“A Day and a Life describes a single day at St Alciun’s and with it, fifteenth century monastic life… As we observe the monks at their prayers and their work, we glimpse their hearts and their struggles, so similar to our own. Readers of this conclusion to The Hawk and the Dove series will enjoy one last visit with their old friends.”
LeAnne Hardy, author of the Glastonbury Grail series
“Followers of, and newcomers to, the series are welcomed to St Alcuin’s as old friends. Wilcock’s prose exquisitely captures those qualities of monastic life which she extols; her narrative is reflective and lyrical, humbly but tenderly evoking the simplicity and faith of a community of devotion. It is a community to which the reader is invited, just as they are, to grapple with what it is to live and love in a fellowship of faith.”
Anna Thayer, author of The Knight of Eldaran series
Titles in the Hawk and the Dove series:
The Hawk and the Dove
The Wounds of God
The Long Fall
The Hardest Thing to Do
The Hour Before Dawn
Remember Me
The Breath of Peace
The Beautiful Thread
A Day and a Life
A Day and a Life
PENELOPE WILCOCK
Text copyright © 2016 Penelope Wilcock
This edition copyright © 2016 Lion Hudson
The right of Penelope Wilcock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Published by Lion Fiction
an imprint of
Lion Hudson plc
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road
Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com/fiction
ISBN 978 1 78264 200 8
e-ISBN 978 1 78264 201 5
First edition 2016
Acknowledgments
Scripture quotations marked KJV are from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.
Scripture quotations marked NRSVA are from The New Revised Standard Version Bible, Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover image © Brian Gallagher
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
For Deborah Sokell
with my thanks for so much encouragement
Unless you give up everything you have, you cannot be my disciple.
Paraphrase of words of Jesus, Luke 14:33
He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
1 Kings 19:11–13, NRSVA
Jesus walked, and he stopped. What is the speed of love?
Revd Canon Martin Baddeley, in reference to Jesus and the Canaanite woman, Matthew 15:21–28
In your disabilities and in what you decline to do lies your way home.
Diana Lorence of Innermost House
Gracious and holy Father, please give me intellect to understand you; reason to discern you; diligence to seek you; wisdom to find you; a spirit to know you; a heart to meditate upon you; ears to hear you; eyes to see you; a tongue to proclaim you; a way of life pleasing to you; patience to wait for you; and perseverance to look for you.
St Benedict of Nursia
Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.
Isaiah 6:8, KJV
We’re all just walking each other home.
Ram Dass
Contents
The Community of St Alcuin’s Abbey
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Glossary of Terms
Monastic Day
Liturgical Calendar
The Community of St Alcuin’s Abbey
(Not all members are mentioned in A Day and a Life)
Fully professed monks
Abbot John Hazell
once the abbey’s infirmarian
Father Francis
prior
Brother Cormac
cellarer
Father Theodore
novice master
Father Gilbert
precentor
Father Clement
overseer of the scriptorium
Father Dominic
guest master
Brother Thomas
abbot’s esquire, also involved with the farm and building repairs
Father Bernard
sacristan
Brother Martin
porter
Brother Thaddeus
potter
Brother Michael
infirmarian
Brother Benedict
main assistant in the infirmary
Brother Damian
teaches in the school
Brother Conradus
kitchener
Brother Richard
fraterer
Brother Stephen
oversees the abbey farm
Brother Peter
ostler
Brother Josephus
teaches in the abbey school
Father James
makes and mends robes, occasionally works in the scriptorium
Brother Germanus
has worked on the farm, occupied in the wood yard and gardens
Brother Walafrid
herbalist, oversees the brew house
Brother Giles
assists Brother Walafrid and works in laundry
Brother Mark
too old for taxing occupation, but keeps the bees
Brother Paulinus
works in the kitchen garden and orchards
Brother Prudentius
now old, helps on the farm and in the kitchen garden and orchards
Brother Fidelis
now old, oversees the flower garde
ns
Brother Basil
old, assists the sacristan – ringing the bell for the office hours, etc.
Fully professed monks now confined to the infirmary through frailty of old age
Father Gerald
once sacristan
Brother Denis
once a scribe
Father Paul
once precentor
Brother Edward
onetime infirmarian, now living in the infirmary but active enough to help there and occasionally attend Chapter and the daytime hours of worship
Novices
Brother Boniface
helps in the scriptorium
Brother Cassian
works in the school
Brother Cedd
helps in the scriptorium and when required in the robing room
Brother Felix
helps Father Gilbert
Brother Placidus
helps on the farm
Brother Robert
assists in the pottery
Members of the community mentioned in earlier stories and now deceased
Abbot Gregory of the Resurrection
Abbot Columba du Fayel (also known as Father Peregrine)
Father Matthew
novice master
Brother Andrew
kitchener
Brother Cyprian
porter
Father Aelred
schoolmaster
Father Lucanus
novice master before Father Matthew
Father Anselm
once robe-maker
Chapter
One
It starts in the deepest darkness of the night. The call of a hunting owl. Across the valley, the loud, melodramatic yapping of a vixen. No other sound. The hens are asleep on their roosts, close together, their heads tucked down. The sheep, packed tight in the byre, breathe air warmed by each other’s bodies. The calf sleeps close against the warm belly of her slumbering mother.
The abbey lies under a gibbous moon, rapt in the Grand Silence. Clouds drift. How profound is the night, and sometimes how terrible. Dreams. Death. Darkness. Demons of insecurity, terror, loneliness, regret are let loose. But at this hour, who is stirring?
In the infirmary, small lights burn. The two men who have kept watch over the sick make their second round of the dark hours, quietly and without fuss: turning those who can no longer move, changing wet sheets, checking all is well. Brother Michael holds the lantern up, so he and Brother Benedict can see their way along the passage. The place where they are is eaten by shadows, but the warm, dancing halo of candlelight illumines Michael’s face. Even in the crumpled weariness of the depth of night, you can see the kindness. You would trust this man, with your life – and many do. Benedict is new to working through the night. He took his solemn vows – his life vows – in the summer. In his novitiate year, they let him go to bed. But here, someone always has to keep watch. Now Brother Damian has been moved to work in the school, and John is abbot, Michael is grateful to have Benedict with him. And they know each other well. The night strips away defences, and bonds form between man and man, in the care of the sick.
The infirmary is set apart from the main buildings of the abbey: the great church, looming up monolithic, a majestic assurance of faith immoveable under the night wind, the shifting clouds, the waning moon. Beside the church, the cloister garth, and set around its verdant square the west, south, east ranges of the abbey buildings, all folded in stillness.
Father Bernard, the sacristan, is lost in dreams; just the faintest whistling snore. He has no idea what he dreams, because he never remembers them. He is not tortured by the recollection of deadly sweet concupiscence, the sensual ardour of unconscious erotica: not that it doesn’t happen – he just forgets. The moon doesn’t peep through his window; at this hour she is looking in on someone else.
The sacristan’s cell has been built just a little larger, to accommodate an utterly essential device: the clepsydra. This water clock drips time away until the point is reached when the striking mechanism, operated by weights and a rope, turns the axle so that the flail strikes the little bells, and wakes up Father Bernard.
He knows from past experience of embarrassing human frailty what you have to do: get up immediately. The clock will not sound another alarm until he re-sets it for the next night. If he lingers for two more minutes, that can lengthen into three… five… drowsing… back to sleep. And an entire monastic community can fail to make Vigils. This must not happen. So the instant those bells penetrate the sacristan’s sleep – and he is listening for them in some buried watchfulness persisting beneath bodily rest – he swings his feet down to the floor, bringing himself to sit upright on the warm hollow of his low wooden bed. And stands up, stiffly, stretching.
Apart from the care of the sick, and the cold nights of early spring when Brother Stephen watches over the lambing, the monastic day begins here, with Father Bernard. He fastens his sandals, his belt. In his cell he has a lantern with a fat candle that burns through the night. Too many abbeys have been rased to the ground as a result of a brother struggling with flint and tinder in the dark. The abbot of this one will not take that risk. So their sacristan sleeps with the light burning, the living flame enclosed securely inside its iron and horn cage. It doesn’t stink like the tallow candles of an ordinary home. Monks prize their bees. The beehive is itself a sort of monastery: Our Lady in her chapel surrounded by her industrious virgin community. And the wax burns sweet and clear, freshening the room. If the sacristan breaks wind as he drifts off to sleep, the flame from beeswax restores the air to purity.
Father Bernard takes up the lantern and leaves his cell. Just outside, on a shelf affixed to the wall next to his door, stands the bell, its wooden handle worn smooth and shiny from the hefting of his hand every night of the year.
He starts along the dorter, making the most unholy jangling clamour as he goes by. Unstinting, as he treads slow and reliable along the passage between the closed cells, the faithful hullabaloo rouses the community out of sleep – ker-chang, ker-chang, ker-chang – all the way to the end and back again.
Doors are opening already as he reaches the night stairs. Going carefully, minding his step, one hand holding the lantern, the other clutching the bell, neither free for the handrail, he goes down to the moonlit cloister. He doesn’t stop to look through the arches at the beauty of the cloister garth bathed in white moonshine, its shadows and shapes mysterious under the stars; he heads for the abbot’s lodge. There he sets down the bell and lifts the latch, picks it up again, and goes through the atelier, stopping outside the inner chamber where the abbot sleeps – ker-chang, ker-chang, ker-chang.
He waits, listens for the sound of the wooden clapper telling him he has succeeded in waking his abbot. Satisfied, he goes out into the cloister, leaving the door open behind him to permit a little more moonlight to shine through, and to save Father John the trouble of groping for the latch of the door in the dark.
By the foot of the night stairs, at the doorway into the south transept of the church, just near the holy water stoup, a stone niche originally intended for a blessed statue makes a convenient place to house the bell while Father Bernard is in chapel. As he places it carefully there, ensuring that the iron tongue so vigorously wagged a few moments before is now hushed, the sacristan is already surrounded by the quietly scuffing feet of the community assembling for prayer. Even given the peaceful monastic tread to which they are schooled in their novitiate years, the brethren descending the night stairs sets up a rumbling like thunder. But here in the stone-flagged cloister, only the ripple and flow of woollen robes and the susurrus of many feet.
Towards the east, in the sanctuary, the perpetual light burns in the ruby glass. High in the rood loft Christ on his cross hangs over this, their world. For a while there is nothing to hear but sandals on stone, robes, the creaking wood of the stalls as men take their places, the discreet muffling of a cough. Then, in the darkness lit
only by the sanctuary light, and one lantern, the gathered community comes to absolute silence, ready. The knock of the abbot’s ring against the wood of his stall, and you hear them all rise in the darkness.
“Pater noster, qui es in coelis…”1 Abbot John begins the Office. Then the Ave Maria and the Credo, facing east, turned towards the source of light and hope, Christ the daystar.
“Deus in adiutorium meum intende.”2 The abbot’s steady voice speaks into the silence.
“Domine ad adiuvandum me festina,”3 comes back the murmur of reply from all around the choir, then the Gloria.
“Domine mea labia aperies.”4 Abbot John again.
“Et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.”5
So the day begins, like a birth, from the dark roots of its depth. So faith walks forward, knowing the prayer by heart, not needing to see. Like an unseen river, the quiet flow of chanted psalms, canticles, and responsories carries the community along its current towards the dawn.
Father Bernard bears the lantern, taking it round, keeping watch. He sees a man drowsing asleep, and gives the lantern into his hand, goes to his own place in his stall. And the sleepy one is glad for the responsibility handed to him, to get up, to take his turn at walking and watching. Sometimes it is the only way to struggle up from drowning in the irresistible waves of sleep.
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