The Breath of Peace (23 page)

Quizzical, searching, William's eyes looked into hers.
What?
she thought, annoyed by the expression on his face.
Anyone would think I was never nice to you! It's not so very strange as all that, is it?

‘Thank you – thank you kindly. Yes, I'd love that. If you're sure you aren't too tired from your journey.' He sounded pleased, but more wary than ever. He kissed her, light as a stray petal landing on the ground, and released her from his embrace. He hesitated, unsure if this was the right moment to continue the day's work while the light permitted, or if he should take some time to be appropriately attentive to his wife. Hedging his bets, he thought he'd tarry a while indoors with her, then see to the animals while she finished their supper preparations. He felt embarrassed that he had done nothing about making supper himself – he had given it no thought whatever. The cheese had all gone, so he would probably have eaten a hunk of bread and dripping, a couple of apples and maybe an egg, washed down with a mug of ale at the fireside. That seemed plenty to him, but he had a feeling Madeleine would consider it a shiftless, inadequate apology for a meal. Even so, having caught him out in his feckless approach to housekeeping, she didn't seem to be cross with him. She didn't look put out at all.

As she chopped onions and garlic and herbs, Madeleine felt aware of William's eyes resting meditatively upon her; quiet, thoughtful, observant. She chatted pleasantly to him about her stay at the abbey – telling him how John had made himself available to spend time with her today, and she had shared his supper in the abbot's lodge the previous evening. William listened, his gaze watchful, penetrating; like a curious fox, she thought, or a cat intrigued by a pleasingly unfamiliar movement.

Madeleine felt a little self-conscious, as though his eyes in deliberate delicacy lifted away the layers of what she wanted him to see, and silently, persistently probed her hidden self, feeling for the truth of her, touching the contours of change and present reality. It came as a relief when, seeing their supper would shortly be done and the sinking sun had set the whole sky aflame, he went outside to feed the animals and shut them in for the night.

Maintaining careful courtesy and gentle speech began to drain Madeleine's resources after a while. She wondered if the brothers at St Alcuin's found it as hard work as this, or if it somehow came naturally to them. Even so, she had to admit, pleasant and cheerful conversation added something of a flavour of courtship to their evening together. Everything felt less empty and prosaic than it usually did. When they had eaten and cleared away the supper things, weariness descended on Madeleine; two hours on horseback and the effort of unremitting sweetness began to take their toll. They turned in early, and in the intimacy of their chamber she felt glad enough to snuggle into William's arms, at least until their body heat warmed the bedding enough to make everything cosy as she drifted off to sleep. But evidently that was not all her husband had in mind.

‘If you're not too tired…' he murmured gently, kissing her brow… her cheek… with consummate tenderness.

Like a thin, snaking river of bile the words that came easy in response ran through her familiar mind:
Yes! I am way too tired! What did you expect, for heaven's sake? I've ridden all the way back from St Alcuin's and not stopped for breath before cooking your supper! Can't you just wait until tomorrow?

She listened to the words in her head, and she thought of the brothers at the abbey, letting all the bitterness and cynicism that arose from weariness come under the kind cloak of the Grand Silence. She thought that was all very well for them; once Compline was done and dusted all they had to do was go to bed – nobody would ask anything further of them until the morning. At least – they did have to leave the warmth of their blankets in the middle of the night to pray, but perhaps they were used to that. Could they
possibly
get used to that? Or was it their gift of love, in spite of being tired, no matter what they felt like – because this was their vow, their way, their commitment? Was it meant to be something they would never get used to, to make sure this way they had chosen could not degrade into a comfortable religious routine, simply going through the motions?

So what she said to William was: ‘My darling… I can't imagine being too tired to want your love.'

He made no comment, but as he held her and kissed her and caressed her, for the first time the thought came to her that this was not simply something happening between them, nor did he intend it as a demand upon her – he was giving her the very best he had to offer, doing his utmost to please her. It surprised her to find herself humbled and moved that it should be so, and further surprised her to discover that his love, tender and gentle and considerate, added no burden to her weariness but smoothed away the fractious ennui and the aches of a long day, leaving her comfortable, peaceful and contented. Later, she drifted off to sleep, still held in his arms. William, momentarily alert as he watched her eyelids drowse shut, felt vaguely unnerved by the change in his wife, and very, very grateful as he allowed himself, too, to be drawn down into slumber.

He woke, as he usually did from sheer force of habit, an hour or so after midnight and at about half-past five in the morning, well before even the first lightening of the dawn. The second time he knew he would not go back to sleep. He lay thinking and praying, turning over in his mind the difference in Madeleine after one short visit with her brother. He wondered what on earth John had said to her. He contemplated the day's tasks waiting to be done, but he didn't move, not wanting to wake her – she was sleeping so peacefully. Eventually, towards daybreak, as the darkness lifted, she stirred. William thought she must surely be awake by now.

‘It's still cold,' he said conversationally, ‘but –' he gave an experimental puff – ‘I can't see my breath.'

Madeleine huddled down deeper under the blankets. ‘Perhaps you're dead,' she mumbled sarcastically. William grinned, reassured.
That's my girl!
he thought. He took the opportunity to slide quietly out of bed and dress himself, leaving her to doze off to sleep again.

When Madeleine finally came to, she could hear from downstairs the familiar noises of logs fetched in from the store tumbling from her husband's arms into the basket, then the scratch of the flint, and the spit and crackle of the kindling wood. Next, the clatter of the chain as he lifted the porridge pot onto the hook. To these sounds of everyday was added one she did not remember hearing before: William singing – a simple lilting setting of the
Benedicite
. She lay in the warm nest of their bed and listened.
What a nice voice he has
, she thought.
Why haven't I heard it before?

* * *

After he had bidden his sister farewell, Abbot John turned his mind with reluctance to another encounter that he could no longer put off. Brother Cormac's uncomplaining acceptance of the obedience of cellarer had startled him. He had braced himself for a tussle to prise Cormac out of his niche in the kitchen. John realized that he must have underestimated him. The cost and the sacrifice, he had seen in Cormac's face all too vividly, but the resentment and stubborn protest he had anticipated had never come, and for that the abbot's heart was thankful. He had no expectation that things could go smoothly twice. He had to do something about his disastrous prior. With this in mind, he had asked Father Chad to come to his lodging after None. After the midday meal and before None, John wanted first to approach the possibility of change with Father Francis. He had hesitated over this, wishing he'd thought to seek William's counsel before his friend returned home. In principle, as abbot, he could ask anything of the monks in his community, and they were vowed to obedience. In practice, it paid to tread gently, to invite more than to command, to discuss rather than to instruct. John thought it unwise to force anybody to an obedience – that would be counterproductive. And he didn't want to end up with no prior in the same way as he had been caught on the hop with no cellarer. So he felt reluctant to lever Prior Chad out of his obedience without having ascertained for sure that someone was willing to replace him. For this reason, he wanted to sound out Father Francis first. On the other hand, he felt that in kindness, Father Chad should be the first to know his role in the community was just about to change. It seemed unfair that Francis should have known all about it beforehand.

He tried to imagine what William would say, how he might approach it – and failed completely. The embarrassment of Brother Ambrose's death having left the community with no cellarer and none in training made a difference to this decision now. The appointment of his prior was John's choice entirely; that was laid out very clearly in the Rule. In this matter he had no responsibility to consult the brethren in Chapter. But the cellarer debacle had happened, and that pushed the stakes higher. He could not afford to put a foot wrong here. A sense of stability, John knew, was an essential component of monastic contentment. The boat had been rocked too often. This was not a time to take risks. He had to keep a man in place in the essential obedience of prior – even if that man was Father Chad. So he had cautiously and uncertainly gone for the option of talking to Francis first.

They had started lambing up on the farm. Brother Thomas would be out this whole day, which presented an opportunity for a very discreet conversation with Father Francis and, if all went well, for consolidating the change with Father Chad later in the day.

John recognized an unusual fluttering of nervousness in his belly. The simple kind of personal authority in his day-today dealings with the men of his community came naturally to him, but faced with the bigger, more strategic decisions he felt out of his depth. He knew that he had to get this right, and he did trust William's counsel and judgment of character. He had agreed, once the idea had been suggested to him, that Francis would probably make a good prior: but he also knew that human temperament is never certain, and all he could really do was make his best guess. He would have liked a better security than that. He wondered as well, though no word had reached him, if there might be any murmurings because he had sought William's counsel rather than the feeling of the community in Chapter, in settling on Brother Cormac to fill the obedience of cellarer. In the case of finding a new prior, he couldn't have brought the matter to Chapter even if he'd wanted to, because Father Chad was very much alive and in post, and John had no wish to humiliate him; this had to happen quietly. John closed his eyes as he sat thinking, trying to see round the bends in the road that lay ahead. ‘Help me,' he whispered. ‘Oh, please help me. I am not man enough for the task you have entrusted to me. Help me. Put me in the way of your grace. Shine into me the insight of your wisdom. Where I am dull and obtuse, of your charity let the light of your Spirit lead me…'

The knock at his door betokened well. Firm, but not insistent. Audible but not loud. John wasted no time in answering the knock. ‘
Benedicite!
' he welcomed his brother as he opened the door. ‘Come in!'

Brother Tom had paused to light the fire before he took off up the hill to the farm that morning, and it glowed on the hearth still. John felt torn over this. After years of working in the infirmary, kept always comfortingly warm, he felt the cold; and it had been a hard winter. He also thought it in some ways improvident to allow the wet to obtain too entrenched a hold on the monastery buildings. During his own time in the novitiate, moss and fungus had grown freely on the walls. Books, so precious and laborious in the making, went mouldy. Men coughed their way through the fogs and frosts, shivering in damp robes. John saw the sense of warmth. On the other hand he knew – and William had pointed it out – that their consumption of firewood had risen considerably since Father Peregrine's abbacy had ended and his had begun. The guilty sense of extravagance nagged at him. He tried to compromise, by permitting himself a fire, but keeping it burning low. He felt glad of it now. This large room, so airy in the summer, felt bleak indeed in February without the kindly welcome of fireglow on the hearth.

‘Come – sit you down, brother,' he said to Francis, who surprised him by sitting not on the chair set ready for him, but on the stones of the hearth. Francis, sensitive to the fleeting and tacit hiatus, looked up in consternation before he had fully settled. ‘Not here? I'm so sorry!' He moved at once to get up.

‘No, no! Stay where you are! You're a blessing to me! Think of what you'll do for my sense of power and authority as I look down upon you from my throne!' John smiled at him, and drew one of the chairs closer to the fire to seat himself. ‘If you feel chill, feed the fire. Spring's coming, I do believe, but it's still perishing cold.'

Francis realized that he had chosen this seat without thinking because, in his novitiate days, this had been where he had always sat when Father Peregrine called him into this room to talk through his progress in religious life, the unfolding of his vocation. There had been, he remembered, some painful and powerful encounters with his own soul as he sat here by the fire, allowing the gentle, persistent probing of his superior's questions to uncover aspects of himself he had struggled and failed to keep hidden. The struggles had been immense, but the prize of self-knowledge and peace and the recognition of Christ at the heart of it all had been worth the pain and turmoil. He felt a sudden shaft of sadness at the passing of those days, that relationship. Swift on its heels came the recollection that it could not be easy to follow in the tracks of Father Peregrine's sandals. Glancing up at his abbot, who sat watching him, waiting for his return from the momentary reverie, Francis felt ashamed.