But even he was totally dumbfounded when the latest wonder burst into his second century monastic life.
In the corner of his sparse cell-room retreat, two lengths of grey-coloured cord lay on the floor beside a cauldron. They trailed across the flagstones of the setting and upwards to a small table.
On the table, the grey cord connected into a wooden box containing a complex mass of small, metallic cubes and spheres with neat little holes in their centres through which the same length of cord threaded them together.
Kendrick stood beside the cauldron, out of which an acrid smell of rotting vegetation rose offensively. He tried not to breathe the stench, holding the air in his lungs for as long as possible. He bent down, picked up the ends of the cords from the floor and placed them into the vessel’s oily red slime.
Then it happened.
The wooden box on the table emitted an angry hissing sound followed by the thin, tinny sound of a man’s voice.
Kendrick started. He was alarmed at the intrusion. He’d never heard anything like it in his life before. The man spoke in a language that made no sense to him. He stood spellbound. It was beyond his comprehension that a human voice could come from a collection of metal objects in his wooden box on the table.
“Was this God speaking to him or perhaps the devil incarnate himself.”
The voice from the ether babbled on for several moments whilst Kendrick decided what manner of thing he had invented.
After a few minutes and being re-assured by the fact he hadn’t been struck down by angry devils or deities, he crept barefooted across the cold flagstone, cautiously towards the sound.
As he approached, his right foot caught under one of the grey wire cords resting on the floor, hoisting it out of the red liquid.
The voice and the hissing were silenced. Their abrupt termination puzzled him. For a moment he wondered if he had imagined the episode. Then realising his foot had pulled the cord from the pot, it occurred to him its presence in the liquid might be linked with the sound of the voice.
He stooped to pick up the end of the wire which had fallen from the vessel, but before placing it back into the chemical, peered in to see if some creature might be swimming around in the liquid. His mind was puzzling to find an explanation for the strange phenomenon, and perhaps some other physical presence would explain the mystery. He used a long-handled wooden spoon to stir the slime. But he could see no animal in the brew. Contented there was no alien presence, he immersed the end of the wire into the solution again. Once again a hiss emerged for the box on the table accompanied by an ethereal voice, except this time it sounded like a woman.
Should he dispose of this invention, he wondered? Was it of such evil magnitude that it might reach out to destroy him and the whole of the monastery?
So far it seemed harmless enough. If only he could understand the words emanating from his curious collection of metal orbs and squares.
He had intended them as a new type of heating device, eliminating the need for fire as the only source of warmth. In ancient texts he had read that certain herbs mixed together in a solution could create heat, which could be conducted through thin, grey cord made from metal into other larger metallic objects making them hot.
But what manner of device he had actually created he could not fathom. He approached the wooden box and ran his fingers gently over the metal occupants. He could feel nothing other than their smooth surfaces. No warmth. But the woman’s strange language continued to emanate from the contrivance.
He sat down on the stone bench formed into the south wall of his cell. Behind him a narrow, vertical slit gave limited view across the monastery vineyards, stretching towards wooded hills. Deep in thought and kneading his chin abstractedly with his left hand, he wondered what to do next.
He knew his holy brothers sometimes heard voices from saints and the deity, but that was in their heads. No one as far as he was aware had ever come across a clutter of metal and wood that could talk. He was apprehensive but fascinated by the event.
Many centuries were to pass before radios became commonplace, so Kendrick could have no idea that he had invented a very crude form of one, let alone postulate who in the year 183 AD possessed the technology to broadcast on the air?
Borthwick must know about this strange invention too, he thought. They were allowed to speak together briefly each day or longer if matters justified it - surely this did?
He could trust Borthwick, his Holy Father the sage. His superior knowledge of the world might cast some light on this most incredible phenomenon.
Borthwick’s craggy face was shaped a bit like an inverted pyramid. His long chin came almost to a point. His manner was self-assured and lofty. He had received message that Kendrick sought counsel with him and now entered the inventor’s cell.
“I know that no good will come from your endless meddling with the unknown,” he warned Kendrick, in anticipation of some ungodly dire consequence that Kendrick may have unwittingly released into the world.
“You should spend your time in the worship of God, not wasting your days with this infernal nonsense,” Borthwick motioned his arm, indicating the many strangely shaped wooden and metal objects littering much of Kendrick’s cell and piled into untidy heaps in the corners.
“But the Lord has given us the gift of inquiry,” Kendrick defended himself.
“Has he? Well what have you discovered now?” Borthwick had little patience for those who did not spend most of their waking hours worshipping the Lord or toiling in the fields in His service.
“Listen,” Kendrick held the length of cord over the chemical pot.
Borthwick stared disapprovingly at the red liquid in the cauldron. And then the offensive odour emanating from the concoction caused him to grimace and turn instinctively away.
“Uh, that is utterly disgusting......” he reproved Kendrick. “What is it?”
Kendrick began an explanation of the herbs he had introduced to the mixture, but Borthwick did not really want to hear the fine details. He moved a few feet away from the brew.
“What is that grey cord you are holding?” Borthwick enquired.
“It is metal which I have melted down and fashioned into a very strong type of yarn. I came across the formula in some very ancient texts........”
“Yes, yes, alright,” Borthwick interrupted. He had heard some of Kendrick’s complex explanations about his inventions before but could never understand them.
“What are you going to do with it? I do have much more pressing engagements concerning the work of God.” Borthwick was growing more and more impatient.
“Well, I’ll show you.....” Kendrick looked down into the cauldron and dropped the end of the wire into the magic liquid.
Instantly something akin to music filled the room. Borthwick’s superior composure collapsed into abject fear. Instinctively he jumped, turning towards the source of this inexplicable sound coming from the device on the table. His face was deathly white. His hands began to tremble, his knees began to shake. His long robe flapped with nervousness.
The spiritual sage sank to the floor and fervently began to pray, anxiously pleading for forgiveness and mercy.
“It won‘t hurt you - at least it hasn‘t so far,” Kendrick attempted to re-assure his master, though he too couldn’t help feeling a sense of fear and mystery generated by the sound of unearthly musical instruments he had never heard before, issuing from the box on the table.
After some moments in prayer and realising nothing else untoward was happening, Borthwick rose again and ever so cautiously approached the device. He stared in disapproving wonder at the metal balls and cubes inside it.
Suddenly the music stopped and for a second there was silence save for hissing. Then a man’s voice started up in a foreign tongue and fear struck Borthwick again. He recoiled. But the moment passed sooner than on his first encounter with the unknown.
“In the name of goodness, what profanity have you committed now?” Borthwick pleaded. “Where is this person? Have you trapped a mortal spirit in these, these.....?” He didn’t know how to describe the device Kendrick had created.
“I don’t think so....” Kendrick faltered. After all he couldn’t be certain whether he had or not
“Or is it the voice of a departed soul?” Borthwick’s eyes widened as he spoke.
“I thought you might be able to tell me what it is....” Kendrick stuttered.
“Me! How in the name of our good Lord would I know what it is? You made it!”
“I know......” Kendrick realised that the Holy Father was wise in all things spiritual, but in matters of mortal creation, his knowledge was far less practical.
“I suggest you destroy it,” advised the sage.
“But it might be useful,” Kendrick protested.
“For what?”
“I don’t know yet. It was meant to be a heating device.”
“A heating device!” Borthwick’s patience was now seriously running out. “What is wrong with fire?”
“Well nothing, but I thought......
“That is your problem Kendrick. You think too much!”
As they spoke the ethereal music returned, this time accompanied by a female voice singing in the strangest manner
“What chant is this?” Borthwick was addressing himself more than his holy brother. His mind contained a library of languages and he was searching to find a comparison. It aroused his curiosity. Here was something he could get to grips with.
He pondered the situation for a moment or two and then with a sense of enlightenment announced: “We must study this. Perhaps God is trying to communicate with us. It may have great significance.” Borthwick was now seriously considering a miracle might have befallen them. “Perhaps God is trying to speak to us through this instrument,” he thought.
He spent several months studying the endless parade of inexplicable sounds, voices and music that came from the amazing device invented by Kendrick.
He had virtually moved into his colleague’s cell filling it with parchments to litter the already untidy room.
For hours at a time he studied obscure hieroglyphs and symbols on stiffened rolls of script collected and stored by generations of monks before him at the monastery. He grew so absorbed in his work, he hardly noticed Kendrick’s existence.
By now the inventor was beginning to tire of his creation. The continuous babble night and day. It had failed as a heating device and so he began to concern himself with a new method of conveying water through metal pipes, avoiding the daily drudge of collecting it in containers from the monastery well.
He was considering a ploy to end Borthwick’s obsessional studies by claiming he no longer possessed enough seasonal herbs to refresh the cauldron mixture, which seemingly supplied the basic power force to the voices.
But there was no need. Before it became necessary to engage the plan, Borthwick admitted defeat.
It was a cold night and he sat on a crude bench working under the light of a flickering candle at the table where the device continued to blurt it strange sounds and tongues.
“It’s hopeless,” Borthwick cried in despair, pulling at the wires so that they came out of the cauldron. Immediately the room fell quiet.
Kendrick had been sleeping uneasily on the straw filled mattress placed in a clearing amid some of the junk that abounded in his cell. It was the lack of sound that caused him to sit up in surprise. He rubbed his eyes and opened them, squinting as they adjusted to the shadowy light of the room.
“Did I hear you say it’s hopeless?” Kendrick asked.
Borthwick nodded.
“Then perhaps we can get some peace now,” Kendrick was unsympathetic. His plans for other inventions had been put on hold while Borthwick had conducted his studies. “I agree it is a useless device, a freak of Christendom. No earthly good to any person.”
Borthwick did not hear him. He would divulge the little he knew and then conclude the episode.
“My difficulty is that it appears to be a form of language that possibly does not even exist as yet,” the sage began.
“The words are a jumble, made up from several separate languages. The problem is that I still cannot understand the meaning of this language even though I have translated a section. There is nothing I can identify with any civilisations past or present. Let me read what it says, perhaps you may recognise something.”
The sage held out the stiffened parchment in front of him, turning it slightly at an angle to catch as much of the fluctuating candle light as possible.
He began: “News has just come in of a lorry which has shed its load on the clockwise side of the motorway near junction 16. There are long tail backs and motorists are advised to leave at junction 15.”
Borthwick stopped reading and looked at his colleague for enlightenment. None came. Kendrick’s gaze was devoid of inspiration.
“Shit!” cried Henry. “I’ve just gone past that junction.” As he spoke he saw the red stop lights and hazard indicators flashing ahead of him in the distance.
He slowed the car, cursing again.
“I’ll never make that meeting now,” he slapped the steering wheel angrily. It was a late winter afternoon and the trees on either side of the carriageways were silhouetted against the fading sky.
The radio music resumed as Henry brought the car to a halt. He reached for a packet of peppermints on the dashboard shelf, helping himself to one of the contents.
The music did not appeal and he pushed an auto tuning button on the radio. It switched to a talking programme.
“.............yes it’s a quite remarkable discovery,” said the man on the radio.
“It was found on the site of what is believed to have been a monastic type of dwelling sometime in the first or second century.
Henry slowly edged the car forward a few more yards.
“Now there was a simple level of technology existing at the time, much of it introduced by the Romans, and indeed a crude form of plumbing was discovered at this particular monastery,” the man on the radio continued.
“Really, so they were a pretty clean bunch of monks then?” the interviewer jested.
“More amazing, however, was the unearthing of an extremely sophisticated device that research has shown was actually able to receive and amplify audible radio waves,” the programme guest enthused.
“You mean, Dr Goss, this device worked like the radios our listeners are using right now?” asked the interviewer.
“Well, not exactly. At best whoever invented it would only have received static hissing sounds. After all there were no transmitters or radio stations broadcasting in those days.” Dr. Goss replied.
“So they wouldn’t have been able to hear this traffic update about the motorway tailback from junction 16?”, the presenter rounded-off the interview light-heartedly.
“Not a chance,” laughed his guest, as a jingle struck up to herald the latest traffic news.
I hope you enjoyed my tale. You can also read another of my stories on:
Best wishes,
Benjamin Wessex