The Beautiful Thread (26 page)

John grinned. “I thank you. But I have only one more item on my list. I am so grateful for everything you've done for us; so very grateful. You know. You know quite well how much we needed your help and what a difference it made. I want to make sure you also know how deeply appreciated it is. William –” He stopped and waited until William would lift his gaze, embarrassed by such praise, to meet John's eyes. “
Thank you
.”

“You are most welcome”; William made no attempt at a jest. “If I've been in any way of service to you, it makes me happy. Now, have you done? Do I get a turn?”

He stood still, looking down at the ground, the thumb of his left hand thrust in his belt, his right hand holding the tether. John waited, intrigued. “Yes?”

“Only this.” He did not look up. “My brother, give yourself time to grieve. You stepped back from a most magnificent blunder in these last few days; and you were right to do so. Nothing holy or strong could possibly have come from it – only either embarrassment or misery. But no one knows better than I do how hard it is to make such a renunciation. Being right is precious little consolation. When you came into religious life as a young man, I suppose you were full of fire and vision, all ready to follow Christ unto the end. Were you?” He glanced up at him then.

John nodded. “Something like that.”

“And then in mid-life, there comes this awful craving for comfort, for gentleness, for somebody to touch you tenderly, for peaceful companionship. A longing to be held. But this time there's no spark left to kindle the fire of vocation, and no real vision – just a life. Nothing more inspiring than a deep sense of responsibility and the knowledge that other people depend on you. Which is not a little thing, but it doesn't taste of glory. What it comes down to is that – and this is a bit rich coming from me, don't I know it – even so – just that I'm so proud of you, John. And that I know it leaves you limping. Be kind to yourself as much as you would to anyone else. Seriously. Give yourself time to grieve. And leave that abominable, loathsome scourge of yours lie where I flang it in the river.” He took a deep breath. “Right then, old friend. Home waits. Better be on our way.”

And so they parted. The abbot stood for a moment watching him stroll away; by no means in a straight line but according to the whim of his companion as the attractions of greenstuff at this side and that drew her fancy. John smiled at the sight, then turned to walk back along the rutted lanes to the abbey green and the stone-flagged open ground before St Alcuin's imposing doors set into the huge arch of the gateway.

He thought about William's words, and about the way he had come – his long journey from insouciant boyhood to heavy responsibilities of the abbacy. He thought about the meaning of his vocation, the daily round of this life; and now he dared to think about Rose – that brief, bright, impractical interlude. And yes, he knew it was in the past; and yes, as William saw, that brought grief. A stinging, painful fissure in his soul.

Glad it was still too early for anyone except the community to be stirring, he walked across the court to the church, in through the west door standing open for any who wished to attend the morrow Mass, along the side-aisle to the spacious, empty nave, into the choir. He genuflected before the presence of Christ in the blessed sacrament, and turned aside to the by now familiar sanctum of the abbot's stall. He pulled his cowl up over his head and closed his eyes. In the silence he sat, quiet and simple, unmoving, allowing that grief to be – the grief of human loneliness in the uncertainty and vulnerability of life; the grief of choosing celibacy, even with all the richness of its gift and possibility; the grief of renouncing, of not clinging, of giving back, surrendering, asking nothing. But he caught the moment when grief slid almost imperceptibly into self-pity, and opened his eyes again. He watched his brothers, their different shapes and sizes, variety of gait, their serious, recollected faces, their disciplined quietness. He thought maybe he had held their trust in him too light. In the innermost intimate place of his heart, silently he touched the presence of the living Christ, and asked forgiveness; not for loving, but for forgetting that he also loved these men, and was called to serve them.

Then the time came for him to don chasuble and stole, to take up the consecrated duties of his office, step out of the simple human struggle of his heart into the holy vocation of the priesthood. He celebrated the Mass, holding high the broken earthly body of the bread for the Holy Spirit to come in and bring the mystery of Jesus. He stooped to his kneeling brothers – “the body of Christ… the body of Christ…” – knowing they had seen his weakness, his stumbling, the longing he could not cover up, but still had the humility to kneel and take the bread of heaven from his fallible, human hands. And these same hands, with their broken lifelines of compromise and sadness, spread in blessing over his brothers and sent them into Chapter – where he was more glad than he could say to have neither Brainard nor Bishop Eric in evaluative attendance, watching and waiting for heresy and error.

Today, Father Gilbert read the chapter from the Rule; then John addressed them.

“My brothers, there's something I wanted to say to you – just for the community, not to put before a wider audience. Because it's an idea half-formed and possibly heretical; so I rely on you to forgive me if I've got it wrong.

“Our lives in religion are governed and directed by the teachings of Holy Church. We study the writings of the Desert Fathers and the holy apostles. We learn and recite the creeds. We reverence the dogma of the church with all solemnity. And in our creeds and our dogma, we learn about the lordship of Christ, how the Holy Spirit proceeds towards us, how Christ died and harrowed hell and rose again, then ascended into heaven. We learn that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the three in one – indivisible, three perspectives upon one God. We learn that our salvation relies upon submitting to faith in Christ – surrendering our will and our intellect to the doctrines of the church. We learn that the church militant here on earth is Christ's body, conjoined in eternal life with the great communion of saints and martyrs.

“This is our faith – the faith of the church. It straightens out for us who Jesus is – our Lord and Master – and what we must believe about him, as Christian people.

“
But
. Oh dear, why is there always a ‘but'? The thing is, in living by the creeds and doctrines of Holy Church, precious though they undoubtedly are, in giving our lives to the study and propagation of religious dogma, we can very readily become inflexible. We can easily allow ourselves to become harsh and inquisitorial, focused on being right, demanding that the thoughts and behaviour of our brothers meet our – occasionally impossible – standards.

“When we say ‘Jesus is Lord', it's a confession of faith and a pledging of allegiance; but we ought also to pause and consider
who Jesus is
.

“Jesus was the one who said that by this would all men know that we are his disciples – that we love one another. Jesus held out to Judas the sop of bread dipped in wine, reserved for the honoured guest. Jesus, risen, asked Peter three times, ‘Do you love me?' Peter, who denied him three times. Jesus came between the righteousness of the mob gathered with stones in their hands, and the woman taken in adultery. Jesus, called as the messiah of the children of Israel, nevertheless stopped and answered the pleas of the Gentile woman whose daughter was demonized. She had no other recourse, and he stopped, he heard her prayer.

“This is our Lord. He was honest – excoriatingly so at times, when he saw pride and arrogance, contempt and indifference. He lived in devastating simplicity, owning (so far as we know) nothing, settling nowhere. ‘The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.'

“Such simplicity bestows, on the pilgrim who lives it, spaciousness. He was not preoccupied, as we are, with masonry and keeping butter cool and the price of grain. He made himself wholly available as an open channel for the generosity of God. He depended on the kindness of others to live entirely for kindness himself. For love. For grace.

“I want to put it to you, my brothers, that though we do indeed hold in reverence the teaching of Holy Church, submitting ourselves to it in holy obedience, even so the church is not our Lord. Jesus is. Dogma and credos are not our master. Jesus is.

“His is the way in which we are pledged to walk, his the discipline that must form our habits of life and mind. And that is both infinitely easier and infinitely harder than losing ourselves in the hair-splitting delights of theological intricacy. Jesus asks of us – shows us – simplicity, and kindness. That's it. That's what it boils down to. That's what he wants of us. To make the best we can of every day. To find the way the light shines on. To serve the cause of kindness. And, so far as it lies with us, to do the little, cheerful things that make people happy.

“If that sounds small to you – not amounting to very much – well, try it. You just try it. I'll have to ask Father Theodore later if I'm wide of the mark. But it's what feels true to me, anyhow.”

* * *

As the days had gone by, Madeleine had passed through patience (swiftly) to impatience, to indignation, to outrage.

At first, though she felt vulnerable at home without William, and the evenings were lonely, she told herself to be proud and pleased that they could help the community at St Alcuin's in this way – her brother's community, who had been so good to her and to William, sheltering each of them in their time of need. It repaid a debt and restored a relationship for William to spend this time with them, assisting Brother Cormac, offering the support and guidance of his shrewd mind and years of experience.

The nights were chilly, but hardly cold enough for the indulgence of a fire. She knew William would never reproach her for using firewood unnecessarily; but without question he'd notice. Without the cheerful comfort of the fire, the hours seemed mournfully long. She made her fire of sticks in the bread oven, of course, for her daily loaf, and a small fire on the hearth for her porridge in the morning. Then she ate bread with butter and cheese made from Marigold's milk, accompanied by salad greens from the hedgerow and the garden. She didn't eat the eggs, saving them to sell in the market when William came home: somehow she didn't want to go without him – not into the town among all the people on market day. She felt safer with him at her side. She examined this thought, asking herself what exactly she feared. She found no answer. She had to acknowledge that he completed her, somehow; she felt a little lost, as though her strength ebbed, away from his side. This surprised her; she had never imagined herself as one to lean on someone else. She wondered if he felt the same.

The quiet, steady ache of loneliness gave way to puzzlement as the passing days increased. John had said the bishop's Visitation would be three days only, and by the end of that time William should have set Cormac up with all the advice he needed to fulfil the extra hospitality occasioned by the wedding. She wondered if something had gone wrong.

As day gave way to day, the solitude got to her. She missed William, she couldn't think what could be keeping him so long, and the thought drifted into her mind – and stuck – that all men are outrageously selfish. Cormac needed help – very well, so did she. John could do with William at his side – what about her? Women, she thought, were there to pick up and put down; to turn to when nothing more interesting came along to claim the attention of their menfolk. Men prioritized their own pursuits above the needs of their wives. Men walked down the middle of the road, leaving the womenfolk to pick their way along the ditch edge.

By the time he'd been away a week, Madeleine began to think if she could get on without him this long, William might as well stay away forever. She felt hurt and neglected, affronted at this level of abandonment. After ten days she decided she never wanted to see him again.

Then a cold fear settled into her heart. What if he'd been set on by robbers on the way home? What if the bishop had taken exception to him, had him clapped in irons and hauled him off to be tried for heresy or apostasy in the ecclesiastical court? Given William's life-long record of upsetting almost everyone he met, this seemed not unlikely. What if he never came home? What if this was it now – just her alone in this spacious, beautiful house, with the goat and the chickens but the light of no human soul to keep her company? Angry, frightened and cold in bed at night, she began to panic.

Had he left her? Had he decided married life suited him no better than his monastic vows after all, and simply walked away? Had he caught the plague and died? Had they all, that they sent no word?

She felt as though her being grew smaller, shrivelling into endurance, scared and upset. She knew the day of the wedding, and thought it would be in the morning, so perhaps he'd return in the evening of that day. So through the afternoon she worked outside, listening, always listening. But still William didn't come home. The next day, she thought he must surely come, and at every smallest sound she lifted her head alert. As the sun sank and its rays lengthened across the orchard and she took the pail out to milk Marigold as evening came, she began to despair.

And then she heard the familiar, unmistakable clack of the iron latch to their yard gate. She stripped off the udder with all speed, followed with a cursory wipe down, moved the pail out of kicking range, and flew off to investigate, leaving Marigold still tied up, bleating indignantly once her knot of dried herbs was all gone.

“What in the
world
?”

Madeleine stopped dead, taking in at one and the same time the green and yellow bruising of her husband's black eye, and the honey-coloured cow traipsing alongside him, led by a rope and a halter, her swinging swollen udder dripping with milk.