Chapter Five

The following day took them on the road to Motherwell. They travelled in silence, their mood conditioned by John’s palpable apprehension. While his abbot had been thanking the guest master at Tadcaster Abbey and making a gift of money in return for hospitality, William had discreetly explained to Father Oswald about Madeleine and Katelin. Oswald had listened with close attention, his face sad.

Nothing of the casual banter of the days before cheered this stretch of the journey. It merely seemed long. Tired and hungry, aching in body and low in spirit, they knocked for admittance as the first cool of evening made itself felt in the sunny afternoon. The shutter over the grating in the door slid back. “Abbot John! Father William! And someone we don’t know! God bless you. Come on in!” The men felt comforted and encouraged by the first honest kindness that had met them so far.

“What brings you here? The sisters are in chapel. Is it Madeleine you seek? I’ll ask Mother Mistress directly after they have finished Vespers if she may have permission to come to the parlour. Let me find you a bite to eat while you’re waiting. Yes, don’t you worry. We’ll rub down the horses and see to their needs as well.”

Sister Mary Cuthbert of the rosy and dimpled cheeks and smiling eyes, one of three extern sisters, betrayed no sign of shock at Oswald’s appearance or his greeting. She took his hand in a brief squeeze of welcome and did not look away or even blink when his answering smile let loose a long drool of saliva, which he hastily wiped away with his other hand.

John could have kissed her, but he thought he’d better not.

Their mealtime routine was beginning to feel familiar. Oswald’s arduous, hawking battle with his bowl of pottage seemed almost ordinary now. They had learned already how best to help him when help was needed—when to intervene and when to let him be.

“This honey tastes beautiful,” commented John, adding some on top of the butter on his bread. “Would you like some, Father Oswald?”

“Don’t give him honey!” protested William at the same time as Oswald eagerly assented.

“Why not?” John stopped in surprise, honey dripping from the spoon.

“‘Why not?’ What d’you mean, ‘Why not?’ Because honey is sticky and—oh, my Lord! Look, he’s already got it on his sleeve, and it’s dripped all down his scapular! Why do women insist on eating sweet food? Abbot John, you must need your head seeing to! For pity’s sake! He can’t even taste it! He didn’t even know there was honey until you—”

“I know!” interrupted John. “William, I promise you this: if ever—God forbid—you lose your eyesight or your hearing or your mind, if ever you are paralyzed or cannot speak or your hand has a tremor—in any infirmary under my jurisdiction the brothers will understand that they are there to be your eyes, your hands, your ears. They will help you reach out for the choices you would have made but no longer can. They will know what those choices are because they’ll have lived in community with you, known you and loved you. They will hold the cup steady for you, pick up the dropped spoon for you, mop up the spills for you. They will be your dignity, your comfort, your freedom, and, as far as it lies with them to be so, your happiness. While you’re waiting for that day to come, you can take your turn at doing the same for somebody else who is living your tomorrow here today. I expect these sisters have a well; and from what I’ve seen so far, I think they will not begrudge us a bowl of water. Anyway, scapulars are made for honey and soup that didn’t make it all the way. Why d’you think we have them? And women eat sweet food because it tastes good. I like honey too.”

William said nothing to this. He watched Father Oswald defiantly clinging on to his bread and butter and honey, enjoying it. The taste was not there for him anymore, but he could still smell it; and it belonged to the memory of past pleasures. John grinned at William as he watched the greasy, sugary mess transfer inexorably to Oswald’s hands and sleeves and face, and even his hair. William shook his head in disbelief as the table around Oswald’s plate began to reflect the rays of the sinking sun.

“Jesus,” said John. “It’s Jesus.”

William looked at him. “What is?”

His abbot’s eyes searched his, playfully, kindly. “This. This whole thing. Finding the grace to take what is truly awful and make it sing again. Identifying something in a ruined life that still can be sweet even if you can’t taste it anymore. Come on, William! Don’t begrudge him his bread and honey.”

“These women have taken us in,” William replied after pondering this. “They have shown us the first real friendliness of anyone. Do we not owe them some consideration? What will they think of us?”

“They will think,” said his abbot, “that we love our brother. ‘These women’ gave us the honey.”

Sister Mary Cuthbert trod purposefully into the room, bearing a large, steaming bowl of hot water. Over her arm she had a number of linen towels.

“The sisters are finished in chapel, and I’ve sent word to dear Mother,” she said briskly. “I thought you might like the chance to refresh yourselves after your supper. Are you all finished? Or would you like some more?”

They all three thanked her, Oswald’s shining face beaming in hideous but heartfelt gratitude. John began to laugh as he started the process of restoring Oswald to any kind of respectable appearance. The extent of the mess Oswald had created released the tension of his dread at meeting his sister after last time. As he tackled the mayhem, he found himself helpless with laughter. “Oh, glory, you do it!” he said to William, handing him the cloth.

Oswald sat patiently still, his face lifted to be cleaned, his hands held clear of whatever unseen chaos he had unwittingly created. As he wiped away the stickiness and the adhering crumbs, William found himself drawn in to both the comedy and the pathos of the moment. Sister Mary Cuthbert had brought enough towels. It took ten minutes, but William restored both the man and his environment to a state of complete order and cleanliness, while his abbot stood watching, leaning against the wall, his arms folded, his eyes full of laughter.

“And no, you can’t have seconds!” said William to his now perfectly respectable brother. Then, “Oswald,” he added seriously, “please will you forgive me?”

They went from the guest house to the parlour, where someone had hung a lantern on either side of the grille. Three stools stood there now. John’s lightheartedness visibly evaporated as soon as they walked through the door into the austere little room. William guided Oswald to the stool in the middle of the three. They took their seats in silence and waited.

Presently the door in the convent wall, on the other side of the room, opened. John half stood, but sat down again as Madeleine came in with averted eyes and stony expression, taking her seat without coming to the grille to greet them. She didn’t even look at them. Her face was pale and formidably pensive. She had grown thin. John felt decidedly unsure of his welcome.

“Wes hal, brother.” She used the old country greeting as the nervous silence continued. She directed her words to John, but her tone did not embody the kindness of the Old English words, which meant be thou whole. She looked at him then for the first time, her eyes dark and unfriendly. “You asked to see me.”

Oswald remained completely still, his face watchful, his whole body reading the uneasy atmosphere of the interaction. William looked at the floor. He felt wretched for John, but thought that in this one he had neither place nor power to intervene.

John stood up and went to the grille. Madeleine did not move except that she appeared almost imperceptibly to lean backwards. She did not want him close.

He had put his hands to the bars, but fearing that this might seem too insistent and intrusive, he moved them to rest lightly on the wooden beam in which the iron railings were set. For a brief moment he wondered whether to pursue the usual courtesies of asking after her health and how everything was going, but he quickly recognized the pointlessness of trying to initiate any such exchange. She sat steadfastly on her stool, enduring being there, staring straight ahead, but not at him. “Madeleine,” he said, “we need your help.”

He had her attention then. With a slight, puzzled frown she said, “My help? With what?”

“My brothers here are new to our community,” he explained. “They were Augustinians from a priory near Chesterfield. Their house was torched and the brothers killed—trapped in the fire. These two escaped. Father William, who was their prior—that’s their superior, for theirs was a priory, not an abbey—found his way to us. He travelled through the same country as I did on my way home from the university at Cambridge, and at the same time. Mercifully he reached us, and we took him in. Father Oswald I met in Chesterfield, destitute, on my travels home from the university. I could not take him with me. No, forgive me; that’s not true. I did not take him with me, for I was in haste to return before Easter and did not want to be slowed by the difficulty, for those who might offer me lifts, of an extra body to accommodate. I left him in Chesterfield, but I told Father William I had seen him. Since I reached home, my feet have hardly touched the ground; there has been so much to learn and tackle from the start. And I have been… the news of what had befallen you and Mother… it… I was… oh, never mind it, I am not excusing myself. I was remiss, and if I had not been, this would never have happened.

“After I came to see you here last time, Father William approached me to ask if we might go back to Chesterfield to search for the brother I left behind. So we went, and by God’s grace we found him. But, Madeleine, they have hurt him grievously—cut out most of his tongue and put out his eyes, as you see. He has been living in the mire and muck of the street, left to see to his wounds by himself with nobody to help him. I thank God he is in no worse state, but he cannot be left as he is now. Sister, I have never stitched anyone’s eyelids. I have watched surgery but never done it. I do not have the experience I need, and I am afraid of hurting him. His sockets are mucky from the street. Father William thought that you might have the skills to help us. I know you are not eager to see me, but I don’t know of anywhere else to turn.”

Madeleine listened carefully to this, and William raised his head to watch her response. When John stopped speaking, she looked at her brother very levelly.

“What a pity you did not go back,” she said coldly. Involuntarily, as he saw John flinch, both of William’s hands tightened into fists, not in aggression but in unbearable tension. He felt the hurt of her words harrow their way through every level of John’s soul, so that for a moment he could not answer.

Then, “I did go back, Madeleine,” he said quietly, humbly. “But can we leave me and my shortcomings to one side for now? I am not unaware of my faults and my omissions. Will you help us? Have you the skills?”

Madeleine sat without moving a moment longer. William saw in her face a deep reluctance, as if wherever her soul had hidden away it had no desire at all to be drawn forth into the turbulence of human need and frailty. Finally, “Let me see,” she said. She stood, crossed the room to lift the lantern down from its hook, and came forward to the grille. She was standing so close to John then, but she did not touch him or smile at him or even look at him. She stood waiting for Oswald to come forward to her, her face closed and remote.

The parlour was not a big room. Only six short, hesitating, shuffling steps took Oswald to the grille, holding his hands before him, groping as he moved toward her voice. William moved with him, his hand cupped under Oswald’s elbow to steer him to the right place.

“Don’t do it like that,” said Madeleine calmly, observing their progress toward her. William’s eyes met hers as they came to the grille. John thought somewhere in one universe or another he heard the clash of steel on steel as two swords met.

“Like what?” asked William in a voice entirely devoid of warmth.

“When you walk with a blind man, you should let him take your arm, and you lead him. At the moment, you’re taking his arm and steering him. He can’t see where to go, so you are making him too vulnerable, in reality as well as in how he feels. If you let him take your arm instead, he will feel more secure, and you will progress more effectively.”

“Thank you,” said William. “I shall remember,” he added in a voice like frostbite.

As Oswald stood at the grille, Madeleine paused one final moment, in which she seemed to be summoning the reserves of her spirit for this encounter. Then she put her left hand through the railings and took hold of Oswald’s chin, holding the lantern high so she could see as she moved his face to this angle and that.

“Open your mouth,” she said. “By heaven, they did not leave you much, did they? Adam, where’s your handkerchief?”

Without thinking, she used her brother’s baptismal name, and he moved to wipe the saliva that ran from Oswald’s mouth.

“Thank you. I’ve seen what I need to,” she said abruptly. “Sit down.”

John returned miserably to his seat. Madeleine watched as William proffered his arm. Oswald slipped his hand through and was led easily back to his stool. “That’s better,” she remarked. She hung the lantern back on its hook and sat down.

“We shall need some dwale,” she said, “and I do not know at all if Sister Bede has the ingredients. For one thing we need the gall of a boar—not of a gilt—which should be fresh. It can be obtained when a beast is butchered, but it’s a matter of finding who has one and when they will be slaughtering. Certainly they owe me more than a few favours in the village, and I think there will be those who would be right glad to do what they might think will appease me, since I am alive and possessed of an excellent memory. I had not meant to disclose that I am here though; what if they come for me again? If they know the community is harbouring me, the safety of the whole house might be put in jeopardy. Anyway, I can ask in our infirmary, but I’m sure that will be one ingredient we are lacking. Of course, Sister Thomas might be willing to slaughter our boar, but it’ll mean we have to buy another, else we’ll have no piglets, and they do us well for a steady bit of income. I’ll ask her, but be prepared to accept that she might say no. In similar wise I have not seen hemlock in Sister Bede’s dispensary, but I can look, and I know where we can get it if she has none.” Madeleine frowned, considering the situation. The challenge it presented had rekindled the habit of a lifetime’s healing work, in spite of the trauma that had locked her soul away. She had been a healer far longer than she had been a broken victim, and the roots of familiarity grew deep. “Bryony, vinegar, henbane, and lettuce we have,” she continued. “Once I can mix the dwale, I am willing to proceed. Without it, I will not. I am changed now. I cannot bear to hurt him, stitching without medicine. Brother—”

She suddenly stopped in what she was saying to John, as if some pestering thing had finally caught her attention, and turned her gaze very directly toward William, searching his eyes with hers. “What’s the matter with you? Are you angry with me for some reason? You have never met me before, except only the once, but you look as though you hate me.”

His composure unruffled by this bald confrontation, William considered her calmly. “I think I do not hate you,” he said thoughtfully, “though at this moment I admit it, I am not far off.” His eyes assayed her unhurriedly. “I am not angry. Something has to be important to arouse anger. I have seen enough to know that none of us is in any real sense important. But it offends me—and hurts me, I confess—to watch you torture your brother. He has been good to me. He has saved my life, sheltered me from violence and deserved animosity. Last time we were here you walked out and left a sobbing heap of pulverized humanity for me to pick up, and I see you are ready with another lashing this evening. You have been through hell? So have I. So has Oswald. Get over it. It wasn’t John’s fault. He wasn’t there for you? Nay, nor was I, nor any other man. He is your brother, not your husband. Since you ask.”

Madeleine’s lips tightened as he spoke until they were bloodless. “Did I hear it said that you wanted my help?” she asked after a moment, her voice hard. The question hung in the air as a threat. William faced it with equilibrium.

“Aye, but not enough to grovel for it, nor yet to stand aside while you punish somebody who never hurt you, because you have run away from those who did.”

His cool gaze held hers. His eyebrows lifted. “Are you going to tell us now that Oswald can go through a fresh hell because I answered your straight question with a straight answer and your amour propre has taken a bit of a tumble?”

John rubbed his brow, looking slightly desperate. “Stop it, William,” he said. “Please stop it. If I can get the gall and the hemlock—if you will tell me where to ask—will you help us, Madeleine? Please. Not for me, not for William; God knows he has enemies all over England. Just for these poor, swollen eye sockets that need protection from dirt and flies, and to give this man some dignity back and clothe him with compassion. Madeleine? Please. Don’t let the whole of life be about people hurting each other simply because they can. I will seek out the things you need without letting anyone know you are here.”

“Please help me,” Oswald enunciated as clearly as he could, and that brought silence.

“I will ask tonight about the hemlock and the pig. If the answer is no, you must go and search out gall and hemlock at first light, Adam, so I can mix the dwale in the morning. Then we shall have good midday light to work with. I will make a room ready with everything else we need. And, Adam, if you are wise, you will take Sister Mary Cuthbert with you if you need to go into the village to ask for a pig—and leave this William behind. The people love Mary Cuthbert. She does not antagonize them.”

John’s eyes met hers. “Father William,” he said very softly.

The faintest smile touched Madeleine’s face, but not her eyes. “Ah, yes, Father,” she said, “to show I respect him.”

Oswald sat as he was, his head cocked and his body motionless, still using every sense he had to feel the dynamics of the conversation. William bent his head, withdrawing from the interaction, for which he had no further use. John looked steadily at his sister. In a movement so slight it was hard to discern, he shook his head. Seeing it, the assurance in her face faltered a little.

“I will ask dear Mother’s permission before Compline for all we have discussed,” said Madeleine less truculently, “but I cannot think she will refuse us. Except maybe the pig. I hope you will join us for Compline if you are not too tired. Other than that, God give you good night, Father John, Father Oswald, Father William.”

William looked up then, and John was surprised and relieved to catch a flash of amusement pass between them. For his own part, though he saw confrontation to be occasionally necessary and bravely faced, he never enjoyed it; it was never a game. But he recognized that he had witnessed an odd apology given and accepted.

Mother Mary Beatrix gave her permission for their enterprise and spoke briefly to Abbot John before Compline to affirm this was so. “Madeleine has explained that the gall of a boar is necessary to make the medicine needful for the procedure she must do. I understand that your time is precious, Father John, and I will not hear of your walking the country round about in search of an animal for slaughter when we have one in our own orchard. It is the least we can do for your poor brother priest who has been so savagely hurt. We will gladly give you our pig, and Sister Mary Cuthbert will be going straight after first Mass to the cottage of the man who looks after the butchering of animals for us. Madeleine has told me that all should be ready for when the sun is at its height, and so it shall be.”

“Dear Mother, how can I thank you for your kindness? You must at least let us pay you for the pig—no, really you must. We will give you what is necessary to replace a boar good for breeding. God reward you. We are so very grateful.”

It felt strange to sit in the nave of the church while the community gathered in the choir. For so many years his stall in choir had been an essential part of home to John. On his travels when he had to beg hospitality, if he stayed at a monastery he would usually find a community of men. He had stayed with nuns before but very rarely. Even so, though he sat in the parishioners’ benches in the nave, he felt welcome, and the generosity and loving-kindness of these sisters warmed his heart.

“We can begin to set you right again now, my brother,” said John to Father Oswald as they retired to the guest house when the last prayers were said and the Salve Regina sung. “This will protect your sockets and make you look tidy. Do you know what the dwale is?”

Oswald shook his head.

“’Tis a medicine that will send you to sleep while we do the stitching, so that we shall not hurt you as we work. And when you wake up, its effects will gentle any soreness there is at first. So you will not feel what we do.”

“Thank you!” Oswald used the sign language of the Silence, and for extra emphasis he pressed his palms together and bowed his face to his fingertips.

After he had seen Oswald safely and comfortably into his bed, though they were now in silence John crossed the long room to the bed on which William sat unlacing his boots.

“Yes, Father? You wanted to talk?”

“Only for a moment. I want to beg your pardon for my sister. This is not like her. She is the kindest, most joyous soul. I think the savagery worked upon her has driven her into a place she cannot come back from. Though mind you, she has always been very forthright, very direct in both question and comment. That’s the healer’s way; you have to be. My mother was the same.”

“Candid suits me,” replied William, “and I’ve no doubt she and I can find our way to some sort of accommodation. You need have no dread there will be fisticuffs when we go into the enclosure tomorrow. But…” He hesitated, then said, completely serious now, “I owe you so much. It was more than I could do to stand by and see those barbed arrows find their mark in your heart. Beyond that, she can say what she likes about me. Why should I care?”

John nodded. “Go gently though, in the way you answer her. Take the long view. The day will arrive eventually when she emerges out of this state of mind and comes to terms with all that befell her. When she finds her new equilibrium, she will have forgotten she was so hard, for my guess is, she does not feel hard inside, only hurt and beleaguered. I think the pain she inflicts is a measure of the pain she feels. Our part is to understand and be forgiving. If I can receive patiently the hurt she dishes out, that may wick it away from her soul a little and help her recover. If I recognize what is happening, it makes it easy for me to forgive. The thing we have to hold before us is the remembrance that this is a molten time when new things are forged. If we offer her gentleness and understanding now, we can forge healing. If we meet what she dishes out with resentment and indignation, we shall forge enmity, when what is in flux cools into the new way she will be. Am I… do you grasp what I mean?”

“Father John,” replied William, “as I travel with you, I am surprised by finding myself grateful for the day St Dunstan’s burned down. I am proud to be a son of your house.” As he looked at him, his eyes shone with admiration. “Go to bed. We have work to do in the morning.”

John smiled.

“A son of my house? Ha! Any other brother would stand respectfully until I told him to go to bed! Nay, that’s no rebuke! Sleep well. Until the morning.”

The light came streaming glorious through the east window above the choir altar as the three men sat in the parish side of the chapel waiting for the morrow Mass to begin after Prime. John and William watched Sister Mary Cuthbert as the mother abbess came to stand there, evidently with something to communicate.

She listened and nodded and, as Mother Mary Beatrix returned to her stall, Mary Cuthbert in barefoot silence came back from the sanctuary to whisper to William, who sat at the end of the bench, “Dear Mother says she has asked of Sister Bede, and she has the hemlock.” If Mary Cuthbert felt any surprise at passing this message, her face did not betray it. “And she says that unless you tell her otherwise, she will let our parish priest know that Abbot John will celebrate first Mass for us tomorrow morning.”

John, listening also, caught the quiet words and nodded his assent.

“God reward you; we are honoured,” Mary Cuthbert murmured, smiling as she left them to prepare their hearts and minds for the Eucharist.

She returned as Mass ended to stand respectfully near the bench where they sat, ready to escort them into the enclosure.

Oswald took William’s arm, and they followed Mary Cuthbert into the Lady Chapel. She took them to a door, insignificant in appearance but securely locked, adjacent to the sanctuary. She drew from under her scapula a bunch of keys of impressive size and quickly selected the right one to open the door. With a nod and a smile, she stood aside to let them through into the enclosure, then closed the door behind them, and they heard her turn the key.

While the enclosure door near the parlour would have allowed them into the claustral living quarters of the sisters, the way through the Lady Chapel took them out into a rose garden, in leaf but not yet in bloom at this time of year. For a moment John could hardly see as he emerged from the cool dimness of the chapel into the spring morning rioting with birdsong and dazzling sunlight.

In only a minute Madeleine appeared around the tall yew hedge to find them. “Wes hal, fathers. I trust you slept well?”

John felt relieved to find her manner less cold, if still reserved. He could sense the intense focus of her energy as she held herself in readiness for what she had to do. For now at least, her mind was no longer haunted by vivid memories of trauma, nor preoccupied with anger, terror, or distress; just for this day she was a skilled healer again, responding to someone else’s pain with a lifetime’s mastery of knowledge and practice.

“If you will follow me, the infirmary lies up yonder slope, just at the end of this path and at the foot of the hill that leads up to the burial ground. We are all prepared. Sister Thomas shed tears for her pig, but she brought me the gall bladder in a bowl, and the bile is mixed in with the rest.”

As they came to the low infirmary building, built of the same honey-coloured stone as St Alcuin’s, Madeleine stopped, looking up to see the lark whose song she could hear in trilling cascades as it climbed into the dizzy blue of the cloudless sky. “’Tis so high! Can you see it, Adam?” She forgot her stance of aloofness as her eye searched out the bird, habits of joy in life and easy familiarity for that moment reasserting themselves, bringing back the person she had always been. Oswald stood listening, his head tilted to one side, while John and William squinted up with Madeleine into the brightness of the heaven.

William shaded his eyes with his hand, his head tipped back as he stood entranced, watching the bird mount up and up and up, always singing. All his life he had loved the wild freedom of the rising flight of the lark. Enthralled, he did not notice as Madeleine recalled herself to the purpose of her visit, leaving the spilling exuberance of music to the sweetness of blue. “What?” he said defensively when his attention returned to what they were about and realized Madeleine was observing him with focused curiosity.

“Round your neck,” she said quietly, “you have a faint mark. Have you been hanged?”

Oswald became totally still at those words. John moved in sudden consternation. “Oh God!” said William, brought sharply back to earth. “It never pays to let your vigilance slip for an instant, does it? Anywhere!”

For the first time since he had known him, John saw William obviously and completely caught off his guard. “Yes, I have been hanged,” he ground out bitterly, resenting the intrusion of the question, “but not by the hand of others.”

“You tried to hang yourself?”

John wished Madeleine would not pursue this, but the question was asked now. Oswald remained completely still, his apprehensions about the hour ahead forgotten. He’d had no inkling before this of anything that had happened to William after St Dunstan’s fire.

“How else do you think anyone hangs who is not hanged by somebody else?”

“Oh, plenty of ways! There are all manner of accidents. But not in your case? And this was quite recent, I see, or you would not still have the mark. Maybe six weeks ago?”

“Aye, about that. Madam, I will answer as many impertinent questions as you have to fire at me later when we have leisure. But while the sun is high, should we not remember what we are here to do?”

“Indeed. In any case, though I perceive you might taste acid in anyone’s mouth, I can find no whiff of despair about you now. The thing that drove you to this act—it is healed then?”

John looked aside, acutely embarrassed by her persistence, but William looked her in the eye. “It is healed,” he answered her. “I have shelter from the storm.”

She nodded, satisfied for the moment. “That’s well then,” she said briskly, “so we don’t have to worry about you. Let’s go to our task, as you say. Sister Bede has lit us a fire. I know it’s hot, but Father Oswald must be really warm. The more he has to make him drowsy, the less hemlock I need to put in. The less hemlock I put in, the less likelihood I shall kill him by mistake. To this end I have begged from Sister Paul a slug of mead to mix in with the wine—and the wine is sweet and heady anyway.”

John saw that though Oswald stood quietly, the mention of a possibility of killing him registered in his face. Though years of monastic discipline enabled him to retain composure, his hands half-hidden from view at his sides in the folds of his habit began clenching and unclenching despite his best efforts to appear relaxed.

“Don’t be afraid: my sister’s bedside manner has more terror than kindness,” John joked gently, putting his hand on Oswald’s back, stroking him in a soothing motion that brought a sudden shaky sigh from Oswald as the anxiety decreased a fraction. “You will be in good hands. It is better for you to sleep through this. Don’t be afraid. I shall be with you. And while you sleep, and Madeleine and I work on your eyes, William and all these good sisters will hold you fast in their prayers. Don’t be afraid.”

Oswald nodded. He lifted his hand to wipe away saliva that he felt trickling. John saw that his hand was trembling.

“Let’s get to it then. Come inside,” said Madeleine, who had also seen the signs of dread. “Yes, you too, Father William, you might be useful. I cannot think that much disturbs you.”

William looked at her, hesitating. “Not much,” he said, “but I confess if I have to watch what you are about to do, I am likely to pass out. I cannot… Well; no, thank you.”

For the first time an impish grin suddenly lit Madeleine’s face. “Squeamish, eh? Stay out here then! Come, Adam; come, Oswald; let’s get this done.”

Abbot John let Father Oswald take his arm and, leading him, followed Madeleine into the infirmary. Though the day was warm, for this occasion Sister Bede had kept her infirmary charges in their rooms. Priests were not to be troubled by the uninvited presence of her sisters. She stood ready in an inner room, where the fire had been burning since morning. Madeleine and Sister Bede had prepared the room together while John went in search of what they needed. A bed stood near the window, through which a strong shaft of sunlight shone. Two uncompromising Franciscan pillows topped by a third, a soft goose-down pillow, had been set ready. “We can’t let him lie flat on his back without a complete tongue,” Madeleine remarked. At the foot of the bed, a table had been spread with a clean fair linen cloth. On it they had laid out a small bowl and four large bowls covered with cloths, a tidy pile of lint scraps, fine silk and needles for suturing, two short, slender knives, a low stack of neatly folded linen towels, a stoppered flask and a beaker both of forest glass, the beaker empty, the flask half-full of something red. The rays of sun from the window sparkled on the glass and lit ruby glints in the contents of the flask. Warming on the hearth stood a pitcher of wine, its aromatic fumes permeating the air of the room along with the pleasant fragrance of wood smoke. Sister Bede held in her hands a second stoppered flask two-thirds full of dark liquid.

“You have used the exact measures I said?” asked Madeleine. “He is thin; we must not give too much.”

“Exactly as you instructed, Sister,” the infirmarian replied.

“God reward you. Now the challenge will be for him to swallow it. It does not have to go down too fast, thankfully. Father Oswald, we need this drink to go down without choking you, so I will not administer it, you must do it yourself. Don’t fret if you dribble some, it doesn’t matter. We shall know when you have had what you need, for you will start to drowse.”

She took the pitcher of wine from the fireside and poured some into the glass on the table to just over half-full. “Now, Sister Bede, add from your flask until the glass is comfortably full,” she instructed. “There, that’s enough.”

She set the pitcher back by the fireside and took the glass to Oswald. “Wash your hands, Father John,” she said, careful to use his name in religion in the presence of Sister Bede, who valued respect. The infirmarian set her flask on the table and uncovered one of the four large bowls, into each of which had been poured boiling water now cooled to be comfortably hot. The small bowl held wine for cleaning Oswald’s eye sockets. John smelled the pungent fragrance of lavender and conifer oils in the steam as he washed his hands thoroughly, using the nail brush set beside the bowl. Sister Bede took from him the towel he had used when he had dried his hands.

Meanwhile Oswald, under Madeleine’s watchful eye, was making a success of swallowing the dwale. He used a peculiar tossing of his head to get the liquid down; because there were no solids incorporated into it, the technique was simple and effective.

“Well done,” said Madeleine quietly as he continued to drink. “That’s right,” she murmured softly. “Good lad… well done, my brother…” And as she continued to speak to him softly, the three of them watched his head nod and his body start to sway. Madeleine had her hand around his as his grasp relaxed and let go of the glass. “Now!” she said without raising her voice. Sister Bede took his legs at the knees, and Madeleine took him under the shoulders. They lifted him across the small room and onto the bed. John watched, holding his hands, now completely clean, clear of everything.

As Sister Bede positioned Oswald on the bed, Madeleine hastily but thoroughly scrubbed her hands in the aromatic water of the second large bowl. “Pick up the lint pieces, Adam,” she said, forgetting Sister Bede’s sense of etiquette. “Sister, bring the bowl of wine.”

One by one she took the scraps from John, and he watched as she cleaned the sockets meticulously, first one and then the other, ensuring that all was thoroughly cleansed and not the smallest speck of a foreign body left inside. Everything she did was swift but unhurried, every movement deft and neat. Observing her, John saw she had forgotten herself, forgotten the horrors of recent memory—everything except the task in hand. As she worked, she dropped each used scrap of lint on the floor at her feet. When the pile in John’s hands was down to three scraps remaining, she stepped quickly back to the table, washed her hands again in the third large bowl, and dried them on the third towel, dropping that too on the floor.

She took up the first of the two needles threaded with the silk, and John watched her clever fingers in admiration as she made the neatest job of suturing Oswald’s left eye. “Pick up one of the blades for me, Adam, from the table,” she said when she was done. He brought her the very sharp scalpel set there, and she cut the thread, dropping the blade into one of the bowls in which she had washed her hands. Then she scrubbed and dried them a third time, took up the second silk, and sutured the right eye. John was ready with the second blade as she completed the stitching. She cut the thread, dropped the blade in the bowl with its fellow, washed her hands in the water she had last used, and dried her hands on one of the two remaining towels in the stack.

She came back to Oswald’s side. “We just wipe off with wine now for good measure,” she said. “You do one. I’ll do the other.” She took one of the two scraps John still held, dipped it in the bowl of wine in Sister Bede’s hands, and wiped the left eye carefully from centre to tail. John did the same with the right eye.

“Now we wake him up. Give me that last scrap of lint.”

Madeleine took the stoppered flask of red liquid from the table. “This is vinegar and water—God reward you, Sister; you can put that bowl of wine down now and pick up the discarded cloths from the floor.”

Splashing the vinegar and water on Oswald’s temples, Madeleine spoke his name several times. He closed his mouth, which had fallen open as he slept, and began to murmur incoherently. “Oswald! Speak to me!” said Madeleine sharply in a voice of command not to be ignored, and Oswald obediently responded with some blurred and incomprehensible reply.

She looked satisfied. “That’s all I need. Well, that went without a hitch! He can stay in here until he is fit to stand and walk. By Vespers he should be able to return to the guest house. Abbot John was an infirmarian, Sister Bede; this man will be safe in his care. Can I leave the two of you now to clean up in here and bring him out into the fresh air as soon as he is ready?”

She washed her hands one last time and dried them on the last remaining towel, leaving it on the table for John to do the same if he wished, then went out into the sunshine. “We are done; all is well,” she said to William who watched her approach, his expression intent in expectation of her report. “They are tidying up and tending to him. Would you care to walk up the hill a little? I need to feel the breeze on my face. It’s hot in there.”

William did not reply but got up from the low wall on which he had been sitting and went with her up the grassy track that led toward their burial ground. Madeleine glanced at him as they walked together. “What has been happening—exactly, I mean? I heard what my brother said last night,” she asked as they strolled up the path. The scent of chamomile was sharp on the warm air.

“Happening?”

“To you, that you tried to take your life—and to Oswald? I have not put together a full picture.”

William sighed. “To tell you the truth, I am almost weary of the tale.” He plucked a stem from a tall weed that grew by the path and toyed with it, pulling the leaves off one by one, rolling them between his fingers. “Well, then, our community—and I as its prior—we were not loved; we were not gentle; we were not charitable. We made enemies, and they burned our house. Oswald—oh, but you can see what happened. He escaped the fire, but he was seen by those who had a grudge against us. They thought they’d teach him a lesson since they hadn’t succeeded in burning him to death.”

Madeleine stole a glance at his face, hearing the savage bitterness that came into his voice as he contemplated what had been done to Oswald. Set and pale, not even noticing her face turn toward him, ripping the remaining little leaves from the plant stem, he continued, “First they put out his eyes, after a violent scuffle; he has told me all this as we’ve travelled, but his speech is so poor it has taken a while to understand. That—the eyes—did in his inclination to resist anything else they had in mind. He thinks they did not want him to recognize them. Next they used him much as you were used and gelded him as well just to make their point. He thought he was beyond caring by then and imagined with one last kick they would leave him alone with his agony, but no. One of them had the bright idea he might try to tell the tale. To ensure he did not, they thought they’d leave him with no means to do so. That was Oswald, then. What’s left of him you can see for yourself. He seems to me to have come through with surprising fortitude and resilience. I wouldn’t have guessed he had it in him.

“And me? I was afraid for my life and was welcome nowhere. I tried house after house, and they would not let me in. When I finally came to St Alcuin’s, I was hated there as thoroughly as anywhere. They knew me from former days. I had used their abbot ill. I guess you remember him. He was a crippled man. I was not kind to him. The community had no mind to give me refuge. Your brother, God bless him, did what he could to plead for me, but they remained, all but a few, indifferent. It was my only hope, you understand, or I would not have gone there. I did not expect they would have forgotten how I’d used their Father Columba. So nowhere was safe. I thought I’d better finish it before I fell into rougher hands and found myself tortured and beaten and maimed. But Brother Thomas—though he loathed me with every fibre of his being and never hesitated to let me know it—found me swinging and cut me down, and here I am. They let me stay. That’s it.”

They walked on in silence.

“Did you… did you really deserve—either of you—anything of this?”

William stopped and looked at her frankly. “Aye, we did.” Then he carried on walking. “We surely did. But it was not the fire nor the hatred nor the fear that made me sorry for it—but that Thomas saved my life without stopping to think, for all he hated me, and that John did what he could to shelter me from every well-earned punishment, and that Michael sat up all night to pull me through when I had pneumonia and would have come out of the safety of those walls with me if they had still turned me away. I saw in them something that puzzled me. Something beyond what I have encountered anywhere else. It is a connection with Christ. So I…”

“Yes?” Intrigued, Madeleine, looking sideways at him, saw his shyness, the faint colour that rose in his cheeks. “What?” she said.

“I opened my heart to Christ,” William mumbled. “I invited him in.”

“You are shy about this? Is it not what every brother does?”

William laughed. “No, it’s not. And yes, I am. It feels very private. Despite what you see, Madeleine, I am not entirely hard boiled. Somewhere at the core something still is alive, which must imply some kind of sensitivity—some vital nerve still sensible to love and fear and pain. But I protect it as best I can.”

“You mean you still have a soul?”

Again he stopped in his tracks, and she was surprised to see as he looked at her that the question had found and touched that nerve. “I hope so,” he whispered.

“I hope so too,” she answered, offering him a way out of the space of vulnerability he found himself in, “or else you would be just like a woman—for the theologians among you monks say, do they not, that women have no souls?”

William’s eyes met the challenge of her gaze, no irony in them now. “They do say so,” he admitted, “but I don’t know why. For you know and I know it is not true. Maybe they would not say it if they had met you.”

Further surprised by this unexpected gentleness, Madeleine turned back to their path and walked on. She felt puzzled. Even with every receptor in her being questing to test the presence of this monk walking at her side, she could not find what had seemed so obnoxious to her in him last night. Detachment was what she felt now—he wanted nothing from her. But she found also an obscure conviction that she could entirely trust him. In these intuitions she could not remember an instance where she had been wrong. No further conversation passed between them as they climbed to the brow of the hill, after which the path dipped before the land began to rise again beyond the wall of the burial ground.

“We should go back in a minute. I must check on Father Oswald and see that all is well.” As they reached the burial ground, Madeleine turned back toward the monastery buildings at the foot of the hill. “Oh, look—there’s my brother. Oswald is not with him. I think they will have put him to bed. I guess Adam wanted to visit Mother’s grave again while he’s here.”

John crossed from the infirmary to the foot of the track they had climbed. He had seen them and waved back as Madeleine waved down to him. She watched his easy stride as he started to walk up the grassy path.

William sat down to wait for him on the grass in the sunshine, resting his back against the stones of the burial ground wall. Madeleine sat down beside him, not too near.

“Do you really want to be a Poor Clare nun?” he asked her suddenly. Madeleine did not need to turn the question over in her mind very long.

“No,” she said honestly, “but I really want to be safe.”

He took this in thoughtfully and did not immediately reply. He felt her observing every detail of him—his hands, one folded peacefully on the other, his forearms resting on top of his drawn-up knees, then her gaze travelling on from the long bony fingers, noting their shape and structure, to his feet, dusty in well-worn sandals, and the rough, faded black of his tunic. “Didn’t they give you a new habit when you joined?” she asked.

He glanced sideways at her. “Not much gets past you, does it? I asked if I could keep this one. You will have known Abbot Columba, I think? This was his.”

“You mean Father Peregrine?”

“Yes, him. It was his.”

“I thought you didn’t like him. You said you used him ill.”

“That’s why I wanted to keep it. At first the thought of putting it on scared me. Now what I feel is that I am wearing his forgiveness. Look, Madeleine, why don’t you come and live with us?”

Startled, she looked at his face, wondering if she had heard right and, if she had, if he really meant it. “What? How could I? I’m a woman,” she said, “and you live in a monastery.”

He turned his head, and the cool gaze of his pale eyes met hers.

“Aye, but we have much more land than that. There is a cottage in the close wanting a tenant. I think we would not go hungry without its rent. You’d like it. The garden is bursting with herbs already, and there’s space for a henhouse.”

Madeleine felt such a gripping of hope around her heart in that moment, she could hardly breathe. She was afraid to reach out for this possibility in case it should be snatched away.

“Is there room for goats?” she asked tentatively, playing for time.

William laughed, and she watched the crinkling of the skin at the corner of his eyes. “No,” he said, “but I think we could find you a place to tether a goat on our land. You would not be vulnerable there as you are here. Motherwell is a small place, and the people do not travel. They will be ignorant and unaware of your connections. I’ll wager John might as well have gone to the moon when he left for St Alcuin’s—am I right?”

“That was the problem,” said Madeleine softly. “He was just gone. That was all they knew. But won’t it be the same anywhere? Your village is not big either. Won’t they think I am a witch and a heretic by St Alcuin’s too?”

“No. They will think you are the abbot’s sister, and you will have the sense to come every day to Mass and to Vespers, so they will know you are devout.”

William saw the struggle in her face. He saw that she wanted this, but something stood in the way. “What? Tell me,” he said.

Madeleine felt again the unlikely sense that she could trust him, whoever he was and whatever he had done.

“It was important to Mother that we did not impose on Adam. He is protective and kind by nature. She said we must let him go and never breathe a word of what it cost us. If I stay here, I will not become a burden to him.” This was not an admission easily made. She and Katelin had kept their understanding entirely to themselves.

“If you stay miserable, you will destroy him!” replied William. He shot her a sly, sideways glance. “Besides, the brothers at St Alcuin’s are good and gentle to a man. It gets under my skin at times. I could do with a sparring partner.”

When John came up over the crest of the hill to where they sat, he saw his sister was laughing. He took in the sight hungrily, with great relief and joy in his face. William smiled and bent down to pick a flower of grass, which he twirled and picked to pieces in his fingers as Madeleine said, “This brother of yours has just committed a terrible indiscretion.” It told her something about William and John’s expectations of him that, despite her lighthearted and teasing tone, John immediately looked somewhat alarmed.

“What’s he done?” he inquired gingerly.

“He has—without his abbot’s permission, mind, Father John—invited me to leave this place and come live in a little cottage in St Alcuin’s close.”

John’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Slowly, considering this, he came to sit with them on the grass. “Is that what you want?” he asked her.

“A little cottage with herbs and a place for hens, he said. With no rent. And I can browse a goat at the abbey. He said I will be safe because I am your sister, and I can come to chapel so people will not say I am a witch.”

John said nothing. He bent his head, absently fingering the speedwell flowers in the grass, but gently, so as not to hurt the delicate petals.

“Adam? Would I be in the way?” Her voice sounded uncertain.

“No!” John shook his head with vehemence. “I mean, ‘No, you would never be in the way,’ not, ‘No, you can’t come.’ I just feel so dreadfully ashamed I did not think to ask you myself, you and Mother both. What might I have avoided if—”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t start that again!” William interrupted him. “I’ve heard enough self-flagellation from you to last me the rest of my life! Besides, you’ve only just been made abbot this last month. When did you have the authority to ask her before? Or when, I might add, did you have a cellarer with the wit to put the thought into your head? So can she come or not?”

Abbot John looked at Madeleine. “This is a fair sample of the insubordination and insufferable discourtesy I have daily to bear,” he said. “My sweet sister, of course you can come. When? Now?”

“Father William said the cottage stands empty,” she said, trying to conceal as best she could her eagerness. “I have nothing though. Everything is gone in the fire. I have no money to live on or to pay for furnishings.”

“St Alcuin’s used to be a charitable house and kind,” said John, “but we have this awful new cellarer’s assistant now who counts every peppercorn and sends us out to pick the tarry wool that has caught on the thorns. I don’t know if he will spare so much as a king’s shilling for your upkeep.”

“He’s quite right.” William looked at her with mock severity. “But you may thank heaven that their real cellarer, Brother Ambrose, is a more modest man, old and indulgent. He will give you enough to furnish the house, and spare half a dozen hens from our flock, and find you an allowance for your needs. His assistant might even feel emboldened to risk his disapproval by obtaining a dress for you to travel home in, so we don’t get arrested for having kidnapped a Poor Clare. Or possibly two dresses, in case you turn out to have table manners like our Oswald. And, when I think about it, a woolen shawl and a warm cloak and a kerchief for Mass. Dear heaven, you’re going to be expensive!”

“You—you are the cellarer’s assistant?”

“I am. And Brother Thomas and Brother Stephen between them can make you a henhouse that will keep out Brother Reynard when he does his nightly round. Do we have an agreement? Will I have added Mother Mary Beatrix to my list of enemies now?”

But the Reverend Mother understood. Getting into a monastic community was not usually easy: no superior stood in the way of a postulant who wanted to get out. Abbot John’s proposition relieved the abbess of the predicament in which she found herself: wanting to help and shelter Madeleine without burdening the community with a sister whose vocation rested on spurious and inadequate foundations. Her almoner proved equally helpful, having only in the past week been given three bundles of discarded clothes to distribute to the poor. Two gowns—one green, one grey—were found to fit Madeleine; a winter cloak with a torn hem that wanted only a quiet evening to repair it; a knitted shawl of coarse cream Swaledale wool; some sturdy boots; and two kerchiefs to cover her head, to drape for modesty or to keep out the chill.

Madeleine was offered no opportunity to make her farewells after John had said Mass on the following morning; it was not the custom. Her departure would be reported to Mother Mary Brigid who, as novice mistress, needed to know, but nobody else. Postulants came, and they went; every now and then somebody lasted the course. But Mother Mary Beatrix embraced her and blessed her; then with a squeeze of the hand and a promise to hold Madeleine fast in her prayers, the abbess left her waiting for Sister Mary Cuthbert to unlock the enclosure door.

As she stepped out of the monastery into the courtyard where William held their horses, while John made their gifts of money in thanks for the kind and generous hospitality shown them, Madeleine felt suddenly, wildly free. For an instant she could hardly catch her breath. As she quickly remembered her composure, she caught William’s eye and saw him amused—and happy because she was happy. With a sense of exhilaration, she brought her pack for him to help her fasten it behind the saddle of John’s old mare. There would always be scars and terrors of memory, but life could begin again.

“We’ll have to wink at modesty, I fear, to get you home,” William said. “You’re as thin as a little bird; there’s nothing of you, so the palfrey’ll take you well enough riding up with Oswald. He’s under strict instructions not to dribble down the back of your neck.”

Then he asked her seriously: “Are you at ease with that, Madeleine? John and I meant to take turns to ride old Bess, but it’s only twenty miles. He and I could both walk, and you could ride his mare with no companion if you’d rather.”

Grateful at his concern for what she might need and feel, Madeleine thanked him with honest warmth. It was his sensitivity in giving her a choice that made the difference. She smiled at him, and as their eyes met she knew she had a friend.