The Beautiful Thread

by Penelope Wilcock

  When John finally threw the scourge back under his bed and pushed up from cramped knees to standing he began to tremble uncontrollably from simple physical shock. The room bucked and reeled about him. Shaking, he picked up his undershirt from where he had flung it on the bed, and put it back on. Resolutely, he overcame the reluctance to don his habit again, and let out an involuntary gasp as the weight of its folds pulled down against what he had done to his back. Dizzy and nauseous, he fumbled ineffectually at the blankets, and took a moment to manage actually to pull them back. Then he crept into his bed, and lay face down, rigid, motionless. He had achieved what he set out to do – something he had never attempted before – driving out any possibility of thinking about anything from his mind by reducing his world to an empty, barren wasteland of pain. It was a brutal trick, but said to be effective. John had disapproved it on the occasions when its results had been discovered in fainting men, sent along for him to patch up in the infirmary. He had used the scourge often enough in a regular way, as ordinary penance to subdue his flesh, but not like this before. As night slowly swallowed the long summer twilight, he lay awake, enduring. His soul, that he had unseated and knocked off-centre in his body, pulsed in waves of misery and shame.

  “… in plain view…” Oh, God… and he the abbot… He screwed his eyes tight against the memory. But the train of thought had begun, and he saw Rose’s face, thoughtful and intelligent, soft and rounded and pretty. So he moved, arching his back, and that set every hammered nerve screaming again, clamouring out all competition to secure his complete attention. “Oh, God, what a path to choose,” he whispered as he subsided, trembling. “You ask so much of us.”

  He stayed with this pattern of retreating again and again out of memory into pain until the brother – Brother Germanus, he thought it was, tonight – came and stood outside his room with the handbell, and the sound battered into his head the necessity to get up for the nocturnal office of Matins. He struggled, trembling and agonized and sick, onto his knees, leaning forward to reach the little clapper of wood that hung from the bedpost, to knock wood on wood when the cacophony of the bell stopped, for the monk outside the door to be sure his abbot had awoken. And so, at two in the morning, began the monastic day.

  Before the dew had dried on the grass, William had been into the checker, ascertained from Cormac that all final supplies were in place, inventoried and stored in date order, and set off to discover John’s preferences for hospitality to the troupe of musicians and the jugglers expected to arrive within the next two days. It had been agreed at supper the night before that William would help Brother Martin clear a space and heft some straw pallets up to the storeroom above the almonry. The minstrels would sleep warm and dry up there – that was all sorted. But though he judged it unlikely the abbot would want to invite them to his table, he thought John should have the final say on that.

  He knocked lightly on the door of the abbot’s house, and Brother Tom admitted him.

  “Father John not here?” William did not sound surprised. With so much going on, Hunt-the-Abbot had become something of a community occupation.

  “Well, he is.” Tom sounded reticent. “He’s in his chamber.”

  “Really? Why? I do need to speak to him.”

  Then William slowed down, and looked properly at Brother Tom. “What’s the matter? He’s not ill? Oh, please – not right now.”

  “No, he… last night, after Compline, he… well he went a bit mad with his scourge, I think.”

  William pursed his lips, thinking. Then he came to a decision and strode towards the door of John’s chamber.

  “Ah! No – William – you can’t just –”

  But William’s light, quick knock had already been applied to the door, and without waiting for an answer he let himself in and closed it behind him. He found John lying face down on his bed, absolutely still.

  “Oh, for the sake of all holy, what have you done, man?” William knelt down at the bedside and twitched out the scourge from beneath. “What the devil is this? Look at it! Was this Columba’s? I’ll wager it was! Knotted ends to it – and what’s this? Thorns! Thorns stuck into the knots? Ah, mother of God, John, these things are evil! They make me sick to my stomach – I hate them! They shouldn’t even exist. Look at me, man! Turn your head and look at me!”

  John did more than that. Slowly and carefully, his breath catching as the fabric of his undershirt stuck and pulled against the torn skin of his back, he turned and sat up straight on the edge of his bed. He looked steadily at William, his face white and drawn.

  “All right, you’ve made your point. How dare you come in here and tell me what to do?”

  But William, the scourge in his hand, his eyes hard as stone, glared back at him.

  “You are the abbot of this place, John. The abbot! What you do, they will do. What you are, they will all be. Savage. Hating their flesh that God made. Is that what you want? Cruel. It doesn’t stop with what you do to yourself, it extends beyond to what you do to others. A fierce, unreasonable standard that sets the bar higher and higher to some ridiculous height of purity that no one can meet and everybody gets hurt trying to attain. These things are vile. And this one’s having a stone tied round it first and then it’s going in the river.”

  Hampered by the excruciation of his back, by the time John had got to his feet to prevent this course of action, William was out of the room and the door shut behind him. Muttering expletives, taking care not to scratch himself on the multiple thorns with their dried blood and little pieces of adherent dried skin, he rolled up the tails of it and thrust the whole thing cautiously down the front of his tunic. He looked at Brother Tom, who stood watching him with some surprise.

  “He’s in no fit state to think about what I came to ask him,” he said. “I’d better sort it out myself. Talk to him. Get some salve from Brother Michael and make him let you put it on him. I’ll see you later. Keep the bishop out of here if he comes sniffing round later. I believe he’ll be back from Byland in the course of the day. I’m going to get rid of this disgusting thing.”

  Without giving Brother Thomas a chance to reply, he was gone. Tom weighed up the best approach to the tasks William had left him. He decided to leave John in peace for a brief while, and headed off to the infirmary to beg a pot of salve. He thought it maybe more prudent to leave Brother Michael out of it. He didn’t want to answer to his abbot for spreading his private humiliations further than need be. He went quietly into the dispensary and took what he needed from the shelf. But Brother Michael was in the garden when he left, tucking frail old men under woolly blankets in their chairs out in the sunshine.

  “Brother Tom – hi, Tom!” Michael stepped across and intercepted him. “I was looking for you. Someone said they saw you on your way over here. Did you want me? If not, I just wanted to know, is all well with our abbot? He sounded so glum this morning in Chapter. Is he all right?”

  Tom closed his large fist around the small pot of salve to keep it out of sight, and grimaced expressively. “He’s… yes, he’s all right. Not the best he’s ever been. Probably he’ll come and talk it through with you at some point – I believe he usually does. You don’t need to worry about him; but pray for him, maybe.”

  In the busy microcosm of the monastery kitchen, Rose was also turning over in her mind the odd ending to an otherwise happy evening, wondering what had happened, puzzled by the abbot’s sudden change in mood. She had been speaking to Hannah in the brief time John left them to bid William farewell, but it did occur to her that perhaps he had quietly communicated some troubling news. She didn’t know. She shook it from her. In the next three days, a great deal must be accomplished.

  “What shall we work on today, my son?”

  Rose smiled at Conradus, her eyes full of kindness and love; but he thought she seemed somehow subdued, even so. “Is all well, Ma?” he asked her.

  “Indeed it is. Perhaps I’m missing your father a little. It’s a wonderful thing to be here
with you, but very unfamiliar to me. I’m used to being at home.” She looked at him. “Abbot John, last night…” Then she changed her mind. “He certainly appreciated that splendid supper you made him. Of course, he usually has important people at his table – the lords and ladies, the bishop – as is his duty. It was very special that yesterday he treated us serving folk who are just helping out. He is a thoughtful man, my son. He remembers the ordinary people.”

  Conradus beamed at her. “He is the best! I’m glad you’ve had the chance to stay a few days and meet him properly. So now, today – if I make a start on the shortbread, will you begin the sweetmeats? Let me show you where I’ve put the marzipan, with the dried fruits. It’s not too early to candy the violets today; we can’t leave everything to the last minute after all. Storing everything where it won’t get knocked or damp is the challenge; but I think we can manage.”

  As Brother Conradus put the final preparations for the marriage feast in hand, so Brother Giles began to marshal his resources in the guesthouse, checking the towels for any signs of moth or mildew, making up beds, fetching across extra firewood, for the evenings still came in chilly. He asked for – and got – help from the novitiate in the form of two strapping lads to get extra benches out of store. The bishop was expected back later in the day, so the novice master wanted all his novices with him in the afternoon, in case of a final invasion. Meanwhile, as Brother Robert and Brother Boniface descended the day stairs on their way to help out in the guesthouse, their abbot passed them on his way up, greeting them with the barest nod. They agreed he looked distinctly peaky; worn out by ecclesiastical inquisition, was their mutual diagnosis. He looked all in; pale, moving stiffly and slowly, as he climbed the stairs. Outside the novitiate door he paused, his hand on the handle, irresolute. Then, remembering that his novice master owed him respect if not admiration, he knocked, opened it and entered.

  “Father Theodore, I need to speak with you.”

  When his abbot said this, Theo usually moved quickly to make things possible. Even when it was inconvenient, he created privacy, found his novices occupation elsewhere. But here he stood, a bundle of Mass settings in his hand, about to begin his morning lesson, the young men gathering already in their tutorial circle. He looked at his abbot without speaking, his face expressionless, his manner unresponsive. This had never happened before; they had always been comfortable together. “Can’t it wait?” asked Theodore.

  John bent his head, and for a moment did not reply. When he looked up again, nothing had changed. Theodore’s gaze took in the shadowed eyes, the strain in his abbot’s face, read it all clearly. “Brother Cassian!” he said, holding out the scores to the novice.“Of your charity, give these out round the circle, if you will. Keep two sets back for Brother Robert and Brother Boniface – they’ll be with us presently.”

  He turned back to his abbot. “Yes?”

  Still John waited and did not speak. Then the abbot sighed. Stand-offs took up more time than community life had to offer.

  “You’re being really rude, Theo,” he said, quietly enough that the young men moving about the room should not hear. “And I am your abbot. And if what’s going through your head is, ‘Then behave like one,’ well, that’s what I came to say. I’m very sorry. I’ve come to my senses. You were right, and I ask your pardon. But being right gives you no leave to treat me with discourtesy. And I’d rather have had privacy to say this.”

  He shook his head, defeated, gave up on the conversation and quietly left the room. Before he reached the top of the day stairs, he heard the novitiate door latch behind him. “John! Father John!” And turning with slow caution, because every movement set the torn skin of his back yammering, he looked back.

  His novice master knelt to make his apology, to beg his abbot’s pardon for his discourtesy. John, coming to stand before him, spoke the familiar words of forgiveness, and Theo stood again. In silence. Things still weren’t right.

  John’s eyes, dark and unhappy, searched his. “What?” he said. “Have I broken something forever, Theo? Can’t this be put right?”

  “We rely on you, John,” said Theodore. “You can bend the rules, when compassion can find no other course – and, by all holy, do you not! You can make mistakes – we all can, heaven knows. No one is asking you not to be human, and what would be the point? But with that said, there are some things you just can’t do. We rely on you to stand steady in your vocation, have the humility to exercise proper caution, make the way you have chosen your clear and absolute priority. You have let us down, Father. You’ve let yourself down, too. And we have put our trust in you.”

  John nodded, feeling shame seep inexorably, relentlessly, into all of him. “I know,” he said, “but what can I do to put it right? I can’t send her home now – Conradus needs her help, and she’d be so hurt; it would look as though she’d done something wrong, when she has not. Nor have I, if it comes to it – I mean, nothing improper has passed between us. No – I know, I know, Theo! I understand full well, and I have let it go. But what more can I do? The guesthouse is filling up with people and the kitchen there just isn’t big enough. Conradus needs her in our kitchen here – it’s the only space practically speaking where he can prepare the wedding feast. Let’s just get through this next week, Theo, and then the dust can settle and we can start again. Oh, for pity’s sake, man – I didn’t mean to fall in love! And was it so very obvious?”

  His novice master regarded him steadily. “Aye. It was.”

  John nodded. “All right. Thank you. Moving on. This afternoon – Tom tells me you want me up here if Bishop Eric comes into the novitiate again. I’ll be here.”

  The door to the novitiate was cautiously opened, and Brother Benedict put his head out. Theodore turned to respond to him, and his abbot left him to it. Still moving gingerly, he went back down the stairs, his face set bleak and enduring. He thought he probably ought to go across to the checker and find out how William and Cormac were getting on, seeing that William had been gracious enough to come and help them out. Except after this morning’s encounter he felt disinclined to look for William right now. He knew for certain he should be preparing his Chapter address for the next day, especially if the bishop would be sitting there. He had more correspondence waiting his attention than he liked to think about, and suspected some of it might be urgent in view of the many guests imminently expected. He tried to think of one thing he could face doing, and rejected everything. His feet took him back to his lodge; once inside he shut out the world and the community. Except his esquire, who had been polishing the table, and looked up, a waxy rag in his hand.

  John stood, indecisive, staring at nothing. Brother Tom waited.

  “It’s chaos, Tom,” the abbot said in a low voice, “inside me. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m overwhelmed. I’ve lost the thread. Everything seems to be thrown into muddle and confusion. Making it up as I go along. I feel as though Christ gave me one sudden push that sent me flying down from the safety of the riverbank into the boiling white water of the abbacy. Somewhere above me I heard his voice, faint and remote, calling ‘Good luck!’ And ever since I’ve been flung about, over my head, barely a chance to get my head above the surface to take a breath, no living possibility of any footing, no guarantee of even coming through at all… just… a mess. Everyone’s angry with me. I’ve lost my dignity. I’ve made a complete ass of myself. It’s bigger than I am, what this obedience asks of me. No room to put a foot wrong, everyone watching – oh, God in heaven! I just don’t want to do this any more.”

  Tom listened. He felt the acrid bitterness and desperation of a man who’d had too much, and hesitated to reply. Good counsel, in his experience, generally made everything worse and was ill received. But his abbot looked up at him and said, “Help me, Tom.”

  This was the curious privilege of the obedience of abbot’s esquire. The role required him to be hidden, effaced, patient. But there were moments – he remembered the terrible intimacy of Peregri
ne’s infirmary room; “Help me, Tom.” This he’d heard before. It asked a steadiness of faith that he had to reach deep within to find; not the platitudes that served to maintain everyday cheerfulness, something deeper than that. Something honest. He felt John’s eyes upon him, and he looked at the ground.

  “It’s come to me,” Tom answered his abbot, “when I’ve felt near despair, that Christ is not somewhere else – if you see what I mean. I’ve reached out for him at times, outside myself to where I thought he must be, and found only emptiness. There have been occasions when my calling hung by a thread; just a frayed, worn, faded thread between one possibility and the next. Without meaning and without hope. And I’ve wondered then if the whole pilgrimage came to nothing more than an inflated sense of self-importance – aggrandizement, to think my life might have significance, even purpose. I talked to Francis about this once. He smiled, and he said, ‘Gethsemane.’ That was all. But he hugged me. And Father, I’m wondering – now, you know me, I’m no scholar; I didn’t get this from any book, just from a place past giving up, so I could have got it all wrong. Maybe you’d do better to ask Theo; he reads. But what I’m wondering – this white water – well, I’ve half an idea that the rocks are Christ and the torrent is Christ; that the terror is his, and the devastation. I think – maybe – he’s not on the bank, and he won’t be throwing you a lifeline, either. Because this is actually it – him – the reality where we find his real presence. And if that’s true, which I know it might not be, then perhaps the thing to do would be to stop looking for a way out, and find the way in. A kind of surrender. If that makes sense.”