The Beautiful Thread

by Penelope Wilcock

  The last light shone from the west and though the sun had not yet gone down, the shadows began to gather in the hollows. John turned his head to look at Rose. To his consternation, though he did not move, his hands could feel the warmth of her shoulders and the texture of her linen dress, his mouth knew the feel of her cheek as if he had kissed it. The sense of intimacy and immediacy jolted through him like a shock, something more than he could assimilate. He felt the power of it travel through his whole body. The loveliness and gentle wisdom of this woman. He looked away again. In the grass, a forget-me-not, ardent sweet blue, just coming into flower. He wanted to pick it and give it to her. Caught in the confusion between the insistent clamour of warning arisen with him, and the anguished rebellion of his heart, he did not move. He sat as still as a stone.

  Resonant upon the dying light, the bell rang out for Compline, calling the community to put the day to rest. Rose stood up, turning to look down at John as he still sat on the step. “Father John?” she said. “Time to go.” And so it was.

  After Compline, John trod slowly along the cloister to his lodging, his heart full of a turmoil of emotion that he did not wish to explore or recognize. He and Tom had tidied up before chapel, so his esquire did not come back with him to his house. He stood in its silence, alone. And in the quietness came the faintest knocking on the outer door. Frowning in puzzlement, he crossed the room and opened it; and there in the dusk stood William.

  “We are in Silence,” said the abbot.

  William nodded. “I know,” he said softly. “I ask your pardon. Even so, of your charity, may I come in? It’s only one thing. I won’t intrude long.”

  So John stood back to let him enter, and gestured to the chairs by the cold hearth in the darkening room, where only one light burned, enough for a man in solitude. “Is something wrong?”

  “Well… I went this afternoon into the checker. Brother Damian had asked if we could have two of these new hornbooks for the school. Brother Tom made them, they did the lettering upstairs, and they’d just finished them. Brother James brought them down to Cormac for approval today. They did a good job on them, too. Very nice. Nifty things. So I took them across to Brother Damian, to spare Cormac the chore. And he said Bishop Eric had been in earlier in the day, and all had gone well except his Lordship was complaining that the birch rod seemed little used. That no schoolmaster can keep order without making an example of a lad from time to time by means of a good birching. Essential for maintaining discipline, he said. And that Brother Damian should soak the thing in salt water to harden it. Did you hear of this?”

  John nodded. “Aye. He said as much to me over supper.”

  “And what did you answer him?”

  John shrugged. “I didn’t argue. But I think we have no plans for laying about the lads unless they give us good reason. Besides, salt’s expensive, and I should think we have better uses for it than that. Why do you ask?”

  He wasn’t quite sure how this impression came about, but in the shadows William’s eyes seemed almost like lights, so intense was the spirit that illumined his gaze. Not for the first time, John reflected how strange and how considerable was this feral soul.

  “In the house where I spent my childhood, we had an upper floor,” said William. “Much like your hayloft, where I’ve spent my nights since Bishop Eric showed up. A store-place, with a wooden ladder stair going up to it from the kitchen. My mother and father had a chamber off the hall downstairs, and I slept up in that loft, among the provisions – the apples and such. Me and one or two rats. It wasn’t a big place, just over the kitchen.

  “Staying in the loft here has its similarities. Brings back memories, swinging up from the ladder into the store.

  “And I remember an evening when I’d gone up as the light went off the day. I’d a straw mattress against the wall, and I lay down there. But I heard my father coming up the ladder. This was never good news, John. It meant I was in trouble. And so it turned out. He erupted through the hatch, raving about something I’d done wrong, or misplaced, or done badly, or forgotten, going on and on. Me on my feet the minute his head came through the hole, or I’d catch it for not showing him due respect. And then he was unbuckling his belt and I had nowhere to run. I went down on my knees, still gabbling excuses and apologies. He grabbed me by my shirt collar, roaring at me to get on my feet, and then he swung his belt for the first slice, buckle end flying – and you cannot brace yourself for the pain. Again and again – oh, Lord Jesus! No refuge from it. I couldn’t help but cry out, and I was meant to take it in silence – ‘like a man’, he’d say, which I wasn’t; but sometimes I didn’t manage to, which earned worse punishment. I collapsed on the floor and still he was at me, the flying end of it knocking something off the store shelf to the ground with a crash, and that infuriated him further. Lashing me and kicking me, like it would never be over, never end. I wrapped my hands about my head and curled up as tight as I could.

  “I’ve heard say that when someone is set upon, or injured, sometimes they do not feel the pain until later; at the time they are just numb, as though they leave their body in that moment. It was not so for me. Trapped in my body, trapped in that small room, trapped in that house, in that life, I had no escape and no respite. Do you think it did me good? Kept me in order? Taught me a lesson? It went so deep, that pain and terror and loneliness and shrivelling shame. It cut through all the layers of my body and right into my soul. It disfigured my spirit.

  “He had a birch rod, too, my father. He didn’t soak it in brine; he wouldn’t have wasted good salt on me. If he wanted something harder he just picked up the fire irons, or his belt buckle did a cracking job.

  “I went up to the hayloft here, before Compline. I didn’t want to go to prayers – my head was full of what Brother Damian had said. He didn’t like the bishop’s recommendations especially; but he wondered if he’d been a bit lax, letting that birch get so dusty. I just listened to him, left the hornbooks, went away. I couldn’t even speak about it, couldn’t begin to tell him what it does to a child. Damian – what do I know? No doubt he was thrashed himself, like every lad. I didn’t ask. I just wanted to be by myself, when I thought about it. But then, when I climbed the ladder, it brought it all back so vivid. And I had to – you’re in silence, I know, and I’m sorry for disturbing you – but I had to say something. Let them… let them have their childhood, John. God knows, there’s enough violent men in the world, enough in every passing day to be afraid of. There have been times when I’ve felt sick with fear – times beyond numbering. Don’t … well… tell Brother Damian to go on letting it gather dust. Let them have their childhood, without fear and pain and humiliation. That’s all I wanted to say. I’ll leave you to your peace.”

  He got to his feet and gestured John to silence as the abbot began to frame a reply. “It’s all right. I don’t want to talk about it – I don’t want a discussion or an argument. I just wanted to say.”

  As John stood too, William moved to leave, then hesitated. “The thing is –” he spoke rapidly – “and I’m so ashamed of this, given what I’ve been and what I’ve done – I’ve never forgiven them, John. I hate them. I hate what they did to me. Nothing I could ever put in place made enough of a defence against the memories… more than that… against what I became. It grew right into me. I have no existence separate from it. The terror and the pain, the loneliness… anguish, really. I don’t have a separate self that could leave it all behind. It’s who I am. I don’t know how I could even start to forgive them. I’m so sorry, John. After all you’ve done for me. But… it changes you, being beaten like that. Don’t… here, I mean… just let it stop.”

  The abbot standing beside him in the deepening dusk listened to this, nodding in affirmation. “Not being able to forgive them sounds entirely understandable,” he said quietly, concentrating for the moment on William’s childhood rather than the altogether more benign environment of the abbey school. “I hate ’em, too, and I never even met them. But –
if you don’t mind me asking – when you say you can’t forgive them, can I just check? Do you mean you would enjoy to watch them sizzle in the eternal fires of hell? Unquenchable fire – pain that never stopped, agony forever? Would that make things better?”

  “Oh, God, no!” William averted his face in disgust. “No. I had a bellyful of suffering and torture. I’m not a good man, but I don’t want to visit that on anyone else.”

  “I see. So then, if you could imagine it was Judgment Day, and your turn came to stand as you are before Christ, would you take the chance, do you think, to tell him exactly what they’d done – ask him to pay them out for what they did to you? Would it be a chance to settle the old score for good and all?”

  William shook his head. “No. No. There is so much in my life I’m ashamed of for myself. Whatever they did and were is their own affair. What I am is up to me. I can’t imagine any scenario where I’d be standing before Christ and pointing a finger of blame at them. My best hope is, if I fling myself at his feet and plead, he might have mercy on me and let me off my own eternal damnation.”

  John nodded. “So… if you could choose, you don’t want them punished, don’t want vengeance? You don’t want them roasted and pitchforked, don’t want to hear them scream? You don’t want the satisfaction of hearing Christ your judge condemn them and send them away to be tortured?”

  William frowned. “By heaven, John – what do you think I am? I know I’ve been a bad lad my whole life long, but don’t run away with the idea I sit salivating over other people’s pain. I’ll give as good as I get if trouble comes looking for me, but that’s all. I’m not excited by cruelty.”

  “But, William – what you’ve just told me: that’s what forgiveness is. It’s not a sweet tenderness like a warm glow in the heart. It’s not saying what was done doesn’t matter. It’s exactly what you said: the grace to realize that whatever they did and were is their own affair; and you have no desire to visit on them the misery and anguish they inflicted on you. That is forgiveness, William. That’s what it looks like. Refraining from upholding old scores in the face of Christ our judge. Being willing to accept into your own life the consequences of who you became, for whatever reason. Letting it be between you and Christ, with no one else dragged in. That’s what forgiveness means.”

  Unusually, for him, disconcerted, William stood in silence, assimilating this perspective. “I’ll think about that,” he said cautiously. “I’m sorry – I said I wouldn’t intrude on your time in silence, and I have. I’ll go now – right now – and leave you in peace.” And he did. He went out into the bat-flitting twilight, latching the door quietly behind him.

  Peace? thought John. In the solitude, in the quietness, swirled the impossibly vivid blend of images. The bishop running a finger along the dust gathered on the birch rod. The petal-soft curve of Rose’s cheek and the intensity of longing it brought. The frightened boy trying unsuccessfully not to cry out, caught up in a tornado of violence. Peace? Oh, holy Jesus… He shut his eyes – that was no good – opened them. Spread his hands involuntarily towards the invisible presence of Christ – to give it all to something good that might bring healing, to reach for some kind of equilibrium in the turmoil of human reality. Peace? As if.

  He sat without moving in the lengthening silence of the night, struggling to still his spirit, until eventually he reached a state of mind that allowed him to go to his bed, to lie sleepless for a while, then finally leave it all behind.

  * * *

  The five visits to St Alcuin’s Florence Bonvallet had made in the course of the week, Abbot John had dodged and left her to his prior. Mostly he had been required to be with his Bishop Visitor. Some of the time he had been struggling to cram in urgent correspondence and the preparation of homilies and Chapter addresses. Late at night and early in the morning he had been approving, signing off and stamping with his seal the prodigious accumulation of bills associated with the torrent of extra guests into the abbey. But on one occasion he had been guilty of catching sight of Florence as he came out of his house, and simply legging it as fast as he could in the other direction, pretending he hadn’t seen her. Today he felt he owed it as much to Father Francis as to the Bonvallets to accept some share of the responsibility himself, and offer her an hour of his time – or better still, half an hour.

  Brother Martin told him she had gone to the refectory, to check on the condition of the tables and their cloths, to be sure the frater had no vermin, to determine the placing of those guests of sufficient status to be indoors and seated, to decide where to situate the harpist. She also found herself in two minds about the minstrels; the simplest thing would be to give them a spot outside; let the harpist entertain the people of refinement and substance, and everyone else could enjoy the juggling and acrobatics, the more boisterous music of dubious ballads about wedding nights, and the hurdy-gurdy. On the other hand, even her more elegant guests had a taste to be amused, so she acknowledged the existence of an argument to give them a brief spot in the refectory. She asked the abbot his opinion on the matter, and he won himself the sourest look imaginable by enquiring what Hannah and Gervase’s preferences might be. And now she stood, regal and imposing, one hand on her hip and the other thoughtfully rubbing her chin, as her gaze swept the room, missing nothing. John noticed that someone had made a fine job of waxing the tabletops and buffing them to a glossy finish.

  “There’s a mouse!” observed Lady Bonvallet, in cold disbelief. She looked at him accusingly. Earlier on in this acquaintanceship, the abbot had felt constrained to please her if he could, to offer their best and remedy any faults she detected. By this time, reduced to counting the days and heartily looking forward to the first sunrise of Hannah’s married life, he limited his efforts to remaining both patient and civil.

  “Aye,” he said. “We do have mice. We keep a cat, but she misses some.”

  “Then get another one,” she responded. The abbot’s jaw tightened, but he did not reply.

  “You know how I want the tables set out? The top table at the far end there, the others flanking the long walls – then the harpist at the bottom, there.”

  “Aye, I do. I believe you had a word with our fraterer, Brother Richard, on the matter. I’m not your man, really, Lady Bonvallet. It’s not I who will be arranging the furniture for your family wedding.”

  Florence’s mouth compressed into a tight, twisted rune of displeasure. The abbot sounded distinctly unco-operative. She fixed him with a frosty look, and drew breath to speak, but the far door – that led most directly to the kitchen – opened, and in walked Rose, cheerful and pleasant.

  “Yes?” Florence re-directed her attention to the interruption.

  Rose, smiling, curtsied. “Good morrow, your Ladyship. My son told me you were here. We thought the wedding day might be such a press and bustle of people, and since we have some of the sweetmeats ready and two of the subtleties are complete, we wondered if you might like to be the first to have a quick peep.” Her eyes sparkled with fun. Though she spoke respectfully, she made the suggestion sound enticing and delightful. She put some of the magic back. Watching Florence’s face change, seeing it light with eagerness and interest, John felt ashamed. A lifetime dedicated to the pursuit of prayer and humility had evidently not taught him the sweetness of manner that seemed to come naturally to Rose.

  “May I have your permission, Father John,” Rose then asked him, “to take Lady Bonvallet through the cloister to the kitchen? I know it is a liberty, not something for every day. But I think it might mean a lot to her.”

  Florence, who had taken a step forward, it never occurring to her to seek the abbot’s permission, paused and looked at him. She read effortlessly the softening of his face, the tenderness with which he regarded Rose and heard her request. She could see that whatever Rose asked, the answer was never going to be “no” from Abbot John. Her eyebrows rose slightly in astonishment. Intrigued, she watched as the whole demeanour of his body changed; the obstinate rigidit
y of a moment before melted away.

  “Conradus is with you?” he ascertained. “Then, yes; certainly.”

  Making a mental note to get Rose on her side about the mice, Florence followed this interesting and unexpected person into the kitchen to see what they had made. Not much about this wedding so far had made her happy; but she had to admit, the sweetmeats were the daintiest creations imaginable. They let her taste one of each kind, and she had to pronounce them delectable. The dragon’s head was ready, and they showed her how the body would be formed of artfully stacked shortbreads – “But they must be crisp and the butter quite fresh, your Ladyship, so we’ll be making them the day after tomorrow.”

  Brother Conradus, bursting with pride, showed her the subtleties he had made – the chalice and paten on the altar with gilded glory raying at the back; and a crenellated abbey with open doors revealing a host of tiny pastry people. Florence peered closer. “How did you make their eyes?”

  “Poppy seeds, my lady,” he said with a smile. Then, the question he could contain no longer: “Do… do you like them?”

  Lady Florence Bonvallet looked at the short, plump brother with his ruddy cheeks and shining dark eyes (exactly like his mother), anxiously awaiting her verdict; and in spite of herself she couldn’t help smiling back. “I do,” she said. “I think what you’ve made is magnificent. The best I’ve ever seen. It makes me feel better about the whole thing.”

  As she escorted Florence away from the monastery kitchen, Rose asked her softly: “Forgive me if I am too forward, or if it’s a secret, your Ladyship; I’m just dying to know – what will you be wearing?”