“My family – my ma and da, my brothers – they are happy for us,” said Hannah softly. “And my da and my brother will help us if we do have our own farm. Help us get started.”
John smiled at her. “And are you looking forward to your wedding day, Hannah?”
“Aye! Indeed I am! I know what Gervase’s family thinks of me – they’ve made it plain. But they’ve been good to us even so, Father. I mean, look, they’ve stumped up for a grand feast, nothing spared. And I’m so excited about the minstrels – there’s to be jugglers. And a lady to play a harp. I think that will be beautiful. A great big harp, it’s to be. She’ll have to bring it on a cart! I… I think – I hope – it’ll be a very special day, Father John; don’t you?”
Hannah spoke bravely, but he could see she had lost much of the bounce and sparkle natural to her in these recent weeks. He remembered the day he had walked up the last few miles to St Alcuin’s, returning to take up the abbacy after a year away. He’d met her out with her goats, waving joyously when she recognized him walking up the track, running down to greet him, enfolding him in an exuberant, affectionate hug. She looked more restrained now.
“It will be a joyous day,” he said firmly. “All the angels singing. You seem to me very well suited to one another. I think the way lies clear for you to be happy. The gift of a farm is a generous prospect indeed. And if that comes about, though I doubt we can offer much help in the way of labour, don’t hesitate to ask us if you need advice – Brother Stephen, Brother Thomas; there’s not much they don’t know.
“It’s not – this discouragement – it’s not a bad thing, really, you know. To enter into a marriage, well, it’s in accord with our human nature, but even so it’s wise to be sure. Much as, though there are monasteries up and down the breadth of the land, even so, when a young man comes to us and says he has a calling, we test it, we probe it, we go slowly. It’s not a thing to go into lightly. Still, it is a blessed thing, and I for one will have a heart overflowing with joy when you tie the knot.”
Gervase looked at him curiously. Something of his mother there, thought the abbot, unerringly detecting the slightly false note in the fulsome reassurances of angels singing and a joyous heart, but forbearing from comment. John hoped they would find contentment in taking their way together. It didn’t seem entirely likely, somehow. But they believed in their love. Who was he to blight it any further than it already had been? Let them take their chances. Especially seeing as they already had two children.
“In a community like ours,” he said, “we have all kinds of men from many different family backgrounds. They come with a variety of assumptions about life, all quickly overturned. Our rule of thumb is to remember that each one is doing his best, each one has his struggles. To give one another the benefit of the doubt. To cultivate a sense of humour. To think twice before making any sort of rebuke. And to be kind. Vocation is noble, but the charcoal beds of everyday life are what filter and refine it from its original condition into something pure and useable.
“A marriage is a community as well – the two of you, your children, the lads and lasses who work together with you in your house and on your fields. Community begins with two, I suppose.”
They heard him with courtesy; they had little to ask, and no comment to make. Like most who came to see him, they regarded him with a certain degree of awe, and tremendous respect. John found this almost unbelievable, but accepted the reality of it. And he supposed he relied on it to make his life manageable. If everyone who came into the abbot’s house felt free to expand in his company and chat away freely, not much would get done. If they were shy in his presence, at least it kept the conversation shorter than it might have been, and left more time for the next in line.
After they had gone, he sat for a while in silence and stillness, thinking about the young couple and the picture they had sketched for him. He felt uneasy about their future. He imagined the difference it could have made if Gervase’s mother and father had taken delight in their love. He thought of Gervase saying his father wouldn’t “be unkind”, meaning nothing more than that he would not be entirely estranged. He wondered if Gervase had ever really known what kindness looked like, before he knew Hannah.
“Oh God, Father of us all,” he whispered into the silence, “breathe your kindness like a fragrance into our lives. Raise us up to be sons of God. Lift us out of the dust of half-measures and ingrained meanness. Raise us up. Breathe your kindness through our lives.”
He sat a moment longer, then on the impulse of sudden resolve left his atelier and went along the cloister and up the day stairs to the novitiate, in search of Father Theodore. He hesitated at the door – which stood ajar – hearing familiar voices inside. He realized that occupying his morning with the wedding couple had left the bishop at a loose end. Evidently he’d thought he might as well get on with his Visitation.
“And what do you think, Brother Robert” – this was the bishop – “of Peter Lombard’s Libri Quatuor Sententiarum? I think I want to ask you in particular what you think of William of Ockham’s commentary thereon.”
John could easily picture Father Theodore physically ceasing to breathe as this question was put. To take a novice as essentially clueless as Brother Robert into the treacherous territory of borderline heresy seemed hardly fair. Sure enough, it was Theo’s voice, not Robert’s, next heard in reply – low, respectful.
“Ah, your Lordship! Ockham’s commentary runs into ten volumes, as you know. We have touched upon them, but not covered them – yet – in depth. Our studies this year have focused on the theology of the Eucharist. But we have discussed Ockham’s razor, Brother Robert, have we not?”
“Really?” The bishop again; though a second voice murmuring, LePrique’s, urging a reminder. Evidently at this point Brother Robert was forgetting to smile. The bishop once more: “Tell me what you have learned of lex parsimoniae, then, Brother Robert – of Ockham’s razor.”
“He… it’s… I think… um… it’s about doing your best to keep things simple. Not complicating everything. Because a razor is narrow and sharp, and cuts through the – er – through the …” Yes. John could well imagine what Theo might originally have said. “He – Ockham – he thought that you could get in a muddle if you made too many assumptions. Better to start small.”
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.” Brother Cassian, having the temerity to interrupt, albeit quietly and with humility. He must have seen Robert struggling, and the approach to novitiate studies they were used to with Theo could better be described as a free-for-all than wait-until-you’re-spoken-to.
“Aha!” exclaimed his Lordship. “Go on, then – say more?”
“It means you don’t exceed what is necessary, in your thinking,” Brother Cassian explained. “That if you have two explanations, you should ditch the fancy one in favour of the plain one. Unless the fancy one is for some reason better. So, you take the best one, but always the simplest best one. Not try to choose something complicated just to show off and look clever. And you should assume things are just natural and straightforward unless you have reason to think otherwise. So if you hear a bump in the night from the next cell, you assume someone has fallen out of bed, not that they’re wrestling with an angel. Because it’s more likely, even if it could in principle be an angel.”
“Very good,” approved his Lordship. “That’s about right. And what about Ockham’s theology of the Eucharist – either of you? Any of you?”
“He… he said…” – this voice belonged to the obsessively diligent Brother Felix, so John had good hopes what he was about to hear might well be correct – “that Christ’s body is truly contained in all of the host, and in all of its parts at once. That the reality of Christ present succeeds the humble nature of bread. There isn’t an interim stage when it’s both, when both natures somehow blend in together. It’s bread, then it’s the host of Christ’s presence.”
“Very good!” The bishop sounded impressed,
though from what he could detect of Brainard’s murmuring, Brother Felix was falling down on the job of keeping his smile in place as well.
“What else have you learned about the theology of the Eucharist? What does Quidort say – and Aquinas?”
John put his hand to the door, thinking this could well be a good moment to interrupt, but paused as he heard Felix begin to speak again. “He – Quidort – did not accept the interpretation given by Aquinas, your Lordship. John Quidort spoke of the nature of the bread being not supplanted by the presence of Christ, but being drawn into the greater being of the Logos – the holy Word, the mystical presence of Christ who is there in all the cosmos, in us who make our communion with the living Christ, in the bread, in the body.”
John saluted this with a silent cheer, and thought Theo must feel profoundly relieved and gratified to know that at least one of his lads had been listening. But when the bishop said, “And you, young man? What are your own beliefs about the Eucharist?” he judged this the right moment to cut in. He didn’t want any of his novices arraigned before an ecclesiastical court for heresy. And it could happen. Not everyone applied Ockham’s razor and assumed basic lack of sophistication and natural stupidity. Some would leap with alacrity to conclude evidence of a subtle and subversive mind at work in sly undermining of the authority of Holy Church, and never stop to ask how likely that was. John pushed open the door.
“Ah! My lord bishop! And Monsieur LePrique. Good morrow to you both. I hope you are finding our novices come up to the mark.”
Thank you, moved Theo’s lips in silent mime as John glanced at him across the tense circle of robed men.
“They seem well versed indeed,” replied the bishop, all geniality. “I was just enquiring about their own views on transubstantiation.”
John smiled. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Brainard nod in satisfaction and encouragement at this. “My lord, do not forget this is only Yorkshire,” said the abbot. “Not Avignon, nor yet the Vatican. I hold Father Theodore’s scholarly ability and considerable intellect in the highest esteem; but mine cannot compare. Some of what our novices have learned will be from my Chapter addresses and homilies at Mass. If you find any fault, come back to me, of your charity. It will be my own shortcoming.”
Though he allowed himself to be diverted from too careful an assessment of their theological orthodoxy, the bishop still persisted with his questions until the welcome sound of the bell ringing for the midday office brought him to a halt. The abbot and the novice master detached him from their novices and flanked him in an escort down the day stairs to the south transept of the church, allowing the young men to flow around and ahead of them. They both felt a sense of having navigated their way across the treacherous, icy waters of a winter stream.
After chapel, as the brothers departed for the frater, Abbot John remained in his stall. Father Theodore crossed the choir and sat in the prior’s place alongside him. “Why did you come up this morning?” he asked, in a discreet undertone that respected the solemnity of the choir. “You were looking for me, not the bishop, weren’t you?”
John nodded. He didn’t want to have this conversation here, but if they went back to his house they’d be late for the midday meal, and if they set off for the refectory they’d run into Bishop Eric.
“It’s Gervase and Hannah, Theo; I’m worried about them.”
“Because –?”
“There’s such wide variance in their backgrounds and opposition from Gervase’s family. And, you know how it is. The aristocracy have a hundred and one ways of disposing of people like Hannah. She’s walking into a lions’ den. If he ever tires of her…”
Theo considered this, his face sober. He sighed. “Well, it’s true. But might we not have said the same of William and Madeleine? If ever a match was ill-advised, it must have been theirs. Yet from the whispers that reach me, they are happy together. And your efforts to stop them were made with the best of intentions but only made them miserable. Even if the ground of this union is shaky to walk on, if Hannah can’t see that for herself, what’s to be done? Seems to me this is one of those things where you have to trust in God and not interfere, Father.”
John accepted this, with reluctance. “Aye. You’re right. I suppose you’re right. Very well, then; I’ll let it be.” He shook it off him and looked at his novice master with a smile. “Your lads gave a good account of themselves to the bishop, did they not?”
“Indeed they did. Good thing he came today and not yesterday. They were all in the kitchen learning to make pastry.”
“What? Why?”
“Brother Conradus will need some extra help for the wedding. He asked if they could all come down, to see who had some aptitude.”
“No! Tell me you’re joking! Making pastry? With the bishop breathing down our necks? They need to be hard at it, Theo, earnest and diligent. Or at least looking like they are. Pastry!”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Theo smiled. “I think it’s good for them to try something other than book work once in a while. I’ve had them down in the pottery learning how to make bowls. I’ve sent them to Brother Walafrid a time or two, to learn how to make tinctures and poultices – basic medicine.”
“Aye, well that’s useful! That’s worthwhile. But – pastry?”
“So speaks an infirmarian,” retorted his novice master. “But listen – while I think of it – Conradus tells me you’ve sent for his mother to come and work alongside him in the kitchen for the Bonvallet wedding. Have I understood him right? You didn’t, did you?”
“For sure. Yes, I did. Is that – is there a problem?”
“Who suggested this? Not Conradus. Oh, don’t tell me – this was William’s bright idea, wasn’t it! John, what are you thinking of? We can’t have a woman working here in the cloister!”
John hesitated, disconcerted. “She’s not… not a woman exactly. This is Brother Conradus’s mother.”
“What?”
“I mean – well, she won’t pose any kind of temptation, will she? She must be near enough my age, and she’ll be a little rolypoly comfortable farm wench. She… well, she’ll be like Brother Conradus but a lot older. What’s wrong with that? What trouble are you expecting? What could possibly go wrong? Nobody’s going to fall in love with Brother Conradus’s mother!”
Theo ran his hand across his scalp. “John, didn’t you say when Madeleine came here that there’s always trouble when women mix in with the community?”
“Oh yes, but” – John waved his hand in dismissal of this – “Madeleine came to live here. Rose will only be here a matter of a fortnight. What problems can she cause in a fortnight, for heaven’s sake?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Theo. “Let’s wait and see. But I’ll have to think twice about the novices helping in the kitchen. Right, then. Shall we have something to eat?”
They walked to the frater in silence.
* * *
In the afternoon, John took the bishop across to the school. One of the few decisions he had made by himself in these first difficult months of his abbacy, was a recent transplanting of Brother Damian from the infirmary and Brother Josephus from various manual tasks, to work in the school. Brother Cassian helped out when his novitiate studies permitted. This dispensation proved to be happy and effective. Occasionally Father Gilbert came in to teach them the rudiments of music, and Father Clement to watch over their penmanship. The boys had evidently been warned of their inspection, and John saw their abnormally angelic behaviour as evidence of a supportive attitude towards their schoolmasters – from which he took encouragement. The bishop was satisfied with what he saw and made no rigorous inquisition. He next asked to visit the checker.
“Perhaps in the morning?” suggested John. He thought it more than likely William would be there, and such a meeting ought to be avoided if at all possible. Even in layman’s clothing and sporting a beard, William was hard to disguise. “I’m hoping your Lordship will dine with me this evening, and I don’t wish
to tire you.”
“Nonsense! Not at all!” The bishop laughed at the suggestion. “I’m as fresh as a daisy. Let’s go now.” As they walked across the court, the abbot discoursed as loudly as he dared without sounding strange, making frequent use of “your Lordship” and “my lord bishop” in his conversation. As they neared the checker, he halted, turning back toward the main buildings of the abbey, gesturing up towards the crenellations atop the west range. “I believe we have to do some leadwork, your Lordship,” he said in a stentorian voice, inventing wildly. “I don’t suppose you can really see from here, but we’ve had some incursion of water into one or two of the cells. Along there. No – a little further.”
The bishop lifted his hand to shade his eyes from the sun as he scanned the meaningless vista. John heard a slight sound from the direction of the checker, and hoped he’d sufficiently advertised their imminent arrival.
“Please don’t concern yourself,” he said in a more normal tone. “It’s nothing but a small domestic matter. Below your interest, really.”
In the checker, the bland innocence which met him in Brother Cormac’s gaze, as that obedientiary rose to greet them, told him the stalling tactics had done the trick.
“New in post, you say?” the bishop remarked with surprise, looking up at Cormac from the immaculate accounts spread out ready for him to see. “Well, by all the saints, you’re doing a marvellous job!”
The new cellarer enlarged convincingly on the state of the abbey’s finances. The picture he portrayed could be summarized as “struggling with chronic poverty in this moorland wilderness, but frugal and careful and an exemplar of responsible management”. Cormac, it seemed, had come a long way in three days.
Later, as he knocked on the wood of his stall with his ring for the community to rise and begin Vespers, Abbot John thought the day had passed off tolerably well so far. But he was not looking forward to the evening, with its influx of sophisticated guests.
* * *
Brother Tom had lit the fire even now in May. The abbey’s thick stone walls meant the rooms were always cool through the summer, and bitterly cold in winter. In the evenings, a fire was always a welcome sight, cheery and hospitable, the woody fragrance a pleasant addition to any occasion.
The Beautiful Thread Page 5
