The Wounds of God

by Penelope Wilcock

  Allen’s parents came into the church and sat down beside him. It was not like him to be early to Mass, but they knew better than to ask questions. Rosalind Appleford, the wool merchant’s daughter, shot a coquettish glance in Allen’s direction as she passed. ‘God give you good morning, Allen Howick,’ she whispered, pouting her lips just a little for his benefit. Allen raised a wan smile, then looked the other way. His obvious rejection stung her, and Rosalind began to regret last Wednesday evening, which she had spent in his arms.

  ‘Dominus vobiscum,’ the cantor raised his voice in the chant.

  ‘Et cum spirito tuo,’ responded the brothers in the choir, and the people of the parish in the nave.

  Allen yawned. He found the Mass tedious. It was a question, in the main, of trying to avoid reproachful feminine eyes and enduring pangs of hunger. He sat or stood or knelt with everyone else through the rite of penance, the liturgy of the word, the abbot’s homily; but his mind was sunk in indifference, in the contempt of familiarity.

  ‘Pax Domine sit semper vobiscum’

  ‘Et cum spirito tuo,’ responded Allen automatically. Then, like a far away song, like a weak shaft of sunlight on a December day, something roused in his soul. ‘Pax Domine sit semper vobiscum. The peace of the Lord be always with you.’ Peace. Peace. He thought of the huge serene peace of the building as he had sat waiting for the people to arrive. Was it then possible to have that vast peace inside you? He had always assumed the words of the Mass to be a polite ritual, designed to humour a remote deity, keep him happy, keep him remote. But this—‘the peace of the Lord be always with you’—this invited the far-off God right in. Peace. Allen was not sure what peace was. He was not sure if he’d ever known it. He wondered vaguely if his father would permit him to convert the guest bedroom into a chapel, maybe pay the abbey to send one of the monks there to say Mass for him, so he could have that peace on hand, at home when he wanted it. It would be good to spend a spare moment sitting in the quiet, enjoying the peace of God.

  One of the lads from the abbey school was singing the Agnus Dei, his voice trembling slightly in the dread of public performance.

  ‘Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, give us your peace.’ Allen felt as though something was wringing the inside of him. Suddenly, angrily, hungrily, he knew he didn’t have peace. He had everything else, but he didn’t have peace. He thought of Brother Francis; that cheerful, purposeful manner, unmoved by his own surliness. Peace, yes, it sat about that monk like it clung to the stones of these walls. How had he come by that peace? What had it cost him to get it?

  Allen went up with the straggle of communicants and took the bread on his tongue, the body of Christ. ‘Give me your peace,’ he prayed. Sitting on the bench through the final prayers the words repeated in his mind: ‘Oh Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, give us your peace.’

  He spoke to no one as he left the church and walked home. All his life, whatever he wanted, he had asked the price and it had been his. What was God asking for his peace? Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world… that, it seemed, was his price. He wanted Allen’s sin, in return for his peace. It seemed like an easy bargain. Allen thought over the past week. Wednesday night with Rosalind. Well, that was sin. Pleasant, but sin. He thought of his party the night before… luxury, drunkenness… the wasted food thrown to the dogs. In fact, the more he thought about it, the harder it was to think of anything in his life that did not bear the taint of sin. Did God want the whole of it, then, before he would part with his peace?

  Allen was irritable all that day. He slept little that night, and on Monday morning sat pale, moody and silent at his workbench in his father’s shop.

  ‘What’s biting you?’ asked his father, as he set out his tools at his own bench. ‘You look like a jilted lover.’ He glanced questioningly at Allen. Maybe one of the lasses had made her mark. It was about time. He picked up the trinket he was working on, and bent his head over it.

  ‘It’s not that,’ he said. As he looked at his father, Allen felt a fluttering of apprehension. What he was about to say was unlikely to be well received. ‘It’s not that,’ he repeated, a little louder. There was an edge to his voice that his father had not heard before, and Master Howick looked with attention at his son. Allen cleared his throat nervously.

  ‘I’m going to be a monk at St Alcuin’s,’ he said.

  His father stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve lost your wits,’ he said at last.

  Allen shook his head. ‘No.’ His father was still staring at him, waiting for him to explain.

  ‘I want God’s peace,’ Allen said, feeling foolish.

  ‘God’s peace? Can’t you have it here at home? It’s free, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? Have you got it?’

  His father blinked. ‘Me? Yes, of course. Well, I don’t know. Peace? I never thought about it.’

  There followed two weeks of arguments and scenes, but in the end Allen’s determination overrode his mother’s tears and his father’s hurt bewilderment. His heart was set on the monastic life, and he meant to have it, as he’d had everything else he took a fancy for.

  Allen went to see the abbot. He did not enjoy the interview. Trained to the craft of the silversmith, Allen’s hands were dexterous and precise tools, and he found the sight of the abbot’s maimed, almost useless hands disturbing, revolting. The long scar that extended all down the side of his face looked horrible too, and his jerky gait as he limped along with the aid of a battered wooden crutch, the foot of it padded with leather to silence its tapping progress, reminded Allen of the bogey-man of his mother’s nursery tales. His wounds and the fierce hawklike look of his face, with its dark eyes that seemed to pierce a man to the soul, frankly terrified Allen, but he made his request and was told that he, like any young man, was welcome to try the life.

  So Allen Howick kissed his girlfriends goodbye, and dutifully embraced his parents. He would prefer to walk up to the abbey alone, he said. There was nothing to be gained from their company. He turned, embarrassed, from his mother’s tears, and filled with an almost intolerable mixture of elation and dread, he walked away.

  His mother and father watched him go, their only child.

  ‘It’s worse than if he’d died,’ his mother whispered. ‘How did we fail him? We gave him everything.’

  ‘Not peace,’ replied her husband, with heavy sarcasm.

  Their son turned the corner of the road without looking back.

  Allen found life at St Alcuin’s gruelling. The night prayers, the meagre food, the hard work and the silence all combined to make him irritable and weary beyond endurance. The other young men in the novitiate, Brother Damian and Brother Josephus, had both taken their first vows and seemed to know their way about and behaved with an easy nonchalance that grated on Allen’s strained nerves. He could not wear the habit of the order until he too took his novitiate vows, but he was given a plain, coarse, black tunic similar to the brothers’ clothes to wear, and his own soft wool and fine linen were given into Brother Ambrose’s care, in case he should change his mind and leave. Neither a brother nor the worldly lad he had been, Allen was alone in a no man’s land between two worlds. Father Matthew, the novice master, he hated. Allen had never bothered much with his studies, knowing that his passage in life was assured, and he felt degraded by Father Matthew’s detection and scrupulous exposure of his academic and spiritual weaknesses. The bitterest pill of all was the very public business of confessing his faults, kneeling on the ground, begging the brothers’ forgiveness for such trifling matters as offending against holy poverty by losing his handkerchief.

  He lay at night, sleepless on the rock-hard straw bed. ‘Peace!’ the night mocked him, astir with Brother Thaddeus’ earth-shattering snore and Brother Basil’s troublesome cough, and the gibberish mumblings of Brother Theodore’s dreams; ‘Peace!’

  In spite of it all he sensed something. He did
n’t know quite what it was, because he didn’t have it himself, but he sensed something in some of these men: an assurance, humour, tranquillity—hang it, peace! How did they get it? Allen ached for it.

  He could feel it in the abbot, though he was afraid of him. He could not analyse it. In the brief moments of the one or two occasions he had dared to return the gaze of those dark grey eyes, Allen had glimpsed unfathomable depths of sadness, resignation, warmth… a mixture of things, and behind them all an extraordinary vital gladness that didn’t fit with the lameness and disfigurement. Somewhere, Allen reflected, as he worked in silence at his task of book-binding, that man is saying ‘yes’ where I am saying ‘no’. But yes to what?

  ‘How did Father Columba get his scars?’ he asked Brother Josephus one evening as they sat in the novitiate community room for the hour’s recreation after supper. He had been only eleven years old when the abbot was crippled and his hands were broken, and he had not been interested in the village gossip of adult life in those days.

  ‘Who? Oh, Father Peregrine. He was beaten up by enemies of his father’s house eight—no nine—years ago.’

  Allen digested this information. He wanted to ask another question, but hated to look uninformed. His curiosity got the better of him eventually: ‘Why do you all call him Father Peregrine?’

  Brother Josephus grinned. ‘Well—does he look like a hawk or a dove?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Columba—his name in religion—it’s the Latin word for a dove. After Saint Columba, of course, but that’s what it means. His baptismal name was Peregrine.’

  Allen thought about it. ‘He… he scares me,’ he admitted, surprising himself with his own truthfulness.

  Brother Josephus looked at him in astonishment. ‘Father Peregrine scares you? Why?’

  Allen began to regret his honesty. ‘I—I feel as though he can look right into my heart,’ he mumbled.

  Brother Josephus laughed. ‘It’s not him you’re scared of then. You’re scared that what’s hidden in your heart will be found out. What are you hiding?’

  Allen stared at him for a moment then looked away. ‘I think I’ll go down early to chapel and be in good time for Compline,’ he said stiffly, and made his escape.

  In the choir, one or two of the brothers knelt in prayer in the twilight gloom. Father Peregrine was sitting in his stall, the scarred face shadowed by his cowl, his maimed hands resting still in his lap. Allen couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He hurried to his own place and knelt there. The silence of the choir seemed oppressive, a great, swollen stillness, weighing down on him. He was glad when, ten minutes later, the bell began to ring for Compline and the community filed in and filled the shadows with the music of their chant.

  Then, silence again, the deep, deep silence of the night, the Great Silence that took a man down with it and would not let him ignore the doubts and fears that daylight business crowded out.

  Allen slept fitfully, as always, and felt bone-tired in the morning. After first Mass he trailed up the stairs to the novitiate schoolroom. Father Matthew greeted him with the information that Father Abbot wished to see him that morning to discuss his progress. Allen turned round and plodded back through the scriptorium where the scribes were already busy with their copying and illumination work, and down the day stairs to the cloister. He met Brother Theodore on the stairs. One of the fully-professed brothers beyond the small world of the novitiate, Allen didn’t know Theodore very well, but the quick appraisal of Theodore’s glance discovered his weariness, and there was something comforting in the smile he gave Allen as he passed.

  Allen was relieved to have escaped a morning studying the latest arguments for and against predestination, but he was not looking forward to being alone with the abbot. He hesitated outside the door of the abbot’s lodging, which was as usual ajar, then knocked. He walked into the large, sparsely furnished room and shut the door behind him. The abbot was at his table, reading through some documents.

  ‘A moment, and I shall be with you, my son,’ he said, and glanced up at Allen momentarily. Then he looked up again, his attention arrested. ‘Faith, boy, you look weary. Don’t sit on that stool. Fetch the chair from the corner there. You need something to lean on, by the look of you. I won’t keep you but a minute.’

  Allen fetched the chair and sat on it, watching Father Peregrine’s face as he finished the perusal of his documents and then put them aside. The abbot smiled at him, and the kindness of his smile, in that fierce, uncompromising face, took Allen by surprise.

  ‘Well? Hard going?’

  The frank sympathy with which he spoke brought sudden, completely unexpected tears to Allen’s eyes. Hard going? By all holy, it was hard going! He blinked the tears away furiously, but didn’t trust himself to speak. He stared hard at the inkstand on the table, determined not to betray his exhaustion and turmoil.

  ‘My son, why did you come?’ asked Father Peregrine, quietly. That, at least, Allen could answer, and the moment perilously close to tears was over.

  ‘I came to find God’s peace,’ he replied.

  The abbot nodded. ‘Have you found it?’

  Allen looked at him, wearily. This man could see right into him. He could see that, couldn’t he?

  ‘You know I haven’t found it.’

  ‘Do you want to go on looking, or have you had enough?’

  Allen thought. To go home… home to a good fire, a soft bed, a bath whenever he wanted one. Home to his mother seeing to all his needs, to lying abed in the mornings sometimes… to an undisturbed night’s sleep.

  ‘But if I go now…’ Allen paused. ‘Well, where would I go? I can’t spend the rest of my life walking away from it, can I? I couldn’t bear it. I don’t… I don’t really feel as though I have a choice. Apart from that, yes, I’ve had enough. More than enough.’ He felt the lump rise in his throat again and thought he’d better stop talking.

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ said Father Peregrine, ‘which it may not be, I felt very much as you do. And… God turns no one away. He will give you the peace you crave.’

  Allen leaned forward in his chair. ‘When did you—how did you find it?’

  The abbot smiled, ‘It’ll give you little comfort if I tell you. I found the peace of God, really, surely, for always found it, just nine years ago. I was forty-seven. And I wouldn’t recommend anyone to find it the way I did.’

  Allen looked at him in horror. ‘Forty-seven!’

  Father Peregrine laughed at him. ‘I’ll pray for you, my son, every day, until you find the peace of God. I know what it is to hunger for it, believe me.’

  He talked to Allen a little longer, asked some more questions, let him talk a while, then said, ‘Father Matthew will be chiding me if I keep you longer from your instruction. He says… he feels you can do with as much schooling as you can get.’

  ‘Thank you, Father.’ Allen got to his feet, and returned the chair to its corner. He felt obscurely encouraged. This rather alarming man seemed to know, and care, how he felt.

  ‘Forty-seven,’ he said as he put the chair down. ‘God’s wounds, that’s a long time to wait.’

  He turned towards the door.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Allen looked back at the abbot, and was startled. Father Peregrine’s eyes were ablaze with anger, his mouth set like a trap. He looked furious. Allen’s jaw dropped. He stared in astonishment.

  ‘If I ever hear you speak of the wounds of Christ again with such blasphemous levity, I will have you flogged, I give you my word.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry,’ said Allen, stupidly.

  ‘That is not how we say it here,’ replied his abbot, still angry but not quite so furious.

  Allen knelt hastily on the stone floor. ‘I humbly confess,’ he said, as he had learned to do, ‘my—my blasphemy. I ask your forgiveness Father, and God’s.’

  ‘No doubt God forgives you, and so do I. Now get up off your knees and hear this.’ The abbot was still very angry.
Allen stood up bewildered. Whatever had got into the man? It was only a figure of speech.

  ‘Christ Jesus your God,’ said Peregrine, fixing him with the fierce eyes that had made most of the brethren quail at one time or another, ‘was mocked by the Roman soldiers. They blindfolded him and beat him with sticks, laughing at him, saying, “Who hit you then, prophet?” They stripped him naked and then dressed him up as a king. They crowned him with a cap of thorns. They flogged him until he bled, and they had him carry his cross on that bleeding back through the streets of Jerusalem until he fell under it. He lay on the torn skin of his back on the cross, and stretched out his arms and suffered the soldiers to hammer nails through his wrists. Nails that hurt him so… that convulsed his hands into claws. Have you ever wounded your hands, boy?’

  Allen shook his head. He had never wounded anything, beyond the grazed knees of childhood.

  ‘It is hideous pain. It is agony. Do you remember what he said—Jesus—the words he prayed as they hammered nails into his hands on the cross? Well? What did he say—or have you forgotten?’

  Allen moistened his lips nervously. ‘He said, “Father forgive them.”’

  ‘Yes. Would you have said such a thing in that moment? No. Well may you shake your head in silence. Nor would I. Five years, ten years later maybe, but not then. The pain of it… I would… I would have begged, not for their forgiveness, but in terror, for mercy. I… did. They hoisted him up on the cross. A crucified man, my son, dies of suffocation from the weight of his own body. Three hours he hung there, shifting his weight from the nails through his feet to the nails through his wrists, scraping his flayed back on the wood of the cross. He did it because he loved us. He chose it, wanted it. It was the price of our peace. I say again: if I ever hear you make light of his wounds with your blasphemy, I will have you beaten until your back bleeds as his bled, and leave you to imagine the rest.’

  ‘Father, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I didn’t think. I…’

  ‘Whatever have you been thinking about while you’ve been here then?’ Peregrine roared at him. Allen stood, silent.