Remember Me

by Penelope Wilcock

  Text copyright © 2012 Penelope Wilcock

  This edition copyright © 2015 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 152 0

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 153 7

  This edition 2015

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Cover illustration © Brian Gallagher

  “If Penelope’s goal was to bring the hope that only Jesus can offer, please know she has been successful. She has this way of being able to authentically portray the human heart and all of its struggles that leaves one full of hope and love. That is not easily done—thank you. Excellent book. I loved it.”

  Mary Gliserman, Dean of Faculty, Vice-Principal, and teacher, The Daniel Academy associated with the International House of Prayer, Kansas City

  “Penelope Wilcock has penned a wonderful medieval series. In Remember Me, she explores the struggle of a monk who has chosen his vocation wrongly to face the implications of his choice. The flavour of medieval and monastic life in Wilcock’s work is to savour anew with each volume.”

  Mel Starr, author, The Unquiet Bones, A Corpse at St Andrew’s Chapel, and A Trail of Ink

  “Magically beautiful, tender, and exquisitely drawn; full of teaching on love and forgiveness and almost every page brought a smile to my lips. I have fallen in love with all the books and I think Father William’s journey, interlaced with Abbot John’s, is the best I have read.”

  Sue Ridley, Sussex, United Kingdom

  “These books are not only ‘a good read’, but also touch on the deeper truths that profit us for eternity.”

  Benedictine Abbess, Kent, United Kingdom

  “We devoured the books, passing them on from one to another, identifying with the characters, appropriating their idiosyncrasies and easily recognizing parallel situations in community life. Congratulations to Penelope for so faithfully describing the phenomenon called monastic life—and for grabbing the heart of it with its daily struggles and surprises, its hopes and fears, its strengths and weaknesses—a microcosm of the human experience.”

  A Sister of Thicket Priory Carmelite Monastery, Yorkshire, United Kingdom

  FOR

  ELVIRA McINTOSH

  who never gave up searching for me

  but went on until she found me

  who lifted me up and encouraged me

  who supported me as a writer—which is what I am

  who understands Christ’s call to community

  and also to simplicity

  and who looks for ways

  to bring the Gospel to ordinary people

  exactly as she finds them

  and where they are.

  God bless you, Elvira, and thank you.

  Remember Me

  Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom

  Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom

  Taizé chant of the words of the Thief on the Cross

  Do this to remember me.

  Words of Jesus at the institution of the Eucharist

  If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else,

  you will have succeeded.

  Maya Angelou

  Some stories are true that never happened.

  Elie Wiesel

  Dying is a wild night and a new road.

  Emily Dickinson

  Accept me, Lord, as thou hast promised,

  and I shall truly live.

  Benedictine Suscipe

  Can you not find it within you to look with eyes

  of compassion?

  Tony Collins

  There is no fear in love.

  1 John 4:18

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Remember Me

  The Community of St Alcuin’s Abbey

  Chapter One: July

  Chapter Two: August

  Chapter Three: September

  Chapter Four: October

  Chapter Five: November

  Chapter Six: December

  Glossary of Terms

  Monastic Day

  Liturgical Calendar

  The Community of St Alcuin’s Abbey

  (Not all members are mentioned in Remember Me.)

  Fully professed monks

  Abbot John Hazell once the abbey’s infirmarian

  Father Chad prior

  Brother Ambrose cellarer

  Fr. Wm. de Bulmer cellarer’s assistant (formerly an Augustinian prior)

  Father Theodore novice master

  Father Gilbert precentor

  Brother Clement overseer of the scriptorium

  Father Dominic guest master

  Brother Thomas abbot’s esquire, also involved with the farm and building repairs

  Father Francis scribe

  Father Bernard sacristan

  Brother Martin porter

  Brother Thaddeus potter

  Brother Michael infirmarian

  Brother Damien helps in the infirmary

  Brother Cormac kitchener

  Brother Richard fraterer

  Brother Stephen oversees the abbey farm

  Brother Peter ostler

  Brother Josephus acted as esquire for Father Chad between abbots; now working in the abbey school

  Brother Germanus has worked on the farm, occupied in the wood yard and gardens

  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 gardens

  Father James makes and mends robes, occasionally works in the scriptorium

  Brother Walafrid herbalist, oversees the brew house

  Brother Giles assists Brother Walafrid and works in the laundry

  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 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 Benedict assists in the infirmary

  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 Conradus assists in the kitchen

  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 Cyprian porter

  Father Aelred schoolmaster

  Father Lucanus novice master before Father Matthew

  Father Anselm once robe maker

  Brother Andrew kitchener

  CHAPTER ONE

  July

  Like a subtle wraith of mist in the still-dark of the night in late July he stole: silent and fleet, not hesitating. He came from the northwest corner of the church, where a small door led out into the abbey court from the side of the narthex. He did not cross the court, but passed stealthily along the walk between the yew hedge and the perimeter wall. Swift and noiseless he slipped along the close. It was a clear night but the dark of the moon, and only the stars gave light at this hour of the morning. At the end of Lauds, as the brothers shuffled back up the night stairs to resume their sleep, he had abstracted himself so unobtrusively that no one had seen. He had dodged back into the nave and stood in the deep shadows of the arcade in the side aisle on the north side of the church, hardly breathing. When all was still, he opened the small door with utmost caution; sliding the bolts back slowly and steadily without a sound, drawing the door closed and lifting and dropping the latch with barely a click, he left, and he was outside in the freshness of the night. Such faint light as the stars gave out found his silver hair, but that was the only glimmer of his presence as he slid from the abbey court along the close.

  Peartree Cottage stood in the middle of the row of houses. The wicket gate stood ajar, and he pushed it open without a sound. As he stepped into the garden, the herbs gave up their fragrance underfoot. He felt a slug fall into his sandal. He stooped to flick out the slug and to scratch up a handful of earth that he flung at the upstairs window. No response. He tried again. This time the casement was opened with irritable vigour from the inside, and Madeleine’s voice said sharply, “Who is it?”

  Peering down suspiciously into the garden she might not have seen him, but he moved very slightly and most quietly spoke her name.

  “Whatever do you want?” she whispered then, surprised.

  “Will you let me in?” She heard the soft-spoken words. And as she came in the dark down the narrow ladder stairway, she realized the implications of this visit. Naturally cautious, she asked herself, Are you sure you welcome this? Just in going down the stairs, in opening the door, she realized her heart was saying, Yes.

  As quietly as she could, she drew back the bolts and turned the key, lifted the latch, and opened the door to him.

  “Whatever has possessed you? What on earth do you think you’re doing?” she whispered fiercely as he came into the room. “Shall I light the candle?”

  “Nay, nay! There are no curtains, you might as well light a beacon,” he said softly. “Can you not see?”

  He himself had good night vision; it was an honest question. “I wouldn’t need to see!” she whispered back. “Who else would risk us both being thrown out by coming here at this time of the night? Are you certain no one saw you?”

  “It’s only a fool who is ever certain no one saw him. I surely hope not though, or we are done for, as you say.”

  In silence they stood then, not three feet between them in the warm darkness of the cottage. Embers tidied together on the hearth still glowed from the small fire Madeleine had lit to cook her supper. They gave out hardly any light at all, but between the embers and the stars, the shapes of things in the room and the man who stood before her could be clearly enough discerned.

  “Well?” she said then. “What should I think? Why are you here?”

  He stood silently. She waited for his reply. She knew well enough but did not dare to presume what she hoped for.

  “Do you…” His voice sounded unsure then; she heard the vulnerability in it. “Do you want me?”

  Madeleine hesitated one last moment. There was still time to go back on this. She heard the intake of his breath in anxious uncertainty.

  So she said in quick reassurance, “Of course I want you. With the whole of me. But is this honest? Isn’t it stolen? Aren’t we deceiving my brother?”

  But he waited for no further discussion; she was in his embrace then, the ardent hold of yearning that she and he had waited for, it felt like for so long. He did not kiss her, simply held her to him, his body pressed trembling against hers.

  She closed her eyes and took in the feel of him: the heat of his hunger for her, the beating of his heart and his quickened breath—all of him, bone and muscle and skin, the soul of him that lit every part, the pulse of desire and destiny. She loved the touch of him, the smell of him. She knew by heart every mannerism, every trick of movement and expression, every inflection of his voice. In any crowd she would have turned at his footstep, knowing whom she heard.

  “I had to come to you,” he whispered, his face against her hair. “I couldn’t think, I couldn’t sleep; I haven’t been able to concentrate on anything. I know I can’t have you, I do know. But I need to have the memory of just one time together for a refuge, for a viaticum—something real. I have been so desperate for you… to touch you… to hold you close to me… to feel your heartbeat and bury my face in your hair. Oh, my love, my love… I have ached to hold you.”

  She felt his hand lift to her head, caressing, and by the starlight she saw in his face such tenderness, such a flowing of love toward her as she had never imagined life might offer. He kissed her then, delicate kisses as light as a lacewing landing on a leaf: kissed her throat, her jaw, her cheekbones, her brow, kissed her eyelids closed, and then she felt his lips brush the curve of her cheek to find her mouth. He too closed his eyes as she parted her lips to the slow, beautiful, sensual rhapsody of his lover’s kiss.

  She felt the momentous tide of it overflow through all of her like the wave swell of the sea; then before she could bear to let him go, he drew back from his kiss, but still held her close. She wished she could see him properly, read the look in his eyes dark in the darkness.

  “This is not what I thought,” he whispered, “not what I expected.”

  He felt her body tense at his words and said hastily, “No! No, I didn’t mean what you think. You are everything I want, all I long for! It’s just that I had imagined this would lay things to rest—allow us to acknowledge something that is between us, and let it have its moment. I thought it might make it easier to relinquish it and give it back to God. But it doesn’t feel like that now.

  “Now that I am holding you I want never to have to let you go. I want us to share a bed and make love together, but I want us to share a home and make a life together, too. I want time to discover all the things I don’t know about you yet. I want to watch you washing at the sink in the morning as the sun comes streaming in through the open door. I want to watch you brushing your hair. I want to find you kneading dough for our loaf at the table when I come in with the firewood for our hearth. I want you to teach me about herbs and how to grow them.”

  “Brother Walafrid could teach you about that,” she murmured.

  “Yes, I know,” he whispered, “but I don’t feel the same about Brother Walafrid as I do about you.”

  She had rested her head against the hollow beneath his collarbone as she listened to these words. She heard the smile in his voice, and he bent his head to kiss the top of hers.

  “When I entered monastic life,” he said, in the quietest undertone, “it was for pragmatic reasons—I had no money, was the thing, and that’s what keeps me there still: no money. I’ve heard men talk about vocation often enough, but I couldn’t feel my way to it—didn’t really know what they meant. I have never had a sense of vocation until now.

  “Now, all of me wants to be with all of you forever. Now I know what vocation is. But I am fifty years old, and I have no trade and no family. There is nothing I can offer you, and there is nowhere for us to go—even supposing you want me, too.

  “You asked me if this was honest. It’s probably the most honest thing I’ve ever
done in my life. I know it’s beyond reach. If I come back here again, someone will see, it will be discovered somehow—these things always are—but I thought I could risk just this one time. And I can offer nothing more. You and I both, we depend on the charity of the community to house us; there are no other choices. Like the poor everywhere, we have no rights and no options. But one night, for pity’s sake, just one night! And it’s not even a night, only a miserly hour between the night office and Prime. But after this, you must not watch for me nor wait for me, for I shall not be able to come to you—not ever again—but, oh my darling, remember me, remember this hour we had. If you get a chance of happiness with someone else, take it with both hands; I shall not be jealous. And deceiving John? Up to a point. I won’t tell him, and I won’t let him see. But I wouldn’t lie to him, and I won’t pursue this. It’s just that I couldn’t have lived the rest of my life starving to hold you for one time close to me. Maybe it is stolen. Yes—it is. But a starving man will snatch a crust of bread because it is life to him. And this is life to me.”

  He closed his eyes, drinking in the touch of her under his hands, the smell of herbs about her, the texture of her hair and her skin against his mouth, the softness of her body yielded against his. And then his mouth quested again for hers, and again he kissed her in deep, rapt communion. Like music, like a sunset, that kiss seemed to go on forever but had its own beginning and its end. And as he kissed her, William felt something change deep within him. He felt, from his belly, from his loins, from his heart, from his mouth, from his soul, the reality of what he was streaming forth unchecked, soul to soul. When their kiss found its conclusion, he realized that he had given all of himself, and it could never be taken back. Too late to choose a different path, to give less of himself or set any kind of boundary, he realized that this course he had chosen would break his heart. It was not realistic to suppose something like this could be contained in one night. When he slipped back through the half-light before the dawn, he would be leaving meaning and fulfillment and all his dreams behind.