And he gave the incriminating verse into Theo’s care.
Brother Theodore swilled away the spilled beer, his gut still swarming with butterflies as Father Matthew vanished from sight. Returning the pail with all speed lest the novice master should think better of his decision, he hurried to the abbot’s house, and found Peregrine just setting off for chapel.
‘Father, please, have you a moment? The bell’s not rung yet.’ Peregrine looked at him in surprise, and stepped back to admit him into his lodging. ‘Yes, Brother?’
‘Father Matthew found this in the cloister. I think you might have dropped it when you pulled your handkerchief out of your pocket this morning.’
He smoothed the crumpled parchment in his fingers as he spoke, and gave it to the abbot who took it and looked down at it. Peregrine took a deep breath.
‘Father Matthew read this?’ Never before and never afterwards could Brother Theodore recall seeing his abbot so completely disconcerted.
‘What—what did he say?’ Peregrine enquired, red faced.
‘He was not too—he didn’t appreciate its beauty, but he was generous enough to believe that no brother of ours could have written such a thing. He was happy to swallow the suggestion that the young lad who came this morning might like to write poetry.’
‘You have read this?’
‘But briefly. He asked me if I recognised the hand, showed it to me, then thought better of it, fearing to corrupt my innocence. He consented to let me bring it to you, and put me on obedience to look at it no more.’
‘Yes. Well, he was right.’ The abbot turned away and took the crumpled poem to his table, and put it inside his box of sealing waxes. ‘I will burn it later.’
‘No.’ Brother Theodore shook his head. ‘Don’t burn it. He may have been correct, but he was not right. He doesn’t know what life is; he doesn’t know. He hasn’t known what it is to be in black darkness, and won, revived by the tender wooing of light. He doesn’t know. The filth is his; the poem is not filth. Don’t burn it.’
‘Filth? Is that what he said?’ Father Peregrine pondered the judgement. ‘I hadn’t meant it so. It seemed a thing of wonder, that silent, lovely mating of the darkness with the light. A hallowed thing. I am sorry if I have degraded that loveliness.’
‘Father…’ Theodore begged, ‘can I read it once more? Please. It was beautiful.’ The abbot looked at him, torn between propriety and the understanding that lay between them. Then, ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You have read it once. The harm is done, if harm there be.’
Theo retrieved the shabby scrap and read it through.
‘I’d like to put this at the end of your book of Hours. It is lovely.’
‘You’ll do no such thing! Put it away, Brother, the bell is ringing for Office. We must go. Thank you for saving my blushes.’
Theodore smiled. ‘You’ve shielded me often enough. I need no thanks.’
When the midday Office and meal were over, Father Matthew went in search of his abbot. Peregrine braced himself for the interview as he heard the knock at the door.
‘Father, might I have a word with you?’ The abbot’s stomach tightened into a knot at the discreet, confidential tone of his novice master’s voice. He managed a pallid smile.
‘Be seated. Have you come to talk to me about this verse you found?’
‘You have seen it then? I trusted Brother Theodore to bring it straight to you. He is a sore trial, but he is honest, I believe. I was shocked and ashamed to discover evidence of such lewd and inflamed imaginings in this holy place. Brother Theodore wondered if it might be the work of the young man who was here this morning. If you think it may be so, I will take it upon myself to inform his confessor. The thought that it be not his, but may be the shameless fantasy of one of our brethren is almost too much to contemplate. Did you know the script?’
‘Yes.’ Peregrine looked at him helplessly. He moistened his lips with his tongue.
‘Brother… the poem is mine.’
The weights and balances of all the world readjusted in the incredulity of Father Matthew’s silence. A hundred angels shut their eyes tight and stopped their ears and held their breath in dread of his reply.
‘Yours?’ He was absolutely thunderstruck.
‘Yes. I’m sorry it so distressed you. It… please believe I had not intended any lewdness. There is a place, in the mind of a man of God, for reverence of carnal love in its beauty, surely? As there is a place for Solomon’s love canticle in the canon of Scripture.’
‘The Song of Songs,’ said Father Matthew coldly, ‘is an allegory of the love between Christ and his church.’
‘Well, I don’t know…’ Peregrine demurred. ‘Solomon was a long time before Christ. It reads a bit more lively than that to me.’
Father Matthew shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Sacred Scripture is then to be taken thus lightly? Compared with such verse as this thing you have written?’
‘No. No, of course not. I didn’t mean my scribblings were of that standard. Matthew, I’m sorry, I’m very sorry to have offended you. I don’t know what else to say. I beg your pardon. It was not meant for anyone’s eyes but mine. I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry you wrote it, or sorry I saw it?’
It is possible to push a man too far. A flash of irritation shone a warning spark in the abbot’s eye.
‘Sorry you saw it, since you ask. I would never willingly offend you, you know that, but don’t you think you are being a little bit prudish?’
A tremor shook Father Matthew’s upright frame.
‘I strive for purity in my innermost being,’ he replied.
Peregrine sighed. ‘Well, you’ve achieved it in good measure. Father Matthew there is nothing else I can say. I’m sorry, I beg your forgiveness. Is there anything further you wish to discuss?’
Poor Father Matthew. He retreated from his abbot’s house a saddened and disillusioned man. He came that evening into Compline, and sat scowling in thought in his stall. What was the world coming to? His eye fell on the candle flame as it moved in the slight draught. He watched it, intrigued, as it dipped and swayed, swelled and pointed, shivered and moved in the air current. He watched the hungry urgency of the flame push against the gathering dark, and a tingle of unfamiliar life stirred somewhere inside him. ‘Heaven help us, he’s right,’ he acknowledged reluctantly.
He paused by the abbot’s stall as the brothers filed out of chapel, and almost spoke; but they were in silence, and it would not do to break the rule. Father Matthew lay awake in his bed for some time that night, troubled by a dim uneasiness. It was the closest he ever came to understanding that ‘he came that we might have a proper code of behaviour’ is not the same as ‘he came that we might have life’. But he chose in the end to take refuge in sleep, murmuring the words from the 139th Psalm, ‘Proba me Deus, et scito cor meum: interroga me, et cognosce spiritas meas. Ei vide, si via iniquitatis in me est, et deduc me in via aeterna… Examine me, O God, and know my heart: probe me and search my thoughts. Look well if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.’
The words that Theodore clung to for healing, Matthew scoured his soul with before he tidied it away, clean, to sleep. God, in his unfathomable silence was content for them each to find what they could in his book. No doubt he also heard the abbot’s last silent meditations from the same Psalm.
For all these mysteries I thank you:
For the wonder of my being, the wonder of your works.
You know me through and through.
You saw my bones take shape
As my body was being formed in the secret
Dark of my mother’s womb.
It had never struck me before, the sensuous, very physical intimacy of those words, but as Mother spoke them, I could almost feel it, see it; the close, fluid world of the foetus, turning in the darkness that changed from red gold to deep red, to velvet blackness, depending on where the mother’s body was. The silent dance of creation, a symphony
of mysteries woven together; bone, sinew, skin. The hands of God hidden from sight, working from the spirit outwards with absorbed tenderness, creating toes, shoulders, shaping the cranium, the long curve of the spine, the delicate intricacies of the lungs. Not to be despised, a human being, in all its weakness and helpless desire, its clumsiness and frailty. A thing of beauty, a work of God’s hands. I glanced up at Mother, but I felt shy to put into words the things that were stirring in my soul. Instead, I said, ‘I’ll never look at a candle flame in the same way again!’
She smiled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but you’ll look at it more attentively.’
CHAPTER SIX
God’s Wounds
Mother and I walked slowly up the hill to church. It was a warm, still evening, the sun was sinking behind the trees. Their leaves had begun to turn yellow and a few were falling. Our church was built on the edge of the common land that led up to the cliffs, on the outskirts of the town; a little oasis of countryside undisturbed by the spread of housing estates.
The bell was tolling slowly for Evensong as we strolled along the church path, and the tower clock chimed the half-hour as we settled into our pew. Mrs Crabtree was there, and the Misses Forster, elderly twins who dressed the same in pale green macintoshes and grey suede shoes. Two rows in front of us sat Mr and Mrs Edenbridge, very upright and correct. She was very smart, as always, in a coat with a fur collar and a rather expensive hat. He was immaculately turned out in his grey suit, the bald dome of his head, above the snow white hair that fringed it, shining pink in the lamplight. Across the aisle, Stan Birkett the dustman was hurrying into his pew as Father Bennett swept out of the vestry, paused to bow ceremoniously to the altar, and then turned to face us, booming, ‘Hymn number three hundred and eighty-one: “Crown him with many crowns.” Hymn number three eight one.’
That was an ambitious hymn for Evensong, long and loud. I was glad Mrs Crabtree was sitting in front of us and not behind us as the congregation started to sing, and the enthusiastic dissonance of her voice made itself felt.
Crown him with many crowns,
The Lamb upon his throne…
A late wasp droned lazily across the church, its aimless, floating path carrying it to the pew in front of us. It settled there and walked about a bit. It stopped to wash its face.
Ye who tread where he has trod,
Crown him the Son of Man,
Who every grief hath known
That wrings the human breast,
And takes and bears them for his own…
The wasp took off again, drifting towards the front of the church. Its flight carried it up towards Mr Edenbridge’s right shoulder, and he suddenly became aware of its buzzing. He must have been one of those people who are afraid of wasps, because in instinctive recoil, he ducked his head and gave a little, hoarse, hastily-muffled cry, flapping his hymnbook at his shoulder. The wasp veered away, and dropped from view into the pew behind him. Mrs Edenbridge, who stood on her husband’s left, was looking at him in surprise. He, oblivious to her astonishment, continued peacefully with the singing of the hymn:
His glories now we sing,
Who died and rose on high;
Who died, eternal life to bring
And lives that death may die.
Crown him the Lord of peace…
The wasp arose from the pew again, ascending behind Mr Edenbridge’s head. He could hear it, but not see it. He spun round in panic, beating the air about his head with his hymn book. His wife stared at him in amazement. The wasp had changed course and was now sitting quietly on a pillar.
Mr Edenbridge resettled his glasses on his nose and glanced at his wife. ‘Wasp,’ he mouthed, silently. ‘Wasp.’
She looked at him in blank incomprehension. Father Bennett, aware of an undercurrent of commotion among his flock, was eyeing Mr Edenbridge with disfavour over the top of his hymnbook.
‘Wasp! Wasp! There’s a wasp!’ whispered Mr Edenbridge loudly to his wife, who was rather deaf. She looked around, looked down behind her, looked behind him. He too began to look around for the wasp. It was nowhere in sight.
Then it came sailing across in front of Mrs Edenbridge, and she jumped backwards in alarm. Mr Edenbridge lashed out at it hysterically with his hymnbook, but it dodged him and flew away.
Crown him the Lord of love;
Behold his hands and side—
Rich wounds yet visible above,
In beauty glorified…
‘Hrrmph!’ Mr Edenbridge cleared his throat, and applied himself to the hymn again. He had seen Father Bennett watching him, suspiciously.
All hail Redeemer, hail!
For thou hast died for me;
Thy praise shall never, never fail
Throughout eternity!
The wasp was sitting innocently on the rim of the lamp overhead, washing itself.
‘Dearly beloved…’ began Father Bennett in forbidding tones. I picked up the prayer book and looked hard at the words of the prayer, quelling with an effort the giggles rising inside me.
‘Whatever was the matter with Mr Edenbridge tonight?’ asked Mother as we walked down the church path afterwards. I looked back up the path. Father Bennett, standing on the doorstep to bid his congregation ‘Goodnight’ as they departed, was offering Mr Edenbridge a distinctly cool handshake.
‘Oh, Mother, didn’t you see it? There was a wasp!’
‘Is that what it was? No, I was concentrating on the hymn. It’s one of my favourites: “Rich wounds yet visible above, in beauty glorified.” I love that one. So it was a wasp. Poor man. Father Bennett was looking rather sourly at him by the end of the hymn.’
‘Father Bennett couldn’t see it. Mother, will you tell me a story? There’s time, walking home.’
‘All right then. I’ll tell you a story if you make me a cup of tea when we get in.’
‘Mother! I always do!’
‘I always tell the stories. Have I told you Brother James’ story? No? I didn’t think so. He wasn’t Brother James yet, at the time of this story. It was before he took his first vows. His name was Allen Howick. It was singing that hymn tonight that reminded me of this story. It’s about the wounds of Christ.’
Allen Howick was born in the year 1295, and throughout his childhood was loved—adored even—as the only child of his father and mother. He grew up into a fine, handsome, young man, whose mother denied him nothing, and whose father, a silversmith, a master craftsman, intended to bequeath to his son all his treasure, all his skill and all his business acumen. Allen enjoyed a privileged status in the small society in which he lived (the parish of St Alcuin’s on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, served from the Benedictine abbey of that name). He was a wealthy, well-fed, well-favoured young man. By his twentieth year, he was a much coveted prize as a husband, and there were no fewer than five lasses making sheep’s eyes at him at Mass on Sundays and dreaming about him in bed at night. In short, he was a big fish in a small pool, thoroughly spoiled and wanting for nothing. He had everything. Life had nothing left to give him that he hadn’t already got, and he was peevish, discontented and bored. The village lasses, eager to win him as a husband, had tried to put a little on deposit by securing him as a lover. He’d had them all and they were nice, but he had to confess, with a certain sense of amazement, that even sex bored him now.
He came up early to Mass, one Sunday morning. He was out of sorts and more than a little hungover from a party the previous night. It had been his birthday and he had celebrated in style. Now he had twenty years behind him and a foul taste in his mouth.
One of the brothers (it was Brother Francis) was opening the great doors of the abbey church as Allen walked up the stone steps. Allen had never really noticed Brother Francis before, but he supposed he must always have been there. Francis, on the other hand, well knew Allen and his family, knew it had been his birthday and was surprised to see him out of bed at all. One glance told him what Allen had been doing the night before and that its legacy this morning was
a thick tongue and a muzzy head. He grinned at him. ‘Fine morning,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Been celebrating?’
There was something in the innocent enquiry that caused Allen to look at him suspiciously. He flushed slightly, put on his dignity by the twinkle in Brother Francis’ eye.
‘Yes, if it’s any of your business,’ he retorted, and stalked past him into the church.
He sat hunched up in his family bench, and watched Francis as he walked purposefully up the aisle, his cheerfulness evidently undented by Allen’s rudeness. Francis disappeared through a door in the north wall of the church, and Allen was left on his own.
The spring sunshine streamed gloriously through the great window at the eastern end of the church, and he could hear birds singing. From further away the bleating of sheep carried on the wind. Otherwise, all was quiet. Allen looked around the huge, empty building. Usually among the last to arrive and the first to leave, he had never been there on his own before. Lord, but it’s peaceful here, he thought, as he gazed about him. Wonder how much it cost to build it?
As he rested in the great hollow shell of tranquility and light, listening to its silence, it dawned upon him that ‘empty’ was the wrong word for this place. It was as full as could be: full of silence, full of light, full of peace. There was something about it that was almost like a person. It had—almost—its own speech. He lost the sense of it as people began to arrive in dribs and drabs, and the speaking silence was erased by their murmured conversation, the creak of the benches, the occasional stifled laugh, the shuffle and tap of shoes on the flagged floor.
The Mass was attended by the well-to-do and the respectable; farmers and merchants for the most part. They came in their Sunday finery, their wives on their arms, their sons and daughters around them. Their servants were expected to attend first Mass at five o’clock, and were busy making Sunday dinners and doing the household chores by this hour of the day.
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