The Beautiful Thread (15 page)

The repast Conradus had conjured for them, knowing his mother would be among the abbot's guests, went beyond delicious. Appreciation of the tastiness and artistry of the dishes brought to the table occupied attention to some degree, and recaptured Rose into general conversation; but this only went so far. That she had become the polestar of John's particular world became painfully evident. Francis, without turning his head or ceasing to smile, managed to lift his gaze and catch Brother Tom's eye at sufficient length to signal something extra was required. Tom worked on a rough (but serviceable) rule of thumb: when things get awkward, give them so much to drink they notice little and forget most of that. He put this into effect.

Hannah got distinctly flirtatious – and Francis deflected this adroitly and with grace. He was used to it. Nearly every girl who visited St Alcuin's fell for the prior's smile.

Gervase became loud and boastful, enlarging on his plans to outdo his brothers in every possible respect. The insecurities and anxiety he felt about forthcoming ostracism from his social circle slipped into view.

Theodore, having drunk his wine without speaking, put his finger across the beaker top when Brother Thomas offered more, in firm refusal. John didn't notice what anyone gave him, and went on chatting happily to Rose, who sipped her wine appreciatively, her cheeks slightly flushed, lifting her face to thank Brother Tom with a smile when he offered her more (but she shook her head; no). Brother Stephen drank well and, as Gervase grew increasingly tedious in his resentment, began to nod off to sleep. It had been a long day. Nobody knew what was going on in Brother Giles's head, because Father Gilbert waxed so very loquacious Giles never got a chance to say anything. But he heard more than he'd ever wished to know about Mass settings, the correct production of the voice and the challenges of polyphony.

William sat, half-smiling, watchful, quiet. He let Tom fill his cup – once – but forestalled refreshment by not drinking any of the first serving. He allowed his face to display interest, amusement, involvement, as though the body language of his abbot included him in the conversation with Rose; which it did not.

Eventually Father Theodore lifted his head and directed his gaze the length of the table, past Stephen and Gervase to William, who caught his glance, took note of the silent plea, and acknowledged it with an almost imperceptible nod. William laid aside his napkin and rose from the table.

“I am up at first light to make myself useful,” he said, “so must bid you goodnight, Father John. I'll come in to Compline, but…”

He stepped away from them towards the door, standing at a little distance, making it evident he expected the abbot to offer him the courtesy of a farewell.

John looked up, surprised, said to Rose: “Of your kindness, excuse me”, then left his place and crossed the room to William, who reached out both hands and took him gently by the upper arms. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he said clearly and distinctly. “It has been a delight to be at your table in good company, as it always is.”

He leaned forward and kissed John on each cheek, saying as he did so, in an undertone one shade above silence, “You cannot afford to fall in love with a married woman in plain view. I'm serious, John. Let it go.”

Then with a friendly smile and a sketch of a bow, he took his leave.

John stood transfixed, gazing after him, and when he moved back to his table of guests, his eyes were lowered and his face flushed. Tom guessed accurately what the import of that inaudible murmur must have been, from the expression of complete mortification on his abbot's face, and felt profoundly grateful to William. He had spent the last half hour wondering if this unenviable task was going to end in his own lap.

Conversation around the table ceased. Theodore sat with his head bent. The others looked at the abbot. The cheerful expansiveness of a few moments before had vanished from John's manner.

“Thank you for your company, good people, and my brothers,” he said politely, but he sounded distracted and discomfited. He no longer seemed inclined to look anyone in the eye. And then the Compline bell began to ring.

“You are as always welcome to join us for the office.” He offered the remark generally. The flush subsided from his face, but still he kept close custody of his eyes, and his manner had become noticeably reserved. His guests arose from the table immediately, Father Francis and Father Theodore first, then the others – Brother Stephen with a dig in the ribs from Brother Giles – and finally Rose; sensing that they had perhaps unwittingly outstayed their welcome.

It was the prior who took care of the farewell courtesies due to Gervase and Hannah, positioning himself so that he physically blocked the space between them and the abbot. Brother Giles tripped on an uneven flagstone in the floor, and the resulting amusement from Brother Stephen and concern from Father Gilbert filled their attention. Rose hesitated, wondering what had happened, and if she should say something or just leave. John stood where he was beside the table, resting his fingertips on the board, his gaze averted; and then he recollected himself and made the effort to smile and come out of himself.

“Rose, I am so glad you came to help us. Brother Conradus is honestly treasured in this house. His gentle and generous spirit is as much valued by us as his wonderful skills in the kitchen. Thank you for taking the time to make the journey here to help him, and for all you have done, and for supping with us tonight. With the wedding right upon us and the bishop back tomorrow, the next few days will be somewhat breathless. In case my time is taken up and our paths cross little, let me say thank you now, for your willingness to come and help us out.”

She stepped forward to stand before him, inclining her head modestly, blushing a little. She took his hand in hers.

For a moment, she closed her other hand around his, then released him. Brother Tom, observing this exchange, saw she meant no more than a gracious acknowledgment of his thanks; just a thoroughly pleasant, sweet-natured woman, who probably had every tradesman in her village wound round her little finger, yet somehow without making other women – or her husband – jealous at all. Father Francis lingered at the door to see her out into the abbey court after Hannah and Gervase. The brothers of the community took the other door, into the cloister.

“Should I clear these things away after Compline now, Father?” Tom asked when Francis, leaving, had closed one door and he the other.

“Yes,” his abbot responded abruptly. Then he drew breath to speak. “Brother Thomas –” he hesitated, but he made himself look at his esquire.

Tom smiled at him, and the kindness and understanding in his face deepened John's embarrassment even further. “Happens to us all,” said Tom, shrugging. “Only human.” He laid down on the table the folded towel he had been holding, and turned away toward the cloister door. “Coming?” he asked. Shaking his head in the confusion of this sudden evolution of circumstances, John followed him in silence, and they walked along the shadowed cloister together with the last few men making their way into the chapel. Quietly and without rush, all found their places. The abbot gave the knock and the community rose for Compline.

The blessing and the
Salve Regina
closed the day, after which the community entered the grand silence until the morrow Mass had been said in the morning. Tom followed John the length of the cloister back to the abbot's house.

Without even a glance over his shoulder at his esquire, John strode purposefully across the room to his inner chamber, which he entered, closing the door quietly but firmly behind him. In the privacy of his bedchamber, he unbuckled his belt, stripped himself of his clothes, and knelt naked on the stone floor, reaching under the bed for the scourge that lay there, as a scourge lay beneath every bed in every cell. Grasping it in his right hand, John laid about his back, chastising himself savagely, until he felt so unbearably sore and bruised that he had no room for any other preoccupation in even the smallest corner of his soul.

In the main hall of the abbot's house, Brother Thomas made sure the fire was safe, stacked the pots, folded and piled the napkins and gathered the knives and spoons. He knew well the sound of a scourge, even through a closed door. He drew his breath in through his teeth, and a little grimace of sympathy clouded his face. “Ow!” he said softly. It took him three trips to the kitchen to clear all away. When he had gathered the last few things, he stood listening, briefly. “For mercy's sake stop, man!” he murmured. His face was troubled as he let himself out of the house, and closed the door quietly behind him.

When John finally threw the scourge back under his bed and pushed up from cramped knees to standing he began to tremble uncontrollably from simple physical shock. The room bucked and reeled about him. Shaking, he picked up his undershirt from where he had flung it on the bed, and put it back on. Resolutely, he overcame the reluctance to don his habit again, and let out an involuntary gasp as the weight of its folds pulled down against what he had done to his back. Dizzy and nauseous, he fumbled ineffectually at the blankets, and took a moment to manage actually to pull them back. Then he crept into his bed, and lay face down, rigid, motionless. He had achieved what he set out to do – something he had never attempted before – driving out any possibility of thinking about anything from his mind by reducing his world to an empty, barren wasteland of pain. It was a brutal trick, but said to be effective. John had disapproved it on the occasions when its results had been discovered in fainting men, sent along for him to patch up in the infirmary. He had used the scourge often enough in a regular way, as ordinary penance to subdue his flesh, but not like this before. As night slowly swallowed the long summer twilight, he lay awake, enduring. His soul, that he had unseated and knocked off-centre in his body, pulsed in waves of misery and shame.

“… in plain view…” Oh, God… and he the abbot… He screwed his eyes tight against the memory. But the train of thought had begun, and he saw Rose's face, thoughtful and intelligent, soft and rounded and pretty. So he moved, arching his back, and that set every hammered nerve screaming again, clamouring out all competition to secure his complete attention. “Oh, God, what a path to choose,” he whispered as he subsided, trembling. “You ask so much of us.”

He stayed with this pattern of retreating again and again out of memory into pain until the brother – Brother Germanus, he thought it was, tonight – came and stood outside his room with the handbell, and the sound battered into his head the necessity to get up for the nocturnal office of Matins. He struggled, trembling and agonized and sick, onto his knees, leaning forward to reach the little clapper of wood that hung from the bedpost, to knock wood on wood when the cacophony of the bell stopped, for the monk outside the door to be sure his abbot had awoken. And so, at two in the morning, began the monastic day.

Before the dew had dried on the grass, William had been into the checker, ascertained from Cormac that all final supplies were in place, inventoried and stored in date order, and set off to discover John's preferences for hospitality to the troupe of musicians and the jugglers expected to arrive within the next two days. It had been agreed at supper the night before that William would help Brother Martin clear a space and heft some straw pallets up to the storeroom above the almonry. The minstrels would sleep warm and dry up there – that was all sorted. But though he judged it unlikely the abbot would want to invite them to his table, he thought John should have the final say on that.

He knocked lightly on the door of the abbot's house, and Brother Tom admitted him.

“Father John not here?” William did not sound surprised. With so much going on, Hunt-the-Abbot had become something of a community occupation.

“Well, he is.” Tom sounded reticent. “He's in his chamber.”

“Really? Why? I do need to speak to him.”

Then William slowed down, and looked properly at Brother Tom. “What's the matter? He's not ill? Oh, please – not right now.”

“No, he… last night, after Compline, he… well he went a bit mad with his scourge, I think.”

William pursed his lips, thinking. Then he came to a decision and strode towards the door of John's chamber.

“Ah! No – William – you can't just –”

But William's light, quick knock had already been applied to the door, and without waiting for an answer he let himself in and closed it behind him. He found John lying face down on his bed, absolutely still.

“Oh, for the sake of all holy, what
have
you done, man?” William knelt down at the bedside and twitched out the scourge from beneath. “What the devil is this?
Look
at it! Was this Columba's? I'll wager it was! Knotted ends to it – and what's this? Thorns! Thorns stuck into the knots? Ah, mother of God, John, these things are evil! They make me sick to my stomach – I hate them! They shouldn't even exist. Look at me, man! Turn your head and look at me!”

John did more than that. Slowly and carefully, his breath catching as the fabric of his undershirt stuck and pulled against the torn skin of his back, he turned and sat up straight on the edge of his bed. He looked steadily at William, his face white and drawn.

“All right, you've made your point. How dare you come in here and tell me what to do?”

But William, the scourge in his hand, his eyes hard as stone, glared back at him.

“You are the abbot of this place, John. The abbot! What you do, they will do. What you are, they will all be. Savage. Hating their flesh that God made. Is that what you want? Cruel. It doesn't stop with what you do to yourself, it extends beyond to what you do to others. A fierce, unreasonable standard that sets the bar higher and higher to some ridiculous height of purity that no one can meet and everybody gets hurt trying to attain. These things are vile. And this one's having a stone tied round it first and then it's going in the river.”