The Breath of Peace (13 page)

‘That's the only major thing happening with us, except the bishop's Visitation in May – and in the same month Brother Damian's sister is to be married from the abbey, but that should be straightforward enough.'

‘Brother Damian's sister? The voluptuous Hannah? Hannah with the goats?'

‘Aye, Hannah. You remember her?'

‘She's something of a gleaner, is Hannah. She was often in the checker begging and wheedling for any odds and ends we might have to give away, or for a vial of Brother Walafrid's drenches for her animals. If you'd sat as I did, at the table in the checker, with Hannah standing on the other side of it leaning over, you'd remember her too. You'd have been proud of me, John. I kept my eyes steadily on her face.'

John grinned. ‘Mmm, yes, I guess she is quite memorable.'

‘And she's to be wed? She has two or three children already, doesn't she?'

‘Aye, indeed – two. It's not that she's free with her favours, but I think there's been some difficulty in winning the acceptance of her man's family. They're higher born than Brother Damian's people, and I gather they'd hoped for a better match than Hannah. Still, they must have been won over at last. I could have done with it being a different month from the bishop's Visitation, but there we are – I don't suppose it'll amount to much. Nothing else presses urgently – yet – but you know how life goes. You don't need me to explain. And then… well… you say
your
situation ferrets out your inadequacies – do you not imagine the same is true for me? In all honesty, I would not have conjectured the whole of Christendom and the lands of the Saracen combined yielded as much administration as we can come up with in our abbey, modest in size though we be. Oh, heaven, and… during the autumn…'

William listened with interest to his friend as their mounts walked easy along the track, picking a way past puddled ruts and occasional fallen branches or tumbled stones; but in this pause he detected distress, and his shrewd sideways glance saw something momentarily shaky and appalled about John's mouth, and a memory of trauma in his eyes.

‘… We had need of pointing the tower at St Mary the Virgin – I don't know what it is with that building, they cannot seem to hold it all in one piece for five minutes together – and it seemed wise while we had money in hand to see it right. But… it was when they were putting the scaffold up… they wanted to work with ladders but I was afraid for them falling, and said they must build a scaffold. And while they were erecting it, a man slipped from a ladder perched all precarious there, no sandbag weighting the bottom, nobody holding it steady. Right from the top. Four children and one on the way at home, and he broke his back in the fall – he fell awkward against the gravestone there. By God's mercy he lived… at least I say that, but… what's his wife to do with a man bedridden for good and all, and more mouths than she knows how to feed on the wage he brought home already? I sat there when they told me of it, thinking how it must be for them in that tiny cottage… remembering my own mother with no more than two children, when the news came back that my father – he was a soldier – had fallen in battle. I remembered the fear and uncertainty of it, not knowing whatever we would do without him to provide for us. And I just felt sick for them, thinking of it. It was dreadful. I felt so responsible.'

He fell silent.

‘Aye, well,' William's dry, quiet voice broke into the misery of that memory, ‘there's no man alive, abbot or anyone else, that has been able to accident-proof idiocy. What have you done for them? Promised them charity forever, if I know you. Am I right? Aye, I thought so! Abbot John, you do need a tougher cellarer and a shrewder prior, if only to protect you against yourself! The world is full of dolts and fools, and no doubt you have your fair share employed by St Alcuin's. You can't patch all their bruises and scrapes when they take a tumble. Oh, I know – I know! You don't need to give me that look! I haven't forgotten whose kindness saved me from myself and all my own folly – and you threw me a wife into the bargain, which was one kindness further than I think you meant! I'm grateful, and sensible of the difference goodness can make. I only meant you cannot rescue all of us; it isn't practical.'

He glanced sidelong at John's face, and relaxed. He preferred the irritation and lively indignation with which he found himself now regarded, to the look of helpless dismay about John's mouth that had lodged in William's viscera like a physical pain.

‘Berate me!' He shrugged. ‘Tell me I have no heart. Call me an ingrate! I'm only saying. The world's a-crawl with boneheads, and even you cannot take pity on 'em all.'

As they rode up the crest of the hill to where the land levelled out into the ground that cradled the abbey before rising into the moorland that wrapped it round, John reflected on how hard to read he found this man. In William's words he heard indifference, heartlessness even. Then why, in some elusive corner of his soul, in a manner he could not readily put his finger on to identify, did he feel obscurely comforted? Even stoutly loved. He left it. ‘We're home,' he said, adding casually: ‘I didn't tell anyone you'd be coming.'

As Brother Martin drew back the heavy bolt and opened the great door to allow their passage in, William caught the startled look of surprise on his face once he had got past the beard and recognized who rode as companion to his abbot.
Oh, here we go
. William reflected that for no man he esteemed less than John Hazell would he submit to the mixture of reactions he was likely now to encounter. Suspicion, embarrassment, resentment, dislike, hostility, astonishment – what would meet him here? He steeled himself for whatever it would be this time, dismounted, and turned to face Brother Martin.

‘Your abbot tells me my help is needed,' he said simply. ‘God give you good day, and I'm glad to be under Benedict's roof once again. For a day or two only, you'll be glad to hear.'

Brother Martin recovered himself enough to muster an adequately civil greeting. John watched this in amusement. William felt himself shrivelling under the prospect of more of the same; but he turned a bravely impassive face to his friend. ‘What will you have me do? The sun's setting, they'll be ringing the Vespers bell any time soon. Should I… um… look – it will be a kindness if you let me wait for you in your lodging. Don't make me run the gauntlet of Brother Dominic and whoever else is in the guesthouse. I can take only so much startled what's-he-doing-here.'

John stopped, his eyes gazing thoughtfully into William's, a scrutiny that effected an uncomfortable squirming in William's belly. ‘I see,' said John; and William knew that was true and wished it were not. ‘Yes; come to my house.'

As they arrived at the door opening from the abbey court into the abbot's lodging, it felt strange to William to have the abbot step back in courtesy to allow William to precede him as his guest into his house. William's instinct still made him want to stand back in respect for his abbot. But John was no longer his abbot. This was no longer his home. It occurred to him as he crossed the threshold that, however eagerly he might have taken the chance to be of service, this would be a visit that churned up any amount of buried emotion left unexamined under the pressure of having enough to cope with as he struggled to accommodate to ordinary domestic day-to-day existence. His apprehensions had no chance to develop into full-blown foreboding, though, because he and John were not alone in the abbot's house.

‘Oh, well met! Right glad am I to see
thee
! But, faith, you look almost done in! 'Twasn't that hard a ride, was it? Has my abbot been battering you and burdening you with our troubles? Good to have you in this house once more! Are you well? Is married life suiting you?'

And William found himself clasped in a hearty bear-hug as Brother Thomas advanced beaming across the room to make him welcome. Grateful to the core, he gave himself to that unequivocal embrace, and Abbot John smiled contentedly as he picked up William's bag abandoned on the floor, and set it on the hearthstone where the fire his esquire had lit ready would steam out any vestiges of winter damp.

‘Married life,' said William then in response to Tom's question, ‘– well,
my
marriage – is turning out to be, predominantly, one long apology.'

‘Oh!' John smiled at him cheerfully. ‘Not so very different from monastic life as you thought then, maybe?'

William shrugged. ‘Nobody ever exclaimed, “Not like that, you great lummock!” in my years of religious profession, that I recall – and, Brother Thomas, I
saw
that grin!'

‘
Mea culpa
,' murmured the abbot's esquire, but his expression was not entirely penitent.

At William's request, John gave him a lantern and the key to the checker, so William could look over the present state of the books in what remained of the afternoon. John invited him to join the community for Vespers, but that he declined, saying that he would need to make the most of the time he had and preferred not to leave Madeleine to fend for herself at home for longer than he had to in this season of darkness. He thought if he worked fast and could examine the accounts in the remnants of this day, then spend perhaps two days asking questions of the different obedientiaries, he could form a good grasp of what needed to be done, and communicate that to Abbot John. If he then gave two and a half days to an initial instruction of Brother Cormac – assuming all went well on moving him from the kitchens to the checker – he could be home by dusk in five days' time. His conscience smote him. That was a long time to leave a woman to manage alone and unprotected: but however focused his approach, he didn't see how he could any further shorten the time.

This early in the year when dusk crept in by mid-afternoon, and the sun set at four, the brothers kept more to the house than in the summer, and visitors were few. So he worked alone and uninterrupted, but did not delude himself that meant his presence went unremarked. He could stay clear of Vespers and Compline if he liked, but he might as well go to Mass in the morning, because by that time the whole community would know he was there.

He worked in the checker until supper time, bringing the rent records and the last trade ledger across to the abbot's house to peruse when they had eaten. He had covered too little ground as yet to give him anything to discuss. The warmth of Tom's and John's friendliness as they ate together – John invited Tom to sit down and share supper with them – touched his soul like balm. Despite his concerns about Madeleine and apprehension lest he be less than universally welcome, William relaxed. It was good to be back here again.

Tom left them after they had dined. John gave his big oak table to accommodate William's spread of accounts, fetching the scribe's table from its now very dark nook by the wall nearer to the fire and lantern light to prepare for his homily in the morning.

‘What are you talking to them about?' asked William.

‘The breath of peace,' John replied. ‘How Jesus came to his disciples as they were gathered together – so flawed and vulnerable, so fearful – and said to them, “Peace be with you,” and breathed into them his gift of the Spirit… courage… hope… life… I've been pondering on that – you know, thinking about the power of his words to the disciples: how they must have remembered that conversation, carried it with them. And the other thing he said, earlier on in the gospel: “…
pacem relinquo vobis pacem meam do vobis non quomodo mundus dat ego do vobis non turbetur cor vestrum neque formidet
”… um… peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, don't be troubled of heart, don't be frightened.”

Yes, I do know what it means
, thought William, but even as the words went through his mind he recognized his testy response as the reflex of defensiveness; he wanted to find his way to that peace again so much that the longing felt like a pain.

‘I thought how what he said must have comforted and strengthened them so,' John continued, musing aloud. ‘It must have worked on the formation of the men they would become. And then that led me on to wonder about the power of our words – yours and mine – and about the influence of memory and the deep roots it has in a man; the awesome responsibility of leadership as an abbot… a novice master… a parent; how much it matters how we nurture and shelter the ones entrusted to our care… especially, though not only, the young ones – the novices, the postulants, the children here in our school. Especially them, because how we treat the child determines the man he will become. But not them only, because there is a sense in which we are all still children inside. That means that there are second chances, maybe, to grow something new; but it also means we do well to touch the soul of a man with tenderness, remembering that whatever else he is, he is somewhere also a child. Thinking that, if we use our breath for words of peace and kindness, maybe it will be the moving of the Holy Spirit in a life here and there – catching something of that breath of Jesus and his legacy of peace. But I don't think I want to cram all that into tomorrow's abbot's Chapter. I'm only rambling.'

William, watching him with the intensity of a hunting wildcat, said nothing. Slightly embarrassed, John smiled. He thought he would never get used to the improbable notion of himself holding forth on a daily basis for the edification of his community. The kind of thing that would have made him laugh if it hadn't been such a terrifying responsibility. Self-conscious, he picked up the stylus to note down chapter and verse, and William redirected his attention to the perusal of the records spread out before him.

As they worked in companionable silence William's presence, so unobtrusive and entirely soundless, emitting nothing to distract or disturb, reminded John of the days of his own deep grief in bereavement, when the only man he could bear to have near him for any length of time was William, for that very quality of quietness. John's memory trod gingerly into that difficult territory of his life – as much of it as he could remember, for he found great blank spaces there as well. But he recalled with gratitude William's immoveable, implacable defence against the anxious interference of Father Chad…
Father Chad
…