The Breath of Peace (8 page)

‘Honour, I think,' she pressed on obdurately, ‘has not been your strongest suit.'

His eyes are the colour of bright steel,
she thought,
and just as hospitable.

‘Well, no; it has not. Then I can offer you no reassurance at all. You will just have to take your chances.'

With a small, deliberate movement, he used his thumbnail to crack in half a fragment of hard breadcrust that lay on the table.

‘I have no clear understanding of what attracted you to me, Madeleine,' he said quietly. ‘You have not told me. But often enough this year you have told me I am a dolt, an idiot, stupid, a bonehead, a simpleton, a clumsy fool. You tell me now that my honour is nothing. No doubt you are right in every count. What is it, then, fundamentally, the regard of a wife for her man? Is it only affectionate contempt? And if I were to dig deeper to the flinty stuff it's built on, would I find only contempt by itself and no affection?'

She drew breath to reply, and his fingers twitched in an irritable interruptive gesture. He had not finished.

‘As a householder, in many ways – not all – I make myself look stupid. I warned you this would be so. I have no grounding in the skills Brother Thomas had that you admired, and that would have served me well here. But I am doing my best, and what more can I do? You knew this when we took our way together.

‘As for my hands and the handling of money – assuredly, yes. Without money we were not able to make a life together. The lack of it stood in our way. Money, inherited money, has given us this home, along with our furniture, our chickens, our pig, the hay for the horse and the goat, the straw for their bedding, the hams hanging from the rafters until we've had time to breed our own pigs. Money corrupts, but it blesses as well. It creates stability, and security, both good things. I have handled it in its corruption, and in my own – but I hope I have sometimes handled it to build something worthwhile.

‘As to how I became a monk – well, I'll tell you about it if you care to hear it.

‘And my honour? Yes, you're right. A vain thing, mostly the figment of my imagination. Not worth mentioning. Not worth anything. I admit it freely. But I still promise you I shall never call you “witch” again; and I hope you can believe me.

‘Oh – and I'm sorry I'm not Brother Thomas, but I don't think you'd have found him the easiest man to get on with either, if you'd actually set about the task of living with him.'

With a scrape of his chair on the stone flags of the floor, the unexpected harsh noise of it startling her, he got to his feet then.

‘I'll get the wood in. And I think, while the weather's cold and it keeps the stink in check, I'll dig out the night soil from the gong, so if you feel the need to relieve yourself, have pity, won't you? And it's market day. I promised I'd go for some things, if you have a list.'

‘Is that it?' she cried after him as he picked up the crockery and carried it through to the sink. ‘Is a woman's word not worth waiting for?'

He stopped. The sudden grin that lit his face as he turned back to her took her completely by surprise. ‘Good alliteration!' he said.

She stared at him blankly. ‘What?'

‘Aye, and that.'

‘William, will you –'

Now he was laughing. He left the bowls and came back to the table, sat down opposite her again.

‘Well, O wise one? What word will work as a weapon to wield to win this William into ways worthier than those in which his wickedness is wont to wend?'

She stared at him. ‘You're impossible! You're just impossible!'

‘What?' he said. ‘Why?' He shook his head, laughing, reaching his hand across the table to her. ‘You can have your say! For sure you can have your say. But first, dearest, will you hear this?' His gaze met hers, serious again. ‘You and I, we have struck sparks against each other from the very first meeting. I liked the challenge of it – it amused me. And I still… well… I love your spirit, I love the bite of your wit. I love that you see through me and flick aside my every pretension. “Honour has not been your strongest suit,” aye, indeed! You don't let me get away with anything. I don't always enjoy it while it's happening to me, but I love you for it.

‘But your contempt wears me down, makes me less of a man. It diminishes me. When you call me a fool and an idiot, when you sneer at the occupation of my hands, I hate that. I have to reach deep within myself to try and remember that whatever the world thinks of me and whatever you think, Christ does not hold me in contempt. He may not respect my choices or admire my character, but he accepts me. He does not scorn me. I hold on to that when it feels as though everything else is slipping, and I am losing all sense of myself as ever being able to be worth anything to anyone. I have to reach way down inside to find that hope to hold on to.

‘And this ceaseless bickering wears me down. It's carping; it's not wit, it's not fun. When I cross the threshold of our home, for mercy's sake, this should feel like a sanctuary. I should not be bracing myself for whatever might hit me this time – what reprimand, what fault exposed. As I open the door, I take a quick glance at your face to see if I must expect trouble. Sometimes all is well. Sometimes my heart sinks and I think, oh save us, what have I done wrong now? Heaven knows I'm familiar enough with that kind of home: but I've always cherished a dream it doesn't have to be this way. I'm sick of it, Madeleine. I hate it. We are little more than a year married, and I hate it already. This is rougher than playing. I'm always having to defend myself against you… and I can't, not really. You get through all my defences. Every spear you throw finds the softest place in my belly and goes right in. Can't we call a truce? Can't we be friends, you and I, as well as lovers? I know what I am, all too well; might you be willing to be kind to me, and overlook some of it in mercy? God knows I need it! And I'm sorry, for I said I would let you speak and all I've done is go on even more myself. I'll shut up now.'

He kept his fingers entwined with hers across the table, and his eyes held hers briefly, then he looked down, and just waited. Madeleine did not move either, overwhelmed by the torrent of words and hardly knowing what to pick up of all that he had said. The silence between them grew less comfortable as every moment passed. Still he waited.

‘I hardly know what to say,' she responded in the end. ‘I had thought we were happy together. I can see we have a way to go before we finally shake down comfortably as man and wife, and know each other's ways – but we were old to begin it, weren't we? I didn't know you hated being married to me. I didn't know you thought me unkind, or that you dread coming home. I'm sorry about that. And I certainly didn't intend you to think I was comparing you unfavourably with Brother Thomas. Do you regret it, then – that you married me?'

He looked steadily into the bright challenge of her gaze. ‘I do not. I bless the day I married you. Now, then: what did you want to say to me?'

‘Oh…' She shook her head. ‘It doesn't matter. It'll keep. We've sat here too long talking and there's too much to be done. The days are short. It can wait until we sit down for a bite later on. Be off with you! And thank you for digging out the muck, William – it's not a job you can have been looking forward to. And I must go and see if either of those birds has laid – I need an extra egg for what I wanted to make us for our dinner. There's only one every other day at the moment, but we may be in luck. The morning's running away with us. Let's talk later.'

William hesitated, uncertain about this, feeling that he had said too much and left too little space for Madeleine. He suspected that if he said so, it might seed another argument. So he nodded in acceptance of what she said, and turned to the work awaiting his attention.

As he carried and stacked wood, and sweated over the labour of digging out the heap of night soil that fell from the longdrop closet built out from their chamber, William turned over in his mind the antagonisms of the morning. The time after they had woken and before they got up to see to the animals, the time they met up to eat at midday, and the evenings when they sat together at the fireside were their occasions for conversation. Through the mornings and afternoons of the day they were often engaged on separate chores – or, if they were working together, so fully involved with the task in hand that it occupied their minds completely. In monastic life, the Grand Silence extended past the community breaking its fast, and meals were taken in silence, listening to the reading of the martyrology. All the naturally arising domestic opportunities for conversation blocked. He reflected ruefully that Benedict of Nursia certainly understood about the propensity of human beings for falling out with one another. The only way to prevent it was to stop them talking altogether, it seemed.

A sudden change in the breeze wafted the stench of human manure into William's face, and he turned aside, retching. This task disgusted him almost beyond bearing. He didn't mind the dung of the goat and the horse, for they fed on hay and leaves, roots and grain, and the smell of what left them was not offensive. But the excrement of meat-fed human beings, and that of the pigs that ate the meat scraps from the human table, turned his stomach over with its putrefaction and hideous rottenness. For a moment he stood quite still, pressing the back of his hand against his mouth, swallowing back the saliva that rose in preparation for vomiting, bringing the instincts of his body back under the control of his mind.

As he took the handcart with its vile but precious load through the herb and vegetable gardens Madeleine had planned and he had dug, mostly bare now in this season when the earth lay banded in winter cold, he supposed he should be grateful that he had somehow evaded this task from the day he entered monastic life – cleaning out the jakes had been a duty reserved exclusively for him through the years of his boyhood.

Though the icy well-water shrivelled his skin and left him gasping at the shock of it against his body, William washed every inch of himself before he went in to eat at the end of the morning.

As well as a compact round loaf still hot from the oven and a tiny cheese from the milk Marigold still produced, Madeleine had made a hearty pease pudding. Tasty with stock from poultry bones, onions fried in grease carefully caught as it dripped from roasting birds, marjoram dried in the long days of summer, and sage and rosemary fresh from the garden, it smelt aromatic and appetizing. William said their grace and sat down thankfully, tired and thirsty as well as hungry. Sometimes they drank well-water, but today Madeleine had served him ale. He made a mental note of this, said nothing but wondered why. They ate for a while in a silence that William's mind probed cautiously.

Madeleine tore some bread off the loaf in the middle of the table and reached for the butter.

‘I thought I might go and visit my brother.' She glanced up toward him, her face defensive. A woman did not leave her man to fend for himself, cook his own supper, manage the chores alone. Their homestead gave enough work and more than enough for two pairs of hands.

She took in, with one sharp glance, William's raised eyebrow and cautious nod, and interpreted this as a nascent objection.

‘Well, I haven't seen him since the day we were wed. I miss him. I'd not normally have let this long go by without a visit. It's only because I married you. And I'd leave you some cheese made, and some bread baked, and you can cook eggs, can't you? Surely you'd be all right by yourself for just a little while! I can walk if it's that you don't want me to take the horse.'

She looked at her husband, who was observing her patiently.

‘How long were you thinking of going?'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake! How hard can it be to look after a goat, a pig and a handful of chickens for a day or so? Not long, all right? I only wanted to see Adam!' Scanning his face, she took for disapproval William's momentary frown of bewilderment at the use of her brother's childhood name from the days before he became John, his name in religion. ‘I meant no more than two nights! Surely you can –'

‘Madeleine…' He spoke quietly and reached across the table to touch her hand. ‘Stop. Please stop. Before I married you I would not have believed it possible for anyone to have an argument all by herself without a second person joining in, but it seems it is so.'

‘I wasn't arguing! William, you're so unreasonable! That's so unfair! I was simply explaining that –'

‘I heard you. My love, I heard you. By all means go and visit John. And it wasn't unreasonable to ask how long you'd be gone – was it? The only stipulation I have is that you promise me you can live with what my best efforts can achieve
when you come back
just as much as when you're planning to go.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

Her husband looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I might forget something vital. I might break something. I might burn something. I might let something die. I cannot swear to it that I will not, though I give you my word I will try my hardest to do everything just as you would wish. You can go if you promise me, on your honour –
your
honour, mark you, not mine, so we're safe there – not to tear me to shreds and feed me to the chickens if you get home to discover I've got something wrong.'

Madeleine stared at him in indignation. ‘William, that is
so
mean! You make me sound like a complete shrew!'

William added a small piece of cheese to his plate and spread butter on his bread. His lack of haste to refute this supposition kindled indignation into outrage.

‘
What
? I don't nag you – do I? I haven't complained when you've been out all day to the market, or to see the lawyer or wherever, without
me
– have I? I have everything to do here myself, with the days short and all – firewood to chop and the animals to feed and the milking and the eggs to collect; not to mention it's lonely on a dark evening here by myself when you go to York and get back home late – and I haven't grumbled, not once!'