The Beautiful Thread (17 page)

Depends who you are
, thought Tom; but felt entirely certain any such quip would be sourly received. So all he said was, “That's exactly where I was thinking of going.”

He opened the door to the abbey court, stepped out onto the threshold, then leaned in again to say, “Uh-oh! Bishop's back. Headed your way, I think, Father.”

He thought he had never seen any man, anywhere, look so wholly dismayed. The abbot just stood still and shut his eyes.

* * *

“I want to put some questions to you, young men.” The bishop raised his forefinger and leaned towards them. Theodore had compromised his jealously protected teaching circle to the extent of opening it out into a horseshoe, allowing the bishop to stand at the front and loom over his charges. Alongside his Lordship stood the abbot, who had made himself available as promised, and the novice master. Brainard had gone to make a nuisance of himself elsewhere.

“The religious life,” explained the bishop, “is an unending quest – not for sanctity alone, but for knowledge and understanding. Ever deeper we must search the texts at our disposal – whether they are the writings of great scholars of the church, the holy Scriptures themselves, or contemporary debate from schools of thought only now being established. You agree with me, Father Theodore?”

He turned to look at Theo, who murmured his assent.

“Your novice master thinks as I do!” The bishop drew back his lips in a distinctly unnerving smile. “Well, then let's see what you've learned. Can you tell me, young man,” he asked, fixing Brother Benedict with his eye, “whose student was Alcuin of York?”

Benedict looked at him blankly. “I – I'm so sorry, your Lordship,” he admitted, darting a nervous glance of apology in his novice master's direction, “I don't know. Oh – that is to say – I can't remember.”

“Anyone?” The bishop let his gaze sweep round the circle.

“He studied under Archbishop Ecgbert,” said Brother Felix.

“Ah!” The bishop turned his attention to the source of this knowledge. “A scholar, eh? Tell me then, did he live in York all his life?”

“No, my lord. He went to the court of Charlemagne, from where he became abbot of Tours,” supplied Brother Felix.

“Indeed!” The bishop pulled a face of surprised approval. “Then – anyone – whose work is
The City of God
?”

Felix hung back. “Boethius?” extemporized Brother Boniface; but the bishop shook his head long and slow. “Not Boethius.”

“St Augustine wrote
The City of God
,” Felix eventually said. “Boethius wrote
The Consolation of Philosophy
. Among other things.”

“Well!” The bishop turned to the abbot and novice master at his side. “At least somebody's been paying attention!” He turned back to the silent circle of anxious novices. “What's your name, lad? Brother Felix? Right, then, you keep quiet. Let's hear from the others. Who can tell me, where in the Scriptures is it written, ‘
tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam
'
2
? And what does it signify?”

They did better on this. Cassian acquitted himself creditably with some vaguely apposite remarks about the apostolic succession. The bishop listened keenly.

“Very well,” he approved. “And, ‘
Solvite templum hoc et in tribus diebus excitabo illud
'
3
?”

Brother Benedict showed himself equal to this, and thankfully had understood it to be in reference to the resurrection. The bishop nodded. “And where is it written, ‘
in principio erat Verbum
'
4
? An easy one!”

“At the beginning of John's Gospel, my lord,” offered Brother Boniface, keen to redeem himself. But again the bishop shook his head long and slow. “Come on, lad!” he said. Brother Boniface looked puzzled, as did Brother Felix.

“Do you not know?” The bishop looked round the group, his eyebrows raised in enquiry. “Oh, come, come! Those are the first words of the holy Scriptures – the opening words of the Bible, from the book of –?”

An uneasy pause followed this question. Finally Brother Cassian spoke up. “The book of Genesis is the first book in the Bible, my lord,” he said, “but…”

His novice master shifted slightly, just the smallest motion of his hand, but he fixed Cassian with such a glare that the novice closed his mouth at once. If Bishop Eric had made a mistake, it was more than their vocation was worth to point it out. So they accepted the inaccuracy that the Bible opened with words penned by the Evangelist, with no demur.

There followed further examination of their familiarity with the Scripture, in the light of its relation to the teaching of Holy Church. The abbot thought they made a good showing. After that, the bishop only wanted to know if they persevered in private prayer and whether their food was adequate. At last he expressed satisfaction with what he found, complimented the novice master on his good work, and looked expectantly at the abbot, ready to move on. As he held the door open for his Lordship to pass through, John looked back, hoping to catch his novice master's eye; but Theo would have none of it. Evidently he still felt disgusted at his abbot. More unhappy than he could ever remember being, John followed Bishop Eric across to the scriptorium, his next port of call.

Not until after Terce did John find himself alone. Even in the relief of solitude, he could not settle. The damage to his back had subsided to an inescapable raw soreness. He could just about bear it if he didn't forget to hold himself straight. He thought he owed it to his Lord to spend some time in prayer and study of the Scriptures, but couldn't concentrate or apply himself to reflection. He drifted, turning over documents on his table, thinking about the minstrels due to arrive any day, wondering how long the bishop planned to stay, looking back on his conversations with the Bonvallet family, asking himself if he had done everything imaginable in service of the impossible task of assisting Hannah's passage into their midst. He thought he might go for a walk, but knew if he set foot out of his house he'd be besieged within minutes by people needing his attention. He wandered across his atelier, and stood by the fireplace. He raised an arm without thinking, in long habit of leaning his forearm against the stone lintel, resting his head against his hand, looking down into the fire. But today it hurt too much, and there were only ashes. And then came a knock on the door to the abbey court. John almost didn't answer. He felt wretched, and spent. But then, with a sigh, he went to open the door. And there (at Tom's request) stood William.

“May I come in? Are we still friends – after this morning?”

“I most sincerely hope so,” said John. “I'm relying on your lifetime's tolerance of appalling behaviour making you understanding of my own.'

As the familiar luminescence of wry humour gleamed in William's features, and he turned to latch the door firmly shut behind him, John suddenly felt such gratitude for his company. He could not imagine anything human nature had to offer could shock or surprise this man. Right now, he was the only soul John wanted to see. “Come and sit down,” he said.

Seeing John take not a chair but a stool, on which he sat gingerly and very upright, William also passed by the chairs; but he seated himself on the stone flags of the hearth, leaning his back against the wall of the chimney breast. For a while, they shared the company of silence. William traced curves in the soft grey ashes with first this finger then that, leaving space for John to speak when he wanted to.

“William,” said the abbot eventually. “Love… married love… I mean – the way of a man with a maid… do you think… are we complete without it? Is it too beautiful a thing to miss? Does renouncing do violence to what God intended? Were we
made
for love? Now you have been a married man, what do you think about it?”

John watched his friend narrowly. He couldn't bear the thought that this should occasion embarrassment or evasion. These long years he had lived in celibacy, he had dodged and run from the natural bodily passions of a man. He wanted to have a straightforward conversation about it without anyone feeling the need to mutter warnings of the concupiscence of women, of the sin of Eve, of women's predilection for dragging the noble souls of men into the dread fires of hell.

The quietness of William's face remained unruffled. His hand continued to describe slow circles in the ashes as he thought about John's question.

“The way of a man with a maid?” he said. “Are you sure you want to talk about this, John?”

“Why?”

“Well… because… look – I'm married and you're not, and I don't want to make things worse than they already are.”

John stared at him. “What's that supposed to mean?”

William nodded, accepting the defensiveness in his friend's voice. “All right then,” he said. “So, the congress between man and woman? Coitus? What do I think about carnal knowledge? Where to start? I suppose I think not all such encounters are the same. Every pairing, every occasion, has a unique quality. Madeleine and I… well… when I first met her she had been heartlessly violated by a whole mob of men. I'm not even going to add to that injury the insult of asking the question if there could have been – for her – anything in the occasion beyond terror and pain and disgust. I can't bear to think of what she suffered, and I cannot imagine how she found the strength within to move on from there to where we are now.

“But I have asked myself the question: what was in it for those men who attacked her? Did they find enjoyment in that? And if they did, was it the pleasure proper to the knowledge of a woman – do they even have an inkling of what such sensitive, delicate felicity can be? I suspect, for them, it was more like whatever my parents got from knocking the living daylights out of me when I was a child. Something in the experience kept them coming back for more. I guess you could call that pleasure. And my novice master, who laid the scourge on me every chance he could create, every time I put a foot wrong and sometimes even when I didn't. He got something out of it, of that I am sure. And maybe the men who raped Madeleine never asked themselves if there might not be more to coupling than just ramming home what you have into whoever has to lie there and take it. Poverty, eh?”

He paused, and glanced at John who sat, his face lined and bleak, worn out by the muddle of his confused emotions, his pain and the strain of responsibility, but listening intently.

“But then, if you look at how things were with me and Madeleine during my time in the community here, that's a different level of experience; but it had also no pleasure in it. On the contrary, it was absolute bloody torture. That one night I stole for an illicit visit to her house – and was seen, wouldn't you know it? You can't move hand or foot or shed a tear or twitch an eyebrow here but somebody sees and takes note, as you now know for yourself all too well! But, that night, was it pleasure? Even when I took her in my arms, I could feel such a howling sorrow of grief inside me, that I couldn't have this, would never see it through – not coitus I mean, but
life
, relationship. Because, obviously, I didn't know at the time that Mother Cottingham would leave us the means to be together. Besides, I felt so bad, so guilty, about going behind your back, and living a double life, when this community – who'd had such doubts about taking me in – had done me the honour of trusting me. So, that hour or so she and I had together, was that pleasure? Not really. Urgency, desire, longing, hunger – but mostly what it all added up to was sheer misery, for a very long time.

“But if you look at the first time she and I came together as man and wife, well that's a different story. Neither of us… we weren't accustomed – weren't practised – we hadn't… it was new. But what I remember is not clumsiness or fumbling, but astonishment at how totally it possessed me. There was not one cranny of my being left uninvolved. It penetrated – odd that, you think as a male you'll be the one doing the penetrating – into the very heart's core of the man I am. Body, soul, the whole of me. For all I've been trounced and terrified from the earliest days I can remember, I never felt more wide open and defenceless in all my life. Nothing held back, you know? Every fragment of who I am, engaged and poured out. It shook me. I hadn't expected it. But to find myself received, loved, embraced –
desired
, John! – all of me; I tell you, it was so healing. It opened up a channel of singing hope. It was bliss, because it had nothing covert, no duplicity. That was its peace, its happiness. That was at the core of its pleasure. The openness.”

He stopped, looking carefully into his friend's face, sensitive to the unfulfillable yearning John was painfully living through.

“But then, you know it well,” he went on gently, “just as entering a woman can happen without love, so also love can flourish without any kind of carnal knowledge. I have a memory – it was so excruciating I can hardly look at it – the day I had to come to Chapter and tell this community I'd invested their entire store, without permission, in a ship that had sunk. Oh, God, what it did to me! Afterwards, I sat there until I thought everyone had gone, and it was safe to slink away. Who should be waiting for me in the doorway but Brother Thomas? Words cannot express how that scared me. He's a big man. I thought there'd be nothing left of me but a smear on the ground like a morsel of dropped liver trodden on by accident. When I saw him standing there, my head reeled; I almost threw up. He read the look on my face, and he said, ‘Oh, you prize idiot! What did you think I was going to do to you?' And he wrapped me in his arms, and held me close, let me dissolve. Brother Thomas; rough, very male. That was surely not carnality, but it was the most intensely intimate encounter. It's right up there with some of my moments with Madeleine as the means by which healing has seeped into my soul. Same with times when Michael has tended to me in the infirmary, and you have broken all the rules to give me Eucharist, and to bless my marriage to Madeleine. These are the things that have touched the quick of my spirit, redeemed me. It's the love that makes them beautiful and good.