The Breath of Peace (3 page)

Not even the risk of leaving a lifetime spent in monastic life to get married
, he thought bitterly as he followed his wife into the house on this February night. Oh, the love between them was sweet at times, and no amount of spats between them came anywhere near denting the basic reality that he adored her: but it had been a very long time since his everyday life had brought him so many scoldings, and led him so inexorably into one kind of trouble after another.

He thought if he let her go first up to bed, he could slip out quietly to the henhouse and close it for the night. Even if (as was most likely) the fox had been at dusk and taken a bird, that would not become apparent until morning, and he could pretend he just hadn't noticed the evening before. ‘They were already roosting,' he could say. ‘I couldn't tell how many were in.'

That would bring wrath on his head too, because her immediate rejoinder would be: ‘If you couldn't tell how many were in, you might have left some shut out. You must count them! You must count them in every time!'

He slipped past her at the door as she bent to unfasten her pattens (the wooden clogs that kept the all-pervasive winter wet out of her boots) and went in ahead of her to attend to the fire. He found it almost dead. He had been longer out looking for her in the lane than he expected. Only a few tiny embers remained. He tore a fragment of lint from the small supply of it they had close by the hearth, drew the embers together, laid the scrap of charred linen over them and built above that a careful pyramid of dry sticks, balancing on top of everything a stiff dribble of candle wax they had saved. He bent low and blew patiently on the embers until the smoking scrap of fabric caught light. And then he prayed. He stayed on his knees, apparently watching the beginnings of the fire, but in reality he prayed. ‘Please,' his heart whispered: ‘Just this once. Please let the wretched thing take.' And it did. The sticks were dry enough, the lint scrap large enough, the embers just hot enough, and the remnant of wax proved adequate as it melted to give the necessary extra boost. As the kindling wood took light he added the next size up of split wood, carefully positioning the pieces. He had his fire. ‘Thank you,' he said in the silence of his soul, ‘for sparing me that.'

He got up from his knees to fetch the pot still half-f of stew from last night's supper, and set it low on the hook to warm through. His wife had hung her cloak on the nail and taken through to the pantry the bag of provisions she had walked into the town to buy, this having been market day.

‘Well, at least I see you cleaned the hens' feeding bucket out this time when you shut them in,' she said as she came to the fireside. The adrenalin rush of the fear she had felt in the lane, and its following sea of anger, had ebbed away now. Madeleine, left feeling flat and slightly guilty in its wake, thought she'd better look for something positive to say. She glanced at her husband, but he did not reply. He stirred the stew with more attention than it deserved and kept his eyes on the pot.

‘William? You – you did feed the hens, didn't you? You did shut them in?'

He made no reply. She thought at first he was angry with her, and felt irritated with him for being so petty – after all, it was his fault she'd had such a scare, he shouldn't have been hanging about in the hedge playing the fool. Madeleine glared at him in frustration. And then some instinct took her past her first assumptions through to the reality. Her eyes widened.

‘You haven't fed them at all, have you? You forgot all about them. You haven't shut them in!'

Still he did not look at her, but he felt the force of her gaze on him like wind and fire, just as clear and honest and direct as her brother's eyes, and just as capable of the most fiery indignation. William recognized a moment of truth when it came towards him. He abandoned the self-protective lie half formed in his mind. But his mouth went dry.

‘I was scared to tell you,' he admitted, his voice so low she could hardly make out the words. She stared at him in disbelief, then whirled about, snatched up the half loaf from the table, struggled her pattens back onto her feet; then the door slammed behind her as she disappeared out into the night once more.

William fetched the bowls and spoons for their supper, wondered whether to follow her but thought better of it, and sat down by the fire he had made, to wait miserably for her return. She was gone longer than throwing bread into the henhouse and bolting its door could have taken. It came as no surprise when she flung open the door and stood there leaning on one hand against the frame as she pulled off her clogs, the corpses of two hens dangling reproachfully by their feet from her other hand. She spared her husband no glance, but stalked through into the scullery and hung the birds on a rafter nail to be dealt with in the morning.

She came back in silence then to the fireside, stopping at the table to pick up their bowls. She set one down on the hearth, stirring the pot, then ladling barely warm stew into first one bowl, which she thrust in her husband's direction with neither a word nor a look, then the other, with which she retreated to the far side of their table.

William received his bowl from her humbly. Never had he felt less like eating, though he'd been hungry enough an hour before. He dared not refuse the food, dared not even raise his eyes to her or thank her when she gave him the dish. He took it, and in silence they ate the tepid stew with the little white discs of congealed fat barely melted. William felt sick at the sight of it, but he ate it. When they were finished, he took her bowl along with his through to the room on the back of the house that did for storage and scullery and preparation space, scooped some water out of the tubful that stood near the door, swilled one bowl into the other, swilled the second bowl round, then opened the window and flung the swill-water into the night. That would have to do until morning. Some grease left on the bowls and spoons wouldn't hurt; they could be scoured along with the pot the next day.

He left them on the table there and returned with slow reluctance into their living room. He had a strip of hide cut for a belt, and wanted to make holes in it for the buckle. He took it, along with the spike to make the holes and a stool from the table, to the fireside where his wife sat in angry silence thinking about hens. The spike was too blunt. One end hurt his hand as he tried to push it through, the other end slipped and punctured the palm of his other hand, though it had completely failed to make more than a mark on the leather. He swore and sucked the bruised and bleeding place, while Madeleine watched him moodily, too cross with him even to point out he'd do better with the bradawl than a simple spike. She thought he ought to know that anyway.

Some evenings, as they sat by their fire through the winter darkness, Madeleine, her carding or spinning done for the day, would lift down her vielle from where it hung on the wall to play the folk songs and ballads of childhood remembrance, and William loved that. It was evidently not going to be one of those evenings. Even the fire was sulking. The wind was wrong.

Eventually they gave up on the day, and Madeleine stood holding the candle while William tidied the fire together, and then followed her up to bed.

They undressed in silence. It was too cold to sleep naked. William kept his undershirt on, and his socks. The sheepskins spread on their mattress under the linen sheet made their bed warmer as well as softer, and the fire in the room below kept the winter damp from their chamber. Even so he shivered as he slipped between the sheets. Their bed felt distinctly inhospitable. Madeleine said nothing, and did not turn toward him for their usual goodnight kiss.

William lay rigid in the cold bed at her side, longing for her to hold him, longing for this to be over now and forgiven, for mistakes to be allowable, for things to be simple and just all right. His hand throbbed where the spike had pierced it. He felt cold and wretched and completely forlorn.

‘
What?
' said Madeleine, sudden and fierce into the darkness, acutely aware of William's frozen silence, angry with him for having the temerity to exude this chill on top of everything else. ‘
What's the matter
?'

Bewildered, William wondered what he could possibly reply to this. She knew what was wrong. He had frightened her without meaning to in the lane. He had let the fire go too low to heat their supper. He had forgotten the hens and let the fox take two more precious birds. He was in total disgrace. He tried to frame some kind of understanding that would allow him to see why she was asking him what was the matter.

‘Just grow up!' Her voice shook with passion, and she kept it low with an effort. ‘I know why
I'm
angry, but I can't see that you have anything to be so resentful about! What's wrong with you?'

Grow up
… The words fastened on to William. Hearing this he recognized what was happening. It had been an occurrence of almost monotonous regularity in his childhood and his early years in monastic life as a novice. Others being angry about the original misdemeanour was never enough for them. There followed the complicated matter of his own response. If he kept his body still and his face without expression, he was mulish, insolent, insubordinate. If he attempted any kind of remonstration, he provoked indignation and outrage. If he lowered his eyes or turned his head away, he was sulking. If he tried to behave normally, he was indifferent and insensitive or unrepentant. If he kept his expression and tone carefully neutral, he was rebellious or cold or rude. And if in the end he was reduced to tears, he was snivelling… self-piteous… complaining… attention-seeking. He wondered how often in the first decade of his life the threat of ‘If you don't stop that grizzling, I'll give you something to cry about!' had screamed and raged around his head. It was happening again now. Someone was angry with him for perpetuating his crimes by continuing to exist. Nothing he said would be right. Even here in bed at night he was in the wrong because his wakefulness had been detected. And he had no doubt that if he'd fallen asleep his callousness would have been unforgiveable. He had no alternative but to ride this out as best he could.

Madeleine heard his breathing change from his nose to his mouth. She felt his cautious movement, and saw in the moonlight, as she turned her head to glare at him, the surreptitious wiping of his eyes with the heel of his hand. Impatient with this, she turned her face away again. He deserved to be in trouble. How could he be so thoughtless and so careless –
all the time?

Careful to minimize any disturbance he might make, William turned over on his side, with his back to her. Madeleine lay in the frigid darkness, furious about the hens, and doubly furious because she could feel the tremor of his misery. She didn't want to have to deal with that, or pretend his incompetence didn't matter after all. A long time passed. The night was very cold.

Eventually, exasperated, all hope of sleep exiled completely, Madeleine rolled over to him. She felt his body tense as she laid her hand on his arm.

‘William…'

He did not move, but she knew without doubt that he lay painfully awake.

‘William, come back to me.'

There was nothing wheedling, nothing coaxing in her voice. Not one corner of Madeleine's spirit lent itself to accommodating other people's petulance or moods.

‘William.'

He turned over again to face her. She took him in her arms.

‘I'm sorry I spoke so sharp,' she said simply. He shook his head, past speaking, and she held him close to her. The hopelessness and despair in him had its talons into his gut, and he clung to her desperately. She realized then that he had not been angry with her at all, only terribly ashamed and needing to be forgiven. Her body relaxed and softened, and she lifted her hand to stroke his head as she cradled him. ‘It's all right,' she whispered, soothing him. ‘It's all right…'

‘I know it's not the same, but I'll get you some more hens,' he eventually managed to say.

She kissed the end of his nose, as light as a butterfly. ‘Moorhens' eggs taste of mud,' she teased him gently: ‘let's stick to chickens.'

With peace restored between them, Madeleine resigned herself to accept the depredations of the fox, and held her husband in her arms until she gradually dozed off and her embrace slackened and released as she drifted into sleep.

William lay awake, his mind still battered by the tumult of emotion.

Barely more than a year ago, his body lapped in peace, lying entwined in afterglow of love, when they were first married, he had felt all fear, all shame, slip out of his soul. Everything had just been all right. That was then. In the intervening time, the householder's round had taken its toll. William was well used to people holding him in contempt and being angry with him, finding him a source of outrage and indignation; but never since his childhood had his intelligence been found wanting. Domestic life had made him into a dunce; and he hated that.

He lay without moving, aware of the sound of the wind blustering about the roof, of the smell of herbs and stew and woodsmoke and cured hams that pervaded their house, of the warm presence of his wife beside him in the bed, her breath whistling slightly. He was glad she didn't snore – or not very often. He lay still, his mind seething with memories, his heart in turmoil. He felt relieved they had ended the day on speaking terms at least, but it had left him with a confusion of shame and self-loathing and hurt that he couldn't begin to sort out. He remained alert in every sense the whole night through, and by the time the sun rose he felt weary beyond description. Desiring no interaction of any kind at all, he slipped out of bed quietly, leaving Madeleine to sleep on as he crept downstairs. If he walked on the edges of the treads, they barely creaked at all.

He raked the ashes and found enough life left to revive a fire. Their money had stretched far enough to buy a second good-sized iron pot. He unhooked last night's stew and sniffed it. The smell of it this morning had become less than inviting. He carried it through to their scullery to take out to the sow. The pitiful sight of their dead hens hung by their feet from the rafters sent a fresh shaft of guilt, like an icicle used as a weapon, stabbing through his belly. He averted his eyes from them, measuring out a cup of oatmeal, a cup of milk and two cups of well-water into the other pot to begin breakfast. He added a generous pinch of salt, took the pot through to the fire, and hooked it up onto the chains. He fetched one of several long-handled wooden spoons to give the porridge a stir as it began to seethe over the fire. This spoon was of his own making, his first foray into shaping wood. Madeleine said he had made the bowl of it too shallow to be very useful, but he had felt proud to have made it nonetheless – at the time. It seemed a clumsy, graceless piece of workmanship when he looked at it again this morning.