The Breath of Peace (9 page)

‘No,' he said softly, ‘you haven't. And yes, by all means, you go. Madeleine, I don't understand why you're so angry with me. You told me you want to go and see John, I said that's fine by me; what's biting you?'

‘You said I was a shrew.'

‘What? I did not! I said no such thing –
you
said it, not me!'

‘Well – you were in no hurry to contradict it.'

He stared at her, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Aye,' he said. ‘Amen! Look, just go! I signed up to a marriage, not to a war! The peace will be welcome and overdue. Stay three nights, stay a fortnight, but for pity's sake go!'

Madeleine stared at him, her speechless lips parted, her face flushed. She looked straight into his eyes, hurt to the quick, in silent reproach.

He swore, savage and bitter, and pushed his chair back from the table. She drew breath to speak.

‘
Shut up
!' he shouted at her, which made her jump, because William hardly ever raised his voice. ‘Don't say anything more! Don't say
anything
!'

Monastic habit dies hard. Madeleine registered it on no conscious level, being too wrapped up in that moment in her own pressing sense of grievance, but if she had thought about it she would have marvelled that he went with quiet step to the door, and opened it to leave with the merest faint click of the latch. He got no further, arrested by his wife's voice, plainly on the verge of tears, quavering: ‘I knew it would be like this! I knew you wouldn't want me to go!'

His shoulders sagged, and for a moment he just stood where he was. Then he turned to face her, his expression entirely baffled. He stared at her in wonder, and walked back to the place he had vacated. His hands spread on the board, he leaned on the table, contemplating his beloved with bewilderment.

‘Madeleine… what have I ever said that made you think I didn't want you to go and visit your brother? You are an intelligent woman. Did you not hear what I said? What's
wrong
with you?'

‘Nothing's wrong with me. Nothing at all!' A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘I heard what you
didn't
say.'

He shook his head, reaching out to wipe away the tear, which was swiftly followed by another. ‘Oh, my love. For mercy's sake, will you try listening to what I have said and not to what I haven't? Go and see your brother. Who knows but he can talk some sense into you. Stay however long you want to. But please – please, please, please – come home loving me.'

‘I do love you!' She fought to keep her voice steady with no success at all. ‘I don't know why it's always like this! I don't know!' The last word came out in a wail, and she dropped her face into her hands and began to sob. William walked round the table. He said nothing more, but stroked her hair and cradled her head against him. Had he caused this? Was he to blame? Did he start it and not notice? He had no idea.

* * *

‘I begged admittance to St Dunstan's Priory when I was seventeen.'

By their fireside once the evening came, Madeleine carding wool and William sitting quietly watching the flames after putting the supper things away, she had asked him to tell her something of how he came to monastic life. She trod cautiously, not wanting to arouse all over again the antagonisms of the morning; but she felt that if she could understand him a little better, grasp what motivated him, perhaps they would blunder less easily into the spats that scratched and tore and wearied them both.

‘I worked for my father then. He was a spice merchant, and he also dealt in unusual hides. I learned from him about buying and selling, trade routes, assessing the quality of animal skins, seeking out trustworthy suppliers. It stood me in good stead later on.

‘But at seventeen, I only knew I was trapped. He paid me no wages, so I had no means to move out of our home, which suited him well – I was a hard grafter, and learned quick. I was useful to him, I think, though he never said so.

‘Nothing in our life was happy, but I did like going to Mass at St Dunstan's. The priory church rose up cool and lofty, airy, very pale stone – and we had the most beautiful glass in the windows there. I loved the music of the chant, and watching the smoke of the incense rising through the shafts of sunbeams. Everything seemed so calm and measured and under control. So much of what happened to me had to do with being hot and frightened and panicking. And there was so much ugliness in our house. Faces ugly with anger thrust into my face, and I dared not even look away. Ugly fists and ugly threats. The priory showed me beauty… the music, the silences, the silver chalice, the peaceful statue of the Virgin and child. It became a refuge in my mind.

‘Everything came to an end at home when I finally stood up to my father – well, if you can call it that. I evaded him hitting me, that's all. He was in his cups – completely drunk, not just a bit tipsy – and I'd passed my curfew for coming in. Even just thinking back to it, I can see him so clear all these years on: swaying, clutching on to the table, shouting after me, commanding me to give account of myself as I started to climb the stairs. I went back and stood before him – it wasn't a wise thing to disregard his summons – and he raved on at me a while, spittle flying into my face and all the usual insults. And when he was done shouting he raised his hand to hit me. And suddenly I'd had enough. I stepped back, and he lost his balance in lunging at me. He fell over the stool and barked his shin on it. He was just staggering back to his feet and I was just weighing up whether taking refuge in my chamber would be enough or if I had to get out of the house until morning, when my mother caught me such a crack on the side of my head with one of the fire-irons I'm surprised she didn't kill me. It caught me off guard, slewed me right over, knocked me onto the floor. And my father let out a great bellow of laughter, and grabbed it from her, and clubbed every inch of me with it. It was all I could do to stay curled up tight and protect my head so I could take it on my back and my legs and not get my nose broken or my skull split or an eye put out. Eventually he'd had his fun, and kicked me and told me to get out. I did. I walked out of the house – with him shouting after me, because he'd meant for me to go to my bed.

‘I spent the night curled up in someone's hay barn, waiting for everything to stop hurting, which it did not. In the morning I went to the priory and begged them to take me in.

‘The prior – a lazy, decadent brute, but tolerably cunning – wanted to know what gift my family would give them and I said, none. So he wanted some word of my good character from my father or my employer, and I explained he wouldn't be getting it. I told him I'd been beaten until I could no longer stomach it, and beseeched him to take me. He laughed at me, asked me what made me think I'd not be beaten as a novice at St Dunstan's, pointed out I'd not met his novice master, which was true. But I stuck to it, and in the end, I don't know why, he gave way and said I could give it a try. So they took me in.

‘The year until my simple vows I grew familiar with their scourges and their penances, and a thousand petty cruelties and deprivations you can impose to make a man's life a living hell. The year between my simple vows and solemn profession things eased off a wee bit. The day I was professed, besides whatever it was I vowed to Christ, I made a vow to my own soul too. I promised myself that somehow I would climb to the top of that pile until I was in charge, and could determine for myself how things went and all the ways of the house. I promised myself that, when I attained it, we would eat well and sleep peaceful, and there would be nothing but beauty all around us. We would have fine victuals and smooth, fiery wines; we would sleep soft and forget the hair shirts, and the scourges could gather dust under the beds. And, by all the foot-licking and hollow flattery and whatever else had to be done, I got there. And I can't say I never had a man scourged, for sometimes I did, and I can't say we walked a path to be admired, for holy we were not. But I got out of all that ugliness and violence, and I stopped it in our novitiate as well.

‘Vocation? When I first met you, Madeleine, you challenged your brother when he expressed misgivings as to whether you had any vocation as a Poor Clare. He thought you were seeking refuge only, and you could not build a life on that. You told him you did have a vocation – a vocation to survive. And when I heard that, I thought it possible that you and I could be friends. We had something in common.

‘I freely admit my motives were never pure, but… I don't know… what could I have done? I think they would have killed me.'

He moved out of his chair onto his knees to place more wood on the fire. He stayed kneeling there watching the small flames lick at the dry wood.

‘I don't know what to say,' she said to him, after listening to him tell the story in that dry, quiet voice so strangely devoid of self-pity or anger. ‘I don't know how you ever survived that hell.'

He brushed the clinging remnants of ash and sawdust and cobweb from his hands. ‘Cauterized, I think,' he said, ‘at some root place in my soul. Besides which, I believed in something good. I had an irrational, unquenchable hope that I could find my way to something of blessing, something I could believe in. And I had this vision of what a home could be: a hearth of loving kindness, a place of shelter and affirmation… and peace.'

Still on his knees, he turned to face her, and shuffled across to where she sat. She set aside the carders with their rollag of fleece, folding her apron up to cover the debris of moss and seedheads and greasy dust that had fallen into it, so he could curl up against her and lay his head in her lap.

‘William, I have a long way to go before I can help you make the kind of home you've dreamed of. I'm too hasty, and too sharp-tongued. I'm not patient and I'm not meek. But, if it helps you to know it, with every breath and every day I live, I love you. I don't even know clearly what it is in you I love. I just feel right with you. When you hold me, I know I've come home. When we unite as man and wife, I feel complete. I can see all too well how I've tried your patience and how long-suffering you've needed to be. And the reason I want to go see my brother is to seek his counsel. There must be a reason they make a man an abbot. I thought he might have wisdom I hadn't taken seriously, thinking of him as only Adam – a loud-mouthed urchin tumbling in the dirt, climbing trees, playing out on the moor. I wondered if he could help me learn how to build a place of peace, the way you dreamed it might be.'

He lifted his head from her lap and kneeled up so he could pull her into his arms.

‘Sweetheart, you have heard – please tell me you have – that you go up to St Alcuin's with my blessing; and that I think after a year of day-in day-out learning, this homestead and its birds and beasts will be safe in my care. Maybe when you go, you might take him one of the ram's horns we got in the market after the Martinmas slaughtering – it'll make good toggles for Father James.'

His kiss, lingering and tender, healed something between them, putting in its place peace and understanding. The rest of the evening they talked of plans for the spring – how the vegetable garden might be laid out this year, how many pigs they might run in the orchard, whether they might make a start on keeping sheep if any orphan lambs became available, and maybe look to hatch some goose eggs, think about eating goose at next year's Christmas dinner. As they talked, Madeleine carded the fleece John had sent her, and by the time the fire died down a full basket of rollags stood ready for spinning. William took the lantern round to ensure that all was well with their livestock before he climbed the creaking stairs to their bedchamber where the moon shone in through their window. When they settled down to rest, he kissed his wife, and Madeleine felt of a certainty, held in his arms, that though they still had much to learn in living together, she could trust this love; it would not fail her. Contented and reassured, looking forward to her trip up through the hills to the moors, she drifted off to sleep at her husband's side.

She was half woken by his struggling and thrashing, by broken impotent cries. ‘No!' he managed to articulate. ‘No! No!' Another bad dream.

‘Sssh…' Still dopey, Madeleine reached out to touch him, then was startled into complete wakefulness as he suddenly sat bolt upright in the bed and exclaimed with harsh vehemence: ‘I am
not
scum! I am
not
!'

He sat there trembling then, and she clambered up onto her knees beside him, holding him close to her, rocking him, hushing him gently.

‘What? What?' he murmured, confused.

‘You were dreaming,' she said. ‘Lie down.'

She soothed him back to sleep and, once she had satisfied herself that he was settled, drifted down out of consciousness again herself, and slept deeply until morning, when she opened her eyes to find her husband already awake, lying quietly alert, just watching her. This slightly startled her.

‘William de Bulmer,' she said, speaking with the candour of a mind not fully woken up, ‘you have the scariest eyes of any man alive.'

He wrinkled his nose, and a little frown creased his brow. Puzzled and taken aback he considered her words.

‘Scary? What d'you mean?'

‘Are you seriously telling me you didn't know this?'

‘Well, I… I – how could I? I can't see my own eyes, can I? I've spent thirty years in a monastery. Gazing into my eyes and telling me what impact they made wasn't something anyone did.'

‘People weren't scared of you, then?'

‘Oh! Yes – certainly they were. I was prior a lot of years – it was my job to scare people.'

‘Is that so? Is that how you see the work of a superior?'

‘Um… yes. Power, responsibility – you have to make it work. Everyone's out to manipulate you, secure your support for their private plans, annex some of what you bring to further their ambitions. If you intimidate them a little, it buys a breathing space. If you intimidate them a lot then maybe you can even use them to advance your own ambitions. That's how it is.'