Throughout October Tom was ploughing. Brother Germanus took over the milking, the pigs and the hens, and kept a watch on the sheep, feeding them in the evenings now the growth of the grass had stopped. They had been put to the tup and were in lamb now, precious sources of revenue and meat.
Brother Prudentius saw to the apple harvest, the abbey school turning out as willing labour again. The loft above the wood store in the kitchen yard had been filled with apples, row upon row of them, green and red and russet; carefully set on the racks so that none should touch its neighbour and any rot be contained. Brother Walafrid passed his days making cider and brewing ale, tending the wines he had started in fruitful September.
Every spare minute Brother Germanus had, he spent chopping wood, sawing and splitting logs. Severe frosts had held off so far, and the brothers hastened with the tasks that grew so much harder in the bitter cold to come.
By the end of October, the fields showed neat strips, ploughed, harrowed and sown. Plenty remained to be done, but they could afford to relax a little, and Brother Tom and Brother Stephen were able to spend a day mending the roof of the byre.
In the evenings, Brother Tom snatched an hour with Father Peregrine, but spent those hours for the most part fast asleep with his feet up on the hearth. He had his own chair in that room now, his own Office-book and ale mug.
Peregrine would talk to him as he dozed. He knew Tom was not listening, but his mind buzzed with Scripture and theology, his whole being dancing like a moth round the dreadful, attractive flame of hope and fear, teaching the brethren in Chapter again.
He must have prepared thirty sermons in the long, empty days of waiting, his mind singing again with theology, philosophy, analogies and quotations.
Sometimes he found himself petrified before the dread of his speech scrambling in the stress of the moment, and sick at the thought of being wheeled in before their eyes. He would not wholly admit his terror of appearing too pitifully grotesque, too much a freak to be seen; but neither could he wholly suppress that fear. His sleep was tormented and destroyed by nightmares of incontinence. He dreamed of sitting in the abbot’s chair on its dais, all Brother John’s careful padding left behind in the infirmary chair they had brought him in, fighting the sudden, desperate urge to urinate, struggling to keep his mind on his talk as his stuttering speech fragmented into nonsense before the polite silence of the brethren.
Always in his dream there would be that watching, listening, sceptical silence sitting in judgement on him, his disintegrated speech finally stuttering into nothing as, appalled, he felt his bladder emptying, on and on, a great sea of it running down the floor of the Chapter House, and the brethren in silence raising their pitying eyes from the stinking yellow river, to watch with curiosity his tears of mortification at the torture of his public shame.
He would wake from this dream night after night, his bed soaked in sweat and urine, and have to force himself to ring his bell to summon the infirmary brother, glad the shadows of night hid his face burning with shame as he mumbled his confession of incontinence. At first, he had been unable to bring himself to call the night brother, but Brother Michael had insisted gently, ‘You must tell us. If you leave it till morning we’re likely to lose the mattress as well, and heaven knows we’ve enough to do without spending the day making mattresses. We could come in and check you at intervals in the night, but I don’t think you want that either, do you?’
And he had shaken his head, speechless in the humiliation.
‘What is it?’ Brother Michael had asked him. ‘What’s upset you?… It’s this blessed Chapter talk, isn’t it? You don’t have to do it, you know. Would you rather not?’
And even more costly than the shame had been the admission: ‘Broth-er, I w-ant to do it m-ore th-an anything.’
He tried out his ideas on Brother Tom as Tom dozed before the fire.
‘D-oes F-ather Ch-ad keep th-eir v-ow of pov-erty before them? They sh-ould never forget poverty. To be p-oor in spirit… Obedience… he w-ill have spoken to th-em of obedience. It is easier to talk about. Ch-astity… T-om, has h-e talked to th-em about ch-astity? Th-ey need to h-ave called to m-ind the f-ire of th-e first love f-or God, s-ingle, h-umble adorat-ion. Celibac-y w-ithout insp-iration an-d tendern-ess is as soul destr-oying as C-ormac’s porridge.
‘H-as he sp-oken to them of th-e Tr-inity? Of perseverance? Has he talked about h-onesty? T-om? T-om? Oh, g-o b-ack to sl-eep, y-ou usel-ess l-ump.’
‘Mm? What? I’m not asleep. What did you say?’
‘H-as h-e talked to th-em about l-ove, T-om; s-uffering love?’
‘Pardon? Who?’
‘F-ather Ch-ad.’
‘Father Chad talk about suffering love? Well… he may have said something that I missed, but… I’d be inclined to doubt it.’
Tom threw another log on the fire and settled peacefully back into his chair.
‘Th-en I sh-ould talk to th-em about th-at. Th-e l-ove of J-esus. Love that gives and goes on g-iving. Th-e defenceless, humble, r-oyal l-ove of Jes-us. Love h-as n-o defences, T-om. Y-ou know it’s l-ove when it h-urts.’
‘Mmm… good idea… you talk to them about that.’
‘Y-ou th-ink so? Tr-uly?’
‘What? Oh, yes….’ Tom’s eyes were closing in spite of his best efforts to pay attention. ‘Sounds good to me… loving when it hurts….’ and he was asleep, and nothing roused him again until the Compline bell rang.
The two of them spent every evening in October in this fashion: Tom working hard on the farm and bone-weary by the end of the day, Peregrine restless in the longing and dread of working again, growing more and more nervous as the first of November approached.
The night of October thirtieth Tom found him in a state of unbearable tension.
‘Talk to him, for mercy’s sake,’ said Brother John. ‘He’s driving us all crazy with this homily of his. We should never have given him so much time to stew over it. He’s thought of nothing else since I don’t know when, and talked of nothing else either. Mind you, he changes it every five minutes. He’s been so on edge today; tore Martin off a strip for some silly little thing—completely lost his temper. I’ll be glad when Thursday’s over and he’s got it out of his system. That’s if we survive tomorrow!’
Brother Tom went into the room and found Peregrine brooding, lost in thought, his chin resting in his hand, scowling in concentration.
‘Byre roof’s as good as new,’ Tom commented cheerfully. ‘And we should have a good crop of winter wheat if….’
‘T-om, wh-at did Augus-tine s-ay in th-e book of h-is Confessions, ab-out th-e inc-arnation? L-oving G-od in things that d-elight… um… “He m-ade th-is w-orld, and is not f-ar off”… oh… M-ementote ist-ud, et conf-undam-ini: r-edite praevaricator-es ad cor… um, it’s Is-aiah, isn’t it? B-ut what ch-apter? Oh, I c-an’t r-emember it, and I us-ed to know it s-o w-ell.’
He shook his head impatiently, his mouth twitching in frustration. ‘C-an’t y-ou rem-ember?’
‘What? Augustine or Isaiah? Either way, the answer’s no. What do you want to know that for, anyway? You’re not trying to impress the Pope. It’s only a homily to a handful of monks who are weary after the harvest. All they need to know is how to find the grace to tolerate each other and stay awake through the reading of the martyrology. I guarantee you there’ll not be a man in Chapter but his heart’ll sink if you start quoting St Augustine in Latin.’
‘Tr-uly? Do y-ou th-ink s-o?’
‘No. I know it. Don’t spin theological marvels for them, just talk to them about Jesus. They like it better.’
‘M-aybe… I w-ish I c-ould r-em-ember it, th-ough. Do y-ou th-ink I’ll g-et th-rough it all r-ight?’
‘Yes. I’m sure you will. Stop worrying about it.’
‘I’m afr-aid of….’
‘Of what?’
Peregrine sat with his shoulders hunched, his head bent, hiding his face.
‘Afraid of what?’
‘Inc-ontin-ence.’
‘That’ll be all right. Brother John said so. You should trust him.’
‘B-ut, if it’s n-ot….’
‘It will be.’
Peregrine sat hunched in brooding silence. He spoke only once more in the rest of that evening.
‘T-om… I’m t-errified,’ he said.
He scarcely looked up to say goodnight when Tom left him to go to Compline. His face was fixed in a frown, staring beyond his present reality, as he groped helplessly in his memory for forgotten teachings, sayings of the Fathers; strove in futility to remember the Athanasian Creed and the famous Corinthians passage on love. To his horror, he found he couldn’t even remember whether it came in the first or second epistle. It all vanished into shadows that mocked him and eluded him. He hardly noticed Tom go.
The Chapter for the following day, October thirty-first, concerned the details of exclusion from the common table for minor faults. Brother Tom made himself as comfortable as he could in his stall, and prepared to hear Father Chad’s careful dissertation on this subject. Tom could not restrain himself from the reflection that anyone who had sat opposite Brother Richard eating pottage might be tempted to commit a minor fault with the sole object of securing exclusion from the common table, but he chided himself for his cynicism, and bent his attention repentantly to Father Chad’s homily, which proved to be, as he anticipated, exceedingly dull but mercifully brief.
After his homily, in the business part of the meeting, Father Chad explained to the brethren that Father Peregrine was to address them the following day in Chapter; said that this should be seen as an encouraging sign of recovery, and though they must not expect too much too soon, they might take hope from this beginning of seeing him returned to them from his long and distressing period of sickness. There was no other significant business that day.
Once released from Chapter, Brother Tom spent the morning with Brother Stephen building a rick to store some turnips and mangels for which there was no more space in the stone shed in the farmyard. They spread a layer of straw, thick enough to protect the roots from ground-frost, and then layered the roots and straw into a stack. There had been no hard frosts as yet, but winter was coming. The two men sweated as they worked, carting the roots and forking the straw, but their hands were red and rough with the cold.
That job done, they fetched the tumbrils out of storage in the barn. The air nipped with a promise of frost now, and the days were coming when the cattle would be housed in the foldyard, feeding on hay and roots, stolid, patient beasts, their breath hanging in steam on the winter cold. Their hay would be forked into the high, freestanding racks, and the roots chopped and fed to them in the wooden tumbrils, great feed troughs that stood on tall legs near the wall of the foldyard.
After that, the morning was all but spent, and Brother Tom went into the dairy to help Brother Germanus, who had set himself the task of scrubbing it out in an effort to rebuff the sarcasm of the kitchen brothers.
‘Brother Thomas!’ A voice hailed him loudly from the farmyard. ‘Brother Thomas!’
Tom looked puzzled. ‘That’s Martin Jonson,’ he said. No monk would stand in the middle of the yard and shout. ‘What’s afoot, I wonder? They’re perhaps needing me in the infirmary. Father’s like a cat on hot bricks about this Chapter address tomorrow.’
Brother Germanus followed him out into the farmyard, where Martin was still calling.
‘I’m here, Martin. Is something wrong?’
‘Aye, I’ll say there is. Father Columba’s took bad: he’s had another seizure. Carrying on something shocking he was this morning. We couldn’t do a thing to suit him. But, “Let it be”, says Brother Michael: “Let it be”—although I can tell you Brother John was looking pretty tight-lipped by the time we got to the morning drink.
‘And there he was, would you believe, he threw his cup of wine across the room, and all because he couldn’t remember how to say some ticklish business in Latin! “Well, here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” I says to him. “You can’t have this sort of going on, not even if you’ve forgot your own name.” And do you know, he swore at me something atrocious—words no man of his calling should even know, not by rights. Fair gobstruck I was.
‘Still, Brother Michael, bless him, he’s the patience of a saint. “Don’t take it ill, Martin,” he says to me, just like that: “Don’t take it ill;” and he was on his knees by the old villain, talking to him as gentle as you please. And what we should have done if there’d been but Brother John and me there I don’t like to think. Still, we shall never know, shall we?
‘Any road, the long and the short of it is, he was took bad again. You should have seen him; eh, it was ghastly! Vomiting he was, and his face as purple as a pulpit cushion, his eyes turned up in his head and his mouth blowing in and out like a flapping sail.
‘So I said I’d come for you. Brother Michael seemed to think you might like to know, being his friend like, so much as you brothers have friends, if you know what I mean.
‘Are you all right, Brother Thomas? You don’t look too good yourself.’
Tom stood with his fists clenched and his face drained of colour, staring at nothing. Everything that made up reality, the solid reassurance of his body, the breeze on his skin, the smells of beasts and hay and earth, the grey banking clouds and the mud under his feet; in that moment he lost it all. There was nothing left to him but the thunder of his heartbeat in the derelict shell of his life.
‘He is… he is still alive?’ he whispered.
‘Oh yes, he’s bad, but he’s with us—just like before: helpless as a babe in arms, his face grey and his wits gone. But he’s not dead. Not yet, any road.’
‘I’ll come,’ said Tom. ‘Go down ahead of me, and tell Brother Michael I’ll come.’ He could not bear to walk down the hill in Martin’s company.
He went back into the dairy, Brother Germanus shadowing him anxiously, and like a man in a dream he picked up the yard-brush he had been using on the floor, and propped it with meticulous care and precision against the wall.
‘I’m sorry I won’t be able to help you finish this job,’ he said, his voice polite, remote; someone else’s voice from far away.
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ replied Brother Germanus. ‘Father Columba needs you with him by the sound of it.’
‘Yes,’ said Tom. He was unsure whether he spoke very slowly, or if it was just that the whole universe had slowed down, stopped all its bustle and colour, condensed all its movement into one slow, agonised, wailing cry. ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘There may still be something I can do for him. I promised him I would do what I could.’
He stood still for a moment, Brother Germanus watching uneasily the haunted gazing of his face. Then he took a deep breath and smiled at Germanus. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’d better go and see what I can do.’
He walked down the hill, cocooned in terror, aware of nothing but the nauseous fluttering of his stomach, the beating of his heart; purposing nothing but that his legs should not give way under him, should carry him into that room, where he might behold that grey, distorted face, and wait a chance to be left alone with the battle-weary, wrecked remains of his friend.
He came to the infirmary, where everything was business as usual: the old men out in their chairs encased in blankets, woolly grey bonnets framing the faces yellow and withered, or veinous purple, of their nodding, dozing heads, and Brother Edward moving among them, rousing them for their cup of wine.
Inside the building, Tom paused at the door of Peregrine’s room, trying to get his body back under control, master the shaking, refuse the icy nausea. He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Help me then, help me,’ he whispered; and he opened the door.
Brother John stood by the bed, bending over the form that lay there. He had his hand laid on Peregrine’s brow, his face thoughtful.
‘Hotter than ever,’ he said, without looking up to see who had entered. ‘This doesn’t look good.’
He took his hand away and lifted the sick man’s eyelids, one by one, moving aside slightly so that the daylight might shine in on the eyes.
They had laid him on his right side on the bed, his left arm and leg cushioned on pillows. Brother John laid his hand on the still, twisted hand on the pillow, rubbing it gently.
‘Peregrine,’ he said, ‘Peregrine. Can you hear me?’
He waited, looking down at his patient. Tom was moved by a sudden impulse of gratitude for the look on John’s face; the gravity, the respect, the sadness. Brother John looked up.
‘Tom, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it was you. Martin told you?’
‘Yes. Can I… can I stay with him for a while?’
‘Of course. Brother Michael and I will sit with him through this morning, but I ought to get some sleep this afternoon in case he needs me through the night. Why don’t you go and get a bite to eat, and come back and sit with him this afternoon?’
‘Eat? Maybe… John, will he live?’
Brother John shook his head. ‘Who can tell? He’s very ill; burning up quite a fever now. Pulse is slow… bounding. Pulled through it last time though, didn’t he?’
‘And if he lives?’ Tom’s voice was husky. He could not iron out the tremor in it.
‘Again, you can’t say. How many times must a ship be dashed against the rocks before it finally tears apart? Each time is one step nearer the last time. Each battering brings further disintegration. All we can say for sure is that right up to the end, before anything else, this broken, helpless, suffering being is a living soul, a house of God’s spirit, needy of tenderness, worthy of respect. I don’t know, Tom. I just don’t know.’
He looked down again at the man on the bed. The sound of the slow, stertorous breathing was the only intrusion on the utter silence.
With an effort, Brother Tom forced himself to take the steps—one, two, three, four, five—that brought him round the bed where he could see Peregrine’s face, clammy and colourless except for the slight, unnatural flush of fever in the cheeks. His lips vibrated with every breath, but the blowing in and out of the paralysed side of his face had been masked by lying him on his right side.
Tom gazed at him, saying nothing. Cold—it seemed so cold today. Brother John laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Get yourself something to eat, Tom. I dare say you don’t feel like it, but he could be days like this.’
Tom shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he won’t.’
Brother John squeezed his shoulder. ‘Have some food. You must. I can’t trust you to be alert to sit with him if you haven’t eaten. No one can say how long he’ll be before we see a change. Go on with you. There’s the bell for Sext now. Come back after the meal.’
Nobody disobeyed Brother John. He had the calm authority that went with responsibility. Tom went to chapel, then to the refectory with all the others, and forced down as much food as he could bear.
When he returned to the infirmary in the afternoon, he found Brother Michael sitting with Father Peregrine. He had a smile for Tom, as always.
‘Hello, Brother. I’m glad you’ve come. He mustn’t be left alone, and although it’s quiet now, someone may need me later. We turned him only just now before Brother John went, so there’s nothing to do but sit with him and keep a watch, keep the fire going and not let his lips get too dry.’
They sat, Brother Michael in Peregrine’s chair and Tom in his own chair, mostly in silence. On the hour Martin came in, and the three of them turned the sick man and changed the padding and the sheet when necessary. Apart from that they just sat and kept watch.
Tom waited, the palms of his hands sweating, for the moment when Brother Michael would leave the room; leave him alone with his promise, his task. But the moment never came. For the first time Tom could remember in all his visits to the infirmary, no bell rang. The afternoon drifted by in tranquillity, the light in the room swelling to a glorious tawny gold as the day drew towards its close.
Once, Brother Edward came in to ask Brother Michael to help Martin change a wet bed. Tom’s heart beat faster, but Edward said, ‘I’ll stay here and keep vigil with Brother Thomas till you’re back. There’s nothing to do for Peregrine, I know, but I’ll share the watch over him a while.’
Brother Edward did not leave until Brother Michael returned, and Brother Michael stayed with Tom while Martin and Brother Edward set out the evening meal trays.
‘It’s a miracle how quiet it is today,’ he remarked once to Brother Tom. ‘Well, you know what it’s like here. Some days we’re rushed off our feet. I don’t think I’ve ever known it this quiet.’
By the time the sun was sinking and the bell began to toll for Vespers, Brother John was back.
He came directly to Peregrine’s room.
‘No change? Ah well.’ He bent over the unconscious man, making his own checks.
‘We’ll give him a wash, shall we, while the others are eating? Edward and Martin can do the feeders, then one of us can help settle them in to bed. No, he’s not much different, is he? Still hot—I don’t like the look of that. I don’t think there’s much point in trying to force fever herbs down him, though; not till he shows more signs of life than this. I’d hate to choke him.’
He looked at Brother Tom. ‘Thank you, Brother, for staying. We’ll look after him now till tomorrow. Go to Vespers and then get some supper and some rest. If you’d like to come the same time tomorrow, that would be a help.’
He saw Tom’s hesitation and added, ‘I will call you, don’t worry. If there’s any change at all, I’ll let you know.’
They were waiting for him to go, Tom could see it. They didn’t want the intrusion of his company while they washed and examined their patient. He dithered a moment longer, then helplessly he left. It would have to wait until tomorrow.
As he sat in the Chapter meeting the next day, Tom wondered if this was what hell was like; a grey suffering limbo of exclusion.
He listened to Father Chad’s homily, but did not hear what he said, and did not take in the announcements. He registered Peregrine’s name being mentioned once or twice in suitably grave tones, but nothing else.
Up on the farm he muddled through his chores, walking down the hill like a sleepwalker when the bell rang for Sext. The other men left him alone when they found their kindly questions met by his dazed, bewildered murmur, ‘He’s… I don’t know… I don’t know….’
After the midday meal, he returned doggedly to the infirmary, where he was met by Brother John.
‘I’m glad you’ve come. I would have sent for you if you hadn’t come anyway. You’ll see a change in him. We must get some of the men bathed this afternoon, so I’ll be glad to have you sit with him. Brother Michael will come and help me as soon as you relieve him.’
This was it then. Tom’s mouth was dry and his knees turned to water as he approached the room. He felt his courage ebbing away from him, his resolve melting.
‘All right, Tom?’ Brother Michael smiled at him as he entered the room.
Tom’s eyes were drawn to the bed, his attention riveted by the racket of breathing that filled the room.
Peregrine lay on his back in the bed, his head and arms supported on pillows. His head was propped slightly to one side, the mouth fallen ajar, his eyes half-open, dull, sightless. A vein pulsed under the scrawny skin of his neck. His face was yellow and seemed to have shrunk. Each breath he drew was a rattling labour, an unnatural, jerky heaving of his chest, separated from the next breath by an age of silence.
Tom looked in horror and sadness at the grievous, pitiful struggle; gazed without moving, without speaking. Yes, there was a change.
Brother Michael watched Tom, took in the tautness of his face, the look in his eyes that gazed across desert spaces of desolation.
Michael nodded. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I know.’
Tom was roused to panic for a moment, and looked at him, horrified, but Michael didn’t know. ‘It’s the same for all of us,’ he said.
And then Brother Michael left, promising to return later when the baths were done. ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be,’ he said, ‘but you can ring his bell if you need me, or you’re worried about anything. We’re not turning him every hour now. No need for that any more.’
Tom watched him go, waited until the door clicked shut, gave him time to walk away. Then he moved slowly to the bedside. He put out his hand and touched the pillows that supported the unconscious man. Those under his arms were lumpy, solid, real monastic pillows, but the one under his head was filled with down, soft and light. Tom slid his hand under Peregrine’s head. It felt unpleasant, sweaty. He lifted it slightly, leaning over him, and with his other hand he tugged the pillow free. He clasped it to him, holding his breath, his heart thudding as he lowered Peregrine’s head back down onto the bed. Without the support of the pillow under his head, his mouth fell open even further. Tom could see inside it. There were brownish, dry patches on his tongue, and little drifts of sticky white saliva. The skin on the lips was tight and dry, cracking.
Holding the pillow in his arm, Tom reached over the bed to the bedside table, where a sponge lay in a bowl of water. He squeezed it lightly and carried it to Peregrine’s mouth, dripping a trickle of water onto the parched tongue, gently moistening the cracked lips. Then he replaced the sponge in the bowl.
‘It’s because I promised you,’ he whispered, ‘It’s only because I promised you.’
He stood there, very close to the bed, clutching the pillow in both hands, holding it ready as he looked down at the bleak, withdrawn, shrunken face.
He swallowed convulsively, his heart hammering and his head wobbling in uncontrollable agitation.
He couldn’t do it.
After a while, he backed away from the bed, still gripping the pillow. He sat down on the low stool beside Peregrine’s chair, his eyes fixed on Peregrine’s face, watching the tough, insistent tic of the pulse in his neck, listening to the arduous labour of his breathing, watching the dead grey absence of his eyes, half-expecting even now to see them waken to a flicker of humour, anger, tenderness.
His grief and frozen helplessness grew until they overwhelmed him; till grief was no more part of him, but he was all grief, had become absorbed into grief, had no more being beyond this moment. Enfeebled of all power to act, he began, unawares, to rock, clinging to the pillow for comfort, past knowing or thinking, seeing nothing, hearing nothing but that face and that harsh, erratic breath.
‘Oh God, give me the courage to do this thing,’ he whispered in agony. ‘Damn me if you like, but first give me the courage to do what I promised… oh God… for he always kept faith with me.’
He had no idea how long he sat there on the chair, clutching the pillow to him, his body rocking in grief. The golden light of afternoon filled the room and then in time subsided until the place grew dim with the violet shadows of evening, and cold. The slow, harsh breathing went on and on; a breath rasping in… the slow wheezing rattle of the outbreath… a long, long pause; impossibly long… another painful indrawing of breath. On and on.
It seemed that the diminution of human life to its last extremity was a grim wrestling with God. For did they not share the same breath, God and man? Neither, it seemed, was willing to let go, and Tom could not find the courage to come between them and break the hold that anchored this man to life.
He did not look round when the latch of the door clicked. He heard it, and yet he did not, everything in him absorbed in the slow, rattling travail of breathing that had become the heart of the cosmos.
‘It’s a hard, slow climb for him, isn’t it?’
He glanced up then, at the sound of Brother John’s voice.
‘Mm?’
‘Not an easy one.’ Brother John looked down at Tom’s haggard, distracted face. ‘Shall we put that pillow under his head?’ he said gently. ‘It might help to make him a bit more comfortable.’
Tom sat without speaking. He looked at Brother John, then stared down at the pillow as if he’d never seen it before, dazed with grief. And he realised with slow, appalled remorse that he had missed the opportunity. His consciousness filled with the realisation that he’d left it too late. The chance had come and gone, and he had squandered it on his own distress; and now it was too late.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ he said, gazing stupidly at the pillow. He raised his eyes, bewildered with grief, to Brother John’s face. ‘I promised him, but I can’t… I… I’ve failed him… I can’t do it.’
Brother John knelt down beside him and took his hands between his own. Tom’s eyes searched his, yearning for refuge in John’s kindness and sanity, but there was nothing, anywhere, to ease the heartache that was bursting inside him. ‘Promised him what, Tom?’
Brother John’s eyes looked steadily back into his, full of warmth and understanding. But warmth and understanding belonged to a dead past, to a man who had not broken his promises, failed his friend in the time of his most helpless extremity. In this cold landscape of grief and regret, warmth perished, and understanding starved; there was no comfort in all the world.
‘Promised him what, Tom?’
‘I promised him that… if he had another seizure… if he was helpless… dumb… incontinent… I would finish it for him. He said… he couldn’t face it again. He said, hemlock, a pillow on his face, anything… and I said I would. I promised… but I can’t… when it comes to it, I just can’t… and listen to him….’
Brother John nodded. ‘I know.’
He chafed Tom’s cold hands gently between his own. ‘You don’t have to do it, Brother,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s dying. This is the end now. This is it. He’ll be gone before the dawn. Stay with him. You haven’t failed him, Tom—far from it. Don’t leave him now. I’ll go and get a fresh bowl of water to wash his face and moisten his mouth. Stay with him and say whatever you still need to now, then I’ll fetch Father Chad for the last rites, have them send word to his family. Help me then; let’s put this pillow back under his head.’
Stiff and cold and weary, Tom rose to his feet and approached the bed. With gentle competence, Brother John slid one hand under Peregrine’s head, one under his shoulder, and raised him sufficiently for Tom to replace the pillow on the bed. They both stood there looking down at the dying face, all the life in it shrunken back, conserved for the one arduous work of breath. His skin lay, a toneless shroud on the bones of his face, his eyes half-open, unfocused, dull as stone.
‘Will he hear me? Does he know anything?’
Brother John looked thoughtfully, a long time, at the sick man. He put a hand to Peregrine’s brow, smoothed it tenderly.
‘Do you hear us, Father? Do you know we’re here? Or is everything you have going into this fight for breath? We aren’t sure, neither of us… but in case you can hear us, in case you know… we want you to know—we love you.
‘Stay with him, Tom. Say goodbye. I won’t be too long.’
He glanced at the dying fire, slipped out of the room, and went in search of Brother Michael.
‘He’s going, Brother. I’ll go and fetch Father Chad, though I dare say he’d rather have had Theodore if I can work it tactfully. Make up the fire in case we’re there through the night, and keep an eye on Brother Thomas. It’s almost too much for him, I think. Oh, and you’d better take him a light. It’s nigh on dark in there.’
‘It won’t be long now, Father,’ Tom whispered as Brother John left the room. ‘Brother John says it won’t be long. Just a little while, and God can have his breath back, and the Earth can have her dust back, and all this hell will be over. I suppose… you won’t miss me, where you’re going. I don’t know how I’m going to get along without you. I always did mess things up. Thank you for the help you gave me. Thank you for the man you were. Thank you for your courage, and your honesty, and your compassion… Father… goodbye. I can’t tell you how much I love you.’
He reached over for the sponge and squeezed a little water between Peregrine’s lips, wiped the sponge gently along his lips to moisten them. He dropped the sponge back in its bowl, and carefully with his fingers wiped away the trickle of water that dribbled from Peregrine’s mouth. He lifted his hand and traced with his fingertips along the ridge of his friend’s cheekbone, along his eyebrow; turned his hand over and stroked with the back of his fingers the hollow of his temple and down the sunken, toneless cheek to the bone of his jaw; a slow, rapt contemplation of tenderness.
‘Father… I’ll tell them what you said. “Love has no defences—you only know it’s love when it hurts.” I won’t forget.
‘Oh Jesu… Son of God, Son of Man… you have been his Lord for so long, master and man. Forgive him that his courage failed and he tried to take a way out of this long misery. Forgive me that I would have helped him but that my courage failed too. Jesus… Jesus, he loved you in Gethsemane, pleading that the cup be taken from you… he loved you for the faltering of your courage… in your utter humanity, he saw God…
‘Look… Jesus, in mercy, look at him… look… oh Jesu… have mercy on your man.’
And then the night. The long, slow watch of the night: last rites, anointing, prayer of absolution from all earthly weight of sin. And the watching and waiting, the painful rattling breaths measuring out the hours of the night.
Until, as the first grey finger of day came stealing in, he drew breath, and they waited… waited… but he did not breathe again. In the dreary uncertain light of dawn, before the sunrise, he was gone.
Tom, who had thought before that those eyes looked lifeless, dull, gazed down on them now and saw beyond doubting, Peregrine was gone. Even his helplessness, his blind, broken suffering he had taken with him: those belonged with his breath, were part of the breath of God in him. They were God’s helplessness, God’s brokenness; and he had taken them back to himself. Peregrine had left nothing behind but this husk of flesh, a cast-off, finished corpse. And it was to that last trace of his presence among them that his brothers must now address their respect.
‘Tom? Would you like to do the last offices for him, with me?’ asked Brother John.
Tom nodded in silence. He could not take his eyes from that dead face; could not take in that this was the end… the end.
‘Brother Michael, will you bring me the things I shall need? Send Martin to tell Brother Basil and Father Chad. Tell him to remind Father Chad he had family; Melissa Langton, and there is a brother still living.
‘What do we do with his ring? Leave it on while he’s lying in the chapel, isn’t it, and take it off for burial? I think that’s what we did with Abbot Gregory.
‘All right then, Tom; have you ever done this before?’
‘No.’
‘We want everything off the bed, pillows, blankets and everything, so we can see what we’re doing; that’s right. Now it’ll take both of us to get his clothes off—very unwieldy is a corpse. Cut the shirt. We’ll burn it. No sense in heaving him about unnecessarily. Ah, Michael, thank you.
‘What shall I put in his hands, Tom, to lay him in the chapel? Some men, I lay out with their rosary in their fingers, or fold their hands over their Office book, or a crucifix, depending on the special character of their devotion. I laid out Father Matthew with a copy of the Rule.’
Tom pondered the question.
‘Nothing,’ he said finally. ‘He should have nothing in his hands. That’s how he wanted to live.’
Brother John nodded. ‘Yes. I think you’re right. Now then, we have to plug anything that might leak—I’ll do that—then you can help me wash him.’
Together they washed him, dressed him in his best habit, combed his hair. They laid him on a clean linen sheet, and folded his hands on his breast, closed his eyes and weighted them down, bound his jaw.
‘Pass me that ball of thread, would you?’ said Brother John as he fastened the dead man’s sandals on his feet.
Tom watched as Brother John cut a length of the linen thread and tied it in a neat figure of eight round the big toes and the ankles, unobtrusively binding the feet into place.
‘There. Done.’ Brother John stood back and cast a critical eye over his work.
‘Right then, we must set to and get this room clear. There’ll be a string of people in even before we can have him lying out in the chapel, I should think. Martin can help me with that though. The fire’s all but dead, but I’ll souse the ashes. We certainly don’t want it warm in here.’ He shot a quick, appraising glance in Tom’s direction. ‘Will you like to sit a moment quietly with him, while I go and get that organised?’
Tom nodded, and Brother John left him, shutting the door behind him.
Left alone, he stood by the bed, his eyes travelling slowly over the motionless form of death. The ivory stillness of the toes; the misshapen fingers stark against the blackness of the habit, decorated with the opulent, bejewelled abbot’s ring; the sharp, jutting outline of the hawkish nose. With his cold, trembling fingers Tom traced the line of the savage scar that ran the length of the right side of the face.
‘Gone….’ he murmured in amazement. ‘Gone… forever….’
Then, in the depths of his numbed, chill disbelief, he felt the first sharp stirrings of a pain too cruel to be borne, the jagged, rending legacy of love.
I don’t know how I’m going to get through this, he thought as he turned away from the bed.
He stooped and untied the knotted tatter of string that had been the kittens’ plaything, from the arm of Peregrine’s chair. For a moment he paused. Brother Basil had begun tolling the church bell; the dolorous, repetitive tolling of the bell for the passing of the dead. He rolled up the scrap of string and put it in his pocket.
Then he left the room and, closing the door behind him, went in search of Brother John.
‘Where have you put his crutch?’ he asked him when he found him.
‘His crutch? It’s in the back room with the wheeled chairs and walking sticks and so on. Why?’
‘Can I take it?’
Brother John looked at him. Brother Tom was not a man to be patted on the back and soothed like a child. If this would ease his suffering, why not?
‘Yes, you can take it.’
At the funeral five days later, with its solemn requiem Mass, attended by villagers, Peregrine’s family, the bishop, representatives from other religious houses and local dignitaries of all sorts, Tom stood sealed in remote, indifferent impassivity. He followed the bier with the other brethren up the winding path under the beech trees to the burial ground, and stood with the others in the raw, blowing drizzle, watching the last remains lowered into the earth, and the clay shovelled in. There had been some argument about that, because Father Chad had thought it more fitting to inter him in a vault in the church; but Brother Tom had insisted that he would have preferred to be buried with the ordinary brothers, out here on the hill, under the stars.
Tom was glad he had won that one, but apart from that, the burial had been of little consequence to him. He had said his farewell two days ago after Vespers, when he had lit a fire behind the vegetable garden, of dry, dead weeds, bean haulm and rose prunings. He had cut back the rosemary bushes and brought the trimmings green to the fire. Into the incense of their fragrant smoke he had placed the little coil of knotted string and the wooden crutch. He had watched as the string charred and spurted into flame, and the crutch blackened and caught fire, the worn, shiny leather pad of the armrest and the leather pad on the foot being the last parts to ignite. He fed the fire until they were completely consumed, and stood for a long time looking up at the smoke of it rising to the stars.
Then at last, he took a stick and raked through the ashes until he found the little metal casing from the foot of the crutch, and this he wrapped carefully in his handkerchief, and he placed in his pocket before he went to Compline.