The Beautiful Thread (22 page)

St Alcuin's prior did not seek his abbot's eye. He kept his gaze fixed steadily on the bishop, who was thawing nicely and grew increasingly expansive as he warmed to his theme. Brother Thomas refreshed his Lordship's wine. John could hardly believe this. They seemed to have got through.

Be that as it may, he thought William Fletcher or Fuller, or whatever name he now went by, had better keep close quarters in the hayloft until his Lordship lumbered off. And the same went for Cormac locked up in the abbey prison.

As their meal drew to a close, Brother Tom murmured in his ear: “Will I take some broken meats out to feed the foxes when I clear the dishes, Father?”

“Oh – surely.”

And his esquire set to work quietly and unobtrusively lifting leftovers away, bearing the scraps of their supper out into the dusk while John had the bishop and his man still securely occupied over wine and conversation.

The abbot escorted his guests into the chapel for Compline as the bell began to toll, then turned back to speak to Brother Tom coming into the choir.

“All well?”

Tom hesitated. “With Cormac, yes. Grateful for his supper. Accepts the wisdom of his billet. But the other… that man has two familiar demons, Father: terror and despair. Tonight it's the latter has him by the throat, I'm not sure why. He didn't say much. He thanked me. But the misery seeping out of him – I don't know – he just looked very despondent. I suppose I would too, in his situation, but I got the feeling there was more to it than that.”

John nodded. “It'll have to wait until the morning, I think; but then I'll go up there myself. Thank you, Brother.”

He turned to go, but Tom put out a hand and caught his sleeve. He spoke low.

“I believe our prior has been busy. What Francis said to me this afternoon, I think he said to every brother in the house. Possibly even the novices, though he may have stopped at Theo and left him to deal with them.”

“Which was what? I mean, what did he say?”

“Something along the lines of: ‘The bishop – feed him, flatter him shamelessly, ask his advice, hang on his every word, gaze at him in admiration. And remember, if it comes to it, none of us – not one solitary man among us – has the dimmest, faintest, tiniest inkling of any idea whatsoever concerning the whereabouts of William de Bulmer. What became of him, if he married, where he lodged; we do not know. If a brother leaves this house, he is dead to us. We do not enquire, we do not pass any whisper. William de Bulmer was with us, he is gone – that's all we know.'”

John frowned as he took this in, and Tom added hastily: “Francis did also say to think about it carefully, to remember our vocation and try not to tell any lies.”

“Oh, right,” said his abbot, “that'll be easy, then! Very well. Thank you for letting me know. Come on; it's past time we began Compline.”

* * *

Not unreasonable on this May morning for the abbot of a monastery to pass by the stables, going about his business with a linen bag of provisions slung from his shoulder, located as they were so near the guesthouse. He paused, stopped to greet two or three horses watching him with interest over their half-height doors. He looked around in a casual manner, then he drifted aimlessly but without delay toward the ladder leading up to the hayloft above.

The warm, fragrant, dusty storage space boasted scant illumination. If the roof had been entire the twilight would have verged on darkness. Light entered only by the grace of slipped tiles here and there, the access hatch, and a small square window left in the stonework at the gable end. Scrambling into the loft, moving away from the ladder so he would not be visible from below, John more felt than saw himself observed. He stepped forward, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom from the contrast of the brightness outside. Eventually he made out his friend, sitting on the hay-strewn floor, his back propped against the stacked fodder.

“I brought you something to eat,” said John, in an undertone.

“Thank you. Most welcome,” came the hushed reply. John brought the bread and cheese and apples, the little stoppered leather flask of ale, which William received with a nod of thanks but no further words. Up here they had to be quiet; it was imperative William's presence remain undetected. Even so, John discerned something beyond that in his friend's stillness. Dejection, he thought. Something raw and taut and suffering he could perceive all the more clearly for the shadows and profound quietness. He squatted down before his friend, and his question barely broke the silence. “What? What's wrong?”

In the vague dusk he watched William shake his head in dismissal, gesturing briefly to avert the question. “Nothing. I'm fine.”

John felt within himself the familiar sag of resignation. Clearly this was something that would have to be expertly teased out; patience required. Not too long, he hoped. The time he could spare for this was limited. He folded himself down to sit cross-legged, angled to make the most of such light as filtered upwards and gleamed down. Motes of dust drifted in the muted luminescence. John tried to see William's face. Evidently his friend intended to offer no help with that.

“Thank you,” murmured William again, reaching forward to pick up the hunk of bread set before him. John leaned forward and wrapped his hand over William's.

“You
are
going to tell me,” he persisted, still in an undertone, “because I need to know. Firstly because I'll have you on my mind all day if there's some fresh trouble but you don't tell me what it is. Secondly because it is badly on my conscience that you came here to help us and it's put your life at risk. Just spit it out, will you, because I shouldn't stay long but I won't go until I know.”

William muttered a string of obscenities at him, encasing a suggestion that he might like to leave now, which John took as a hopeful sign of making headway. He took no offence at it; this was just William in a bad mood. He made no move to go. Gently, he withdrew his hand, and waited. He had his night vision now, enough to observe the bitterness etched on his friend's face as William leaned his head back against the hay behind him, one eye still swollen shut. “Come on,” said John quietly. “It's only me. What is it?”

It was clear John meant to go nowhere until he had an answer. “'Tis the merest thing. No more than…” William shook his head. “Don't concern yourself. It wouldn't even bother me normally. Yesterday was a difficult day – that's the only reason it got to me. And it was nothing, no more than that… someone – quite properly and rightly – suggested I make myself scarce. Go away. Not return. Leave and don't come back. Because I am trouble and bring trouble, and…” He stopped speaking, dismissed the thing in another irritable gesture of his hand. The day carried to them sounds of the monastery round about, the horses shifting, blowing, chomping on hay in the stalls below them, occasional voices in the distance, the tiny scratch and clatter of birds on the roof tiles above. But that was the world beyond the silence lying between them, enveloping them. The practised fingers of John's soul probed the mute pain.

“Who?”

“Oh… John… for pity's sake. Do you not think I am loathed enough without adding fuel to the fire?”

“Who? Look, I'll have this out of you, William. I will. If you do not tell me, I'll ask every man of them at Chapter. Who?”

“Oh, what? Between you and me, then, Father Chad. But he didn't mean it spitefully and he had good reason. I took refuge in his cell, under his bed, and brought the bishop and his lackey on him, breathing fire and damnation and leaving poor old Chad having to lie for me. Not his style. He was scared. He just wants me to go away.”

“William? I'm sorry? You didn't tell me this. You say you were hiding from Bishop Eric under Father Chad's bed?”

“You got it.”

John sighed. This mess seemed to be growing into something greater than he could see his way to encompassing. In such a pass he had learned, from many years in the infirmary, to ignore the encroaching litter of complexity and detail in favour of concentrating completely on human pain.

“Listen. For one thing, heaven only knows what kind of a pickle we'd be in right now if you hadn't come up here to steer us through. But more than that, you are my family – my brother-in-law. You and Madeleine are the only family I have. Nobody is going to order you away from here. William, I need you. I rely on you. I love you. In a world where almost no one can be trusted, I know I can trust you. When sorrow came to my life like some terrifying dark angel, you watched over me and saw me through. I'm the abbot of this monastery, and right and left all day long everyone wants something of me. In my whole life, you are pretty much the only man who asks nothing from me, and still is there for me. You've stood firm while I've shouted at you, turned my back on you, misjudged you. And you
never
judge me. Well – apart from you seemed seriously annoyed with me the other day, but set that aside. I don't know quite how this happened to us because we didn't have a promising beginning, but I can honestly say you are the truest friend I have in all the world. All right? My brother – my friend?”

And then William was glad of the shadows. Silently he lifted his hands to his face, leaning forward until he crouched there, hunched over, his knees drawn up to his chest, his head bent. Asked to guess, John would have judged it impossible that a man could sob so deeply without making the smallest sound. With practice, he supposed, you could do anything. In the hay-scented dusk the abbot sat and watched the faint blurring, betraying the tremors passing through William's body as his friend shrank into the familiar agony of his various levels of hell. The kindness had found him, touched and exposed the raw hurt, got past his efforts to splint it, dismiss it, not care.

When he could speak, “Thank you,” he said, straightening up, lifting his head, wiping his nose on the back of his hand and rubbing his good eye with the heel of it. John did not offer the use of his handkerchief. He felt entirely sure William would prefer the fiction that he had never seen the tears.

William shook his head, ashamed that he could not keep his emotion contained.

“I'm sorry I've messed things up. And I'm sorry I swore at you,” he said. “I'm sorry to make such a fuss over so slight a matter. I think I'm just tired. And… if I'm honest… I've been so scared. If they caught me – by the Mass, it doesn't bear thinking about. Even so, I should be able to bear myself more continently, be better in command of myself than this.”

“Oh, I don't know,” the abbot said, and William felt the comfort and kindness in his voice. “You'd be a terrifying man if you could be as invulnerable as you want to be. I'd say the capacity to feel is your saving grace.”

“It is not,” William responded, and John felt the force behind it, even though his friend still spoke carefully low. “My saving grace is the ability to come up with a strategy and work it through. My head is my strength and my heart is my weakness.”

“William. You don't believe that. Come on. All you've learned here? Madeleine? Tom? Are the lessons of the heart held so lightly?”

“Well, then they have at least to be yoked together. My head and my heart: it's like the disciples of old quarrelling as they went along the road, arguing about which of them was the greatest. My head says the shrewd thing is that he should be the master. My heart fights back. Seems it doesn't agree.”

John smiled. “Heaven, yes. Finding the harmony, bringing the interior of the soul to a state of peace. That's the task, is it not? But to my mind the heart is the key, the gentle leader.”

“Really? You sure about that? Let your heart lead? How's your back? Still sore, by the way you're carrying yourself.”

John did not reply immediately. Then he admitted, “Well, yes it is.”

“Aye. Then that's the catch in letting your heart rule over your head. It leads to trouble. Father John, you are the abbot; the eyes of your world are on you. Not much is hidden. Your love, your pain, your longings, what fires you. Your brothers see, and they follow. Even when they don't realize they see, they still follow when they don't understand. That's what being an abbot is all about. That's
why
you need a cool head.”

John took this in.

“You have out-manoeuvred me,” he said. “I think you always will. You are cleverer than I am. I respect your intelligence, and I am surely grateful for the help your head brings to this abbey. It's true I made a fool of myself, and I should have had the wit to see it coming. But even so, William – the bond between thee and me, the beautiful thread by which my finger-pads trace their way when I ask myself ‘Is it well with his soul?' That thing – that's a matter of the heart.”

Dust in the sunbeams. Quietness but for beasts shifting, blowing, chewing in their stalls below. The scent of hay. The sense of presence, of dear companionship. The present moment with its lode of life.

“It is, too,” William said quietly. “And in my heart is where the other end of that thread is tied secure. I will never let it go. But look now, John, my head is insisting, you'd best be on your way. You'll be missed. If they find me here I haven't too many other options. Let's keep it safe. And please – I beg you, please – don't say anything to Father Chad. It was childish of me to let something no more than obvious common sense smart so painfully. Don't raise it with him, I beg you. Just let it go.”

“Huh!” John got up to leave.

“John – please!”

“Stay safe. I know you're stuck up here a long time each day, but don't pee on the hay if you can help it. I'll see you later.”

“John –” But the abbot was descending the ladder, and checking that he was still unobserved as he left the stables.

He headed for the library. On the way, as he passed the guesthouse, the porter's lodge, the frater, first Brother Dominic, then Brother Martin, then Brother Richard, wanted to speak to him; but, “Not just now,” he said.