The Beautiful Thread

by Penelope Wilcock

  At some point, as she held him in the grip of her baleful stare, Lady Bonvallet recognized in the abbot something she knew from long familiarity with her husband. He had stopped listening. Though this aggravated her, since she felt he should be paying attention to what was both important and unquestionably right, she knew from long experience that distracted look opened a chance to ask for almost anything. She took it.

  “Then there are all these guests arriving, and where shall we put the musicians? The minstrels. We cannot house all comers;ours is only a modest manor. They will have to come straight here. You have plenty of room. I will send them on as soon as they arrive. It will only be for a few days, you’ll hardly notice them.”

  She eyed him judiciously; and he did not say no. Moving on rapidly to other considerations, she questioned him about the provisions she had ordered – had the cheeses arrived? The spices? The flour? And hay? What about the dried fruit? And would the abbey’s own stores of salt suffice?

  “Lady Bonvallet” – John spoke quietly and courteously but, she saw with clarity, through gritted teeth – “you will have to enquire of my cellarer. I have made no inventory of our cheese. May I invite you to step along to the checker and confer with Brother Cormac? I am sure he can furnish you with all the information you need.”

  The abbot noted that he was shaking with simple anger as he bowed in farewell and opened the door for her to sweep through. He paused and closed his eyes, slowed his breath. Then he turned to the task of preparing tomorrow’s Chapter.

  Sitting at his desk, he opened the Rule and looked blankly at the passage set. He tried to scrape up from the scattered debris of his excoriated soul something worth saying. He wondered if he could simply pass the responsibility across to Bishop Eric. Wider and deeper? Richer? More inspiring? Fine. You do it.

  He picked up his pen, dipped it in the ink, drew to him a torn scrap of vellum for making notes. Parchment was valuable, not to be wasted. He hesitated, searching for thoughts worth writing down. As I sat in my atelier… No. As I looked out on the sunrise this fine May morning… No. As we prepare to receive a considerable invasion – oh, for the love of God, who’s that now?

  He shoved back his chair in irritation and crossed the room in three livid paces, snatching open the door. And there stood William.

  “Oh. Not a good moment? I won’t come in. But can I just ask you – is it the case that you gave permission for these minstrels the Bonvallets have engaged to impose on your hospitality three days? Yes? John, tell me you said the family will have to foot the expenses. The drain on your coffers from this masquerade is growing like mushrooms on horse dung! She’s a conniving and opportunistic shrew, that woman, and –”

  “Go away,” said John quietly. “Just for now. I am grateful for your help. I appreciate your advice. But just for the moment – please – give me some space. Yes, I gave my permission. Please go away. Just for now. Please.”

  He tried to smile, but failed. He had to trust William to understand as he quietly closed the door again, right in his face.

  Once more he stopped, applied himself to restoring calm and concentration; then the bell began to ring for the noon office.

  Doggedly, he returned to his work after the midday meal, having directed his prior to find the bishop something to do, and tracked down William to apologize for his earlier discourtesy. But he could not settle, could not think. Scattered like feathers, like blown leaves, his thoughts whirled empty and random. He thought he might as well find Francis and the bishop and at least make himself useful there. He opened the door to the abbey court, but couldn’t bring himself to go.

  It was then, as he stood in the doorway of his house, within the shadow of its frame, that he saw Brother Conradus crossing the court towards him with a short, comfortably proportioned woman who simply had to be his mother. Deep in happy conversation, Brother Conradus gesticulating and laughing, pausing to point out the checker as they passed it, the door to the refectory, the windows of the library above – they made slow progress. And then she broke off to walk across, over to the wall beneath the refectory windows where a mass of bluebells, fading now but still in bloom, gave out such a glorious fragrance. And John watched her kneel unselfconsciously and unaffectedly, putting out her hands to the flowers, bending her face to them, breathing in the perfume. Brother Conradus came to stand beside her, and she turned her head, lifting her face, her smile full of delight and appreciation. That’s where he gets it from, then, thought John. I wish more of your sons had vocations, Rose. We could do with the whole tribe up here.

  She held out her hand and Conradus pulled her to her feet and into his arms for a quick hug, then they continued their cheerful, sauntering transit along the path bordering the west range, to the abbot’s house. Eventually Conradus saw his abbot standing in the doorway and evidently said as much to his mother, for they both looked his way, Conradus with a cheery wave, and quickened their pace.

  As John stepped back in to admit them, Rose held out both her hands to him, much as she had to the flowers, and her eyes searched his face with keen perspicacity; something sharper and deeper than the usual glance of first acquaintance, something seriously appraising but as kind and gentle and happy as it was wise.

  After his initial greeting, John asked her, “Will you be weary now? Shall you first rest?”

  She hesitated. “I’ve ridden far,” she said, “but I am eager, too –”

  “To hear about the wedding?” John anticipated. “Is that best?”

  Rose smiled. “Oh yes – but more, to spend some time with you. Our lad writes home about his Abbot John, in every single letter that he sends.”

  “Aye, Rose – we likewise know you through your son; I almost feel that we’re already friends.”

  She nodded. “Then may I – but I don’t want to impose. If I would be a nuisance, you must say –”

  “Ah, no! You are most welcome; truly, Rose. I’ve been so looking forward to this day.” John thought he could make as much time for this woman as she wanted. Her face lit in the brightest smile, and she confessed with honesty as limpid as a child’s: “It’s such a big adventure to come here!”

  John laughed. “You’re welcome, with wide open arms, my dear.”

  Brother Conradus, observing this first encounter of two of his favourite people with pleased satisfaction, felt it couldn’t have been better. “I told you,” he said, “you’d absolutely love her!”

  Rose turned to him, her eyebrows rising and her eyes wide, “You told him what, lad?”

  “Oh,” he said, “you can say anything to Father John. Besides, it’s true; look.”

  “Well,” said John, “sit you down, both of you. Oh, but Rose – forgive me, rude – this is Brother Thomas, who looks after me and keeps me in order. One or other of us is usually here if you’re looking for me.”

  Having greeted her, Tom offered to go with Conradus to the kitchens and fetch some refreshment for Rose after her journey. He closed the door to the abbey court, and the two men went by way of the cloister.

  “Your husband has not come with you?” John asked, both of them choosing, without really thinking about it, to sit not on the chairs for important guests but on the two low stools.

  “Oh, no. The garden, the animals – I mean, we have one lass still at home with us – our Alice – and the others are nearby, they’ll always help out, but this is too many days. Though Father Chad did invite him, and Gavin thought maybe he’d ride up for the wedding, so then I could go home with him afterwards – save one of the brothers turning out a second time. Jane – our Simon’s wife – will stay with Alice while her dad’s away.”

  “You take good care of each other,” observed John.

  “We – aye, I suppose we do. I expect our Alice could manage alone, but she might feel a bit forlorn all by herself with her dad and me off on a jaunt having a wild time. I’d be sad to think of her lonely.”

  “Conradus is the same,” John said. “It’s not so very lo
ng since I had the most awful family tragedy myself. My mother and sister… some unspeakable louts set their house afire, killed my mother. My sister… they… a whole gang of them… they… hurt her. It tore me apart, and for a while I was good for nothing. And your lad was so gentle to me, and so very kind.”

  Rose listened to this, still and serious. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I hardly know what to say. Your sister? How is she now?”

  “Oh…” John hesitated.

  “I don’t mean to be nosy,” she said quickly.

  “No, it’s all right. She lived here with us for a while, but now she lives ten miles hence. She married. I believe she is well enough settled. You’ll meet her husband. He’s also here to help with this wedding. He’s called William. He… well… perhaps I’d better leave it there. He’s a dependable man; I can trust him to look after Madeleine. But it’s the same as with you – she couldn’t come with him because they have chickens and geese, a goat and a garden. They used to keep pigs, but not now I believe.”

  And so they talked easily about homely, family things, and the life Rose sketched out for John reminded him of his childhood, the way he grew up. He felt comfortable with her, his eyes resting on the soft contours of her face, rosy cheeks, dark eyes, dark hair streaked through with silver like his sister’s, stray wisps of it escaping from the linen cap she wore and curling softly against her neck. Her hands, plump like the rest of her, brown from the sun and very clean, rested peacefully in her lap as she chatted. She dressed modestly, he noted – her cap, her kerchief folded over her breast and taken round to tie behind her – and he liked that. She had, he thought, an odd combination of quietness and vivacity, so that her presence felt calm but sparkled with the same inherent joy and zest for life as he felt in her son. He found himself telling her things that normally felt insignificant, too inconsequential to say; and she listened, her eyes alive with interest, her mouth almost curving in a smile always ready.

  When Tom and Conradus returned from the kitchen, she tasted appreciatively the soft honey cakes and crisp little pastries her son set before her with pride, and gratefully sipped the camomile tea Brother Tom poured her. She listened carefully as they explained what was needed of her in helping with the wedding preparations, and that for this short time she would by special permission be allowed to work within the cloister. She thought about this. “That is a privilege indeed,” she said, “and to work alongside my son again is a precious gift I had not looked for. But… the only thing… sometimes, Father John, when I’m cooking – I just can’t help it – I do start to sing. Because I feel happy. But maybe that would be out of keeping here. Unseemly. Only I think it might just happen. Even within the cloister.”

  She looked up, concerned, into his laughing eyes. “Oh, Rose, thank God you’ve come!” he said. Somehow, everything about her set the bishop and the Bonvallets and the whole struggling endeavour of trying to live up to the status of the abbacy into better perspective. It unaccountably faded away. They’d only just met, but he felt as though he’d known her forever.

  Chapter

  Three

  They walked through the apple orchard, the trees laden with pink and white blossom, to the infirmary, where Rose especially wanted to see the physic garden. As they strolled along, they talked about healing herbs, and Rose’s knowledge delighted John. Some of what came out in their conversation was familiar to him already – lettuce as a sovereign remedy for heartburn, the dangling flowers of the nettle as a wonderful spring tonic – but other snippets about winter aconite for tumours and flowers of hawthorn to strengthen the heart, were new to him. She surveyed the beautifully tended knot-garden full of the infirmary’s medicinal plants, her eyes bright with pleasure. She walked among the herbs, bending to touch and to sniff the clean, robust bouquet of aromatic scents.

  Rose thought her son had it right – you really could tell this man anything. His manner was so understanding, so warm and kind. Besides, she felt so free and at peace in his company – a man of God, vowed to the monastic way of simplicity and holiness. She felt less cautious and guarded than she would ordinarily be with a man. Even now in middle life, her hair turning grey and her waist expanding, she took care to exercise the discreet reserve of propriety in her dealings with men. But, believing in him, in his vocation, with John she felt at liberty to simply let him see who she really was, and share with him the interior landscape of her soul. She trusted herself to him.

  As they walked back to the checker, they talked of the care of the sick and dying, of human nature and the threads of faith, the bright thread of love and courage – gold, she said; red, thought John – and the thread of peace – blue, said John; green, said Rose – woven into the stuff of everyday life; strengthening and stabilizing it.

  In the checker, he introduced her to Brother Cormac, showed her where to find information if she needed it, where the keys of the storerooms and cellars hung. From there he took her to the refectory, to show her the quickest way into the kitchen from the guesthouse.

  Father Theodore, who had left most of his novices working on their New Testament Greek, dashed down to beg his abbot’s attendance at the bishop’s second visit to the novitiate. He didn’t know when that would be, but assumed it must be soon, since the Visitation was generally accomplished in three days; so he thought he’d ask now.

  He had been greeted at the cloister door to the abbot’s house by Brother Tom, who said the abbot would most likely be in the vicinity of the checker. With a hastily suppressed sigh of exasperation – he ought to be overseeing his charges – Theo strode across the atelier, opening the further door in time to see John and Rose walk across the greensward from the checker to the refectory. He stopped in his tracks, watching John’s eyes crinkle in a spontaneous moment of genuine, unaffected laughter, seeing how the abbot bent his head to attend to what Rose was saying, observing the openness, the happiness of her countenance, so lively and natural.

  “Oh, no,” he said under his breath. “Oh, no, no, no. Oh, sweet mother of God. That’s all we need.”

  Tom came to stand behind, looking over his shoulder. “Don’t say it,” he said. “Don’t say anything. Not to me, not to anyone. Let’s hope he’ll come to his senses and it’ll just sort itself out. He’s canny, is John. Most of the time, anyway. Well…” The two men watched the approach of their abbot and his guest. “At least, he usually is. Oh, he’ll catch up with himself.”

  Theo shook his head in unbelieving despondency. “Quite possibly. But when? After how much damage is done? We’re in the middle of a bishop’s Visitation, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Theo! Let it alone. I’ll have a word with him if need be. Oh look – there’s the equerry. I wonder where he’s going?”

  As John and Rose walked along to the abbot’s house Brainard, having discovered Brother Conradus’s genius, headed this lovely May morning towards the kitchen. Not only had he a considerable list of his own morsels of choice, but carried in his head Bishop Eric’s aspirations for the gastronomic aspects of his stay.

  His path from the guesthouse crossed the abbey court, then took him through the refectory into the cloister – the simplest route to the kitchen.

  In the refectory, he found Brother Richard and Brother Placidus, hard at work on the dining tables. Richard scrubbed these thoroughly every afternoon, but they wanted waxing to make a nice finish for the forthcoming marriage celebrations. Located in the west range with a door into the abbey court, the refectory offered a convenient space for larger parties of visitors than the guesthouse could accommodate. This didn’t happen often – the triduum of Easter was usually the only time of year St Alcuin’s received a really sizeable influx – but on this occasion every nook they could think of would be pressed into use; and had to be cleaned first.

  Today, Richard had scrubbed the tables down as usual, swept the floors, and had now started on the laborious job of rubbing in the polish. Brother Walafrid made good-sized pots of this, using their own beeswax fragranced
with lavender from the garden. The turpentine he added softened it somewhat, and Brother Conradus had set the pot to stand near the kitchen fire since first lighting it this morning. But the consistency remained stiff; applying it to all six tables took some muscle. When the last one had been completed, the first should be ready for the patient work of buffing with first one cloth, then another of softer fabric, and finally with a square of sheepskin – the fleecy side, obviously. Nobody looked forward to this job, but at least Placidus could console himself it had got him out of a long morning of New Testament Greek. Father Theodore had with reluctance given his permission.

  Humming a cheery (but sacred) melody, Brainard came into the refectory, and paused to inhale deeply the aromatic mixture scenting the room.

  “Ahhh!” he exclaimed appreciatively. Brother Placidus continued his work without pausing; as a novice he was not supposed to get into conversation with the abbey’s guests, unless that proved unavoidable. Brother Richard looked up and smiled.

  “Good morrow,” he said pleasantly.

  “Aha!” Brainard contemplated the fraterer with approval. “Now, that’s what I like to see – a smiling face. Did you know, Brother… er… smiling while you work makes you more productive? Smiling men get more done! Imagine that! Ooh – look – Brother Er; you missed a bit! Just here; can you see? If you tilt your head sideways – lean to the left a little way – you have to look at it so the light just catches the surface. No, not there – a little further along; by that knot in the wood. Yes, that’s right. Ooh, and look – another little patch near the end; only small, but I’m sure you want to do a good job. Oh and another – hahaha! Isn’t it a merry thing, how once you really start to look, you see little places missed everywhere! That’s right. Oh – another little spot; here, look.” He pointed. “How remarkably felicitous I happened to come by. Just think, you might never have noticed. Such occasions – not coincidences to my mind, I like to call them Godincidences – the mini-miracles that blossom unheeded along our daily path. Ooh – another spot here, Brother – er…”