Chapter Four

“I found him in an alley near the market; it was just beside a bakehouse. I remember because I went to get us some bread. I was almost out of money, but I thought we could share a loaf.”

The two men picked their way along the crowded streets of the busy town, John retracing his steps with increasing confidence. Having run back and forth to provide food and water for the destitute man on the first time of visiting the place, he remembered the location of St Mary’s Gate and the alleyway beside the baker’s shop without too much trouble.

“There he is! In the exact same place where I left him! That’s too good to be true! Look, William, we’ve found him!”

The man he had seen had a considerable beard and his tonsure had a covering of dark hair by now, but John recognized him from across the street, even still wearing the same habit he had seen him in before. His face was turned toward them, but he gave no sign of recognition.

Then in the next moment John’s exultation withered into shrivelling horror as, crossing the street together, William said quietly, “Look again. It seems to me that someone else has found him first.”

As they traversed the thoroughfare and came to the mouth of the alley, hearing passing feet pause before him, the crouching beggar became very still and attentive—and wary. Standing in front of him, William and John found the impression formed as they crossed the road confirmed. They were looking down on the swollen, damaged eye sockets of a blinded man.

“Father Oswald,” said William, “it’s me.”

The man was galvanized into response by these words. He did not say anything, which seemed odd to John, nor did he smile; but he reached out filthy hands in sleeves thick with blood and dirt and stuck food scraps and turned his face eagerly toward William’s voice.

John glanced at William, taken aback that he did not come down to his brother’s level, did not touch him or take his hand to make connection with the poor man in his blindness. He saw that William was looking very closely at the mutilated man, frowning as he scrutinized his face. Oswald’s lips were swollen and crusty, and blood had dried in clots and rivulets into his beard. Sores had been created at the corners of his mouth by a constant trickle of saliva that Oswald periodically raised his hand to wipe away.

Slowly William squatted down in front of him. “Speak to me,” he said softly. And then John understood.

Oswald spoke, but he produced no human speech—only a guttural moaning that formed no words.

“Oh holy Jesus! Oh sweet mother of God! What have they done to him?” gasped John as he bent over the man. Oswald reacted sharply to his voice, which he clearly recognized at once. He had not forgotten John. He reached out his hands toward them, groping to make contact.

“Put out his eyes and cut out his tongue, as I think you can see,” said William. “And God only knows what else we shall discover in due course.”

As William spoke, John knelt down before the crouching man and let the questing hands find him. Horror jolted through him in waves that left him cold and trembling. The bright sunshine of the day seemed only pitiless now. “Oh, why? Why did I not come back? How could I have left him? Why ever did I not come back?”

As he allowed the man to cling to him, moaning out his incomprehensible words, his face searching blindly toward John, his hands clutching at him desperately, tears streamed down John’s face.

“Oh, why did I not come back?”

“You did come back,” said William. “You are here.”

Blowing out his breath in an effort to regain calm, John brushed his tears away.

The maimed beggar continued to cling to him, gripping the folds of John’s cloak tightly, pouring out words that neither man could understand.

“Just a minute. Steady, my brother; it’s all right; we shall not leave you. Wait while I sort myself out.”

John blew his nose and wiped his tears away, his hands still trembling. Then he pushed his handkerchief back into his pocket, and William watched the remorse and distress receding to be dealt with later as John brought his skills and experience to the situation.

“Let’s have a look at you.” John’s voice, kind and sane, disciplined into composure again, spoke reassurance.

“Open your mouth,” he said gently. “Let me see. Well, that has healed fairly clean at least. Hold still now, very still. I want to look at your eyes. I will not hurt you, but you must keep still. These are sore and swollen, and that’s pus oozing there. You’ve got quite a bit of dirt in the sockets I think, my brother. How could you not, out on the street like this? They need cleaning and soothing. I think you will need bandages, maybe eye patches. I have never cared for an eye socket before; we will have to learn together. But we can take care of you and make you comfortable.

“This is strange, William. How has he survived? Has someone helped him? The blood loss when someone’s tongue is cut out is phenomenal. The shock of losing both eyes and tongue could result in death by itself.”

“His mouth looks burned to me. I think they did something to stem the bleeding. Can you see? Probably not in this alley; it’s not the best place for light. Maybe he was just lucky, if that’s the right word.”

“But why would anyone do this? Is it simply the viciousness of human nature—because he was vulnerable here on the street?”

“No.” William shook his head. “He will have been recognized. Oswald was my almoner. We were not known for giving freely. There will have been many he turned away.” He straightened up and stood watching as John took Oswald’s hands in his left hand, keeping that gentle contact as he continued to look carefully at Oswald’s eyes and mouth, his right hand touching lightly to help him feel and see what had happened as he explored and examined. Oswald was quiet now, his face turned toward John in mute attention.

“Well, he was no angel,” William observed drily, watching, “but he didn’t deserve this.”

“We have to get this poor soul to shelter,” said John firmly. He turned to look up at William. “Where is the nearest Benedictine house from here?” He frowned. “What? William, how do you make your eyes kind of flicker like that when you don’t like what’s said to you?” A look of amusement passed through William’s face, and John could never figure out how he did that either: how he could smile but not smile. “Well?” he pushed him.

“There is a house ten miles north of here,” William replied. “It lies barely a half mile out of our journey home. St Olave’s at Holmehurst.”

“Perfect. Let’s go there then. What’s the matter?”

William moved his hand in a vague, irritable gesture of dismissal. “’Tis only a matter of a few months since their abbot denied me shelter in the roundest possible terms. Threatened to set his dogs on me if ever I darkened his door again.”

John stood up. “Did he so! Who is their abbot?”

“Robert Chesham.”

“Why is he keeping dogs?”

William shrugged. “He’s your modern Benedictine. Very sophisticated—or thinks he is. Rides to hounds and likes to go hawking with his friends in the aristocracy. Sees Nursia as very rustic and a far cry from fourteenth-century Chesterfield. He’s not into the simple living your Columba held so dear.”

“Very elegant. Well, I don’t care if he keeps parrots and monkeys so long as he’ll have us too. Anyway, you’re a Benedictine now, so he doesn’t have to like you, but he’ll have to take you in. And Oswald will be a Benedictine before the fortnight’s out. In the meantime he could be anything, so no need to take offense at him. We’ll set out for Holmehurst directly. Don’t look so skeptical; it’ll be all right.”

William went back for their horses, and John noticed that even crossing the street he looked as cautious and wary as a fox. When he returned, John helped Oswald to his feet. “He’d better ride up behind you; that’s a better mount than my swaybacked old mare. Not that there’s much of either one of you, but even so.”

The evening sun lay warm on the pale stone of the gatehouse as they rode up to the entrance of St Olave’s. As they came to a halt, William and John looked at each other.

“Well, I’m not going to knock. I tell you, it’s barely four months since they told me to get out of here and never come back, and my guess is they told Oswald the same. It’s you who will have to ask.”

Oswald commented on this. Neither of them understood him, but he seemed to be affirming William’s remarks.

“Hold the reins for me then, and I’ll see what they will do for us.”

John knocked at the postern door in the great gates, which were shut, and at once their porter came out to him, smiling a welcome.

“God give you good day, Brother Porter,” said John courteously. “I am seeking lodging for a night for myself and my brothers. I am Abbot John Hazell of St Alcuin’s Abbey, north of York. My friends are also brothers of that house.”

“Come in; you are right welcome, friend!” beamed the porter, grasping John’s arm in hospitable goodwill. “My name is Brother Justin. Have you travelled far?”

“We are returning from Chesterfield,” began John, but Brother Justin was no longer listening. His eyes had fallen upon William and whoever was seated behind him on his grey palfrey. He froze completely, staring at William, whose gaze, eyebrows lifted in sardonic inquiry, met his steadily.

The porter whirled about, asking John bluntly, “You have taken William de Bulmer into your house? You took him in?”

All of John’s life had been bedded in a context of harmonious relationships. His childhood home had been happy, and his friendships with the other village lads had been cordial, and his work as infirmarian at St Alcuin’s brought him gratitude as well as fulfillment. As William and Oswald sat on the horse waiting for him to manage the porter’s appalled response, he suddenly had a glimpse into the vulnerability of human existence: how much we depend upon the kindness and goodwill of others.

“He came to our house seeking shelter after the tragic fire at St Dunstan’s priory,” said John evenly. “He was well known to us and had offered hospitality to our brothers in the past.”

“Aye,” replied the porter, “we know! Our prior was there as witness to that hospitality; it has not been forgotten.”

John looked at the ground for a moment, embarrassed by the candid hostility and distressed for William and Oswald. He raised his eyes again to meet the porter’s expression of frank indignation. “Well,” he said softly, “he was grateful that we made space for him, and he is proving to be a wonderful asset to our community—both loving and remarkably able. We appreciate him. What’s past is past; ours is to forgive, if I’ve read the Gospel right. Yours too, Brother Porter: same Gospel.”

Nobody who lacks character and determination is ever elected abbot. Brother Justin noted the steel in John’s gaze as it held his, though John’s stance remained relaxed and friendly.

“May we come in?” Something in the way John said it communicated an expectation rather than a plea, but the porter remained reluctant.

“Who else is it you’ve got up there, then?” he asked suspiciously. And at that John saw red.

“Since you ask,” he replied, and his tone was different now—distinctly cold and clipped, “it is another brother of St Dunstan’s. Another who met your frigid welcome before. We came back to search for him, knowing him to have been left destitute. We found him on the street, with his eyes put out and his tongue cut off, left to the mercy of cruel and violent men because his Christian brothers found themselves too pure and too nice to bear his company. That’s a sin of commission resting on a sin of omission by my calculation, and I am not favourably impressed. Seems to me it is a virtue these men can bear your company, never mind what you may think of them! At least you sleep safe at night and can swallow your food and see the light of day. Now will you let us in, or am I asking you to fetch your superior out here to speak with me?”

William slipped down from the horse and stepped quietly to his side. “Leave it, Father,” he murmured. “If I am not welcome, I think I can make my own way home. If only they will take you in with Oswald, so he can be made comfortable for this night at least.”

John didn’t even look at him. “You will not ride home alone!” he answered shortly. “We can care for one mutilated man in our infirmary, but I see no point in adding a second.”

“Come in, come in—let me open the way!” Flustered, Brother Justin averted his eyes and turned away, hurrying back in through the postern door to unlatch the big gate. “You can tie up your horses here,” he said hastily as they came through; he evidently intended them to pass no farther. “Make yourselves comfortable yonder in the lodge. I think I’d better tell Abbot Robert you are here. I’ll not keep you long.”

In silence John hitched his old mare to the iron ring in the wall. “I hope she fouls his entranceway good and proper!” he muttered as William led his palfrey to the adjacent tethering ring. William shook his head, amusement gleaming in his face. “It’s all right. I understand. I had it coming, and I have to live with it.”

John laughed shortly. “Yea, verily, evil swine that you are!” he mocked him gently. “But I need you at my side, for you’ve kept me together in the bitter valley of these last weeks. I don’t know what I should have done without you.”

Again came the subliminal luminescence that did William most of the time for a smile. “I don’t doubt you would have coped. You’re sturdy-made. Look out, here comes Abbot Robert, just as promised! I’ll get Oswald down: that’ll give them food for thought. Come on down, my brother: look pitiful and earn us some supper and a night’s lodging. If they give our abbot any grief, you talk to ’em!”

Oswald smiled, which in his present condition was an alarming sight in itself. He dismounted unaided and put out his hand to find William, who said to him, “I’m here” and let Oswald find his own way to his side.

Abbot Robert arrived at the entrance arch where they stood. A burly man in his mid-fifties, his face bore the story of the years in hard lines and clever eyes. He looked like a man who would stand no nonsense, and he threw one chilly glance at William before addressing his attention to John. “Father John, welcome! We have not met before. Brother Justin here tells me you need one night’s lodging.” He spoke pleasantly, but he emphasized one. John was a peaceable man, but he had fire about him too, and he did not take kindly to this.

“Aye; one, for our necessity,” he said, “and then we shall be glad to go.”

Abbot Robert’s eyelids flickered slightly as he took in this reply.

“Father, may I speak?” murmured William submissively in his abbot’s ear; and thinking of his usual manner of conducting himself, John wondered if there was no end to his tactical wiliness. “Certainly,” he affirmed.

“Father Robert…” William’s voice conveyed nothing of either its habitual mockery or the dangerous softness it could sometimes employ; neither did it allow Abbot Robert to see the vulnerability he exposed to John and his brothers at St Alcuin’s. He spoke with the humble and seemingly guileless simplicity of an artful child who knows how to get his own way. “I have by God’s grace been given a new beginning with the good brothers of St Alcuin’s, who are true Christians indeed and a credit to their Lord, for they have taken me in. By their kindness I have been shown a better way. By their example I have seen what a monk may be. So you need fear no bad influence from me if I stay in your house this one night. I know you do not think the same as the brothers of St Alcuin’s; but I hope you will find in your heart the kindness to let us stay.”

John saw in that moment—as he watched Abbot Robert looking closely at William’s submissive innocence, trying to work out if he had just been breathtakingly insulted or not—why so many people hated William so much.

And then Abbot Robert started violently as Oswald added his own plea to the mix.

“Glory, what kind of a circus are we?” said John to William as twenty minutes later they made their way from the stables into the guest house, where they had been offered supper before they bedded down for the night. Father Robert had invited John to sup in the abbot’s lodging, but John took exception to this pointed exclusion of his brothers and sweetly explained that his skills as an infirmarian might be called upon to help Oswald manage his food. Father Robert seemed content not to push this by asking how Oswald had been managing until now without John’s help, graciously bowing his farewell to them as he withdrew.

The guest master showed them their chambers, where they stowed their baggage. John, as their abbot, had been given a room of his own; William and Oswald were given a room to share.

“Father Oswald, of your courtesy,” said John gently, “will you mind sleeping alone and allowing William to room in with me?” He saw the relief on William’s face as he said this, adding, “He is assisting our cellarer at home, and we have a number of things outstanding to discuss that are tedious to anyone else and may intrude on your rest as we talk. Will that arrangement please you?”

Oswald had been a monk for twenty-four years, and his prior had been William de Bulmer. He knew better than to say it didn’t suit him, whatever his private thoughts might have been, and accepted the arrangement with good grace, though somewhere deep inside he knew he would be frightened when they left him alone.

“Right!” said John briskly as he and William dumped their bags on their beds. “I’m going down to the infirmary to beg a clean habit and a razor. I’ll ask the guest master what their bathing arrangements are, and we’ll get you clean and presentable before we sit down to eat. I shan’t be long.”

William guided Oswald into his chamber. “Just a minute—don’t sit down yet,” he said. He went to his own room and fetched the cloak he had deposited there, spreading it on the clean pale wool of Oswald’s blankets to save them from the dried blood and food and the filth of the street that mired Oswald’s garments from neck to hem. “You can sit down now—just one step directly behind you,” he said. Oswald, looking ill at ease, sat on the bed. William sat beside him.

“Your tongue, your eyes—is that all?” he asked him crisply, and Oswald shook his head. The grim cruelty of what human beings will stoop to moved like a shadow through William’s face. He said soberly, “Abbot John has been St Alcuin’s infirmarian these many years. He will see to what must be done to make the best of this. You could not be in a safer pair of hands.”

Oswald nodded. He spoke, but William could not understand him. He said it again. “Thank you?” said William, and Oswald nodded. “For?” Oswald nodded. “Say the rest again.” Oswald said it twice. “Coming back for you?” Oswald nodded.

Because his brother could not see, William did nothing to disguise the bleakness of this situation from showing in his face. But he said, “You are most welcome. I am only sorry that I did not come sooner; I had some struggles of my own.”

As they waited together, William covered the silence that lay between them with quiet talk of St Alcuin’s Abbey, describing to Oswald the contours of the land and the extent of the buildings, telling him about its traditions of music and style of pottery, the size of the farm and the focus of its husbandry, the location in relation to the villages and towns nearby. As the anodyne flow of his words continued, he watched Oswald begin to relax, his mind led out of the fear of violence and hatred and danger into the consideration of the simple realities of everyday life—buildings and communities, routines and the comfortable patterns of tradition.

Then John stood in the doorway, an old habit from the infirmary in his arms. “We can take you to wash, Father Oswald, and I will shave your head and beard. Come to that, William, you look much like a vagrant yourself—a little soap and water would do you no harm.”

John and Oswald rejoined William in time for supper. “It is as you thought,” John said quietly to William, “they were not satisfied with what they did to his face. Whatever the countenance of pity looks like, it is not human.”

William shrugged. “Some and some,” he said and added, “Yes, he told me.”

The guest master brought them bread and cheese, apples and ale, with a pat of freshly made butter still beaded with moisture in an earthenware dish.

Oswald looked like a monk again, his beard shaved and his hair trimmed and tonsured, dressed in St. Olave’s clean habit.

John had also begged a large cloth from the infirmarian. He said gently to Father Oswald as he took his place at the table, “Father, will you let me provide you with a napkin to keep your habit clean? My guess is, supper has become something of an adventure to you now.” Oswald laughed, from which sight William silently looked away, and John spread the cloth carefully, tying the ends of it at the back of Oswald’s neck. When he had done, he rested his hands in reassurance on Oswald’s shoulders and said, “I am here beside you if you find yourself in need of any help.”

Oswald replied. John and William looked at each other blankly. “Say that again,” said William, and Oswald did. “Oh, right! You can manage!” John’s face cleared. “Yes, I expect you can. Here’s bread, brother, and cheese and butter. I’ll put some here on your plate; butter on the edge. There’s ale too. Would you like some milk to dip your bread? I’ll ask our guest master. There are apples, but those will not work for you I think?”

Oswald shook his head, saying “no apples,” which the shake of his head and the p in apples helped them recognize. He nodded his head then, affirming milk, and stroking his left finger with his right hand in the sign for milk from the Monasteriales Indicia, the sign language of the monastic hours of silence. John requested some from the guest master who was happy to oblige.

Oswald next spoke to John again, but however often he repeated it, neither man could understand. He reached out his hand, groping for John, whose hand found his. “You—” Oswald managed to make himself understood at last, and he traced the word kind in unsteady letters with his forefinger on the tabletop.

“You notice he doesn’t extend the same compliment to me,” said William drily, pulling them back from the territory of emotion into the verges of which they were straying.

As they ate together, the magnitude of what had been done to Oswald made itself obvious. William watched him, remembering his fastidious manners. The son of a merchant with aspirations to upward mobility in society, Oswald had been schooled in courtly graces until the end of his teens, when his father had lost three spice ships and most of his money, the large mansion in which they lived had to be sold, and it had been expedient for both his sons to discover in themselves the stirrings of religious vocation—quickly. At St Dunstan’s Priory Oswald was sometimes admired, sometimes mocked for his elegance and refinement. William watched as Oswald broke his bread and dipped it in the milk, dropping lumps that he groped for and carried to his mouth, dripping milk and wet shreds of bread. Of the food he got safely into his mouth, some fell out, and what remained he had to push back to his throat with his fingers. Some he swallowed successfully; some he had to hawk back up and start again because it went the wrong way. William took a little cheese, a little bread, then found himself suddenly not hungry anymore.

Abbot John ate his supper quietly and steadily, occasionally reaching out to guide Oswald’s hand or put back on his plate bread he had inadvertently pushed off. The cheese and the apples were beyond Oswald’s attempting. At the conclusion of their meal, the table around Oswald’s bowl and plate was strewn with spilled food, and the cloth that wrapped him was drenched with milk and soggy bread. John removed the cloth, careful to keep any mess contained within it, and used it to wipe down the table, talking amiably as he did so of their journey home. By the time he’d finished, the chaos of Oswald’s supper had vanished from view.

“Are we going to Compline?” John was not sure to what degree his companions would feel comfortable participating in the life of St Olave’s.

“For sure we are!” said William at once. “It’ll be one more strike against us if we are too corrupt to bother to worship God!”

Oswald offered a comment with a conspiratorial nudge. After persevering with decoding his remark for quite some while, John and William grasped that what he had said was he would sing loudly. As they walked from the guest house across to the cloister buildings, John reflected that the refusal of St Dunstan’s survivors to take themselves seriously showed they had strength of character even if they had admittedly been lacking in virtue.

After Compline, the community went into silence, and the three travellers returned to their rooms in the guest house, making ready to retire for the night. John could see Oswald’s distress and deep sense of misgiving as he prepared to leave him on his own. He could not even leave him a light to dispel the oppression of darkness. He contemplated changing the sleeping arrangement but suspected William might be dismayed to find himself rooming in with Oswald; and he himself felt so distressed and unsettled by this turn of events that he wanted some time to talk it through in privacy with William. He had taken a linen towel from the lavatorium, and he spread it on Oswald’s pillow to soak up the frequent streams of saliva that dribbled from his mouth.

“Lie down,” he said to him gently. “I’ll stay with you for a little while. And we are only in the chamber next door. You would be able to find us, and we would hear you call. All will be well. These are good men here. Their welcome may have been frostier than it should have been, but you will sleep safe from harm. The worst they will do to us is leave us alone. Rest now, my brother. Say your prayers quietly until you fall asleep. Here, you can have my rosary.” John stayed a while longer until the atmosphere changed and he saw Oswald begin to relax; then he bade him good night and left the room. He joined William in the adjacent chamber and closed the door.

Even so late in the evening, it was not quite dark at this time of year. The last light of day still filtered in through the small windows, but William had lit the candle, as much for hope and cheerfulness as to see.

John crossed the room in silence and sat on the edge of his bed without speaking, bending to take off his sandals. His face was grave and troubled as he climbed into bed. He sat with his back leaning against the wall that the head of his bed abutted, staring straight ahead, thinking.

William also said nothing, but he was waiting for John to speak, which eventually he did, words pouring out in a torrent of the distress he had succeeded in concealing from Oswald. “How could I have let this happen?” he berated himself bitterly. “I can’t live with this, William. I can’t bear it. My sister raped and battered, my mother murdered, and now this poor soul tortured and abused and left with his life ruined forever. Can’t see. Can’t speak. Can’t eat properly. What do they think of when they do things like this to people? Another human being—all the joy of life snuffed out and exchanged for terror and death in the work of one short evening. Who can make an eye? Who can give the gift of sight? Who can understand or make a copy of the tongue—to talk, to taste, to feel, to swallow, to moisten the lips, to kiss? How dare they destroy what they did not give and cannot make? What cruel, savage ignorance! The delicate, beautiful, intricate integrity of God’s creation, everything working together to make life joyous and sweet—aye, to make life possible at all—just thrown away. And am I not just as bad, just as much to blame? For I sat with him there in that alley in Chesterfield, broke bread with him. I found him, and then I left him behind, threw him back, to this! How could I have done it? How could I have left him? Oh God, I cannot live with the guilt of this. I cannot bear it. And my mother. And my sister. It’s too much, it’s just too much. I cannot bear it.” He sat trembling, unable to process the horror of all that had happened.

“Sshh! Listen a minute!” William’s faint gleam of a smile shone for a moment, but he spoke soberly then. “Listen. Are you listening or just caught in a tangle of grief and guilt and shock?”

The haggard strain in John’s face was accentuated by the light of the candle that burned on the table beside him as he looked at William. You’ve aged about ten years in this last month, William thought.

“I’m listening,” said his abbot.

“Good. Because there’s something and someone you’ve forgotten. Now listen to this. When I came to you before Easter, it was for exactly what we’ve seen today that I was afraid to be turned out. I’ve seen other men branded, gelded, mutilated—their hands cut off, their ears, their noses slit in two. I knew well what kind of business the pack would wish to do with me. We were a sinful house, Father; and worse than that, we were successful and rich. The world rubs along with sin easily enough—but success? The rich are hounded without mercy by a thousand hangers-on and must expect to pay out generously or be hated. We didn’t pay. We had no mercy either. And we were hated, me especially.

“What think you? If you had not stood between me and Brother Thomas’s old loyalties—between me and Father Chad’s fears and Father Gilbert’s misgivings—where do you think I should have been? Dangling and jerking from a tree branch dying at my own hand most likely—and that would have been the easy, gentle choice. Or I’d have been kicked to death or choking on my own blood as they sliced out my tongue, groping blind and in agony as they tore out my eyes despite my pleading and my screams, crawling to some corner in trembling shock after they cut off my sex organs. I knew very well what my fate would have been, and the evidence of it we’ve found crouched in the alley this evening. It would have been me begging on the street corner with the flies crawling into my eye sockets to lay their eggs. And who would have saved me but you? I heard Brother Thomas say he wished I’d been burnt to death; I believe he also expressed the opinion that someone should flay the skin off my back just as Christ was flayed. Nay, it’s all right—it’s all right; I understand. He’s a passionate man, and we are friends now. But if you had stayed home with your mother, if you had stayed in Chesterfield with Oswald, who would have been there for me? You’d forgotten that, hadn’t you? You hadn’t thought of it like that. No, but I surely haven’t forgotten. If you had delayed one day to care for Oswald on your way home or to find means to bring him with you, then when I arrived at St Alcuin’s you would not yet have arrived home. And do you think they would even have let me in past the porter’s lodge if you had not been there? Well? You know as surely as I do, they would not. I give thanks every day that my life was given to me twice—once by the hand of God when I was born of my mother, and once by you. And you might take a break from beating yourself up over the things you missed and the things you got wrong to notice that sometimes you got it splendidly, mercifully right. Nobody can be every place at once and save everybody, but by God, Father John, I’m glad you were there for me!

“And what if you had—quite reasonably—found yourself too fully occupied to come with me in search of Oswald? What if you had contented yourself with giving me directions to know where to look? Do you think these good brothers would have taken us in without you? Did it escape you, the way they looked at me and the opinion they hold of me? There would have been nothing but a bed in the lee of a hedge or huddled in a church porch all the way home if you had not been with us—and what if I had been recognized on the way? Oh, my lord abbot, it’s easy to make an inventory of the things you could have done and failed to do, but if you’re bent on doing that, you must remember the times you were there and it made a difference.”

Abbot John sat quietly, digesting these words. “Thank you,” he said after a while. “Thank you, William. You always comfort me.”

Mindful then of the Grand Silence, which should be broken only of necessity, they spoke no more. John blew out the candle, and they settled down under their blankets, but neither of them could sleep. An hour dragged by, and another. Wide-eyed, John stared into the darkness, remembering his sister’s anger and coldness, seeing her face and hearing her words again: “No doubt it would have been different if you’d been there.” He tried not to think of his mother but found himself wondering how quick it had been and whether she had been very afraid. And he relived the supper they had just shared, Oswald’s painful, choking progress through a bowl of milky sops.

Haunted by memories, John tried to pray. He prayed for himself, for forgiveness and strength; and for Oswald, for courage and grace; for his sister and the community she lived in now, that she would find peace. He prayed for the repose of his mother’s soul. And he prayed for William, who had been turning restlessly in his bed the entire time.

“What? What’s troubling you?” Abbot John finally spoke into the midnight, addressing the edginess he could feel in his companion.

“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“I suspect you have always been more than a little disturbing to everyone you meet.” William heard the smile in his abbot’s reply. “But, no, you didn’t wake me up. It’s just I can feel that something is troubling you.”

He listened to the sound of William turning in his bed, sighing, finally struggling into a sitting position, and sighing again.

“What?” John repeated.

“I can hardly say this. I feel so ashamed.”

In the silence of the night John waited for him to speak, and finally William said, “The thing is… Oswald… my response is not like yours. I knew I had to go back and look for him, do what I could to find him. I knew I couldn’t just help myself to safety and leave him behind, but…”

“Yes?” John prompted after some time went by.

“I don’t want to take care of him,” William mumbled. “He’s going to be a confounded nuisance forever now, isn’t he? Incessantly needy, trapped in his own body. It won’t only be the appalling disabilities that have been imposed upon him; I mean, it isn’t too hard I suppose to help someone get from place to place and make sure they have something to eat and someone to talk to… although…” Again William paused for a long time before admitting, “I don’t want to do even that. It drives me wild having needy people tagging along with me. But the worst thing is, there’s going to be an absolute tornado of grief and despair and tears and ‘why me?’ and religious doubt and all the rest of it unleashed once we get him to a place where he isn’t just concentrating on surviving—isn’t there? And all that makes me feel as if I’m drowning. I simply can’t stand it. I mean, I wish he’d just died if we’re going to have to live through all that. But people never can keep it contained, can they? They have to talk about it and weep about it and tell you how completely broken they are and all the rest of it.”

He shifted restlessly. “I was his superior. I asked to go and find him. I’m responsible for bringing him back. So I guess that means I’ll have to look after him and keep him company; listen to him and figure out the meaning of his weird moaning from day to day; take his arm and lead him every time he wants to go to the privy—and misses the hole—or it’s time to go to chapel; sit with him and help him while he slobbers his food and pushes it off the side of his dish, poking his fingers into it and trying to find what he’s got and where it is and trying to get it down his gullet without choking to death. And what about the office? D’you think he’ll attempt to sing the psalms? Every time? Will we have to put up with that forever? And what’s this going to mean about the community’s attitude to me? They can barely tolerate me as it is: I’m there because you fought tooth and nail to keep me there. What will they think when we turn up at home with Oswald in tow: ‘Oh look, everybody; William’s brought his friend! Happy days!’ Sancta Maria!”

He fell silent for a little while; then, by the faint moonlight in the room, John saw his head turn toward his abbot. “And I feel so dreadfully ashamed,” William whispered, “that after all you’ve done for me, I can’t do better than this. It’s disgraceful, isn’t it? I’m a disgraceful man, and I should probably never have been a monk. I certainly never thought I had a vocation. But here I am now, and what on earth am I going to do? I never even liked the man. Irritating individual. I can’t bear all this intimate, personal stuff, and I just can’t stand it when people slobber their food. It makes me feel sick.”

“Is that all?” asked his abbot after a further silence had elapsed.

“Yes.”

John considered what he had just heard.

“Are you… are you really disappointed in me?” William asked. “Are you sitting here thinking how pitiless and cruel I am?”

“No, not that. I love your honesty, which I think takes courage. I love it that you don’t pretend to be the man you think you should be. I’m not disappointed in you. When someone’s life goes badly wrong, starting with reality is helpful. When we add pretense to personal tragedy, we just give ourselves two impossibilities to struggle with. For what it’s worth, you may feel reassured to know, every time I try to approach in my own mind the fact that very soon, once I’ve figured out how to clean out his eye sockets thoroughly, I’m going to have to suture his eyelids, it makes me go cold inside—makes me feel like running away.”

“Stone the crows!” said William’s appalled voice into the silence that followed John’s words. “I should think it does!”

The two men contemplated this hideous prospect as they gazed into the dark.

“Will he be able to sit still enough to let you do it? I mean—you won’t be able to leave gaps or anything, will you? Because once you’ve stitched them you won’t be able to get in to clean them.”

“That’s correct. I mustn’t get it wrong. I’ve never done it before, and it’s going to hurt him. I have to keep telling myself, if it feels too much to face for me, what must it feel like for him? Still, whatever he or I think or feel, it’s got to be done, so there’s an end of it. I’ll find out what to do and take it from there. But can I ask you about something else? In all you told me just now, you said in passing that you never had a vocation. So what are you doing in monastic life?”

William reached down and pulled his cloak up from the floor, wrapped it around his shoulders. The days were warm now, in May, but the hours of darkness drew in cold.

“I like power and wealth. I like silence and beautiful music. I like fine art and good craftsmanship. I like spacious buildings. I had no stomach to be a soldier and no money for an apprenticeship. I worked for my father—he was a merchant—but things got too bad at home. I craved peace. My family did not love me, nor did I love them. There was nothing lost in parting from them, but I had to live somewhere. And I find women tiresome. It seemed the obvious choice.”

“So you had no sense of being drawn by Christ into this way—or desire to come closer to him?”

“Christ?” William turned the question over thoughtfully. “When you speak about Christ—or when Theodore does or Francis—it is the same as when Columba spoke of Christ. To listen to you, anyone would think you meant somebody actually real—somebody you know, your master maybe or your friend.”

“That’s right,” said John softly.

“Well, that isn’t what most people mean.”

The wide spaces of the night expanded around them. John had that odd feeling of limitlessness that comes in the deepest hours of the night—a time when anything might happen; a time when people die and truth is spoken, when animals lie down to give birth to their young. He listened to the silence and felt the spaces, felt his own soul expand into the spacious night. “What do most people mean by ‘Christ’?” he asked.

William pondered this question. “Most people mean one of two things,” he replied after some thought. “Either way it is an object, not a person. Either they see Christ as an important asset—like a tool or weapon or a game piece. If you can prove you have Christ on your side, you win the game. If you have Christ in your hand, your arsenal is superior to that of those who don’t. Religious argument is about establishing that my argument has Christ in it, not yours—so that you have to capitulate and I win. Or else they see Christ as the object of a set of ideas. The concepts formulate around the second member of the Trinity and fix him into his place in the dogma of the church. The dogma is mandatory then—hence the Christ idea being useful as a tool or weapon: something to get your own way with. Not all people manipulate things that cynically, of course, though it can certainly be done; I’ve done it myself.

“But many believe faithfully all their lives without ever realizing that their faith is just the pursuit of self-interest ratified by being able to produce ‘Christ’ in substantiation of their own theory or objective. Whoever has Christ wins.

“But when you speak about Christ, in Chapter, it is as it was when Columba spoke of him. You are not trying to work an angle or push through your own advantage, and you don’t care who wins. But you—I don’t know—it’s as though Christ were not just a matter of belief but somebody you know, someone you’ve personally met, I mean… and you love him.”

“Yes. That’s right,” John replied. “That’s how it is.”

“How your religious faith is? You mean that faith for you is a personal thing, so real it’s like actually knowing someone?”

“Yes,” said John, then, “No!”

He sat up in his bed. “D’you know, if it had been daylight, I’m not sure I could have found it within myself to say this. It feels too personal. You are a master of the searching question! How you just put it—what did you say? That for me religious faith has a personal nature, almost like actually knowing someone? No—that’s not it. Religious faith is something a man has, like an attribute of that man. In one man it’s a thing of the heart, in another it’s a thing of the head. It’s a conviction, it’s whatever you like to call it, but it’s part of the man. But really knowing—meeting—finding Christ is not an attribute or a conviction. It doesn’t arise from the seeker. Christ is really there. He is someone I know, someone I’ve personally met. And I do love him.”

“This is like a mystical experience that you’re describing?”

“Well… more for every day than that. I don’t mean a caught-up-into-the-divine, glimpse-of-heaven type of thing. And it isn’t ‘like’ anything. It’s not an ‘as if’. What I’m struggling to say is, it isn’t any kind of metaphor. It starts as an encounter, and it continues as a relationship, and it’s real.”

The room became very quiet as William considered this. The night stepped down even deeper.

“So, can… I mean, could anyone…?”

“Yes,” said John.

Silence.

“How do you…?”

“It’s a matter of opening your heart. D’you remember—of course you do; how could you forget?—when you came before our community the second time to ask admittance, and you spoke to us about letting your heart be seen? ‘A casement that doesn’t open easily,’ I think you said. You opened it and let us see. It’s much the same thing. In the spiritual realm, nothing can cross a threshold without permission, so Christ waits. But all you have to do is open the door of your heart and invite him to come in. He isn’t passive. Ecce sto ad ostium et pulso. He waits and knocks—that means he is actively waiting to be invited.”

“If I did this,” William said slowly, “then Christ would expect of me… that I be patient with Oswald and spend time with him and take care of him, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he?”

In the darkness John smiled. “Aye, probably he would!”

“Can I get this quite clear? You’re telling me that Jesus Christ is a living person who can be encountered as I am encountering you?”

“Yes,” said John softly. “That’s the implication of the resurrection and the ascension. Jesus lives beyond the dimensions we know. He is not subject to the limitations we experience. He died in a natural body and was raised in a spiritual body, and he now transcends the limitations of time and space and so can be with us always.”

“Has there ever been anybody who invited him in and he did not come?”

“No,” said John.

“Not even very sinful people?”

“We’re all very sinful people. There is no difference. Eum qui venit ad me, non ejiciam foras.”

“Is there anything special you have to say when you ask him?”

“There is not.”

“Does it have to be public? Do you have to tell anybody?”

“No. But it doesn’t have to be secret either. It doesn’t have to be anything apart from sincere.”

When William spoke again, his words were so quiet John didn’t catch what he said. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“I said I’d like to do that. I want to find the way into how you live and how Columba lived. When we came here—the way they looked at me—I was conscious again of your sheltering me. I want to find my way to how you do it, how you find that spaciousness and generosity of spirit and that deep core of peace; it seems to me to have something to do with this relationship you’re describing. It’s like a secret, an open secret, something that can’t be seen except from the inside. From where I am, it just looks puzzling; it sounds unlikely. But if it’s true… then I want it very much.”

“Then ask him,” said John, but he sounded sleepy now, and they lapsed into silence. After a while John snuggled down again and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders. Time passed. William listened to his abbot’s breathing changing as, in the first faint lightening of the dawn, John drifted off to sleep.

William sat looking at the small square window set deep in the thick stone. He watched as the colour of night began to give way to the morning.

“If you are there…” he whispered, then his voice faded into silence. He could not bear the idea that this might not be true, or even worse, that it might be true for others but not for him. Quietly, so as not to disturb John’s sleep in this last brief hour before dawn, he slipped out of his bed and knelt on the floor of the guest chamber. He bent low, kneeling, his brow touching the floor, his hands cupped open before him, in the posture of a supplicant. “Jesus… Lord Jesus,” he whispered, “I open my heart’s door to you. My heart is open to you. Please come in. Please make yourself known to me, as you have to these others. Please forgive the man I have been and the choices I have made. There is so much to forgive, and it is late to begin again… but please may I do that? Even if I have to take care of Oswald, Lord Jesus, please come in to me.”

William had no idea what he had been expecting: to see a figure of a man appear, to feel nothing at all but have faith in an answer, to experience a sense of another person in the room? But he was startled, when he got up from the floor as the sun rose, to experience a rising tide of joy more intoxicating than he would ever have thought possible, filling and flooding and saturating and overflowing his soul. And he knew—not believed, but knew without any shadow of doubting—that this was the presence of Jesus whom he had welcomed in.

He crept back into his bed and sat there very still. As the moments passed, he gradually became aware of another change. The impossible knot of blame and guilt lodged at the core of him had resolved. It had just gone. For as long as he could remember there had been this rooted tangle of things he had done wrong and things he thought he might have done wrong and things other people said he had done wrong even though he couldn’t see why, grown into his being so that he could never get free of it. And it was all gone. For the first time in his life he felt peaceful and clean. William sat there, afraid to move in case this was only a momentary gift, and when the ordinary day began it would be trampled and sullied, everything back to normal. He knew that he should wake his abbot, for the sun was well risen, but he was afraid that if he said any word or took any step into the mundane, he might lose this place of transfiguration forever. The way he felt now might evaporate like a dream losing its identity to the waking day. John, undisturbed by the office bell here in the guest house, slept soundly. William sat in silence, life and joy so full he could hardly contain it stretching the boundaries of his heart. Then he began to feel guilty as he watched the morning sun rise higher, tipping over the sill of the window to strengthen the light in the room. When he heard Oswald begin to move about in the adjacent room, he knew it was time to get up. He let the glory fold down into the storehouse of his heart, such a precious, precious gift. “Thank you, my Lord,” he murmured softly. Then he slipped out of his bed, patted John firmly on the shoulder four or five times, and went to find out what help Oswald needed to begin the necessities of the day.

“What happened?” John asked later as they sat at table waiting for St Olave’s guest master to serve them with bread and ale, after they had washed and dressed.

Oswald turned his face to John, waiting alert and still to hear what might be amiss. William met his superior’s gaze, and John observed the shyness, the reluctance to speak of experience too precious and deep for common talk across the table. He smiled. “You did it.”

William nodded. “Yes, I did. I did.”

Oswald asked a question, the content of which neither of them understood, but both of them guessed, and William turned his face away with a reluctant, hunted expression; he had no words for this. John realized that he was witnessing something outside his own experience and not quite within his comprehension: that these two men had managed to live in community together without coming either to know or to trust one another. It occurred to him that though St Dunstan’s may have revelled in luxury and licentiousness, it had known nothing of real friendship and could not have been a happy place, not even for those who benefitted substantially from the considerable material successes it had enjoyed.

“He—may I say this, William?” John asked him, and William bowed his head in assent. “He has found his way through to touch the living presence of Christ for himself,” said John, his voice quiet and reverent. “He has asked the Lord Jesus to abide in all fullness in his heart, and it is done.”

Oswald remained entirely still, his face slightly puzzled. There had been no tradition at St Dunstan’s that could accommodate a real understanding of what John had just said.

The guest master came to their table and with civility, if not enthusiasm, gave them a jug of ale, a pat of butter, and a fragrant basket of bread rolls still hot from the oven. He had brought a cloth to protect Oswald’s clothing, and from force of infirmary habit John rose to his feet to tie it on and serve Oswald his food.

“I’m sorry,” said William quietly. “I should have done that.”

An infirmarian learning to be an abbot, a superior learning to serve, a fastidious aristocrat learning to forget table manners in favour of survival: it was a strange fellowship, and the three of them bound in it found it hard to keep their feet in the paths of propriety and observe the rightful order of their going. But Christ was with them as they broke bread and shared what they had, as they made the best of what they had not and countered the coolness of their welcome with warmth of their own. Each of them felt Christ’s presence, though Oswald knew only that he felt obscurely comforted.

Abbot John and Father William both felt glad to ride out of St Olave’s after Mass, though courteous thanks were expressed in their parting, and St. Olave’s porter felt contrite enough to be uncommonly kind in his farewell.

They agreed on their road and travelled north into Derbyshire. The question of where they would sleep that night had determined their choice of direction: they headed for Doncaster. Their horses now well-fed and rested, an early start made it reasonable to suppose they could make that distance—just over thirty miles across country—in a day. Again William knew the Benedictine houses there better than John. There were more Cistercians than Benedictines in the north country now, but John wanted to knock only on a Benedictine door, to be sure the hospitality would be an obligation upon their hosts. He would not have either of his brothers turned away again. Living with the consequences of past misdeeds John saw as no bad thing; yet he disapproved in principle of any welcome that fell short of ordinary Christian kindness. So their road that day led to the small community of fifteen brothers at Loversall.

“I don’t suppose they will,” commented William.

“Will what?” They rode on in silence a little way, and John looked questioningly at William, who did not respond.

“Oh, I see! Love us all! No. But I expect they’ll not take exception to Oswald and me—shame about you!” John teased him cheerfully.

“Too right,” William replied. Then, “Father John…”

“Oh no. You’ve had an idea, haven’t you?”

“I have.”

“God preserve us; let’s hear it then.”

“Oswald, this concerns you and your eyes; so if you’re feeling squeamish, put your hands over your ears.”

John waited, curious as to what William had to say.

“It would take us not more than five miles out of our way to pass through Motherwell, would it?”

“That’s right,” John affirmed.

“Now, you said your sister and mother acted as midwives in their village for some years.”

“They did.” William heard the note of pride in John’s voice. Both women had considerable skill in the healing arts.

“Midwifery. I have no personal experience of this, I hasten to add. I’ve never needed the services of a midwife. I’ve strayed from the straight and narrow every day of my life, but not in the direction of siring progeny.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” replied Father John. “I should think one of you in the world is more than enough. So you don’t need a midwife, and—?”

“But midwives… I imagine they need some skill in suturing from time to time, do they not?”

Abbot John digested this thought in silence. “Yes,” he said slowly after a while; “yes, indeed they do. You are absolutely right. I would put money on Madeleine having a fair amount of experience in suturing wounds, not to mention cleaning hard-to-access mucous membranes. William, you’re a genius. D’you know, I never thought of that! You have been filled with the Holy Spirit, haven’t you?”

William cast him a withering, sidelong glance. “Anything you hadn’t thought of must be beyond human wit, you mean?”

“Uh-huh. That’s why they call me ‘superior.’ Motherwell it is. Can we make it up there by tomorrow, do you think?”

“No. Assuming we make Loversall tonight, the farthest we’ll get tomorrow is Tadcaster. That’s thirty miles and then some from Loversall. And it’s the best part of another thirty miles on from Tadcaster to Motherwell. We shan’t reach the Poor Clares until evening the day after tomorrow. I think we’ll have to beg another night’s lodging with them too. We can’t push on any quicker than that because these two mounts won’t take it—especially my poor palfrey with two of us up, even if you have both our packs. If we go for the greater distance, the horses will have to rest a day; it makes no odds. Still, we should be good for the extra night’s lodging because, thanks to my divinely inspired intelligence, I had the gumption to check the chamber before we left and picked up the money bag you left behind on the bed. I’m surprised they don’t call you ‘inferior’ if sagacity is the only criterion. What’s that you say, Oswald? I’m sorry, without being able to see your face, I cannot make head nor tail of anything you just said. Think deeply, and divulge all your deliberations over our bread at midday. On second thought, that sounds slightly revolting.”

The day was cloudy, bright and not too hot, so the horses journeyed easy. They stopped by the River Ryton, resting under the spreading canopy of a beech tree while their horses cropped the lush green grass of late spring and slaked their thirst in the shallows at the water’s edge of that stopping place.

Their reception at Loversall Abbey, at the end of a long day, proved little different from what they had encountered in Chesterfield. Weary of surliness and suspicion, Abbot John thought he would be glad to see the moors again and climb the hill that led home. They made the best of it, kept to themselves, did what they could to minimize the mess Oswald generated, and slept soundly until the rising sun roused John and William early in the morning. They were on the road again after Mass, going gently to pace their mounts on this fifth day of travelling, making steady progress toward Tadcaster, where they asked shelter at a Cistercian house, because going on to a Benedictine community meant another five miles, and their horses were already turning questingly toward every quiet green spot. The Cistercian welcome seemed markedly reserved, but the travellers were admitted to the guest house with no awkward questions. A few raised eyebrows and astute glances in William’s direction told John these men had grasped the situation; he was grateful when they chose to make no comment. For just the one night a truce could be reached, it seemed.