central tower and the south aisle had collapsed and much stone was carted off to build houses in the village and elsewhere.
In the last two hundred years, Lindisfarne’s fame and spiritual magnetism have been reborn. Now thousands of visitors cross the causeway to visit the holy island, its priory and castle. As many of these modern pilgrims walk in the footsteps of great saints, they see more than ruins, feel more than a sense of the long past. They come because the island is still a place of spirits, a place where they can hear the whispered prayers of Cuthbert and the echo of psalms that were once sung under these huge skies.
PART ONE
TO THE ISLAND
1
The Island of the Evening
Most of a lifetime ago, in the summer of 1965, I walked across the causeway to Lindisfarne. Only just turned fifteen, I was one of three schoolboys intent on adventure, or at least a change of scene, something different from the dull school day routine that had just come to an end. Six glorious weeks of summer holiday were opening before us and we had decided to celebrate our freedom by travelling south-east from Kelso, our home town, to cross the border to the Northumberland coast and enjoy all the exotic differences of England.
I have no memory of the journey except for two moments, one misty, the other sharp. We must have walked on the roads, much less busy in those days, my companions and I, because my vague recollection is of pitching a tent, borrowed from the Boy Scouts, on a riverbank near the little town of Wooler. Midgies are what sticks in the mind, and everywhere else.
The sharper memory is of crossing the main line between Edinburgh Waverley and London King’s Cross at Beal. The white level-crossing gates were open and, it being a hot day, we stopped at the red brick station house on the far side to ask for a glass of water. This was a time long before anyone thought of bottling the stuff. In what I imagine must have been an interval between trains, the signalman/gatekeeper was in his garden tending to conical trusses of canes that were covered in the pale colours of sweet pea blossom. It was a still day and the air was thick with their scent.
When he came out of his back kitchen with a jug of water and glasses, this genial man had also put a large jar on the tray. Saying something like, ‘You lads won’t have tasted this before,’ he unscrewed the top and pulled out what looked like a twig with small blobs of green stuff stuck onto it. ‘This is samphire, edible seaweed,’ he explained, and drew the twig through his teeth, then pointed it towards the seashore. ‘Down by the causeway there’s plenty, but not many know what to do with it.’
The three of us probably exchanged glances, and I went first. It tasted of salty vinegar. A mild grimace must have escaped because the signalman laughed as he took the big jar back into the kitchen. ‘If you are wanting to cross’ – he waved his arm in the direction of the low sandy island we had seen in the east – ‘then you’ll need to get a move on.’ Of course, it had not occurred to any of us to check the tide times, probably because none of us knew how.
A few minutes later, having climbed the low hill where the hamlet of Beal clusters, a wide vista opened. Below us was the arrow-straight tarmac causeway, maybe a bit more than a mile long, and beyond that, the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, its village huddled around the ruins of the priory and the miniature castle rock further in the distance. To the north lay a long run of undulating sand dunes, and beyond all of that the shimmer of the North Sea and its endless horizon.
We hurried down the slope and began marching across the little black road that seemed built on sand, its edges fraying. On either side, the long, wet sands seemed to merge seamlessly with the sea, and there was no telling if the tide was coming in or going out. We were carrying hefty packs and moved as fast as we could towards the white refuge box that stood on stilts about halfway across. Its purpose was to rescue idiots like us, but when we reached it, we still could not tell if the tide was coming in and, being daft boys, we pressed on regardless. There was no other traffic on the causeway, wheeled or on foot, but of course the significance of that occurred to none of us.
By the time we were halfway between the refuge box and what seemed to be dry land (or was it?), there was no doubt. On both sides we could see the tide rising, what looked like a low wave running across the sands towards us. We began to jog, and when the sea washed across the tarmac we started to run. For the last hundred or so yards, we were forced to slow to a wet walk as we first splashed and then waded. And then the road rose up almost imperceptibly, suddenly dry, and we stopped, panting, shuffling off our rucksacks, then turning to look behind us as the tide raced across the black tarmac and rose up the stilts of the refuge box.
Landlocked boys raised forty miles inland amongst the meadows and cornfields of the Tweed Valley, we had no idea of the elemental power of the sea. No matter how far we strayed from home in Kelso on a summer evening, we could always walk back, always get home, even if there was a telling-off waiting. But here we were sea-locked; the tide had cut us off from the world, and nearly done worse. In moments, Lindisfarne had become an island, and we were stuck on it. Not so much bad planning as no planning.
Our boots and socks were soaking and there was nothing we could do about that except squelch along the road. I remember in those days I wore a green hooded anorak with a large, horizontally zipped pocket along the front. It was the sort you had to pull over your head. Under it my shirt was soaked with sweat, but the road to the village was long and sweeping. Perhaps I would dry off before we reached it and could ask when the tide was due to go out. By the time we started our damp trudge to the village, it was late afternoon.
At the age of fifteen I was as tall as