St. Felix and the Beaver
A story of Norfolk, as it never happened.
St. Felix of Burgundy was shipwrecked on the River Babingley in West Norfolk in about 615 CE. Felix was purportedly saved from drowning by a colony of beavers. In thanks, he made the leader of the beavers a bishop.
“Oh, bother,” said Felix of Burgundy. (He was speaking another language entirely, but if I wrote what he did say, you wouldn’t understand it.) “I think I’m sinking.”
He wasn’t supposed to be here at all. He was supposed to be…somewhere else. Felix looked down at his feet. His shoes were wet. The hem of his robe was wet. Water sloshed in the bottom of the little boat he’d borrowed.
“Definitely sinking,” he sighed.
Who was he speaking to? God, I suppose, given (a) he was alone in the boat and (b) he was a bishop. He’d been asked to come to East Anglia by Sigebryht, the king. Or, rather, one of them. The junior king was pagan, and didn’t care a whit for Felix or his god. But Sigebryth did care, and he had a louder voice and a bigger retinue (and he was better with a sword), so here Felix was, contemplating the marshes as his robe got wetter and wetter.
“Bugger,” he said this time, which he shouldn’t have, but a few prayers and acts of contrition would make up for it. Fog was rolling in, obscuring the shoreline. The shore – if you could call the treacherous saltmarshes that lined this bay a shore – had been that way. Hadn’t it?
“God helps those that help themselves,” Felix muttered. He stuck an oar into the water, not to row, but to test its depth. It found – mud. Solid mud, he thought, probing some more. The water appeared to be about waist deep. He would wade to the land.
Why, he wondered, had he insisted he must give thanks for his safe crossing from Frankia by a day’s vigil alone on this bay? “Safe enough,” he’d been told by the man whose boat was now half full of water. “Shallow, and the water’s warm. Well, warm-ish,” the fellow had added, after a moment’s thought.
Felix slid off the boat’s side and gasped. Warm-ish? Certain parts of his anatomy he wasn’t supposed to care about receded into his body. Mud sucked at his ankles. He was sinking too.
His next words would need a lot of acts of contrition. If he lived. Felix grabbed at the boat, just catching it before it floated beyond his reach. Pulling it towards him, he removed the oars. Holding one in each hand, he stuck them down into the mud. They steadied him enough he could pull a foot free, and then the other one. He took a step, pulled the oars free, shoved them down again, took another step. Pulled the oars free, shoved them down, took a step. Again. And again. And again. You get the picture.
After some number of steps (a very big number, it felt like) Felix stopped saying words he’d have to repent of and started praying. Between the water and the fog he was wet, and cold, and he hadn’t eaten all day. “Send me rescue, God,” he panted. “I will build a church to your glory at the site of my salvation.” And other words to this effect. Bishops bargain with God too, even if they tell you not to.
Was that land ahead? He staggered forward a few more laborious steps. Not land, not in any real sense. Saltmarsh. Boggy, treacherous saltmarsh. Felix wiped drops from his cheeks, the salt air and the fog blurring his vision. (Or so he said later. I think he was crying, and why shouldn’t he have been?)
He could see – just see, in the fog – a little river running through the marsh. He’d stick to it. Maybe its bed would be firmer. (Oh, for a bed, even a very firm one…even a bare plank. And a cup of hot broth.) Felix sloshed on. The river bed was firmer, even gravelly. He dropped one of the oars. One walking stick was enough now.
“God, I thank you for safe passage from the sea,” he murmured, his eyes closed. “But is there a living creature in this marsh to direct me to safety?”
Felix opened his eyes. Directly in front of him, barring his passage, was a dam. A dam made of willow and alder branches woven together with great skill. “Thank you, my Lord,” Felix said. For if someone had dammed the stream, it would be for watering their livestock, or catching waterfowl. Perhaps there was a village on the pond beyond? With broth steaming on a fire, and furs to cover him?
Felix climbed – carefully – up onto the dam. “Help!” he shouted. “Help!”
A loud noise – half ‘splash!’, half ‘whack!’ broke the silence. Then nothing. Felix stared out into the fog. Had that been an oar, or maybe a boat being launched? “Help?” he cried again. “Someone?”
Felix waited, shivering. He said his prayers. He repented of his bad words earlier. The light dimmed. He cried a little more.
A sound caught his ear; a scrabbly sound just below him on the dam. He looked down.
A beaver? An effing beaver? This was a beaver dam? Felix groaned. God was being awfully cruel. “Why are you testing me like this?” he shouted.
“Oi!” A voice came out of the fog. “Shut up! You’re scaring the beavers.” (Don’t ask me how Felix understood this. He might have spoken Latin as well as Old French, or whatever they spoke in Burgundy in 615, but this East Anglian peasant didn’t. We shall gloss over this.)
A man paddled up, in a round boat made of reeds and hide. “Who the eff are you?” He wore furs, and a round cap, at the back of which hung a beaver tail.
“Felix of Burgundy. Your new bishop.”
“Bishop? Wot’s a bishop when it’s at ‘ome?”
“I have come to bring you the word of God.”
“Wot you doin’ here then? The beavers don’t need no word of God, an’ nor do I.”
This was no time to argue with the peasant. Felix’s teeth had begun to chatter. He needed that broth and furs, even if they would be lice infested. (Both the broth and the furs, very likely.)
“The beavers do not, it is true. They are already God’s creatures. My boat sank out in the bay, but have they not brought me rescue? Assuming,” he added, looking doubtful, “there’s room for me in that craft.”
“You’re skinny enough. Slide in.” The peasant steadied his boat against the dam. Felix, on his behind, edged most ungracefully down it, sticks poking him in the most private of places, and into the boat. It rocked from side to side, and sank a little lower in the pond, but stayed afloat.
“Is there a reward for rescuing you?” the peasant asked, paddling away from the dam.
“I can promise you everlasting life,” Felix said.
“Wot, to be out ‘ere in the fog an’ mud, trapping beavers forever? They stink, you know. And there’s biting things and fevers. You can keep your everlasting life.”
“Then,” Felix said haughtily (his father-in-the-Lord had chastised him often for the sin of pride; it was a failing) – I will reward the beaver, instead.”
And he did.
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Charming!
What a fab little story! Thank you for bringing Felix and his experience all those years ago to vibrant life 🥰