The Wounds of God

by Penelope Wilcock

  It was a long time since Brother Francis had occasion to build a fire. Dry sticks and cones over a twist of dried grass. Some rosemary twigs cut in the summer saved for the sweet-smelling winter kindling, that catches well. Then the little apple logs, gnarled and speckled with blue lichen. An old candle stump on top of the pile to encourage it along.

  Father Peregrine watched him. I like him, he thought. His bearing is composed but modest. Yes, there’s no swagger to him. Alert, intelligent face and plenty of humour there. Well, he needs that, no doubt. It’s not an easy life. The abbot felt a bit like Pilate, looking for a fault and finding none, saying desperately to the Jews, ‘But I find nothing wrong in this man.’ There was a little nervousness about him maybe, a certain tension around his shoulders and neck, and his fingernails were well bitten. Having got his little fire going, he sat back on the hearthstone and looked up at Father Peregrine. The ready smile that caused Father Matthew such foreboding flashed a bit too quickly maybe, but then… being required to discuss his vocation with his superior was unlikely to set him at his ease.

  ‘There, you’ve made a better job of it than I would have. Sit for a while and enjoy the warmth now. I’ll not keep you too long. Brother Clement will be missing you in the scriptorium.’

  Brother Francis laughed. ‘Yes, like a headache, I should think.’

  ‘Does he dislike you? He has never complained of you.’

  ‘It is my illumination work that is his sorest trial. “Will you look at the knowing smirk you’ve done on the face of Our Lady, Brother Francis,” he says to me, and, “What is this monstrous being here? Is it an angel with this lewd wink and cunning leer? For shame, Brother, it is a holy thing you’ve rendered thus like a brutish yokel in a tavern, three parts drunk!”’

  Peregrine was laughing in spite of himself at Brother Francis’ exact mimicry of Brother Clement’s refined dismay. Francis grinned at him.

  ‘No, he bids me stick to flowers now, for flowers have no expressions to disgrace their faces. I doubt if he sighs much over my absence this morning. He must think the good Lord has given him an unexpected holiday.’

  Father Peregrine shook his head. ‘I must see these works of art for myself one day. I remember him speaking of a thing of the Last Judgement you had painted that went somehow amiss.’

  ‘Oh that, yes. He had me erase it and give it to Brother Theodore to finish in the end. I thought it was coming on quite well. I’d meant to paint a scowling devil glaring over the souls of the damned, and I was thinking of Brother Cormac first thing in the morning when Father Matthew berates him for his Latin; and it was shaping quite well I thought, black-browed and a kind of ugly look in his eye, but Brother Clement didn’t like it at all. “It looks like an Irish pedlar with the belly-ache!” he exclaimed, which made me smile, because I’d got it more true than I intended. “And what is this simpering Christ like a silly lass sighing for her sweetheart? Brother, no more! Your lettering is adequate, but these caricatures give me a pain,” he said. Yes, that was my Last Judgement.’

  He laughed and looked into the fire, pushed the little logs together and watched the sparks fly. Peregrine could see that his conversation would not be to Father Matthew’s taste. ‘Apart from your disasters in the scriptorium, how are you finding the life, my son?’ he asked him.

  Brother Francis smiled. ‘When I’m not too hungry to raise my thoughts above my belly, I get a glimpse of heaven now and then.’

  ‘You don’t have enough to eat?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it really, no, no. The food here is good, and it drives us to prayer, you know—“Of your goodness, dear Lord, have Brother Andrew make the bread today and restrict Cormac to the vegetables.” Left alone in the pantry I should eat more, I confess it; but no, I have enough. I’m just greedy.’

  ‘Poor Brother Cormac. Is his bread so bad?’

  ‘You haven’t noticed? Father, you’re a saint! He made the bread yesterday. Did it not sit in your gut like a stone?’

  Father Peregrine forbore answering that question, and changed the subject.

  ‘How are you finding the rule of silence, Brother? Some men find it disturbing and hard to live with at first.’

  ‘Well…’ Brother Francis glanced up at the abbot with a grin, then looked away into the fire. ‘It wasn’t so bad in the middle of winter, because my lips were too cold to move then anyway, but I… um… you must know I’m always in disgrace over my tongue—it has a life of its own it seems. Not only that, it chatters what’s little worth hearing. “Half-witted and facetious babble” were the words Father Matthew used, and on that particular occasion I own he was not far wrong. I talk too much and jest too much—speak first and think later.’

  ‘Well, that’s honest,’ said Father Peregrine. ‘But silence—when you are silent—does not oppress you?’

  Francis laughed. ‘It is formidable at times, but then I am small-minded. I lie like a child in the night, counting sheep until I fall asleep at last, and then the bell is clanging and I am stumbling down the night stairs to Matins, drunk with sleep and cursing the day I ever heeded God’s call. The silence then is a happy necessity, for if I were permitted to speak it would be only a drivel of self-pity and complaint!’

  ‘Yes…’ Father Peregrine nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s not easy to get used to the night prayers and the broken hours of sleep.’

  ‘Get used to it! By my faith, I had ceased daring to hope there would ever be a time when I’d get used to it! Will I?’

  ‘Oh yes, you will adjust. Granted, it would be pleasanter to stay in bed, but it is not always as weary a business as at first.’

  Brother Francis smiled. ‘Then God be praised,’ he said. ‘I’ll look forward to that.’

  ‘Your fire is dying,’ said Father Peregrine. ‘Put some more wood on it.’

  I must make this lad talk to me seriously, Peregrine thought as he watched Brother Francis placing the little logs on the fire. Things are not all roses. He has a low opinion of himself. He knows he’s a trial to the man he works under… he thinks himself greedy… small-minded… a chatterer. There must be some conflict in a young man who bites his nails to the quick and can’t get to sleep at night.

  ‘I imagine,’ he said, ‘that the vow of celibacy you have taken is at times a stony path?’

  Francis was silent for a moment, fiddling unnecessarily with the fire. He looked up at Peregrine with a wry smile, then he dropped his gaze again.

  ‘I have learned,’ he said eventually, ‘to sit on my hands and say “no” and then ten Ave Marias and then “no” again.’ He grinned sheepishly at the abbot, hugging his arms round his knees as he sat on the hearthstone. ‘But stony, as you say.’

  ‘That can be the least of it,’ said Peregrine quietly. ‘The hardest lesson is the learning to bring your capacities for tenderness—the heart of you—into a communion of trust with the other brothers. A celibate monk must learn how to be fruitful in his dealings with others—how to open himself to them in truth, and bear the pain of letting himself be seen, be known. Yes, your heart must truly have an unlocked door, or celibacy will sour you, wither you. It is not only a matter of the physical urge, though God knows that is not to be belittled.’

  Francis raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re saying, in effect, “You think it’s bad enough now, my lad, but you wait!”’

  Father Peregrine smiled at him. ‘Not exactly that, but no, it is never easy. There are ways, though, to lift this renunciation up out of the realms of mere denial into a beautiful giving of your self; a way of peace.’

  The fire spat out a spark, and Francis moved back a little, and flicked it back into the flames. He sat tracing his finger through the ashes on the hearthstone as he took in this thought. Composed and quiet, half-smiling, his face gave nothing away.

  I can’t get near this young man. Father Peregrine thought as he watched him. He has made himself a fortress. Amusing, courteous, responsive, but too well-defended for his own good. Father Matthew’s right, ther
e is something about this eternal cheerfulness… a rebuff… no, maybe not. Maybe he is protecting something… a wound somewhere….

  ‘Brother Francis,’ he said, ‘are you aware that you have turned aside my every enquiry with a jest?’

  Francis looked up in consternation. ‘No, I—I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude, I—’

  ‘You have not been rude. But I can be of no help to you if you keep me forever at arm’s length with flippant remarks and an armour-plated smile. Now tell me honestly, since you are evidently not too troubled by any of the things I have asked you about, is there anything you are finding difficult?’

  ‘Not… not really,’ said Francis slowly after a moment’s silence.

  Father Peregrine shook his head. ‘Let me put the question another way. I would be ten times a fool if I let you assure me that it is all plain sailing. What is it that you find hardest about your life here?’

  Brother Francis stared at the ashes in the hearth, his face fixed into a slight, strained smile. He had hidden the secrets of his heart from others for so long it was not so easy to put his hand on them himself now when he wanted to. He did not speak for a long time.

  ‘The constant criticism,’ he said at last. He looked up at Father Peregrine, his face still protecting his heart with the habitual pleasantness of his smile. The abbot was observing him quietly and seemed not about to speak. Brother Francis swallowed. ‘I know I have a long way to go. I know I talk too much. I know I am sinful and proud… and foolish. But, oh God I do try!’

  His smile was gone suddenly, and the surface of his face was distressed with little twitches of nervous muscles that didn’t know what to do now they were no longer employed in guarding his soul with the shield of a smile. ‘I have studied and practised and done my utmost to please, but it is never enough. I am hemmed in by rebuke and censure until it seems there is nowhere left to stand. There is no place for me. I can never be good enough.’ The words tumbled out and stopped abruptly. Quivering in the unaccustomed exposure, he looked at the abbot, his brown eyes full of distress.

  Father Peregrine considered him carefully. ‘Francis, you try too hard,’ he said.

  The young man responded with something halfway between a laugh and a gasp of indignation. ‘Let me know when I’ve got it right and I’ll stop,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘No, that’s not it. It is the effort itself which is your undoing. It makes you unreachable. Father Matthew now, he feels as though you are, somehow… insincere… in some way false, maybe.’

  Brother Francis said nothing, his face was quite still. I’ve hurt him, thought Peregrine. He was not ready for it. It went too deep. Help me now, good Lord, or this will close him up even more.

  Francis looked away, gazing into the fire. ‘Insincere?’ he said quietly. ‘Am I?’ Slowly and absently he crushed one or two tiny sparks that lay on the stone, then he let his hand lie still. ‘You have met my family, haven’t you.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘My father’s wife is his second wife. She is not my mother. I was not quite seven years old when my mother died. My father married again not long after, and my stepmother brought me up after that. She did her duty by me, fed me and kept me clean, but… I suppose I was as irritating then as I am now. More so, if that be possible. She said no end of things to me along the lines of, “Why can’t you…? Will you never learn to…?” and “For the hundredth time, child!” It must have been the hundredth time, too. It certainly felt like it.’

  He paused and pushed the logs together on the fire, took another from the pile and placed it among them. His thoughts were far away. ‘My mother, my real mother, I will never forget her. She was beautiful. I tried to paint her face when I was painting the picture of the Virgin that Brother Clement took such exception to—she with the offending smirk. She had gentle brown eyes, my mother, and she was always merry and kind. She had the kind of laugh that made you laugh with her. She used to say to me, “Always do your best, my son. Be a good boy,” and she’d rumple my hair and smile at me.’

  He was silent, then, and Peregrine waited; waiting for the memories that hurt and haunted the silence to be spoken and released.

  ‘She got ill a long time before she died. I don’t know what was the matter with her. They didn’t tell me then, and no one ever spoke of her after my father married again. It was as though she’d never been. They took me in to see her, the evening they knew she was dying. She’d grown so thin, her eyes big and her face white. She could scarcely speak. Just a whisper. She smiled at me though, even then. She looked as though the illness was hurting her badly, but she was smiling, for me; looking at me and her eyes were shining and kind still. She was not afraid. My father was standing behind me. I can remember it, because I wanted to go and kiss her—it was the last time—but he had his hands on my shoulders and restrained me. I suppose she was too ill. She stretched out her hand and touched my cheek, and she said, “Be a good lad for Mother now. Do your very best.” They sent me out of the room then. It was late—dark—but I was sent to play in the garden. I stood out in the garden, looking up at her lighted window. I was cold. The next time I saw her she was laid out for burial.’

  The sense of his suffering swelled out now that the protective layer he had covered it with was stripped back. The air was tense with his pain. His body was rocking slightly in the rhythm of rekindled grief. Softly, he said, ‘And I have done my best. But somehow it is never good enough.’ He grew still, very still, his face a mask of sadness.

  ‘It may be,’ he said at last, ‘that my soul is… lightweight… not worth very much perhaps, but I give you my word, Father, I am not insincere. I have done my best.’

  How odd it is, Peregrine thought, that men think the soul is invisible. Times like this, a man’s soul sits about him like a mantle for all to see. I wish Father Matthew was here. He’d not now scorn this man as insubstantial froth.

  ‘Your soul, my brother, is of inestimable worth,’ he said. ‘It is also of great beauty and nobility. It is only that you have kept it hidden from us. You have not understood. Your best is yourself. You are not a dog or a dancing bear that you must do tricks and search out ways to please us. The gift of yourself in trust—that is your best. You need courage to make that gift to us, because we also are weak in our humanity and will sometimes deal with you clumsily, as Father Matthew has, as Brother Clement has, as I have just now, without understanding, bruising you. Brother, please forgive us. Please trust us. There is nothing, nothing, nothing amiss with your conduct or your attitude. There is no rebuke here. But, be at peace. Breathe a little more easily. Allow us to see you, to know you. When you are bewildered and bowed down under discipline and hard words, weep—don’t laugh. Father Matthew is not unkind, but he takes you as he sees you, and he believes he sees light-hearted indifference.’

  ‘I can’t weep!’ Francis’ voice was sharp with pain. ‘How must I weep? I couldn’t bear to weep. There is no one… it hurts too much… I could never stop… I can’t weep.’ His hand moved in a gesture of hopelessness, and he got up from the hearth and knelt before the abbot.

  ‘Father, I confess my fault. I ask God’s forgiveness and yours.’ The words were torn wretchedly from the centre of him, little shreds of his soul ripped away in pleading need. He was trembling, his head bent, his hands clasped together.

  Peregrine looked at him in perplexity. He’s getting tighter and tighter in this pain, he thought. God help me, I’m not breaking it for him. What is it he fears? What is it he needs me to do?

  ‘My son, what is it you want me to forgive? Are you asking me to forgive the pain of your heart? God knows—’

  ‘Me,’ Francis broke out in anguish. ‘I need you to forgive me. I want to be clean. I want to be true… I want to belong to God… I want him to forgive me.’

  Father Peregrine looked at the young man, the tightness of his hands, his shaking despair, the rigidity of his bowed shoulders and neck and bent head, and wondered what to do.

 
‘I don’t want him to leave me alone.’ Peregrine heard the note of shame, of reluctance, and understood that this was the heart of the thing.

  ‘I am so terrified he will abandon me. I don’t deserve him, I’m not good enough, I’m not clean or pure or holy. I dread his coldness, his turning away… Oh, I’m so afraid of burning in hell. I would do anything, I… I am a desert place, useless and poor. Oh God, forgive me… forgive me… not only my sins, but me. Oh, do not leave me alone, don’t abandon me….’

  ‘This is what you fear?’ Father Peregrine asked him gently. ‘Francis, look at me. This is the thing you fear? That God will abandon you?’

  ‘Yes. How should he not? What is there of worth in me?’

  Blindly, almost cringing in his need, he reached out his hands to Father Peregrine, and creeping forward he buried his face in the abbot’s lap and allowed the brittle shell to shiver into a thousand pieces.

  God of love, help me to drive out this fear, thought Peregrine as he stroked the young man’s head and brooded over his grieving. However can I reassure him? He had seen many men weep in release; seen it bring them comfort and ease their sorrow, but this man’s weeping was bitter agony. There was no peace in it, only pain. He thought of Father Matthew—‘This eternal smile of his covers an emptiness within,’ and resolved to listen to him more often.

  ‘My child… my poor child,’ he murmured. He did not know what else to say. He knew the futility of smothering this fear with platitudes about God’s mercy and love. It is a thing a man needs to know deep in his heart, an understanding with God himself. That is what faith is. It cannot come second hand.

  ‘It hurts too much. It’s going to break me!’ Francis gasped in terror. ‘It’s like a great black wave, towering too high. If I let it fall, oh God… I’ll be dashed to pieces! It will destroy me!’

  On the quivering shoulders Peregrine rested his hands, frustrated at their crippled immobility, wishing he could spread his fingers, hold the man through his fear.