Remember Me (23 page)

Watching William's face as he pulled the stool across to the table brought that beaten, broken animal back with a sharp, unexpected suddenness to John's mind.
Lord have mercy!
he thought
Whatever's happened to him now?

“That's right; then I can begin.” The lawyer's fussy, precise tones called their attention. William sat down on his stool and looked as interested as if he had been summoned to watch the fire going out.

“This is a most unusual will, most unusual. I have special instructions, and I have had to speak to the beneficiaries separately. In the letter she left with me, Mistress Ellen Cottingham was particular to ensure that the contents relating to St. Alcuin's Abbey were divulged in the presence of its abbot and of Father William de Bulmer. Can you confirm, Father, that you are indeed he?”

“Aye, that's me,” said William. John was relieved to see he looked at least puzzled now, not just desolate and bored.

“Thank you. Then here are the bequests Mistress Ellen Cottingham has made. She has three properties in the city of York that return a tidy sum in rent each year—I have the particulars with me, all the relevant accounts. One is a butcher's shop in Low Petergate, one is a leatherworker's shop in Spurriergate, and one is a merchant's home in a yard behind Stonegate. They are all trade premises with dwellings over. She has also a farm about halfway between here and York—a good-sized, thriving farm, a little east of Malton. Mainly sheep. Good income. Each of these properties, and the income related to them, she has bequeathed to St Alcuin's Abbey.

“Then she has some money on deposit which she has bequeathed to the abbey—being the sum of four hundred and eighty pounds, fifteen shillings, and sevenpence, and the use and disposal of this is at the abbot's absolute discretion. There is also a second sum, however, a greater amount. She has bequeathed separately, but also to St Alcuin's Abbey, a sum of five hundred pounds. This is to be used at the discretion not of the abbot but of the cellarer, in payment of any outstanding debts and for the purchase of provisions for the workshops and the kitchens and the infirmary, wherever it will be of practical use for the well-being of the community. This second sum, she bade me make especially clear, is given to the abbey with particular thanks to Father William de Bulmer for his gentle care of her soul. There are no conditions upon this sum; its connection with Father William is none other than that it is an expression of thanks for his care of her. He has no personal claim or call upon it. It is to supply the daily wants of the community here.”

As Thomas Haydon stopped speaking, utter, stunned silence reigned.

“Have you any questions for me, Fathers?” the lawyer inquired. “No? I shall act for the estate in making the deeds of transfer to the abbey's ownership, and my fee is to be subtracted from the first of the two sums. Under any circumstance, Mistress Cottingham insisted, the five hundred pounds bequeathed in association with Father William de Bulmer is to pass to the abbey untouched by any other consideration or cost. I shall carry out all that is necessary, and I think you will see it is straightforward. If the lands and properties lie too far from here for you to consider practical to administer, I can (if you wish) arrange for their sale and see to it that you receive the monies realized in outcome of the transactions.”

“Thank you.” John recollected himself. “Thank you, indeed. I think we were just speechless, friend—I mean, who knew? She lived so simple and plain. Anyway, God bless her. Yes, we may well have questions later. I know you have business down in the village while you are here today, but perhaps you will care to dine with me here?”

Abbot John rose then to accompany Mother Cottingham's lawyer to the door, and Brother Ambrose went with him to the stables to see that all was ready for his visit to his other clients down in the village. William ignored their departure completely. John came back and sat down opposite him.

William sat gazing, thinking, gazing. “Oh I see…” he said softly at last. “‘My will… all shall be well.'
That's
what she meant.”

He seemed to snap back into a more normal state of being then, and he looked down at the documents spread on the table.

“I can take these and look at them, perhaps? Will you accept my advice on whether to keep or sell the farm? Not decide today maybe—ask Brother Stephen's advice and Brother Tom's. The shops in York—my first instinct is to keep them, but we can see how we go, surely? If I take these with me now, I can have something coherent for you at suppertime—that's if you want my company here, Father; forgive my presuming.”

“Oh, yes indeed, I would be grateful if you join us, and for your advice which is always shrewd. Yes, take them—do. And you? Does this make some things better?”

William rolled the plans and scripts and deeds into one large scroll and looked up at his abbot.

“Better? I feel as though the whole fallen world has been resting on my shoulders and crushing me to death, and it's just rolled away. She has made everything better—not some things—everything.”

John wondered how that could be and if perhaps William had been haunted mostly by anxiety about the money. Perhaps the thing with Madeleine was fading from his mind, even if not from hers. He sincerely hoped so. He held the door open for William and thought how fragile he was beginning to look. Even this good news, stunning as it was, brought profound shock, and in that moment William seemed as brittle and unstable as a lattice of ice. “Look them over, but don't work too hard, my brother,” he said to him as he walked through the door.

“I'll tell you what you need to know by suppertime,” William replied.

He took the documents to the checker and put them down on his table. Brother Ambrose had returned and was full of excitement at this new turn of events. But William, half listening, murmured an excuse. He left the checker and walked swiftly down the close to Peartree Cottage, and he couldn't care less who saw him.

Madeleine recognized the quick decisive knock. He had intended only standing in the doorway, not going right in, but he saw from her face she had been crying. He slipped inside the house, pushing the door to, and took her in his arms.

“It's all right,” he said. “It's all going to be all right.”

The frustration of brief explanations was something they both had to live with. They hastily agreed that Madeleine would go to the cottage that had been given them, and William would follow as soon as he had guided John through the abbey's end of the necessary administration. He thought it best that she go without telling John of their intentions. “Let me weather that storm once you are away from here, dearest,” he said, for he privately thought the storm when it broke might be very bad.

“Can I ask you though,” he said soberly then, “are you sure you really want this complete dolt to have and to hold? You will be a woman of property now and could have your choice of men. Do you truly want the real man I am? Some women … well, there are women who fall for the fantasy, and once out of the habit and the mystique of the monastery, the man himself, so ordinary, loses attraction. I haven't the skills of a householder. Away from here I am going to seem inadequate by anybody's standards. Are you sure, quite sure, my sweet, that you want me—the real me?”

“I'm not one of those women,” she answered him, “and yes—I am quite sure that I want the real you.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX

December

“John—” he whispered—“John, please let me go.”

“
Let you go?
What d'you mean, let you go? Are you out of your mind? Do you think for an instant I'd be letting you
stay
, after this? You've betrayed me—deceived all of us! How long has this been going on? How long have you been hatching this? What kind of a deal did you strike with old Mother Cottingham? Whatever have you and Madeleine been up to in that old woman's cottage? How could you do this to us? Do you not remember how you begged us to take you in? And all this while you have been taking what we have to offer and presuming on our good fellowship while you plotted in this safe place some other private scheme of your own! How could you do it? Oh, you disgust me! I would never have believed this of you!”

There followed more of the same. William stood silently while this tempest raged round his bowed head. Eventually John stopped, biting off his last words abruptly. He glared at William, shaking with fury. “Yes—you can most certainly go!” he said coldly, quietly then. “How have you used us? What were we? Your inn, or your place of business? I never imagined it coming to the day when I would take the lash to any man's back, but by heaven, you would have felt it if I'd had any inkling of this.”

William nodded. “And I should have deserved it. You can do it now if you like.”

“To what end? William, do you not understand monastic life
at all
? Our scourge is not for punishment; it's for correction. It's for those who are struggling to walk in the way, not those who want to leave when the going turns uphill. It's for the monks—and as far as I can see, you are no monk, you're just a man in someone else's habit.”

“Please, John. Can I speak to you? Will you listen to me? Can we sit down and talk?”

He raised his face to look at his abbot. “Please.”

With a rough, vague gesture, John indicated the chairs beside the hearthstone. “Sit then,” he said.

With evident reluctance, the abbot sat in the other chair, and so they faced one another. “I'm listening.”

William swallowed. “It hasn't been quite as it looks, but I haven't behaved well either—and I'm sorry. I went to see her one night in the summer, and—”

“You did
what?
” John gripped the arms of his chair.

“Oh, peace!” William lifted his hands, palms toward John. “Brother, peace! Let me tell you. Please. Just—shut up!”

John was not breathing like a man at peace, but he let him speak.

“You are thinking we spent the night in her bed; well, we did not. I held her. I kissed her. I stayed there an hour. I was just desperate, John; I was going out of my mind with it. I thought if we had that one hour, I could bear it—lay it to rest.”

“If you thought that, you must be more of an idiot than you look!
How
long have you been a monk? Do you think someone who'd been a postulant only a fortnight couldn't have told you better than that?”

William nodded. “Of course, they could. Of course, I was fooling myself, telling myself what I wanted to believe. Even before I left her house that night I realized what I'd done. If it makes you feel any better to know it, oh God, I've suffered for it. If I thought I longed for her before, that was nothing to how I felt after that hour. Anyway, Mother Cottingham saw me leave the close. She asked me about it. So I told her. I begged her to keep silence for us because I knew you'd turn us out if it was known. And bless her—she did keep our secret. Since that night, I kissed Madeleine again once; only once. And I took her in my arms, for she'd been weeping, one time in these last weeks. And that's all, John, and I'm truly sorry, for I did deceive you. At least—that's all we physically did, but for sure we went on loving one another. I tried to stop, I tried to renounce it, but I couldn't do it, I just couldn't. I could only pray to find a way for us to be together. But there was no arrangement with Mother Cottingham. I had told her about the money I lost, but this will came as a complete surprise to us. She believed in our love. She wanted it to have its day. And when I asked you to let me go, I was not for one moment entertaining the notion you'd let either of us stay here once this was known. My brother—please—are you listening to me?”

John's eyes looked like two black holes glaring back at him, hostile and full of contempt.

“Go on.”

“When I first came to this place, there was so much anger, and all of it deserved, all of my own making. I've made hatred in the world by the way I've behaved. But I knew if I could find my way to Columba's house, I would find a shelter in Christ's mercy; he would hold his cloak over me.”

“Who? Peregrine or Christ?”

William looked at him. “Yes,” he said softly. “Exactly. I've worn Columba's cloak, and I have been sheltered, and was it the Master or the man? Both, I think. You made a way in for me, and you have been so good to me. I've never had a vocation. I've told you that before. Though the monastic way suited me well enough, I used it to my own advantage. But you—all of you: Michael, Tom, Conradus, Theodore, James, you yourself—you've stood up for me and spread your kindness over me. I shall never forget, never. I came here full of fear and cynicism, and I'd hardly been in the place a few days when I realized I'd come to learn how to love. I found myself kneeling to kiss Tom's feet and begging him to teach me how to love. And it hasn't been an easy lesson—by heaven it has not! I've thought it was going to kill me at times, the growing inside me of love. Clothed in Columba's habit day by day, that is what I've learned and what's happened to me. By inches, Christ opened me up. And then there was Madeleine, and now I am wide open. I have no defenses anymore. I love her so much, John, I really do. I love her so much.

“And I've come to understand that when you love someone, you don't bind them to you; you set them free. The loving itself sets them free. If we are possessive or selfish or unkind or full of hate, we build prisons. We bind the people we hate to ourselves with cords like twisted metal; they gnaw into us so we can
never
get them free of us. I hated Columba, and he worked into me like a painful splinter. I couldn't shake him off no matter what. But now I've learned to love him, and he has released me, not only from what I did but from all the horrible consequences of it. It's over. I'm forgiven. I'm free.