“We haven’t a proper mattress, but I’ve made one from bracken and heather from the moor for now,” said Madeleine as they came into the only furnished bedroom. “But Adam said I could bring the sheepskins. I haven’t purchased much, but I did buy the linen to make the mattress, and two sheets and a blanket. I got the best price I could, but it was a lot—I hope you don’t think I’ve been extravagant.” She looked at him anxiously.
He smiled at her and kissed her cheek. “What else could you do? We can make shift with heather and bracken very well, as you say, for now. Once we have the birds, we can save the feathers until we have enough for a mattress.”
“William…” She hesitated. “What are we—when are we—do you know—when will we be able to be wed?”
He raised his eyebrows, and his gaze held hers, teasing. “Wed? Were you thinking we would be wed?”
But he dropped a kiss on her brow before she could entertain any serious doubt of his intentions. “Nay, if you will have me, my lady, your good brother has been more generous than I could ever have expected. He will marry us with a license to waive the need for banns—this coming Saturday, in the afternoon, he said. We are to meet him at the lych-gate of Holy Redeemer.”
“Brother Conradus.”
The novices had finished their lessons for the morning, stacked the Gospels and the various texts of the Desert Fathers away neatly on the shelves, and begun to make their way down to chapel for the midday office. Conradus sometimes helped in the kitchen in the mornings too, but Father Theodore remained firm upon the point that he did actually have to learn something sometimes, and he had been in the novitiate schoolroom all this morning. On his way to the door with the others, standing back to make room for Brother Benedict to go ahead of him, he turned in response to his novice master quietly speaking his name.
“Yes, Father?”
“Will you wait just a moment. I wanted to ask you something.”
Conradus came back to where Theodore still sat in his place in their circle, watching the young men filter out of the room. He always prayed for each one as they went through the door.
“Come and sit down. I won’t keep you but a minute.”
Conradus sat beside him, and his novice master waited peacefully until all the others had gone. Brother Robert, the last out, looked back questioningly: should he close the door? And Theodore nodded—yes, please—so he latched it quietly behind him.
“What’s the matter, Brother Conradus?” asked Theodore then.
Brother Conradus looked instantly alarmed. “I’m sorry!” he said quickly. “Have I been remiss? Was I looking sullen?”
Theodore smiled. Sometimes it hurt Conradus that almost everything he said seemed to make people laugh, even when he was in earnest, when he was telling them the most heartfelt truth. He comforted himself with the reminder that those who afford others a reason for laughter, who are somehow of themselves a kind of joke, are part of the leaven of righteousness that keeps life from getting heavy and sad. But he couldn’t see why his reply had caused his novice master amusement.
“You have not behaved badly, Brother Conradus. You just look a bit glum—and cheerful is your normal mode of being. What’s wrong?”
Conradus sighed. He looked perplexed now. “The thing is, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this, Father.”
“You probably are. I am your novice master and your confessor. You can say what you like.”
“Well, then, it’s Father William. I knew he was unhappy—really unhappy. I told Father John he was. There was a day during the summer when I accidentally came upon him up in the wood. He’d gone there to find some privacy, I suppose, and I’d gone up just for a stroll. And when I found him there, he was crouched on the ground weeping—really sobbing. He was angry to be disturbed and had a few choice words to say to me—he came to find me later and apologized to me—but I could never put it out of my mind after that. He was so very unhappy. I prayed for him every day, and not knowing what to pray for I asked Our Lady for help. And—I told Father Abbot this—the words came into my mind to pray that he would have the courage to keep the flower of his love alive through this winter, for it would have its time in the sun. So that is what I have prayed for, day after day after day. But he never looked any happier, and now I see he has gone. I know I can’t ask; I’m not prying. I just feel so sad and disappointed that my prayers were never answered. He gave up without ever getting past December; he didn’t struggle through the winter to see that time in the sun.”
Theodore digested this in silence, wondering how much, if anything, he could say.
“I’m sorry, Father,” said Conradus. “I do know I’m not supposed to mention him.”
“This is difficult,” Theodore said slowly, “but I can tell you this much: your prayers have not gone unanswered. He had the courage. He kept it alive. It has its time in the sun. You can give thanks. And he would be touched and grateful to know you had prayed so faithfully, for it was very hard going for him at times. That’s all I can say to you, apart from that it’s worth bearing in mind that many of our prayers are answered beyond the horizon of our sight—but that’s a limitation of what we can see, not the failure of our faith or our prayer.”
“He’s—he’s all right then?” Theo watched the young man’s eyes brighten with hope and relief.
“I believe so,” said Theodore. “I really cannot tell you anything more than that.”
“But we’ve only this week begun Advent. We haven’t gone through the winter.”
Theodore looked at him with a certain amount of wonder. The realm of thought and philosophy was his natural medium, and it never failed to surprise him how opaque that realm could be to the literal-minded.
“I think,” he said, “Our Lady may have been speaking figuratively.”
“Sweetheart; we are man and wife now. We are safe in the privacy of our own chamber. Here I am, in my own skin. I know it’s chill, but might you not think of removing your shift? I give you my word, I’ll keep you warm!”
Madeleine, sitting on the edge of the bed brushing her hair far more thoroughly and for longer than was necessary, paused and looked round at him.
“To be honest with you, I’m shy,” she admitted in a small voice. “I’ve never done this before. And I think if I still had the body of a girl I’d be proud and excited, but…”
“Yes?” he prompted her softly.
“I am a mature woman, William. I am no longer beautiful.”
He moved across the bed and knelt behind her, put his arms around her, buried his face in the heavy fall of her dark hair streaked with silver, pushed it aside, and kissed her neck.
“Will you let me be the judge of that? Will being beautiful to me be beautiful enough? And can I ask you, am I beautiful to you?”
She twisted around toward him, hasty to reassure.
“You are! You are lovely. Every inch of you.”
“Well, shall I tell you something? A month or so back your good brother told me I am nothing but a bundle of bones. He said my face looks hard and drawn and lined. Desperate, he said. He told me I’d aged and had a grim, dusty look to me. He said the whole light about me is grey, whatever he meant by that. And he concluded by telling me my eyes are red and that’s the only colour left in me. Now, my best beloved, what do you think I felt?”
“Hurt, I should think. It doesn’t sound very kind.”
“John is always kind. He was trying to make me eat and rest more. And no, I didn’t feel hurt, I felt terrified—so frightened I felt sick, lest the day should come when you and I had our chance, and you looked at me and didn’t want me anymore. And do you want me?”
“Oh, my sweetheart!”
She scrambled up onto the bed to hold him in her arms. “Of course I want you! You are beautiful. You are adorable.”
“Well, I am also the man your brother described. So even if under that nightdress you have the body of a woman of ninety, we shall be a good match. Therefore, of your charity, wi
ll you not take it off? Look, we have only the remains of the fire and one candle burning here. It’s a kindly light, but if you want I can blow the candle out, and we will make love by starlight and ember glow.”
Madeleine hesitated still. “Yes,” she said, “will you do that?”
So he crawled across and took his time blowing out the candle that stood on the chest beside the head of the bed, and when he turned back, she knelt shy on the bed, dressed in only her long fall of silver-streaked dark hair, mysterious and lovely in the moonlight.
“Oh, my dear!” he whispered and held out his arms to her, and she crept into his embrace.
He held her tenderly, feeling her tension. “Are you afraid?” he asked her, his lips leaving light kisses on her brow.
“Awkward, more,” she said. “I am not used to this intimacy.”
“Nay; well, there wasn’t much of it in a monastery either. We can get over that. The time will come when we are just easy with each other, but there is no way to arrive there without getting used to one another—there has to be a first time. I am more concerned that you have been hurt, you have been violated, and I think you might be afraid. So I want you to know—” like a constellation of stars barely there in the evening sky, she felt his kisses on her cheek, her throat, her ear “—that it will always be gentle with me; never rough, never demanding. And if you say ‘stop’, then we stop.”
And he held her quietly, waiting for her response. “I am not afraid,” she said. “I feel that I can trust you absolutely. I believe that you love me. And though I have lost all the beauty of my youth, for some reason I cannot fathom you do seem to find me desirable.”
She felt his lips curve in a smile against her cheek. “Well… as to that,” he murmured, “I don’t wish to be too cocky in my presumption, but I’ve a cheery hope rising that all will be well. Come, my love, believe in this. Believe in us.”
And in the beautiful rhythms of tenderness and trust, letting defenses melt away, finding delight and, deeper, discovering exquisite pleasure in surrender to this love that finally had its day, they consummated their marriage. Patient and tender. Light and slow.
Their bodies entwined together, folded in the peaceful, grateful afterglow of love, all hunger satisfied, they fell asleep. And the stars watched over them, and the silver moon.
“D’you miss William?”
This sudden question came from Brother Thomas, who had lit the fire for his abbot on this dismal, freezing day between Christmas and the New Year and now sat in one of the chairs at the hearthside, a capacious cloth spread over his lap, rubbing grease into John’s boots.
Abbot John did not respond immediately, but the stillness Tom’s words brought signalled that he had heard. John frowned. When a man left the community, he was not discussed. His name was never mentioned again. That was the custom. Tom knew that.
For a moment, John considered simply not replying and leaving the matter to the tradition of silence. But on consideration he recognized that he and Tom and William had formed a strange triangle—William’s unexpected arrival, complete with a personality it was impossible to accommodate in any kind of tranquil manner, had got between the abbot and his esquire. John thought on reflection that the question was fair and needed to be asked. So he looked up from the preparation for his catechetics class. Tom was not waiting for an answer; he was calmly continuing to polish the boots.
“Assuredly I miss him,” said John. “No dramas in Chapter. No hangings. No illicit love affairs. No shipwrecks. No sudden reversals of fortune. The place isn’t the same without him.”
Tom smiled. “Yes. He shook us up a bit. He didn’t belong here. I think the abbey spat him out something like the whale spat Jonah out. He gave the whole building a bellyache. But it wasn’t a waste of time, was it? I learned to see him differently—all of what happened while he was here taught me that you can’t always tell; there are two sides to everything, and people aren’t always what they seem. I try to remember that now in my dealings with everyone. Even when someone seems completely bloody-minded and I’m losing my patience fast. I think back to the way William behaved toward Father Peregrine and then where we got to in the end, and I don’t give up on the men I can’t see eye to eye with, as once I might have done. He found out who he was, too, didn’t he? He was called to be a householder—a married man—not a monk. I’m assuming he went with Madeleine. It was clear enough to see he was head over heels in love with her when you brought her back here. And I’m guessing—stop me if this is impertinent and not welcome—that you put a stop to that, because something was snuffed out in him in midsummer. When you came back with Oswald, he was luminous. I don’t know what happened there. But in Madeleine’s company, he was different again—he was… purely happy, I think. Not a holy thing; just ordinary human happiness, something he wanted and couldn’t help reaching out for. I felt so sorry for him at the time because it could obviously only end in tears, in short order too, and so it did. And since then all the light, all the happiness, they’ve been gone. He looked more haunted every day. If he had a chance to find that happiness he lost, well, God bless him. You can’t be in community if it’s become a living purgatory for you.”
He put the boot down and picked up the other one. “Is this all right? Am I speaking out of turn?”
He glanced up at his abbot, who was listening to him quietly.
“Yes, you are, and you know it; but yes, it’s all right,” said John.
“Speaking out of turn is how I know it’s you.”
Tom smiled. “Yes. When William asked me to teach him how to love, I asked him in return to teach me to think before I speak, and he said he thought that would be impossible. You know, I’m glad he came. I’m glad we had this time. He did learn how to love, albeit not quite what we had in mind. But it wasn’t only Madeleine; he loved us too—loved the whole place, even the wood and the stones and the store chests—perhaps especially those! He loved you, Father. He was devoted to you. I’m guessing it must have been a hard choice to leave, even for Madeleine.”
“Not a hard choice, I think,” said John thoughtfully. “Not really a choice at all. She had his heart, and a man has to be where his heart is. But he said it felt like being skinned alive to leave us.”
“Did he?” Tom chuckled. “That’s my lad: understated and sanguine to the last!”
He set down the greasy cloth and picked up the dry one for buffing.
“Well, I think for all it was a bit like lightning making a direct hit on the house—we learned a lot, and so did he. I’m glad we had Oswald here too, and that he knew some comfort and kindness for a while—besides, I’d never realized before what an important organ the tongue is! I assumed it was just for speaking—never gave it a moment’s thought beyond that. I never knew a man would die without his tongue. And I’m glad Madeleine came—that she had a chance at having a man of her own and being a married woman—and that some healing came there, for those terrible things that befell her and your mother. And if your mother still watches over us, I’ll wager she had a hand in that healing. I’m glad about the shipwreck, too. I reckon it taught William that all the tricksy, clever dodges he set so much store by are not to be trusted, and they are neither the way of Christ nor the way of well-being. It’s Mammon, all that wheeling and dealing. The ways of Christ are open and simple. And again and again he learned here that nobody can earn love, forgiveness, understanding; those are gifts, it’s in their nature to be freely given. It cost him dear, learning that. He’s never got rid of the tic in his face that began the day he had to come and tell us in Chapter about the money. Had it ever since.”
He swapped the boots again and began buffing the second one.
“I’ve taken a lot of lessons from this time. One of the things I’ve had to learn is that I couldn’t be possessive about you—but that didn’t cut into me as deep as the same lesson cut into him. He got very close to you, didn’t he? And I’m guessing you put a stop to that too, and that hurt him badly. On
ly guessing, but … anyway … there wasn’t a day passed without something that hurt him or was taken away from him, or that he had to accept he’d got all wrong—except when he was crossing all the boundaries and making up a new Rule of his own. He was not made for community, that man. But, Father—” Tom put down the boot, finished, alongside its mate, and looked up at his abbot “—I hope you will permit him still to be our friend.”
John lifted his eyebrows. “Did he speak to you about that?”
“No. He never spoke to any of us about anything, as far as I know. Most of what we know about William was by conjecture. I think he only ever talked to you.”
John nodded. “Well, he did ask if he might come here to church and if we could stay friends. I was feeling a bit raw at the time, and in any case I think there has to be a space. In a year, I said, he could come back to us for Mass, provided he accepts he can’t receive the Sacrament. And I shall see them—Madeleine is my sister, after all. I… I don’t know if I should be telling you this, but I will. I married them two weeks ago. They seemed very happy.”
Tom smiled. “Christus victor,” he said. “Here’s your boots, Father.”
It was very cold, with the fire out, when the sun came up that winter morning. Frost flowers jostled thick on the window glass. William felt profoundly grateful the house had been kept up to date and at some point the windows had been glazed. Madeleine lay fast asleep still, but he, attuned to monastic hours, had lain awake some time. He didn’t move. He didn’t want to wake her. In the abbey they would just about be finishing Lauds now, probably, he thought. He prayed in thanksgiving and consecration for this new day, and he smelt the frost in the air. His breath hung as cloudy as smoke when he exhaled. He turned his head and, for a while, looked at Madeleine’s tumbled hair and features quiet in sleep. He thought he could see different things in her while she was sleeping, and that interested him.
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