The Beautiful Thread (20 page)

Coldly observant, Bishop Eric watched for the monk's reaction. Father Chad licked his lips. Why? Why did people choose to be so cruel? Was not life already hard enough? Did not each day have trouble enough of its own, without the introduction of a manhunt? Bishop Eric and his equerry both held him in their stare of accusation. They had to find some vindication for the invasion of this cell, a compensation mitigating the humiliating withdrawal of simple failure.

Father Chad saw that some kind of response was awaited, and one that would meet the expectation of their outrage.

“Father W-William…” he stuttered. “Well – th-that is to say – if you tell me he's married, I suppose he's not Father William any more. William, then. But he – are you sure he is married? He… Well, who would marry Father William? He was not a very personable… I mean… I think ladies would not… He could be a little bit gruff. But –” The bishop was beginning to turn away in impatience. Clearly this pusillanimous monastic had no light to shed. Still, he waited to hear where Father Chad's “But” might lead.

“But this I can tell you,” Father Chad persevered, lowering his gaze before the intimidation of theirs, his clasped hands sweating: “whoever told you Father William was a malefactor, had him wrong. I don't know if he got married after he left here. When somebody leaves, we no longer discuss them. They are dead to us. It is true he had an accident up on the farm during his time with us, but he was loved in this monastery. He was a trustworthy man, a good man. Humble. God-fearing. Why ever should such a one have wanted to hang himself? It must have been a mistake, an accident, that's all. He didn't want to die. No one ever clung to life with such tenacity.”

The eyes he slowly raised to ascertain the effect of his speech on the silent men were full of dread. He did what he could to stiffen his shaking legs. He felt dizzy.

“Brainard,” said the bishop, “let's go. You hear me, Father Whoever-you-are – Cedd, is it? Oh, Chad. Well, you hear me. If that miscreant shows his face in this abbey, I will find him. And when I do, he will answer for all his filthy sin and faithless wickedness – not to me and to the ecclesiastical court only, but to Christ his judge. That man's days are numbered. I won't be made a fool of, not by him or any man – and certainly not by you.”

“Oh, my lord!” Chad's consternation was genuine. But the bishop offered him no reassurance. With a scathing glare and a curl of the lip, the equerry fixed Chad one last time before following his superior out of the room. It seemed that the smiling days had finished. Father Chad stood motionless, his head cocked, listening to their corpulent tread descending the stair. Then he let his breath out in a sigh, crossed the room and closed his cell door again.

He bent down and picked up his scourge, stood holding it loosely in his hands as he watched William's sinuous and cautious emergence from under the bed. Wearily, the execrable, repulsive transgressor pushed himself up to kneeling, to standing, and (with the eye still available to him) met Father Chad's gaze.

“Trustworthy?” he said, after a moment. “Good?”

The monk moved his head, his hand, in a slight indication of diffidence. “I know, I know. I believed it at the time.”

William, catching the twinkle in his eye, appreciated for the first time that Father Chad had a sense of humour.

“Cobwebs and dust on your clothes,” murmured the monk, reaching out to brush them away. Then he looked William square in the face. “I expect it'll be safe for you to go now,” he said, “but I ought to own up: you've been on my conscience, ever since you left. It didn't take long before it dawned on me, we – well, I – missed an opportunity. I hope this changes things. I hope we may be friends from now on.”

Under William's small grin, Chad saw the etching still of tiredness and fear. “I'll add you to my mental list of Men in this Monastery who have Saved my Life,” William answered him. “And of course, yes – I am honoured to be considered your friend.”

He turned to go then, but paused as he reached the door. “Look – you may not understand – I want you to know – all I ever, ever wanted was a peaceful life… security… shelter from the storm… for things to be comfortable, and… safe. But… well, it was such a struggle to get to that. I had to fight for it, tooth and nail. But I'm sorry – truly, I'm sorry, Father Chad – if you were one of the many who got bitten and scratched along the way.”

Father Chad nodded, then drew breath with a certain resolve. William looked at him in enquiry. Father Chad hesitated, unsure in this mood of new bonding whether he should say what he wanted to, or just let it go. But William was waiting.

“I am glad we have put the past behind us,” said the monk, averting his gaze, embarrassed at what he planned to say.“But…”

A certain tension entered William's entire demeanour as he braced himself for whatever this might be.

Father Chad ploughed bravely on. “Even so I must admit, Father William – at least… er… well – William – that it might be a wise course to take – for all of us, for you as well as us in the community – if after this you maybe don't come here any more. I know you mean your interventions kindly, but… before you came… Before… Until… Oh dear… A bishop's Visitation used to be a simple, uneventful, encouraging experience.” He waved his hand desperately, feeling William's gaze upon him, watching, not moving. “Surely you must see –” there was no accusation in his pleading tone – “trouble always follows you.”

He did not – could not – look at William, which was just as well because, if he had, he would have taken the wooden impassivity his words brought to the other's face as stubborn sullenness, hostility. For one moment they both stood unmoving; then, “I understand,” said William softly. “I hear you.” He latched the cell door quietly behind him as he left.

Edged as close to the stone wall as he could get beneath Father Chad's low wooden bed, flat on his back, unable in the shallow space even to turn his throbbing head sideways, refusing the rising panic of claustrophobia, William had waited. It had occurred to him in the close prison of his meagre refuge that human history was peppered with terrified men cramped in choking hiding places desperate to escape discovery by their fellow human beings. He would not even look at the visceral wound left by Chad's plea that he leave and never return. It felt too painful, and he thought he'd better deal with it later, in some safe and private place. Wondering what it would be like to live in a world where people simply accepted and understood, he trod cautiously along the passage out from the dorter, every nerve strained for warning signs of human presence. But he was alone. As he went warily down the stairs to the cloister, he noted that his legs and belly felt weak, shaky. “Pull yourself together,” he instructed himself silently, and gave thanks for an empty cloister as – keeping to the shadowed side by the wall, away from the light from the garth – he walked along it to the abbot's door. There he listened one moment lest there be voices within, before knocking.

* * *

“You've got a visitor.”

Abbot John swung round, but saw no one awaiting his attention. “Where?”

“In your chamber,” Brother Tom explained. “I think he's in trouble again. He wouldn't say.”

With a quick frown of puzzlement, the abbot crossed the room and went through into his chamber.

“Oh, God save us,” he said, taking in the black eye, the tired, strained face, the dusty clothes, as William, sitting on the floor in the far corner of the room with his back to the wall, regarded him in silence. “What now?”

William shrugged, stayed where he was. As the abbot entered the room, the reflexes of William's muscles had bidden him stand; but he no longer belonged to this community or owed his brother-in-law the respect of his fealty.

“I don't know how word has reached his Lordship of my personal history,” he said, his voice flat and despondent, “but he wants me excommunicated, thrashed and strung up – and perhaps for entertainment they'd like to tear off my fingernails or slit me open and wind out my entrails on a bobbin. Who knows? It is the felony of my attempted suicide that has so upset him – and how did he hear of that? Besides my desertion of my monastic vows, of course.”

John listened to this in silence and stillness. William nodded in affirmation of the horror on his face. “I think you might shut the door,” he continued, “because that's not all.”

John turned back to the door and put his head round it. “Tom, I am not here,” he said.

“Even to the bishop?”

“No –
especially
to the bishop. I am not here.”

He withdrew into his bedchamber, and sat on the floor beside his friend, still moving carefully, and avoiding resting his back against the wall. “What else, then? Who hit you?”

William turned his wry grin towards the abbot. “I got between Brother Cormac's knuckles and their intended destination,” he said. “I thought it best the bishop's equerry not be laid out cold in the checker. It had better be me.”

John's mouth dropped ajar, and William began to laugh.

“Oh, my life!” the abbot exclaimed. “William, this isn't funny! For heaven's sake, what are we going to do?”

“About Cormac? Yes? Well, my counsel is that you make a big show of locking him up in your prison, full of expostulation and lurid declarations of how you'll flay him to ribbons just as soon as your busy schedule gives you space to put your mind to it. Tell 'em it'll do him good to go hungry in the cold and damp dark, contemplating the blood and pain and violence of the drubbing you mean to put him through. Surely the bishop can't stay here forever – there must be other monastery larders for him to empty somewhere in the ridings of Yorkshire.”

“But… if Cormac's out of action, who's going to oversee all the provisions and paraphernalia of this confounded wedding?”

“I am, you numpty. I'll just stay out of sight.”

John gazed ahead at nothing, chewing his lip, weighing this in silence.

“You… William, how could I ask it of you? I'd never forgive myself if they found you.”

“Find
me
? I hope I've not lost my touch that badly. I've been dodging someone's wrath and malevolence the whole of my life. It's all I'm good for.”

John sat quietly and thought, recalling to his mind the weariness in William's taut face but five minutes before.
Resilient
, he thought;
and brave
.

“You sound very confident,” he said eventually, “that they will not find you.”

“I am – and you know why? I have seen a confession of guilt and sin signed by a man after he was tortured. I knew his signature from before they got to him, too. The change in it was not something I would easily forget. Oh, no. They will never find me. Look, you've not too many choices, John. You can't leave Cormac on the loose after this, and the only other option is to go ahead and beat him to a pulp in Chapter – with a lash like that insult to the Creator you used on your own back – while his Lordship salivates and crows over the scene. Look, just put someone discreet and steady in the checker, and I'll nip in before first light and after dark each day to keep things on track.”

“First light? It's May. When? Three in the morning? Is that realistic? The sun doesn't go down until after nine o'clock, either. You will be sleeping when?”

“Oh, for mercy's sake, leave the details to me! Just be glad of the offer, why don't you? Concentrate on keeping your guests happy, and his Lordship occupied and separated from your cellarer by a nice stout door. Francis is sharp – he can man the checker for you until the bishop pushes off.”

* * *

John, knowing he could depend upon his brother-in-law for shrewd pragmatism, took his advice. When his cellarer cautiously presented himself within the half-hour, the abbot escorted him to one of the prison cells in the eastern range, each man apologizing to the other all the way. John turned the key himself, having encouraged Cormac to see it as locking the bishop out more than locking Cormac in. Abbot John felt definitely relieved to have secured that situation, but still conscious that this was the least of his problems. He might hope by determination and intelligence to remain elusive until suppertime, but sooner or later he'd have to face this reckoning. Whichever way he looked at it, he could not imagine what he could possibly say to get himself out of it, much less to keep William reliably safe.

He slipped back into the cloister, leaving aside for now the steadily increasing list of urgent tasks requiring his attention, and sought out the most shadowed and obscure nook the side chapels within the abbey churches afforded, there to pray most desperately for his Lord's immediate help. After some while of frantic prayer and racking his brain, John got up from his knees and went to find Brother Conradus in the abbey kitchens. He nodded pleasantly at Rose, but did not stop to speak to her. He went directly to his kitchener. “The bishop's supper,” he pleaded. “Make us something magnificent, something delectable. Do your very best, Brother, I beg you. I cannot go into explanations, but I have to serve something that will mellow this man. We're in a hole, and I need every means at our disposal to climb up out of it. Something delicious, Brother Conradus, if you can. That thing you told me about, that Francis of Assisi asked for – er…”

“Ah! You mean Lady Giacoma Frangipane de Settesoli's delicious sweet,” said Brother Conradus, nodding in understanding. “Fra Jacopa. The recipe my mother had. Yes, there's time to make that for his Lordship's supper if I don't delay. Don't worry, Father. I'll come up with something good.”

And from there the abbot went back into the cloister and up the day stairs to the novitiate, where he begged a brief private audience with Father Theodore.