Chapter Two

Small and comfortless, spotlessly clean, the parlour had been furnished with nothing at all except two stools.

Perhaps once a year the family of a Poor Clare might visit her; and when they did, the meeting would take place in this austere divided room. A door led into it from the convent side, and a door from the externs’ lodge and the guest house, on the side of the world. In the wall that divided the room exactly across the centre, a rectangular space four feet wide and three feet high made communication between the sisters and their visitors possible, but the iron railings that barred the space set limitations to every encounter. In many enclosed communities, the grille was curtained as well as barred. In this house they contented themselves with the railings; they were not more brazen than other religious women, but they were short of money for linen.

John and William waited in silence for their requested audience with Madeleine, seated on the two stools made ready for them in the centre of their half of the parlour. William felt cautiously pleased with the condition in which he had managed to escort his superior to this meeting. The familiarity of saying Mass and the office, and the small amount of food William had coaxed him into eating when they stopped at midday, had restored a measure of equilibrium to John’s shattered soul. On the journey to Motherwell, William had left John to his thoughts only a little while; then he had drawn him expertly and gracefully into conversation, eased him into discussing matters of little moment but of interest and diversion. By the time they arrived at the monastery of Poor Clares, his abbot had recovered a considerable measure of self-possession and was looking forward with impatience to seeing his sister. He loved her. They had always been the best of friends. Over the years he had been at St Alcuin’s, naturally a greater distance had developed between them; sometimes he had felt that she withheld from him thoughts she might once have spoken, but that seemed inevitable since they no longer lived under the same roof, sharing the warp and woof of every day. It was part of growing up. People drifted apart. Even still, he and she had ever been glad to see one another; he had always contemplated his little family’s visits to St Alcuin’s with eagerness.

As the door opened and his sister came into the room on the convent side, John rose to his feet and went to the grille. She wore the brown habit of a Poor Clare and a postulant’s veil.

“Madeleine—” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m just so very sorry.”

He put his hand through the bars to her. Though she glanced at his hand, she did not come across to the grille but sat down on the stool on her side of the room, her eyes lowered.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again, his voice shaking.

Then Madeleine stared at him, remote, composed, very pale. “Yes,” she replied, “no doubt it would never have happened if you had been there.”

Silence followed these words. Blindly, John stepped back from the grille and sank down on the stool provided for him on the visitors’ side of the parlour. He could find no means of addressing this response. Neither did William speak. In silence he observed the depth of John’s distress; then his eyes turned to contemplate the woman who had caused it.

Eventually Madeleine said, “Well, it was good of you to come. I’m glad you came.” But her voice had no colour and no sincerity; the sentiment was produced by determined application to duty. Reverend Mother had said she must come and do this. She was trying her best.

John got up again and went back to the grille. Gripping the bars, he pressed his face against the railings, to be as close to her as enclosure permitted. “Madeleine—” he whispered. “Please…”

Her careful composure broke apart, and her head jerked up sharply. She fixed John’s eyes with hers. She stopped trying to be what she had set herself to be and became simply herself. Her evident anger hit him like a hard slap in the face.

“What?” she demanded, in sudden concentrated fury. “What can I do? What can I say? Our house was burned. Five men raped me. Mother died in the fire. She was terrified and alone. We had no one to defend us. What do you want me to say? That it’s all right? That it’s over now? It will never be over. It will never be all right again. I died with Mother—and just as alone! What you see here now is a body that inconveniently lived. When I am professed, they will give me a new name; and it will be the name of this body that has no soul. Whoever Madeleine was is dead. And, yes, it would have been different if you had been there.”

Gripped by the glaring fury of her red-rimmed eyes sunken in the pallor of her face, John stood, his knuckles bloodless as he hung onto the railings, his knees trembling, absorbing the savage power of her accusation. He had no thoughts about it. It was bigger than thoughts. It overwhelmed him. By his absence, by his preoccupation with his own vocation, he had done this, it seemed. He was responsible. That this might be true appalled him, shook him to the foundations of his soul. Had the flames, the violence, the coarse laughter, the lewd brutality, and lonely terror proceeded from the all-involving obedience of the abbacy, his full and overflowing round of duty, work, and prayer? What he had chosen had seemed holy, devout, and Christ committed, but out of it, this had come.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered. “Please, sister, please forgive me.”

The brief flare of anger had subsided. She had very little energy for it; it soon drained her. Now her eyes, large in her ghostly face, with none of the old laughter in them anymore, looked at him as if he were a stranger, as if she had lost the language of family and love.

“Sister?” Her tone was flat and dull now. “Yes. I will be a sister of this house. Here I will learn to forgive. I shall learn the rules that will school what was my heart until it can find a way to forgive you.”

John bent his head, resting his brow against the cold iron of the railing. A nun? Madeleine? He found this hard to take in. His mind was beaten senseless, shocked beyond rational thought. Even so, her intention filled him with foreboding. He well knew religious vocation to be an uphill road that asks everything, not a healing refuge for a torn soul. The peace and safe harbour a religious house may offer those visitors who take refuge there is won at the cost of hard daily discipline and dogged turning away from the peevish demands of self, on the part of the community who have made it their home. He knew his own state of mind offered little of rational assessment right now, but he judged his sister to be in no fit state for joining anything.

“Can you do this?” he asked her, his voice anxious and upset. “Dearest sister, this seems no time to be taking such a step. If you have no vocation, can you bear this life? Dear one, it is not easy.”

A coldness settled over her, as though the flash of authentic response from a moment ago had hardened off. She stared at him woodenly.

“I have a vocation to find a safe refuge,” she said, the words coming stubborn, bitter. “And it would seem I have a vocation to survive. The life of this house may look simple and strict to you, but compared with the rumours and the whispering, the innuendo and the ostracism and the fear we have put up with for years, it does not seem so very hard to me. It is not thought to be easy to live in a monastery. But I tell you, compared with being flung to the ground with my clothes torn off and held down by my hair while five leering village peasants take it in turn to hold my legs apart and force themselves upon me, I think I may find it easy enough. Look at you! You don’t want to hear this, do you? You don’t even want to think about it! No. Neither did I, but I had to be there: I had no choice in the matter. I could not choose to run away, or I would have done so. And now? At least in this house, if they receive me, they will cut off my hair. No one will ever hold me down by my hair again. If it happens to me again, the veil will come off, and I shall be able to fight free. Do you know how much that means? I had not thought I had a vocation to be a Poor Clare, ’tis true enough, but I know I am no witch, nor yet a heretic or blasphemer. And at least here no one will spit on me because I can read the missal and scribe the Pater Noster.”

She let the words punish him like the knotted tails of a lash, regarding him with uncanny, calm hostility. “Don’t weep, brother; it’s too late for that!”

He did not raise his eyes to her. He rested his bent head against the railings of the grille and suffered the guilt and horror of it all to tear at him. Blood ran down his soul.

She watched him for a while; then it was as though a shutter came down inside her. She moved one hand in a small fretful gesture of impatience. Of what use were his tears?

“God bless you,” she said, matter-of-factly. “God forgive you. God give you good day.”

She rose to her feet, lowering her eyelids as she had seen the sisters do, so that she cut him off from her sight, and left the room.

John, upright only because he still clung to the grille, stood there with his back to William, weeping as though his heart would break. It did break.

William still said nothing. He held his peace and waited. His watchful soul, like a bird of prey on a crag, surveyed this bleak storm havoc without a sound. Against the harsh austerity of that stone room with its dividing grille, swept clean of dust and free of any comfort or ornament, the sound of his friend’s weeping was the only reality, and nothing relieved it at all. At some point the extern sister opened the door into their side of the room. Her face, already full of concern as she beheld the abbot, took on an expression of definite alarm as she found herself the focus of William’s pale and disconcerting eyes. “Not yet,” he said to her very softly, and she looked entirely content to withdraw. He turned back and continued his vigil, sitting motionless, his hands resting in his lap, watching John’s body racked and convulsed as the iron claw of grief harrowed over and over his soul.

But the human spirit is tough. Even its storms of anguish cannot continue forever. The agonies we do not believe we could ever survive, we do. The time came when the anguish of sobbing shaking John’s body from the roots of his viscera finally abated. After a while his hands relaxed their grip, and he let go the grille, turning to stumble across the room to the stool they had set out for him. Collapsing heavily onto it, he bent double, sinking his face into his hands. “Oh God…” he groaned, “Oh God… Oh God… Oh God… how shall I live with what I have done? Whatever am I to do?”

And still William waited; still he did not speak.

Then at last, rubbing his tears from his face with the back of his trembling hand, John sat more upright and glanced across at William. In another moment he found his handkerchief, blew his nose, and wiped the tears that still dripped from his chin, still trickled from his eyes and would not stop.

He groaned, shaking his head in sorrow. He had entertained no expectations of this visit, knowing only that he must come; he had certainly never imagined it would be as awful as this. Hunched on the stool, lost and broken, his head bent, he held the handkerchief loosely between both hands on his knee. The tears still trickled and dripped.

Then, “Listen,” said William. “Listen to me; are you listening? Listen!”

John lifted his head. Bleakly he nodded.

“You did not do this—” He dismissed John’s nod of the head and semiarticulate protest with a peremptory gesture. “No, don’t interrupt me! Don’t argue with me! You did not do this. Each of us bears responsibility for the life we have been given. It was no more your fault that this happened than it was Madeleine’s fault because she had not provided herself with a husband to guard their home. It was not her fault, and it was not yours. It was the fault of the men who did it; and one day they will be brought to meet God’s justice or—even better—his mercy.

“When I came to St Alcuin’s, I was hated because of what I did to Columba—and reasonably so. Nobody thought it was his fault for putting himself in a vulnerable position as a crippled man. Nobody thought it was Father Chad’s fault for failing to defend him. They thought it was my fault because I did it. And they were right.

“This is your sorrow, but it is not your fault. It is the way of the world. People lend themselves to working great evil sometimes. That’s how it is. We are made to be able to carry the pain of that—and to recover. But we are not made to bear the guilt. If we try to do that, it crushes us. You were not there when men raped your sister and killed your mother. But Christ was there, and he did not intervene. We can only assume he was there in her vulnerability, in their rejected chance to have mercy; and he is here now in the agony of your sorrow. But, John, I am neither a kind man nor a good man, only a practical man, and I am telling you—and you may trust this—it was not your fault!”

As he stopped speaking, his eyes with their pale fire fixed John’s. “Do you hear me?” he said.

In spite of everything, surprising both of them, something about the furious intensity with which he was regarded unexpectedly made John smile. “I hear you,” he said.

“Good! Then hear this as well. Your sister will be safe here. And these are not silly women. They will understand about outrage and pain, as well as vocation. They will not profess her unless she makes her peace with life. Right now she is so full of pain herself that she has nothing left over to enable her to touch your pain gently. Suffering isolates people. But here she is in a place where the channels of healing will be kept open for mercy and grace to flow into her. The sisters will make a ring of intercession all around her, as so will we in our turn, in our house. In time it will reach her, seep through to her. Sooner or later—probably later—it will soak through to the core of her where she has been terribly hurt. Something will touch her. Someone will get through. A change will come, and she will find her way back to living. When that happens, these things can be sorted out between you, and the bond of love can be grown back into place—not as it was before, but in a new way, because you will both be different having passed through this. But there is nothing you can do to rush that healing or take away the pain of the journey she must make to get there. It is between her and God. It would be presumptuous to think otherwise.

“Your mother also is safe. She is healed. The sorrow and fear of this world cannot touch her now. She is safe, John, and happy and free. Do you hear me? Safe!

“The many good times are also safe: the laughter, the caress of the breeze, the joy of the sunshine, the crooning of hens amongst the herbs, watching the garden grow and the spring come, the warmth of the fireside, the beauty of stars on a frosty night, shared jokes and shared meals—nobody can take them away from the lives that had them. They were God’s good gifts, and they belong to those lives forever. They are safe now.

“What is not safe at this moment is your soul. If you are wise—are you listening, my brother?—instead of torturing yourself over what you could not help and did not foresee, you will allow the grief in you to be a simple open wound that Christ may touch and, in good time, heal. This thing happened. It has broken you to pieces. If you can find the humility to allow it, grace will also heal you: you will be stronger in the end for this, one day. This grieving is the filth and mess that turns out to be the bed of sticky clay that, if we plunge our hands into it and bring them out full, we can craft into a grail of hope. It is so. I promise you.”

John nodded, half-listening, somewhat holding together. “All right,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll do my best.” He shook his head distractedly, trying to dislodge the bewilderment of overwhelming emotion. “Well, I guess we’d better go.”

He got up wearily. For a moment he remained standing as though he could not remember how to put one foot in front of the other. Then suddenly his face crumpled, and he began to weep again, holding his head in his hands, sobbing helplessly where he stood in the middle of that bare room with its two wooden stools. The latch of the door behind them clicked again. Once more an extern sister looked in, murmured her apology, and hastily withdrew.

This time William stepped briskly across the room and opened the door. He glanced along the corridor where the nun was walking away and said, not raising his voice, “Sister.” Monastic life is attuned to quietness. He knew there would be no need to call out. She turned back.

Treading toward him, her kindly face full of concern, she said, “I did not mean to intrude. God strengthen you, brother, in your time of loss. Oh, may God give you peace.”

William looked at her. “It’s not my loss, but thank you. I think we need to speak to your Reverend Mother, and also your novice mistress, please.”

“If you will wait one moment, I’ll go in search,” she said. As the nun disappeared along the passage, William returned to the parlour. He assessed his abbot’s condition and frowned.

“My father, you are almost hysterical,” he said. “It’s time to get a grip on yourself. Stop. Give yourself a break. The time of tears will be long. Look at you. Your head feels light, and your belly aches with sobbing. Hush now. Let it alone. The sorrow will wait for you.”

William communicated with the world in many voices, but when he spoke in the persona of an Augustinian prior, the ruling authority of his house, he never doubted for an instant that he would be obeyed. And this was the role he found his way back to now. He placed his own dry, clean handkerchief in his abbot’s hands, flicking away the sodden one onto the floor, took hold of John’s upper arms from behind, and firmly steered him back to a seated position on the stool provided. “Enough now!” he said. John felt the well of grief seal off. He felt like a small boy who has been rebuked by his teacher. He also felt himself in the presence of a love like a rock that would never fail him.

“D’you want your handkerchief back?” he asked some minutes later, his voice unsteady despite his best efforts, but his face finally dried of tears. William glanced at it. “I do not.”

The door on the convent side of the grille opened, and two nuns came forward to the bars. John stood up to greet them, pushing the now damp handkerchief hastily into his pocket. As John and William stepped forward, William appraised the women carefully.

“God grant you peace in your sorrow, my poor brother,” said the older of the two women. Short and stout, with a face physically soft and gentle but with eyes that expressed keen intelligence and immovable authority, she came to the grille. It was her intention to take John’s hands through the bars in a gesture of sympathy and comfort, but as soon as she read that might not have been what he sought, she forestalled the movement. When she stepped back to the stools on the convent side of the parlour, so did the novice mistress, a tall, angular nun with vivid blue eyes and a firm mouth in a face already etched deep with the lines of her smile. They seated themselves with dignity and composure, the brown skirts of their habits falling in folds that hid the stools beneath them completely. John also stepped back and sat down again.

“I am Mother Mary Beatrix,” the first nun said, “and this is Mother Mary Brigid, our novice mistress. We are all praying for you every day through this harrowing time of terrible distress.”

“Thank you,” said John simply. “Thank you.”

Seeing that his superior had no apparent intention of adding to this, while the two nuns waited politely to hear what the men wished to say, William spoke. “I am Father William de Bulmer,” he introduced himself. “I am not an obedientiary at St Alcuin’s, having joined the community but recently. I have no authority, so I was free to be Father John’s travelling companion. This event has hit him hard, as you see for yourselves; for which reason only, I must be his mouthpiece now and ask you the things we need to know.”

Reverend Mother inclined her head. She understood.

“Firstly, of your kindness, may I inquire what has become of the body of my lord abbot’s mother? By my reckoning, even supposing your messenger came the day that you took his sister in—yesterday—this is still the fourth day Katelin Hazell has been dead. It is warm weather. Have you buried her body already, or is that still to be done?”

William was aware of John’s movement of horror and distress but did not turn his head to look at him.

“We laid her in the earth early this morning.” Mother Mary Beatrix let her calm voice steady this situation as it had had to steady so many others. “It would not have been a blessing or a comfort to you to see her.”

“I understand,” said William quickly, sensing John’s trembling and thinking it best not to linger where imagination might dwell on the implications of what had been said. “Where is she buried, please? Might my lord abbot pay his respects at her place of burial?”

Mother Mary Beatrix nodded. “Certainly. Usually only our sisters are laid to rest in the burial ground here; but Madeleine has been so consumed with the dread that wicked men might violate Katelin’s grave, we made an exception. I’m so sorry, Father John. I can see for myself how hard this is for you.”

John felt for his handkerchief again, his hand shaking.

“We can take you directly to the burial ground, and you may visit whenever you wish. Priests of the church are allowed inside our enclosure, as you know.”

“Thank you,” said William. “You have our heartfelt gratitude for stepping in as you have, and bringing some healing and sanity to a time of deep turmoil and pain. May I ask you next about Madeleine Hazell?”

“What can we tell you?” responded Mother Mary Beatrix pleasantly. Her eyes rested on William with careful appraisal, and she felt more puzzled than she usually did. She thought there was something odd about this man. His assurance and authority did not sit comfortably with his assertion that he held no office at St Alcuin’s. She thought that could not always have been the case. William de Bulmer… she felt sure she had heard that name somewhere before.

“She was attacked on this last Saturday evening?” William asked, and Mother Mary Beatrix nodded in affirmation. “Yes.”

“She hid the next day in the woods and came to you when dusk fell?”

“That’s right,” confirmed Mother Mary Beatrix.

“You sent word to us the very next morning, for which we most heartily thank you, and we came down to you the day following, being this day.”

Mother Mary Beatrix nodded. “Mm-hm.”

“Good sisters, please do not take my questions amiss. Madeleine Hazell had not previously come to you with intention to explore a vocation as a Franciscan?”

“No. We knew her. She and Katelin had sometimes been with us for Mass. They were here only two weeks ago, at Easter, just after they had been to visit at St Alcuin’s, I gather. Katelin was very proud of her son. She wanted to tell me how he had been elected abbot, but she said that she feared it would mean she and Madeleine should not overburden him; she did not want to be in the way at a time of year when he would have his hands so very full. So they came back home and observed the vigil at the cross with us.”

“Oh, by all heaven, they would never have been in the way! They never… Oh God, help me, they are both so dear to me!”

“My dear Abbot John, I didn’t mean—”

“That’s all right,” said William quickly. “We understand. Father, your love—for your mother and your sister both—has ever been apparent, and you made them most welcome, so I heard. It was a sensible decision to come home. No superior has time on his hands in Holy Week—or on hers.”

Mother Mary Beatrix rewarded his acknowledgment that women superiors also existed with a small, wry smile.

“So Madeleine Hazell had no thoughts of a vocation as recently as Easter?” William persisted. “Then why is she dressed as a postulant today? I should judge her state of mind to be wholly inappropriate for making any such commitment.”

Mother Mary Beatrix nodded. You don’t miss much, do you! she thought.

“We thought the same,” she said transparently. “The day Madeleine made her way to us, we heard her story; we washed her and comforted her, for she was very distressed. We put her to bed, and Mother Mistress here sat with her through the night, for she was frightened and kept starting awake. The next morning we sent someone to look for her goats, as she was desperately concerned about them, and they could not be found. No doubt they have found new homes in the village, and what’s to tell between one goat and another if they are not your own? So we left it. That day we sent word up to you at St Alcuin’s. Madeleine pleaded with me to allow her into this community. She said she had been called a heretic and a witch, and she was afraid that if she remained here just as herself, Madeleine Hazell, somehow they would come for her and drag her out and do their worst to her again. No assurance from me would convince her otherwise. I think the experience had temporarily sent her to the edge of her sanity. Mother Mistress and I talked it over. We fully realize that as she comes to herself again—though what she is in the future can hardly be the same as she has been in the past—she may wish to reconsider this decision. On the other hand, it is quite likely that once she has been so savagely persecuted for a heretic and a witch, this may in truth be the only safe place for her. Frankly, if she wants to stay alive, she may have to find a vocation. When one looks at it realistically, what she said to us is probably exactly true. This is the eye of her storm; this is her only refuge. Fathers, can you understand this?”

“Oh, yes,” said William softly, with perfect conviction. As Mother Mary Beatrix met his eyes she remembered where she’d heard his name before: the Augustinian, the St Dunstan’s fire. William, seeing the sudden kindling of comprehension, heartily regretted giving her his name; he wondered how it was that enclosed nuns invariably had such an uncanny knack of keeping up-to-date with everyone else’s news.

Mother Mary Beatrix saw the slow flush of colour in William’s face and lowered her eyes discreetly, giving him a moment to recover.

“Rest assured, Father John, Father William, we shall lead Madeleine gently.” The novice mistress spoke for the first time, her voice slow and soft and kind. William believed her, and John raised his head to look at her. “Thank you,” he said. “Of your charity, would you take us to where my mother is buried, good sisters?”

The abbess rose to her feet, and the novice mistress immediately followed her example.

“Sister Mary Cuthbert will not be far away if you care to go through into the passageway. She will open the door to the enclosure for you, and we will take you to the burial ground.”

William went to look. As soon as he lifted the latch to the parlour door, Sister Mary Cuthbert, who had been waiting on the occasion of their needing her, appeared in the clean-swept and empty passageway watched over by a statue of Our Lady, cloaked in peaceful blue, her face sweet and simple, the infant Christ held protected in the carved wood of her arms.

“Dear Mother had thought you might be wanting to go in to see our burial ground.” Sister Mary Cuthbert’s cheerful and rosy face beheld him soberly, clouded by her concern as she heard the request to admit them to the enclosure.

William found himself moved by a sudden impulse of intense gratitude. “I think we owe you a great deal,” he said. “Without your hospitality and care, my lord abbot’s sister would have been alone in her trouble. Thank you for what you have done for her, for my abbot, for his mother. Thank you for seeing that she had the dignity of Christian burial. It would not have been pretty to have to search for her in whatever remains of her home. We are grateful, Sister, more than I have words to express.”

“Oh!” She smiled, waving aside all thanks. “It was nothing, nothing at all; God bless you, it was the least that we could do.”

William shook his head. “No; it was not ‘nothing’. And we shall not forget. You will pray for my lord abbot, won’t you? This has hurt him badly. He is new to the abbacy. It is a steep path his feet are finding.”

“Father, we are holding him in prayer every day. As I sit with my work in my hands, in every stitch I make, I am sewing John Hazell into the wounded side of Christ crucified with sturdy linen thread. All shall be well. The sacred heart of Jesus will be his shelter.”

William bent his head in appreciative acquiescence. Behind him the door opened, and John joined them in the passageway.

“Let me show you the way,” said Sister Mary Cuthbert. “Follow me.”

Conscious at every step of the delicacy and kindness of these sisters, William observed the dread and distress in his superior’s face as Mother Mary Beatrix and Mother Mary Brigid led them out past the claustral buildings, past the infirmary and up the steep path to the burial ground. While Mother Mary Beatrix sustained a gentle flow of inconsequential words to lighten the grim miasma of horror overshadowing their walk up the hillside, Mary Brigid contented herself with silence as she walked behind the other three. And William could feel her praying for them.

As he watched John fall onto his knees beside the new mound of earth and the simple wooden cross, the cascading larksong and clear blue of this May day seemed to William otherworldly, mocking in its brightness. John did not pray. He wept.

William and the two nuns waited in patient, respectful silence; even to them, used as they were to the slow chanting of psalms and intoned pages from the martyrology, it seemed a very long time before John staggered to his feet again and turned to face them.

“She was burned,” he said, “burned, choked, terrified! How could they? How could anybody do this to her? She was wise and gentle. She was a healer. Her hands stretched out to help, to bring peace, wherever people were frightened or in pain. Why would you—why would anybody want… why?” He shook his head in slow, bewildered disbelief. “What a… mess,” he said, finally.

“Who has been notified of this?” William asked the abbess. “The mayor? The sheriff?”

Mother Mary Beatrix hesitated.

“We have taken no action,” she said cautiously. “These are unsettled times. The plague was hereabouts a year back, and there have been rapid changes in tenancies of the land because of it. Beasts—even flocks in some cases—have passed from man to man. It is not as easy as it might have been even a few years ago to establish beyond doubt who might rightfully own what. Things are no longer clear. Our blessed holy Father’s residence at Avignon… well… the people sometimes consider… these are licentious times.”

Mary Beatrix stopped. If she had little to say in commendation of the Pope, then silence was best. William read her silence with no effort. They lived in days of corruption, when cynicism abounded, the celibacy of priests was compromised on a grand scale, and spiritual progress bought more than hard-won. An old woman’s cottage accidentally burnt down by a raggle-taggle group of drunken men would be unlikely to be seen as cause for much concern. Even so, “Katelin did not own the land, I think? The lord of the manor will be short a rent. He at least will want to know.”

“It was glebe land,” said John quietly. “It belongs to St Mary’s at York.”

Not one of the four of them needed to voice what was in the minds of all. If the root of the ruckus had been an allegation of witchcraft, there was evidence enough. The women could read; they knew herbs; they were healers; they lived together alone without a man and under no religious rule. It was enough. Any justice sought would be countered instantly by those with an interest to protect themselves, with trumped-up stories of spells and curses and incantations. The very authorities who might have protected her would likely drag Madeleine from her refuge and finish what coarse ruffians had begun. It would be wiser to let things lie. The walls of the monastery and a cloak of silence wrapped around her would keep Madeleine safer than the king’s court or the ecclesiastical authorities or the sheriff.

His face bleak and hopeless, John turned away from the grave. There was nothing to be done; he just had to accept this. The consequence of further investigation could be the devastation of his sister’s life. She had enough to reproach him for already.

“I cannot pray,” he muttered. “God help me, I cannot pray.” He stumbled away from the grave, glancing back at it once.

“Mother Abbess, I think we must presume upon your hospitality this one night,” said William. “I must go with him to the cottage before evening today. I think he needs to see what damage was done and get a grasp of how things were. It is painful now, but what we know is ever easier to come to terms with than what we imagine. Tomorrow we will make our way home. There seems little comfort we can hope to offer just now to his sister, Madeleine.”

The Mother Abbess nodded in sober understanding.

“Please avail yourself of anything our house has to offer. If there is any healing, any easing of pain that we can bring to this sickening brutality, we shall be glad of it. Do not fret for Madeleine. We shall watch over her. With God’s grace we may lead her out of the place she is in now. And John Hazell has a good friend indeed in you, Father.”

“He’s been a good friend, in his turn, to me,” William responded.

Yes, Mary Beatrix thought, so I have heard. But she did not say it. And she thought this might not be the best day to ask if one of them could preside at the morrow Mass if they were staying overnight.

She did have to ask though.

“Dear Mother would be glad of a word,” whispered Sister Mary Cuthbert in William’s ear in the tranquil moments of gathering before Vespers that evening. Glancing up, he saw her standing, waiting, behind the barred screen separating the nave from the choir. Reverencing the possibility of the reserve sacrament as he passed the parish altar, William went quick and light to see what she wanted of him.

“Father,” she said in the quiet undertone appropriate to a conversation here in church, “our priest is sick, and we have nobody to say Mass for us in the morning. I was wondering… this is awkward, for of course I should really have asked Father John.”

Her gaze, quiet, level, discreet, questioned his.

“Most certainly,” he responded. “Yes, one of us will. I’ll ask him tonight, to find out whether he would rather I do it. But rest assured, one of us will.”

Ashamed to the living core of his soul, John admitted he did not even want to think about celebrating the Mass. He had set himself to be holding together in time for their return home, but this request caught him off guard. “I can do it,” said William.

As John hesitated, wretched and anxious at failing in the duty of his office and status, letting down the reputation of his house, William added, “Look, let me do this. It’s the first time anyone has asked me to preside at Mass since St Dunstan’s was razed. Do you think I haven’t missed it? I’m not a shining example of the priesthood, I own it, but I’m not yet spiritually dead either.”

“I’m sorry,” said John numbly. “William, forgive me; I never thought…”

“Oh, by all the saints, I meant no reproach! St Alcuin’s is jostling with priests; what would I expect? I’m only saying… Just give your permission, Abbot John! Make something easy!”

And John nodded in silence.

The afternoon had been hard and painful. John had no wish to ride through the village; he did not want to be seen or recognized. He had no desire for vengeance, no wish to search for those who had hurt his family to curse and upbraid them. He had been gone too long from Motherwell; he could make no guess now as to who among the villagers might bear the blame. He had accepted that seeking justice could stir up more than it resolved. He just wanted to see the cottage.

The monastery where they were staying perched on the hillside above the treacherous ground that became so boggy when the river flooded after spring and autumn rains. Springs welled plentifully in the earth here, so the sisters did not rely on the river for their laundry or their kitchen or their baths. They had two wells, which between them never ran dry. Even so, their house had been built only halfway up the hill, so that the rising land might protect them from the north and east winds, and the reredorter might drain through the natural filter of the earth down to the river. Their drain was not sophisticated, but, given a certain level of maintenance—digging out the sump when guests had been plentiful—it served.

The two men had ridden farther down into the valley, crossed the river at the fording place to the west, and made their way up through the wooded slopes and over the brow of the hill to the cottage where John had been born on the edge of the heath, a goodly mile out of the village.

He got down from his horse without a word, handing the reins up to William, who likewise dismounted and hitched the two beasts to a fence post. William stayed where he was with the animals, leaving John space to assimilate the scene that met his eyes.

Almost nothing remained of the cottage. The thatch and timbers had gone. Its walls had been built of stone and clay hauled up from the riverbed. Men valued stones already shaped for building. There was little left now even of the walls.

The places where herbs and vegetables and flowers grew had been trampled, and some plants dug up and taken. The goat shed still stood, its door banging in the wind. The henhouse was gone completely—not destroyed, removed.

The house place looked so small and desolate. Blackened and charred remains of household objects—a wash pail, a stool, a bedstead, clumped pages of torn books—had been left behind. It seemed that anything still worth reusing had vanished into other lives and homes.

John stepped slowly across the garden with its pretty hedge of honeysuckle, roses, and blackberry, its small shading trees of hawthorn and elder, and came to a standstill at the edge of the scattered, burnt debris that was left of his childhood home.

William watched him pick his way into the mess, stoop, and lift out of the ashes still wet with dew a book half consumed by fire. John raised his head and looked back, saying something William could not catch; so he crossed the garden to stand beside him.

“A missal,” said John. “My mother’s missal. ‘Witch’ indeed! Oh God in heaven! Such cruel, gross brutality.” His face, hard and drawn, turned to William. “And I know, if I take this to the sheriff or the lord of the manor or any man, he will ask me, ‘What did a woman want a missal for, unless she be a witch, seeking to foul it with her own perversion?’ It’s crazy, William, crazy! And it is cruel, and it’s not fair.”

“The world? Aye,” murmured his companion, “and we must make the best of it we can.”

“They take it from the Bible,” John went on, his voice shaking, “and they take it from the tradition of the church. They go to the texts of the Church Fathers and the book of Genesis and the Law of Moses and the epistles of the New Testament to find proof that women are pits of filth and dangerous temptresses, cesspools of evil. From the Bible! In Christ’s holy name, William, what must God think? When he looks down from heaven and sees what we do with his book, what we use it for! Witch-hunting and stoning and pillorying and persecuting! For mercy’s sake, is that Christ’s gospel of reconciliation and love? Is that what the Book of God is for? What have we done, we in the monasteries who have carefully scribed out the works of John Chrysostom and Clement of Alexandria and Cyril and Tertullian and St Jerome and Augustine of Hippo and all the rest of them? Our young men have sat in the scriptorium faithfully copying out that every woman should be overcome with shame that she is a woman, that women are the Devil’s gateway, that woman is the root of all evil, that women are especially dishonoured by God and should be especially dishonoured by men—and here it is! Here’s the dishonour! Here’s what we let our scribes write that our novices might read and our preachers might teach—and look at it! Look at the result! Oh God, oh God, oh God! Forgive us!”

He let the remains of the missal drop to the ground and buried his face in his sooty hands, shaken with grief. He fell to his knees, bending low, convulsed with sorrow, groaning, “Forgive us. God, forgive us.”

At least that’s what William, standing watching him, thought he was probably saying.

William folded his arms and waited. After about fifteen minutes had gone by, he decided enough was enough. He squatted down at John’s side. He put out a hand to touch him, thought better of it, and withdrew his hand.

“Father,” he said, “John—come now. Come. Set it aside. You will drive yourself mad. Perhaps the Church Fathers had heartless mothers. Perhaps they had temptations it was easier not to admit. Celibacy doesn’t sit easy all the time with anyone. Best to let their ravings sink where they belong and be grateful for anything left that makes sense. Come now.”

But John lifted up a face contorted with fury and grief. “How can you say that? How can you make light of it? How can you brush it aside as a thing of little consequence? Look at this devastation! See what we have wrought with our pious talk! Does this mean nothing to you?”

William listened to this. Squatting began to feel distinctly uncomfortable, so he stood up again. He clasped his hands and raised them to his face, rubbing his thumb pensively against his mouth, waiting. Over his joined hands, his calm, considering eyes regarded his abbot. He betrayed no sign of impatience or irritation, but William still thought this had better stop.

John glared up at him, possessed by his anger and distress, his face blotched red and smudged with charcoal and ashes. William said not a word. The wind blew about them, carrying the scents of summer grasses and flowers and the acrid smell of burning. Above them a curlew cried.

Nothing lasts forever.

John felt the tide of rage subside, leaving behind a deep, dragging weariness.

“I loved them so much,” he whispered, “and this was such a happy home.”

“Come, my lord.” William reached down to help him up. “We have seen what’s done, and there is no mending it. Thugs are just thugs and will always find someone to beat up. And the Church Fathers, well, even the wise and great have their follies, and the Word of God is often bent to the purposes of men. They were paid to think, and they were poor workmen. Anticipation is the chief tool of leadership—to see what we have said today will land us in tomorrow. They failed us there. But let’s go now. There is no further good we can do here. It’s best to let it lie.”

They walked in silence across the spoiled garden. As they reached their mounts, John raised his eyes to his brother, who met his gaze inquiringly.

“Does nothing of this move you?” said John. “Does nothing in you respond and understand?”

William’s eyebrows lifted.

“Oh. Yes, I think so, my lord abbot. It is not unfamiliar ground. I have been used to living with mutters of ‘their entrails should be torn out, they should be butchered and burned, evil stinking misbegotten sons of Satan.’ I found it quite amusing. Um—until they actually turned on me and did it, of course. Then I was only afraid. I understand. But what’s to do? The world, the church, the people—they are always like this. Sometimes it will be your comeuppance, sometimes someone else’s. Tears will not alter it. But they flow, and we cannot help it. We are only human after all.”

John frowned, watching him as he said this. “Are your eyes blue, or are they green?”

The eyes in question flickered, and humour entered them like a shaft of early sunlight on a winter morning. “I have no idea, my lord abbot. I’ve never looked into them.”

John turned and mounted his horse. William handed up the reins, then jumped up lightly into his own saddle.

“Forgive me,” John said before he turned his horse’s head to leave. “I have been so absorbed in my own troubles, I had forgotten yours as if they had never been. I ask your pardon, William. And don’t tell me you don’t mind. You only call me ‘my lord abbot’ when something’s not as it should be. I’m very sorry.”

William shrugged. “I’m not touchy. You helped me when I had need of it, and I believe you always would. What more would I ask? Come, Father John, it’s evening, let’s go now.”

They went back the way they had come, crossing the river valley and climbing the incline to the monastery of Poor Clares. The sisters had no ostler, but a man from the village did the heavy outdoor work for them. He came to take their animals back to the stable. William walked with him as John made his way into the guest house.

“My lord is the abbot at St Alcuin’s, a day’s ride north and high up on the edge of the moors. He is a man of power and consequence and well connected.” William spoke softly to the man as they crossed the sisters’ yard to the small block of stables. “We have been to my abbot’s childhood home today,” he continued quietly. “A godly woman, his mother was, and his sister too. They lived there together, Katelin and Madeleine Hazell. He loved them dearly. They have been set upon. Their house is burned and looted, his mother is dead, his sister deflowered, and she has fled. I imagine you know nothing at all about this. But if you did—if you ever have word of who did this thing—you would be able to tell them that, though my abbot is minded to let this go and seek no revenge, if one hair of his sister’s head is ever harmed again, there will be such hell to pay, those men will wish they had never been born; aye, and their families too. And do not think there would be any hope of mercy or redress. Just as nobody knows what has happened to these women, so nobody would ever know what had happened to them—only that they would have found their journey to hell had been suddenly accelerated. And I am a man of my word. You may believe this absolutely. Thank you kindly. Water them well, but don’t give the grey too much grain.”

He did not raise his voice, and his manner seemed pleasant enough; and yet the man’s face was pale and his hands shook as William walked away. He had stolen one quick glance into the cold and baleful glow of William’s eyes, and what he heard and saw entirely convinced him.

In the guest house, Sister Mary Cuthbert attended kindly to their wants. She had heated some water for them to wash after their ride through the river valley, and some hearty soup with herb dumplings. William eyed his superior toying abstractedly with his food. “Eat it,” he said, “or give it to me.”

John managed a smile and an apology and addressed himself dutifully to the food he had been given.

Then they sat in the deep stone peace of the chapel, on the rough, low benches there, each with his own thoughts as the time for Vespers drew near, which was when Mary Beatrix begged a celebrant for the morning’s morrow Mass.

“What about the parish Mass?” William asked her.

“God reward you for your concern, but here we have only one Mass on a weekday. It is not the same here as in an abbey with many priested men.”

He nodded. “Of course. It is a privilege, and, Mother, we feel your kindness to us keenly, and we are more than grateful.”

Mary Beatrix’s shrewd eyes appraised him with interest for one brief moment. She liked his courtesy and appreciated his protective loyalty to his superior. She wondered if all that had reached her ears concerning this man had been true. She smiled at him.

“We are glad of the chance to do what little we can to help,” she responded. She made him a small bow of farewell, then lowered her eyes and turned back to her stall to start the office.

The guest house offered simple accommodation: one long room of stone walls and bare rafters, big enough for six low wooden cots with blankets, warm but far from soft, that the sisters had spun and woven from fleeces they could not sell. The walls were mercifully free from damp this near the solstice of a dry year; even so, shafts of the morning sun always exposed an unmistakably greenish tinge. William felt relieved to find they were the only guests, and so did Sister Mary Cuthbert, seeing that most of their visitors were women.

He was glad too that John acquiesced to the sisters’ leaving them undisturbed through the offices of the night. Their night proved to have disturbance enough of its own. John tossed and turned and started awake sweating. William, a light sleeper always, was there at his side when needed, and he was glad when the sun finally rose at about four o’clock.

The day found John haggard and weary, exhausted from more grief than he could bear.

William said the Mass and insisted that John break his fast with a cup of hot milk and honey, even if he could not face the fresh and fragrant bread Mary Cuthbert had set out for them.

The hired man, sullen, dour, and wary, had saddled their horses. William thanked the sisters and gave them a generous gift of money, both for their care and for Madeleine’s keep.

Sister Mary Cuthbert listened to the clatter of horseshoes as they rode out, and she murmured a Hail Mary for travelling mercies, then exclaimed “Drat! I had that handkerchief laundered all ready, and I forgot to give it back!”

The road up into the hills lay wild and peaceful. The two men covered half the distance before midday without any undue haste. John remained pensive, his face set in hard lines of hopelessness, and William left him to his thoughts as they passed through farmland and woodland, by streams that sparkled over stony beds and gurgled around mossed boulders. When the sun was high and he judged the horses could do with a rest, William waited for a place with grass lush enough to offer helpful grazing, a stream low enough to lead their beasts to drink, and an oak tree with ample canopy to afford them some shade.

Neither of these animals would wander. As the men slipped down from their saddles and stretched cramped muscles, William pulled off the bridles and left them to crop the grass. He carried the pack of food Sister Mary Cuthbert had given them to where John had found shelter from the midday sun in the cool green shadow of the oak leaves.

“I am finished,” said John, his voice dull, his eyes staring hopelessly at nothing. He sat slumped against the tree, with no interest in the fruit and cheese William had set out for him. “Whatever I once was good for, I no longer am. I’m completely finished.”

William looked up from carefully tearing in two the loaf the sisters had given them. He stopped what he was doing, remaining motionless and silent until John’s attention was caught. He could not read the look in William’s eyes, but he had to listen when William spoke to him.

“No, you are not finished. When they bind your limbs with ropes to the wheel, and you hear them urge the horses on, you are finished. When they put a bag over your head so the executioner doesn’t have to look you in the eyes, you are finished. When you glance down and see the first flames curling up from the fagots and the smoke is in your nostrils, you are finished. When the man who walks toward you in the forest with a knife in his hand laughs because he sees you are afraid, you may well be finished. This is not what being finished is. This is you having a bad day because you feel upset and guilty about your mother and because Madeleine is as trapped in her grief as you are in yours. That’s valid, as far as it goes, as a feeling.” William directed his attention to the bread again and finished dividing it. “But to say you are finished is simply incorrect as a fact. You have the same skills and experiences as ever—and the same duties. Shirking your responsibilities because you are half out of your wits with grief is a self-indulgence an abbot cannot afford. Take your time to rage and weep and whatever else you have to do today—after that you must pick yourself up and carry on. One of the great challenges of being human is that long after a man concludes he has finished with life, he discovers to his dismay that unfortunately life has not finished with him. Here—take this: eat it. Eat your bread. No, truly—even if you don’t want it, eat your bread. There’s no way to dodge this pain, but you don’t have to wallow in it. Bread has strength in it, and strength you’re going to need. Eat!”

John obediently took the bread pressed into his hand.

“All right, I’m eating it!” he said as William sat watching him.

“And some cheese. And you can share this apple with me.”

John ate, and he drank some of the ale they had been given. William shook out the crumbs from the cloth when their meal was done and carefully folded it away.

For a while silence reigned as the two men stretched out and rested there by the side of the road, while their horses cropped the grass and herbs that grew alongside the track. The warmth of the day felt sleepy and still. Crickets chirped, and bees were busy among the flowers, but no more than the odd scintillas and ringlets of birdsong drifted coquettishly to beautify the languid air. A lazy afternoon.

Into the peace between them, John gave voice to something that was starting to bother him.

“What was the reverend mother’s name? Faith, why can’t I remember? I can’t seem to… can you remember her name, William?”

William turned his head and eyed his abbot calmly, observing his distress as his battered mind failed to do what he wanted it to do.

“I’m not completely sure,” he responded, “but I think it might have been Mary.”

Trying to make this fit, John eyed him with the expression of a puzzled child. “Mary? You think? But…”

“Yes,” said William. “Never mind. She was Mother Mary Beatrix, Father John.”

The day was peaceful and sunny, and here on the edge of the wood nothing could be heard but birdsong and insects and the faint stirring of the trees. For a moment William forgot his anxieties at being away from the abbey. He lay on his back in the grass, aware that his habit was getting damp and not caring, watching the clouds pass, and thinking nothing more edifying than Sister Mary Mildew… Sister Mary Mandrake… Sister Mary Magpie… Sister Mary Mosaic… Sister Mary Millipede… Sister Mary Motheaten… Sister Mary Meticulous… Sister Mary Matchless Magnificent… Sister Mary Might… Sister Mary Mightnot. “I’m sorry, Father, did you speak to me? Yes, surely. We can be on our way just as soon as you’re ready.”

Both of them felt drowsy, and their muscles ached from more time in the saddle than they were accustomed to, but the sun was well past its height and the day passing.

As they took the road again, John remained taciturn, absorbed in his thoughts. William rode beside him, making no attempt to break the brooding silence.

Eventually his abbot asked him, “Is your mother still alive, William?”

“I have no idea,” William answered him calmly. “I have not inquired.”

“You mean she—she might be still alive and you not know? And not care? Your mother?”

“Yes. Yes, that is what I meant.”

William did not turn his head to look at John’s wordless incredulity, though he could certainly feel it. They rode on together without speaking for another mile.

“Your mother—” John broke the silence. “You did not—do not—love her?”

“Brilliant deduction.”

William knew this was discourteous and thought he had better amend it.

“She was not good to me. Neither of my parents was. We were not wealthy, but we certainly were not poor. They were just not kind people. I was often cold, often hungry, often beaten. Beaten for forgetting things, beaten for dropping things, beaten if I was clumsy with food or late or rude or inattentive. Sometimes they beat me because they were drunk or had nothing else to do. I recall one splendid occasion when I was beaten because I’d got blood on the sheet of my bed from having been beaten. And I never would know if I deserved any supper—oh, it was miserable. I’ve found many assets in being a man of God, but the chief of them must be the consolation of knowing that if I go to heaven then for sure I won’t see either of the merciless, spiteful bullies that begot me, there.”

A small, mirthless half smile twisted his face as he darted a sideways glance at his abbot. He bent forward and patted his palfrey’s neck.

“Don’t look so shocked, my father. It’s the way of the world. It’s commonplace. You must know that.”

“How long did this go on?” asked John.

“Each beating? What do you mean?”

“I mean, for how much of your childhood?”

“Oh, I see.” William, quietly considering, searched back for a time when he might have been simply allowed to be. “All of it that I can remember. Somebody must have nursed me as an infant, and whether that was my mother or a wet nurse I do not know. I have no memory of it. I remember only violence. And loneliness.”

John shook his head, appalled and horrified. “Did nobody at all try to stop this? Did no one intervene?”

“Not as far as I know. Why would they? What grown man or woman ever takes the side of a child? And even the child—it becomes impossible to know when blame is deserved and when it is not. You can just assume it will be woven into the fabric of everything.”

A rabbit dashed across their path, zigzagging, diving into the tangle of brambles that edged the way. To their left among the trees, a heavy bird, maybe a rook or a wood pigeon, startled and flapped as it took off in flight. A small cart pulled by a mule rumbled and rattled along the way toward them, and for a short distance they went single file to pass it by.

Clouds had gathered, their shadows travelling across the rising and dipping landscape as they crossed the sky.

“I think,” said Abbot John, “I am coming to understand you a little better than I once did.”

“People understand me well enough,” his companion replied. “A man is as his actions and choices are, not what is done to him.”

“Is it as simple as that? Someone who is bullied will often become a bully in his own turn.” William turned his face aside from the gentleness in John’s voice, and John did not catch his mumbled reply. “What did you say?”

“I said, you hardly need to tell me that. I’ve already found it out for myself. But please can we talk about something else now? Neither my character nor my mother’s is edifying to reflect upon. Talk to me about your mother. Tell me about your home.”

Another rabbit started right in front of them, and William’s palfrey shied in alarm. John observed William as he soothed her, bending forward to whisper quietly. Her ears moved in response to his words of reassurance. Something about him told John of a well of unexpressed tenderness. An animal cannot bond with coldness or cruelty, and this palfrey was readily pacified under his handling. She trusted him.

“She’s a fine creature, that palfrey of yours,” John said as he watched William settle her.

“She’s a sound animal, but she isn’t mine.”

Once he had her quieted, William spoke to her softly, and they walked on. “She belonged to St Dunstan’s before and to St Alcuin’s now. I cannot call her my own.”

“Oh, I agree with you, but I’m not sure she does.”

William heard this but would not be drawn. “Tell me,” he said again, turning his questioning gaze in his abbot’s direction. “Tell me about your family and the life you lived at Motherwell.”

In the presence of one whose own upbringing had been so bleak and starved of love, John hardly liked to reminisce on a childhood home that had been a cheerful sanctuary of kindness. But William seemed composed, unmoved by the memories of his own childhood.

For the rest of their journey home, John relived the past. To his surprise, he found that the recapture of what had been wholesome and good brought him comfort and a measure of peace. It restored a sense of sanity and ordinary well-being. He felt his equilibrium begin to reestablish.

William listened to him without interruption, neither affirming nor commenting, just letting the comforting recollections do their healing work.

As the hooves of their beasts clattered on the cobbled expanse before the abbey gates, John felt drained and weary but no longer as bruised and fragmented as he had felt before. “Brother, thank you for your wise care of me; you have done me good, and I am indebted to you. God bless you,” he said as Brother Martin swung open the great gate for them and they rode in. “Thank you, Brother Martin!” he called as they swung down from their saddles. “It’s good to be home.”

William made no reply to his abbot’s words, but as he took the reins of their mounts and led them away to their stable, his face was content. He had managed what he had set out to do.