The Beautiful Thread

by Penelope Wilcock

  He watched with lively attention as Richard, having little choice in the matter, doggedly persevered with his application of beeswax, baring his teeth in his best approximation of a smile.

  “Zounds! Fie! Is that – wait! Just a minute! Go to! There’s a mouse!” This elicited little astonishment from Richard or Placidus; the frater hosted plenty of mice. They had a cat, and it hunted valiantly, keeping the population within tolerable limits. But Brainard, moving more swiftly, and more silently, than Richard would have judged within most men’s capability, managed to arrest the little creature’s escape by treading on its tail. He stamped on it with his other foot, grinding in a vigorous circle to be sure it was dead. Placidus, straightening up from his work, watched open-mouthed. “I think that’s done for it – well, nearly; it won’t last long,” said the jocund equerry. “A bit of a mess, I’m afraid, but nothing a scrubbing brush won’t shift. Well, I must be getting on – I’ve a list of requests as long as your arm for Brother – er – the kitchener.” He stepped sprightly towards the cloister door, leaving a faint trail of blood mixed with tiny traces of gut, fur and body fluids in his wake. “Don’t forget, now!” Almost coquettishly he looked back: “Keep smiling!”

  Brother Richard had always maintained that Brother Cormac, during his days as kitchener, ought not to pepper his speech so freely with expletives, exposing the novices who worked alongside him to an example falling far short of the monastic ideal. But in that moment Richard descended to the same unworthy laxity himself. Realizing that not only had his vocabulary been reprehensibly unrestrained for the presence of a novice, but also the choice opinions he had expressed about a guest of the abbey and the right-hand man of their Bishop Visitor, Richard knew he would have to confess this in Chapter the next morning. It occurred to him that Bishop Eric would most likely be present at the Chapter meeting, and wondered if he ought to say nothing, that being the case. Or go to his abbot and make a private confession – though when he saw Father John earlier this morning, he had every appearance of being wholly taken up with Brother Conradus’s mother.

  “Well? Is it dead?” he snapped at Brother Placidus, who had gone across to look.

  “I surely hope so,” said the lad. He sounded upset. “I know they’re vermin, but… every creature that lives should have the chance of a gentle death. That’s what Father Theo says, anyhow. I’ll get the scrubbing brush and a pail of water, shall I, Brother Richard? Clear it up?”

  The fraterer nodded, and took a deep breath. “Aye. Good lad. Then we must get cracking with this – it can’t be far off time for the midday office. We ought to be laying up in here before too long.”

  It might have been awkward if LePrique had come upon Rose in the monastery kitchen. No doubt he would have mentioned his surprise in conversation with his master, and feminine infiltration of the cloister was unquestionably undesirable. Bishop Eric, like Father Theodore, would probably have considered it unthinkable. And the kitchener’s chances of getting his feast together without her would have been surpassing slim.

  Happy it was, then, that having introduced her to his novice master and cheerfully agreed to make himself available for the next examination of the novitiate, Abbot John found so much in common with Conradus’s mother, and such a lot to talk about, that LePrique had just gone on his way by the time she hurried along to the kitchen. The equerry left behind an extensive outline of menu suggestions. Conradus actually physically stopped, when his mother walked in, to achieve the conscious accomplishment of changing the expression on his face.

  “Good morrow, my sweet ma!” He took the scroll of dietary aspirations and put it rather emphatically on the spike. “Have you slept well? And breakfasted? And do you feel inclined to have a go at some gingerbread? I’ll show you my design for the main course subtlety. I drew it up last night. It’s going to be awesome!”

  * * *

  Father Theodore, out of breath from scaling the stairs at speed, found his novices studying with exemplary quietness on his return. Too quiet, in Brother Robert’s case – head resting comfortably on his folded arms upon the desk under the window, he had fallen asleep over his New Testament. The irresistible drowsiness brought on by difficult texts could be palpably felt among them all. So the novice master invited them to regroup into their circle. The physical movement involved in setting out the benches brought them back to life.

  “So.” Once they had gathered, Father Theodore looked round at their faces. More than one of them thought he seemed a bit flinty today. More forbidding than usual. “Why do we have a Rule?”

  His gaze went from one to the other, his eyebrows raised in enquiry. Theodore encouraged question and comment, he took all of them seriously. They knew that nothing they could say as an honest opinion would draw censure or derision from their novice master. This gave them the necessary confidence to explore possibilities without needing to feel afraid of looking stupid.

  Anxious to please, seeing Theo looked a little grim, Brother Boniface said: “The other day in Chapter, we had that reading from near the beginning – the one about Jesus’ story of the time of storm when the house doesn’t fall, because it’s been built on the rock. I don’t think the rock is the Rule. And I don’t think the Rule is doing the building. Because the story in the Bible says the man who listens to the words of Jesus and acts on them is like someone building on the rock – and that’s anyone, not just Benedictines. Perhaps not even only monks or nuns. But I think the Rule might be to guide us in that way. Like a builder’s apprenticeship, or something.”

  Theo nodded. He rarely said “Good”, or “Right” or “Wrong”. He respected their insights and opinions, and let the discussion between them hunt down truth.

  “What about the Chapter based on Psalm 119 we had a day or two ago?” suggested Brother Benedict. “About running in the way of God’s commandments? The one that said about the monastery being like a school that trains us, our whole life long. To persevere, and be made fit to be in the presence of Christ. I mean – by his grace, of course, too. As well as the Rule.”

  Theo listened to this thoughtfully. And Brother Cassian said: “I guess everything we need for our salvation is already ours in Christ. The word of the Scriptures and the teaching of Holy Church, and really living those things as we come to understand them. But our Rule… well… I’m thinking, Father, if you come at it from the other side, considering how we’d get along without it. Might it be that with no Rule we’d be unruly? Hit and miss, muddling along, misled by our own preferences and temperaments and inclinations. Taken in by understandable human desires. Like the story you told us about the gardener, whose friend admired his beautiful orderly plot, going into raptures about the hand of the Almighty in the work of creation. And the gardener said, ‘Yes, but you should have seen it when the Almighty had it all to himself.’ I think the life and growth and beauty comes from the hand of God, but the Rule keeps it tidy and fruitful, so there’s something to eat as well as something glorious to look at.”

  “Just so,” said Father Theodore, “but please don’t repeat that story in the hearing of the bishop. Though it makes a point, it’s not the zenith of scholarly theology. But, yes. Bringing our God-given human nature into a fruitful discipline. Because, thinking about human beings for the moment, not gardens, someone usually gets hurt in short order in the lives of people who act on impulse, who abandon wise discipline, who do what they want because it feels so attractive and they can’t see the harm in it. And then comes the reckoning. Later. Tears and trouble and broken friendships, people angry and hurt. The reason we have a Rule, to my mind – though the insights you’ve offered are just as valid as mine – is because it tends towards peace. By that, I don’t mean it’s easy, or that it encourages complacency. It doesn’t make us idle, or dull. Living by our Rule isn’t boring or narrow. But it works for peace in human community. And anyone who has tried to live for five minutes without peace must surely grasp how precious that is.”

  He paused. None of the l
ads who sat in the circle listening to him could help but notice the vehemence with which he spoke. Brother Cassian, hearing it, frowned. It sounded as though something might have gone wrong, in that mysterious society of professed brothers, still closed to the novitiate.

  “Because peace is so inestimable a treasure,” said the novice master, “it follows, as you might expect, that it is not bought cheap. Our life, our Rule – this is a costly way. It costs us everything. It is our calling, our pearl without price. Don’t be tempted, brothers, to trade it in. So long as this is your true calling, you won’t find anything better. That would be impossible. Brother Robert, are you listening? Because you need to know this. All of us do, from the newest among our novices clear through to the abbot.”

  * * *

  After Chapter the following morning, John came into the kitchen looking for Rose. He had seen her yesterday – they had walked by the river in the evening, talking about this and that, inconsequential things, the small, dear, bright, ordinary grains and fragments that made up their respective worlds. But he felt it somehow important he should call by again today, just to check all was well. No doubt Conradus could take care of her competently, but John convinced himself he owed her this courtesy, as his guest. He would have liked to invite her to eat with him in the evenings, but – try as he might – he could not imagine her in the same social space as Bishop Eric. She belonged to a different part of him, the life that had formed and shaped him before he came here, or at least before he was elected abbot with all the unwelcome carapace of consequence and responsibility that came along with it. An unacknowledged inside place felt guilty and defensive as he walked along to the kitchen; but he went anyway.

  As he stepped through the open door, the first sight to meet him was Rose carefully pouring melted butter onto the surface of multitudinous pots of paté. A shaft of sunlight lit the place where she worked. John stood quite still, watching her, the friendly curves of her face and body, the soft colours of her linen dress and apron, the tendrils of silvering hair that would not stay put under her graceful linen cap.

  “Well met, Father! We’re getting on fine now, as you can see!” Conradus, cheerful, appeared at his elbow. “Mother’s just putting the last touches to the potted meats – juniper berries and bay leaves to go on the top, then they’re all done. I’ve cleared a shelf in the dairy to store them where it’s cool. Today we’ll start on the cheeses, and by some kind of cunning wizardry I must summon up a place to store those too. The wine is all in place, and the casks of ale. The sweets are done, for the most part. The birds are hanging out back, and we’ll pluck them later today. The butter comes after that, and the subtleties. The bread will be the last thing we can prepare ahead of time.”

  Wiping her hands on a cloth, Rose came to greet him, her rosy cheeks dimpling in smiles. “Wes hal, Father John. I mustn’t stop – I’ve to garnish these little pots before the butter sets hard. But it’s good to see you.”

  “Oh – I can finish those off, Mother! You take a little break. Better still – maybe gather me the salad leaves to send along to the guesthouse?”

  John went out with her, into the kitchen garden, each carrying a basket, and they walked along its immaculately tended rows.

  “Thank you for helping us,” he said to her. “You’re making all the difference. Conradus was beginning to look just a teeny bit harassed before you came.”

  Merry and warm, her eyes laughed up at him. “Aye, I can believe it! There’s a lot to get through. But we’re equal to it. You know, Father John,” she said, reaching out to pluck from the pole beans a leaf where blackfly had begun to gather, “I was thinking only this morning, what is it spurs me on – gives me strength for each day?” She looked up at him, squinting against the sun. He was listening. “And I think I put my finger on it. It first began as a game with myself, when I was just a young lass. I started to see if I could make people happy. I told myself that would be a kind of magic.” She smiled. “Better not let the bishop hear me say that, eh? But I think my secret’s safe with you! It turned into a habit, something I almost – not quite – stopped thinking about. When I see anyone looking sullen or feeling low, I watch them, think about what they enjoy, ask myself what might have gone adrift. And then I see if I can’t do some small thing to brighten them up. I’m not a rich woman, Father John, as well you know. I’m not important or clever. I learned to read, after a fashion – well enough to know the words in a recipe, but nothing like the Latin and so forth that our lad’s learning here with you. But I – well, I’m nobody and nothing really. And I’m not beautiful. That’s a kind of confession. All women want to be beautiful, Father John, and I know I’m not.”

  Oh, Rose, yes you are, he thought; but he didn’t say it. He just listened.

  “But it came to me, making people happy is so great a power, so beautiful a thing, that if I could do that, it would make me… well…” She hung her head, blushing to admit this private thing. “I thought it would make me like a queen.” She stood quiet for a moment, then she said, “So that’s what I do. Every day. It brings me joy, and that joy is my strength. Magic. Power. Making people happy.”

  She risked a shy glance at him, to see how this glimpse into her private world had been received, and saw understanding in his eyes, and tenderness. “I think you know what I mean,” she said. “I think maybe you do it too.”

  He began breathing again. “Well, I will now,” he said. “Always, I do believe. Thank you, Rose.”

  “Oh! It’s only a little thing, but it does make a difference. It doesn’t take a lot to make people happy, I find. To be considered and remembered, comforted and fed. Just ordinary things. Asking how the day went, bringing them a drink. But now – hark at me, prattling on while our lad’s put to it to get all done back there in the kitchen! Here are we idling in the garden together – let’s get him the greens that he asked for.”

  As John went along the row, doing as his mother had taught him in his boyhood, plucking out some leaves and leaving some to grow on and renew the plant for further harvest, a memory obtruded into his mind of William and Madeleine in her garden during her time at the abbey – and how he had said to William, crisply: “One word – boundaries!” But this, as he told himself, was obviously different. For he was the abbot, and owed Rose the courtesy due to a guest. He wondered vaguely where the bishop was, and decided not to care. His world seemed to have drawn apart into contrasts of light and shadow; these vivid moments of satisfying, delightful conversation sparkled like sunlight at noon. They send into dark, recessive hollows of meaningless tedium the round of the day shaped by bells and chant and silence, the duties of administration, the obligation of courteous attendance upon Bishop Eric. And the Bonvallet family simply grated on his nerves; he stopped trying to pretend to himself that they didn’t.

  He made himself leave Rose in the summer garden, willed his feet to take him along the cloister to his house. In the rest of the day, he listened politely, he spoke with as much intelligence as he could muster, he tried to put his mind to the never-ending pile of documents accumulated on his desk. But his heart was not there. Then, halfway through the afternoon he remembered he’d promised the bishop over lunch to show him the library. It must be nearly time for None, but he thought he’d better take a look, in case his Lordship had gone straight there instead of coming to find him first.

  As the abbot came out of his house, something caught his attention. Obviously he could see monks in the cloister at most times of day; it wasn’t that. What made him look twice was the absolute dejection in the young man’s demeanour; Brother Robert mooching dismally along the cloister as if he’d lost interest in arriving anywhere. John felt it more than sure he would already be keeping Bishop Eric waiting in the library, so he considered leaving Robert to sort his own problems out. But he reminded himself of the priorities of Jesus, which didn’t rank status and position as a more compelling imperative than the struggles of ordinary people, and he strode briskly after Brother Rob
ert to find out what had gone wrong.

  Not a gifted man, Robert had no expectations of setting the theological circles of Christendom alight with his insights any time soon. His illumination work was frankly awful, and though his lettering stood up tolerably well his spelling hampered him. Not quick-witted, he often missed the point of the understated jests, the puns and parodied references, characterizing the conversation of the novitiate’s leisurely moments. His departure from the world into monastic life had left no trail of broken hearts; in fact, though he had three sisters and two younger brothers, it would be accurate to say no one missed him much at all. Here in the abbey, he worked alongside Brother Thaddeus in the pottery. Their craftsmanship directed itself towards the production of simple, serviceable vessels for everyday use, and under Thaddeus’s kindly tutelage Robert had begun to shape up into first a passable craftsman and then a good one.

  Seeing time was short because he wanted to be on his way, John felt relieved that it usually required no oblique diplomacy to draw Brother Robert out: a straight question would do. And so it proved today.

  Father Gilbert, he explained, had co-opted the entire novitiate to sing the polyphonic setting of the Mass for the forthcoming nuptials. Several of the young men had fine voices, as did Father Theodore. Mostly just two or three of them were required to learn new solos for acting as cantor as their turn came round; but this music was difficult and asked for a full choir. Father Gilbert needed them all; except, as it turned out, Brother Robert, who came in early however often he was told (late would have mattered less), seemed incapable of following a conductor, and sang flat.