“In those days between, I was so happy. I never knew what happiness was before that. I entered monastic life because I could see no other realistic options, and it suited me well enough. I was a shrewd obedientiary but a bad monk. Before I came here, I got on well enough; didn’t give a toss what anyone thought, and lived as I pleased for my own advantage and the advantage of my priory—I was the prior. But here they made me see things—and see myself—differently. I’ve spent most of the time feeling bitterly ashamed of myself and working my fingers to the bone trying to repay their goodness to me. I was supposed to be a reformed character, and that was going well until I fell in love. The joy of Christ’s presence in your heart is one thing; the love of a woman is another. Obviously. For a monk.”
Ellen listened, enthralled, to this account. The brothers of St Alcuin were friendly and pleasant, but they did not confide in lay folk their passions and struggles. The boundaries were courteously but absolutely maintained. Such an insight as this was not something that had ever come her way before. She was fascinated, and as he stopped talking, lapsing into stillness, his eyes hopeless and his face drawn, she watched the small movements of thoughts in his countenance, and she held this encounter to be a privilege, and an honour. She realized that he could not have this conversation with any of his brothers, not even his abbot who must not know he had come back to see Madeleine again. It occurred to her that she had become his confessor before he had become hers. An old woman in any society is redundant and invisible; that made the gift of his honesty and self-revelation especially precious to Ellen. She would never betray him—nor Madeleine, who had been kind to her, sweetened her life with her company, and done a hundred little tasks and errands for her that seemed to be getting harder for her to accomplish every day.
“Is the joy of Christ’s presence with thee all extinguished by this parting?” she asked him.
He hung his head, ashamed. “Yes,” he whispered. “It is.”
Ellen was grateful she still had sharp ears. It occurred to her you would need good hearing to be a confessor.
“Can tha not find him still, in thy heart? Is he not still there?”
She asked for her own curiosity as much as to help him.
William looked at her. Tears glittered in his eyes. “Oh, he is there. My heart is become like a bloody torture chamber. He hangs on his cross and groans and shifts his weight and sweats and weeps and waits to die. Yes, he is with me. But he is no ray of sunshine now.”
He was trembling. He took his hands from the tabletop and put them in his lap, inside the wide sleeves of his habit.
“Sounds as though tha’rt very lonely,” said Ellen.
He nodded, mutely. She watched him strive for mastery over himself, and her soul saluted his strength as he achieved it.
“I have always been a solitary man,” he said then. “I had little regard for the human race and little desire for human company. But I’ve changed. Since Christ brought me here and broke me open, things have been different with me. There is such real, living fellowship among the brothers here. And I value my abbot’s good opinion. I love him. But all that is wrecked now. I am back to covert ways, hiding my heart and trying not to seem what I am.” He stopped, abruptly. “Yes, it feels lonely.” His final admission was barely audible.
“Tha’rt a good man, though,” she said.
Hunched in misery, he shook his head. “No. I am not.”
“Yes, tha’rt a good man. Tha’s proved it to me.”
He raised his head to look at her, frowning in puzzlement.
“Tha hasn’t seen what I’ve offered thee, in asking thee to be my confessor, hast tha, Brother Cellarer?”
He looked blank. “No. Well—apart from your undeserved confidence in me, and the honour that such a request always is, both of which are very gracious of you. And by the way, I am not the cellarer—and do you not know my name?”
“We are suffered here in the cottages because we have bought the right to be here. But we are not admitted to any kind of closeness with the brethren. I think thy name might be William, because I have heard Madeleine say it, and the way she said it makes me think she must have been talking to thee; otherwise I would not have known it.”
“Yes. I’m William. And it’s Father William because I am a priest, and without that I could not be your confessor. But plain William will do fine.”
“Well, Father William, I know tha’rt a good man and a good monk, because tha’s said yes to shepherding my soul only because I asked thee—and to buy my silence maybe. But tha sees, does tha not, I am an old woman, halt and frail. I would hope tha would do me the kindness of coming to my little cottage to hear my confession, not make me come all the way across to the church. It would not be so often—every few weeks. Maybe after Vespers, when tha’s had thy supper and the day’s work is done. When the light goes off the day and the dusk brings the shadows. The gardens at the back of our cottages are but one long strip, really. The dividing walls are low.”
William looked at her, the implication of what she was saying slowly sinking in, and he began to laugh.
“Oh, Mother Cottingham! God bless you—you are a woman after my own heart! What a thoroughly rascally scheme! By my faith, you would have made a good archdeacon! Oh, I am tempted, sorely tempted! But it will not do. See, I really love Madeleine; this is not a dalliance. And I love Abbot John, too—besides which, John is no fool and he walks a straight line. He would not be long in feeling his way to the truth of it. And I would be stripped of my tunic and flogged in Chapter and flung out to find what way I could in the world—and Madeleine would follow after. She needs security, Mother. She needs a proper home. It would be no true love to take that away from her. We are not young enough; the years of learning a trade and building a life have gone. I must stand by what I have set myself to do. And I cannot bear the thought of passing her on my way here, ‘Good morrow, Mistress Hazell,’ as if I barely knew her. But thank you—thank you, thank you—for being on our side and trying to make a way through for us. It means a lot. God bless you. There. That’s one outrageous, naughty sin forgiven. What else have you got hidden in your heart?”
“Eh—it’s good to see tha can laugh! I was beginning to wonder. I have no more sins for thee, child. I’ve the time but not the inclination at the age I am. No doubt tha can lead me astray and give me something to confess. Work thy way along the whole row, mayhap—why stop at Madeleine and me? Anyway, get thee gone. I thank thee for thy courtesy in coming to see me; that goes a long way for an old woman. Tha’ll find when tha grows old, folk don’t go out of their way for thee anymore. Tha’ll become invisible too, of no regard anymore. And I am grateful to thee. Tha came promptly, and tha spoke to me as if I were a duchess. Here’s thy money for the abbey then. God bless thee, and remember this door stands always open to thee.”
He stood to go. “Stay where you are, Mother—don’t get up, there’s no need.” He hesitated, then leaned over the table and left a light kiss on her brow. “Thank you for keeping our secret.” Then he took up the money bag and, bowing to her in courtesy, turned and let himself out of the cottage.
Mother Cottingham stayed in her chair, just sitting quietly. She thought about Father William, her confessor now, and savoured the memory of the look on his face as he left her cottage. She had not been able to lift his troubles away from his shoulders and carry them for him, but she could see that he had felt comforted. She thought of Madeleine and admired her discretion. Not by the smallest hint had Madeleine ever indicated that she might have any sort of connection of friendship with one of the brothers. Ellen thought about the two of them. She cupped her arthritic, old hands in her lap, and in her imagination she held the two of them there together… and she prayed for them. She prayed for a happy ending to their story. She prayed that God who made them would understand… that he would not be severe with them… that he would have mercy on their humanity. And then, just as she was beginning to doze off to sleep in the warmth of the aftern
oon, she had an idea.
CHAPTER TWO
August
John did not find the responsibility of the abbot’s chapter and the homilies at Mass easy to carry. Years in the infirmary had accustomed him to the idea that all anyone needed to hear him say were things along the lines of “Drink it all. No, all of it. No, you really must.” Or, “Roll over then—there, that’s it. Just hold steady, exactly as you are. Nearly finished.”
He took to the work of administration and pastoral listening with almost no adjustment, but the concept of the community attending diligently to his theological ruminations struck him as somewhere between laughable and terrifying. He prepared carefully and dug deep. He knew that St Alcuin’s housed scholars of far higher calibre than his, so usually what he offered them were his reflections on many years of walking the monastic way, the memories and experiences that had acted as shafts of light for him in his own struggles to be faithful to the Christ he loved.
Today he wanted to talk to them about the Eucharist, principally because Father Theodore had asked him to. The novices were discussing the theology of the Eucharist in their morning studies.
“Theodore, are you having me on? Your knowledge of Eucharistic theology is so far ahead of anything I have to say, it’s completely out of sight! What more could they possibly need to learn from me?”
Theodore smiled. “Thank you, Father, for the compliment. I teach them what’s in the books and the sermons. I tell them what the holy Church has laid down and show them the Scriptures and make them read the works of the church fathers. But what I was really hoping is that you could speak to them out of your life. Show them what the Eucharist can mean to an ordinary monk trying to get on from day to day with his brothers, as well as to a great mind with a following of disciples.”
A strange silence followed these words. “Oh, holy saints!” Theodore exclaimed, horrified. “You didn’t think—I don’t mean my great mind and the disciples in our novitiate! I meant like Jerome and Augustine with their following of young men gathered around them!”
John fiddled with the knotted cord of the rope belting his habit as he thought about this. “The trouble is, Theo, I never really paid attention. I don’t think I even realized they had gatherings of disciples. I was always more interested in the practical side of things—what works, what makes people better, what keeps them sane and well.”
“Yes.” Theodore smiled at him. “That’s what I was hoping for.”
So John got his homily ready for Mass, feeling only a bit of a fraud while the community waited respectfully on his pronouncements concerning the holy Eucharist.
“‘Remember me,’” he said, “is what Jesus asked of us. ‘Do this to remember me.’ We think about remembering as looking back on times past, a nostalgic recollection of something that has gone now. But remember is also the opposite of dismember. When something has been broken apart, dismembered, we look at the broken pieces and remember how it used to be, and put it back together, make it whole again.
“I’ve done a lot of that in the infirmary. People have come to me with an abscess or a runny eye or a rash, asking if I have anything that can make them better. And I did the best I knew to make each one into the man he used to be, bringing him back to full health, if I could.
“The heart of illness is imbalance. Things out of balance go wrong very quickly—that’s why we have to keep the discipline of rest and recreation as well as work and prayer, eating and enjoying ourselves as well as fasting and disciplining ourselves. You have to get the balance right.
“And the Eucharist heals us. So what has intrigued me about it has been trying to see how and what it was balancing, that it can be such a healing thing.
“Now, you probably recall, from your studies of St Augustine—um… the African one—that he taught his catechumens, when they received the bread, the host of the Eucharist, to respond to the words ‘The body of Christ’ by saying ‘Amen,’ as we all do. But he told them, ‘Let your Amen be for I am.’
“See? ‘I am the body of Christ.’ That’s… quite momentous. But it’s true enough. We—you, me, all of us together—we are the body of Christ.
“So let’s think about this a bit. Jesus, at the Last Supper, when he tore the bread to pieces, said to his disciples, ‘This is my body, broken for you. Do this to remember me.’
“Do what? Not just consecrate bread and wine, eat and drink, as he did; I think he meant more than that. I think he meant that we should gather as they did, that we should share as they did, that we should hold together and walk the way in faithfulness as they did, eat together, pray together, discuss together.
“But of course, as soon as we do this, what do we notice? Before very long it becomes apparent to us that this bunch of brothers is immensely annoying. You sit in silent meditation and the man next to you keeps holding his breath and then letting it go in a sigh—every couple of minutes, until you think ‘Oh, shut up, you idiot! Just breathe normally!’ You sit at the meal table and try to focus on the reading from the martyrology as you’ve been told, but you can’t because the brother beside you is bashing his dish so vigorously as he scrapes out his pottage that you can’t hear what the reader is saying, and you think, ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—what’s the matter with you, man? Do it quietly!’ And then you sit down in your stall at Vespers, and you have this little tickle in your throat that makes you keep clearing it, and you’re trying to be discreet, but you suddenly catch the eye of the man opposite you, and you think ‘What? What’s his problem? I’m doing my best!’
“Living in community isn’t easy, especially when the only material for the job is us lot.
“There are people we can’t stand the sight of, men we’re afraid of, brothers we’re frankly jealous of, and some who make us feel so inadequate we wonder if the place wouldn’t be better off without us.
“The body of Christ—yes, we may be; broken, we certainly are. And we may be limping along to begin with, but when Christ takes us into his hands he breaks us again—tears us to shreds at times. He has to grab hold of our pride… arrogance… contempt… cynicism… hardheartedness… He has to break those things up, or there would never be any humility, no compassion, no gratitude.
“So the body of Christ is broken—in the bread, on the cross, and in the community; it’s dismembered, it isn’t well. That word ‘well’—it’s an old word, and it means the same as ‘whole’.
“And what Jesus is saying—at least, I think this is what he’s saying—is that as we gather together like this, suffer him to break us like this, then Christ, who has been dismembered in crucifixion and in sin, is re-membered in our gathering, made whole in our community, in our communion. Comm-union, comm-unity: they mean being as one together, being reconciled in a fellowship of humility and forgiveness. The brokenness of his body (and we are his body) is healed in our love, in our common life—which is his love, his life, in us.
“So—do you see? There is a balance. We are made whole in Christ, but also—I hardly dare to say it—Christ is made whole in us.
“When we refuse to love and accept one another, when we break the communion of love, we dismember the body of Christ. When we come here in the Mass, embrace each other humbly and honestly in the kiss of peace, kneel in humility to receive Christ’s body in the host, a miracle of healing happens. When the brokenness of Christ’s body touches the brokenness of our souls, the blood of his love flows from one to the other, mingling our life with his. We become one body, one blood with Him. We are accepted. We are forgiven. We are healed.
“It’s about maintaining a state of balance in the community as a body—like breathing in and breathing out—the humility to receive from him and the generosity to give of ourselves. Wellness can happen because life balances for healing again as we remember him.”
Brother Robert, probably the least promising of Theodore’s novices, listened to this, rapt. He had absolutely no idea what his abbot was talking about, but he liked Father John. He sensed his
kindness, and his strength. In the short time he’d been in the novitiate he had watched his abbot battered to his knees by grief and distress, and watched him get up again and carry on. He thought Father John probably knew what it meant to be broken.
In the silence for reflection the abbot left before they moved on, Brother Robert looked at the faces of his brethren in community. Father Theodore, his face gentle and still, sat with his eyes closed. Brother Thomas was evidently bothered by a splinter in his thumb, which he was trying to get out. The abbot himself sat with eyes downcast, motionless, his hands folded into his sleeves. Brother Robert’s eye lighted on the cellarer—or was he the cellarer? Wasn’t Brother Ambrose the cellarer? Anyway, the man who had come to the community just a few months back during Lent. Father William. Intrigued, Robert looked at the tense, hard lines of his face: composed, yes. Peaceful? Not at all. He gave the impression of simply enduring being alive, and Brother Robert wondered why. Wasn’t he happy here?
How do people know when someone is watching them? William glanced up quickly, straight into Robert’s eyes, and for a moment the young man felt suddenly frightened, for no real reason at all, just the look in William’s eyes, which scared him. And then the community stood for the Credo.
The Eucharist was the heart and soul of the way these men had chosen, and it sat as a central jewel within the setting of the monastic hours. Lauds and Vespers, the cardinal offices (named after cardo, the word for a hinge), opened and closed the central working hours of the day. Compline folded their tired minds and bodies under the wing of God’s silence at bedtime. The night office was the mysterious trysting hour that kept watch with the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps. The offices of Sext and None reminded them that they took their meal only after they had prayed, and that the work of their lives was their focus on God, not the occupation of their hands in their various tasks—those must be set aside when they heard the bell ring for the Office, however pressing or absorbing the task had become.
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