‘It would make more sense for you to be on the farm than working in a job like this, wouldn’t it?’ asked Father Chad.
‘Yes. It would. I’d like to be on the farm just now.’ Brother Tom stood before the great oak table in the abbot’s house. Father Chad had it considerably tidier than Father Peregrine ever had. He had been Father Peregrine’s prior for so many years now, and the community was now so stable both economically and pastorally, that he had been able to step smoothly into the role of abbot, filling his superior’s place in time of sickness. Brother Tom looked down at the tidy table, and at Father Chad supplanting Peregrine in the abbot’s chair. The resentment he felt was, he knew, the danger of particular friendships. As part of his vow of chastity, keeping his heart guarded against human affection, he ought now to contemplate the prospect of another man filling Father Peregrine’s place with equanimity. He did not. There was no point trying to deceive himself.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I think I’d rather be on the farm. There are two strips of hay still standing because of the rain in June. They need to get it down and stacked as quickly as possible, and they need someone to thatch the ricks besides Brother Stephen. We want to begin work on the field shelters in the least sheltered places before harvest, too. Once the harvest is over and the fall is on us, the weather will be more uncertain, and we shall need to get started with the ploughing, and—’
‘All right, Brother Thomas! I can see you’re itching to get underway. I’ll ask Brother Josephus and Brother Thaddeus to take your place here. It’s not really advisable to have just the one attendant these days anyway; people expect at least two. I know Father liked to keep to just the one—humility and poverty, and so forth—but there are lots of good reasons why having two is more practical. You have done good service here, Brother. I have often thought it was hard to keep you to the obedience of abbot’s esquire when your heart is for the land, but Father would have it so. He relied on you as he relied on no one else. The change will be good for you. You can go up to the farm this morning if you like. I’ve no visitors. I shall be eating in refectory with the brethren at midday.’
‘Thank you, Father.’
Father Chad smiled at Tom, and Tom obliged with a smile in return, but his heart was sore. It was true, all summer he had fretted to be out on the farm, as he always did, but now he had what he wanted, there was no joy in it.
Earlier in the summer, in June, when they had been struggling to harvest what hay they could before the rain defeated them, his obedience had weighed like chains. Most of the able-bodied men had been out in the fields all day, and he had been able to snatch only a couple of hours in the afternoons. The rest of his time had been taken up in the abbot’s house, where a seemingly endless procession of wealthy pilgrims availed themselves of the abbey’s hospitality, day after day. He had chafed under the tedious restriction of waiting at table, standing unobtrusively to one side to pour wine. Father Peregrine had seen it.
‘Would you rather be on the farm, Brother Thomas?’ he had asked.
‘Yes,’ Tom had responded shortly. And he had watched the familiar tightening of tension about his superior’s jaw as he replied evenly, avoiding Tom’s eyes, ‘Brother, it would be the work of a moment to release you to the farm. I can have Brother Francis or someone to help me here.’
Eventually Tom’s silence had forced the abbot to look him in the eye, revealing the anxious vulnerability of his incapacity. Tom knew that anyway. He knew how Peregrine needed someone who was very familiar with the limitations his disability imposed on him, to smooth the path with guests, and to a certain extent with the brethren. He knew, too, that Peregrine needed someone who could read his moods, see through his defences, to help him live with his own stormy spirit, its occasional moods of anguish and blackness.
Tom had shaken his head. ‘Don’t distress yourself. My work is here. I’ll help with the ploughing in the fall. That’ll do me.’
And Peregrine, who with anyone else would have dismissed it, sent them to the work they were best fitted for, sat with the anxiety twitching his mouth, looking at Tom, helpless, his eyes begging understanding. ‘Thank you,’ he had said stiffly, at last. He needed Tom. Both of them knew that.
Tom plodded away from the cloister buildings, and up to the farm. Only a week. It did not seem possible. Only a week, and the gap was closing behind him… another man in his chair… another man’s rule making little changes… another man’s style in the abbot’s chapter at the morning meeting. It was as though he’d died. Worse, maybe.
It was four days since Tom himself had been to see Father Peregrine in the infirmary. There was nothing to go for. He lay mute and paralysed, beyond communication.
The first day of Peregrine’s illness, Brother Tom had been at the infirmary at six o’clock in the morning, as soon as he had eaten his breakfast; and that had stuck in his craw like sawdust, as he ate in anxious haste.
Martin Jonson, the village man who came every day to help in the infirmary, greeted him at the door.
‘Good day to you, Brother Thomas. Have you come to see how Father Columba is?’
‘What? Oh—yes.’ Columba was Peregrine’s name in religion; the name he had been given when he took his monastic vows. His brothers all called him Father Peregrine, which was his baptismal name, agreeing that Peregrine the hawk was more in keeping with the man than Columba, the dove; he could be gentle and merciful, but he was no dove. Even his compassion burned with the fierce ardour of his spirit. No dove. But as a matter of propriety, outsiders to the community knew him as Father Columba.
‘Yes. Can I see him?’
‘Well….’ Martin pulled a long face. ‘I wouldn’t, not if I were you, Brother. I don’t want to upset you, but he’s not right, like. He’s as limp and floppy as a stick of wilted rhubarb; his eyes turned up in his head, and as helpless as a baby, too, if you know what I mean. There’s no point in speaking to him, not really. He’d not know you.’
‘I see. Thank you.’ Brother Tom turned away. He could not now remember the rest of that day. The events of it all gave way to the dull pain of sadness. It must have been like any day, shaped by the round of prayer and work, but all he could remember of it was lying in his bed in the abbot’s chamber that night, listening to the regular breathing of Father Chad’s peaceful sleep; wanting to cry, and telling himself not to be so silly, wanting the familiar comfort of Peregrine’s grey eyes watching him shrewdly as he poured out his troubles.
‘This is a big one, Father,’ he whispered into the sleeping dark. ‘I need your counsel to help me through this.’ And he remembered the senseless anger and indignation he had felt that Peregrine was not there, now when he needed him.
At Mass in the morning he had sat in his stall gazing up at the great wooden crucifix, as he had seen Peregrine do, times beyond counting. But it was nothing, only lifeless wood. God seemed as far away as the sun in the sky, shimmering in remote, impassive glory on the half of the world that was not engulfed in the night of sickness and confusion and distress.
After Chapter, where he had listened with aching resentment to Father Chad, sitting in the abbot’s chair, giving the abbot’s address, he had gone again to the infirmary, and found Martin Jonson sitting out in the morning sunshine, sorting through a great bag of absorbent sphagnum moss.
‘Good morning to you. Brother Thomas! Not much change I’m afraid, if it’s Father Columba you’re asking after. He’s a little better, maybe. Not so limp today, but his right side is all stiff: apoplexy. Brother John says it is. They’ve only just started on washes and physic dosing and what have you. Truth to tell, you’d be wasting your time waiting. We’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you,’ Tom had said miserably, and trailed slowly back down the path to the cloister buildings. That day he could remember. He remembered sweeping the floor in the abbot’s house, moving out his bed into the dorter upstairs, because Father Chad did not need him in the night to help him dress and fasten his shoes, as Peregrine had.
‘You don’t think he’ll be back, then?’ he had asked Father Chad, trying to keep his voice casual, trying to make it sound like a friendly enquiry. The sick pain of sorrow that wept inside him was too private to share with anyone. He did not want Father Chad to see it. He thought of all the times he had come into the abbot’s house, in perplexity, in heartache, in temptation—‘Father, can I talk to you?’—and Peregrine putting aside his work, looking at him affectionately, perceptively—‘Tell me about it.’
Father Chad shook his head doubtfully. ‘Brother John thinks not. He’s paralysed all down one side, you see, and he can’t speak. They think he can see and hear, but… no, Brother. I’m sure he won’t be back.’
‘No,’ said Tom. ‘No, of course not. I’ll move the bed.’
He remembered waiting on Father Chad at table, the concerned enquiries of guests, and Father Chad’s discreet, reassuring answers: ‘Not too well—overwork—complete rest for a while. No, we’re not at all sure… yes, he will be delighted to know you were here and greeted him. Yes, I will pass on your good wishes with all my heart… no; no visitors, I’m afraid.’
When he was free to go, Tom went early into chapel for Compline. He sat in his stall, thinking nothing, holding the sadness inside him like a great weight; sitting very still lest the rolling weight of sorrow topple his equilibrium completely.
Suddenly aware of someone beside him, he looked up, into Brother Michael’s face. Brother Michael, Brother John’s assistant in the infirmary, had been with Brother Tom in the novitiate for a short while, and they had the ease between them of men who had trained together, even though years had passed since those days.
‘Are you not coming to see him, then?’ Brother Michael asked. His gentle friendliness undermined most men’s defences. Tom felt the tears welling in his eyes.
‘I came. Martin said….’ he couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘Martin Jonson sent you away?’
Tom nodded.
‘I’m sorry. He had no business to. Come in the morning, after High Mass.’ Brother Michael paused. ‘And what about you, Tom? This must be distressing you. Have you talked to anyone about it?’
‘No.’ Brother Tom replied dully. ‘There’s no one I want to talk to.’
Brother Michael looked at him, quietly taking in the harshness of pain in his face.
‘You know where to find Brother John and me, if you need us. I’ll see you in the morning then, yes?’
Brother Tom nodded. He did not trust himself to speak. The Compline bell was ringing, and the chapel beginning to fill up. He did not want to make a spectacle of himself here. Brother Michael pressed Tom’s hand gently, then took his place in his own stall.
In the morning, as soon as Mass and Chapter ended, Tom hurried up to the infirmary. He went in, and found Martin carrying a tray of drinks out to the old men who were sitting in the sun in the physic garden.
‘Can I go in and see Father?’
Martin smiled at him cheerily. ‘Yes, I don’t see why not today. You’ll have to wait a minute though, the brothers are washing him and whatnot just now. There’s a bench there outside his room if you’d like to sit yourself down till they’re finished. He’s not so bad this morning. They think he’s going to pull through. He’s not like he was that first day—grey as a corpse he was, gave me the shivers! Brother John thinks he’s all there and understanding us now, though I must say I can’t see much sign of it. His eyes have righted themselves, but that’s about all. Brother John says we have to keep talking to him, chatting like. “Chin up, never say die!” I say to him, and, “Look on the bright side!” Well, it’s important to keep sick people happy, that’s true enough. Sit you down then. They’ll not be long.’
Tom went and sat on the bench outside the room. The door was ajar, and he could hear Brother John’s voice talking quietly to Brother Michael. Years, those two had worked together now; they were a good team, understanding well the blend of hygiene, discipline, compassion and medicine that was needed to promote healing. He listened to the calmness of Brother John’s voice.
‘We’ll leave the sheet for now. He may need a clean one later anyway. Has he passed water this morning? Yes? Recently? Good. Bowels open? No? Still not? That’s three days. Hmm. We’ll have to do something about that then. I don’t want to be messing him about with enemas. You dosed him, yes? But no luck. Let’s have a look then, and clear out whatever’s necessary. Pass me the jar of ointment there.’
Tom listened to the gentleness and kindness of his voice as he spoke to his patient, soothing.
‘Father, we’ve to look and see if you need to relieve yourself, or you’re going to be in pain. I won’t hurt you. We’ll roll you on your side over to Brother Michael, and I’ll check if there’s a stool formed needing removing, and take it out if there is.’
Silence.
‘Ah, yes, I thought so. That’s impacted there. He needs it out.’
Squelching. A whimpering moan.
‘Oh God, will you never finish with this man?’ Tom’s spirit groaned. ‘How much more are you going to put him through? How much more pain and infirmity and humiliation have you got in store for him?’
He leaned his head back against the cool stone of the wall behind him, and closed his eyes. ‘It’s not fair,’ he whispered. ‘It’s not fair.’
Jesus, whom Peregrine worshipped and clung to as a suffering, broken Lord, was determined, it seemed, to make him bear the same grim cross, endure it to the bitter end. ‘What a wonderful friend you are,’ Tom muttered.
‘There, that’ll do for the moment. You should be more comfortable now, Father. Hold him like that a minute, Brother while I wash my hands, and I’ll give him a quick wash, then we’ll leave him in peace.’
Silence. Water splashing. A nailbrush. Silence.
‘Good, that’s done, then. There, we’ll leave you alone now, Father. I’ll come back later and see if you can manage something to eat at midday. I’ll take the pot and empty it, Brother, if you’ll take the water and towel and shaving things.’
They came out of the room.
‘Hello, Brother Thomas! I didn’t know you were here. I hope you haven’t been waiting long. You can go in and see him if you like. He’s not saying anything, but I think he’s with us, taking it all in.’
Tom stood up and made himself smile at Brother John. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and went into the room.
It was cool and dim, a west-facing room that missed the morning sun. A table. A capacious wooden chair. Against the wall another chair, the jordan, with a circular hole cut in the seat and a chamber pot on a shelf below the hole. A low stool. The bed. Tom looked at the bed. He felt his throat constricting in the apprehension. You look small in that bed, he thought.
He went nearer, stood beside the bed looking down at Peregrine. Oh God, he thought; oh my God, what have you done to him?
Saturday morning, shaving morning; they had just shaved him, washed him, combed his hair. This was as good as he was going to look. The right side of his face with its disfiguring scar, sagged tonelessly. His eyes had righted themselves, but they had lost all their lustre of life, staring—no, not even staring, only gazing, blankly. Tom could not be sure that those eyes saw him at all. There was a mute, bleak, stillness about that face, except for the lips that vibrated and spluttered loosely and noisily with every outbreath. Every breath in grunted and rasped in his nose. Tom stood looking down at him. ‘Oh God,’ he whispered. ‘Oh suffering Jesus… Father of mercy… oh my God….’
The door pushed open, and Brother Michael had returned, entering softly. He came and stood on the other side of the bed.
‘Here’s Brother Tom come to see you, Father,’ he said lightly. ‘He’s been before, but now you’re well enough to see him, and looking very clean and presentable. You put me to shame indeed! Your first visitor; and if you’re very lucky, he might even say “Good morning” to you.’
Tom looked up at Brother Michael incredulously. What was the point in saying anything to this?
Brother Michael returned his gaze with a challenge in his eyes. ‘Please,’ his lips mouthed silently.
Tom swallowed. He put out his hand and laid it gingerly on Peregrine’s head, his thumb caressing his brow. ‘Good day to you, Father,’ he said. He looked up desperately at Brother Michael.
‘Better not stay too long, not today.’ That same light, easy tone, as if there was nothing wrong; as if he’d been visiting a man with no more than a cold in the head. How does he do it? Tom wondered. He let his hand drop to his side. Not a flicker of response from those dull, gazing eyes. Those eyes… such compassion, intelligence, laughter, anger he had seen burning in those eyes, dark grey brooding eyes. And now… now nothing, shallow emptiness; the bright lamp of the man’s spirit snuffed out to a charred and smoking wick. He turned away, and walked to the door.
‘Tom.’ He looked back at the sound of Brother Michael’s voice. Brother Michael indicated with a slight nod the still figure in the neat infirmary bed. Peregrine had turned his head. The lifeless grey eyes were following him. They bore no spark, the song of the spirit was extinguished, but they were watching him go. Tom looked back a long moment before he left the room.
Brother Michael followed him out, walked with him out onto the path, where the bright sunshine stabbed their sight.
‘He’s going to die, then?’
‘No,’ said Brother Michael, ‘we don’t think so. Not now.’
‘You mean, he’s going to live? Like that?’
Michael hesitated. ‘It’s impossible to say. He should improve—Brother John thinks he will improve, and so does Brother Edward. He should be able to get out of bed, sit in a chair.’
Tom looked at Brother Michael. ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said bitterly.
‘It may be better than that. He may recover his speech.’
‘Speech? He’ll have to recover his mind first!’
‘We don’t know that his mind is gone, Tom. It’s better not to jump to hasty conclusions.’
‘How long will he live, like this?’
‘We don’t know. It could be years, months, hours—we don’t know.’
‘But he’s not going to die.’
‘We don’t think so: but it’s impossible to say. We don’t know.’
‘Don’t know much, really, do you?’
Brother Michael did not reply at once. He plucked a leaf from a bush of lemon balm that grew at the side of the path, and crushed it absently in his fingers. ‘I love him too, Tom,’ he said quietly. ‘So does Brother John. It’s not easy for any of us.’
‘No. I don’t suppose it is. I’m sure you look after him admirably. I won’t hold you up any more.’
Brother Michael sighed as he watched Tom walk away. Which would I rather have, he wondered: the luxury of turning my back like that, or the privilege of facing it?
He went back into the building. The old men needed an opportunity to relieve themselves, and there were three men to be bathed before the end of the morning, and half the beds still to be made.
Brother Tom went straight up to the abbot’s house, not seeing, not thinking, his memory harrowed by the vision of that empty, foolish, blowing face, like a derelict house with the shutters broken and the door swinging loose. He came in to Father Chad and requested bluntly to be transferred to the farm. He half-wished Father Chad had it in him to look at a man with shrewd compassion, ‘Tell me about it’; but Father Chad was not one to probe too deep. Tom looked into amiable, accommodating brown eyes; not astute grey ones that saw through to the soul.
‘It would make more sense for you to be on the farm than working in a job like this, wouldn’t it?’ asked Father Chad.
‘Yes, Father. I’d like to be on the farm just now.’
And now he came into the farmyard, and stood listening for clues of Brother Stephen’s whereabouts. The farm track wound up through the farm buildings—a barn, the cow byre, the milking shed with a dairy attached to the back of it.
This dairy was the occasion for many caustic remarks by the kitchen brothers, whose own dairy, at the back of the kitchen, was a spotless model of cool, scrubbed cleanliness, pleasingly stocked with wide bowls of cream set to rise, and dripping nets of curds destined to become soft, delicate white cheese, and pats of yellow butter, and stoneware pitchers of milk. The farm dairy, by contrast, was more or less swilled down each day and brushed through, but it was a comfortable haven for bats and spiders, and never scoured so viciously as to disturb the corners. A large, rough table stood in the centre, and that was well enough scrubbed. On it, the milk pails and water pails were stacked side by side, and the barrels in which the farm brothers transported the milk down to the kitchen, to be poured out for using fresh or making cheese, or left in the barrel to be churned for butter. Along one wall of the dairy ranged the capacious feed chests of grain and dried beet, which kept the cows happy during milking. Strictly speaking, these had no place in the dairy, but it was the most difficult building for the cows to plunder, so there they stayed.
On the far side of the milking shed was a foldyard and a byre. After milking, the beasts went through into the yard, where they stayed in colder nights, and daytimes as well in the depths of winter.
In the summer, they were released into the pasture beyond the yard, but it was still useful to send them out through the foldyard, because any beast with mastitis or a cut leg could be kept back for treatment when the rest of the cows went out to pasture.
Past the milking shed, the track curved on up the hill to an apple orchard enclosed by a stone wall. The pig sties formed part of the wall, and these apples grew mainly for the benefit of the pigs. They also fed on the beechmast and acorns that fell from a row of trees planted in a curve around the upper side of the orchard, sheltering the farm buildings from the north and east winds.
This year the two sows had fourteen piglets between them, and these Brother Stephen was nurturing carefully for the bishop’s visit in the spring. He fed them on kitchen swill and wild plants, sow thistle, comfrey and dandelions, with the added luxury of a pail of milk thrown over their barley meal in the morning. The littler boys from the abbey school hunted snails on wet afternoons when lessons had finished. They took a gruesome pleasure in watching the pigs’ eager, abandoned greed as they snuffled and crunched their way through a pail of them.
Beside the pig sties a stout stone shack with a thick, heavy oak door that fitted snug to the ground with no space beneath it, housed a variety of Brother Stephen’s veterinary implements and animal medicines. From this shed there suddenly erupted the most appalling cacophony of noise; a deafening racket of screaming and squealing which Tom could attribute to only one thing. Brother Stephen was castrating the piglets. Brother Tom cast a nervous glance up towards the orchard. Where were the sows?
His question was answered the instant he looked. The two of them, in furious haste, came belting down the orchard to the gate in response to the screaming panic of their offspring.
Tom knew from experience that they could lift the orchard gate off its hinges as if it were no heavier than a milking stool. The pigs, if they could get their noses under the stone sinks in which they were fed, tossed them carelessly aside as though they weighed as little as a wooden pail.
Once in the farmyard, they would not be able to get at Brother Stephen about his bloody work: that was why the door had been so carefully fitted, too nicely seated to admit any pig’s snout. Their enraged motherhood would therefore wreak its vengeance on whomever their small, livid eyes caught sight of. A full-grown pig provoked to wrath can crush a man’s limb between its teeth with astonishing ease. Tom knew. He had witnessed it.
He stood frozen for one moment as the two sows thundered down the orchard to the gate, then, ‘Sweet mother of God!’ he gasped, and fled to the milking shed. He dragged the door shut behind him, sweating and cursing the accumulation of straw and cow dung that clogged around the foot of the door, and the rust that bound the hinges. The cows were staid old beasts, used to the routine of milking. They had no objection to it provided there was a manger of cereal in it for them, and they entered the shed in placid procession every morning and evening, each strolling peaceably to her own tethering ring, awaiting her pail of food. Those cows weren’t going anywhere. No one had had need to close that door for years.
Brother Tom heard the orchard gate go with a crash. ‘Oh, God, my God!’
He was shaking as he got the door to and dropped the heavy iron latch. Within seconds two dewy, whiskered pink snouts were snuffling and questing under the door. Tom watched in awe as the two of them heaved and the tall, wide door shifted a little. The hinges were made like those of all the farm buildings’ doors, so that the doors could be lifted off if they were needed elsewhere or needed replacing.
‘Dear heaven….’ Tom murmured as he watched the hinges creak and shift. He didn’t believe even the two sows together could take the weight of that door, and yet… ‘Oh no, you’re not having me for breakfast, sweetheart,’ he said, and went through the milking parlour into the dairy. This time the door presented no problems, being always secured to keep the beasts out of the feed. Tom went in and shut it behind him. The latch was on the dairy side of the door, accessible from the milking parlour by a round hole cut in the wood of the door. Cattle had too much of an aptitude for mastering latches with their noses for a farmer with any sense to attach the latch where they could reach it.
On the table in the centre of the room a pail of milk and a pail of barley meal stood waiting. When Brother Stephen had finished with the piglets, he would release them out of the shed to their indignant mothers, wait until both piglets and sows had calmed down and wandered away, then restore their confidence in him and tempt them back to captivity with this extra feed.
Tom scrambled up onto one of the feed chests, and waited. Even after the ear-splitting discord of the terrified piglets had ceased, he did not dare move.
Eventually, he heard the scrape and creak of the milking shed door. Common sense told him it was Brother Stephen, but still he did not dare move. Pigs, after all, were intelligent and resourceful animals. Then unmistakably human fingers reached through to the latch of the dairy door and lifted it. Brother Stephen entered the dairy just in time to catch Brother Tom climbing down from the feed chest.
Brother Stephen stopped in his tracks, gazing at Tom in blank surprise. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ he enquired in amazement. Brother Tom found the question, and the foolish look on Brother Stephen’s face, intensely irritating.
‘I thought,’ he replied with biting sarcasm, ‘that the peaceful pastoral setting of this hillside would be an ideal environment for some private meditation. What do you think I’m doing, you fool? I got here just as you started work on the pigs.’
A slow grin spread over Brother Stephen’s face, and he began to laugh. ‘You were hiding from the pigs?’ he chuckled.
‘Is that so perishing funny? I only just got in here in time.’
‘Well, well. What are you doing up here anyway?’ Brother Stephen lifted the pail of milk and the pail of meal from the table. ‘Come and show your face to the pigs.’
‘I’ve permission to come and work on the farm now.’
‘For good?’ Brother Stephen looked at Tom in pleased surprise.
‘For good.’
‘How comes that, then?’ asked Brother Stephen as they walked across the farmyard. ‘Lift the gate back onto its hinges, will you? Here, pigs! Piggy, piggy! Here, pigs!’
He tipped the meal and milk into one of the stone troughs that stood in the orchard, and banged the bucket on the side of it, calling. In a cloud of dust, the pigs came bustling up the farm track, and hurried greedily into their orchard, all trauma forgotten before the happy prospect of food.
Brother Stephen shut the gate on them, and he and Tom stood watching the grunting, hasty delight of their feeding.
‘Father won’t be out of the infirmary again,’ said Tom. ‘Father Chad is willing to have someone else for his attendant. Attendants. He wants two.’
‘Yes, well that’s sensible enough. It’s a job for two men, for so much of the time is employed in standing about.’
‘Father didn’t think so.’
Brother Stephen glanced at Tom’s face, and decided against pursuing that conversation.
‘So,’ he said brightly, ‘you’re up here with us. Well I don’t need to tell you how glad I am. One more day to dry that hay out, and we’ll mow it tomorrow, God willing, if the fair weather holds. I need your hands, and I need your sense. We’ve Brother Germanus since he took his simple vows, but that’s only been six weeks, and you wouldn’t think he’d ever been within hailing distance of a cowshed, to watch him work. You couldn’t have come at a better time. Wish we’d had you for shearing.’
Brother Tom did not reply for a moment. He leaned on the gate, staring gloomily at the pigs.
‘Shall I milk tonight, then?’ he said after a while, without enthusiasm.
‘Yes, please. Brother….’ Brother Stephen paused.
‘What?’
‘I know how you feel about Father Abbot—’
Brother Tom interrupted him savagely. ‘Do you?’
Brother Stephen tried again, hesitantly, searching for the right words. ‘I’m sorry about it. That’s all I wanted to say. It’s all I can say. We all know how close you are to him. It must be very painful for you.’
‘Yes. Well, there’s no point crying over spilt milk, is there? I’ll do the cows, if you like, this evening. What about this afternoon?’
Brother Stephen sighed. It seemed Tom wanted his heartache kept private.
‘Thank you. We’ll start the hay first thing tomorrow, then, as soon as the dew’s off the field. If you’ll milk tonight I would be grateful, and in the morning, please. This afternoon I’m sharpening and greasing the scythes, and looking over the hay wagons. Then I’m going up to the hay field and the top barn to make sure all’s ready. I’ll have Brother Germanus with me, but you can come along if you like.’
Brother Tom pulled a face. ‘No thanks. Don’t fancy his company. I’ll go and help Brother Paulinus get his beans in, and pod them tonight after Vespers. They’ve cropped well. He needs help. Oh, ’struth, there’s the Office bell already.’
The two of them walked back down the hill in silence. Tom did not spare a glance at the infirmary buildings as they passed them on their way to the cloister buildings and the abbey church.
The choir was full of sunbeams, and the whispering quiet of the movement of the brothers’ robes and their sandals on the floor, the quiet undertow of sound that served only to emphasise the invisible river of light and peace that flowed at all times in the chapel.
Brother Tom was grateful for the silence as the brethren gathered to pray, each one motionless in his stall, his cowled head bent reverently.
Tom sat down in his own familiar place, Theodore quietly turning the breviary pages to find the psalm and reading in the stall beside him. Brother Cormac had the stall on the other side, but his place was empty. The kitchen brothers rarely all made it to the Midday Office, occurring as it did during the preparations for the main meal of the day, any more than the infirmary brothers managed all three to attend the Office. Tom looked for the infirmary brothers. Old Brother Edward was there in his place, so bent and frail these days, he looked as though a puff of wind might blow him away; and Brother Michael, just slipping into his place now at the last minute, as the cantor rose to sing the versicle.
‘Deus in adjutorium meum intende.’
Tom felt suddenly weary of the whole business as he rose to his feet with the rest of the community. ‘Domine ad adjuvandum me festina.’
He sang the words of the Office numbly, automatically; but the duty of worship, that usually sat so comfortably on him, today seemed too tedious to bear. Tom looked at Father Chad; the prior, so naturally filling the abbot’s place, sitting in his chair. It rankled. Why couldn’t they have left his place empty, allowed his absence as the reminder of his presence, let his empty chair stand for a silent hope that he was not finished, not dead? I’m being unfair, Tom told himself. They have to fill the office. They don’t pretend to replace the man. And besides, he is finished. Not dead maybe, but over, done with.
The Office ended, and the brothers filed out into the cloister to wash their hands at the lavatorium, then into the refectory to stand before their places for the long Latin grace. They sat down to eat: fish, beans (again), bread, fruit.
The reader stood at the lectern reading some intermin able ramble from the Church Fathers. This could go on forever, Tom thought. An endless, suffocating round of days; beans, porridge, bread, prayer, watered ale, silence. When I die, he thought, I shall go to heaven and St Peter will say, ‘And what have you done with your life, my son?’ and I shall say, ‘I have been to chapel seven times a day, my lord, every day for years and years and years. I have got up in the middle of the night to pray, every night, for years and years and years. I have choked down Brother Cormac’s bread—uncomplaining, mark you my lord, give me credit at least for that—and I have eaten beans and pottage, pottage and beans, dried beans, fresh beans, stewed beans, boiled beans, baked beans till the thought of them turned my stomach.’
And St Peter will look at me in horrified pity and say, ‘Is that true, my son? Is that what you did with the life you were given? Well, that’s a shame, because you only have one. You won’t get a night’s sleep, or roast beef in heaven, you know. Ah well, chapel’s along there. Have a nice eternity.’
Brother Francis, whose turn it was to wait at table, was removing Tom’s dish from under his nose. It was not like Brother Tom to leave half his food, and Francis paused, looking questioningly at Brother Tom. Tom came out of his reverie, and looked at the dish of beans and bread sopped in fish juices. He shook his head. Francis smiled at him, and took the dish.
Brother Tom spent the afternoon in the vegetable garden, picking beans.
‘I thought we’d take the haulm down and burn it today, but it’s still going strong, isn’t it?’ he remarked to Brother Paulinus. ‘We shall be in beans up to our necks all winter. Oh, joy. Here, I’ll take this lot and shell them this evening after Vespers.’
As soon as Vespers was sung, Tom went swiftly up the hill to the farm, and brought the cows in, milked them, brought the milk down the hill on a hand barrow (‘Whatever did you do that for?’ asked Cormac in astonishment, in the kitchen. ‘You’ll kill yourself. Use the pony, for heaven’s sake; that’s what we keep it for.’). Then he went back to the garden and podded beans until the Compline bell rang as the sun was sinking.
After Compline, he went to his bed in its little cell, the wooden, partitioned cubicle in the dorter that had been allocated to him on moving out of the abbot’s house. The air was lifeless and stuffy. He tossed and turned in his bed and could not sleep.
In the end, he sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, and prayed, silently. ‘I don’t know what you want,’ he prayed. ‘I thought I knew you, but I don’t understand you at all. Lord God, your loving kindness is supposed to be better than life. What have you done to my friend? He loves you. Don’t you know that? Have you forgotten him? Well let me tell you something: you’d better remember him now, because I can’t bear to think about him any more. I’m going to forget him. It hurts too much to see him like that, because I love him, God, and there’s nothing I can do. Nothing. You’re the almighty one, not me. If you love him too, you—you who know everything—then you do something about him. You know what to do. I don’t. If I could work a miracle to make him well again, I’d do it; but there’s nothing, nothing I can do. So it’s up to you now. I can’t stand any more. I’m out of it.’
After that, Tom had no more words, no more thoughts. He sat among the sounds of night; Brother Peter’s whistling snore from the next cubicle mingling with Brother Thaddeus’ awesome rumble from further down the dorter, Theodore’s mutterings, and someone making a most extraordinary noise, rapidly smacking their lips, a sound like a dog chasing fleas in its fur.
Then the bell was ringing for the Night Office, and Tom got wearily to his feet. ‘You heard me, God?’ he whispered, just before he left his cell. ‘You remember him, because I’m going to forget him. I can’t bear to think about him any more.’
Morning came, and Chapter Mass, then Community Chapter, and Father Chad attempting to counsel the brethren on secret sins of the soul, how, according to the Rule, a brother must confess his secret sins to the abbot or a spiritual father, who could discreetly go about healing the wounds of others, seeing they knew how to heal their own wounds.
Do they, indeed? thought Tom bitterly. Does he know, my abbot, how to heal the wounds of his soul and mine too? Oh, shut up, Chad. What do you know about it?
Then the business of the day. Father Chad laying before the brethren the position now with their abbot. No improvement… serious condition… time going on… looking at permanent invalidity… time to consider election of a new man. And Brother John getting to his feet, ‘May I speak?’ Yes, assuredly.
‘Brothers, please don’t write him off. I have seen men before recover from seizures such as this, but they need time, and hope. Something to work for. I beg your patience. Father Chad can stand in for him very well. Give me till the spring to work with him. Let’s elect a new superior at Easter-tide. Things will run smoothly enough till then. Give him his chance. Please.’
Idiot, thought Tom. Blind idiot. Wishful thinking. He’s finished.
Then the community expressing doubt. They thought he was finished too; thought Brother John over-optimistic. Father Chad overruling; ‘Until Easter, Brother John. We know his amazing resilience, the power of his spirit. We grant him his chance.’
Tom shook his head in disbelief. Some people never knew when to let go.
He was glad to get out of the Chapter House and up to the farm. The weather was holding fair, no more than a lacy veiling of white cloud adorning an azure heaven. Tom stood in the hayfield in the sunshine, rolling and fastening back his sleeves, kilting up his habit into his belt. Every year of his life his spirit had lifted in joy at the blue and gold of harvest, but this year he was indifferent to its loveliness, lost in a dull misery that would not let him go, would not let him forget, would not let his soul out of its pain into the singing freedom.
The only hope and gladness in it was the opportunity the harvest offered to work himself into the oblivion of exhaustion, taking out his anger and unhappiness on the standing grass, slaying it in methodical sweeps of the scythe.
‘All right,’ he said to Brother Stephen, ‘let’s start. We’ll have it mown and turned before dark.’
There were four of them to mow the hay; Brother Prudentius and Brother Germanus as well as Brother Stephen and Brother Tom. It was not many, but there was little hay still standing. They had no need to call on the rest of the community until the larger affair of the grain harvest. There was enough hay for the four of them to have their work cut out though, and they went at it at a gruelling pace, sweltering in the heat of the climbing sun. Brother Germanus, though he came of a farming family, was an aristocrat and had never laboured in the fields until he came to St Alcuin’s. He handled the scythe clumsily, though he learned quickly, and he was left further and further behind the others as they mowed in a steady line along the meadow. By the time the bell rang across the hillside for the Midday Office, he was trembling with weariness, his palms bloody with broken blisters.
‘Never mind,’ said Brother Tom unsympathetically. ‘You haven’t held us up too much. We’re three parts done. It’ll be as hot as hell out there this afternoon. The grass’ll be dry enough to turn before night. Bind your hands with a rag. They’ll soon harden.’
‘Easy, Brother,’ protested Brother Prudentius. ‘He’s too young, and I’m too old. You work like a madman if you will, but don’t forget, work here is supposed to be prayer, not frenzy. We can hardly keep up with you.’
‘Let’s not turn it yet, Brother,’ said Brother Stephen. ‘It needs to be well dry. We’ll trust providence and leave it a day. There’s no sense half-killing ourselves to rush it in, only to have the rick burst into flames a month from now because the hay wasn’t dry when it was stacked.’
Tom shrugged his shoulders and grunted his assent.
The brothers went down the hill to eat their midday meal in the refectory. Once the cereal harvest had got underway, they would be given permission to dispense with this midday interruption, but this final day’s mowing was a minor undertaking, and they had been given no dispensation from the Midday Office and meal. They finished the mowing in the afternoon, though it meant skipping Vespers, and stood leaning on the scythes, looking with satisfaction at the swatches of grass lying in neat lines along the meadow.
‘Cows’ll be up,’ said Brother Tom. ‘I’ll milk again tonight.’
‘Brother, you’re a saint,’ Brother Stephen responded warmly. ‘My back’s fit to break in half, and my legs are melting. I’ll be hobbling down that hill like old Father Cyprian. Look at that sky now, coming crimson. Fair weather tomorrow. We shall get this last lot dry and stacked, God willing. Give me your scythe, then, Brother Thomas. I’ll put it away for you. You can do the cows with my blessing.’
Tom gave Brother Stephen his scythe without a word, and set off down to the milking shed. The other men watched him go.
‘What’s eating him?’ asked Brother Prudentius.
‘What d’you think?’ Brother Stephen replied.
‘Aye, well… it’s hit us all hard.’
‘What has?’ asked Brother Germanus curiously.
‘He’s breaking his heart for Father Abbot, is Brother Thomas,’ said Brother Prudentius. ‘He’s taken it hard, poor lad.’
‘Yes,’ said Brother Stephen. ‘Going to make life hard for all the rest of us too, by the looks of it. Still, he’s more use working than he would be sitting about moping. Let’s get these scythes away and grab a bite to eat before Compline.’
Brother Tom sat on the milking stool in the dusk of the milking shed, his forehead leaning into the hollow of a cow’s flank, his hands wet and greasy with milk, rhythmically squeezing and pulling the teats. The whiskery hairs of the firm udder against his hand as he grasped the teat, the warm living bulk of the beast against his head, the gurgling of her belly, and the shifting of her flank as she moved her foot, the inquisitive blowing of her breath as she swung her nose round to inspect him, getting impatient as he stripped down the last of the milk; it made a world. He took refuge in the solid, living presence of her comfortable benevolence.
The milk was finished. Tom rubbed his face against the cow’s warm rough flank, yearning for the comfort of her sensual, unquestioning being. Then he swore and fell back, knocked off his balance as she shifted impatiently, lifting her foot and planting it firmly in the pail of milk.
The sunset was fading by the time he had finished milking, turned the cows loose, swilled down the milking parlour and fed the pigs. He brought the milk down in the hand barrow, the muscles in his shoulders burning, his legs protesting with every weary step.
He ate a hasty meal of bread and cheese and ale in the kitchen as the Compline bell was ringing, tramped wearily to chapel, then fell into his bed and slept like the dead until the insistent clamour of the bell roused him for the Night Office.
After that, his days were a blur of work and weariness. They stacked the precious hay, and thatched the ricks with straw against the rain, the days still holding fine.
Brother Stephen and Brother Tom sweated to get the field shelter out on the hills repaired before the early plums needed harvesting.
Then the cherries were ripe and had to be picked before the birds had them all, and the last of the beans harvested and shelled, spread out to dry for the winter soups and stews, and some saved for sowing next time round.
Apart from that, there were all the little jobs; filling the water butts for the milking parlour, and the cattle troughs, from the spring above the orchard; teaching Brother Germanus to milk the cows, sharpening and greasing the scythes again ready for the corn harvest, clearing the ditches, mending the flails where the leather had perished, patching the hen-house where the fox had got in.
And every night and every morning the milking, and swilling down the shed, scrubbing out the pails, carting the milk, and checking that Brother Germanus had fastened the hens in securely at night, and the geese. Brother Stephen could be trusted not to forget his pigs.
‘I don’t know what we did without you,’ said Brother Stephen with frank gratitude as he and Tom started work on the timbers for the second field shelter. You’ve done the work of three men. I never thought we’d get these done before harvest. At this rate we might attempt the dovecote ourselves before the cold weather comes. We shall have a breathing space before ploughing.’
And gradually, as he immersed himself in the work of the farm, Tom succeeded in blotting out the guilt and helplessness of his thoughts about Peregrine. He ceased to grieve, ceased to wonder if Father Peregrine knew enough to miss him, ceased to notice the ache of it. At first he had to force himself to think only of the farm, but now it came easily.
When he walked past the infirmary on his way down the farm track to chapel, he looked the other way at first; then, when that brought him the view of the back of the abbot’s house, he walked with his head bent, setting himself to think of the milk yield, the egg yield, anything. And he did love the farm. Peregrine’s absence, illness, became a familiar background ache, displaced from the fore of Tom’s mind as he became involved in the work with the beasts and the land.
August passed in shimmering, coppery heat. Tom watched with satisfaction as the fields of grain turned red-gold, white-gold in the sun, the fat ears rustling in the stirring of a breeze at evening. It would be a good harvest, providing the weather held.
The boys from the abbey school turned out to help harvest the plums, which was the usual noisy business of shrieking and laughter, as the boys did battle with the geese in the orchard, climbed the trees, fell out of them, ate the plums, gathered them in baskets, golden and green and purple, sweet and full, with Brother Prudentius fussing to and fro, beseeching the children to handle the fruit with care.
The fleeces from the June shearing all sold, and Brother Tom went with Brother Stephen to the Cistercian abbey higher up in the hills at Mount Hope, to buy some new ewes to replenish their flock.
‘Thirty beauties,’ said Brother Stephen happily, as they unloaded the sheep from the wagon. ‘Beauties. And a good bargain too. Come with me again next time, Brother. You drive a harder bargain than I ever could. They always strip my purse to the lining.’
Tom shrugged. ‘We should have waited and got them in lamb. We’d have paid more, but got a better bargain.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Our ram’s willing enough, and his seed comes cheap.’
Tom shook his head. ‘Their pure stock’s the best. You can’t beat it. Still, never mind. We’ve not struck a bad bargain, as you say. Help me get the milking shed doors down before Vespers, if you will, to keep the cows out of the rick beside the farm track. They’ll spoil it before we have any good of it at all, if we don’t look out.’
‘Get the shed doors down? That’ll take some doing. The hinges are rusted. Don’t you ever stop? I was looking for a rest in the sun, admiring these ewes, this afternoon.’
‘They’re not rusted solid. I oiled them and eased them before we went. They’ll slide out easy.’
Brother Stephen sighed. ‘Oh well, if you’re doing the milking. But that’s my last job today. That trip up to Mount Hope about rattles my bones loose. We usually take a week over it and drive them home. It was madness going in the wagon. Oh, I know, don’t bother to say it; it saves time. For mercy’s sake, will you slow down, Brother Thomas? You’ll be the finish of me. I can’t keep up this pace. You’re like a man trying to run away from his own shadow.’