John was not breathing like a man at peace, but he let him speak.
“You are thinking we spent the night in her bed; well, we did not. I held her. I kissed her. I stayed there an hour. I was just desperate, John; I was going out of my mind with it. I thought if we had that one hour, I could bear it—lay it to rest.”
“If you thought that, you must be more of an idiot than you look! How long have you been a monk? Do you think someone who’d been a postulant only a fortnight couldn’t have told you better than that?”
William nodded. “Of course, they could. Of course, I was fooling myself, telling myself what I wanted to believe. Even before I left her house that night I realized what I’d done. If it makes you feel any better to know it, oh God, I’ve suffered for it. If I thought I longed for her before, that was nothing to how I felt after that hour. Anyway, Mother Cottingham saw me leave the close. She asked me about it. So I told her. I begged her to keep silence for us because I knew you’d turn us out if it was known. And bless her—she did keep our secret. Since that night, I kissed Madeleine again once; only once. And I took her in my arms, for she’d been weeping, one time in these last weeks. And that’s all, John, and I’m truly sorry, for I did deceive you. At least—that’s all we physically did, but for sure we went on loving one another. I tried to stop, I tried to renounce it, but I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. I could only pray to find a way for us to be together. But there was no arrangement with Mother Cottingham. I had told her about the money I lost, but this will came as a complete surprise to us. She believed in our love. She wanted it to have its day. And when I asked you to let me go, I was not for one moment entertaining the notion you’d let either of us stay here once this was known. My brother—please—are you listening to me?”
John’s eyes looked like two black holes glaring back at him, hostile and full of contempt.
“Go on.”
“When I first came to this place, there was so much anger, and all of it deserved, all of my own making. I’ve made hatred in the world by the way I’ve behaved. But I knew if I could find my way to Columba’s house, I would find a shelter in Christ’s mercy; he would hold his cloak over me.”
“Who? Peregrine or Christ?”
William looked at him. “Yes,” he said softly. “Exactly. I’ve worn Columba’s cloak, and I have been sheltered, and was it the Master or the man? Both, I think. You made a way in for me, and you have been so good to me. I’ve never had a vocation. I’ve told you that before. Though the monastic way suited me well enough, I used it to my own advantage. But you—all of you: Michael, Tom, Conradus, Theodore, James, you yourself—you’ve stood up for me and spread your kindness over me. I shall never forget, never. I came here full of fear and cynicism, and I’d hardly been in the place a few days when I realized I’d come to learn how to love. I found myself kneeling to kiss Tom’s feet and begging him to teach me how to love. And it hasn’t been an easy lesson—by heaven it has not! I’ve thought it was going to kill me at times, the growing inside me of love. Clothed in Columba’s habit day by day, that is what I’ve learned and what’s happened to me. By inches, Christ opened me up. And then there was Madeleine, and now I am wide open. I have no defenses anymore. I love her so much, John, I really do. I love her so much.
“And I’ve come to understand that when you love someone, you don’t bind them to you; you set them free. The loving itself sets them free. If we are possessive or selfish or unkind or full of hate, we build prisons. We bind the people we hate to ourselves with cords like twisted metal; they gnaw into us so we can never get them free of us. I hated Columba, and he worked into me like a painful splinter. I couldn’t shake him off no matter what. But now I’ve learned to love him, and he has released me, not only from what I did but from all the horrible consequences of it. It’s over. I’m forgiven. I’m free.
“I hope when you’ve had time to take all this in, and a few months have gone by, you might countenance the idea of being friends again. I hope you’ll come and visit us in our home. I hope if you run into difficulties with the accounts and everything, you’ll come and ask for my help—and if you do, my help will be so gladly and gratefully given, for I owe my life to you. But—I hardly dare say this to you—in the meantime I need you to truly let me go. And by that I mean I need you to let me go with understanding and kindness and humility, and then I will be free. If you stay angry with me, you will bind me with guilt and the resentment that goes with it so that I cannot be free of you, or you of me, even if you throw me out. And I am done with anger and hate. I want no part in it anymore. I came here to learn to love, and I have learned my lesson. Please let me go. Please let me go to where love is leading me. John… please.”
John rubbed his forehead, tired and confused and upset as his rage subsided. “I don’t know what to say,” he responded eventually, avoiding William’s eyes. “You betrayed me,” he muttered.
William leaned forward in his chair. “I’m honestly sorry, John. Please forgive me. I haven’t handled this whole thing well. Please understand—I’m not making excuses. I did try to keep faith with you. There were those two times when I kissed her, but, oh Lord, the nights I’ve lain awake in despair, the days I’ve trudged through not knowing how I would make it from one minute to the next—trying to be faithful because you deserved that. But now there is a chance for this love, that’s ached and festered inside me in raw agony, to come true in my life. Please let me go. Please don’t curse it and blight it and bind me to you here with hate and anger.”
And as he listened to him, John saw what he meant. He sat in silence a little while longer, then said, though he still couldn’t bring himself to look at William, “You can find yourself some clothes in the almonry store. You can take some money—enough to tide you over until you make your own arrangements, whatever you need. I cannot dispense you from your vows—you know that—because you are solemnly professed. Nobody can dispense you; it is between you and God. All you can do is marry Madeleine in defiance of your vows—and then they are in suspension unless, for example if you are widowed, you seek pardon and reinstatement. There is no clean way of doing this; you just have to go. If you keep your head down and do not advertise your identity and manage to live without attracting the attention of the ecclesiastical courts, you may hope to be not important enough to make yourself worth excommunicating. Shave your head completely so you will not advertise your history with your tonsure. Grow a beard. Be who you choose to be, and answer questions as you wish. The cellarer’s work has introduced you to a wide range of people. You cannot hope to be unrecognized. But you can live quietly, without attracting more notice than is necessary—at least, I think you can, though what I’ve seen of you so far makes me not entirely confident of that. Go in peace then. Yes, you do have my blessing, both of you. If all of Christ’s way is a way of love, perhaps you have a vocation after all. Maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong place for the last thirty years.”
William relaxed, gratitude and relief shining from his face. John still wouldn’t meet his eyes.
In the years he had presided over St Dunstan’s as its prior, William had often enough been in the place in which John now stood, as a man’s vocation ran dry and he asked to leave. He knew the territory well enough. No goodbyes, no latitude given, no time. He would be expected to leave now, since that’s what he had asked for and got, without speaking to any of the brothers, no explanations, no farewells. It was a shameful thing. He went in disgrace. To turn aside from a vow made to God is a sacrilege. Such a course could never be condoned. William clung gratefully to John’s willingness to say he gave the two of them his blessing, for he stepped out of every tradition of the Church in so doing.
The two men rose from their chairs. “John, will you… will you give me the kiss of peace?” William asked him humbly.
John stood quite still for a moment, and William felt his struggle, the turmoil of mixed emotions that had grown out of this parting tumbling and knotting like a n
est of adders. Then without speaking, John stepped forward and embraced him, hugged him tight, with the desperate courage of a man who must press an iron spike into the vulnerable tissue of his heart. “Peace be with you,” he whispered, “my brother, my friend. And I didn’t mean what I said about taking the lash to your back. I’m sorry I said it. Others have been there before me. You’ve been beaten enough for one lifetime.”
As he felt the gentleness of William’s embrace, even in that difficult, painful moment, John knew that in the course of this last year he had witnessed a miracle. He dimly grasped that if he could see this through with compassion, conduct himself with the understanding and grace of Christ instead of the stern coldness of ecclesiastical authority or the hot indignation of a man who has been deceived, he had the chance to allow the miracle to be made complete.
He kissed him—one cheek, then the other cheek—and releasing him, he looked into his eyes and saw the love and gratitude that he knew would be what he remembered in the end, and he could not be angry anymore.
“I’ll come with you to the checker to get you some money,” he said. “It might be better if it’s me signs it out of the book.”
Together they left the abbot’s house by the door leading into the abbey court, and they walked across to the checker. Brother Conradus, returning from the guesthouse to the kitchen, saw them and waved cheerfully.
“May I speak to him? He’s always been so good to me, and I haven’t always treated him with the appreciation he deserved.”
“No, you may not,” John replied. “You should have thought of that before. That’s the point of being nice to people. You never know when you won’t get another chance. And you’ve made your decision; now you’re going to have to live with it. You can’t say goodbye to anyone, and you know that full well.”
William said nothing. He did know, but the full impact of that knowledge had not made itself felt until he saw Conradus and had to pass him by. They walked on. When they reached the checker, William halted a few feet from the door. “Please don’t make me go in,” he said unsteadily, and John then saw the tears on his face and realized how much this wrenching apart was costing him. “I don’t think I can face Ambrose. Please can I stay outside?”
John hesitated. “All right, wait for me here,” he said, thinking it would in any case save awkward questions from Brother Ambrose, and went by himself into the building. William waited for him, leaning against the rough stone of the checker wall, tears cold on his face in the wind and bleak, pale sunshine of this December day, accepting the reality of what it meant to leave the abbey. He felt empty and sick and cold. He had been a monk since he was nineteen years old. Suddenly the thought of leaving the security of the Rule and the rhythms of life, the safety and strength of a community, seemed terrifying. He had no idea what kind of a husband he would make, no idea if this dream would deliver the joy and fulfillment the fantasy promised. He had never been a householder. He didn’t know if he would still be vulnerable to the violence of rough justice outside the monastery. He knew he loved John, and he found the distance that must be put between them unbearable. Will this never end? he asked himself. People being angry with me and telling me I’m no good… people hating me and despising me… contempt… getting everything wrong… being afraid and full of shame… will there never come a day when it’s different? In a miserable attempt to pull himself together, he felt for his handkerchief and rubbed the tears away, but they kept on coming.
As he waited for John, he reflected on the generosity with which the community had eventually enfolded him, and he felt bitterly ashamed to be turning his back on that. He could see that a man who wants to be accepted and included has to stay in one place, that the Benedictine vow of stability was the cornerstone of the monastic vision. But then, there was Madeleine. A merchant went in search of fine pearls, the Gospel said, and when one day he found a pearl of great price, he gave everything he had to possess it. William could identify with that. His whole life had been about shrewd assessment and cool evaluation, as a merchant’s is. And then, like the desert blooming under a rare fall of rain, his heart had woken up; he had found what he was looking for, and he wanted Madeleine enough to give up everything else. But what if the dream went sour?
John came out of the checker with a bag of money. He looked at William and hesitated. “For mercy’s sake, look at you! I think you and I need to go somewhere a bit more private than this before you’re ready to walk out of the gate,” he said.
“Thank you,” said William wretchedly, his voice shaky. “Yes, please.”
John sighed, a little impatiently. “Oh, come on; you’d better come back to my house until you can get a grip on yourself. Just look at you!”
So they trudged back the way they had come, and John opened the door of the lodge and silently stood aside for William to go in.
“Sit down,” said John. Underneath the roughness of his exasperation, William felt the kindness of concern. “Can I get you anything? Would you like a cup of wine to steady you? You look as if you’ve hit rock bottom.”
William shook his head. “I don’t want to be drinking. If ever there was a moment to think clearly, it has to be this. I think I’ve shed more tears in this last year than in the whole of the rest of my life put together. I don’t know what it is about this place.”
“Really? You don’t know what it is?” John’s eyes bored into him, challenging him to a better honesty than that.
“’Tis Jesus,” William mumbled in answer. “’Tis the Spirit of Jesus.”
“Yes! That’s what I think too. And you’re sure you want to throw that away? You’re sure the privilege of being part of what we’re doing here doesn’t matter to you? William, do you really want this? Look at yourself ! Tears pouring down your face—by’r Lady you look as if you’d just lost everything! Are you quite sure you want to go? It isn’t that you’ve made a promise you didn’t mean and feel you can’t back out of it now?”
William shook his head no. “John, words aren’t enough to tell you how I feel about Madeleine. She completes me. She makes sense of my life.” He took a deep breath and managed to steady his voice. “It’s been a long time finding it, but I feel as though this is what I came here to do. The love between us has been like the first wick green shoots of dog’s mercury in the hedgerow at the end of a long winter—a flash of new life when everything else is sere and drab. It’s not about excitement or satisfying a lust of the body; it’s about being able to be who I was meant to be and trusting someone enough to let her see who I am without being afraid. Well—not very afraid. She gets behind my defenses, without even trying. She just sees me.”
John listened intently, his face serious and thoughtful, saying after a while, when William had blown his nose and dried the tears from his face, “I suppose I should be grateful there is someone to take care of my sister, one who loves her that much. I thought it was enough for her to be safe here, but I should have seen more, I suppose. If celibacy is not a calling, it can be a terrible deprivation. To live alone, without the companionship of marriage, family, or community, is a hard sentence for someone who is not called to it. Some people are not whole without a life partner. I think I would not be whole without the community. Vocation encompasses your whole life. It’s about what completes you. And you and Madeleine—you think you complete each other?”
William nodded. “Almost. Not quite. It’s not complete without your forgiveness, John. And I… we shall be living only ten miles down the road. I would have liked to come to Mass here, or to Vespers sometimes, but… would it—would I—be welcome?”
John sighed deeply and shut his eyes. “Dear heaven; you do push it, don’t you! Anyway, I thought I had forgiven you.”
“You embraced me with courage. I appreciate that more than I can say. But you and Madeleine—I love you both. It tears me apart to have to choose. Leaving here feels like being skinned alive; that’s bad enough by itself. But the idea of the door of your heart shutting behin
d me as I go…”
He shook his head, the words trailing away into silence, his face crumpling again.
John looked at him. “You know, you still remind me of Peregrine. You’ve got the same awful nose to get at the truth of a thing where any sensibly cautious individual would just leave it and let it work its own way through. He was just the same. Well, here it is then. We are friends, you and I. You might think I have forgotten who upheld me and went with me through my own bitter valley. It’s not uppermost in my mind at the present time, but I have not forgotten. There is a bond. We are friends. And that is Christ’s gift; it is a sacramental thing. These odd circumstances where soul touches soul are Eucharistic. Christ whispers, Remember me, and in these encounters where two people bring who they really are to meet in defenceless honesty, his real presence is found. It is a Eucharist, Christ’s kiss.
“What about you anyway? Have you forgiven me? You have begged me for my forgiveness, but I think you must have had some hard thoughts about me pass through your mind in this long desert you’ve been walking—forbidden to see Madeleine, forbidden to let your bond with me grow into a friendship that would exclude others. Am I forgiven too?”
William was shaking his head. “No. That’s not how it is. I honour you for your strength of purpose and for standing back enough to see when things are off balance. And for trusting me to keep to my word that I would stay clear of Madeleine. I have nothing to forgive. I love you, John.”
Intrigued, John looked at him. “Do you know, nobody but you has ever said that to me in my whole life—with the possible exception of my mother. How strange. Thank you, William. Thank you very much. One more thing then. You have never lived with women, have you? I think you had no brothers and sisters—am I right?”
William nodded in affirmation.
“And you have lived the whole of your life from the end of your boyhood in a community of men. William, it’s different living with women. Are you sure you’re ready for it? Women are not the same as we are. I may have lived here for all my adult life, but I’ve certainly not forgotten what living with my mother and my sister was like. And you may take it from me that however dear they may be to you, women are surely not easy to live with. A man may do his level best to please them, and he still won’t get it right. They ask you to make a stew and you set to it—and then they taste it and say, ‘What did you season this with? Oh.’ And they smile, and you can see you got it wrong. And you go to the market for them and toil up the hill with a great basket of provisions and they go through it all while you stand and watch—and every time they look surprised and a bit put out. You got the wrong kind, the wrong size, the wrong amount; it’s always the same! And women—intelligent women—can somehow never let anything go. You have an argument, and past sundown you’ll be hearing reasons why she’s right and you’re not. You upset her and have to stand and hear a recital of every character flaw you have and that you’re always like this. At the end of every spat you feel chastened and ashamed and wonder how they can put up with you in the noble and long-suffering way they do. The marriage bed may look attractive from the cloister, but monastic life looks like heaven sometimes to a married man. Are you sure this is what you want? I tell you now, you fall out with Madeleine and she won’t kneel and kiss the ground and beg your forgiveness—more likely she’ll slap your face!”
Remember Me Page 18
