The Wounds of God

by Penelope Wilcock

  But poor Theo and his disastrous clumsiness drew rebuke and trouble constantly, adding humiliation to pain, and insult to injury. Because, of course, his soul was not numb or impervious to hurt. He came perilously near to giving up on life, sinking into defeat, existing utterly without hope. Worst of all, in that most ugly face of despair, the despair of receiving love and affirmation, the little green plant of tenderness inside him all but withered and died, so that he could no longer give love. The wound almost cut too deep, and cut off life.

  He was saved from this final despair by the joy of his work as a scribe and a musician, in which creativity his artist’s soul flew free and rejoiced; and also by the understanding of his abbot, who kept him going. Father Peregrine patched up the cuts and bruises Theo’s soul endlessly sustained, comforted his confused misery, delighted in his artistry, beheld his grief. It was a wonderful thing to Brother Theodore, that beholding. In his private meditations he would read the words of Psalm 139: ‘Domine probasti me, et cognovisti me—Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me,’ and he would kneel down in the solitude of his cell whispering his prayer. ‘Look at me, oh, look at me! Look at my sin, my failure, my stupidity. Oh, look at me and heal me.’ And it was as he allowed his secret grief and shame to be looked at, touched and beheld by his abbot, that he was healed. It was not anything Father Peregrine did or said that healed Theodore so much as knowing that the abbot, whose body bore the scars of his own suffering, really did behold his grief. That somehow made it bearable.

  For the period of his novitiate in the community, Brother Theodore and Father Matthew, the novice master, were each other’s cross to bear. Father Matthew, that upright, stern, deeply religious pillar of monasticism was determined, though it cost him everything, to train Brother Theodore into an admirable figure of recollected piety. Brother Theodore, so far as Father Matthew was concerned, went from the novitiate into full profession as one of his failures. The mere sight of Brother Theodore was enough to pucker Father Matthew’s austere brow into an unconscious frown of irritation. The encounter was indeed a costly one, but Father Peregrine knew what his novice master never understood: that it was Brother Theodore, not Father Matthew, who paid the price.

  The abbot was, of course, a man of his time, and whereas a modern superior might have found someone kinder than Father Matthew to be the master of novices in his community, Father Peregrine accepted the severity of Father Matthew’s régime as an important, if sometimes excessive, discipline. He contented himself with tempering its effects with his own mercy. He also suspected that much of Father Matthew’s unyielding spirituality was made more of plaster than of rock, and to humiliate him by depriving him of his post might bring the noble edifice of his assurance to dust.

  This particular day, when Brother Theodore was nearly, but not quite, through the tunnel of his novitiate year, had seen a good morning so far for both Brother Theo and Father Matthew.

  The novice master had spent the greater part of the morning in the parlour with a family: mother, father and their son, who meant to try the life at St Alcuin’s. They had come humbly for Father Matthew’s guidance and counsel, which they received with a reverence and respect that was the more gratifying because they were of a lineage and descent that would have put them as far above Father Matthew’s social aspirations as the sun in the sky, had he remained in the world as the fourth son of a struggling merchant. So St Alcuin’s master of novices was feeling well-disposed towards all men as he emerged into the courtyard with his little party of visitors. Their talk had gone well. The lad was full of the wild hopes and ideals proper to a nineteen-year-old heart, and Father Matthew had smiled benignly on his avowal of vocation. He had smiled on the lad’s parents too, for their coffers were lined with as much gold as silver, and more estates than any man could reasonably require. The abbey stood to receive a fair gift at their hands if their youngest son chose to make his soul as a monk in its cloisters. Even Father Matthew, whose vision was set unwaveringly upon heaven, could not help but notice these material benefits out of the corner of his eye, and feel a modest glow of satisfaction that their meeting had run so favourably.

  He came into the courtyard with the three of them, and together they made a striking group indeed. Father Matthew’s erect and ascetic dignity was enhanced rather than eclipsed by the fashionable elegance of his wealthy guests. Yes, things had gone well, and the small frisson of exultation he permitted himself was only diminished, not utterly extinguished, by the sight of Brother Theodore approaching, one sandal flapping awkwardly on a broken strap, the hem of his habit trailing and a smudge of livid green ink on his left cheek. Theodore was bearing in his hands a jug of beer from the kitchen, which was one of the ingredients of the ink he was mixing for his new project in the scriptorium (‘Beer?’ Cormac had said in the kitchen. ‘Theodore, this had better be true.’) which was just now absorbing him heart and soul.

  He had one morning last week been summoned to the abbot’s house, and found Father Peregrine seated at his table with a book lying before him in a little clearing amid the landscape of manuscripts and letters that cluttered his table. The abbot had greeted him with friendly courtesy, and then after a fractional hesitation, a split second of indecision, had taken the book between his hands. ‘Brother, I would like you to look at this. It is a book of Hours that has not been completed. Do you think you can finish it for me?’

  Brother Theodore heard the slight diffidence, almost shyness, and realised this was something special. He took the book and opened it. It was indeed something special. It was three-quarters completed, with fine and graceful lettering, and illuminations of subtle beauty, paintings of flowers and birds, of mythical beasts and intricate designs; a courtly dance of colour, balanced and harmonious, yet of uninhibited and arresting vitality. There were touches of gold shining on its pages, but used with restraint. This was not a vulgar riot of scarlet and gilt, but a sophisticated marriage of colours, and it was wanting a few pages still. As he turned over the parchments, which lay loose in a stack, unbound as yet because unfinished, he found there were two or three blank at the end, and one or two with the design sketched out, but not lettered or painted. There was one half-finished page with the lettering complete and the capital, but the margin half-done, started with the soft blue that was the theme colour for the page, but interrupted.

  ‘Father, this is a beautiful thing’, said Theodore, holding it in his hands, handling it with the curious mixture of confidence and reverence which denotes the true artist. ‘It is… it is… I’ve rarely seen one so lovely as this. Indeed I would be honoured to complete it if you think I can, but where have you come by it?’

  Father Peregrine had been watching Theodore closely as he examined the book, but now he looked down at the table, unnecessarily moving his pens, the ink, the seal.

  ‘I had thought to continue it on the next Tuesday,’ he said, looking up abruptly, his voice studiedly light. ‘I had begun the painting of that last page on the Wednesday, then left it, with reluctance I confess, because the claims of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Eve and Easter Day left me with no leisure for anything. Then on the Monday night, they destroyed my hands. I put it away at the bottom of the chest over there, and it has stayed there this long time. Brother, will you be my hands? Will you finish it for me?’

  Brother Theodore laid the little book on top of a pile of manuscripts on the table and turned over the leaves until he came to the half-painted one. He took it into his hands and studied it carefully.

  ‘You think I can do justice to this?’ he asked. ‘If I had made a thing of such beauty as this, it would be no small sacrifice to turn it over to another man to finish.’

  ‘These long months I have locked it away,’ Peregrine said. ‘It begins to look a little as though I thought it my own private property, which it is not. It is the community’s, not mine to sit on like a dragon guarding its hoard. Of course you can do it justice. Your work is equal to mine. Besides, even if you could not, wha
t of it? It is only a book.’

  Brother Theodore had need to put a brave face on too much heartache in his own life to be fooled by this. He put the parchment back carefully among the others.

  He cleared his throat. ‘In the eighth Psalm,’ he said, speaking in rather a hurry, his ears a bit red, embarrassed at seeming to preach to his superior, ‘it says that God has put all he had made, all the works of his hands, into our care. I have often wondered what God felt—feels—when the beauty he has made and given us on trust is indifferently regarded; when men trap the singing lark and cut out her tongue for a dainty meal; when we beat little children with belts and sticks and let them creep hungry to bed to nurse their bruises; when we smoke out the bees and destroy them to rob them of their honey. God must have his head in his hands and weep sometimes, I think, in the heartbreak of our negligent misuse of his artistry, the work of his fingers. You understand what I’m saying to you? He knows, and I know, how you feel about this, even if no one else would. Can I take all of this away, not just the pages waiting to be done, so I can study how you’ve gone about it? Then I can do my best to make the whole thing a unity. Will you also write down for me the recipe for this blue ink, and I will try to mix some like it.’

  Father Peregrine took a scrap of parchment from a little pile of torn remnants he used for jottings, and wrote down the proportions of the blue mixture. Theodore watched the toiling progress of the pen as the abbot formed the crabbed, unsteady letters. It was a laborious business: time and again the pen slipped in his crippled grasp, but the result was legible. He gave the slip to Theodore.

  ‘Can you read my staggering script?’

  ‘I can read it.’ Theodore paused, then gathered his courage to say, ‘To be your hands, that is a humbling thought, for your hands have more skill than you know. They have erased a lot of the black and ugly scenes from my heart and painted some fairer, brighter colours. Father, I will do what I can.’

  So Brother Theodore had spent the week studying the little book, getting the feeling for its design, planning and preparing the last pages, practising lettering in the style Peregrine had used, and now he was ready to mix his inks and begin to paint the remainder of the half-finished page. It was to be a work of love, and the trust given him he hugged like a treasure to his heart—‘Brother, will you be my hands?’

  As he walked along carrying the jug of beer to make his ink, his mind was filled with the vision of the page as it would be when it was done. The soft blue; blue of the Virgin’s cloak, blue of the morning, blue of the woods in spring, of a child’s eyes, of the harebells nodding in the summer fields… blue of all things gentle and beautiful and… Theodore looked up and saw for the first time the little knot of gentry standing in front of him. He was suddenly uneasily aware of Father Matthew’s eyes upon him in the sort of mild disapproval that Brother Theodore knew from experience could be kindled into wrath as easily as dry grass in the drought of summer can be set ablaze. He felt the familiar flutter of panic at the base of his throat, the clutch of apprehension in the pit of his stomach, the tightening of his chest.

  It was at that moment that Father Peregrine came limping out into the courtyard to find Father Matthew, and to extend his own greeting to the guests. He saw the family standing there making their farewells. He saw Theodore pause, then nervously approach with his head bent in an attempt to render himself invisible as he passed them on his way to the day stairs leading up to the scriptorium. He saw the expression on Father Matthew’s face as Theodore stumbled over his broken sandal strap, shot out his hand to save himself, and dropped the jug he was carrying. It was smashed into tinkling fragments on the stone, in a puddle of warm fizzing beer that splashed my lady’s elegant gown and my lord’s embroidered shoes. There was a moment in which the universe stopped to allow for Brother Theodore’s mind to reel in dismay, Father Matthew’s expression to change from mere resentment to red-hot rage, and my lady to step back with a little, affected ‘Oh!’ of alarm.

  Theodore, speechless, went down on his knees in haste, gathering up the pottery fragments, dropping them again, cutting his finger on the broken shards. Father Matthew, his lips tight with fury, drew himself up to his full height and towered over the offensive wretch grovelling in the beer at his feet. Then Theodore’s soul shrivelled under the excoriating shower of rebuke that the novice master released upon his head—his clumsiness, his discourtesy, the order and dignity of the abbey: it went on and on.

  Smiling at the familiar scene (had he not often an occasion to bawl out his own serfs?) my lord took his lady’s hand that she might step across the pool of beer, and the family moved discreetly away to allow Father Matthew to finish his scolding.

  Theodore crouched on the floor, his hands filled with broken bits of pot and dripping with blood and beer.

  Father Peregrine, when his novice master paused for breath, said quietly, ‘Go gently, Matthew—he’s shaking. There now, you neglect your guests. Leave him to me.’

  After one last scalding reprimand, Father Matthew consented to rejoin, with a profusion of apologies, his guests thus abused by the clumsy foolery of his novice. They dismissed his apologies with gracious good humour as they moved away towards the gatehouse buildings across the abbey court. None of them looked back, except the boy. He glanced over his shoulder to see the abbot stooping down, trying with his twisted and awkward hands to pick up the last fragments of sticky pottery, and the young monk on his knees remonstrating with the abbot, dropping what he held already in his attempt to gather up what he had missed.

  With an amused smile, the lad turned away and followed his parents into the gatehouse.

  Father Peregrine pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket. ‘Here, Brother, you have hurt yourself. Put that pile of pieces there to this side. Go and wash the cut on your hand and then you can find something to gather these up in. There now, don’t distress yourself, it couldn’t be helped. Swill away this spilled ale and there will be nothing left to remind Father Matthew of the offence.’

  In mute distress, Brother Theodore did as he was bidden, and Peregrine went after Father Matthew and his guests to offer them the courtesy of an abbatial greeting.

  When Theodore had disposed of the broken pot, and collected a broom and a pail of water, he returned to find Father Matthew standing there, balefully surveying the scene of Theo’s disgrace.

  ‘You will confess your fault of rude clumsiness at Chapter in the morning, Brother. I trust you are planning to wash this mess away. Have a care to leave no little shards of pot. What’s this?’

  He picked up a scrap of parchment which lay on the stone flags. Theodore thought at first he must have dropped his ink recipe, it was a little torn-off slip like it; but his recipe was safely tucked away in the scriptorium. It could not be. There was something written there, though. As Father Matthew read the writing on the little chit, his eyes widened and his eyebrows rose higher and higher. Brother Theodore watched him apprehensively. At last, the novice master looked up at him.

  ‘Do—do you recognise this hand?’ he spluttered. ‘Whose drunken scrawl is this? Can a brother of this house be responsible for this… this… this… well, read it!’

  So overcome was he with horror and disgust, that he held out the thing to Theo, who took it and read it with some curiosity. It was a poem, written in Latin. Father Matthew, having second thoughts, twitched the parchment out of Theodore’s hand. ‘No, no, you should not be reading such filth. Heaven bless us, what a thing!’

  But Theodore, who spent all his days working with Latin texts in the scriptorium, had scanned and understood what he read, which roughly translated as this:

  This vigil is long.

  What time I have sat here,

  Watching the candle flame’s

  Slow, passionate exploration kiss the night.

  The blind and gentle thrusting tongue of light

  Finds out the secrets of the dumb receptive dark.

  Her sensuous silence trembles with delight.
>
  He did indeed recognise that drunken scrawling script. He had referred to it a dozen times that afternoon as he mixed up his pot of blue ink.

  Father Matthew crumpled it in his hand. He was really shocked by what he had read.

  ‘Did you recognise the hand, Brother?’ he asked. ‘To think that a monk should pen such words!’

  ‘Maybe.’ Brother Theodore hesitated. ‘The young man who came to see you this morning stood here some while, Father. This is the kind of thing that young men sometimes write.’

  Father Matthew was visibly relieved. ‘Ah yes, it must be so! Then I shall give it to his father. The young lad’s priest should know. His soul is in danger if he is prey to such sensual and lascivious ramblings.’

  ‘No! Um… no, Father. Perhaps I should take it to Father Abbot. He should see it, surely? It may be that one of the brethren wrote it, after all, and besides, the lad plans to enter our cloisters. Father should know, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, Brother, indeed. I will take it to him after we have said Office. You are right.’

  ‘I could take it,’ said Theodore hastily. ‘I am going there directly once I have mopped up this floor. I—I won’t look at it again, I give you my word. I’ll just take it to him.’

  Father Matthew looked suspiciously at Theodore. Theo looked as innocent and submissive as it was in his power to do.

  ‘I should like… I should like to confess to Father Abbot that I caught a glimpse of those words, and seek his counsel,’ he murmured. It worked.

  Father Matthew nodded soberly.

  ‘Very well, but I charge you under obedience not to read it again.’