The Breath of Peace (24 page)

‘What were you thinking about?'

‘I… well… it goes back years, now, doesn't it – but, when I was a novice, when I came here for audience with Father Peregrine, he would invite me to light the fire, and I would sit here on the hearth. He touched on some sore places and went with me down some dark paths.'

John nodded. He understood. He also noted the faint embarrassment, and felt grateful for Francis's sensitivity to the awkwardness of comparison.

‘It's all right,' he said. ‘I loved him too.' He thought it better to leave the moment and move on. This could get maudlin. ‘Brother, I have something to ask of you.'

He paused. He supposed he should call Francis ‘Father' really. There was something innately informal and fraternal about Francis that made the suggestion of gravitas in the word ‘Father' seem inherently unlikely. He hoped he was about to do the right thing. Francis looked not at him but into the embers of the fire, waiting with thoughtful attention for his abbot's request.

John drew breath. Was he going to do this? It would be a grave thing, to topple his prior from his seat of privilege and power. Replacing him with someone like Francis might raise some eyebrows.
William de Bulmer, I sincerely hope you're right
, John murmured in his soul. Francis felt his hesitation, and glanced up at him, curious.

An abbot's prior works very closely with him. If Francis were to fill this obedience, John would make him his confessor as well, and no serious decisions would be made without consulting him. This was part of the problem with Father Chad. The respect and strength implied in the relationship was, John had to admit, simply lacking. Apart from his esquire, placed to see his weaknesses and vulnerability more clearly than anyone, the abbot's prior came most nearly privy to his heart. John thought he might as well therefore take him into his confidence starting now.

‘Father Chad is a good man but a weak prior.' He went straight to the point. ‘He is prayerful and kindly, but he is not decisive, and authority sits ill on his shoulders. He has served well and faithfully in his obedience, but I think a change would bless him and bless the community. I have not yet spoken with him about this. Before I do, I wanted to ask you, Father Francis: are you willing to accept the obedience of prior in this community?'

Francis looked up at him in sheer, naked astonishment; and after one stunned moment of disbelief he began to laugh.

‘
Prior
?' he said. ‘
Me
? You
cannot
be serious!' And John knew then, looking at Francis's flabbergasted, stupefied, shocked face, that he had asked the right man. Not a trace could he discern of ambition, or self-congratulation, or elation. Francis was simply dumbfounded.

‘Well, I am,' John answered him.

‘But… look… you know me. I'm a complete nitwit, always have been. I talk too much, I laugh too much, I clown around – still, even still. I'm just a lightweight, I – John, I'm
nothing
! And I'm sorry, that was disrespectful to call you just “John”. You see what I mean? I'd be useless! Oh, for goodness' sake, ask somebody else!'

John nodded thoughtfully. ‘Who?'

‘Well… er… I don't know. What about – er – what about… er…' Francis saw the problem his abbot faced. ‘There isn't really anybody, is there? To be candid with you, I don't think there's really anybody, even if you include me. Why… whatever made you think I could… ?' He shook his head, amazed.

‘I didn't want this matter leaking out through the community,' said his abbot. ‘So I took counsel with William de Bulmer.'

‘William? William de Bulmer thought I would make a good prior? He must be off his head! Truly, Father, I'm just a birdbrain – I'd let you down, I'd be incompetent.'

‘Have you finished? Is that your only objection?'

‘Um… yes – well, isn't that enough?'

‘Will you do it? I need your help, my brother. Will you accept this obedience?'

And John saw the incredulity fade from Francis's face, and sober consideration replace it. ‘What about Father Chad? He will be hurt, surely? He will feel humiliated.'

John drew breath in a sigh. ‘I will do my utmost to protect him from that. I will couch it in the best terms I know how to do. But yes, he may indeed feel debased. I will do what I can.'

‘What is… can you explain to me what would be required of me? There isn't much about it in the Rule, is there? Unless I haven't been paying attention. I mean, I know what being a prior looks like from the outside, but – well, to me it just looks like Father Chad. I can't distinguish between the vocation and the man. If you were away, I know the prior would have to stand in for you, but what about when you're here?'

‘You would help me with ministering all the temporal matters – help me in making decisions, in receiving guests, in writing letters and overseeing all the different areas of service in our common life. And as you rightly said, if I were away or fell ill, you would act in my stead. Unless that happened, the work is not onerous, because the responsibility rests with me.'

‘But if, God forbid, it did happen – if you fell sick as Father Peregrine did – have I the stature and judgment to hold everything together?'

‘Well, if you have not, at least you don't annoy everybody. Don't underestimate yourself, Father Francis – and don't underestimate the grace of God to allow you to rise to your calling. Now, enough of this shilly-shallying – will you do it?'

Francis took a deep breath. ‘For you and in service of Christ, yes I will,' he answered his abbot, ‘if you will promise to be patient with me, Father, and if you will guide me.'

He spoke with such unpretentious humility and looked John in the eye with such sincerity that for a moment John felt incapable of framing any kind of reply; he just thought how blessed he was to have his life shaped by a community in which the gospel had forged the lives of men on Christ's own anvil.

* * *

For the first time she could remember, Madeleine woke before her man. Dawn lightened the sky and faint colour streaked the grey, but it was still before daybreak. In their chamber, the darkness had barely lifted. She lay quietly, looking at her husband's face. Curled up in sleep his chin rested on his hand, and something of the dignity and peace of his face in repose moved her deeply. Then his eyes opened and looked straight into hers.

‘Good morrow, Scary-eyes,' she said.

‘Oh, please!' he mumbled, and closed them again.

‘Sorry,' she whispered. ‘Sorry!' And she placed a soft kiss on his brow.

One of the scary eyes grudgingly re-opened. ‘Is it safe to come out?'

She snuggled closer to him, and he uncurled and received her into his arms, she peaceful with her head on his breast, he silently loving her close to him there.

After a while, she spoke again. ‘I don't really know how you managed not to be a complete monster,' she said.

‘
What
?' She felt him move in consternation, twisting his head in an attempt to look down at her. ‘Whatever brought that on? What are you talking about?'

She played absently with the hair of his beard. ‘I was looking at you while you were sleeping… thinking of the things you've told me about your home and your family when you were a little lad… so frightening and cruel… It sounded as though you never knew anything else in all your childhood… and children grow into what they know… so I'm surprised you didn't turn into a monster.'

She felt him relax, and his hand gently stroked her hair as he turned these words over in his mind.

‘Well…' he said eventually, ‘there would be those who said I did. On that notorious occasion – you must have heard tell of it – when I received Father Columba du Fayel at our priory… St Dunstan's… um… Father Peregrine they used to call him… and he came to challenge my intentions… didn't trust me to do anything good… I gave him a hard time… it fills me with shame to think of it now… I simply did whatever it took to grind him down… hurt him… humiliate him… And then, when my guests were leaving – it was after he had gone – I overheard a man saying to his travelling companion: “You know I always had trouble believing the devil was real, until I set eyes on William de Bulmer.” His friend laughed. “Aye, I surely know what you mean,” he said. I suppose I deserved it. But it didn't feel good. And I was afraid sometimes… that I had lost my humanity… that I was turning into some kind of demon and there would be no way back…'

His caressing hand fell still. ‘It was your brother, you know, that made the difference. It was John. He knew precisely what kind of man I was, and what damage I would be capable of doing – and he gave me refuge, not because of what I was but because of what he is. He stood between me and the disgust of the whole community, to save me from the consequences of so many things that had all stacked up against me.'

He twisted to look down at her face. ‘If you want to create evil in the world, all you have to do is pick on a little child. Nothing else. That's all you have to do. Because you only have one childhood. You start with an ordinary little lad, and you pick on him relentlessly until you end up with some kind of devil who seeks power over others so that no one will ever, ever treat him that way again. I don't even know I've got free of it now, if I'm honest. I can think of some none too pretty things I've said to you since we were wed. Start again. That's the only thing I can think of to do ever, just start again. Pick myself up and start over when I fall. But the real feeling of shame comes from thinking of the people I've hurt. Seems I'm not big enough to contain it all, let it stop with me, but I must forever be passing it on. I wish… oh, God, I wish I hadn't hurt people like I have.'

The silence between them filled with a sense of sorrow that was of itself so tender and so broken that it seemed to Madeleine to come from some beating heart of life, wider and deeper than just this one man who lay here beside her.

‘Madeleine…' he hesitated. Something in her went on alert. This sounded important. ‘There's something I've been meaning to ask you, but I haven't been able to pluck up the courage.'

She pulled back to look at him – ‘What? What is it?' – and knew it must be something serious when he would not meet her eyes but gazed steadfastly beyond her at the bedpost.

And then, the words tumbling out of him, nervous about how insane this would sound, and how damaging to their plans and hopes of prosperity, he told her about the pigs, described all that Cormac had depicted so vividly. Afraid to look at her, he confessed the truth: that he could not face the prospect of slaughtering any of them – not the runt of the litter for a tasty roast while it was still a milk-fed suckling, nor any of the weaners, nor even a full-grown yearling. None of them.

Listening to him in growing astonishment as she tried to assimilate this ludicrous and completely unexpected proposition, it occurred to Madeleine that she had not been ready for this aspect of marriage. Until now any beast of her flocks had been entirely her own to manage as she wished; as a married woman, she had no property. Everything they owned was in law her husband's, and his to dispose of as he saw fit. She had thought the man she married to be hard-nosed and practical – shrewd and pragmatic, not susceptible to sappy romanticism like this. But if her husband had been seized by some insane desire to turn loose their swine – the best investment they had so far developed and the key-stone of their budget for this year – she had no legal ground for stopping him. He was her lord and master by her own free choice, and there was nothing she could do about it. Even so, too dumbfounded to speak but watching him narrowly as he laid before her his suit for clemency, she saw no sign of arrogance, nothing overbearing. If anything, he reminded her of a brave child at this moment, and the slight tremble in his voice as he made his outrageous proposition did not escape her. Neither did she fail to notice that the notion came to no more than ludicrous sentimentality borrowed from Brother Crazy Cormac; as so she told him when he finished what he had to say, plucked up the courage to look into her eyes for her reaction, and heard her adamant and decided rejection of any such daft proposal. He listened to her thoughtfully, his gaze resting on her face, respectful and quiet, and she thought for a moment she had swayed him. But he said – not argumentatively, nor yet beseechingly, just simply and honestly: ‘I asked you before we were married, when you still had time to turn back, did you want the man I am, not just the idea of marriage or of me – and you assured me, yes. Well, this is the man I am. This is what I want to do.'

Madeleine stared at him, nonplussed, the unfamiliar exertion of her efforts at gentle submission not even discarded – just forgotten. ‘But… surely there's no need to be so all-or-nothing about it? I can want to be married to you without having to agree to every whim that takes your fancy! Besides, this thing with the pigs is not the man you are; it's the man Brother Cormac is. And no woman alive would want to end up married to him, never mind his blue eyes and his barmy, lop-sided Irish grin.'

William paused on this thought. It had never crossed his mind that these characteristics of Brother Cormac would make him attractive to women, and the idea intrigued him.

‘William?' His wife had reared up onto her elbow, and waited with tense anxiety to hear his response. They depended on the pigs, they had built them into their plan for seeing their way clear. Without the pigs, they could manage, but it would be lean and very hard going.

Her husband looked up at her again, his gaze searching hers. So often she saw everything shifting and changing in William's grey-green eyes, as unfathomable and unreadable as sky and sea. They looked different in this moment; very clear and straight.