The Baton

They call it the Grim Shift, 3.00 to 5.00 a.m., a time when the Holy Garden is as dark and still as death, and on an autumn night the chill wind can make even the hardiest runner struggle.

I love it. As a senior monk (in age if not necessarily status) I am able to choose my shift in the Holy Garden and I choose the Grim Shift every night, a time I have covered since I first arrived at the Temple as a young boy, over 60 years ago.

True, it is so dark I cannot see my feet as I run, nor so much as a as an inch around me, but I don’t need to see, I have run round this garden every night for over sixty years, 16 or 17 laps a night (19 or 20 when I was younger). There isn’t so much as an inch of ground I don’t know, that my naked feet haven’t touched a thousand times.

I love the Grim Shift BECAUSE it is dark and silent, because I have to focus so hard in order not to trip and thus accidentally end the world. I still remember the words used by The Man With His Ear To God when I was taken in by the order as an 8 year old orphan child. “Running is the highest form of meditation. To run only to run, to become totally immersed in the process, only in this state is your mind totally open to God.”

I took the baton from Newman, a monk who is neither new nor old, currently being punished with a night-time shift as punishment for being caught with cold meats. He grunts a word of welcome and takes my torchlight from me, leaving just two torches in the whole garden, enough to bother a stray moth, but no barrier to the great cloak of darkness covering the night sky.

My body resists at first, as it does every time I start running now. Pain screeches in my knees, ankles, calves and a few joints and muscles seemingly unconnected to the running process. But I ignore it, focusing my mind on running, running, just running, and soon the body reverts to muscle memory, the rhythm rehearsed day after day for 60 years and gradually all aches, pains, weariness and age are forgotten.

God has spoken to me twice before. Reaching God takes an almost inhuman level of concentration, a meditative high that few have ever achieved. The first time I panicked as soon as I heard God’s voice, almost tripped and dropped the baton, almost ended the world. I never managed to say so much as ‘hello’ back to him.

That was 40 years ago and I had to wait another thirty years before I had the chance again. This was during the great fever and I prayed intensively as I ran, concentrating so hard that I was almost in a fever myself. When he spoke, though, I was ready, and questioned him intensely about the fever and how it might be abated by the just. God told me to use the leaf of the Undone Tree to tame the fever, and as soon as my run was over I went down to the village and tended to the sick with that very leaf, now a key ingredient in every medic’s herb-store. A statue stands to this day in the Holy Garden honouring God’s message to me, without which the entire village could have died.

Of course The Man With His Ear To God conversed regularly. It is his communications with the Mighty that form the basis of the Templar Book, through which we understand his ways and our duties.

It was The Man With His Ear To God who took me in when I was eight years of age. There were many orphans seeking refuge in the Temple that day and he looked us over carefully before choosing. He saw immediately that I was built to be a good runner and sure enough, when handed the baton in my Templar Test, I ran non-stop for seven hours and nine minutes before an experienced monk saw me wilting and took the baton from me.

“Why does it matter if the baton is dropped?” I asked, betraying my youthful innocence.

“Because if the baton was ever dropped, if the monks in this order ever cease to carry it round the Holy Garden, then God will take it as sign that we have abandoned him and he will abandon us in turn. The world will cease to go round, floods, earthquakes, every conceivable disaster will rock the earth and the world will come to an end.”

“But what if someone tripped, or became ill as they ran?”

“God is watching over us, no ill fate will befall those carrying the baton.”

A crazy prediction, you would think, but it is true. Not once in the hundred plus years the temple has been here has a single monk tripped, let alone died, whilst running with the baton, not even those monks, like me, who run in near total darkness during the night, when there would be nobody to take over and carry the baton from a fallen comrade.

My third conversation with God was different from the time of the fever. He did not impart wisdom to save our village, nor did he impart the rules and guidance that he had passed to The Man With His Ear To God. It was personal, it was critical, it made me feel I had failed in my worship. “You betrayed your brother,” he said, his first words to me in over ten years.

“My brother was unable to come to the temple with me,” I said, explaining my history to god as if he were ignorant of the facts. Understandably his response was ill-tempered.

“I know your history,” he said, “I know how you came to the temple. I don’t refer to that, but to your silence.”

“My silence?”

“Your brother was a much better runner than you, much fitter, faster. If you had spoken The Man With His Ear To Me would have sent for him. But you didn’t speak, you feared that your brother would take your place in the temple, that you would be left to fend as you might, like any other orphan.”

“It is true I did not speak for my brother,” I confessed, “but it was not through self interest. I loved my brother, more than I loved myself. I simply feared to speak to the Man With His Ear To You, or any other of the monks, except to answer their questions. The power, their gravitas, their wisdom, I could not trouble them with talk of my brother. And if truth be told, I simply didn’t think to mention his running, he was everything to me, a friend, a source of knowledge, ofhumour, but I never thought of his body, of his long legs and firm muscles. I was too foolish to think of these things.”

God didn’t answer and I continued to run. I had reached the coast by this point, so it must have been early on the second night.

Ah! In my haste to convey the words of God I have forgotten to explain what happened during my last run (for my last run it will surely be).

I was deep into my run and focused totally on my meditation when there were suddenly flames, crashes, bangs and eventually screams coming from the temple. Torches amassed round its walls, the stables were set afire and a great army of men emerged from nowhere. The temple was under attack, and no sooner had the attack begun than it was over. True to my mission I continued to run around the Holy Garden, eyes fixed on the temple. I watched the invaders enter the temple, heard the screams of the Templar monks as the invaders fixed their victory and watched still as they left with loot and plunder, the great treasures of our taken for common booty.

I left the Holy Garden, in fear for myself and for the baton. I continued my run down the hill towards the village, but that too had been ransacked, plundered and burnt to the ground. Anybody left alive had fled.

I ran on, clutching the holy baton, knowing that I must carry on my run until I could find someone trusted to hand it on to.

I ran on, and on, through the night and into the day. I avoid towns, fearing that I would be forced to stop. I headed to the coast, though I had never been there I knew the way, I had the gulls come from there.

On the second night God spoke to me about my brother. I ran on, though my body was beyond pain at this point, my eyes filled with tears at God’s words and my mind wretched, feeling that my life of worship had failed to make up for my childhood weakness.

I ran on, because I have to. As soon as I stop I know that my body will no longer be fit to run again, I have used it as recklessly as the rogue army used the temple.

In the heat of the second day God spoke to me again. “You have led your donkey to a strange town,” he said, though I have no donkey and I avoided all towns. As I protested God responded only with the words “bleuggh and spalleos.”

I was quiet for a while, trying to understand his meaning. What did he mean by leading my donkey to a strange town?

I ran on.

As the sun descended and the sky bloodied into a furious red sunset, God spoke to me again. “I am dressed as a lady God,” he said, “I will be waiting for you by heaven’s gates dressed as a big fat dairy maid.”

“Why?” I asked, but God had gone again.

Again, despite my every effort, the meaning of his words did not reveal itself to me.

God’s final message was this: “Spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spot.” I spent hours trying to understand it’s meaning, but perhaps, as a mere mortal, I may never fully understand the true meaning of God. Maybe, if I had not been running constantly for over two days, I would, with due reflection and comfort, come to a sensible interpretation of God’s words, but weary, worn and useless, even the word of God is nonsense to me now.

“When the baton ceases to be carried God will turn his back on the world. When the baton falls the world falls.” I remember so clearly the words of The Man With His Ear To God. They are all that keep me going. Fifty, no, sixty hours, without food, just a few stray handfuls of water, there is nothing left in my body now, nothing left of me, just a mind, a soul and a mission. Yet even these are beginning to fade.

My run has slowed to barely a walk, yet still the world keeps turning, so I too, go on.

My feet slip and slide along the harsh coastal path, for all skin has been scraped away and I am being carried along by a pair of bloody stumps.

Yet still, God demands it, so I go on. “When the baton falls, the world falls.”

“Spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spot.”

Gods words play through my mind, I must understand their meaning. If I succeed I could form a new order, build a new temple, teach the wonders of this philosophy. “Spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spot.”

But, in order to do that, I must pass on the baton. I must live. I must … put my right foot forward …, then my left, then … oh God the pain … my right again then, fuck, what comes next, where has my left foot gone, why is my leg on the floor? Why am I on the floor?

“When the baton falls, the world falls.”

Is this how it ends? A fallen monk on his bloody stumps, muttering desperately God’s last words to mankind before the fall of the world?

“Spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spiggle, spot.”

Is this the end of the world?