The Breath of Peace (4 page)

The porridge would take a while. He scraped the remnants of yesterday's pottage into an earthenware dish, and took it out to the pigsty. Later, one of them would drive Lily out into the forest, where she could scavenge what little remained of beechmast and acorns, beetles, slugs and fungi and anything else that would take her fancy under the rattling canopy of bare winter twigs below the steel-grey sky. For now, Lily immersed her snout happily in their left-overs, devouring them greedily.

The sun had scarcely cleared the rim of the hills, and the light of its rising still reflected crimson on the underbelly of heavy clouds. The ground was muddy where it had thawed here and there, but the days still continued cold enough to hold the land as if it had been banded by a wheelwright. It had not got so soft as to make it slippery or slow to walk over. Ice still fringed the puddles.

Back in the cottage, William stirred the porridge again to prevent it sticking, fetched the tub of honey and two bowls and spoons to the table, and took a bucket of water and the milk pail across to Marigold's stable, where she waited impatiently, reared up with her front hooves on the rim of her stall. The hay in her net had all gone. He led her out to the milking block, and she jumped up willingly, knowing her routine. Even so he chained her. Nothing in him trusted a goat to co-operate reliably.

He had flung a generous handful of barley and another of oatmeal into a crock, and this he tipped into her bowl, washing down her udder without delay, before she got bored. He took no more than half a can of milk from her this morning. She would be kiddling late, her milk would just take them through the worst of the winter, but until someone's milk-cows calved in March he could see they would have a few lean weeks to go through with no milk at all. They would be pulling in their belts for a while. Especially now they had lost two more hens – if indeed it proved on inspection to be no more than two.

This year, he thought, they should try to afford a second milch goat. Even if the kid Marigold carried in her belly turned out to be female, nothing would come of that this coming year. With a second fully grown animal they could alternate breeding and milking through.

The browsing was almost non-existent now, and most of the evergreens did even goats no good. William tethered Marigold with care where he judged her busy teeth could do no lasting damage in stripping bark from the trees, promising to come back with some kale stalks from the leavings later on. He took a minute to scratch her bony head, and Marigold butted him in return; affectionately, but painfully.

William paused to pluck a sprig of rosemary as he hastened back to the house. He left the precious yield of milk in the scullery to deal with later, while he stirred the porridge, now thick enough to eat. He decided to leave the palfrey and the hens until he had called Madeleine to eat. They needed attention, but he thought burnt porridge would not bless the morning.

He ran light up the stairs to their bedroom, where he found the bedclothes folded back neatly that the mattress might air, and his wife already almost dressed although only half awake.

‘Breakfast,' he said, and she nodded still sleepily, saying nothing, absorbed in lacing her kirtle. She couldn't understand it. The strings seemed shorter than they used to be.

William retreated down the stairs and ladled out their porridge, as it had now reached a critical stage and he could smell it just starting to burn. He lifted the pot off the fire and set it down on the hearth. Just before he sat down to eat, he found the thick, squat earthenware jug for making hot drinks, dipped it full of well-water from the pail in the scullery, and left it at the fireside to heat. He dropped in it the sprig of rosemary and a hot stone, which he lifted with tongs from the heart of the fire and blew free of ashes before he set it into the jug.

Madeleine joined him as he sat down at the table.

She sniffed the steam that rose from the porridge appraisingly. ‘A bit burnt,' she commented. She opened the tub of honey and dug some out with her spoon. ‘Well? How many hens have we left?'

‘I haven't been to the hens yet,' her husband replied, trying a spoonful of the porridge. He agreed with her. He had been too late to stop it catching, and now it tasted burnt.

‘Haven't – William, are you serious? You haven't been to see how many hens are left?'

William took another spoonful of porridge. ‘I've been doing other things.'

‘Other things? What could be more important than checking the hens, after you knew the fox had been in there last night? And you ought to take honey with your porridge, it's good for you.'

‘I don't like porridge with honey on it. I don't like honey at all. I know it's important to check the hens, but it's important to get the fire going and make breakfast and milk the goat and tether her out to get what little there is to eat while it's not dark. And feed the pig.'

‘It doesn't matter if you don't like honey, you should still eat it; it keeps colds away. And the goat isn't so important now she's drying off. I would have gone to the hens first.'

Her husband put down his spoon. ‘Checking the hens,' he said quietly, ‘was not your priority. Staying in bed was.'

‘Oh, William, for goodness' sake! Don't be so petty! What's the matter, are you all full of churning resentment just because I slept in and you had to make the breakfast for a change? Well, I should have got up, shouldn't I, because you burnt it anyway. Where are you going now?'

William had got up from the table, taking his bowl of porridge with him. In the pantry he took the wooden lid from the crock of barley grain and scooped a handful, which he dropped into his porridge, replacing the lid of the jar with quiet precision.

‘To feed the hens,' he replied, as he came back through the room where Madeleine sat staring at him in astonishment as he passed. ‘There's tea in the pot if you want it.'

‘Oh, don't be ridiculous, William! Honestly, you're always so touchy about everything! And for mercy's sake put your pattens over your boots – you'll ruin them if you go out in this weather like –'

He latched the door behind him with the same quiet precision he had used to put back the lid on the crock of barley.

‘– that.' Shaking her head in disbelief, Madeleine turned her attention to her breakfast again. It was, she acknowledged, not badly burned. It still tasted good, especially with honey on it from bees that gathered nectar from the herbs and blossoms in the garden. It tasted different from the abbey's honey; their bees concentrated on the moorland heather.

She finished her porridge and went to the fireside to pour herself a mug of fragrant rosemary tea. While she was there, she added a couple of small logs to the fire. She wondered whether to pour a cup for William too, but thought it better to leave it where it would keep hot.

By the hearth, Madeleine had a low chair with a sheepskin on it, where she sat in the evenings, and there she took her cup of tea now, to drink peacefully by the fire. Despite the loss of her hens and her husband's incomprehensible moods, life felt good. She considered the tasks of the day waiting to be done. Just as soon as she'd finished her tea she would put some dried peas to soak, and some barley. It was hard to tell from indoors exactly how the weather might be, but rays of sunlight shone in through their small windows. William had taken down the shutters. He knew she liked the sun. Some people didn't bother, and left them shut all winter – old habits died hard, and everyone had done that before they had glass. But William would put them up in the evening and take them down in the morning every day. And they hardly ever closed the shutters to their bedroom, only in a gale: they both loved the light of the moon.

She sipped her tea. Rosemary… for strengthening joy and love in the soul, for the heart and the flow of blood in the veins… for cheerfulness, vitality and peace… William loved the scent of it; he said it smelled clean and healthy. Madeleine closed her eyes, her hands warm around the heat of the cup of tea in her lap. So peaceful.

Outside the house, William had taken his bowl of porridge and the barley grain to their henhouse. Made of clapboard and raised off the ground to discourage the inevitable attention of rats, it had been built big enough for ten birds, a dozen at a squeeze. Three weeks ago their flock had been eight in number, enough to keep them in eggs and sell a few as well. A visit in broad daylight from a hungry fox had taken the number down to six. He hoped he would still find four this morning, and the two corpses Madeleine had retrieved last night would be their only losses. He could hear the sound of them crooning and muttering inside.

He set his bowl on the ground and slid back the hatch. Two birds emerged, lurching eagerly across the trodden earth around their hut to peck at the warm porridge and grain.

Despondently, William unlatched the bigger door located at the rear of the henhouse for cleaning it out. He lifted the hinged lid of the nest boxes. The other two birds were missing. He considered going back to the house to add the protection of pattens to his boots, and rejected the idea. Aware that his patience had been frayed to the point of giving way, he thought it might be preferable if he and Madeleine went their separate ways for the morning.

He picked up the board by the pigsty and opened the stout, well-fitted gate to let Lily out. Deft now at managing the tricky business of driving a pig, he guided her across their land to the woodland at its borders, where she would forage all day until the inviting rattle of the pail called her home as the light went off the afternoon when the sun began to sink in the west. William didn't really like his sow foraging on common land. She was too valuable an animal. But Madeleine had views on this. Every other homesteader kept her sow in the sty after she had bred and until she had farrowed, once the best of the autumn fodder had been taken from the forest floor. But Madeleine said the lack of exercise was bad for a sow, making farrowing harder. The winter days were short; Lily went out late and came in early – but out she did go; Madeleine insisted upon it.

As he walked across to the edge of the woods, William's eyes roved here and there for any sign of their missing hens. Just on the fringe of the woodland he spotted one forlorn corpse. Evidently the fox had left it there for later. He bent and picked it up by its cold yellow feet curled in death and turned to go home, leaving Lily rooting contentedly under the trees.

Aware of his mood darkening to something like entrenched bitterness, and unable to lift it despite determined effort and the clear brightness of the morning with its blackbird song and catkins coming on the trees, William trudged back to the house. The soft, heavy weight of the dead bird hung from his hand, the wind-ruffled feathers kissing his skin, the loose hanging head at the end of the broken neck dangling and bobbling and nagging at his knees with every step. He laid the corpse he carried on the roof of the henhouse, temporarily, while he went for an armful of hay to set down within Marigold's reach, and another for his palfrey. He filled her hayrack, but by this time the winter wet had seeped through the layers of leather that soled his boots, and his feet were freezing. He retrieved the dead hen, and carried it indoors, hoping Madeleine would have found something else to occupy her by now.

She stood at the table kneading dough as he came through the door. The sight of her there went through him like a blade. This was a scene he had imagined as he hungered and longed for her, suffered and yearned to make her his own when, as a monk at St Alcuin's Abbey, that dream seemed impossible. That they might have a cottage somewhere, a place to call home, and he could come in through his own front door and find her kneading dough for their daily bread. What had not been part of his imaginings was a dead hen in one hand and an intractable pattern of domestic bickering.

‘Oh, no! Another one! We have only three left, then?'

‘Two,' he said, miserably. ‘I haven't been able to find the other one. I guess the fox took her. This one was all the way across to the wood. Whether he killed it there or dragged it to have by for a larder I couldn't say. I'm sorry, Madeleine. I'm really sorry.'

He sounded sombre, his face morose as he went through to hook the dead bird up from the rafters with her sisters.

‘Is there any tea left?' He came through to the fireside, sat in the low chair Madeleine had vacated and picked up the empty mug from the hearth. He wanted to be by himself, but his feet were so cold they hurt badly and his boots were wet through. The fireside offered a solution to both problems. He poured himself a cup of the tepid tea, and replenished the fire with the last of the wood in the basket.

‘We're low on kindling, too,' he commented. ‘I'll split some more in a minute. I'll just have this.'

His wife watched the steam rising from his boots as he sat in the chair and stretched his feet towards the fire-glow.

She couldn't help making the observation: ‘I did say you should've worn the pattens.'

‘You did, and I heard you, and I was an idiot, and will you kindly shut up about it now?'

She continued her kneading. The silence between them did not feel friendly.

Eventually she felt the dough turn pliable and then silky under her hands. She gave it a little more time, and then returned it to the huge, beautiful terracotta bowl with the creamy glaze, that Brother Thaddeus had made, and John to their astonishment and delight had given them for a wedding present. They had not expected a wedding gift. As abbot of the community, her brother had flagrantly transgressed in offering to consecrate the marriage of a renegade monk from his own flock. The kindness of a wedding gift went beyond anything they might have expected, and they cherished it all the more because of that. Madeleine covered the dough with a wet cloth, taking the bowl and setting it on the hearthstone for the bread to rise.

‘What's still to do outdoors?' she asked.