He would learn medicine.
Not the simple remedies of hedgerows and hearthfires that his mother had taught him, though those still lived in his hands. No. He sought the greater knowledge—learning powerful enough to save those who otherwise would slip quietly into the earth. It was the knowledge that might have saved her.
And so, in the autumn of 1340, he left Ireland behind and crossed the sea to mainland England, carrying with him little more than his upbringing among herbs and forests, and the stubborn resolve that grief often breeds. But knowledge in those days was not given freely. Medicine, like most learning in the Christian world, lived behind the walls of the Church. A man who wished to study the body was first expected to study the soul. Christianity was not merely encouraged—it was required. Those who healed the sick had to be certain they did so along the righteous path, lest their knowledge wander into forbidden territories. A healer who strayed too far from God risked being called something far more dangerous than ignorant.
So the question many later asked was simple enough: How did a poor Irishman from the edges of Connacht find himself welcomed within the halls of St. Etheldreda’s in Lunden? The answer lay in the years after Fiadh’s passing.
In those long, quiet seasons of grief, Audloed had devoted himself to assisting a local priest named Father Byrne. At first he served simply as a helper—running errands, tending the church grounds, aiding with small duties. But before long Byrne noticed the boy’s careful mind and steady hands, especially where matters of healing were concerned. Audloed became his assistant in nearly everything. He helped tend the sick of the village, mixing simple remedies and offering prayers beside the priest. In time, Byrne became more than a teacher—he became a bridge between Audloed and the vast world of Christian learning that stretched far beyond Ireland’s hills. Audloed never desired the power that many clergymen quietly pursued. Wealth, influence, comfort—those things held little charm for him. To Audloed, power meant something very different. True power was the knowledge that could decide whether a person lived or died. It was a thought that sat uneasily beside the teachings of the Church. Though he followed the faith as best he could, somewhere deep in his mind he kept those two ideas separate—God’s will on one side, and the quiet craft of healing on the other.
Perhaps Father Byrne understood that better than anyone. He was also the only person Audloed ever truly spoke to about Fiadh. The pain of losing her had never faded. It simply settled deeper over time, like a scar beneath the skin.
One evening, after hearing him speak of her, Byrne had offered a piece of wisdom that stayed with Audloed for years afterward.
“You do not move on from death,” the priest had told him gently. “You move forward with it.”
Audloed carried those words with him. And he spoke his own in return—words Byrne would later remember clearly when writing his recommendation.
“Some people cannot be cured,” Audloed once said quietly. “But everyone can heal.”
Byrne saw something in that sentiment—something rare.
So when the time came, he wrote a letter to Archbishop Ceolberht in England. In it he urged the archbishop to accept Audloed as a student under the Church’s wing. The archbishop had long encouraged promising pupils to be taken from “all corners of the kingdom,” and though Irish students were uncommon, they were sometimes welcomed for that very reason.
Thus Audloed found himself crossing the sea.
Life at St. Etheldreda’s was unlike anything he had known. The church stood among the crowded streets of Lunden, a place filled with noise, commerce, and humanity in numbers he had never imagined. Yet within the stone walls of the church, the world seemed quieter—ordered by prayer, study, and discipline.
Audloed studied medicine, but his learning was never limited to the body alone.
He studied scripture, philosophy and the delicate balance the Church believed existed between earthly suffering and divine will. Like all students of learning in those days, he was required to read and speak Latin, the language of scholarship and scripture alike. The English Reformation lay centuries in the future; the Church’s language still ruled every page and prayer. Alongside his studies, Audloed worked closely with the monks of St. Etheldreda’s. He assisted in teaching scripture to parishioners and occasionally helped deliver parts of the doctrine during services. It was here that he came under the guidance of a bishop named Ieremias. The bishop was widely respected in both the church and the surrounding communities, and he took a particular interest in the young Irish student. Ieremias saw in Audloed something unusual—a healer’s instinct sharpened not by ambition, but by loss.
Under his guidance, Audloed’s path slowly shifted.
The line between priest and physician in those days was thin. Spiritual healing and physical healing were often seen as two halves of the same calling. More than once, Ieremias suggested that Audloed might someday take full vows and become a priest himself. Audloed considered it., but in the end, the pull of medicine proved stronger. His skill among the sick grew quickly. He worked closely with local healers, physicians, and even the women who cultivated rare herbs needed for remedies—connections Ieremias encouraged rather than forbade. Before long, Audloed became known within the church as one of its most capable healers. And yet, as his knowledge grew, so too did something else.
Questions.
If there was a moment when his certainty first began to fracture, it did not arrive as a single revelation. Instead it came as a slow procession of strange thoughts and dreams. Some nights he dreamed of impossible medicines—potions capable of curing those thought beyond healing. Other dreams were stranger still: visions of women among fields of herbs, guiding his hands as he prepared remedies in ways he had never been taught.
And always, somewhere in those dreams—
Fiadh.
Her presence lingered like mist in his thoughts, never fully gone.
He prayed often, hoping the dreams might fade.
Instead they only grew more vivid.
To anyone watching him from the outside, Audloed appeared calm and devoted—a diligent student of both medicine and faith. But behind closed doors, something within him had begun to tremble. For the first time in his life, his relationship with God was no longer simple.
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