Chapter 6. The Escape. It was early summer. Six years had passed, and Patrick was sleeping out in the fields with the sheep. As usual, he had been praying throughout the days and nights. He also frequently fasted. One particular night, something unusual happened. During his sleep, Patrick heard a voice from heaven saying, "It is good that you are fasting, for soon you will return to your own country." When Patrick awoke, he cried aloud from sheer gladness. God had spoken to him. He was going to return home.
He sang and prayed throughout the day as he worked with the sheep. That night, he camped with Sid and some of the other shepherds. "Sid, you're not going to believe this," Patrick said in excited but hushed tones, pulling Sid off to one side. "God spoke to me last night in a dream. He told me that I will soon be returning to Britain." "Are you sure it was God, Patrick?" Sid replied, his eyes studying Patrick's face. "It's easy to be misled by dreams." "Yes, I'm absolutely sure.
It was too clear to have been my imagination." Patrick's face was beaming with joy. "But how—how will God rescue you?" Sid inquired with a puzzled look. "I don't know. He didn't say. Maybe my parents have located me and are going to ransom me. I really have no idea." Sid thought for a moment. He then smiled broadly and gave Patrick a warm embrace. "I'm really happy for you, Patrick. So God has finally answered your prayers." "Patrick, the persistent widow," Sid shook his head and laughed.
"I have to admit," he continued, "that I had given up hope a long time ago that you would ever be rescued. I guess you've taught me something about prayer. I'd like to leap for joy, but the other shepherds might get suspicious." "You're right," Patrick agreed, glancing at the other shepherds. "How I would love to do the same." The two men smiled and then prayed together. "You probably should start storing up some food, as you don't know what lies ahead," Sid wisely counseled Patrick.
Patrick agreed to follow his advice. That night, Patrick prayed through much of the night. The next morning, Sid embraced him warmly before leaving with his flock. "I sense that I'll probably not be seeing you again. I'm going to miss you, dear brother. I'll be praying for you." The two men stood there, looking at each other tearfully. Finally, Sid said, "Goodbye, my friend." He smiled warmly at Patrick and then walked off, driving his sheep in front of him. Patrick watched him disappear in the morning fog.
"It doesn't look like I'll be able to rendezvous with the others for a while," Patrick told the camp cook nonchalantly. "Could you give me some extra supplies to tide me over?" "Sure," the cook replied, giving Patrick a couple of loaves of bread, some roasted grain, and a few pieces of cheese and salted fish. Patrick ate from his new food store quite sparingly, so he would have some food on hand for any contingency. Then, a few nights later, God spoke to him once again in a dream.
This time, God simply said, "Look, your ship is ready." When Patrick awoke, he knew this was the day he was to leave. He didn't know what God meant by "your ship is ready." Perhaps his parents had come to ransom him. Perhaps a legion of Roman soldiers had landed. He didn't know. But it didn't really matter. God had spoken to him, and that was all he cared about. Patrick worked throughout that day as normal. As soon as it was dark and the sheep were safely bedded down for the night, he asked God what he was to do.
He sensed the Holy Spirit nudging him to rise and flee to the east coast. So Patrick slung his small cache of food over one shoulder, hung his water bottle on the other shoulder, and picked up his staff. Then he quietly stole away, first walking and then breaking into a light run. After running about two hundred yards, Patrick stopped, caught his breath, and looked back. He saw his sleeping flock in the ghostly lights of the pale moon. He could go back now, and no one would ever know anything.
If he continued on, Milchu might eventually catch up with him and punish him severely. But no, he knew God had spoken to him, and he trusted God without any doubt. Patrick turned and continued his flight, never looking back again. Of course, Patrick had no idea of the precise place where he was headed. He simply followed the guidance of the Spirit as he fled. Leaving the meadows, he headed into the dark wood of Voclut, where the soft beams of moonlight could barely reach the forest floor.
But Patrick knew this forest only too well, having rescued sheep from it many times. He found a familiar path between the dense growth of oak, elder, and birch trees and continued on, sometimes running and other times walking. After a long while, he reached a clearing, rested under a birch tree, and gulped water from his bottle. Across the clearing, upwind from him, Patrick spied a red deer, a buck with a majestic spread of antlers. The buck stood for a moment on a knoll, then darted off.
Patrick waited a few more minutes and then continued his journey past the clearing and back into the woods, following the twisted path through the dense forest. His heart beat wildly as adrenaline pumped through his veins. Some seven hours of incessant hard traveling brought Patrick to the edge of the forest. It was around four o'clock in the morning, and Patrick was ready to rest for a while. He took another drink of water and ate some bread. Suddenly, he heard a rustling noise behind him.
He sat very still, scarcely daring to breathe. Had he been followed? The rustling grew closer, and he half expected to suddenly feel a rough hand on his shoulder. He waited in suspense, and then a weasel darted out of the woods close by and ran nimbly across the moonlit meadow. With a sigh of relief and a prayer of thanks to God, Patrick continued his flight.
The path on which he was traveling now led him to a morass and then to a gently moving brook, whose banks were irregular, swampy, and overgrown with dwarf willows. After a moment's pause, Patrick forded the brook and began climbing up a steep, rocky hill on the opposite side. His hand slipped on the muddy incline. In desperation, he grabbed hold of a rock, but he then slipped again, tumbling down the rocky slope back to the edge of the water.
Lifting his bruised, wearied body, Patrick attacked the hill once again, and this time he made it to the top. His eyes searched the moonlit view around him until he spied a small path, which he followed down the other side of the hill. The path meandered through stretches of yew trees and open meadows. Finally, it brought him to the banks of a second river. Here it intersected another path that ran along the riverbanks. Patrick rested and prayed for guidance.
Sensing the leading of God, he took this new path, which wandered along in a pleasantly erratic fashion, sometimes close to the river, sometimes up in the hills above it. When morning began to softly lighten the skies, Patrick looked for a safe place to sleep. He knew he dared not travel during the daylight. Glancing around, he spotted a thicket of bracken on a hillside, about twenty yards from his path. He made a bed in the thicket and thanked God for his promise of deliverance and for the safe journey.
Soon, he was sound asleep. The sun was already in the western sky when Patrick woke from his sleep. He lay still and listened for about half an hour, hearing nothing except the babbling of the nearby river as it splashed over mossy stones. He used this time for prayer. He knew he was on a journey of faith, and he dared not break communion with God at any point. Parting the bracken, Patrick peered down the path he had last been traveling.
He saw no one, so he sat up and devoured a small meal of bread, cheese, and salted fish. "I wonder what's happening back at my master's farm," he pondered. "Undoubtedly, by now the shepherds have told Milchu that I've disappeared. He must be furious. Hopefully, no suspicion will fall on Sid," he thought. Finishing his light meal, he returned the food to his satchel and prayed some more. "Please, protect me, Father," Patrick cried out in his heart. "Please, don't let Milchu find me.
And please, please protect Sid from any suspicion." Finishing his prayer, he peered out again at the countryside around him. "Where am I?" he wondered. "I wonder which clan rules this territory. No doubt Milchu has already sent a search party out after me." Patrick instinctively crouched down. "Of course," he thought to himself. "I've probably crossed the boundaries of more than one clan during the night. That affords me a measure of safety." He smiled. "I know only too well that the clans rarely cooperate.
They certainly won't unite to look for a runaway slave from another clan." Suddenly, Patrick heard footsteps on the path. Hugging the ground, he peered once again through the bracken. It was only an old, hobbling woman with a crutch stick. Patrick heaved a sigh of relief and smiled. The old woman stopped for a while, directly across from where he was hiding. "Oh, my aching back," she moaned as she rubbed her lower back. "And I still have so far to walk.
Oh..." With that, she continued on, traveling in the direction from which Patrick had come. Soon, she disappeared over a hill. He now heard only the faint sound of her steps and her stick, along with her fitful coughing. Finally, everything was silent again. A soft rain began to fall. When the shadow of night once again cloaked the landscape, Patrick ventured out of his hiding place and continued his journey to freedom, moving quickly through the black, silent air.
Although this was empty countryside, the flicker of torches and cooking fires here and there told him there were various huts and houses hidden in the quiet places of the hills. Eventually, the path took him close to a longhouse, which he surmised to be the home of a tribal king. He heard the sounds of revelry coming from inside the house, and he smelled the sweet, almost buttery aroma of a peat fire. He traveled nearly twelve hours that night, staying close to the river.
He knew that the river eventually should lead him to the sea. When daylight peeped through the clouds, Patrick once again found a hiding place and slept. When he awoke, he prayed, ate a bit, and then waited again until nightfall before traveling. He traveled for another twelve hours that night, then slept in another thicket. It was now the afternoon of the third day of his flight, and Patrick began feeling considerably bolder.
"It's highly unlikely that any word of a runaway slave would have reached these districts," he reasoned. "For one thing, there's no road system in Ireland, and since the people are illiterate, there's no way for Milchu to send a written message to other parts of the country." He glanced around from his hiding place but saw no one. Feeling even more confident, he deliberated further. "Besides, no one I encounter in these parts will guess that I'm Roman. After all, I dress and groom just like the native Irish.
I don't look any different. What's more, I speak Gaelic fluently." After praying about the matter, Patrick took a deep breath and stepped out into the afternoon light. It felt so good to stretch and move about in the daylight. After getting his bearings, he quickly resumed his journey down the river path. It led him by a wood of birches growing on a steep, craggy side of a mountain that overhung a picturesque lake. The trees clung to the slope of the mountain like sailors on the ropes of a ship.
"Hello, how are you?" he loudly greeted a woman carrying a basket of grain. As Patrick continued, the blood-red sun began to slowly edge toward the horizon. He followed the winding path up to the rich grassy glades of a forest. Hundreds of wide-branched oaks flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of shamrocks. In some places, they were intermingled with rowans, hollies, and yews. The branches grew so closely together that they totally intercepted the level beams of the sinking sun.
In other places, the trees receded from each other, forming long, sweeping vistas. In such places, the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discolored light that danced on the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees. Patrick traveled until he reached the edge of the forest, around midnight. Then he slept on a soft bed of moss at the forest edge. When he awoke the next morning, the blackbirds were whistling in the beautiful emerald and yellow meadow that stretched before his eyes.
A gray Irish hare darted across the footpath. Robins, stonechats, and larks sang in the trees and bushes. His heart was bursting with joy, and he praised God aloud for the wonders of his creation. Patrick continued his journey for several more days, eventually covering about two hundred miles. Passing through well-watered valleys, he at last came to an exceedingly steep woods that scrambled up a craggy hillside. It was crowned on top by a naked precipice.
When Patrick reached the top, he caught his first glimpse in six years of the Irish Sea. His heart leaped. To his right, sheer black cliffs loomed out of the water. Raucous colonies of gannets, shearwaters, and puffins nested in the ledges of the cliff. Waves lashed the foot of the cliffs. In front of him, the hill sloped gently down to the rocky beach. "And what was that on the beach? A ship!" Almost delirious with joy, Patrick raced down the embankment as fast as he could, waving his arms wildly.
When he reached the beach, the sailors were quite baffled. Out of breath, Patrick quickly blurted out through huge gulps of air, "I'm the one! I'm the one you're waiting for!" The crew only looked at him in silent bewilderment. "You're supposed to pick up someone, right? Well, I'm the one!" Patrick explained. The boat's captain, a burly man with piercing eyes and bulging muscles, looked at Patrick contemptuously. He then harshly blurted out, "I don't know who you are or what you're talking about.
We don't carry passengers. We're carrying cargo to trade in distant places." "That's fine," Patrick calmly replied. "Let me come along with you. I assure you, I will earn my keep." The captain's face turned red in anger, and he growled, "Get out of here! You're not going with us, so don't ask again!" Patrick stared at the man in stunned silence. He slowly turned away and began to trudge listlessly back up the hillside, fighting back tears as he went.